No offense, but running eight PCs 24/7 probably doesn't represent the costs of PC gaming for any decade.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Phil Spencer: Why Scalebound, Crackdown 3 and Quantum Break won't be launching on PC
- Thread starter mocoworm
- Start date
- Status
No offense, but running eight PCs 24/7 probably doesn't represent the costs of PC gaming for any decade.
viveks86
Gold Member
Come on now. People have all kinds of obsessions without having "mental issues". Seems needlessly harsh to have multiple people attack him like that. All I see is a guy sharing his personal experience. Where did he suggest that it's general info?
PanicFreak
Member
Dat keeping up with the Joneses.
Even if they did have plans, it would make no sense to announce them now. Great towards the end of 2016 you'll have some reason upgrade to Windows 10 and visit the app store. LOL.
I think it's a fair classification. We all have our mental issues. Upgrading the CPU, GPU and hard drive (!!) in 8 PCs 3 times a year in order to play games is clearly one.
So based on you having money to burn and your obsession with having multiple PCs for some reason (job related, at least?), you felt the need to make a disingenuous argument about the costs of PC gaming?
Why did you think that would fly here?
dancrane212
Member
Until the "Gold" situation can be figured out in a way Microsoft doesn't end up killing that income things are going to move pretty slow for the kind of games that drive subscriptions to come to PC. I'm sure that Quantum Break (single player only?) will make it to PC pretty quick but Crackdown and Scalebound I'm not as sure even though I was kind of expecting a Crackdown 3 port to be announced at Gamescom to promote cloud services on PC.
Anyone who moves from Xbox to PC and drops their gold subscription isn't going to start paying again - they are probably gone for good. That's a pretty dangerous minefield to navigate but I'm sure it will eventually get sorted out. Perhaps for the next generation of hardware?
Anyone who moves from Xbox to PC and drops their gold subscription isn't going to start paying again - they are probably gone for good. That's a pretty dangerous minefield to navigate but I'm sure it will eventually get sorted out. Perhaps for the next generation of hardware?
Same. However, I hope they don't change their mind when Windows 10 isn't shiny anymore.
Not even sure why people expect them to put all their exclusives on PC.
I also thought that games like Fable Legends and Halo Wars 2 would be no-brainers on being X1/PC same day and date, but stuff like Gears, QB and Scalebound would remain on Xbox One only. Or until they've outlived their usefulness years later.
Despite what they say MS still want the bulk of their sales to be X1 consoles.
I also thought that games like Fable Legends and Halo Wars 2 would be no-brainers on being X1/PC same day and date, but stuff like Gears, QB and Scalebound would remain on Xbox One only. Or until they've outlived their usefulness years later.
Despite what they say MS still want the bulk of their sales to be X1 consoles.
JayWood2010
Member
Speaking of PC costs, I would be interested in the average cost people spend on gaming rigs. Ive put $2000 in mine since 2011. Not a godlike computer, but still built with gaming in mind.
Hip Hop
Member
You just stopped when the PC was about to become standardized and are missing out on the golden era of it. It's never been better than ever, in fact, I myself switched mainly from console to PC just 2/3 years ago.
aaronwt
Member
I would spend several hundred on a CPU and several hundred on a gpu. Then I would typically upgrade to a newer, faster, larger hard drive.(back in 2002 I had 3TB of network storage for my OTA HD recordings.. I remembER getting twelve 250GB hard drives and paying close to $300 each. Storage is cheap now compared to then)
If I replaced the motherboard then I would also upgrade the memory too. New DVD drives etc. I was going crazy with upgrades during that time period.
I fell in love with online Multiplayer gaming in the 90s and that is probably what fueled my passion of PC gaming at the time. I think once I saw multiplier gaming on the 360, and done well, then that was it for my pc gaming days.
How would it get sorted out though?
The only ways I see for that to happen are either
a) MS dropping the subscription fee on console.
b) Them successfully introducing one on PC.
I don't see any way for either of those to happen.
Why would they do so though when their biggest competitor in the console space adopted the same policy?
So who forced you to do all these multiple upgrades within a year?
Kssio_Aug
Member
Did you work with all these machines?
Cause how could you use 8 PCs at the same time, 24 hours a day, every day?
Its not only the money you spent in the machines, but also the absurd amount of energy you may have consumed!
They'll never do it which is why I said "ideally." I also don't see them paying to develop games to sell hardware and then allowing PC ports unless somehow the Windows 10 app store suddenly becomes the next coming of the iOS app store.
aaronwt
Member
How is that? PC gaming is still expensive. $300 to $500 for a gpu. A core i7 too costs some money. I only use the on board graphics now and only need core i5 CPUs. There is no question that if I wanted a top of the line gaming rig I would spend well over $1k for it. While a core i5 with 8GB of memory and on board graphics? $400 is what I paid for my last two PCs with Windows 8.1, 8GB of memory, and core i5 CPUs.
It's cheaper now for me to buy a prebuilt machine with Windows than to put together a pc myself. In the 90s and early 2000s I was putting PCs together for friends, family etc.on a regular basis. I could do it much cheaper than what they could buy, and I could still make money on it. But nowadays, this is no longer the case.
GhostTrick
Banned
Haha. You know it exist 100 to 200 dollars GPUs that gives you better performance than an Xbox One, right ?
Why would you want a core i7 for gaming when an i5 does the job and an i3 outperforms both consoles ?
Add a 150 dollars GTX750ti to your 400 dollars PC with an i5 and 8GB of ram and you get a machine outperforming both consoles.
For a guy who used to build PCs, you seem pretty clueless on the actual cost of a gaming PC.
Top of the line is different that gaming capable. These days a top of the line rig will last you the rest of the generation and beyond. A more budget gaming PC is extremely viable these days.
People were just calling you out on your spending claims. I mean you may have spent that much yearly back then, but your situation was clearly an insane one that doesn't at all represent how expensive PCs are or were. That's a fairly important disclaimer there.
JeffG
Member
They need to add "value" or change the fiscal model.
Maybe if they move to a subscription fee based software. A Crackdown like game that is subscription based??
Cloud saves alone isn't enough value and they don't control the game sales, so they can't give away games.
I spent roughly $1200-1300 on mine a few months back.
I got a GTX 970, ASUS Micro ATX Z97M Plus, Intel Core i5-4690K, 16GB Kingston HyperX FURY, Corsair CX Series 600, 250GB Samsung 850, BitFenix Micro ATX and then a Noctua 120mm CPU Cooler and a bunch of Noctua fans.
aaronwt
Member
Did you work with all these machines?
Cause how could you use 8 PCs at the same time, 24 hours a day, every day?
Its not only the money you spent in the machines, but also the absurd amount of energy you may have consumed!
I ran SETI on them 24/7/365. I had a main PC I used, the couple of HTPCs, and One PC for my network storage that was a big tower with thirteen hard drives in it. Twelve for the 3TB of network storage and one for the OS.
Energy was cheap then. I used more electricity back then compared to now, but my electric bills cost half as much then. My last bill was around $200. Back then it would have been around $100. I'm more energy conscious now than I was back then strictly because the electric rates are so much higher now.
Or they start to build the cloud compute into Xbox live, drop the requirement for Multiplayer and release that subscription on PC
Shining Sunshine
Banned
So is he saying every Microsoft game will be on PC as well from this point on?
No more excuses
No more excuses
dancrane212
Member
I think it could come from making a different service on PC that offers something that folk don't typically get - maybe tying it to hosting for servers or something that some folk already pay for in specific situations? In truth I don't really have a clue other than the two obvious (and improbable) options you brought up. It's more of a (vain?) belief that the biggest obstacle to Xbox just being a platform is going to get solved by people with a lot more business sense than myself.
Hell, maybe the fear of folk dropping Gold subs in droves is unwarranted. Not that I imagine Microsoft would want to put themselves in a situation where it could happen but who knows.
That's just it, none of it reads like an excuse of any sort. The thread on the other hand reads like every wannabe MS crucifixion around here - holding them to some impossible standard that nobody else is held to, and jumping on them for things that nobody else would be. They never said every Xbox game is coming to PC, and it would be insane to expect them to at the moment. He doesn't know what the future holds so why should be close the door?
Yautja_Warrior
Member
Because we need to sell more Xbox One consoles first, then we will announce PC versions later.
That's why.
That's why.
That's what you got from this?
For all I care they can make Gold mandatory for PC multiplayer, I'll just stick to single player.
I used to pay for Gold and I now pay for PS+, but paying a fee for multiplayer is one of the single most absurd things the gaming industry has successfully managed to impose on its userbase. It's shocking really, like I bet other industries look at it and think 'how the fuck did they manage that?? Those brilliant bastards!'
I used to pay for Gold and I now pay for PS+, but paying a fee for multiplayer is one of the single most absurd things the gaming industry has successfully managed to impose on its userbase. It's shocking really, like I bet other industries look at it and think 'how the fuck did they manage that?? Those brilliant bastards!'
BabyFaceKillah
Member
lol
Hockeymac18
Member
The only way an Xbox Live service has a chance on the PC is if they offer:
- Dedicated servers and cloud compute (a la Crackdown 3)
- Cloud saves linked to gamertag
- Cross play/buy with Xbox
- Free games (Games with Gold) - through their store, I presume
They wouldn't be able to get away with charging for multiplayer, which is why they've already gone on record (multiple times) saying they wouldn't do that.
I just don't think the PC is a threat to the Xbox because there are plenty of people out there who will never associate a PC with anything other than a desktop/laptop in an office-like setting.
The misconceptions about how complicated and expensive it is, etc. are just not something the general console buyer will even make an attempt to overcome. It's pointless to worry about it, I think, and it's frustrating that Microsoft pretends the two markets would completely cannibalize each other.
aaronwt
Member
??? It's been ten years since I put a gaming rig together. A lot has changed since then. I'm going by prices I saw at Newegg for components. If I were to put together a rig, I would want it to run at the highest settings. With consoles I don't need to worry about any of that. Plus I wouldnt want to put a gaming rig together for each location too. I had four 360s at one point because I'm not about to move consoles from room to room. Now I limit my game play to only two TVs. So I have two Xbox Ones, a PS4, and a PSTV to play remotely at the secondary TV.
Final Verdict
Member
Uhm care to back that statement with any numbers? Like so:
calling the platform which has the most games played worldwide with League of Legends, Dota2, CS:GO and so an a "niche market" is huh .. strange
spent around 600$ in 2010 and my machine is still running most of the new games at least on medium || Edit: added a SSD and RAM in between
There is a very specific difference there. The "Cuz it's a PC game" argument doesn't hold true for anything other than your generalised view of what a "PC game" is - likely strategy style games or things that have traditionally been PC only due to input or feature sets not available on consoles at that time. There is countless begging from console owners in threads for titles that only have a PC announcement at a given time, we saw it with Civ BE, Xcom 2, FireWatch, Dirt Rally, Shovel Knight, Valkyria Chronicles (even though already on PS3) etc etc.
Equally there is a sizeable amount of the same regarding other games that are console only at a given time, since generally there is no reason for a game to be withheld or not possible on a PC - unless there is an exclusivity / development agreement in place to withhold it. Most commonly though, there may be development or financial constraints for a particular developer leading to the PC versions coming later on, which still sees begging directly to the developer, since there is no dedicated platform holder there make their voice heard
The big issue here is Microsoft claim to be "unifying" PC gaming and Xbox gaming, when in reality that is not what they are doing at all. A unified ecosystem should have functionally feasible content on both platforms, but selectively Microsoft do not do this in order to prop up the Xbox console. By all means, in this interview stating that the games were planned ahead of the decision, that is fine if true. But for other games they should be available across both unless it is not functionally possible. What games are not "suitable" for the PC platform?
Deciding what games are "suitable" for each platform is a bad precedent particularly for the PC, when there is no functional reason to prevent games going to PC unless there is a cost issue and tiny market size on PC making such a move unlikely to be justifiable to develop. Fundamentally, that has been a great part of PC gaming and why it is popular now. Microsoft claim commitment to it, but are doing it in the most lackadaisical way
The fact of the matter is that this isn't about "PC gaming" being unified (as it ignores the entirety of developers / other store fronts and their own communities etc). This is about Microsoft's version of PC gaming (Xbox on Windows) from its own store, being unified only in a partial manner with that of the Xbox console gaming. Their "dedication" to the platform is only a little more than it has been in the past (or similar to that of GFWL which promised the same things, only via a gaming store front dedicated to it).
I think it is a combination of these things that irks people
That stupid ass "pre-alpha" buzzword is already taking into effect. It's so funny to see it actually blossom and have fans use it as a defense for criticism. The industry warping a word to cover their asses. Never seen a pre-alpha with voice acting and cut scenes already thrown in there. They should have gone with "alpha." It would have made it more believable. I expect to see pre-alpha thrown around a lot for projects that already have a rock solid foundation in their development cycle.
If a company decides to show early footage and expect not to have criticism, then why show it at all. It's not like I'm saying it sucks. The framerate was never even 30 for the whole damn presentation.
Imperfected
Member
You know, asking Platinum to add PC development onto their docket mid-development probably wouldn't go terribly well. He's not even wrong about that.
Cthulhu_Steev
Member
He could've tweeted Kamiya.
It wouldn't work the development of pretty much anything, so it isn't a good idea. At the same time I find it a bit hard to believe that these projects are so old. I would have thought plans to make the Windows Store and also support gaming would have been in the planning a lot longer
- Status