Actually, I’ve owned a PS2, and my issue wasn’t with the games, it was the first generation ones that didn’t have a filter for the fan, but that’s hardware.
HDR is pretty much the only game, except for maybe dragon age, that I played that is really buggy on the PS3. I don’t remember having problems with PS1 or PS2 games.
Besides, I like the system, its the game not the system.
So a company doesn’t have to make a playable version on both systems, they can just make it for one, and hope it works for the other? Wow, that’s awesome.
Completely off topic, but what’s wrong with Dragon Age on PS3? I was going to pick up that game and wasn’t sure which system I was going to get it on, but if the PS3 version has problems the 360 one doesn’t I’ll go 360.
Back when I was playing it months ago, it had issues with the PS3’s firmware? I believe they said. I was lucky if i got to play 1 hour straight without it freezing during a load sequence.
Really fun game, if you liked any of the bioware RPG’s.
I played DA:O on 360, my dad played it on PS3… We both agreed the 360 was less buggy.
I think if this discussion has made anything clear its the primacy of economics in decision making. Capcom doesn’t do things because it doesn’t make them money, or at least it doesn’t make them money based on their best estimation. If it doesn’t work to maximize value for their shareholders (the people they’re ultimately responsible to) they don’t do it.
Now of course this raises the issue of legality and by tangent (See how I did that? COTH - Cotangent? HUH? I’m such a nerd…) regulation and regulatory issues. But here is the overarching question. The video game industry has largely escaped large regulatory schemes in most markets (the major exception being Australia’s arcane rating system which is based on film standards) and has done well globally in large part because of that. I understand the frustration of having a game be one way on one system and not the same on another. But do we really want to implement a regulatory scheme to force that on developers? The consequences of that could be severe in terms of the costs of game development and further testing that would have to occur. The result would be in many ways dumbing down the technology of games to ensure completely equality across systems, and those systems would have to have some sort of technical oversight board that would determine what each console is capable of and that would in turn create an artificial ceiling on tech based on the weakest console available. This whole system would effectively make different consoles useless. I mean do we want to be forced to play games across all three consoles at the Wii’s technical abilities? OR as a PS3 owner do you want to have to play games at the 360’s max resolution instead of the PS3s?
I understand the frustration here, but it seems to me that the cure is far worse than the disease. If we’re going to encourage companies to innovate and make great products it seems to me we should have more individual decision making with their dollars, the ability to return digital content to its owner if it doesn’t work to your satisfaction or a secondary market by which you can sell your rights to your digital content to someone else. The creation of a secondary market would do more to encourage the type of bilateral equality based development you’re looking for without the forced costs of a burdensome regulatory scheme.
The problem is how you would create a secondary market for used digital content and manage it effectively. But even so, without it I believe the status quo is far better for gamers than one in which some type of government or whole sale industry oversight group forces game developers to make cost cutting measures to ensure compliance with some artifical technical floor or ceiling. The moral of the story here, the market when allowed to function is a highly efficient allocator of resources and if anything, the fact that people still continue to buy HDR on the PS3 and play it tells Capcom everything they need to know. That the people who would buy and play this game on the PS3 are the type of people who will complain, make a fuss, but won’t punish Capcom financially.
I’d be more inclined to go with your post yesterday about confusing company politics though. It’s clear that a lot of the things that happen are simply not backed by sensible economics at all.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. If anything it shows that corporate politics and bad firm leadership are causing the company to make irrational decisions in terms of how it treats Capcom USA developed products. Both sides of Capcom are individually devoted to maximizing profitability but because of inefficiencies in cross continental firms (politics, lack of communication, an inability to work on equal footing etc.) the whole isn’t making the best decisions in terms to each other’s products, but in regards to their own I see no evidence suggesting that Capcom Japan isn’t doing all it can for Capcom Japan products and Capcom USA for Capcom USA products. In Capcom USA’s situation, it isn’t profitable to patch a game they can’t sell in Japan and won’t make more money if it is patched in North America and the EU.
Now obviously in no way am I commenting about the quality of said products (Bionic Commando??? Not the arcade rerelease but the new one…)
I’m not asking for some kind of complete unification between the games.
The point is, apparently the xbox version post patch is working as intended for the xbox. The ps3 version post patch is well. . . not.
Therefore, I believe that as far as it matters for that system, it should be fixed so it is at least working the way it should.
I’m not saying each game should be the exact same across the systems. However, if a game should have online multiplayer on both systems, then it should work on both systems. In a general it works sense, not a specific it works the exact same sense.
Unless the consumer should come to expect that one model of a home appliance is likely to explode, but that’s ok, because this other model doesn’t.
The difference in a physical appliance market is that items are built to be used for long periods of time and usually have some sort of warranty to cover defects in a very static manufacturing process. Game development to my knowledge (and Thelo, DC correct me if I’m wrong) is not a static process. It’s humans working in a dynamic way on an interactive entertainment medium and the cost to covering dynamic products under some sort of warranty process is nearly impossible as the odds of you having to pay out to the warranty would be so high it would make any possible profitiability go by the wayside.
I understand your frustration Coth, I really do. And if you want to argue that Capcom infact could build more good will for its PS3 players by biting the bullet and patching it anyway, I could understand, I would disagree, but I would understand and at least we could say we have to look at the data to know for sure. Otherwise the only recourse your left with is for some type of extra corporate oversight and that always imposes extra (even if unintended) costs to developement.
I would argue that any type of dynamicaly created product would be more subject to this process. But as discussed earlier, console games are unique in that 1.) Developing products for multiple systems is equivalent in many ways to making separate games to listen to MiloDC discuss the differences on coding for the 360 and the PS3 and 2.) there is an extra cost above and beyond the internal costs but an aritifical cost imposed by Microsoft (and probably) and by Sony to reduce the number of patches on their networks.
The Operating System market is unique because Microsoft owns 94% of it. For all standard purposes for most people your PC runs windows and you don’t even KNOW there’s another option. In that environment Microsoft makes a product dyanmically which because of its overexposure constantly has its flaws shown which an entire dev team at Microsoft stays up day and night fixing. Have you ever met a Microsoft OS programmer? It might be the worst and yet most fulfilling job on earth.
Processors, Ram, Video Cards, etc. all use very detailed machine operated static manufacturing processes and those processes are developed by engineers with decades of experience to ensure as few flaws happen as possible and on those products there are often generous warantees if bought new.
manufacture warranties typically are only meant to catch defects off the line, its why virtually all electronic equipment has a limited warranty. its not really there for the consumer
Exactly. Ideally the static process reduces the risk of hardware failure to zero but that’s not realistic. And the warranty exists as a type of protection in acknowledgement that no process is fail proof but in their case so unlikely that it will rarely be used creating an instrument to fix failure should it occur and give consumers confidence that in the event of a rare failure they’re protected.
Limited warranties accomplish the same funciton they just do so in an acknowledgement that problems are more likely and put more stipulations onto their warranty to reduce the risk of paying out while providing more confidence to consumers (even if its not necessarily warranted, data shows that the word warranty in an of itself with our without qualifiers is often enough to convince consumers of their ability to replace their product in the event of failure)
Oh absolutly people miss the limited part. But like I was saying the data shows that people don’t care about the adjectives that come before it, all they care about is the word warranty. Especially older consumers who have preconceived notions of what warranties were and should be. But even in younger consumers they don’t question adjectives very much… The economics of modern marketing are really interesting… even if marketing departments are ran by complete idiots… oh did I say that just now? lol
You know who I’m furious at? It’s not Capcom, it’s the people who left this game to play SFIV instead. IV has enough players to survive on it’s own, but HDR needs every player we can get. It comes down to the “somebody else will do it” attitude. If someone doesn’t take the initiative to create that empty lobby, then everyone else will think, “someone else will do it”, and then in the end no one does it. People come online, see there is no one playing and instead of supporting it by waiting a while, they go and play SFIV. Well if everyone has that outlook, then HDR will die in no time.
In fact I went on last night at what was traditionally a peak time, and all I could find were two lobbies at 150 ping.
As for HDR patches, let’s face it. It’s mainly to correct the flaws within the online gaming mode. With PS3 having the shittier end of the stick. Offline mode is fine on both systems. I’m like the rest of you…I would love to see a patch to fix all the online glitches particularly with PS3 but I don’t believe it will ever happen.
Just to give the non PS3 owners a taste of the much needed patch for PS3 version:
Private Rooms Option Does Not Work (PS3) - It creates the room but not all invitees can join, but in a public room (same size) the same invitees can join.
Mandatory Reboot after a High Ping Room Bust (PS3)- When someone with a high ping enters an already in-progress multi-player room, the room will lag and ultimately causes it to be unstable and explode. Once this occurs, any new rooms you create or try to join in will also automatically crash at the player versus screen unless you reset the game or restart your PS3.
(Note: This does not account for (just an example) European players connecting to West Coast US players or Japanese players connecting to East Coast US or vice versa, since lag will always occur in connecting from around the world in any online gaming.)
However, despite a futile attempt in convincing the powers that be. I think we should take a more pragmatic approach such as: spamming this thread all over capcom-unity every freaking day until Seth Killian takes notice that “We the HDR people…” demand a patch! Hahaha! Dosukoi!
Some of the greatest PC games of all time had some terrible terrible glitches and with some basic patches, they were great games.
SOmetimes, I honestly feel like I’m the only true PC gamer out there when people say shit like this. OK, yes, PC games in general are glitchier than Console games. But you also have to realize that no two PCs are the same. There’s different hardware in each PC and they interact with each other differently, add to the fact that PC games have Drivers for their hardware, and different operating systems. When a development team develops a Console game - the hardware is the same. There doesn’t have to be any kind of rendering tests performed on 8 different graphics cards, just that one card in the x-box, because everyone has the same graphics card in their x-box.
To say that PC games are glitchier than Console games because being able to patch games makes developers lazy, is a huge leap of logic. Yes, some devs don’t give a fuck and release buggy products. Just about all of those PC developers are being shit on, too.
Companies like Funcom are being hit in the mouth because of their lazy development. But console games are buggy, too. There’s plenty of glitches in Marvel. Plenty of Glitches in Super Turbo, even. Hell, the entire special move cancelling combo system of SF2 started off as… a glitch.
With all the talking out of one’s ass going on around here, proctologists would be dentists.
Again: Twenty years as a professional game developer (art and programming) has shown me, unequivocally, that PC development makes us game makers “lazy,” i.e. less likely to concern ourselves with bug fixes in favor of improving a title’s feature and content checklists (since bugs can be addressed later with patches).
This is especially true for larger-scale projects like MMOs and heavily story-driven FPSs.
As you wrote, yes, the fact that virtually no two PCs are alike is also a huge factor in PC games having more bugs at release (as a couple of us had already pointed out). That hardly precludes a developer’s deciding to let some bugs slide, though; in fact, the great variability of hardware on the consumer end is another justifiable reason to do just that. It’s all about economics, it’s all about trade-offs.
It does suck that the PS3 version is a little hosed, though. I’d still need to see a definitive list of just what problems it has before I take the side of the indignant end user.