News Epic: "PC piracy drove us to consoles"

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/05/19/epic-pc-piracy-drove-us-to-consoles/1

 

Epic, piracy and consoles mentioned in one news post?

"braces for eruption in the comments section"

 

Fair comments regarding their move away from the PC platform but still pretending they love the PC is a bit rich.

 

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2279/2458347953_c26f090cbe.jpg?v=0

 

Think you just summed it up perfectly.

 

Are they still part of the PCGA? If so, that's a crock of bull. Kick them out.

 

http://news.bigdownload.com/2010/05...s-represent-16-percent-of-total-us-game-reve/

The money is in consoles. Simples.

 

Well lets face it, games on the console have a much higher price then the pc market and with less people to complain about the prices.

 

EpicFail...

 

Fair enough, but atleast port us the games we are missing!

Companies should be more like Bioware imo, in the sense that they still have very well designed games that work well on all platforms. Not crappy ports for the console or PC.
Can't say Epic have done any decent games recently anyway...

 

It's funny that Epic are still trying to make excuses for failing at PC games supply. lol

 

The retail price has almost nothing to do with it. Generally the money received by the developer/publisher ends up being the same regardless of what platform you bought the game on.

The bulk of the difference on retail price is down to the console manufacturer's cut, they receive about $10 per copy sold.

If anything, publishers like Ubisoft are starting to make more profit-per-game from PC sales compared to console. They've hiked the price to nearly match the console version, but instead of giving a cut to Sony/Microsoft, they pocket it.

Have a read of this.

 

I imagine it would cost more developing for PC as you have to design something that can run on multiple different hardware configurations and specification levels and then supply technical support to the product long after its release, whereas with consoles you have less of these sorts of issues. Though i don't know much about the inner workings of the industry so I could be wrong.

 

Valve sitting on its giant pile of money. Sure there's no money in PC gaming...

 

The only people who are pirating PC games are those who have no money and like single player. Everyone else buys.

 

This is a load of crap.....

Epic games were basically MP only, which you needed a genuine CD key to be able to play.....

The percentage of cracked servers was and still is tiny.......

 

Spot on.

Testing for PC Games must take ages longer than for consoles.
Its proven that its harder to develop for PC than console in that PC games will almost always have patches, whereas you never really hear about console games having lots of bugs and requiring constant patching.

IMO, something needs to be done, to sort of standardise the PC gaming market. Something like DirectX, the hardware a user is using shouldn't really come into how the game is programmed. Apart from obvious things like 32bit and 64bit, and probably mutli-threading.
But with graphics cards, it shouldn't matter whether the user is red or green, IMO, directX should have taken care of this, but then that would mean companies working together, which I can't see happening any time soon.

Don't get me wrong though, I love PC gaming, I only have an Xbox for Forza 3, that's the only game I really play on it, gaming on a PC just seems to give you more freedom, and has more potential for making a game really good. Also, PC Games seem to age better, get a game out for the PS2, and it'll look awful, get Half Life on the PC out, and it doesn't look too bad.

 

Piracy and no one buying the rather awful unreal series after the original unreal and unreal tournament.

And why companies still complain about pc piracy when the Steam model for piracy seems to work exceptionally well. It doesn't appear to be rocket science?

 

Not really. It does take longer, but not by enough to have companies abandon the platform altogether, or to bitch about it as much as Epic seems to be doing.

 

Come on now, that's a BS arguement you know it.

If we were to ever see Value's bookkeeping I would bet everything I own that the majority of their money comes from selling third party games, not their own.

If anything, I would argue that Valve only develop games as a means to an end. They just want as many people as possible to install Steam. Take TF2 for example, that game alone has probably lost Valve a fortune. Nobody in their right mind would release 120 free updates for a game with no ongoing fees or expansion packs.

You can't say to developers "Hey want to make money? Create a fantastic distribution service and sell other people's games", eventually somebody has to actually make those games.