Added by Jeff on Oct. 19, 2008
99 comments
Here is a person from the game in question to give you something to occasionally glance at while reading!
Well, I saw that
Kotaku's Owen Good dug up a story this morning that
videogamer.com is teasing an interview with remarks from the president of the PC Gaming Alliance, an organization attempting to be the "authoritative voice of PC gaming worldwide." In it, the president, Randy Stude, just sort of repeatedly slams LucasArts for not doing a PC version of
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
Hey, great work, guys. Going negative and talking a bunch of mess about the company who makes the game you think should have been made on the PC totally makes you sound like an official organization that should be trusted, and not like a big bunch of jerks.
Stude spends his days as a director at Intel, where he works in the Gaming Program Office and, also according to the PCGA site, works with game developers to ensure their games are optimized for the PC. So maybe LucasArts' official stance, that they didn't want to develop a game that had to work on a wide range of equipment and give some people a sub-par experience, just struck him funny. After all, they could have come to him for help.
Anyway, his response to that from the Videogamer interview came out as...
"That's not an educated answer. In the last several years there have been at least 100 million PCs sold that have the capabilities or better of an Xbox 360. It's ridiculous to say that there's not enough audience for that game potentially and that it falls into this enthusiast extreme category when ported over to the PC. That's an uneducated response."
OK, so far, so good. He's probably correct there. But then he just starts to sound like an ex-girlfriend or fussy child with "fine, we don't want you anyway" tactics like...
"LucasArts hasn't made a good PC game in a long time," he said. "That's my opinion. They make some pretty good games for the Wii, you know those little sticks you wave in the air, that seems like a natural fit for a lightsaber game, sure. But I think the last good PC game they made was probably Jedi Knight 2, and even their strategy games weren't that great. So I can understand why they would make that call.
Way to go from "THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS" to "MAN WE DON'T WANT THEM ANYWAY MOST OF THEIR GAMES ARE BAD" in the course of one teaser article! I mean, hey, let's just ignore the part where putting out a single-player-only game on the PC like The Force Unleashed is like slapping an invisible sticker that only the unscrupulous can see on every version of your game that reads "just pirate the PC version instead." Perhaps that will be addressed in the full interview, which is to be posted later this week.
I would think that an alliance focused on the development and promotion of the PC game would be off in a bunker somewhere, trying to figure out how to solve all the DRM issues that people have been complaining about lately. Or maybe trying to come up with decent guidelines on how to be more accurate with the required and recommended hardware specifications on game boxes. Or, you know, maybe giving
Stardock's Bill of Rights for game players a good, hard read.
What do you think? Do you think doing a PC version of The Force Unleashed would have been a good idea? Or do you think that a release like that would have just increased piracy and lowered the sales of every other version of the game as a result?
Salute: 1UP Acquired By UGO, Downsized; EGM Shuttered
Sony Issues Handy Chart, Giant Bomb Issues Handier Chart
Pre-Release Killzone 2 Demo Only For Pre-Orders in US
LittleBigRoll
Metal Gears of War?
Warning! Caution! Overload! Planned Downtime Tonight!
Ninja Blade Demo: We Cut Some Guys, Watch
1.5M Xbox Live Users Online, Bogging Us Down
Guides
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
Giant Bomb gave the console version 3 stars. The PC version would undoubtably have 2 stars, a "This game's problems outweigh its good qualities." rating. That's why it's not on PC, it wouldn't be worth the time and they realized that.
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
on Oct. 19, 2008
I suspect most people interested in pirating it would play the first Darth Vader level, and perhaps 50% of those people would want to skip to the last level as the apprentice, and to hell with the grind in between. That would hurt potential sales and word of mouth, since nobody would be talking about the (canon omg!) story, just how short the really kick-ass levels with maximum power are.
Personally I've given up on PC meaning "Personal Computer gaming", and I now deem it "Platform of Choice gaming". I play the games I want on the platform I want to play it on. The Mother 3 fan translation just came out. I do in fact own the original GBA cart, so I can load that sucker on my Mac laptop or my PSP for emulating bliss during my commute. I'd rather play Skies of Arcadia on my Dreamcast than my GameCube. Orange Box may be better on Steam, but I like da gamerscore, so I go 360. I can play flOw on a PS3 or in my web browser. I hear Mass Effect and Alone in the Dark are better the second time around...
Any game that dreams of calling itself mass market will have one remarkable version on one of multiple platforms. Releasing a single player action game on the PC first is a death sentence.
on Oct. 19, 2008
PC gamers are a big audience, but they have a much harder time paying for a product if it's not AAA material. TFU was built from the ground up as more of a cash grab than a masterpiece (i.e. instead of polishing a single version, they made one for every platform from the DS to the N-Gage). For better or worse, games developed with that kind of mentality just don't sell on the PC anymore.
on Oct. 19, 2008
Login or Signup to comment.