I miss AAA PC FPS Exclusives so much

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Crysis the last one we had I'm talking pure FPS that was 8 years ago that is crazy.PC gaming is doing really good these days money wise with digital distribution.Half life 2 pushed graphics and physics F.E.A.R.pushed enemy AI Crysis pushed graphics with real time shadows and destructible environments.It just feels like we could be have such better FPS experiences these days that lets PC hardware being used to it's fullest potential like they use to do.Does anybody else miss them? and do you think those days are dead and gone or will we ever get them back it just sucks bad that they don't make them anymore.

Battlefield, Metro, Far Cry, Wolfenstein. Off the top of my head these all fit your description? Highly produced shooters with decent singleplayer? There might be a bit less of this stuff now, but it's hardly dead or anything.

That would be cool, but the issue is that developing a game that pushes the limits of a modern PC requires a pretty large budget. Most developers and publishers want to hedge their risk by releasing the game to the largest audience possible and that typically means going multiplatform.

On consoles, it benefits companies like Sony and Microsoft to push for AAA exclusives and help finance them because it helps move their own platforms. Unfortunately, on the PC side of things, you don't have anyone that really fits into that same "first-party" role that directly benefits from an expansion of the platform's audience...I mean Microsoft actually does but in spite of their promises of rededicating themselves to PC gaming, they haven't done much to push it. Valve is the company most likely to fill that role since they control the largest distribution platform, but they're not even clearly focused on releasing new games themselves so it's doubtful they'd be interested in helping fund other developers' PC exclusive efforts.

That being said though, there are still a lot of really great well produced FPS games coming out these days. They're typically not exclusives, but I'm not sure that really matters all that much to most people - it certainly doesn't matter much to me.

Shadow Warrior? Don't know if you'd call that AAA but it certainly isn't easy on machines.

In any case, they simply can't make enough money these days.

The 'exclusive' factor is rather meaningless, but I did like Battlefield 3 a lot - much better than a typical console port.

Essentially, if theres a big multiplatform FPS on PC, devs can do more than just make it work. You can play faster and play different on PC, as the player's aiming speed is higher. More buttons are available to the player, and hardware isn't nearly as much of a contstraint. In Battlefield's case, the restrictive level size and player count are no longer hardware issues, which is why PC could handle twice as many players. Sure, not everyone has GTX 980, but I would say the average PC enthusiast looking for such a game has a much better GPU than a PS4/XBO, or would upgrade if a game came along that appealed to them.

Well, there was Crysis Warhead :P which is still a PC exclusive, given that the original did end up on consoles at some point. Anyway, the term 'AAA' is a bit nonsense anyway. But there are still high-quality FPSs being made - Hard Reset is a straight-up single-player PC shooter-ass shooter. Although, um, that was 4 years ago, which, depending on how you see things, was not exactly recent.

Crysis was a significant turning point for sure. It sold how many copies in it's first year? Like a million and change maybe? It pretty much confirmed to the serious end of the industry that PC exclusive (or focussed) was no longer viable for that sort of project, regardless of how good a game you made or how far you were pushing the boundaries.

After that, gaming kinda stopped being relentlessly dragged forward by the PC market and just sort of stagnated on consoles for 5 years or so until 360 and PS3 were finally --belatedly-- taken out back and shot.

I absolutely miss developers being able to throw huge AAA budgets at games which are designed entirely with the PC in mind, but I also accept that the widespread refusal of PC gamers to pay for what they consume is largely responsible for why that is no longer possible.

Battlefield 2 was last pure pc game out of the series Metro good series but I believe there console ports could be wrong. Farcry original was PC exclusive Wolfenstein the new one is great but it's still not built from the PC ground up.When I mean dead I mean built from the PC to utilize the hardware to the fullest without cutting corners.I guess my other big gripe with FPS these days is the the gun models fov they are way to big because there catered for tv not monitors. I really wish devs would give PC users options to change the size a rare case like dishonored they did which was good and CS:GO has that option too.

I think when it comes to consoles this is true because the hardware and HID's are so similar. However when it's a PC there's very distinct differences that make a "PC exclusive". When games are built around the mouse and keyboard and more powerful hardware you get things like (what's already been said in this thread) Crysis and Battlefield 2 both of which had console variants but severly limited versions for said reasons. The PC exclusive also tends to be more daring with mechanics and new types of content.

Natural Selection 2 was a great PC FPS one of which exemplifies what I just stated but man they botched it with trying to expand the audience. Their tutorials were terrible and it didn't run well on modest machines, such a shame to see that game die off.

CS:GO is pretty good, and at some point that new Unreal Tournament will be a thing, hopefully.

Think the new Unreal Tournament will be probably one of the best more exclusive FPS tittles for the PC in 5 years time when they can take 1 year to make 1 full map :D

Otherwise yeah I'm thinking Crysis or Battlefield 2 were the last ones.... Last ones that were of any quality at least....

@tobbrobb: All of those are also on console now pretty much. Think OP wants Max Exclusive games.

@believer258: on PS4 that game is! Plays great.

I think you're stretching the truth here a bit. Crysis was just uglier on consoles. That's it. That's not "severely limited". And it was also ugly as hell on many PCs by the by. Which exclusive PC FPS made by large companies after 2006 would you point to as being mechanically innovative? True blue curiosity. I've played on PC/Console for ages and can't really think of any. When I think of PC Exclusives that are mechanically innovative and take full advantage of hardware, I think of Strategy Games and Flight Games. Not FPS. I'd also ask when the last time was that anyone made a PC FPS (exclusive or otherwise) that didn't use or allow for a controller ; I'd point to the game @beachthunder brought up, Hard Reset, as an example of that. There's nothing to stop that game being played on a console.

There's just so few reasons to release an FPS for PC only. Especially for big companies.

The truth about the PC market is that only the smallest percentage of gamers have very powerful computers. The rest are easily less/equal/around the power of consoles. So from a performance stand point limiting yourself to PC means very little. You can't build a super game for Super PCs because even if all the Super PCs bought it, your game would fail. CDProjekt Red has been very forthcoming about PC/Console sales split. There are not enough Super PCs to support your AAA high-end graphics blow out. They had to release the game on console to afford making it as big as it is.

The only other factor you have other than performance is controller input.

Yes, M+KB =/ Controller, but that's very different from saying a game designed for M+KB could never ever be balanced for a controller.

And again - which PC exclusive FPS does not allow for a controller? They are so, so few. And they're definitely not AAA. Well I can't imagine they are anyway.

So, not to be a total Shut Down, but I think the FPS genre has only one extremely limited style that benefits from PC exclusivity and that is making a 100% competitive arena shooter like Quake and even then an argument could be made that you could balance a controller for it for consoles, where, with everyone only having controllers, there's a natural balance anyways.

In other news just bought FEAR on GOG having never played it.

@geraltitude said:

Well that's what I was implying by "more powerful hardware", also just because the most common PC wasn't capable of running Crysis on ultra doesn't remove the fact that it was a big step up in graphical technology at the time. Despite what some people want to believe graphics do matter to a lot of people and they definetly helped Crysis a lot. Being severely limited is also a point of view, I see Crysis on the 360 as severly limited as it's taking away one of the biggest draws from the PC version.

That's kind've the point of the original post in this thread there hasn't been any and he misses them. I could say the ARMA games, now there's an FPS that you simply can't get onto a controller without drastically sacrificing a large portion of control and features.

This is true, but it also doesn't stop the yearning for games that push your hardware which is one of the things this thread is about.

You can adapt things to controllers yes but you drastically sacrifice the gameplay by doing so. Go play Counter Strike Global Offensive on console and then go play it on PC. If you don't see that as a drastic difference then I don't know what to tell you. The same could be said for pretty much every Valve game really.

@baronsamedi:

ARMA is a great example actually of a an exclusive PC FPS, and I'd agree that it's a mechanically unique game but it isn't at all what the OP would describe as AAA I don't think. And that's what I'm saying. Small, niche games (FPS or otherwise) will always have a special home on PC. But AAA first-person shooters? There's no good reason for them to be exclusive to PC.

Crysis was a huge step up graphically but that still has nothing to do with putting it on consoles. It's true that a developer who's going multiplatform may choose to handicap the PC version but that is not a design/technology fact, that's a decision based on market factors (is the juice worth the squeeze?). Skyrim came out for both consoles and PC and the PC UI was shit because the developers went that route not because Objective Law said so. But the game scaled graphically very well and the PC version looked miles better than the console version imo. So again just because your game is on console does not mean the PC version has to be sacrificed. What I'm saying is that even a PC game is designed based on limited hardware. PC developers design for the Average and the High End. Star Citizen is maybe a recent exception, we'll see.

And back to the controller, I think you're missing what I'm saying.

KB+M is a world of difference from Controller. I said that in my first post so not sure why you brought that up. Consider this scenario to see where I am coming from:

• We are company. We made CS: GO. We develop a PC version based all around KB+M. In fact, no controllers allowed.
• 6 months later we release the game for console, newly balanced for controllers.
• How does anyone lose in this scenario? If the developer can afford it, and the market wants it, why would they not have the game available, fun, and balanced for both platforms?

I just think the case for FPS is extremely thin. MOBAs? Strategy games? Tactical games? Flight games? Simulators? All of these have 100% irrefutable fact based, mechanics based reasons to be exclusive to PC (they need, like ARMA, a keyboard and mouse; a controller replicate is not possible), and all of those genres (outside MOBAs) can also be very very CPU intensive being that they push AI and Physics, and thus they are even more justified in being PC only.

I have no problem with a PC exclusive being a timed one as long as it doesn't effect the PC version in a negative way that way the devs can make there extra money.But man I still remember how impressive BF2 was back in the day with the 64 size maps and dedicated servers that's one thing that all MP games should have P2P just isn't right on PC.I just hope someday we get a true top notch FPS with no restraints can't believe how long it's really been it's really disappointing.In my opinion nothing has come close to how great F.E.A.R. gunfights feel with there great AI or the first time you saw Crysis and where blown away.I know there's Star Citizen coming out someday even though it's not a FPS I can really appreciate how far there pushing that game.But would it kill devs to go back to this method build the game on PC first then port it down I don't think so and Half Life 3 would be great place to start again very wishful thinking.

There's not much of a reason for FPS to be PC exclusive anymore because now consoles have the Internet and control well with dual joysticks. Developers don't wanna walk away from that money (basically except valve).

That said there's a lot of great PC exclusive/near-exclusive games that aren't FPS coming out of Valve, Blizzard and the indie community.

I get your idea OP, and I cant say that it's not a good one at least in theory. In theory because usually game devs go for a large audience. Why is that? well its because the sales are higher, hence the company is going to be more popular. Take blizzard for instance. Until diablo 3 they were a pure pc oriented team. But once they launched diablo on consoles their sales skyrocketed again.

Now dont get me wrong this is not only due to marketing purposes. There is also a competition between brands. Maybe we gamers don't know of that, but between them surely is. By being open to multiple platforms they spread the word throughout people. They(gamers) start talking about the company, and so they get popular. Getting popular means claiming that place in the triple A industry. Take for example CD projekt, which at first was oriented only for pc's. The witcher 1 was a pc exclusive. But they realized that if they want to go big they need to broaden their audience. That's what/how many of them do.

@counterclockwork87 said:

@ripelivejam: Fear is so good it was one of the very first games when I got my first gaming capable pc and man it blow me away.

Threads like these always remind me of playing Quake (and Team Fortress) over Mplayer for the first time.

In my opinion the PC's heyday was always double edged sword. It's easy to remember all the great innovations but I feel like too many people gloss over the costs and woes of the PC gaming arms race.

Battlefield 1942 is one of my favourite games of all time - and that's a good thing because it required something like 250 dollars worth of pre-mature upgrades for me to get it running. Damn you T&L!

Who remembers when nVidia inundated the market with those cheap but shitty mx440s that wouldn't run most games due to T&L problems :<