PC Games, a Dying Breed? - Blame the Game Developers!

I’ll start by pointing the finger at the game developers; they are the ones making the games. They are part of a company and as a company, the goal is to make the most profit possible within legal and ethical means. But as EA has proven, this can be interpreted in various ways. The market for console games is huge and they are adapting to that.

Programming for consoles compared to the PC is different. With the PC, one version fits most PCs and simple updates usually fix issues. Once you take a look at the console market, it gets rather difficult. You simply can’t plug the code for the Xbox 360 into a PlayStation 3 game. You could end up developing three of the same games for three different consoles. This doesn’t seem cost efficient, does it?

Microsoft PC software developers tried to stick to what they were good at. The gaming code for the Xbox 360 is very similar to the code for a PC game. This makes porting over a game from the PC to Xbox 360 and vice versa very simple. An employee at Valve, the creators of the Half-Life series, said that it took them a day to get the PC version of the Orange Box running on an Xbox 360 compared to the PlayStation 3’s version, which took months.

The game developers should take part of the blame. They are the ones making the games, but the market for PC games isn’t there anymore. You can’t blame them for a lack of market. Perhaps if they made great games for the PC only, it would catch up, but you can’t expect them to make a game for such a small market share and spend tons of time and resources on only that market.

Next: Blame the Hardware! >>
 

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