Gears of War Heading To PC Someday 69
Mark Rein, of Epic Studios, told the folks over at Team Xbox that sooner or later Gears of War will be heading for the PC. With Microsoft's 'ownership' of both the 360 and PC platforms, it's a no-brainer that Epic's epic will make its way there eventually; the question is one of keeping quality high and satisfying fans of the franchise. They also discuss the hopeful-looking future for the game, as a part of the Marketplace download ecology and in future games. Rein states: "The big challenge is to make a game that was designed solely for the console, to take advantage of every last little corner of that console, to fill every little crack and run as many threads as we could and do as much to exploit the power of that machine, and make it run well on enough PCs to be worth releasing. That's a challenge." For another look back and forward on the game, 1up has a chat with CliffyB up on their site.
PC...the land of the ports. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:360 Controller for PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PC...the land of the ports. (Score:2, Insightful)
There's something about gaming on a console that I prefer over PC gaming. Not only do I sit, chained, to a computer all day at work, when I get home I fire a computer up to read the news, get new music, and to keep in touch with friends and family. Unless I need a WoW fix, I'd rather throw an FPS or goofy Wii game on the tube, especially if there will be friends and/or booze involved.
I don't understand your comparison. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Whoring out our franchise" implies they were doing something for some noble higher purchase and are now succumbing to the call of cash, and giving up their moral stance. It implies that there's something seedy about writing games for the PC. I don't think it applies here.
"Gears of War" was written to make money. Expanding to the PC market allows them to make MORE money. No change in position, goals, or morals.
Co-Operative Mode (Score:2, Insightful)
PC games vs Console games (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider how much of the console development is actually done on the PC ? Consoles do not have some magic Console++ programming language - most of the development is done on the PC itself. Sure, the extensions/libraries might be different but we're not talking about a total code re-write just to make a port from console to PC.
What I think is the major difference between a PC game and Console game is how the game looks and plays.
Console games must have support for more limited controller compared to PC keyboard. Console games have simpler interfaces, the saving/loading mechanisms are generally simpler.
In the end, Console games are having difficulty overcoming the "platformer" stereotype. Back in the days of sega genensis and etc, most games were simple 2d scrollers, punch the monkey, kind of simple affairs.
Things have changed since these days but it seems like the spirit of the idea that console games are pac-man and Centrepide lives on.
Look at DeusEx1 vs DeusEx2.
Dx1 was clearly a PC game: it had inventory management, most guns had 2-3 different types of ammo you could switch/change/manage/use vs different opponents. You picked up a lot of information and it was saved in a log which you could edit/change/annotate. As you learned information in game, you had to feed it back into the game: you read someone's email that contains a username/password to another computer, you go over to that computer and you actually have to type it in. The interface was very robust and extensive. You could suffer area specific wounds, and heal them accordingly. It was a fantastic game. It ran perfectly fine the first time around. Many years after its release as newer and newer cards come onto the market, the game on max graphic settings looks better every time I buy a new card.
DX2 on the other hand was a console game that was poorly ported to PC: Universal ammo meant you only had a pool of 1 ammo and different guns burned the ammo at different rates. Usernames/passwords/pin numbers were non-existent - you either had access or you didn't (oh wow that concept was only invented in gaming in like the 80's). There was one type of 'tool' instead of dx1's collection of multitools/lockpicks/etc that you could use on a very limited number of places in the environment. The interface was clunky at best. Inventory management was limited to "you have 10 spots, each item takes 1 spot, you can carry 10 items) The interface was slow and unresponsive even with patches, the game handled sluggishly even years after the game was released and the graphic cards improved many fold.
Same comparison could be made between Morrowind and Oblivion. Granted Morrowind ran like an slug on release and just as bad after months of patching, even on high end systems. However, these days, running Morrowind on a high end system means the game handles incredibly well and all them fanboys who are spazzing about "but look how great oblivion looks you can see sooo far!!!!" should see Morrowind on max settings with a graphic tweak that increases the view distance to match today's hardware.
I could go on about the artistic aesthetics and the countless imaginative/interesting/fun books that morrowind had compared to the plastic crap of oblivion with its dozen of cut-and-paste-from-lore/elderscrolls-background books.
In closing, yes, there is a huge difference between PC games and Console games - it is not the programming, the extensions, the 3-12-months-behind-pc-technology, the controller or the madden-loving-fanboys.
It is the look and feel of these games, the spirit - one is the spirit of early dungeon and dragon text games and geeks learning how to use the acoustic coupler to dial up to their local BSB wondering "how cool would it be if we could play the Red Dragon text game with more than 3 people online!!" and the other one is supermarket plastic toy that gets chucked out every year or two for the newer, shinier one.