Staff Roundtable: The Future of Simulations Part 3 – PC’s versus Consoles Page 2

By SimHQ on July 16, 2007 in _commentary, hide

Teddy Bär: Console games will always outsell PC games as they are predominately, though certainly not exclusively, owned by young kids and teenagers, and adults who have yet to grow up.

Another reason why console games will outsell PC games is that they are shallow and are something that will have a high turnover. You know, yep played that for a week, now I am bored.. It is not surprising that game shops stock mostly console games and that they are mainly in shopping centers, again for the reasons above.

Sales of PC games will I think grow as the current crop of console players grow older and look for a more rewarding experience. I would like to add, that it is the more rewarding experience that PC games have been missing over the last 8+ years, and is why I have not bought but 2 games in that period and had played CAOD for near 10 years.

Should SimHQ do consoles? No. I feel that it tarnish what SimHQ stands for, that is a serious simulation game site. It is this that makes SimHQ what it is and was the reason that I visited the site. Going into consoles would lessen our credibility. I would also say, for the majority of visitors that consoles would bring to our forums would not be the kind of members we would want. No polite way of saying it.

20mm: (laughing) Teddy, now tell us what you really think about console users! Very provocative, I like that.

No worries, we do not intend to cater to the current crop of console crowd. Their games are not our sims, not yet anyway. Our mission and focus is simulations.

But as I said before, I don’t see the platform we use as any sort of litmus test, simulations are the litmus test. If the “game” is in fact a simulation, I don’t care what runs it. Of course, cheaper, better, faster is always good, and if consoles are that future, cool.

You make some interesting observations about console users. I think that a lot of our members use both, they PC for their sims and console for their sports or FPS or whatever games. Fine and dandy. Your point about console kids growing up and maturing and discovering sims is great. Is that what really happens do you think? If so, how do we maximize the process, convert as many older console kids into mature simmers?

guod: Few more thoughts about hardware. While we didn’t see final production versions of the Xbox 360’s graphics, they all still had jaggies and shimmering that begged for FSAA and Ansiotropic Filtering. Even on the HDTV, eye-popping plasma screens. Beyond that, GR3 and BF2 looked great. Just not the caliber we’re currently used to on the PC.

In the golden days of the early to mid 90’s, the concern wasn’t as much on the graphics quality as it was on the gameplay. Not that the graphics were bad for it’s time and I’m thinking of Microprose’s F-15 III here, it’s just that the play was more entrancing. Now, if the game doesn’t have accurately scaled bass jumping out of translucent water as you fly over it, “it sux man”. The gameplay has lost out to the techo race for better graphics, and some of the recent titles we’ve had offered to us have been as sterile as an O.R.

The keyboard and mouse connection for consoles has already been achieved as has racing wheel / pedal sets. All are available for consoles. It’s only a question of time before we see flight controllers more than a stick on consoles. But will there be anything worth flying… at least by “our” expectations?

Here’s a bet. I have no idea who, but I’ll bet *somebody* is talking about the feasibility of developing sims on the next generation consoles. It only remains to be seen how effective they do their job.

Okay, next person… I yield the soapbox.

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