The Problems With Porting Games 330
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Crying shame.
Like lesser lather,
Endless flame.
Burma Shave
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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The mouse is a superior controller for anything that involves aiming (FPS) or pointing (RTS). The PC can have superior graphics to any console (at the price of a $300 GPU). That said, PC gamers still aren't justified in claiming the overall superiority of their platform because certain types of controllers aren't really there for PC gaming yet.
If one of the major game publishers (EA or Valve?) were to start selling Bluetooth-enabled motion sensor style controllers, and supporting them on multiple titles, we
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I don't think the mouse is superior to the light gun for aiming/pointing. It's just too bad the light gun isn't very common except for with coin-ops.
How would Wii Remote support be worth it? (Score:2)
I don't think the mouse is superior to the light gun for aiming/pointing.
But how many PC gamers are going to buy a Bluetooth adapter, a Wii Remote (the only widely available light gun that works with LCD monitors), and a wireless sensor bar? And given that figure, would it be worthwhile for major label video game developers to spend the time==money to support them? I'm not too optimistic.
Besides, how do you use a light gun to turn your character from side to side in order to shoot off-screen targets?
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You appear to call Duck Hunt a FPS (Score:2)
I suppose the light gun is better for FPS games with controlled movement along a path
As I understand the common understanding of the term "first-person shooter", games like Duck Hunt, Area 51, and Time Crisis series are called "light gun shooters" or "shooting galleries", not "first-person shooters". Taken literally, they would qualify, but ordinarily, FPS encompasses "games with full freedom of movement" at least to the extent seen in Battlezone (1980).
Re:You appear to call Duck Hunt a FPS (Score:4, Informative)
They're often called "rail shooters."
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Wanting to kill consoles (Score:5, Interesting)
The big flaw in all this is an assumption that any video game publisher wants consoles to be killed.
Some people develop video games but do not do so as a full-time day job. They want consoles to be killed because console makers (especially Nintendo) have an overt bias against teams who work from home. This means games developed in part-time have to be self-published for PC. And even among major labels, there have been a couple stories on Slashdot over the past couple days about publishers whining about console makers' fee structures. See, for example, this story [slashdot.org] and this story [slashdot.org].
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Other consumer electronics don't come with "special monitor manuals". Why should computers?
If they machine has an HDMI port, you're set. Otherwise it's going to be a PAIN not because
of the PC but because different vendors treat any VGA port you might find differently. Some
allow the native panel resolution, some allow some lesser 16:9 mode and some only allow 4:3.
Once you're using HDMI and the "monitor" identifies itself as a "TV" then the possibilities are really limited.
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Other consumer electronics don't come with "special monitor manuals".
Yes it does. The manual for a Wii explains how to connect it to a TV using any of several methods.
If they machine has an HDMI port, you're set. Otherwise it's going to be a PAIN
Which means that in most cases that one encounters, it will be a pain. Most PCs I see at Best Buy do not have HDMI ports, nor do any SDTVs.
Some allow the native panel resolution, some allow some lesser 16:9 mode and some only allow 4:3.
But even that is better than allowing only a blank screen because the PC is HD-only and the TV is SD-only.
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Boot time isn't an issue, just use linux! Moblin boots in less than ten seconds! You can go from zero to NetHack in less time than it takes to display the console game developer's logo.
Yessir, you can have games on linux in any color you want, so long as it's black. Nethack, Falcon's Eye, Slash'em: It's a regular gamer's utopia!
Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
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No, it's not a matter of opinion. It can be objectively measured. The measure of a good input device is how accurately it can transform what the user wants into what happens. Therefore, if skilled players using one device consistently outperform skilled players using another device in an FPS, we know objectively which device is better.
Do you know any wiimote players who think they c
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's not the same thing at all. It just proves the old adage "A witty saying proves nothing".
The perfect example is Halo, since it's more popular on the X-Box, and the X-box controller is usable on the PC, where there is also a port.
A lot of players are really, really good with the X-Box controller. My ex girlfriend worked with one of these players who would decimate both of us whenever we went over to play him on the his X-box. He'd also be at the top of the ladder in online torments, etc.
So I propose
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The Wii can use a mouse and keyboard (for surfing the net ...) as well as Wiimotes - guess that makes the Wii the uber-superior platform. (Not really - but when the next version comes out with hi-def video and a faster cpu ...)
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Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Informative)
No, the moderator just plays PC games and works for a video game store.
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Or actually thinks ferraris are the only car to drive, and is upset that he brought them into that.
Rob Lang speaks the truth... (Score:2, Insightful)
Since the vast majority of developers can achieve the vast majority of technical feats with enough time and effort. The problem is the fact time and effort costs money. The Guitar Hero 3 port was crap because no-one put any real money behind it, simply because chances are, no-one would buy it. That only makes sense.
I understand a lot of what the devs are saying, but if I'm going to be really negative about this I couldn't help get an uneasy feeling reading about Dead Space. So, essentially he's saying "don'
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Re:Rob Lang speaks the truth... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's really fucking hard to have redefinable keyboard layouts. I don't know much about console programming, but if there's an event loop capable of calling a buttonpressed routine, you have no excuse.
MSFT's market cap is over 2*10^11 USD (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, it's really fucking hard to have redefinable keyboard layouts. I don't know much about console programming, but if there's an event loop capable of calling a buttonpressed routine, you have no excuse.
Microsoft has a blanket ban on the use of USB keyboards as game controllers in Xbox 360 games; any game that does so doesn't get digitally signed for use on retail consoles. If step 1 involves hostilely taking over the parent company of the console maker so that it will make an exception to this ban, would that be an excuse?
Re:MSFT's market cap is over 2*10^11 USD (Score:5, Insightful)
Final Fantasy XI on the 360 allows you to use a USB keyboard as a controller, to include full WASD movement and not just typing messages.
Punchline: (Score:5, Insightful)
Making an interface that actually works properly on both Mouse+keyboard and gamepad(never mind wii stick) falls into the "squaring the circle with world peace" pile.
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Making an interface that actually works properly on both Mouse+keyboard and gamepad(never mind wii stick) falls into the "squaring the circle with world peace" pile.
Personally, since I bought the Xbox 360 Controller, I don't mind playing ports which skimp on Mouse+keyboard :).
The Prince of Persia: Sands of Times trilogy (haven't played the new PoP game) was awesome with the gamepad on the PC. In fact I'd say that a dual analog stick gamepad is by far the best method of control for these types of games, jus
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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:Punchline: (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure whether to take this straight or as satire. Does the "performance crown" in PC games really mean the game that runs the slowest?
Development cost (Score:2)
Game developers have the advantage over car manufacturers that they can produce a Ferrari for the same price a Volkswagen would cost
Since when does Crysis, your example of a Ferrari, cost the same amount to develop as something like Animal Crossing: City Folk, which had a similar day-one MSRP?
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Dead space no remappable keys (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be Rich (Score:2)
If I had a nickel for every time someone purchased a terrible port...
Oh wait, someone IS making that... and making alot of Nickels...
On the issues of port (Score:3, Informative)
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neither one is an emulator?
The Cavestory wiiware port looks promising, though (Score:2)
Oh course, I suppose having the entire original PC dev team involved along with some Wiiware developers helps.
disappointing article ... (Score:2)
i glanced at 1st sentence of the summary, and got all excited to read the article
I disagree with the first paragraph! (Score:5, Insightful)
"...only PC gamers use the word 'port' with such a fervent degree of repulsion"??
How about Mac OS X users!!?
Every time they give us a "port" these days, it's just someone repackaging the PC game code around the Cider engine, tweaking some of Cider's parameters until it appears to "basically run ok" and then they turn around and charge full retail price for it, AFTER it's been out at least 3 months for the PC already!
Never-mind the PC version might ALREADY have just been ported from a console.....
Re:I disagree with the first paragraph! (Score:5, Informative)
Mac is also a PC.
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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?
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The usual argument against ports I hear is that it's too much work for too small a market. Apparently Linux pirates are way more damaging to the industry that Windows pirates.
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For a game, it's not like it matters if it's using the native platform look and feel, so don't care if it's using X11 or e
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Isn't Mac OS X based on BSD?
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Wow, first time I feel old due to a whippersnapper like yourself not knowing history.
A short description that glosses over many finer points and is probably a bit loose with terminology:
in the 80's IBM came out with the IBM-PC (Personal Computer). This took off like a rocket, especially for business users. Unlike Apple, IBM allowed other companies to make computers based on their architecture- these were known as IBM-PC compatible, or "PC Compatible" for short. This was in contrast, to your Amiga, Mac, and
Re:I disagree with the first paragraph! (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck, revisionists.
It was "IBM-Compatible." Not "PC-Compatible." I never. Ever. EVER heard "PC-Compatible." Why? Because originally, Macintoshes, Amigas, Commodores, et al were also personal computers. However, they had different architecture. So, you needed to know what company's architecture was in mind when buying software. When people came out with clones, they identified what company's software they'd run. Saying "PC" wasn't useful, since that only meant "Not a Server/Mainframe."
Re:PC = Personal Computer (Score:5, Informative)
It does not, nor has it ever meant "Personal Computer with Microsoft Windows Operating System installed".
You must be 2 years old then. Apple has been using a decades plus old campaign that says exactly that.
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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!
Doc, it hurts when I port! (Score:2)
Isn't a poor port evidence of a poorly engineered original software product? There ought to be a separation of the game logic layers from the actual hardware implementation of the details.
I'm not in that industry, but, I've come across hearsay that game development these days is pretty shoddy for the average title since all the money is poured into asset development (sound and visuals) and the software part of it is an afterthought.
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Actually these days middleware and the use of thirdparty engines is becoming hugely important. Thus the software part isn't an afterthought so much as outsourced to someone more competent. The biggest problem in porting tends to be when someone tries to bring a game developed for consoles to the PC, or vice versa. Essentially the console is dramatically underpowered versus contemporary PCs. So console games are developed "close to the metal" to gain as much power as possible from coding tricks, and therefor
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Essentially the console is dramatically underpowered versus contemporary PCs.
A tri-core 3.2ghz PowerPC powered Xbox360 is underpowered? Yeah, maybe compared to PCs that cost 10 times as much, but it's far more powerful than most desktops people are buying even today.
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The CPU's pretty nippy, still, but RAM is comparatively limited and the graphics card's showing its age. It's just the tradeoff you get for the benefits of a fixed platform.
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Bear in mind, a 'contemporary' PC is six years old with on-board graphics. And that the biggest selling PC titles are things like WoW and the Sims which don't use much graphical power at all.
Maybe PC gaming would be in a better state if they made more games like those, and fewer like Crysis and Oblivion which are pretty much just graphic-card bench-tests.
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The structure of the engine itself might vary considerably - consider the situation of the PS3 vs the PC.
With the PS3, you know every user has around 6 free cores, each of which is somewhat less powerful than one core of a C2D for certain kinds of data. So if you want a high end product that performs well, you parallelize. Massively.
Now consider the PC, where you can't even guarantee the user's got 2 cores, and even if you do, they might have 2-4, you've got a division of labor problem. You could spawn to
Depends on the category, depends on the dev (Score:2)
If done right, almost any FPS should be portable from console to PC, and be FAR better on PC. (Mouse + keyboard is a superior control mechanism for FPS games.)
Most RPGs aren't too bad either, especially if you plug in a joypad to the PC.
Of course, frequently ports are NOT done right - the PC port of Final Fantasy VII is a notorious example of a port being done so lazily as to break compatibility very rapidly within about a generation of hardware releases. Nowadays it's often easier to get the PSX version
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If done right, almost any FPS should be portable from console to PC, and be FAR better on PC. (Mouse + keyboard is a superior control mechanism for FPS games.)
Most RPGs aren't too bad either, especially if you plug in a joypad to the PC.
Of course, frequently ports are NOT done right - the PC port of Final Fantasy VII is a notorious example of a port being done so lazily as to break compatibility very rapidly within about a generation of hardware releases. Nowadays it's often easier to get the PSX version running in an emulator than to get the PC port working.
Even after you just use these game types you still end up with far too many good games that you can't change the controls. The most recent example of this is the pc version of Arkham Asylum (batman game). A standard usb analog stick logitech pad messes up and has the up be down, down be up. And there is no way to fix it. Every pc game should either have customizable controls or tested well enough so they know that all devices are going to work with it. Sigh...
RE4 (Score:4, Informative)
it's only a port because it plays like one... (Score:2)
If it feels like it should be on a console, then one is likely to consider it a port, even if the development was done primarily on a PC, for a PC.
In other words, whilst not being particularly technically accurate, 'port' is a word that gets thrown around precisely because it is obvious that not all the pieces fit.
Valve and EA (Score:2)
If you want to see porting done wrong, you should look no further than Valve's partnership with EA. I don't think anyone can argue that Valve makes some very good games. Half life 2, L4D, TF2, Portal, etc... are all excellent games. But their console versions are a crying shame. They range from passably mediocre (Orange box for 360) to downright awful unsupported shovelware (Orange Box for PS3). The only product that actually can be called good is L4D on the 360, and even that is a pale imitator to the PC v
DX? (Score:3, Insightful)
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PORT to Linux!! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:PORT to Linux!! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like linux doesn't run great on high end hardware or anything. So, don't worry about the poor little consoles for a moment and PORT to Linux!!
Yeah, clearly Bungie was stupid for targeting Halo 3 for that crappy 360 and selling 8 million copies in 3 months when they could have gone straight for the Linux gaming market and have garnered 15 sales in a year.
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Yeah.. Linux will never be a major gaming platform until these things are resolved.
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Agreed, but targeting Wine is not "porting to Linux".
It depends on where you start (Score:5, Interesting)
It's very important to point out that the porting task has everything to do with where you start. The PC is simply not the best development environment anymore, the Xbox 360 is-- and even Carmack would agree with me, here. You can get a game going really fast on 360, then it's a bit less difficult to go to PC. We can call this the best case scenario. Rapid time to market with superior development tools on 360 with familiar API's for cross-platform development on PC, along with similar TCR requirements between GFW and 360.
Let's say you started on the PS3, though. Maybe you took the time to learn the architecture and really take advantage of the cell architecture, so your game is basically hardcoded around the flexible pipeline and mass pararllelization, now it does things that even PC games cannot. Porting it to the 360 might not be so bad, but going to the PC is going to be a rough letdown. It feels like a dog when porting a console game.
So maybe your game started out nicely organized and clean in design, but in that last few months before release while your publisher is driving you up a wall to release, you're going to have so many hacks and messy revisions to the model to ship within your ridiculous timeframe- plus all the devs are tired and need vacations and such. Suddenly, the game is not so portable. It's the same for any platform, really- you go balls to the wall optimizing our game for the platform and you're going to spend a lot of your smooth portability.
Pay no attention to the "specs" of consoles vs. PC, it's basically meaningless. Consoles often run games almost directly, plus they have all sorts of architecture enhancements and little hardware tricks you don't find in PC's. A PC needs to have brutally more power to really match the sort of speed and power you can squeeze out of a console.
Let's say you developed on nintendo wii first... well, it's game over already, you just developed a last-gen, almost Xbox-looking game and tied it to the wiimote. Good luck porting that. That's part of why American studios don't throw big games at it, because it's too limited in power and the publishers just don't want to risk it. There are too many "hardcore" games, which need to push the envelope. The Wii is basically doomed to casual games and childrens' games because of this, because the marketing figures will always point it in that direction--and that's what really runs the game industry.
Technically speaking, you can probably see why people like the Unreal Engine or Source Engine, given the fact that all the porting work is done for you... well you still have to deal with the insane, i mean ABSOLUTELY insane requirements each console has for release... everything from trademarks to menu formats to the way control is expressed in the interface. The amount of attention to detail necessary blows away months of work. Consoles are not a free-for-all, you have to use the hardware in a very specified way.
In short.. yeah, it's rough. More difficult than most people will ever really know.
Radically different CPU[s] ? (Score:2)
They are all PowerPC variants.
Some of us have to ship the same product on x86, MIPS, PowerPC and ARM from the same source base. ex: Cisco's CUE. While I admit the APIs for the graphics architectures of the different consoles are radically different, sometimes I can't help but wonder if some of the complaints from game developers are the typical exaggerations that everyone makes about how hard their job is.
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Someone has to write the game engine, if it is shit on certain platforms because it wasn't ported well then the games using it will suffer obviously. Even between the three game consoles the ports can be pretty dramatically different, not even compared to a PC port.
PCs have a bunch of additional problems in that you cannot easily predict what combination of features customers will have on a PC. Many popular PC games run on video cards that are inferior to the capabilities of the Xbox360 and PS3. Inferior in
Let us use a damn mouse and keyboard (Score:5, Insightful)
All three consoles now have USB ports. Let us use a mouse and keyboard with games that are appropriate for this kind of setup (FPS, RTS, etc).
You don't play MegaMan with a godamn keyboard and mouse and you don't play Starcraft with a godamn gamepad.
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Or if you have a PS3, you can use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Either way, it would be nice to see keyboard/mouse support in more games.
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To a degree I understand why you
From the porting cave... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'll back you on that. I worked on a port of a PC game to the DS a few years ago. Basically the budget and schedule was the minimum possible to get a successful project. For about half the project we were doing 70+ hour weeks. The lead programmer did significantly more than the rest of us. The final candidate milestone was about a week after the beta milestone. We basically got everything working in the minimum acceptable state just days before we hit the beta milestone. We had enough time for just a little
I For One (Score:2, Flamebait)
Would as soon see 10 great pc games a year as another 100 ports with absolutely SHITTY controls. I can live with poor graphics. occasional bad camera. Controls MUST be designed well and with ALL options for a PC.
For example. I believe Devil May Cry "or a similar port" Had a GAMES FOR WINDOWS logo on it. I attempted to play it with Keyboard/mouse and it was horrid "unable to play game breaking." So I got my PS3 controller and plugged it in. The Assholes who developed it only allowed a Xbox Controller scheme
Ports (Score:2)
Feature Loss (Score:2)
One of the reasons I stopped taking the Mac even remotely seriously as a games platform - the butchered ports of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.
BG lost multiplayer and voice sample customization, required all four CDs and swapped continually, even on fast-for-the-time hardware.
Bioware or whatever company was subcontracted to do the dirty work couldn't be bothered to port the DM toolset.
iD and Blizzard games are feature-complete between platforms. The problem is obviously on the developer (or the port
Port shmort (Score:2)
Cry me a river .. Back in the day we had to port arcade games with real sprites and dedicated sound chips to computers with 1 bit per pixel graphics and 1 bit sound (seriously). Oh, and controllers? You'd get the "key down" but not the "key up". Now get off my lawn :)
Ports (Score:2)
Convergence. (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it amusing that the final paragraph states that PCs is being taken at least as serious as consoles for gaming. Remember when this generation of consoles was first introduced? The talk then was that PC gaming was doomed.
It's been the same sort of nonsense the last few generations. People get excited about these new consoles and because they offer a technological leap over the previous generation they start expecting some sort of revolution. Once the consoles have been around a while people start noticing PCs again.
Consoles naturally have to offer a clear technological leaps given their relatively long life expectancies. PCs, however, never stop progressing so that within months they surpass anything consoles are capable of. And actually, at least with this generation it was more consoles caught up to the capability of PCs than that they actually surpassed them.
I expect that eventually the market will move towards a more unified platform. Given how complex games are getting developers will be pushing hard for something like this. And hardware makers are being put into a difficult spot where they basically have need to be confident their console will be successful because if it isn't developers will abandon them. Look at the challenges facing would-be competitors the handheld market. And it's almost pointless to even compete on hardware at least for consoles. I say competition will come from the games themselves and motion-control peripherals. Perhaps not for the next generation of consoles, but eventually.
The problems with porting games... (Score:3, Funny)
NOT just games (Score:3, Interesting)
The problems with ported software exist with all software, they are just much harder to hide in games.
An awful lot of software that appears to be available on more than one platform is smooth, sweet, and stable on one of those platforms, and weird, clunky, and unreliable on another. Things like odd screen refresh bugs. Sometimes, applications that just don't look or act like good citizens of the world then run in. Sometimes, the application will seem to run all right but there's some difference in buffering or caching or memory management strategy, and on the "bad" platform it will have a tendency to freeze up mysteriously for unpleasantly long periods of time, or crash. Or work fine when installed in the exact place the installer puts it by default but act funny if you put it somewhere else. Or fail to follow the proper OS conventions for where preferences and configuration settings and other persistent program "state" should be placed. Or show you a literal view of your disk volume and directory structure instead of the slightly abstract view that "normal" programs show (e.g. "Desktop" at the top, root level in Windows).
I think it's wonderful that gamers are able to yell and scream and try to exercise some market discipline about this. I think it's because a game you don't enjoy is valueless. Alas, when it comes to "productivity" software it's hard to quantify things like "feels klunky."
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Hey man, let's use a more relevant example, like no blood in Mortal Kombat on the SNES while Genesis had the blood code!
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Hey man, let's use a more relevant example, like no blood in Mortal Kombat on the SNES while Genesis had the blood code!
Amusing example. Nintendo listened to the complaints when that game was launched. MKII came along, full blood on the SNES.
Re:Don't forget Bowlderizing (sic) (Score:2)
I believe you mean ``bowdlerizing''....
spelling aside, Nintendo has eased the reins a bit, and one can find ``mature'' titles for the Wii now, even including WiiWare (though I'd be inclined to describe ``Sexy Poker'' as immature, puerile drivel).
A quick search reveals quite a few M-rated games:
Alone In The Dark
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30
Call of Duty: World at War
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Hard Evidence
Dead Rising: Chop Til You Drop
Driver: Parallel Lines
Escape from Bug Island
MadWorld
Manhut 2
Mortal
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You mean like the plot of MGS? Or the Resident Evil series? Or Manhunt? Nintendo's not the same company it was in the SNES days.
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That was before the ESRB. Nintendo doesn't do that any more.
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Anyhow, the box and disc looked
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why can't games be ported to run natively in linux ?
Probably because most companies see little incentive to do so because they estimate a small amount of sales that won't make them a profit for the effort. The failing of Loki Games, despite the fact that it was mostly a self-inflicted implosion on Loki's part, probably doesn't help make a case to these companies to put out any effort.
is it / more / same / less difficult to port a game to linux than it is to port, say, PS3 to PC
More difficult in many cases from the experiences I've seen. There are some frameworks developed that help ease this, but for most of these companies developing against Direct
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Now, remember UnrealTournament for XBox?
Not really. I do remember Unreal Tournament for Windows, Mac OS9, Linux, PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast. But can't remember ever seeing Unreal Tournament for the XBox.