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Would the gaming industry be better off if consoles never existed?

Would the gaming industry be better off if consoles never existed?

  • Yes

    Votes: 55 52.4%
  • No

    Votes: 50 47.6%

  • Total voters
    105

deama

Prophet
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
4,352
Location
UK
So, like the title says. I vote yes.

By "Better off" I mean higher quality games.
 
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ciox

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
Messages
1,279
You might have some kind of a case there given that a lot of great console games were ports of arcade titles and the arcade is where a lot of the gameplay associated with good console games originated, meaning consoles wrecked both arcades and PC games in a way, but I don't really want to think about such a brutal thought experiment too much, what should never have happened is PC gaming being influenced by consoles in any way, shape or form, which is kind of hard to envision given that Dreamcast versions for complex PC games like Half-Life and System Shock 2 were being worked on as early as 1999 or so, the pressure was that high to make shitty console FPS from the beginning.
 

Jarmaro

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 31, 2016
Messages
1,466
Location
Lair of Despair
It's obvious that we would get much fewer games with easy controls, like Horizon or Assassin's Creed, I think games would be much more Mouse dependend than they are now.
 
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Codexlurker

Savant
Joined
Dec 15, 2010
Messages
366
Nope. I actually got way more interested in PC gaming after playing PC ports on the PS1. The decline started when consoles became the main focus rather than the complexity and depth PC games can deliver. Good thing that happened because the beta of Mount & Blade and Severance Blade of Darkness were godlike.
 

Nano

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2016
Messages
4,648
Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
I wouldn't go that far, simply preventing the existence of the Xbox would be enough.

Do you seriously believe a monopoly is prefered? Two corporations, and they will both be shackled by public perception, neither able to escalate their greed-driven anti-consumer practices without losing marketshares to the competitor.
If either Xbox or PS died, what prevents the other from going to AA/AAA developers and telling them: "If you port to PC, we will remove you from our store and you can kiss 70% of your income goodbye."
Or just outright bribe them! Regardless, bye-bye Steam Catalogue. I hope you like indies and Chinese MMOs.
"But surely PC-only developers and multi-platform publishers with integrity (lol) will stay!"
Not for long - their income would slowly fade away as the remaining Console-Goliath steal PC gamers away with promises of overproduced exclusives.
You must be into cuckolding, because PC gaming as we know it would die within the decade.

But if you've dived so deep into apologism that you prefer your PS4 still, think about what Sony would do to their own ecosystem once their consumers have nothing to replace it with. (Hint: Comcast was once popular.)
Developers have to pay $10'000 for releasing a patch? How about $30'000.
Users have to pay $10/month for online play? How about $20.
You can't pay the (increased) entry fee for publishing a game and they don't see enough (market)potential in it to make an exception? Bad luck.
tl;dr version - capitalism needs to be abolished
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Technically, yes, in that there would be more 'complex' games, simply because of the standard user interface. However, in actual quantity of the market and number of distinct games, probably not.

Technologically, too, i think that consoles have some advantages over computers for preservation, because the emulators tend(ed) to be simpler because of less operating system and library dll hell (and because 'supposed' backwards compatibility). A project like wine, which is a herculean effort of reimplementation, gets it about 80% right, with the remaining 20 % being 15% of 'users can get it working with sysadmin effort or patches' and the rest 'get stuffed'.

In contrast, these are really bad numbers for a emulator.
 
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deama

Prophet
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
4,352
Location
UK
Technically, yes, in that there would be more 'complex' games, simply because of the standard user interface. However, in actual quantity of the market and number of distinct games, probably not.

Technologically, too, i think that consoles have some advantages over computers for preservation, because the emulators tend(ed) to be simpler because of less operating system and library dll hell (and because 'supposed' backwards compatibility). A project like wine, which is a herculean effort of reimplementation, gets it about 80% right, with the remaining 20 % being 15% of 'users can get it working with sysadmin effort or patches' and the rest 'get stuffed'.

In contrast, these are really bad numbers for a emulator.
What about virtual OS emulators? Or just installing an old OS instead of using wine?
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Virtual OS emulation is just showing how 'complex' it really is, even if it gets it 100%, you still end up with a multiprocess environment with dozens of pre-requisites and danger of breaking if you try to install something else.

The console approach of 'boot to enter game, game is completely in a read-only medium with all libs that the user can't muck with' has major benefits from a software and emulation viewpoint (they did this because it was cheaper not to have large writable memories and distribute a read-only medium).

And lets face it, 90% of old pc/computer software is godamned buggy in awful ways even in the original. Projects like whdload show that even today, fans of the old computer games want to fix them. The average level of (software) quality on a console is higher just because it's not a multiprocess environment, has fixed hardware and Nintendo/Sony could tell the devs to fuck off if they were horrible at coding (and other things unfortunately).

Of course, the games themselves were worse graphically and in fps (especially in the early 3d era), because consoles were constantly being out-performed at launch and it got worse on their lifespan (compared to pc, they got better internally as studios got better at the hardware).
 
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J_C

One Bit Studio
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Developer
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Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Gaming would probably never have gotten this popular without consoles. Decide it yourself if it is a good or bad thing.
 

Commissar Draco

Codexia Comrade Colonel Commissar
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Привислинский край
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Absolutely yes; more complicated controls; better hardware and smaller market with games made for nerds and adult people; as Comrade Morgoth has said the profits of capitalist pigs would suffer a bit but f... them anyway.
 

Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,559
Location
Denmark
It would probably be alot smaller industry than it is today, but so was it before the console explosion, and games back then were excellent.

So yes.
 

Dev_Anj

Learned
Joined
Jan 14, 2015
Messages
468
Location
Auldale, near the great river
Incoming CyberP butthurt response. : D

To answer the question: depends. While theoretically you would have more games focused on taking full advantage of the PC specs, as in, graphical capabilities and more free form controls, you would also have the danger of triggering a graphical arms race where game developers are focused on playing catch up with the latest graphical advancements and so be unable to focus on the other aspects of design as well. It would also mean computers would get obsoleted faster and quite a few would be stuck with playing only older releases. Developing for PC only also adds more issues on the development end since they would have to bugtest for many, many different configurations of systems possible, which would be a nightmare. Even though consoles are dominant in the market today, a bad PC port still goes a long way to sullying the reputation of your game. Imagine how much worse it would be if PC was the only valid option.
 

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