Are consoles the only reason AAA games exist?

[PigSkinWetDog]

I can't even remember the last AAA pc exclusive. Not to mention, many of these console ports are broken until being patched a few times. And don't get me started on how Nvidea Gameworks is ruining pc gaming with their horrible optimization.

It just seems like AAA games are catered to consoles. It kind of sucks, because everyone talks about how consoles are so weak, but these ps4/pc comparisons look very similar in the digital foundry videos. I want to see a game that is tailored to pc with mind blowing graphics.

 

[mmntech]

There's still plenty of AAA PC exclusives being made, including most big MMOs and strategy games. Those rarely end up on console.

Things today are certainly not as bad as they were a few years back. There's this period between about 2005 to 2010 I call the PC gaming dark ages. There were a lot of shoddy console ports back then, riddled with draconian DRM.

You can largely blame Microsoft for the decline. Last gen, they pushed hard to make the Xbox 360 the lead development system for cross platform titles. PC gaming was massively de-emphasized in the process, apart from the occasional lip service (*cough* Games for Windows Live). Most of their top PC studios got shut down, including Ensemble (Age of Empires) and ACES (Flight Simulator).

Piracy was also a huge issue, which lead to increasingly drastic measures to prevent copying. Rootkits, always-online, install limits. All that hot cup of awful. A lot of developers and publishers considered PC a lost cause that they couldn't make money off of. So games that did come out were usually pretty rough.

Then Valve came along and standardized everything from sales to DRM, proving PC could be a viable platform. It's sort of entered a renaissance since then. PC was also the lead platform for the indie revolution for the longest time.

A lot of top end PCs will outperform consoles graphically. It's just you need an expensive system to do it. I'd check out Grand Theft Auto V if you want eye candy.

As for shoddy ports, well, plenty of games last year proved that even consoles aren't immune from the "sell now, patch later" attitude.

 

[digitaldurandal]

You have two posts and both bash Nvidia (note spelling.) I would recommend not doing so or you will get infractions. Especially when it is not on topic.

As to your question I would say no. There would still be AAA titles without consoles. If consoles did not exist at all there would be more users gaming on the computer.

If your question is do the big budgets come largely from consoles the answer is yes, although it can be difficult to say the exact profit they make long term from computer vs console sales because there are so many factors. Console sales are going to be initially much higher than sales on the computer in most cases, however they have to pay royalties for console sales, also many console games are still physical and most computer games have gone digital so that is one less cost for the computer, and lastly I believe that computer game sales continue for much longer than console game sales leaving a revenue stream open for longer even in some cases for years.

 

[stockwiz]

It's because people on the PC pirate, and I was guilty of this too. The argument that people who pirate would not have bought the game anyways, an argument I use to give, is not valid. There were games I would have bought if I couldn't have pirated them... so there you have it.

With that said, content providers, especially game publishers and record companies, make way more money than they ever really deserve just for being the ones to publish/own content... plus they can own the same content forever, long after the artist has died.. content should become public domain after so many years... a major record label should not have the rights to own say "Def Leppards" original recordings long after the band is gone and have ownership go back and forth among large record labels who can continue to sell and 'milk' these old songs 100 years from now... nor should radios have to pay royalties to play content forever and ever...

 

[TheELF]

With that said, content providers, especially game publishers and record companies, make way more money than they ever really deserve just for being the ones to publish/own content... plus they can own the same content forever

Well it's not forever but pretty damn close to it.
https://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

 

[sweenish]

There's still plenty of AAA PC exclusives being made, including most big MMOs and strategy games. Those rarely end up on console.

Things today are certainly not as bad as they were a few years back. There's this period between about 2005 to 2010 I call the PC gaming dark ages. There were a lot of shoddy console ports back then, riddled with draconian DRM.

You can largely blame Microsoft for the decline. Last gen, they pushed hard to make the Xbox 360 the lead development system for cross platform titles. PC gaming was massively de-emphasized in the process, apart from the occasional lip service (*cough* Games for Windows Live). Most of their top PC studios got shut down, including Ensemble (Age of Empires) and ACES (Flight Simulator).

Piracy was also a huge issue, which lead to increasingly drastic measures to prevent copying. Rootkits, always-online, install limits. All that hot cup of awful. A lot of developers and publishers considered PC a lost cause that they couldn't make money off of. So games that did come out were usually pretty rough.

Then Valve came along and standardized everything from sales to DRM, proving PC could be a viable platform. It's sort of entered a renaissance since then. PC was also the lead platform for the indie revolution for the longest time.

A lot of top end PCs will outperform consoles graphically. It's just you need an expensive system to do it. I'd check out Grand Theft Auto V if you want eye candy.

As for shoddy ports, well, plenty of games last year proved that even consoles aren't immune from the "sell now, patch later" attitude.

Your timeline seems to be a little misaligned. Steam didn't come along during that time and save PC gaming. It existed during that entire period.

Granted, it didn't really start catching on until maybe about 2008 or so when Steamworks and their own matchmaking were introduced. In that regard, it does match up with your timeline. So maybe I'm more taking issue with the wording.

I think what helped PC gaming was more that the few devs that still cared about PC were legitimately putting a better product [than the aging consoles] on PC, and the rise of indies with the help of Humble Bundle. And Minecraft. I don't think one can talk about the renaissance of PC gaming without giving some credit to Minecraft.

Xbox 360 was the lead platform for the indie revolution. Credit where it's due, there. PC has just taken over the reigns.

 

[rivethead]

Star Citizen is a pc-exclusive game being built specifically to push modern hardware to the limits and beyond. With a $75 million budget (and counting), I'd say it's going to be AAA (at least).

Point: those games do exist.

 

[mmntech]

Your timeline seems to be a little misaligned. Steam didn't come along during that time and save PC gaming. It existed during that entire period.

Granted, it didn't really start catching on until maybe about 2008 or so when Steamworks and their own matchmaking were introduced. In that regard, it does match up with your timeline. So maybe I'm more taking issue with the wording.

Of course Steam is not solely responsible for the current PC gaming renaissance, and it did exist during the dark ages. Though about five years ago is when I started noticing it making a impact.

I'd peg PC gaming's lowest point being 2008 when Spore came out. It was one of the first mainstream casual games to use install limits. The buggy installer would fail and each subsequent install attempt would use up a slot even if it was on the same computer. That angered the casual gaming scene. They're customers that are very difficult to win back.

Also any posts I write after midnight should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[Stringjam]

Star Citizen is a pc-exclusive game being built specifically to push modern hardware to the limits and beyond. With a $75 million budget (and counting), I'd say it's going to be AAA (at least).

Point: those games do exist.

PC gamers: "Gimped consoles hold us back! PC is superior! Bwahh!"

Star Citizen comes along...

PC gamers: "System requirements are too da*n high! Download is too big! My 5-year-old PC can't run it on ultra! Bwahh!"

 

[DeathReborn]

I'd say if anything consoles have made AAA titles worse and not better. They enable the developers to go cheap and when they make it to the PC more often than not it's a sub par effort. That is not, despite the OP's opinion Nvidia's fault but the developers making bad choices or being controlled by money men.

Doom & Half Life were AAA at the time and existed entirely because of PC's.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Consoles are vastly easier for most people, for a wide variety of reasons. Most people who have PCs don't build their own, don't know how to troubleshoot when things go wrong, and don't buy PCs with hardware specifically designed with gaming in mind (most notably in the graphics card department). With a console, there's never any mystery about whether a piece of software will run; if I have a PS4 and the game case says PS4 on it, I'm golden. With a PC, it can be a crapshoot considering the wide variety of different system configs possible even if you just stick to what's offered by major PC builders. And then there's choosing various graphics options, which, while awesome for allowing PC gamers to crank up eye candy, is seen as a major hassle by people who just want to jump immediately into a game and play it knowing it will work correctly with little manipulation on their part.

Also, over the past few decades, people have become accustomed to controlling games with a purpose-built controller, and while the modern console controllers work on PC straight out of the box, most people still associate PC gaming with "keyboard + mouse" controls that they assume they won't like or won't be able to adjust to (never mind the ignorance about how simple it is to get a PS4 / Xbox controller working with a PC; this goes hand-in-hand with the earlier point about ease of use).

Then there is the convenience of consoles in connecting to a TV so games can be played on a large screen from the couch. You can connect a PC to a TV / home theater (and mine currently is), but it's not as convenient as a console which is meant to always be connected in such a way and very few people want to spend more time troubleshooting their setup to get everything working in harmony. Also, if you are using a keyboard and mouse, doing so from the couch is... well, it's just awful.

Finally, consoles are also cheaper than a dedicated gaming PC. $400 can get you a nice enough computer for basic web browsing, but you aren't matching a PS4 as a gaming machine for that price.

So, with all those things considered, consoles represent a larger market for AAA game developers to target. They've got dedicated hardware that will run a specific level of eye candy, but you don't have to cater to different levels of system configuration so the people playing on grandma's laptop can play alongside people on quad Titans. The expansion of online connectivity has helped negate one of the major strengths PCs had over consoles in the past with regards to online multiplayer. I wouldn't say that consoles are the only reason AAA games exist, since if consoles didn't exist, developers would make AAA titles specifically for the PC (and some still do), but consoles certainly get the lion's share of the attention.

 

[Midwayman]

Finally, consoles are also cheaper than a dedicated gaming PC. $400 can get you a nice enough computer for basic web browsing, but you aren't matching a PS4 as a gaming machine for that price.

Not true as was discussed much last year. You could put together a box that had better gpu (barely) and a better cpu for the same money. PC components have only gotten cheaper since then. The real trick is you have to be happy running at the quality settings, resolution, and frame rate that consoles use. Most PC games consider that unacceptable. Plus when you add in that PC games are cheaper, PC gaming is actually cheaper by quite a bit in the long run, even if you do decide to blow the budget a bit and upgrade to better hardware.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Not true as was discussed much last year. You could put together a box that had better gpu (barely) and a better cpu for the same money. PC components have only gotten cheaper since then. The real trick is you have to be happy running at the quality settings, resolution, and frame rate that consoles use. Most PC games consider that unacceptable. Plus when you add in that PC games are cheaper, PC gaming is actually cheaper by quite a bit in the long run, even if you do decide to blow the budget a bit and upgrade to better hardware.

A slightly better GPU and better CPU are not going to equate to a better gaming experience given the difference in operating system and software optimization. A PC is a better overall investment since it can do a whole slew of things besides playing games, but if gaming is literally all you care about, and you only have $400 to spend, a PS4 or Xbox One is a better choice from an economic standpoint. And the people who are concerned about the economics of such things are usually the same people who want the convenience of a console anyway.

 

[norseamd]

You have two posts and both bash Nvidia (note spelling.) I would recommend not doing so or you will get infractions. Especially when it is not on topic.

No not at all as long as it is following the rules of the individual subforum.

 

[bystander36]

AAA games exist because there is a gaming industry. Not because of consoles. They'd exist if consoles didn't exist, and they'd be on the PC instead. Of course there have been AAA PC games in the past, such as Dragon Age: Origins, but due to Piracy and in general, there is more money to be made on consoles, current games are being designed for the console/controller first and foremost. Now Dragon: Inquisition is clearly designed for a console first. DA 2 was somewhere in transition.

What ever the top quality games that are made is going to be considered AAA games. They'd exist as long as a gaming industry exists. The platform is just going to changed based on popularity and possibilities of making money from it.

 

[escrow4]

AAA is pffft all round last 2 years or so. This year, we had Dying Light so far in three months and *crickets*. Sure there is Battlefield and Call of Duty but genuine AAA games that actually push genres (or are just different with some heart) are nearly dead. Its all cookie-cutter now. GTA V is an exception, same with the Witcher series but it seems like all the life has gone out of a lot of AAA titles. And stupid multiplayer, where is the singleplayer? Flashbacks to the 00s, you had the Suffering, Manhunt, Condemned, State of Emergency, Bloodrayne and more - all that cheese and now its mostly shiny shiny meh. If I bought a Titan X for $1K - for what?

And Star Citizen meh. I'd take Mass Effect anyday.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Not true as was discussed much last year. You could put together a box that had better gpu (barely) and a better cpu for the same money. PC components have only gotten cheaper since then. The real trick is you have to be happy running at the quality settings, resolution, and frame rate that consoles use. Most PC games consider that unacceptable. Plus when you add in that PC games are cheaper, PC gaming is actually cheaper by quite a bit in the long run, even if you do decide to blow the budget a bit and upgrade to better hardware.

Slightly better with tons more overhead in the OS and drivers. The game will probably not run as well.

The thing you guys like to forget is that there are a lot of games that would never have made it to the PC, that are now. Developers are catering to multiple platforms because it's not that difficult to do so these days. They aren't making games for consoles just because that's where the money is, but because it's easy to make games for all the platforms and why not maximize your game's potential profit by having it everywhere?

 

[BSim500]

Slightly better with tons more overhead in the OS and drivers. The game will probably not run as well.

I think this is highly variable depending on the game. Many console games which cannot sustain a stable 60fps are now locked to 30fps (even if they could average say 40-50fps). Yet on a PC with console equivalent hardware (7790/7850/750Ti) you'll be getting that higher 40-50fps average (often with higher min fps due to much better single threaded CPU performance). A good example is Watch Dogs - locked to 30fps on a console, yet a 750Ti averages 45-50fps on same console equiv Medium (so that's 1080p @ 45-50fps PC vs 720/900p @ 30fps Console on virtually the same level of hardware). So the "consoles can do more with less" thing which has been traditionally true in the past, is simply non-existent in many cases due to 30fps locking and/or resolution nerfing.

Same with OS overhead - it's very minimal (1% CPU usage on mine), and the XB1 basically runs Windows in all but name. Overall console background overhead is just as high if not higher given the "next gen" consoles now need to install games like a PC, download endless patches like a PC, and require 1-2x of their 8x Jaguar cores to be set aside for that purpose of background updates, leaving only 6 out of 8 for gaming. That 25% console CPU overhead is far higher than any idle PC background usage I've ever owned.

 

[futurefields]

PC's are gaining traction in a big way since 2012.

 

[cmdrdredd]

So you spend $140 of your $400 budget (gotta match console price and I am not even including bundles on the Xbox that was less than $400)on a 750ti and you think you can build an entire system for the same cost? You have to include operating system and keyboard etc even if you reuse it because it is part of the package.

The point is, it is not that easy to build a gaming pc on that budget that matches up well.

 

[BSim500]

So you spend $140 of your $400 budget (gotta match console price and I am not even including bundles on the Xbox that was less than $400)on a 750ti and you think you can build an entire system for the same cost? You have to include operating system and keyboard etc even if you reuse it because it is part of the package.

The point is, it is not that easy to build a gaming pc on that budget that matches up well.

Assuming the sole use for a PC is 100% gaming, and that the person with a console hasn't also needed to buy a $400-$500 laptop to match the same overall functionality (because his console isn't that good at typing out his college dissertation / homework, etc) which he then "forgets" to price in as the amount "saved" on not buying a PC. And then "forgets" to include the premium of higher priced console games over the next 7-8 year lifespan, which drop in price far less, and far slower, (especially if you don't rush out and buy every single game you're interested in on launch day).

"PC vs console pricing" is an old argument, but when you add up your "total computing needs" the average person often ends up spending +$700-$800 one way or another, and most PC-less console owning teenagers usually end up getting a laptop when they start college / high-school / get a job. In many cases it's often "console + laptop + tablet" vs "desktop + tablet".

 

[Morbus]

PC gamers: "Gimped consoles hold us back! PC is superior! Bwahh!"

Star Citizen comes along...

PC gamers: "System requirements are too da*n high! Download is too big! My 5-year-old PC can't run it on ultra! Bwahh!"

Meanwhile, all the cows in the universe that grass isn't green enough.

 

[Midwayman]

So you spend $140 of your $400 budget (gotta match console price and I am not even including bundles on the Xbox that was less than $400)on a 750ti and you think you can build an entire system for the same cost? You have to include operating system and keyboard etc even if you reuse it because it is part of the package.

The point is, it is not that easy to build a gaming pc on that budget that matches up well.

Meh. Just at Newegg I threw stuff in a cart and came up at $460 including windows without even looking around for deals. That will happily run bf4 at better than 60fps at higher settings than a console will. (x4 860k + 260x) I could probably further reduce it if I wanted to spend time researching parts rather than overkill the cpu and gpu.

That doesn't even get into the money you save on each and every game or the fact you don't need a second device as others have said.

Consoles are easier for sure. However they are not especially cheap, especially in the long run.

 

[Morbus]

Consoles are only cheaper when a valid cheaper suggestion would be not to play at all.

Yes, it's technically cheaper to buy a console than it is to buy a gaming PC. As it is cheaper to buy a bicycle than it is to buy a car. But which is actually cheaper depends on what you want to do and how you want to do it. After all, walking is cheaper than buying a bike and a car both.

 

[escrow4]

Meh. Just at Newegg I threw stuff in a cart and came up at $460 including windows without even looking around for deals. That will happily run bf4 at better than 60fps at higher settings than a console will. (x4 860k + 260x) I could probably further reduce it if I wanted to spend time researching parts rather than overkill the cpu and gpu.

That doesn't even get into the money you save on each and every game or the fact you don't need a second device as others have said.

Consoles are easier for sure. However they are not especially cheap, especially in the long run.

And it will die in GTA V and Witcher III with a poky Athlon and a slow 260 @ 1080p. And by the time you turn down the settings it will look like the console version in the first place.