@Scotto said:

In all honesty, I think the real lead of this story was kind of buried behind the provocative bit about "lead platforms". This is the important bit:

"Nowadays most of the quality of a game comes from the development effort put into it, not the technology it runs on. A game built with a tenth the resources on a platform 10 times as powerful would be an inferior product in almost all cases."

He's trying to explain that the PC not being their lead platform doesn't matter, in their opinion, as much as it seems to matter to others. Effort put into development matters more than the technical side.

And I'll be honest - after you tweak the game's config and launch settings on a PC, the game is fucking gorgeous. Still probably one of the best looking PC games I've ever played. The texturework is gorgeous and endlessly varied, the art direction is strong, the framerate is butter smooth, and it effortlessly renders incredibly complex environments. And because they put the effort in, this same engine scales beautifully to the less powerful consoles.

We need to stop worrying so much about PC prominence, and I say that as a guy who spent over $3000 this year building his own gaming PC from hell.

- Scott

Personally I couldn't agree more with this, There seems to be a misunderstanding that expending more on a PC equals "having the superior version of everything" it usually does but in the limits of a financial logic for developers.

I've been playing RAGE on steam and god it does look amazing the amount of unique assets, some of the best vistas I've seen lately, the quality of the animations and overall smooth feel make it something, design wise the game is quite mediocre thou.

Lucky for me I'm a Nvidia/Intel guy so I'm not experiencing issues, ATI is a decent brand and all but they always have drivers/compatibility problems, since the beginning of time.

Does this mean the PC is dead?

Considering how good rage played, and how it mostly looked? Can't say I can complain. Just, next time, pwease do not fricking make the pc launch so awful! Its fine to develop for the consoles, but if you put it on the pc, don't release it broken

@SeriouslyNow said:

The $2000 figure is bullshit by today's standards of pricing but even IF it wasn't you're missing the point. More expensive luxury items are generally not simpler to use but they do often offer more fidelity. What is true for expensive, high performance sports cars which can require a lot of expensive maintenance is also true of high end gaming PCs. You want a simple plug and play experience and that's what consoles offer, whereas I want higher fidelity and that's what PCs offer.

Yeah, different tastes I guess. What I was trying to say is that the vast majority of people is going to feel alienated from pc gaming when they experience issues like the Rage driver-trouble a couple of times. You may have the patience for this, but I know most people just don´t have that- It´s sad, because stuff like this leads to the PC losing importance again, at a time when it´s pretty clear that the current consoles are on the way out. Whatever. It´s the fault of Bethesda/id. They should have pushed it back a few days, because they probably knew those drivers weren´t ready.

That's not really an excuse for putting out a broken game. I get wanting to make it for consoles first but if your product doesn't work properly out of the gate don't put it out. The fact of the matter is there was(and still is) a large percentage of PC gamers that can't even get into the Single Player as it crashes when you get past the first cutscene(if you don't believe me head to the steam forums or ask one of my friends that has it). Have they even tried to respond to those users? No all they keep doing is essentially blaming it on the Users by saying "Well update your video drivers". I'm not even going to get into the fact that I have to use Beta Drivers and edit a config to get no texture pop-in or horrific screen tearing. If you know your product is going to be faulty hold back the release. It's called integrity and if you do put out a product doesn't work properly don't treat your users like they're complete morons.

@James_ex_machina said:

Does this mean the PC is dead?

No, just that they'll be used for better things, like being a computer.

It's funny how the more commonplace computers have become, the less profitable PC gaming apparently has become. It's like every single person on Earth with a computer in 1996 bought Diablo or something haha

Guys pirating and all this PC gaming dying talk has nothing to do with Rage being so crappy on the PC.

The problem is Rage uses an openGL format and ATI cards specialize in Directx.

And while Nvidia has better openGL support, they've also been falling behind in openGL development as well.

This is why the game is such a crappy port. id software didn't take the time to optimize the game for Directx.

It's their fault for not making sure the game was compatible with current PC video cards.

With that said, I stand by my earlier post about the evolution of console gaming, as far as becoming PC's themselves.

So does that mean they didn't even make an effort with the PC version and it's a crappy port?

Video Game's are fucking funny shit man.

@MideonNViscera said:

It's funny how the more commonplace computers have become, the less profitable PC gaming apparently has become. It's like every single person on Earth with a computer in 1996 bought Diablo or something haha

Computer gaming is very profitable. This is just the go to excuse when companies don't do their legwork and wish to shield themselves and their partners in corporate doublespeak. If computer gaming wasn't profitable then the Indie scene wouldn't be exploding and people like Notch wouldn't be rich. He doesn't stand alone.