Alan Wake PC "up in the air"

[Sethos]

Following reports earlier this week that Alan Wake dev Remedy Entertainment is focusing all its efforts on the 360 version comes further bad news for PC gamers.

Speaking to Edge-Online, lead writer for the title, Sam Lake, explained, "We are fully concentrated on the Xbox 360 version. Other than that the plans are up in the air and open. Once we get this version done we'll see."

Those words aren't very encouraging if you were looking forward to playing the PC version.

Source: CVG

:hmmm:

[Richard Hammond]

Sod it, this game was supposed to be made with PC in mind i remember watching a demo using the then new out Quad core intel processor, if they dumb this crap down for consoles and give it a transplanted console onto keyboard and mouse control system they can shove the game where the sun dont shine.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Aw didums :p

[Miuku.]

Money and ease - despite PC having superior performance and hardware, it's so much more coherent to develop for consoles, not having to deal with various issues that plague the other platforms.

[Sethos]

Money and ease - despite PC having superior performance and hardware, it's so much more coherent to develop for consoles, not having to deal with various issues that plague the other platforms.

... And rampant piracy

[Richard Hammond]

Bored of that excuse games still sell a crap ton despite the pirates, look at Bethesda all their games in the past few years have been protection free apart from a simple dvd check and they dont have any problems.

If a game is worth buying people will buy it, if its a load of crap its easy to blame lack of sales on piracy.

[Eric Veteran]

... And rampant piracy

I think the 360 is still pretty rampant with piracy as well...

[alphaomegainfinity]

Agreed, GTA IV for 360 was stolen like anything from torrent sites. So the fact that game developers still continuing to claim piracy to be an obstacle in the development of PC gaming is moot.

[+Mystic MVC]

I think the 360 is still pretty rampant with piracy as well...

Ha ha ha, no where to the extent of the PC. They can guarantee themselves at least a million in 360 sales for this but I don't think you can even say 250k would sell for the PC (legitimately).

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

I think the 360 is still pretty rampant with piracy as well...

Lol yep I've seen new 360 games on rapidshare links days before they hit retail and there's no need to wiat for no cd patches and hacks, just mod the 360 and off you go.

Piracy on consoles is far easier than on a PC so wtf are devs thinking "if" they blame PC piracy.

[Miuku.]

Piracy on consoles is far easier than on a PC so wtf are devs thinking "if" they blame PC piracy.

The magic is in the numbers - the "guaranteed" sales vs piracy and the amount of time and effort needed to support the product once it's out. PC versions often (but not always) require more support personnel, more patches and more testing - all of which is away from the bottom line.

For smaller game developers this can be really a question of life and death.

Also, there's practically no piracy for PS3 - albeit the userbase is much smaller than for 360.

[alphaomegainfinity]

Mystic, here is a link.

Look at the figures for Crysis, The Witcher, Orange Box,Bioshock,S.T.A.L.K.E.R, AOE III and others. I would say, if a game is fabulous, PC users will soon gobble it up at the nearest store or by ordering online. Average or Mediocre games tend to be pirated more as people want to test them before making a buying decision. Also I think it has been proved numerous times here that regular pirates were anyway not going to spend their cash on these games. So where was the question of revenue loss for the game developers when these people were not their pre determined customers at the first place?

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

I read this and cried after buying a decent PC rig - I'm aiming to start using my PC more now for games I can get on console and PC, unless the PC copy is turd, which unfortunately happens for quite a few multiplatform games that are ported to PC instead of made for it. Although I get my 5.1 sound through my games consoles, and this is an atmospheric game it seems!

However I read somewhere recently there will be "more news on the PC version soon", I'll go find the link.

edit: Here we go, most likely it'll just end up a timed exclusive.

[Raa]

... And rampant piracy

Oh Puhleeze. This has been debated time and time again.

IMO, it's lazy developers, and tight*rse companies that refuse to release PC games either immediately, or at all.

It's getting to be more frequent, and quite frankly, its ****ing me off.

Audioboxer : Bring me good news buddy! I'm not buying a console, even though Halo, Fable 2 and now this aren't coming to PC. (Some yet, some at all).

[+Mystic MVC]

Mystic, here is a link.

Look at the figures for Crysis, The Witcher, Orange Box,Bioshock,S.T.A.L.K.E.R, AOE III and others. I would say, if a game is fabulous, PC users will soon gobble it up at the nearest store or by ordering online. Average or Mediocre games tend to be pirated more as people want to test them before making a buying decision. Also I think it has been proved numerous times here that regular pirates were anyway not going to spend their cash on these games. So where was the question of revenue loss for the game developers when these people were not their pre determined customers at the first place?

Thanks for the list. Comparing titles on that I could maybe see it get one million units but that is stretching it. It won?t have a multiplayer aspect so even more reason for people to pirate it.

[Ricardo Gil]

Agreed, GTA IV for 360 was stolen like anything from torrent sites. So the fact that game developers still continuing to claim piracy to be an obstacle in the development of PC gaming is moot.

It doesn't matter if it's pirated on the 360 or not. They care about the sales.

GTA4 sold ~5Million+ on the 360 alone, how many did they sell on the PC?

[Richard Hammond]

Came out on 360 well over a year before pc and it ran like crap.

[ObiWanToby]

Man. PC gaming is great. We need more red rings.

Console games should be PC ports. The game feel is generally not that great anyways. Except a few like Gears of War. The gun feel was pretty good on console.

[protocol7]

If it does 360 exclusive I'll be disappointed, but the fact that I've been waiting for the game for so long that I've lost a lot of the interest helps a little. I just hope that if they do put out a PC version that it won't be the increasingly-common "tick this box to build for Windows" lame-ass port.

[Ricardo Gil]

Console games should be PC ports.

Why should them? The current gen consoles are still more powerful than the average PC.

They're not gonna develop with 50,000 people who like to juice up their PC's in mind...

[alphaomegainfinity]

It doesn't matter if it's pirated on the 360 or not. They care about the sales.

GTA4 sold ~5Million+ on the 360 alone, how many did they sell on the PC?

I agree nowadays it is sales which all matter.

Since you brought up the issue of GTA IV, let me point it out that any 360 owner can decently run GTA IV at 20-30 fps. For the PC version, less than 20% of all so called gamers can run it. Less than 15% of all gamers have a high end GPU(Steam and Independent surveys). So where does it stand? Of course, it is again a vicious cycle as game developers would try to sell games at hype alone to console owners who expect to atleast run it and not like PC owners who have to run from pillar to post browsing for tweaks, patches, workarounds, and drivers to run obscenely ported games like GTA IV.

[protocol7]

PC gamers had no problems running the first 3 GTA games. The reason GTA4 is such a pig is because it's a crap console port. It might as well be running under emulation. While it's good times for 360 owners these days, the standard of PC games had plummetted in recent years. Hardly "fair" when dedicated gamers could spend more on a gfx card than a console bundle.

You can blame the decline in quality and the increasing emphasis on console-first/only games on piracy, but I think these factors are actually encouraging piracy when PC gamers buy new, hyped titles and get handed third-rate buggy (or just plain broken) console ports.

[Rudy]

Also, there's practically no piracy for PS3 - albeit the userbase is much smaller than for 360.

Ever thought that maybe there's a link between the two? ;)

[Ricardo Gil]

Hardly "fair" when dedicated gamers could spend more on a gfx card than a console bundle.

The same reason I stopped playing games on the PC a few years ago. You pay a lot just to get the games running acceptably.

Consoles are a much better deal.

[ViperAFK]

I am sick of devs promising pc versions then just going "nevermind no pc version" piracy is a **** excuse, an excuse is all it is.