More money to be made. Its harder to program on a PC, because of all the diffrent possible configs you need to cover, plus the fact Windows (in general) is simply not well optimized.
PC's do get plenty of support in the RTS, FPS, and 4x categories; RPG's, Action Adventure, and Fighting games are mainly Console games though, and its been that way for some time now.
Not really. Too many diffrent hardware configs that need to be accounted for, which favors making code as generalized as possible, where on a console, you know EXACTLY what your system specs are, so you can make specilized functions to take advantage of the hardware.
The other major disadvantage PC's have is an unoptimized OS, which by itself hogs a lot of resources, and can prevent direct access to the hardware (which slows everything else down). And even then, how many diffrent versions of Windows need to be accounted for (XP 32/64, Vista 32/64, and now Win7 32/64, not to mention diffrent editions).
And even then, how many diffrent versions of Windows need to be accounted for (XP 32/64, Vista 32/64, and now Win7 32/64, not to mention diffrent editions).
It gets worse, some titles won't run on Vista without SP1 installed.
It's not any easier to make a game on a console, but it *is* easier to sell it on a console. Consoles represent a market nearly as consistent as the hardware is, one that's well-marked (due to their ownership of the consoles) and hence easy to reach to, and without too much in the way of divergent tastes. Hence, respective sales levels for most games on the consoles are generally higher.
Also, there's a lot of misconceptions at the studios and especially publishers putting out there games, such as the silly idea that console games aren't/can't be pirated... When in fact, due to their confidence over that, they leave no protections on Xbox 360 discs whatsoever, so anyone with a decent DVD burner can readily burn a copy of a game; and the 360 version of Fallout 3 was found on Torrents weeks before the game even appeared on store shelves.
It's not any easier to make a game on a console, but it *is* easier to sell it on a console. Consoles represent a market nearly as consistent as the hardware is, one that's well-marked (due to their ownership of the consoles) and hence easy to reach to, and without too much in the way of divergent tastes. Hence, respective sales levels for most games on the consoles are generally higher.
Good point. If consoles were 'easier' to make games for then why doesn't valve develop it's games for the PS3? The answer is there aren't enough programmers out there who know enough about the Cell chip to use it effectively. A game is only as hard to produce as your knowledge permits.
It's also unfair to say games sell more on consoles since we don't really know who many games sell on the PC, all we really have is a few numbers from NPD which doesn't even cover places like Amazon, Steam, D2D etc and it only covers the US markets. Most of the time when console games sales numbers are broadcast it's worldwide sales numbers which you don't really get with PC games.
Message edited by JeanLuc on 02-14-2009 at 01:14:41 AM
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