Why New Games Are Always Garbage on PCs

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I think what this lady was trying to say is "why CONSOLE PORTS are always garbage on PCs." The solution is simple, if you can't make a PC version...don't. Kinda makes you wonder how video games were ever made for the PC in the past?

The biggest issue is the difference between consoles and PC. There’s very little fragmentation in the console market. A developer producing a game for the PS4 and Xbox One has exactly three devices they need to consider while developing. Meanwhile a PC developer has to consider what version of Windows the gamer has, a long list of possible video cards and processors. There are thousands—millions—of variations and it’s really, really hard to account for them all. “There is no complete way of testing for every variation of PC, even with a proper QA setup.
 
The problem is that they underfund the devs that are porting the games. Iron Galaxy was given almost no time or resources to port Arkham Knight, but they are a pretty good dev, so had they been given the time and the money I am sure it would have been fine. Look at Rise of the Tomb Raider, Square gave Nixxes the time and money they needed to get it right.
 
A developer producing a game for the PS4 and Xbox One has exactly three devices they need to consider while developing.

Three devices? Am I missing something? Didn't read the clickbait article... is she including a monitor of some sort?
 
There is no complete way of testing for every variation of PC, even with a proper QA setup.

Because everyone knows Beta testing isn't for testing anymore?
 
Three devices? Am I missing something? Didn't read the clickbait article... is she including a monitor of some sort?

Console, controller, and display. At least that's what I assume she means. Didn't read it either but that makes sense
 
Three devices? Am I missing something? Didn't read the clickbait article... is she including a monitor of some sort?

Probably because either the Playstation 4 or the XBoxOne has a variant edition with a faster processor or more/different RAM.
 
Build the absolute best for PC, then downgrade things to fit the console.

Rather than build for the console and just use those assets to make due on the PC.

Why wouldn't you want to go with the absolute best then knock things down a bit to make it the best you can on the console. Why start with the lowest standards and just hang out there? Cost, sure. But, you're not making much of a reputation with gamers. The game companies that make the good reputation (Naughty Dog is a console only company that I will absolutely pre-order games from). Others, like EA - I won't pre-order. Their reputation on console ports, shitty releases, season pass, etc. is horrible.

I'd rather do it right, have a good reputation for delivering excellent games, than be the laughing stock on the industry, but still rake in money....
 
Personally, I think one of the major problems with PC ports is that many PC ports are not done in-house. Many studios do the console versions in-house and after that finds contractors or outsourcer to do the PC port.

And immediately a few problems occur. Firstly, the technical expertise that led to the developed game is not replicated with the contractors or outsourcer. There's this old adage: writing your own code is easy, fixing someone else's code is hard. When you have a console version, you have a different SDK and different system APIs. There are some system calls in the consoles which are not replicated in the PC. So you have to rewrite some code. Do the outsourcer or contractor know what the original programmer or developer intended with their code?

A lot of these problems can be solved by communication but developers are busy people and they can't necessarily answer every email or skype call. There is no substituting working in the same office and having a face to face conversation when you need to clear doubts or ask questions.

Then there's the problem of time. Game developers are under insanely tight schedules. But if schedules for releasing games is unrealistic, schedules for releasing ports is even more unrealistic. There's a mindset that if a game is released on consoles, then the PC port must follow very shortly after. Few people understand that you cannot just write the code once and just simple compile it on the Xbone, then PS4, then PC. Doesn't work that way. Product managers seem to also have this mindset at times. I think the problem is that too many assets can be shared, like art assets or game data code, etc. So there's this belief that "it's a small tweak" to make something written on the consoles work on the PC.

And there's money. How much we pay for the PC ports. Some publishers think the PC is a great market and will invest a lot into the PC version. Some others however, think the PC scene is pirate haven and not worth the money. Therefore very little money is spent on the PC port.

I work in software testing for a games studio, and the difference between console and PC testing is indeed night and day. Consoles, just get 50-100 consoles, hire a few interns or contract testers, and get them to test(play). You know who are the good testers by the reports they generate, the detail in the report, the clarity in the ways to reproduce bugs(hint hint hint to future games development people!). PC on the other hand, it's a question of identifying the majority of the market. It's impossible to test every single hardware combination. You just get the hardware you think 95% of the market has and just build PCs with that combination. Steam's hardware survey is a good guide. Even then, you will find that many bugs still will occur with some hardware.

All too often, you heard people scream about "This game doesn't work with this sound card! I don't believe how they can let this bug through, don't they ever do the simplest test?" More often, there's a simpler reason. We didn't have that hardware in testing. Most of the glaring hardware bugs to slip through these days, I think they involve hardware like sound, network, storage. Hard to track what gets released daily too.
 
I think what this lady was trying to say is "why CONSOLE PORTS are always garbage on PCs." The solution is simple, if you can't make a PC version...don't. Kinda makes you wonder how video games were ever made for the PC in the past?

The biggest issue is the difference between consoles and PC. There’s very little fragmentation in the console market. A developer producing a game for the PS4 and Xbox One has exactly three devices they need to consider while developing. Meanwhile a PC developer has to consider what version of Windows the gamer has, a long list of possible video cards and processors. There are thousands—millions—of variations and it’s really, really hard to account for them all. “There is no complete way of testing for every variation of PC, even with a proper QA setup.

This kind of work is actually hard too, I have been a dev for around 35 years on just about everything including all likes of assembly (yes fuckers I don't call it assembler) and I have just started really looking hard at GPU computing and just general things like shader programming. It's not easy, at least in my view this seems to be one of the last bastions of real coder work, I feel like it may even be more challenging than many device drivers which I have written a few of as well. So I guess the question I have is how the hell do they even do these ports? Are they using some type of toolkit or common engine that can do it?
 
It was a clickbait article that the author wrote out of frustration at most. They did very little to investigate the issue or to even explain the issue. They just brought up three games (Batman Arkham, Batman Telltale, and No Man's Sky), took a couple quotes from one indie dev, did no investigation into what went into the games they brought up. It was a very click-baity article. It probably should not have even been brought up here.
 
I'm not going to even read the article after looking at the quoted summary.
Performance is a hard target to hit on PCs when dealing with low end machines.
Development is not.
Using the fragmentation excuse is just lazy. Most games are garbage because it's all graphics with little focus on fun or innovation.
Ports are lazy because it's just lazy i general. They try to adapt the game to PC using the least amount of work.
 
It is mostly due to the business practice of Minimum Viable Product. You want to put the least amount of resources into something that gives you the best ROI. It has been the consumer electronics model for a long time but now the gaming industry is following in that as well.
 
The biggest issue is the difference between consoles and PC. There’s very little fragmentation in the console market. A developer producing a game for the PS4 and Xbox One has exactly three devices they need to consider while developing. Meanwhile a PC developer has to consider what version of Windows the gamer has, a long list of possible video cards and processors. There are thousands—millions—of variations and it’s really, really hard to account for them all. “There is no complete way of testing for every variation of PC, even with a proper QA setup.
I've heard this argument again and again and while of course there are always going to be exceptions, is the reality actually this bad? Isn't the whole point of APIs like DirectX to write your code for a specified standard so that it will work on ALL hardware that supports it? Of course there are always the odd products that have poor drivers, but it seems like that should be a small minority. Everyone always totes this argument out like you have to program for infinite combinations of hardware. What's the actual truth on this? Like if I have a Geforce 780, I can run the game, but uh oh, now someone has a 970, back to the drawing board! Or the game runs great if you have an MSI motherboard, but once you have a Gigabyte, then no-go! Could someone more knowledgeable on this topic clear this up?
 
Build the absolute best for PC, then downgrade things to fit the console.

Rather than build for the console and just use those assets to make due on the PC.

Why wouldn't you want to go with the absolute best then knock things down a bit to make it the best you can on the console. Why start with the lowest standards and just hang out there? Cost, sure. But, you're not making much of a reputation with gamers. The game companies that make the good reputation (Naughty Dog is a console only company that I will absolutely pre-order games from). Others, like EA - I won't pre-order. Their reputation on console ports, shitty releases, season pass, etc. is horrible.

I'd rather do it right, have a good reputation for delivering excellent games, than be the laughing stock on the industry, but still rake in money....

While I completely agree, look at No Man's Sky, the most played game on Steam...they realize a majority are dumb as rocks and take advantage of it.
 
Build the absolute best for PC, then downgrade things to fit the console.

Rather than build for the console and just use those assets to make due on the PC.

Why wouldn't you want to go with the absolute best then knock things down a bit to make it the best you can on the console. Why start with the lowest standards and just hang out there? Cost, sure. But, you're not making much of a reputation with gamers. The game companies that make the good reputation (Naughty Dog is a console only company that I will absolutely pre-order games from). Others, like EA - I won't pre-order. Their reputation on console ports, shitty releases, season pass, etc. is horrible.

I'd rather do it right, have a good reputation for delivering excellent games, than be the laughing stock on the industry, but still rake in money....

Console market penetration and assisting with development costs on certain titles. I really noticed this generation that Developers don't want to really show just how bad the XBone and PS4 are by blowing them out of the water with actual PC grade specifications. I would not be surprised if Microsoft and Sony pushed developers along these lines, the crappy port mess is really just a smaller symptom of the overall disease.
 
Oh god, another misinformed article from that echo chamber.

First off there are plenty of people with 20-40 hours logged and more on PC who are loving it and it's everything they hoped for. I'm one of them. DLC will only improve it.

Secondly, this stupid bitch is no journalist and fails to be aware of the fact that NMS was primarily developed as a PC title! It only became PS4 in the last year and a bit.
 
I thought the use of things like DirectX and what not basically meant you didn't need to so much care about different machines, you program for for that, and that talks to your hardware.

But whatever, say it like it is, they sell more on consoles than PCs, which is why they make for consoles first, the end.
 
The problem is that they underfund the devs that are porting the games. Iron Galaxy was given almost no time or resources to port Arkham Knight, but they are a pretty good dev, so had they been given the time and the money I am sure it would have been fine. Look at Rise of the Tomb Raider, Square gave Nixxes the time and money they needed to get it right.

Definitely! It's funny you mention Rise of the Tomb Raider. I literally just installed that game last night and couldn't believe how much smoother and well optimized it seemed compared to the previous title for PC. Rise looks sooo much nicer graphically, has tons of graphic options with explanations for each when you hold over on them, nice HD menus and just an all around complete and correct feel. Plus, with as good as the game looks... it actually runs at the same FPS for me on high/medium settings as did the previous game on mostly medium settings. That is saying a lot, given how much nicer Rise looks. I was expecting to have to play on medium/low to get 40-60 fps considering how the last game ran for me. Definitely a good example of a well done PC title that hit console first.
 
Why AAA, $60 Titles, Are Always Garbage on PCs

FTFY

I have no issues playing 99% of the games I purchase -- then again I don't pre-order anything and I def do not fall for marketing and hype, like some teenager.
 
You do get the one one gem that turns out to be an overachiever but most of them are either garbage to begin with or has piss poor optimization (i.e. Batman AK as one example).
 
I dunno, I haven't been too upset with a game I purchased in quite a while. I didn't wan't to spend $60 on Overwatch, but I did and it has been so worth it.
 
It baffles me as to why every new game has limited keybinding options. Is it some standard thing to not allow half the keyboard to be rebound? I always assumed it was some universally used code for something like that. Kinda always effects me since I'm a lefty
 
It baffles me as to why every new game has limited keybinding options. Is it some standard thing to not allow half the keyboard to be rebound? I always assumed it was some universally used code for something like that. Kinda always effects me since I'm a lefty
That always annoyed the crap out of me too. I want melee on the mouse dammit!
 
What I wonder is, if you have two video cards with equivalent horsepower, why do games that we think should have been optimized for AMD card always run faster on NVIDIA cards.
 
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