Epic Games General Thread - Its time to talk about what the AAA gaming industry does not understand about the PC console.

[Tanner Glass]

PC exclusives exist, also games that are not shitty console ports, but are either built for the PC first and nerfed for consoles later or optimized for PC. These are actually majority of games worth playing at all as opposed to stuff on consoles.
The notion, that consoles will somehow magically utilize the speed of SSD better for anything than PC, barring console exclusives, that get a shitty low budget PC port, is ludicrous and you should feel ashamed for your post, peasant.

PC exclusives aren't so worthwhile that they're developed in a radically different manner.

PC developers can't assume that everyone has a super fast SSD, either, as you have pieces of shit like me still playing games off of a regular hard drive.

The point being is that even PC exclusive games still have to do console-tier bullshit of hiding loading screens through doors, hallways, etc and keep a gigantic pile of bullshit in memory and that's going to be the case until SSDs become the new normal. Putting them into consoles drastically accelerates the rate which they will be adopted as the new normal, it's a positive boost for all parties.

 

[BrunoMattei]

It isn't just the speed - it's how the speed that's utilized that's important.

PC Games can't take massive advantage of the speed currently because nearly 90% of all video games are being designed around consoles without no SSD - which specifically means that most games are designed around a slow hard drive, RAM, and hiding loading screens. Currently it's worth no one's time to go and alter the PC versions of games because of how drastic and massive the effort would be.

If SSDs are commonplace (ex- in all of the new consoles) then developers can start developing their framework differently and really start leaning into those speeds offered by SSDs.

It's cool that PCs have had SSDs for a while, but until nearly everyone has them - they can't universally be put into expected use.

But you don't put the game on the SSD on PC. You use the SSD for the OS. Once they get cheaper and cheaper, sure, but I use a 500 GB SSD and two plug in drives.

 

[DidYouJustSayThat]

PC exclusives aren't so worthwhile that they're developed in a radically different manner.

PC developers can't assume that everyone has a super fast SSD, either, as you have pieces of shit like me still playing games off of a regular hard drive.

The point being is that even PC exclusive games still have to do console-tier bullshit of hiding loading screens through doors, hallways, etc and keep a gigantic pile of bullshit in memory and that's going to be the case until SSDs become the new normal. Putting them into consoles drastically accelerates the rate which they will be adopted as the new normal, it's a positive boost for all parties.

Everything you just said is flat out wrong. What is Crysis? What are massive world building games, terrain alteration, fully destructive environments, detailed simulations etc. PC games constantly push the envelope and people actually do upgrade their systems to play the latest stuff available. Don't get me even started on commonly available configuration options that can make shit look 10x better on high end system, but still playable on old hardware, meanwhile console titles are locked into same hardware for 5 years and will keep looking shit for the duration. Also 30HZ for 1080p. IN. THE. YEAR. OF. OUR. LORD. 2020. ROFLMAO. Mouth breathing retards designing these consoles, who can't even support 60hz refresh rate are somehow able to squeeze out magic SSD speed advantage. Give me a break.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I smell a nerd fight. It stinks.

 

[Pope Negro Joe the XIIIth]

Everything you just said is flat out wrong. What is Crysis? What are massive world building games, terrain alteration, fully destructive environments, detailed simulations etc. PC games constantly push the envelope and people actually do upgrade their systems to play the latest stuff available. Don't get me even started on commonly available configuration options that can make shit look 10x better on high end system, but still playable on old hardware, meanwhile console titles are locked into same hardware for 5 years and will keep looking shit for the duration. Also 30HZ for 1080p. IN. THE. YEAR. OF. OUR. LORD. 2020. ROFLMAO. Mouth breathing retards designing these consoles, who can't even support 60hz refresh rate are somehow able to squeeze out magic SSD speed advantage. Give me a break.

Nigga, you gay.

 

[AnOminous]

Community seems to agree that it was a smart business decision given that no one gave a shit about the game prior to the EGS exclusivity reveal, and they don't seem to give a shit after the gameplay reveal either.

So Epic is basically a toilet where devs flush their failed products while getting giant piles of money from a moron for doing it.

 

[Kamiii]

Also 30HZ for 1080p. IN. THE. YEAR. OF. OUR. LORD. 2020. ROFLMAO. Mouth breathing retards designing these consoles, who can't even support 60hz refresh rate are somehow able to squeeze out magic SSD speed advantage. Give me a break.

As someone who used to own an Xbox one, I can tell you it's 60 frames. Even 360 had a 60 fps cap on some games.

 

[Slimy Time]

So Epic is basically a toilet where devs flush their failed products while getting giant piles of money from a moron for doing it.

In a word, yes.

 

[DrearyDoomguy]

So Epic is basically a toilet where devs flush their failed products while getting giant piles of money from a moron for doing it.

In theory, they could be a platform that funds more experimental games that wouldn’t see the light of day otherwise. Problem is, crowdfunding beat them to that years prior. The only advantage they have is the obscene amount of money they seem willing to shovel into their exclusivity deals. Though given the trend away from poaching games, it looks like EGS is trying to backpedal on the poaching and replace it with game giveaways.

Funny thing is, that is somehow backfiring and driving up sales on Steam, which Tim admitted in his recent Summer Games Fest appearance, attempting to spin it as a sign that his shitty practices are totally helping the industry guys.

 

[The tired cat]

In theory, they could be a platform that funds more experimental games that wouldn’t see the light of day otherwise. Problem is, crowdfunding beat them to that years prior. The only advantage they have is the obscene amount of money they seem willing to shovel into their exclusivity deals. Though given the trend away from poaching games, it looks like EGS is trying to backpedal on the poaching and replace it with game giveaways.

Funny thing is, that is somehow backfiring and driving up sales on Steam, which Tim admitted in his recent Summer Games Fest appearance, attempting to spin it as a sign that his shitty practices are totally helping the industry guys.

I mean, that kinda falls apart when one see's how better Bl3 and Metro Exodus sold on steam. Plus, if that was the case 2k wouldn't be saving all the money from Epic as it happened with the Mafia 2-3 remasters; one could make an argument that all said the money went into the Mafia 1 remake. But even so, one does raise an eyebrow.

 

[DrearyDoomguy]

I mean, that kinda falls apart when one see's how better Bl3 and Metro Exodus sold on steam.

That's where it gets really scummy; take the deal, screw over your PC market for a year, and then reap the rewards anyways when your game eventually comes to Steam and sells well to the broader audience. It's why I refuse to every buy epic exclusives. If the money you get from the deal can compensate for development costs enough to tide you over until you're able to go on Steam, you suffer almost no consequences. I have no idea how big an 'if' that is, but that's what I infer the angle to be in the absence of any deeper knowledge of the game industry. It certainly worked for Gearbox's executives, albeit at the cost of completely screwing over their developers with lower than expected quarterly bonuses due to the inflated game budget. At least, I assume that the exclusivity money went straight into the BL3 budget. Maybe it didn't. Maybe Pitchford is that much of a scumbag.

 

[The tired cat]

That's where it gets really scummy; take the deal, screw over your PC market for a year, and then reap the rewards anyways when your game eventually comes to Steam and sells well to the broader audience. It's why I refuse to every buy epic exclusives. If the money you get from the deal can compensate for development costs enough to tide you over until you're able to go on Steam, you suffer almost no consequences. I have no idea how big an 'if' that is, but that's what I infer the angle to be in the absence of any deeper knowledge of the game industry. It certainly worked for Gearbox's executives, albeit at the cost of completely screwing over their developers with lower than expected quarterly bonuses due to the inflated game budget. At least, I assume that the exclusivity money went straight into the BL3 budget. Maybe it didn't. Maybe Pitchford is that much of a scumbag.

Actually, it's more hilarious with Metro Exodus. Because, Deep Silver was going on how amazing the game sold on Epic, yet they ran their asses to the Microsoft store as fast as they could, with BL3 2K kept pimping how huge the sales were and yet one could tell the game was selling like crap on Epic and got a much bigger sale on Steam.

 

[PowerWomon]

Everything you just said is flat out wrong. What is Crysis? What are massive world building games, terrain alteration, fully destructive environments, detailed simulations etc. PC games constantly push the envelope and people actually do upgrade their systems to play the latest stuff available. Don't get me even started on commonly available configuration options that can make shit look 10x better on high end system, but still playable on old hardware, meanwhile console titles are locked into same hardware for 5 years and will keep looking shit for the duration. Also 30HZ for 1080p. IN. THE. YEAR. OF. OUR. LORD. 2020. ROFLMAO.

That's not completely wrong. If you have a PC title, you might have more resources. You usually have a few reference systems on which you test performance of your game, so you have a target system you develop for and test performance on - it's just not a console. I am actually less sure how program managers and others do the market research and that determination. I have never been part of that end of the process. We got the target systems and target specs given to us and then we would test on and develop those system. If that point was the most cost effective or not, or if game X or application Y had sold better with this or that optimization, I might never know. If I did, and I could do it better, I will find out when or if I ever have my own company.

Mouth breathing retards designing these consoles, who can't even support 60hz refresh rate are somehow able to squeeze out magic SSD speed advantage. Give me a break.

Then the competition that can do better should beat them. Make it better, for the same price. Then whoever is a retard should be be outdone by those who are less retarded. If there are no such people, maybe the former are not that retarded.

 

[KanaPostsonKiwi]

Everything you just said is flat out wrong. What is Crysis? What are massive world building games, terrain alteration, fully destructive environments, detailed simulations etc. PC games constantly push the envelope and people actually do upgrade their systems to play the latest stuff available. Don't get me even started on commonly available configuration options that can make shit look 10x better on high end system, but still playable on old hardware, meanwhile console titles are locked into same hardware for 5 years and will keep looking shit for the duration. Also 30HZ for 1080p. IN. THE. YEAR. OF. OUR. LORD. 2020. ROFLMAO. Mouth breathing retards designing these consoles, who can't even support 60hz refresh rate are somehow able to squeeze out magic SSD speed advantage. Give me a break.

Developer here, you're wrong on just about all counts.

Crysis is a tech demo for an engine that wasn't made publically available until much later, and didn't really take off due to its exorbitant royalty rates.
What are massive world building games? You mean minecraft, the staple title of Xbox 360? Yes, it started on PC, but it hardly takes advantage of high-tech PCs and the codebase is a jumbled mess.
Detailed simulations? I guess the ~10 per mille people who are simulator enthusiasts are very happy. I enjoy the occasional flight sim, train sim and tank sim because muh 'tism, but it's an extremely niche category, and also available on consoles.

As much as i love the PC and developing for it, it is a significantly smaller market when compared to the cancer-inducing mobile market, or the normie console market. Outside of the absolute giants (League of Legends, for instance) it accounts for approximately 10% of all gaming market, although with Steam now being opened to China, that figure is skyrocketing.
While there are games that pioneer tech and push the envelope (Hello there, Star Citizen) realistically what shoves the envelope forward for most games are console generations, because of the profit that moves in there. It forces the engine producers to iterate, because marketability is in graphics for the normies.

When you have a set hardware optimization and programming routines specifically to utilize that hardware can take place. We've seen this since the days of C64. You're probably much too young to remember what a speedloader is, but it practically took advantage of a certain trick of using screen draw space as additional memory and forcing it to update at a high rate to make loading faster. In fact, it made it so much faster you could have songs written specifically to run during the loader. If you want the ur-example of this, take a look at Mr. Gimmick on the NES. It does physics simulation and momentum calculations on NES hardware all while the rest of the game is running.

Did you mean 30 FPS? Yes, some console games do run at 30 FPS, and some of them run at up to 120 FPS. Hertz is not comparable to frame rate.

How can you call someone a mouth-breathing retard when you don't know basic terminology?
You remind me of silver players in League, know nothing, but still have opinions on how everyone else should play.

 

[DidYouJustSayThat]

Developer here, you're wrong on just about all counts.

Crysis is a tech demo for an engine that wasn't made publically available until much later, and didn't really take off due to its exorbitant royalty rates.
What are massive world building games? You mean minecraft, the staple title of Xbox 360? Yes, it started on PC, but it hardly takes advantage of high-tech PCs and the codebase is a jumbled mess.
Detailed simulations? I guess the ~10 per mille people who are simulator enthusiasts are very happy. I enjoy the occasional flight sim, train sim and tank sim because muh 'tism, but it's an extremely niche category, and also available on consoles.

As much as i love the PC and developing for it, it is a significantly smaller market when compared to the cancer-inducing mobile market, or the normie console market. Outside of the absolute giants (League of Legends, for instance) it accounts for approximately 10% of all gaming market, although with Steam now being opened to China, that figure is skyrocketing.
While there are games that pioneer tech and push the envelope (Hello there, Star Citizen) realistically what shoves the envelope forward for most games are console generations, because of the profit that moves in there. It forces the engine producers to iterate, because marketability is in graphics for the normies.

When you have a set hardware optimization and programming routines specifically to utilize that hardware can take place. We've seen this since the days of C64. You're probably much too young to remember what a speedloader is, but it practically took advantage of a certain trick of using screen draw space as additional memory and forcing it to update at a high rate to make loading faster. In fact, it made it so much faster you could have songs written specifically to run during the loader. If you want the ur-example of this, take a look at Mr. Gimmick on the NES. It does physics simulation and momentum calculations on NES hardware all while the rest of the game is running.

Did you mean 30 FPS? Yes, some console games do run at 30 FPS, and some of them run at up to 120 FPS. Hertz is not comparable to frame rate.

How can you call someone a mouth-breathing retard when you don't know basic terminology?
You remind me of silver players in League, know nothing, but still have opinions on how everyone else should play.

Pardon my French, but since you seem to be one of these console peasants, your opinion is automatically invalid.

 

[KanaPostsonKiwi]

Pardon my French, but since you seem to be one of these console peasants, your opinion is automatically invalid.

I literally have developed games exclusively for the PC for the last decade or so. I believe i mentioned this on the second post i ever made on this site.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Nerd fight!

 

[DidYouJustSayThat]

I literally have developed games exclusively for the PC for the last decade or so. I believe i mentioned this on the second post i ever made on this site.

Oh, so you've developed something with rpg maker and this gives you a pass to commit a cardinal sin of employing the logical fallacy - appeal to the authority?

 

[KanaPostsonKiwi]

Oh, so you've developed something with rpg maker and this gives you a pass to commit a cardinal sin of employing the logical fallacy - appeal to the authority?

RPG Maker is not development. It's storyboarding at best, and possibly some graphics design if you want to go "higher quality" production.
I am amused at the fact that you think it is, however, which speaks volumes of your understanding of development. Do you by chance also watch extra credits?
Should note that RPGMaker is also available the consoles, starting with SNES.
I've developed for everything between Turbine's absolutely retarded game engine to CryEngine, and i mostly do programming, my background before programming is in QA.
Recently i've taught both Unity and Blender in high school & secondary education setting as a guest lecturer.

 

[Disc]

Everything you just said is flat out wrong. What is Crysis? What are massive world building games, terrain alteration, fully destructive environments, detailed simulations etc. PC games constantly push the envelope and people actually do upgrade their systems to play the latest stuff available. Don't get me even started on commonly available configuration options that can make shit look 10x better on high end system, but still playable on old hardware, meanwhile console titles are locked into same hardware for 5 years and will keep looking shit for the duration. Also 30HZ for 1080p. IN. THE. YEAR. OF. OUR. LORD. 2020. ROFLMAO. Mouth breathing retards designing these consoles, who can't even support 60hz refresh rate are somehow able to squeeze out magic SSD speed advantage. Give me a break.

Come on guys. Just let the man lick his balls and move on.