Look, I’m not going to flesh this out any farther than this post because this is a discussion that has no ending. PC > Console < PC is something we could sit and debate for… well, forever.
PC gaming being an after though of major devs isn’t true because PC gaming isn’t the better platform, but because major devs know where the money is, and the is in the extremely casual player base that is console gaming. I think that nothing is better than PC gaming and have felt that way for a long time, hence my business. That’s neither here nor there, but I’m agreeing with you on that point. I have a bit of a biased opinion on the matter. Moving on.
However, the current console (and gaming market as a whole) is built around ease of access. Casual play. The games (not all) released to the console market are dumbed down, slow, and designed to make everyone a winner. Consoles have the biggest market share, without question, and that easily explains why PC is an after thought. Its not that PC is somehow worse, or dying, its just that more people own an Xbox 360/PS3 than they do an adequate gaming machine. For good reason, they are expensive. I get that. I know, I build and sell them. What I mean to establish with these two paragraphs is this.
The PC market is smaller, thus the increased focus on the console market for development. Simple supply and demand.
Moving on, Gears is a bad game to begin with and fits right in with what I was saying above. It is a casual experience designed for the console market, and the PC market really didn’t care about it in the first place. That is why it failed. Not because the port was bad, which is was because the devs didn’t care enough to make the transition well enough, but because it isn’t the same market. We have Quake, Tribes, and UT. Games that operate at breakneck speed and rely on perfect precision. CS, which requires more of the same sans the speed. Battlefield, with gameplay that just wasn’t possible on consoles at the time. They had no interest in creating a worthy PC port. They wanted to sell, and nobody on this side of the market wanted to buy. Which also explains 3.
As for the game being full of hacks. Just because From isn’t Blizzard doesn’t mean they can’t patch their game. Microsoft and Sony charge for patch releases. Posting a patch for download on their website does not. The one patch they have dropped fixed a vast majority of the glaring problems that were making the game nearly unplayable for some people, and fixed the major issues in PVP. (TWoP/RoF) From doesn’t have a shortage of money lying around, I can assure you. Even if they were hurting for some money, the sales they stand to receive for the PC version of DaS could easily bridge that gap.
One of their selling points is indeed about the controller, because it was designed for it. Clearly. So what is different about this and Gears? Well, DaS tends to be a more methodic, and hardcore game. You can’t tell me that it isn’t exactly what the PC market is known for. Counter Strike, StarCraft, MMOs, DotA, Quake, UT, and a vast amount of other games pride themselves on their high bar of entry, and difficulty. Plugging in a pad isn’t going to deter the PC market when nearly 100k people have signed a petition.
The hardcore aspect of the market pops back up when we go back the price of a functional gaming PC, around 700-800 bucks on the low end. People who are willing to spend that much on their machines take this a bit more seriously than Chad who’s parents got him a 360 for a graduation present, or Tommy who got one for his 10th birthday. Just a couple of lame examples I know, so don’t take them too seriously. The hardcore player base never left. Console hardcore, and PC hardcore are two very different sides of the same coin, and fortunately for DaS, its a coin that it can land either way.
