PC Port "Discussion" - a Cautionary Tale

[reaVer]

When will they give the PC players a token of forgiveness for not releasing anything besides #R on it? And what do they have against Linux users?

[Circuitous]

Probably as soon as porting to PC becomes a sound financial decision.

[M.Song]

When will they give the PC players a token of forgiveness for not releasing anything besides #R on it? And what do they have against Linux users?

ggx and isuka

[RoBoBOBR]

As soon as PC players start buying fighting games in big quantities and stop pirating everything.

[reaVer]

As soon as PC players start buying fighting games in big quantities and stop pirating everything.

Yes, because those pesky pirates not planning to buy the game in the first place is really denying them their profit! Really, I can pull up quite a few studies where piracy has proven to increase sales on a product and pulling the "THEY PIRATE EVERYTHING" argument out of your ass when the PC players come up is a bit misplaced to say the least. This is besides the fact that the new game is already released on a PC based arcade platform, porting it to the PC should be a LOW cost effort. Instead we're now waiting for ARC to get their shit together on a port that is significantly harder.

[Rhannmah]

Yes, because those pesky pirates not planning to buy the game in the first place is really denying them their profit! Really, I can pull up quite a few studies where piracy has proven to increase sales

Yes, that is probably why the offline PC exclusive games market has been in total shambles for over 10 years.

[Grue]

Steam is always an option, no? Pretty hard to pirate things that way.

[reaVer]

Steam is always an option, no? Pretty hard to pirate things that way.

Steam apps are pirate-able. The reason it is successful is because players aren't inherently pirates. As for single player games to note: Half-Life 2 and Portal (1 & 2) did pretty well. Then there's lower budget games like magicka that are also doing great. The reason 'AAA singleplayer' games are getting such bad sales on the PC, is simply because the PC crowd is a much tougher customer(as most of them make their own money rather than spending their parent's) and the AAA titles simply have not lived up to their standards. These aren't just my words, game developers that still dare to tread in PC land say it. Heck, the most successful game amongst all platforms is still WoW, which is PC only; and yes, there are hacked servers of that game too! Other than that, singleplayer games are kind of a niche market which makes it hard for a game to carry on singleplayer alone.

[Henaki]

Steam is always an option, no? Pretty hard to pirate things that way.

It's actually very, very easy to pirate steam games.

The reason steam makes money is surprisingly, when people are offered a convenient way of buying a game, they will do it over pirating it.

People will always pirate games for sure, but Valve (and GoG) are publishers that get money by not explicitly fucking over their userbase.

[Grue]

...Oh. I assumed there was no way to play online with a pirated copy. Should have taken the time to check before posting.

Still, would piracy really hurt sales to the point that it's not even worth releasing the game on the platform? There seem to be quite a few people willing to buy a PC port.

[Henaki]

...Oh. I assumed there was no way to play online with a pirated copy. Should have taken the time to check before posting.

Still, would piracy really hurt sales to the point that it's not even worth releasing the game on the platform? There seem to be quite a few people willing to buy a PC port.

Edited October 20, 2012 by Henaki

[reaVer]

Henaki: please factor in that it basically already has a PC port(the arcade version), so the effort on porting would be significantly reduced.

And, I've mentioned before, piracy does not affect sales; if pirates were forced to buy or remove the game(and thus stop playing) only 1 out of 1000 would buy it.

[Circuitous]

Henaki: please factor in that it basically already has a PC port(the arcade version), so the effort on porting would be significantly reduced.

First and foremost, there have been a lot of arcade fighting games on "PC" hardware (KOF13, BBCT/CS, etc.) that have been leaked and made playable. Even though these are designed to be run on a system running Windows, for most people they run like shit and have to be run through a special emulator regardless - they're not native programs, and they don't take multiple hardware configurations into account. If you don't happen to exceed the arcade board specs, it just won't work. Even if you do, you have to take into account all the background applications you're running that the arcade board doesn't because it isn't actually a PC.

Furthermore, BBCT actually did get a consumer PC version, which took ages to get into working order and still wasn't that great. You think they spent all that time with their thumbs up their asses?

Developing for consumer PCs is a pain in the ass. Developing an arcade game that runs on "PC" hardware (which has set hardware, with set specifications, and set expectations of performance, exactly like a console) isn't. Saying "it's already a PC game!" is fucking stupid, stop doing it. Just because the arcade board is running a version of Windows doesn't mean it's not essentially a console.

[reaVer]

Exceeding the board specs would guarantee you being able to run the game, that is indeed true. But Guilty Gear XX #Reload and Isuka have shown to run on budget PCs/Laptops in the time they have been released; and that was while using a ps2 to PC API layer(if not a commercial emulator!). Now, I doubt they'd pick that approach to creating the arcade version, so it's 100% native; and while these nice effects are in there, the performance lost should be relatively minimal. That means that while this game is now running on ring edge 2, it would probably perform fine ring wide and thus budget PCs. And yes, we all know the horrors of Windows 7 and it's likelyhood to run things you don't want taking time from things you do want; it's one of the reasons I advocate Linux... But, considering its inherent low CPU/GPU profile, this would be one of the games that should do fine without much tweaking.

Now I'm not sure on how BBCT for the PC got developed, but I do recall that arcsys is a small company and the likelyhood of more than one person working on it is pretty small. Add to that that all their other PC ports have been done by other companies that have bought the rights to do so, I can very well imagine that noone within arcsys is experienced to program for windows. Then there's the features being added, they incorporated windows live, which is something they didn't write so it has a different thought pattern than one used in the company. That experience has been gained... And if they did the engine correctly, they should be able to put all the features they are working on for the consoles in the 'arcade' version and save themselves quite a bit of work.

Now if you still believe they put down so much time and effort on the PC port, I can bring up my numbers, I'm currently finishing a full application that I have been working on for a year. It's a recode of 3 applications that have over 8 years of work in them, which means the feature set is quite large. During that year the requirements for that application changed numerous of times which took effort to adjust to. So it would sound really unlikely to me that they have been focusing a full year or longer on just the port.

Edited October 21, 2012 by reaVer

[SolxBaiken]

Who cares?

A PC ver doesn't exist get over it, go download nullDC if you want to play AC online (like many have for years)

[Circuitous]

Good times.