Why PC Games Release After Consoles According to Capcom

[News Portal]

The mid-nineties was a greatly transitional period for gaming. As hardware advanced, we started to see more and more PC-ports hitting consoles. They were never quite as good and always arrived a little bit late bit, but it was a nice consolation none the less. Flash forward a decade and the tables began to turn, with games hitting consoles first and PC later. It's been an unexpected turn of events that has left many gamers questioning why PC releases continually lag behind. Capcom have stepped in with an explanation.

Read full article by Matt Williams

[GaVoX]

OK but that doesn't explain why games come out on console first
cause they could do the pc development first an then do the console development
the question was "Why PC Games Release After Consoles" so why not do pc dev first

[André Axe'm]

What about when there are multiple consoles involved?

[SomeXspeC]

"Quite often, PC development starts when the console development finishes or nearly finishes."

Which in my view means "So we can copy the console development and make a quick and easy port for the PC scene."

[Paastie]

"Quite often, PC development starts when the console development finishes or nearly finishes."

Which in my view means "So we can copy the console development and make a quick and easy port for the PC scene."

Except that since Lost Planet, every capcom port has been near flawless. They run perfectly (are great games to begin with), have adjustable controls and extra graphics options to near a PC only release.
I wouldn't fault them on the ports they do.

[sPOiDar]

It's because consoles require the most trade-offs and optimizing, so it's easier to target them first, then port the gimped code to PC, rather than coding for PC with all the stops out, then trying to shoe-horn that into a console.

Fscking sad, but true.

[PalZer0]

Except that since Lost Planet, every capcom port has been near flawless. They run perfectly (are great games to begin with), have adjustable controls and extra graphics options to near a PC only release.
I wouldn't fault them on the ports they do.

The problem is that they shoehorn GFWL into said ports which makes them not sell as well by default.

[Paastie]

Except that since Lost Planet, every capcom port has been near flawless. They run perfectly (are great games to begin with), have adjustable controls and extra graphics options to near a PC only release.
I wouldn't fault them on the ports they do.

The problem is that they shoehorn GFWL into said ports which makes them not sell as well by default.

That's true, though I'll admit that GFWL isn't as cumbersome as it used to be. Sure, I'd rather not have it around, but as long as it doesn't affect my performance and doesn't prevent me from playing the game I can live with it.

[TRB]

They were never quite as good and always arrived a little bit late bit, but it was a nice consolation

/snort /chortle


I see what you did there.

also there is one too many "bit"s there.

I still found it quite 'punny' though

[SomeXspeC]

I wouldn't fault them on the ports they do.

They can be faulted, but they do fix problems reasonably fast. Dead Rising 2 I found to be unplayable due to the sluggish movement, ended up having to wait for a patch to be deployed to tuck into that properly.

[Slipoch]

There is no reason for a major delay between console and pc ports, if they are using abstracted expressions and functions it is not hard to set a couple flags for xbox, ps3, pc etc so that the core commands are the same but the underlying APIs used change, this means the only things that would need major alteration for a pc release are:
1: non-standardised (or hardware specific) code.
2: texture sizes
3: Poly count on models
4: control schema

[bundyraider]

There is no reason for a major delay between console and pc ports, if they are using abstracted expressions and functions it is not hard to set a couple flags for xbox, ps3, pc etc so that the core commands are the same but the underlying APIs used change, this means the only things that would need major alteration for a pc release are:
1: non-standardised (or hardware specific) code.
2: texture sizes
3: Poly count on models
4: control schema

Those assets there are A LOT of work.

[André Axe'm]

Make huge textures to start with, then scale them down to fit console.

[Nebby_99]

Remember abstraction has a performance cost. If you really want all your code abstracted to be hardware-independent you'll be running on Java.

His 'explanation' is useless though. "It comes out late because we start it late."
Well why do you start it late, genius?

[InAUGral]

Idk what capcoms PC releases are like but a lot of games ported have little to no effort to make a game somewhat comfortable to play on a PC however at least a fair few can have their .ini files modified.