In a developer panel at the console game developer conference in South Korea, Harada shared his raw thoughts on the challenges on the Xbox Series S.
In a developer panel at the console game developer conference in South Korea, Harada shared his raw thoughts on the challenges on the Xbox Series S.
The thing is, PC games don’t have this issue since expectations are different based on hardware configuration. A lot of great features have to be dropped from the end product since the Series S cannot support them, and Microsoft expects parity between console versions (whereas on PC you can just turn the setting off and put a minimum requirements section on steam for additional details so you can keep cool things available but disabled for the entry level hardware).
Also, the console subsidy is coming to a close, at least if Xbox’s repeated corporate restructurings (they can’t sustain a division making 50 cents on the dollar forever) and ongoing hardware prices are anything to go off of.
The switch 2 is a different animal due to the way Nintendo handles games, and I would argue expectations are also quite different compared to Xbox players (not to mention necessary concessions due to it being a portable platform with an emphasis on battery life over detail).
Regarding PC pricing, things are fucked right now, but the way to go on a budget is to ship of Theseus the thing by getting what you can with the money you have then upgrading your machine incrementally. It’s the boots theory of gaming where buying cheap consoles repeatedly will make you worse off in the long run compared to paying for a modular setup that has more longevity. (Don’t be scared of the used parts market either)
If there are PCs that can’t run a given game, even on lowest resolution, then some gamers on lower-spec PCs are being excluded; and the game could likely do better optimization.
The key is, usually features relate to graphical visuals. Half-Life 2’s expansive physics came out in 2004, and even then many future games dropped such elements or made them optional because they don’t add to the experience.
The difference here is that PC as a platform doesn’t get excluded just because it was built in a previous generation. And if it does get excluded for some technical reason (e.g. because the CPU is missing an instruction set), you can just upgrade the part that’s causing the incompatibility (even from a secondary market) instead of buying an entire new PC.