It’s no secret that multi-platform games are limited by the hardware of consoles; a limitation that’s not present on the PC as developers can push things as much as they want. The Crysis series is a perfect example of how a game can be limited by consoles and it appears that Fallout: New Vegas was also a victim of such a thing.
As Obsidian’s Scott Everts told PCGamesN, the game would have been a lot different if it was a PC exclusive, it would not be plagued by its performance issues, and it had to be simplified so that consoles could run it acceptably.
“We had to simplify, so we had less stuff that would bog down the game engine. We would have had fewer performance issues. We did break it up a bit, but from my point of view it was a performance-related game and we had to fix things.”
In short, Obsidian has basically admitted what most of us already knew. And this is basically what most studios do nowadays, even though they do not publicly admit it. And no, we are not only talking about the “downgrade-ation” of a game’s visuals. Most of the times, the gameplay is also being simplified in order to cut to a more casual audience (or to console gamers).
Obviously, this does not mean that there aren’t any hardcore console games out there. Dark Souls is a perfect example of a hardcore action RPG that originated from consoles. Cuphead is another very hard game that was released on multiple platforms. So no, a multiplatform game does not have to be simplified. However, the console hardware limitations – as well as the gamepad itself – are more than enough, most of the times, to limit a game’s vision. And that’s a fact that has been confirmed by numerous developers in the past!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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MILD SHOCK!
Thank you for the admission Obsidian. But yeah, we knew that 7 years ago when the game came out. Still, you did beat Warren Spector’s admission last year that the PC version of Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows were a mere afterthought. That admission only took Mr. Spector 13 years to cough up.
This has been well known for years now. The Strip, as well as it’s casinos, were meant to be heavily populated areas that really felt like Vegas. With 4/5 year old CPUs and 512MB of RAM in the consoles of the time, this simply wasn’t possible. Mods have somewhat restored this, but the unreliable 32 bit Gamebryo engine only allows for limited success by the mod author’s. That doesn’t even cover game mechanics and systems that simply weren’t possible on gamepads.
TL;DR the industry needs to finally admit that consoles simply aren’t a good fit for many games and genres, just like how smart phones and handhelds aren’t.
And in other news the sky is blue.
We really don’t need them to confirm that, we already know consoles are a disease.
without consoles gaming wouldnt be nearly as popular and accessible as it is and the devs that are making the aaa games wouldnt be making them because they wouldnt get the billions of dollars consoles make for them
Exactly, they would be making good and interesting games instead.
Legendary comeback reply.
Lmao
“billions”
You didn’t seriously just use the “b-word”, did you?
Didn’t you know that Fallout 4 made around 4.5 Billions of $ ?! The equivalent of France’s annual GDP …
Lol’d ^^
Really, lets assume everbody bought all the DLC, and to give a simple estimate, call that $100 each, that means you are claiming at a minimum of 45 million people bought it. I think you got the numbers wrong.
… dude, I hope you realize I was kidding … Zatara did ..
WEll consoles are not really a disease…its the greed for money that is a disease that drives devs and production companies to focus on the consoles while compromising the better/more powerful platform that is PC!
So, a disease basically
What worries me is HOW the PC gained back popularity, through free games, with ingame transactions, hero shooters, and with streamers boosting game’s popularity, this makes me think that the popularity PC got back is basically represented by people coming from consoles, which is pure ignorance and superficiality.
It doesn’t surprise me, seeing Steam threads these days being filled with ex or current gen console players.
“is this enough” type threads end up showing up quite often these days all over Steam. Then we have the usual F2P type of games clogging up store pages, steering people away from the proper fully fleshed out PC games, this is what leads to stupid list wars from console folk, who often feel they need to make a list for each new exclusive that shows up, then when they ask about PC, they reply with “oh it’s just MMO’s, Mobas and F2P crap”. It’s like a totally new myth, just like the whole “PC gaming is super expensive” one that’s been rolling around all these years.
The important thing to note however, is that the casual crowd will always dwarf the hardcore dedicated ones, even on consoles you’ll find a lot more casual gamers than those who like their dedicated AAA titles. PC is full of it’s own, via social networking sites, going all the way to Steam.
Yeah exactly, ignorants basically.
Are you talking about me?.
because I was the one pointing out that stupid af myth, not claiming it to be true.
In other news: water, wet.
consoles are slowly dying
the problem is not the consoles, but the PUBLISHERS who cuck developers into
downgrading their own game just so it can work on consoles
Yes they are dying, game sales are droping, xbone one sales are low, switch is doing meh, wiiu is dead and pc is making more money than all consoles combined.
same with the PS2 generation, these consoles are P*ss weak and cheap
because of that, everyone can afford them
it doesn’t matter though, because many people buy a console just for a few exclusives (250$ is not much nowadays)
hell even i’m guilty of buying a PS4 just for bloodborne and an XBone just for halo MCC and backwards compatibility
imo Publishers are taking note of the ever increasing PC games revenue year after year. iirc PC games accounted for around 35 billion dollars in revenue last year which exceeded MS console games revenue and exceeded Sony console games revenue individually. Collectively, of course, consoles account for more revenue than PC but PC is #1 for now of the 3 main platforms.
I know that billions get spent on games like League of Legends in microtransactions but Publishers are wanting a slice of the AAA pie too. That’s why we are seeing previous console exclusives being ported to PC and hell even Activision is attempting to kiss up to the PC gaming community and hoping to sell Call of Duty to us. Just words right now with Activision and I’m not sure if they will succeed very much.
Anyway, things are looking very good for PC gamers over the next few years imo.
I don’t need proof. I have seen it happen repeatedly over the years. Consoles suck.
Obsidian admits water is wet…
New consoles such as Xbox X are faster than 95% of gaming PC on Steam Survey. So it no longer limit game developers. Compare Xbox X specs to average PC from Steam Survey
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/90ac94958566bf70399e82116e9d725708fbc3a5286ca5fe680e3ac38c90f687.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d23537390cd5c69332c4628fb4cec8cb8bf8b0b1e45406a0b9e624a866b5381a.jpg
You comparing over 125 million acounts (2015 stats) with few xbone x
Well……no. The consoles are still holding us back. You are assuming that everyone who owns a Xbox One or PS4 will be upgrading to an Xbox One X. Nope. Many tens of millions will stick with their current console and thus Developers will continue to have to develop for the lowest common denominator.
Also by next year an entry level Volta will beat the graphics potential of the Xbox X. Most likely long before the nextgen Xbox comes to replace the Xbox One X it will be painfully slow and weak and still limping along dragging all of us down from advancing.
“You are assuming that everyone who owns a Xbox One or PS4 will be upgrading to an Xbox One X. Nope”
I never assume that. I also never said that everyone who own GeForce 750TI (1.3 TFLOPS) will upgrade to GTX 1070 (6.5 TFLOPS). As you know power difference between GTS 750ti and GTX 1070 is equal to power difference between Xbox 2013 (1.3 TFLOPS) and Xbox 2017 (6 TFLOPS).
Like you said difference in power is great on consoles. But this is even bigger on PC between low-ends graphics cards and high end PC. Always some gamers will have better hardware and some other slower – on any platform
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/883ee24755e6cbef606e8a8ccf0fd56ec13ef43e07b22cfa89a2f4361a2fc06f.jpg
Try to compare some low-end cards such as GTX 650 to GTX 1080 or something like that. You will see bigger difference than between any current consoles.
Upgrading console is like upgrading graphics card on PC every 4 years – some gamers do this… some others don’t
The Steam survey is as good as a citable source as Wikipedia. Also the static hardware in the XOX that matches today’s upper midrange graphics card’s will be outperformed by next year’s card for the same price, and the gap will only get larger with each year.
Xbox One X is still heavily CPU limited with a CPU that is still built upon the terrible Bulldozer architecture.
It depends. Xbox use additional hardware command processor to help CPU with preparing draw calls for GPU. So CPU can’t limit GPU in this task.
But standard game logic (not graphics) can be limited by Jaguar. But current games don’t require fast CPU. Games like Rise of Tomb Raider run great on 12 years old Xbox 360 with 512 MB of memory
Hi, consoles are crap. They always were, and they’ll forever be.
Keep pasting your fancy images that mean nothing, and I’ll keep telling you this: the best gaming experience will always be found on PC. Period.
You know it, you can’t shake it, it’s simple: PC will always be the best option if you want to enjoy your games at it’s best.
“the best gaming experience will always be found on PC. Period.”
I love my PC, but I am yet to find a gaming experience better than what the Last of Us was on PS4 :/
whose fault is that exactly?
I dont see a fault here…
Or valuing Story and gameplay over frame rate and resolution counts as a fault?
Whoa, but how can you play a game like that with a joystick? I mean, takes ages to turn around, you can’t redefine bind like you’d do with a nice gaming keypad and mouse. Quickturn, autoaim… that’s just crap. Imagine that game you like so much, with higher resolution, framerate and a better control scheme…
Well, we’re all different I guess, I’ve yet to find a gaming experience better than (nicely modded) STALKER SoC on PC.
1. It all depends on your sensitivity setting
2. The default binding is perfect, couldnt imagine it better, thats a pro of consoles: Simple and easy to use
3. There is no Autoaim in TLOU, only aim assist, but thats optional, personally I prefer to turn it off
4. I dont need anything above 1080p@60fps in a slower Third Person action game, and zhe graphics are damn good
5. I do agree that Stalker is great, but I’m more for storytelling and characters, not a big fan of Open World games, but yeah, STALKER is awesome
Hey. First, sorry for PC master race BS talk mate. I mistook you for one of the console trolls that come regularly to this site to start flames; it’s clearly that you’re not. You just happen to have another point of view, which is perfectly fine.
Second, The Last of Us is a nice game from what I’ve heard, I’d play it anytime if they ported it to PC. Perhaps not with a joystick, but that’s just personal preference.
Mate any pc is a gaming pc. Who the heck cares if xbox x is powerfully when it has no games and you an play all the games on pc and xbone? Why would you buy a xbone?
What is the point of all of this? Here we are telling you that becaues of consoles being weak and dated games are held back and you response is “but xbone x”
WHAT ABOUT IT? Games will still be based to run on xbone and ps4, So whats your point? Why should we upgrade when your shinny xbone x will have to run games that were made with xbone and ps4 in mind?
Freaking idiot.
This is what peeves me more than the performance bottleneck, and the issue is the developers seldom care. I’m using a mouse, on a 1440p screen I don’t need to dig through menus to “favorite” crap to a scroll wheel so I can use it in-game.
Go away.
Please?
Remember few months ago some Dev called current gen consoles weak,( I forgot what games they are developing but ea is the publisher and it has something to do with prison escape) and how every console fanboy jumped up their throats even threatened not to buy their game..
And now obsidian has spoken the truth.
But hey another bitter truth is that AAA games do sell more on consoles so no wonder everyone focuses on consoles and in the process dumbs down the pc version.
But seeing as more and more devs now are getting onboard pc especially Japanese devs I’m hoping a day would come in future where we’ll see another crysis and the day when pc don’t get second hand treatment. All frostbite games are first developed on pc and just look at them the graphics speaks for themselves.
Who remembers Deus Ex 2 from 2004 ?
“long loading screens, the game”. Hmm lets see lets have a big map and do quests there or have small maps WITH NO WATER BECAUSE THE ENGINE COULDNT DO IT.. and have the player go back and fourth levels to finish quests…WITH VERY LONG LOADINGSCREENS.
DE: Invisible War was made for the Xbox and that console had a very small amount of RAM so the game couldn’t store much in memory and hence the long load times between levels. Warren Spector came out last year and admitted that the PC version was a mere afterthought. They could have done better but…..console was king.
It’s a shame that this game followed such a true classic as Deus Ex 1.
For as many faults as it had, I really enjoyed it.
What I don’t get to this day is why it ended up that way? First Deus Ex was released on consoles as well. It worked. Exactly same thing with Red Faction 1. It worked even on consoles. So WHY make sequels which are worse in every single way?
Shift in the lead platform means a shift in development approaches, means a completely different end result.
Unfortunately.
What irks me the other way, is how we’ve come to expect the baseline options in our PC games, some of which don’t even show up at all and some turn up in patches, but what annoys me the most is how publishers market those standard options as “new” or “bonus features”, as if we’ve never had an FoV or AA options before.
The other thing that annoys me, is how PC versions are treated like some kind of afterthought this gen. We even have some devs acting as if it’s “the best for last”, when it’s really just a console port cobbled together with a few shiny settings and some people even have the tout to cite some of them as “legit demanding”.
last demanding game I ever played was Crysis, things went downhill after that game demanding wise.
I cringe every time I see something along the lines of: “Now playable in ultra-fluid 60 FPS!”. As if it weren’t a standard feature.
Member Ubisoft’s TD PC trailer?, the cringe on that one.
“It has a FOV slider!!!!”
$1000 iPhone……
With a design that’s making Steve Jobs roll over in his grave, to boot.
F*cking. Genius.
I think in this case the biggest problem was bethesda rather consoles. There is a riddiulus amount of cut content that did not manage to make it into the game because of bethesda wanting to ship the game before it was ready. i cant imagine how great this game would be if it was made for pc first and without bethesda or ea rushing the damn thing.
They are one of the few who admitted to it, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Nobody has to point out blatant downgrades in order for them to be visible.
not a good comparison but, shadow warrior 2 has alot of detail as far as graphics go, its well optimized and has alot of assets. Why i say this? Because it is clear to me that its not a matter of budget. You can create great looking games with alot of assets without having insane AAA budgets.
oh oh…i smell new fallout from obsidian and they will then say – look this fallout is not limited by consoles!!!!
also probably this one will be actually decent one after f4 crap. next one from beth will be garbage also. they have an agreement to make one good game and one bad. this way they can keep hype train running and sell two games instead of one
While that would be great, I seriously doubt it, as Bugthesda hates Obsidian too much.
Likewise, I don’t see what’s in it for Obsidian. I mean, what’s the point of getting back into bed with ZeniMax, at the end of the day? So that they can get screwed out of their bonuses once again?
Console fanboys rage in 3..2..1
I think even Bioshock Infinite had some amazing parts removed from the game due to the Xbox 360 and PS3 being unable to handle heavy fighting scenes
Although I’ll do admit, if Halo 3 taught me anything, it’s that sometimes the best place to play a game is simply just with friends.
While I am not familiar with the technical details of development, I don’t understand why triple A titles are held back in particular. Wouldn’t it be easier to develop the game for the high performance market and scale it back for consoles? As opposed to developing it for consoles and then slapping on some shoddy tweaks for performance PCs? My guess is consoles are so weak the developers have to use an ancient engine to begin with but I could be wrong.
Yes, but that means developing for PC first, something which most developers don’t even know how to do any more, which is why outsourcing is so popular these days. Also, you have to keep the console’s limitations constantly in mind, lest you end up overreaching, which is basically considered to be a waste of resources, since you can’t make the PC version look too good, as Microsoft & Sony would throw tantrums, etc.
So, yeah, even though the PC versions, even with lead console development could look better, they can only look “so much” better, lest Microsoft & Sony throw a hissy fit.
The engines vary these days, depending on whether or not they retooled previous generation engines for the new generation or if they went with something actually new.
Awwww, what’s wrong, pleb?
Butthurt much?
triggered much? 😉
Not really, no.
BTW i know the first comment will not pass, but you are so gonna pass the toxic comments from all the diabetis filled crackheads down below, so enjoy it, you know im right
Sometime lower gfx consoles limit also top gfx consoles too,is what is happen with the first destiny run on xboxone and ps4 with limited graphics because the 360ps3 version
Another game that felt massively limited due to the consoles was Bioshock Infinite IMO