Pitchford: PC gamers expect better than console brethren
By Alice Lynton on July 8, 2012 at 1:56 pm
Speaking at a developer’s session at Rezzed, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford said the PC elite are fussier than their console-lovin’ cousins.
“What we learned after shipping Borderlands 1 was customers who play on the PC expect better treatment within the game itself,” he said.
“With both BL1 and BL2, the PC version is the best looking, highest fidelity version of the game, but what we’ve learned is that the details are important to you on the PC and we made a strong effort to improve those details in the product.”
Although Pitchford reiterated Gearbox’s commitment to the PC as lead development platform, he did reneg on any possibility of official modding tools for Borderlands 2, which goes multiplatform in September.
“There was a moment after Borderlands shipped where we thought about releasing an official SDK but we found that most of what we would be able to do, was already accomplished by the gaming community,” he said.
“The best thing we could do for the community was get to work on Borderlands 2. Imagine if we’d spend a year working on an SDK for BL2.”
Source: VG247
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I’m not sure we expect better so much as we just expect PC games to work well on a PC interface. The Borderlands interface may have been passable on a tv screen being played from across the room, but on a monitor with a keyboard and mouse it’s a horrible-looking mess that wastes space and which is *still* glitchy to navigate years after release.
What jez said. PC gamers aren’t really elitist (most of us anyway) – we only complain when console games are ported to the PC with stupid, stupid console settings such as mouse smoothing by default, a menu system that doesn’t work well with the mouse, a FOV that feels zoomed-in compared to a native PC game, useless messages such as “Saving… Please do not turn off your computer”, and so on. Basically if you’re gonna release a game for the PC, at least treat PC gamers with a little respect and don’t assume they’ll be happy with whatever badly-coded trash you give them.
I think that it’s harder for devs to get away with awful texture work, low poly models etc on PC – it’s just that much more obvious on a sharp high res screen, particularly when compared with games which do do those things well.
Well said… It’s not about wanting anything “more”. Just what should be provided in the first place.
Yup, game devs have gotten a bit complacent with the massive bout’s of sequelitis that have hit the industry. Tiger Woods 2012 being a fantastic example of an engine that is stuck in 2006 and certainly not up to 2012 standards.
The original Borderlands had it’s good points, but it’s UI was so consolised it was atrocious. To claim it’s because PC users demand more is totally incorrect, it’s because the design team didn’t design the UI correctly for the platform they were targetting. It’s not that hard to make a usable UI for two platforms and incorporate them into the same game. It’s just they (dev or publisher, dunno which) didn’t want to spend the money/time doing it properly.
PC version has Nvidia PhysX while the console version doesn’t.
Do not forget that you will be able to import your BL save data for useless comedic advancements…
I have an AMD card :/…
Yeah i’m fussy alright, I am so demanding when it comes to PC games, especially console ports, I mean look at my outrageous and elitist demands:
- Interface that suits the system
- Actual textures
- Resolution greater than 640 x 480
- A screen to say “push enter” instead of “PUSH START TO PLAY BRO”
- Some form of game engine that is at least optimised towards the systems they are meant to be.
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
The interface on borderlands one on consoles was terribly broken for split screen and i demand they improve on it for the sequel – guess i’m a fussy console gamer now…