I haven't played this game called Sins of a Solar Empire, but I found a quote by a developer on the team that made it that makes a lot of sense.
I realize Epic's in a relatively unique position given that they need to ramp up the visual fluff to push engine sales, but overall I think PC gaming needs more developers like the one above. With each new game that requires PC upgrades, consoles sound like a better and better idea. Epic recently mentioned that consoles are where the money's at, but given how tough UT3 is on PCs, they're certainly not helping that fact.
I've got my PC upgraded and ready to go for the next few years, but before that UT3 barely ran at all. At a playable setting it looked worse than the original Doom. Comparatively speaking, HL2 looked great, so I don't believe for a second that UE3 is as scalable as they claim. And that fact only hurts their bottom line... which caused them to go on record claiming that consoles are hurting the PC market. In reality PC developers are likely just hurting themselves.
I'm guessing once consoles make it to the point where keyboard/mouse is the de facto input method and games are designed around this, PC gaming is finished. That is, of course, unless PC developers do something about it before it comes to that.
Honestly, what good does UT3's visual fluffiness do? What does it bring to the table as far as gameplay is concerned? Nothing. It might be slightly more immersive than the alternative, but immersion isn't a gameplay concern. If UT3's current gameplay could be experienced on 10x or 50x the computers, perhaps we wouldn't be in a position where at any given time there's only about 150 - 200 people playing it in the US."For console advocates out there, ask yourself how well a given game would sell if it required players to run out and buy a $300 upgrade to their console to play the game? That's essentially what a lot of high profile PC game developers expect. When Ironclad and Stardock were working on Sins, we made a conscious decision that the game would not require potential gamers to upgrade their systems. That meant we couldn't have things like moving turrets or whatever but it means that the size of the market was much larger. No matter how good your game is, if people can't play it, you will always be limited. The number of people willing to upgrade PCs for games is not that large. If you want to sell lots of copies of your PC game, make sure it runs on a lot of machines."
I realize Epic's in a relatively unique position given that they need to ramp up the visual fluff to push engine sales, but overall I think PC gaming needs more developers like the one above. With each new game that requires PC upgrades, consoles sound like a better and better idea. Epic recently mentioned that consoles are where the money's at, but given how tough UT3 is on PCs, they're certainly not helping that fact.
I've got my PC upgraded and ready to go for the next few years, but before that UT3 barely ran at all. At a playable setting it looked worse than the original Doom. Comparatively speaking, HL2 looked great, so I don't believe for a second that UE3 is as scalable as they claim. And that fact only hurts their bottom line... which caused them to go on record claiming that consoles are hurting the PC market. In reality PC developers are likely just hurting themselves.
I'm guessing once consoles make it to the point where keyboard/mouse is the de facto input method and games are designed around this, PC gaming is finished. That is, of course, unless PC developers do something about it before it comes to that.