General Discussion

I don't know if you've heard this rumor, but there is a rumor going around, and has been for some months, that Biowares upcoming MMOG is either console only or focuses on consoles and will come out on both console & PC at the same time (and thus very likely be a console port with bad control, oversized menus and just a more basic game over all.)

Well this has been all but shot down by Ray Muzyka himself (the co-founder of Bioware.) In a GDC panel he said the following on the topic of whether MMOGs will be coming to consoles;

"Every game developed for a console incurs a fee to the console maker; further, console-PC interoperability is expensive.  Given that there are far more PCs than consoles, developing an MMO for the console crowd is fraught with challenges."

Now, this isn't a blatant 'our MMOG won't be on consoles.' But it is sure as shit a 'making a console MMOG is a right pain in the ass!' :)

That gives me hope lol.

Oh BTW, the entire panel can be read here. It's with several industry leaders and is quite worth the read to get some insight on what they are all up to.

http://wow.incgamers.com/forums/vbarticles.php?do=article&articleid=42

Didn't they say at GDC that the PC online userbase is something like 300 million but noones buying the software which is the problem. I blame them I mean it's not hard to make it so you need to be online to play or if you're offline then that CD key can only be used once until you've logged back into your online account to refresh it.

"300 million but noones buying the software which is the problem."

BS excuse. First of all, in the MMO market, that's not even an issue as you can't really pirate an MMO. Second, good PC games, still do well. The problem is most of the "big" games on the PC in the past few months have been 6 month late ports or some other vaguely uninteresting crap. Even Bioshock managed to drop the ball a bit by including a completely obnoxious and obtrusive DRM scheme that put off a ton of PC users. The global PC user base is MUCH larger than that btw.

In regards to the console only rumor, never heard of it, and if I did, I never would have believed it. Unless they were looking for shockingly low subscription rates to begin with, going console only for an MMO would be a terrible idea, and there isn't a chance in hell most PC users would play in a mixed console+PC world.

Isn't Final Fantasy a mixed console and PC users world?

It used to have 600,000 subs and was the "WoW" of it's day, vastly out subscribling it's nearest rivals.

I don't think PC users mind playing with console users.

I know I'd be unpleased by any nerf to the game's scale for console users, but playing with them would'nt be an issue. I'm easy. I'll play with anyone.

Originally posted by baff

I don't think PC users mind playing with console users.

I disagree. Keep in mind, the console users were tacked in after the PC players had already well established themselves in that game, and there wasn't any change made to the game specifically yo cater to the console users. The only measurable difference really would be the quality of the community, which I haven't seen in a while so I couldn't really make a comparison. The biggest issue with PC+Console is the console community tends to be even less mature than the PC one, if that's even possible. I'm not talking about kids, I mean just generally immature and obnoxious people of all ages. It gets to be a bigger issue when they actually modify the game to suit console users. Just look at the whole Live on PC thing. Nobody wants to pay for features that are being stripped out of a PC game that would of otherwise been free, and many don't want to play with the console community which is even less of an incentive to "upgrade". There are outright riots when Live gets dumped on a PC game, and I've yet to see one Live for PC title do well on the PC.

Originally posted by greenstumps

Didn't they say at GDC that the PC online userbase is something like 300 million but noones buying the software which is the problem. I blame them I mean it's not hard to make it so you need to be online to play or if you're offline then that CD key can only be used once until you've logged back into your online account to refresh it.

 

In  the US the number of PCs in the house compared to the number of consoles is like 3/1. So there is a MASSIVE market there. But yea, most of those simply don't have the hardware to run most modern games. So what we need is for some company to build a unified, cheap yet reasonably powerful 'gaming PC' that is also fully upgradable (as that is the strength of the PC over Macs or Consoles.)

Theres actually something like that in the works. Nvidia, AMD, Intel and more have come together lately to try and do this, to bring PC gaming back to the forefront. To let all these millions of console gamers and tens of millions more casual PC gamers (those who play online poker, bejeweled or even the solitare every PC comes with) be able to buy an affordable yet reasonably powerful PC and open that PC gaming market up 1000 fold.

Consoles sell at a huge deficit so that the consoles can be relatively affordable. But they charge $15 more then a PC game cause thats where they make all their money. The same thing might have to happen with PC gaming. But one thing they also have to do is find a reliable and un-intrusive protection to prevent pirating.

"But one thing they also have to do is find a reliable and un-intrusive protection to prevent pirating."

THQ did this a long time ago. The most reliable and un-instrusive protection is nothing.

I don't really buy that.

Subscription games means most people will be of credit card owning age, and everybody will be accountable and have to behave themselves rather than get their expensive accounts banned.

Whats "Live on PC"?  Google comes up with Irish football.

A way of playing Halo online with PC and Xbox users.....

Only no one with a PC wants to play Halo at all because they all have Quake Wars and BF2142.

I'm quite willing to play Xbox users in my Quake Wars or BF games. But I'm not going to buy any crap games. It's Halo PC gamers object to, not what type of terminal the other players use to connect with.

Huxley on the other hand, I'll play that.  

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/10980.html

Bring yer consoles.

Originally posted by baff

I don't really buy that.

Subscription games means most people will be of credit card owning age, and everybody will be accountable and have to behave themselves rather than get their expensive accounts banned.

Live on PC is microsofts attempt to make PC gamers pay for their online play like Xbox360 players do by roping in developers into using their Live matchmaking system, stripping out all the advanced multiplayer features, giving PC users the absolute bare bones multiplayer, and then making them pay for all the advanced ranking and the like that we've done successfully for free for decades. Note, that once again, all it is is a match making system where you use your own bandwidth, only its on the PC, making it shockingly more of a ripoff than it is on the 360 which I didn't think was possible. Overall their goal is to wrap it in with the "games for windows" requirements so developers will be forced to use it if they want their sweet sweet MS kickback money.

Whether I played with Console users would depend on two things.

1: If the console got things like 'sticky targeting' to help them in PvP and PC got a system to automatically reduce aiming to make things' more fair.' Thats the way it works in the only PC/Console FPS game. Console players get sticky targeting, PC players get their accuracy reduced in the game itself. It was totally pathetic.

2: Theres build in voice that is always turned on. The #1 reason I refuse to buy a console and play online is the pathetically immature Xbox360 community. You ever watched someone play Halo 3 on Xbox Live? You want to scratch your ears off.