The Problems With Porting Games

mr_sifter writes "There's a large lexicon of monosyllabic, four-letter words for describing something you don't like — but only PC gamers use the word 'port' with such a fervent degree of repulsion. Common complaints about console ports include meager graphics options, dodgy third-person camera angles, poorly-thought-out controls and sparsely distributed save points. In this feature, Bit-tech talks to developers of games such as Dead Space, Red Faction and Tales of Monkey Island to find out why porting games between the three major consoles and the PC is so difficult. Radically different CPU, graphics and memory architectures play their part, as do the differences in control methods and the rules Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo set about how games should work on their systems."

Ported game

[smittyoneeach]

Ported game,
Crying shame.
Like lesser lather,
Endless flame.
Burma Shave

Obligatory

[elrous0]

Well I'm a PC gamer and PC's are the far superior platform, as any real gamer like me knows. Anyone who doesn't use a mouse and keyboard is clearly inferior to me and lacks my intelligence and superior taste in gaming. If you want to know more on the subject, just come to the videogame store where I work sometime. I regularly spend hours there snobbishly berating console game buying customers and informing them of my superiority.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play the pompous villain in an 80's teen flick. Ferrari is the ONLY car to drive, you know.

4 letter words I don't like

[Anonymous Coward]

...RTFA?

Re:Punchline:

[kalirion]

We want a game that doesn't run again, like Crysis did the first time we subjected our poor socket 939 rigs to it.

I think you're pretty much alone on that one.

Re:Split across six pages

[Anonymous Coward]

It's tough porting articles from the back of a napkin into HTML, clearly.

Re:On the issues of port

[Anonymous Coward]

neither one is an emulator?

Re:Don't forget Bowlderizing

[larry bagina]

You wouldn't believe how uncensored they are. I was in Japan back in March and one evening saw the weirdest Wii game ever. It was a bukake simulator. Imagine 3 drunk japanese businessmen and pasty white guy shaking their wiimotes at a virtual girl. There was some sort of scoring system I didn't understand, but you did shoot a load on her (and theyr replayed the money shot in slow-mo) As the game progressed, she removed more and more clothes (I only played a few rounds).

Anyhow, the box and disc looked like a legitimate, licensed wii game not some homebrew game.

Re:I disagree with the first paragraph!

[Minwee]

But I thought that once software was exposed to the healing rays of Steve it would "Just Work".

How can anything that runs on The Holy Mac be bad?

Re:I disagree with the first paragraph!

[Yvan256]

OS X is pretty much dead as a gaming platform.

Isn't Mac OS X based on BSD?

Re:PC = Personal Computer

[KrimZon]

Chicken achtung Gertrude coriander buffalo 0xfe30 had had had had had had had had had had had had off in whose tool shed they were whacking. And I think we all know what that means!

Re:Obligatory

[gbarules2999]

Linux Gaming: All One Million Source Code Revisions of Nethack, Right At Your Fingertips (TM)

The problems with porting games...

[HikingStick]

The problems with porting games really come down to getting through customs. If they would just declare everything, and not try to sneak in those exotic fruits, everything would be okay. Maybe next time they should just fly in, instead of sea passage...