“Consolitus” is a word that a lot of console gamers hate. This word describes how some games “change” in order to be released on consoles. Developers do a lot of changes regarding the level design, the control mechanics, the AI, the graphics, and – generally speaking – everything in order to make the games enjoyable on consoles.
This phenomenon mostly happens when a game mainly targets consoles instead of the PC, and Warren Spector has just revealed something we all already knew; Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows were consoles game and their PC versions was an afterthought.
As Warren Spector said during this year’s E3 PC Gaming Show:
“When we started working on Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows, we had new marching motives. Those games were to be developed for the Xbox. The PC version was… well I probably shouldn’t say this but… the PC version was kind of an afterthought which some might have noticed.”
Warren Spector also said that he – and other developers – were kind of forced to develop for consoles as that’s where the money was a few years ago.
“The bottom line in all this; publishers wanted console games and developers like me had no choice but to go where the money was. And the money was on console.”
Things are obviously different now, however this will give you an insight at why some of your beloved franchises have “evolved” into something completely different from their original vision.
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.”
Contact: Email
Shameful
Perhaps, but in the same regard he weathered the storm and is still here making great games again. might have been a different story had he not given into his console overlords.
“Otherside is putting a great effort to make the PC versions of Underworld Ascendant and System Shock 3 are the best ones”
not sure console versions of these games were announced or not but this sounds like a confirmation (i can be wrong) if they weren’t which isn’t surprising. i am not against a console version as long as it doesn’t interfere with the PC version though.
It always interferes. You’d need to have two different games for pc and consoles for it to not interfere.
not necessarily. Dragon Age Origins for example had console versions, yet the PC version is a real PC game (the sequels are console oriented though but just like most multi platform games they perform and look better on PC).
with Original Sin for example they just focused on the PC version first and then worked on the console version.
You can make a game that performs differently on PC’s & Consoles, & some people have actually done it throughout time, but it’s just not being done anymore, since it costs extra, & nobody wants to dish out that extra.
Just look at Witcher 3. The alleged die-hard PC guys went & f*cked us for Consoles.
Paul Neurath (studio head at Otherside and one of the founders of Looking Glass Studios) said at one point that they were looking into the possibility of console releases after the PC version was done. And I agree, I have no problem with PC games being ported to consoles afterwards (though I’d rather just see consoles die off, tbh).
No console version of Underworld: Ascendant is announced so far, and even if it comes out on consoles, it’ll come out after the release of PC version. Don’t know if same will be the case with System Shock 3 or it will see simultaneous release.
This is pretty meh. Now i have to think if i want to buy their games in the future. Money was on consoles. LOL. PLEASE. Look at all the pc titles that are making a load of money. Maybe your game was just NOT WORTH IT?
This was like 14 years ago dude, the situations that he’s talking about
OMFG i was wrong lol. I thought he was talking about the most recent thief. Which was so crappy. imo. Gawd dayum.
My apologies.
It is unfortunate that these mistakes were made in the past, but at least the gaming industry has something to learn from and make much better PC games moving forward. I am 100% confident Warren Spector’s next game(s) will be great.
He’s directing System Shock 3.
Yeah I know he is working on Underworld Ascendant and System Shock 3.
I listened at this speech at pc gaming show, it was a honest and truthful portrait of game industry of the last ~10 yrs.
If we should put our trust and hope in someone for what’s coming, should be this man here no doubt.
Thanks Warren
It’s interesting to see how this has swung in the opposite direction as the PC is where the money seems to be now.
It is to a degree, but we’re still seeing ignorant publishers who still bet and bank on Sony and MS, Square Enix for example bets highly with Sony first and foremost because of the strong Japanese following and had Sony failed this gen and MS won, SE would have folded to PC entirely, but since Sony is still going strong they tend to feel much safer with another Japanese company in the race.
There are more Japanese devs who are starting to see that more money could be made on PC though and that’s a good thing for both us and them.
I honestly get kind of disheartened when people scream “consoles are holding back PC’s, think of how good [insert title here] could look if it were only on PC.” I’m just thinking “who cares, just look at how much they dumbed this game down for the console peasantry.” I’d kill to once again get games that are as complex and in depth as Thief 1&2, System Shock and Deus Ex 1. For all their jank, those games demanded a lot from players, and were hugely rewarding for it. Here’s hoping Otherside can deliver with Underworld Ascendant and System Shock 3.
WHO CARES? Thief dead lshadows cares.
I was just talking about graphics when I said that.
Amen, Invisible War has to be the most dumbed-down game ever made to make it work on consoles.
AbsoFvckingLutely right!
Well, no sh*t. I think I may die of “not surprise”
But consoles weren’t so lackluster then, I guess? At least I thought so back then…
So apparently I was just naïvely charmed by advertising. Stupid me!
have you played thief deadly shadows and deus ex invisible war? Doom 3 had to be split into smaller levels on low settings to run on xbox. They couldnt run far cry.
As I said now, thinking that those consoles were so good had to be my groundless assumption, probably caused by advertisement.
Despite being dumbed down and not being as good as first two games, Thief: Deadly Shadows was still one helluva game and a true Thief title (unlike crappy reboot).
There are 3 things that I didn’t like about Deadly Shadows. First one was giant UI designed for TVs. Second, FOV and third, loading screens within missions.
Other problems that held back Deadly Shadows were bugs and some of the half baked features like faction system. Devs clearly didn’t get enough time to polish the game from pubs. Lack of rope arrow was also a bad news but it had more to do with engine limitation than consolization. Overall it was a solid game and had one of the best endings to a trilogy.
Fingers crossed for System Shock 3. I trust OtherSide Entertainment. I know they will deliver with Underworld: Ascendant and System Shock 3.
If you can get past its bazillion of stupid design decisions
warren spector was the best thing in the PC gamer show if you asked me..
Definitely, he was very insightful. I just wish he surprised us with some damn System Shock 3 gameplay!
It does sound that way, but he at least had the balls to tell us we were an afterthought towards the mega publishers and companies at the time who wanted those consolized games, not even MS has the guts let alone the soul to tell us they wanted to leave us for dead when they threw out the first Xbox, they know too well that telling us such a truth would forever damn whatever image they have left in the PC gaming world.
That said I am getting a bit tired of not hearing from some devs after a number of years, they suddenly show up and give PC gamers lip service, I mean we had Firaxis do that with XCOM 2 and how X game couldn’t be done or possible without PC and then it turned out they had console plans the entire time but decide not to say a word while dishing out lip service.
CDPR can suck it though, I used to like those guys but after the whole “W3 wouldn’t ever be possible without consoles” just tells me who they truly value and that big money is all they really care for, not the fans, the platform or the games.
Fraxis are not developing console port.
They don’t have to at all but the information was kept hidden the whole time with lip service given out during the time.
How many open-world, non-linear RPGs are PC exclusives? Those games cost a lot of money and if you want to keep your studio floating you need to get back the costs. Despite TW3 selling really well on PC, would have that been enough?
Other than graphics, then, why was that so bad that TW3 came on consoles too? Combat is better than on TW2, more streamlined but not much (if anything) that can be blamed on “consolitis”. The spell wheel made for a controller? Yeah, right, like it wasn’t there in TW2.
Besides, weren’t we the ones that said that exclusives are the cancer of the industry? How can we ask for one then, especially when it doesn’t make sense to NOT have it on consoles (because it’s not like it is an RTS that can’t be played well with one).
You seem to want to lump in hardware/platform based exclusives along with monetary exclusives into the same camp despite both being entirely different for various reasons, the two are like water and oil and exist for different reasons too.
If you think they are a true cancer then why not ask for all the console exclusives, or will we defend their reasons but not PC’s?.
I think I made a pretty clear distinction between a game that can only be played/plays much better in certain hardware than the others. I certainly can’t imagine how a game like XCOM can be played with a controller. Hell, I don’t know how an FPS can be! The Witcher 3 wasn’t one of those games and I can’t really blame the devs for going for that market too. Yes, it responded mostly to a monetary reason but it’s completely different to, say, Sony or Microsoft “buying” certain properties to lock other players away (games developed by their own studios, not partners, lie in a very murky grey area). That is the industry cancer. A game locked to a platform for hardware/gameplay requirements is a different thing.
Exclusives are rife on PC, but it’s not locked to hardware, it’s purely a platform issue.
The Platform is called an online store client, but it’s exclusives are no different to what we got on consoles.
I switched from console to PC because I refused to be locked to a platform, I chose my platform and stuck to games I could play on it.
I made the same excuses as other gamers for why online clients were different, but I no longer accept the lies I told myself.
ONline Store Clients are just as much a walled garden as the consoles hardware is, no different at all.
If Steam/Origin/Uplay…. are required to play a game, they are exclusives to the platform, all the same. It’s no different, at all.
How many other store clients now? I’ve lost track.
No store client is acceptable to me anymore, I can’t say I abandoned consoles in protest of their ransoming of games, while paying multiple ransoms on the PC, to the store of all places.
I now demand an offline installer for all my games, just like I expect for every other piece of software, and when that games installed, I expect nothing else to be required to play it, that’s outside the game I installed, for a single player game.
Online games require a means of connecting to a server, but that means must be installed within the game, and mustn’t connect to anything but a server dedicated for that specific game.
Obviously I’m limited as to what I can play, but GOG is growing, and without forcing me to use Galaxy, I have no problem with those choosing to use such things, as long as I can choose not to.
Though prefer DRM free, I’d accept DRM with installer, rather than DRM frree with store client.
K&M
One thing I’ve never understood is the idea consoles must have a controller, theirs no technical reason why, K&M can’t be used.
It’s only stupid marketing, that divides console/TV, and PC/Monitor.
So don’t use marketing restrictions to make these false arguments. My PC can be both a controller/TV and K&M/Monitor device, and so could any console. It’s old tech, and would add little to the price, nothing in fact, as only standard drivers are required
The USB ports exist, and XB1 already has K&M support, not sure PS4 does, but as only drivers are required, in reality both consoles support K&M
The makers choose this, if it’s not forced by the hardware. requirements, it’s should be the user’s choice what peripherals are used.
To be fair games have really improved compared to last gen which was the linear corridor qte generation of consoles.
Well i think they actually changed but not improved. now games are linear open world QTEs and each one has less quality and content than the last one with worst business practices than last gen.
Well in 2004 PC gaming was still strong ! We have many cool exclusives at this time . Unreal Tornament 2004, Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Total war rome 1, Far Cry 1 soo money was ON PC IN 2004!!
While on the subject of “fake” PC games;
Quake Champions is confirmed as “PC only” at launch, but;
“It’s a PC game. No excuses. No limitations,” Id Software boss Tim Willits told GameSpot in an interview today at E3 2016. “We’re going to focus on one platform.”
Willits went on to say that he still “love[s] [his] console fans,” and teased that, “We’re not totally shutting the door on consoles.” However, it’s too soon to say if the game will ever come to consoles.
“We drew lines around this game to make the best game we can within the scope,”
I wonder which scope….. the PC one, or the console one?
See this is exactly what I hate , I hate when developers wh*re their games to PC gamers as being built from the ground up for PC knowing fine well it will go down well with hardcore PC gamers who crave games designed from the ground up for the key strengths of the PC platform and once they sell well on PC they then port it to consoles easily and intact which proves it was never designed from the ground up for PC at all. This is why I say Steam should be doing more