Great! Maybe writing for consoles means the initial release won’t be buggy! It HAS to work! (See, writing for a specific hardware format isn’t such a bad thing… when it comes to games!)
Firaxis is just bowing to the inevitable. The PC market isn’t strong enough any more.
I have mixed feelings at best. It’s going to cost me a bundle to upgrade my console setup to use HD in the next few years. And, in my family, we watch television/movies in a different room from the one relegated to satisfying gaming needs. I still need my PC, so it isn’t as thought it will save me money any time soon. (Insert obligatory rant about console controller limitations here.)
OTOH, it will gradually loosen Microsoft’s hold over my desktop, and that’s a good thing. And I enjoy gaming while sitting on the couch.
Note to self: sell Intel stock.
I thought it was pretty clear that I meant turn-based strategy, so enough with the RPG examples! ;-)
Point taken about Koei, though were any of the Romance games big sellers in NA? I thought a fair number of them weren’t even released here. Anyhow, it just doesn’t seem like turn-based strategy really plays to console gaming’s “pick up and play strengths,” or the younger (in comparison to PC) user demographic. Maybe that’s unfair, but I just find it hard to see something like Civ competing on systems where the big sellers perpetually seem to be sports games and platformers.
Dunno about Pirates! That game seemed more of a fit for consoles, as the original game already had the mini-games, for instance. I never thought of Pirates! in this case, though, as Sid specifically mentioned “turn-based” in that interview snippet, and Pirates! was partially real-time.
KOTOR was turn-based, and was definitely a hit.[/quote]
No, KotOR is not “turn-based”
It is real-time with pause(RTwP), but unlike the previous Bioware games, in KotOR the pausing is handled automatically when certain conditions are met. Go into the options and uncheck all the pause conditions and the game will be RTwP proper.
Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance Wars, Tactics Ogre…
Get the 1.09 patch Chet. It made a huge difference for me performance wise.
Portable Pirates! would make me buy a portable console. Portable Civ would make me weep with joy.
What are the handheld PC options for this sort of game?[/quote]
You could put it on a laptop, but thats where i think they really blew it with civ4. Why such a system hog even with scaled down graphics? I bet not one person bought the game for the graphics, so why not let it run on lesser hardware?
I was going to play around with settings before my next flight, but right now it just runs like crap on my laptop, which is beefy enough to play hl2 and other games.
Chet[/quote]
So gaming has no roof? (sorry, see the thread topic for more info) I couldn’t resist… :wink:
Here’s more proof:
…for our next generation Wolfenstein game, which uses the Xbox 360 as it’s primary development platform…
- Todd Hollenshead, id Software
This looks like the future of AAA games for the PC – ports from console versions. For a shooter, it’s not so bad I guess. For other genres, yuck.
or as long suffering PC games fans you can look at it like this.
The more the mainstream AAA companies give up on PC to concentrate on consoles(after all it costs mega to make for the console market due to graphic complexity mostly, so it makes sense that companies have to prioritise) as the platform to design for - the more of a vacum is left behind in the pc market. Space that can be filled by independant publishers. I dont know about most of you guys, but if i want to play a decent strategy game - one that will take me more than a few days to complete, even one that requires a bit of inteligence to play/work out; then at that point i’m 90% of the time sitting in front of my PC, and not in front of a console(portible or not).
So i’m thinking its all good :)
The ultimate blow will come when MS adds mouse and keyboard support. At that point, there’ll be no reason to keep a PC for gaming anymore. Just hook your xbox up to your monitor and voila! Insta-pc-gaming.
I don’t know if I can this a bad thing – at least not this week. I can’t get Civ 4 to run for more than 10 minutes without crashing on my reasonably high end PC. If that’s what it takes to avoid all my rebooting, so be it.
The ultimate blow will come when MS adds mouse and keyboard support. At that point, there’ll be no reason to keep a PC for gaming anymore. Just hook your xbox up to your monitor and voila! Insta-pc-gaming.[/quote]
Except you can’t multi-task. I doubt mods will be as prevalent. It will still be a closed architecture with next to no indie support. You’d lose a huge library of PC classics.
However, as I’ve said before, I’d be pretty intrigued by a modern version of something like an Amiga. But consoles are still consoles even with keyboards and mice.
I agree, but my post was with regards to AAA titles. The PC is fast becoming the pure domain of indie gaming, and I’m totally cool with that.
Well, that’s a pretty big exaggeration. I believe the PC had about 7 or 8 titles that sold a million plus over the past year and a half or so.
Closer to half that, actually.
Doom 3, Half Life 2, WoW, Sims 2, Guild Wars and Battlefield 2 are 6 right off the top of my head. Those are world sales, BTW, not U.S.
Well, my stats are only for the US and part of europe, but three of the games on your lists aren’t million sellers. Guild Wars may have asian sales that aren’t included in the numbers I’ve seen, the other ones are probably pretty accurate.
What part of Europe? Like the Vatican City or something? :P
Seriously, I’m not gonna dig for sources, but I’ve seen all of those titles as being listed as million plus sellers. I suspect D3 and HL2 might not have sold a million during the year in which they were released or something, maybe that’s why your stats don’t jive with mine.
The numbers include all copies sold in retail from may 04 to nov 05, for the US, UK, and france.
And Guild Wars wasn’t on it? Even GameSpy got that one. :P