Console vs. PC ports: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Rob Daley 31 May, 2011 at 5:26pm ET Article published in Gaming

I’ve been an avid PC and console gamer throughout the years, but have always been consistently disappointed with one thing in particular—bad console ports. It’s understandable from an economic standpoint that game developers code for consoles first—this is perfectly fine—but the part that really grinds my gears is lazy porting: “It was great on the Xbox, it’ll be great on the PC!”. Let me give you two concrete examples: NBA 2K11 and Fable 3

The Good

It’d be a shame for me not to point out the positives about console ports. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely benefits: First off, it gives PC gamers a chance to play games and genres that aren’t usually directed at the PC gaming market. A good example of this is NBA 2K11. Sports games for the PC are few and far between. Porting broadens the scope for PC gaming and opens up new opportunities for companies to reach a larger market. Secondly, especially concerning Fable 3, it gives PC gamers a chance to relate to their console gamer counterparts. Instead of the constant bickering between them—and yes, there is a lot of that in the gaming scene—common ground is a welcome sight.

The Bad

A real turn off for PC gamers is playing what they thought was a great console port and suddenly realizing they’ve found a game-shattering bug. Console games are usually released way ahead of their PC counterparts and are almost always a bigger hit for the console than the PC. This isn’t exactly a bad thing, but one would think that the companies releasing these games would take the extra time to squash those nasty bugs. What I’ve noticed is that if a game is originally a console game, then more times than not, one of your friends has it on the console as well. They find a bug and they’ll tell you about it. PC gaming is different—more often than not if you’re playing a console port you’ll be lucky if any of your friends are playing it too.

A great personal example of this is Fable 3. I played for a good five hours—and for the most part it really is a good console port, I must admit—when I came across one of the worst bugs I’ve ever experienced. I was playing in a mission called “The Game”. As soon as I got into it, it auto-saved. The problem is that the whole mission is bugged, and you’re stuck in an endless loop of not being able to finish. Can’t warp out, can’t “quit” the mission, you’re unable to do anything but suck it up and start again. This wouldn’t be that bad if it was new but that wasn’t the case. This bug has been around since Fable 3 was released for the Xbox 360 back on October 26^th, 2010. The end result? Program and Settings, uninstall. This brings me to my next point..

The Ugly (and I mean UGLY)

Here’s the big one: Controls. Why do console ports (almost) always have horrible controls? Would it kill the developers to actually make the game playable on the PC without having to have a controller? The best example of a nearly unplayable console port is NBA 2K11. If the controls weren’t horrible, then it would actually be a nice game that isn’t often seen in the PC gaming genre. The controls are so bad that the tutorial for the PC is still written for an Xbox 360 controller—that’s just inexcusable. This is bad enough, but just to add icing on the cake, the “slam dunk” controls require you to flick the joystick on the Xbox controller. If you’ve spent any time on a computer, you’ll know there is no joystick on the keyboard. Up, down, left, and right don’t cut it for NBA 2K11, thus making the game completely unplayable. Fable 3 wasn’t as bad in this department but it still needed some tweaking.

Another game breaker is laziness on behalf of the developers. Why spend millions coding a completely different game for the PC when you can just port it? A world where money is king and console developers want to make the most money possible is a world of lazy PC ports. “Console sales are dropping? Time to port it to the PC and market it as the next big thing!”

There are more examples of PC ports that didn’t cut it, but these particular examples learned the lesson that porting to PC just to make money by cutting development costs isn’t exactly good for brand image.

Let’s look at NHL 09 and Madden NFL 07 for a moment: Both of these games were the last in the series for the PC, despite continued release for consoles. A good move? I’d argue “Yes”. I’d love to see more sports games on the PC, but if they’re not coded from the ground up with PC gamers in mind, then it’s not worth it. Consoles and PCs are physically different in many ways as far as gaming experience is concerned, and they need to be treated as such.

Take Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 vs Battlefield 3. Is it really two FPSs just going at it? No. Being a PC gamer, I’ve played Battlefield since 2004. Would I consider #3 a console game, despite being released on the Xbox and other consoles? No. The Battlefield franchise has its roots in PC gaming and in my opinion will always make solid PC games. Call of Duty is the other way around—it has its multiplayer roots in console gaming and will always be good to controller huggers. Two FPSs going at it for ultimate supremacy? Not even close. PC vs Console gaming? You better believe it!

PC gaming isn’t suffering a downturn despite the court of public opinion saying it is. Rather, PC gaming is finally getting the chance to go head-to-head with its biggest competitor—consoles. I have no idea who’s going to win but I’m putting my money on PCs.

Comments

31 May 2011 ~ 6:14pm Cliff_Forster Outstanding article. Poor console ports cost PC gamers, I'd rather not have it at all versus having a shoddy port. I've played my share of horrible console ports. Resident Evil 4, Star Wars Force Unleashed, bad ports are bad....

Let me say this though. A standard 360 controller connected via USB is just an essential PC gaming peripheral. Everyone should get one. There are just so many games that control better via dual analog, and I find that a great number of games just map automatically to the 360 controller connected via USB. I wish they would just list it as a requirement for certain titles. For example, you could play Street Fighter IV with keys, but then again, you really can't. I'd almost prefer Capcom to just remove the option and force the gamer to use a compatible controller. Just list the supported options on the box, a 360 controller is 39.99, its not a bad peripheral investment. I use mine for various titles.
31 May 2011 ~ 6:32pm primesuspect I agree to an extent; I mentioned it a long time ago in my Psychonauts review; the game is just plain better with an analog controller.

HAWX is another one: I can't imagine playing it without a flightstick.

Some games just need certain controllers. That's cool.
31 May 2011 ~ 6:38pm Colin First off, it's called NBA 2K11. Second, the controls are great. I've been playing the game since October 5th when it came out and it's a fine controlling game...
31 May 2011 ~ 7:36pm Tushon Sounds like a 2K rep came out to play
31 May 2011 ~ 7:37pm Thrax Sure feels like it.
31 May 2011 ~ 7:40pm MrTRiot Pissing off the reps! w00t!
31 May 2011 ~ 7:43pm Thrax Just looked into it, and it's not a rep. Just an angry fanboy who thinks he's anonymous, but isn't.
31 May 2011 ~ 8:00pm primesuspect Edited to correct the title of the game, thanks!
31 May 2011 ~ 9:07pm Winfrey Often times a decent gamepad fixes a lot of the issues with console ports. What really sucks are the incredibly lazy ports that force to you play with low res graphics, non-customizable control settings, and crazy ridiculous amounts of menus/sub-menus/sub-submenus. I remember playing the first Assassin's Creed I'd just alt+f4 to quit the game because it was about 12,000 times faster than having to navigate all the menus.

One thing I have noticed though is that most developers are getting better at porting to the PC. There doesn't seem to be nearly as many bad ports as there used to be. Maybe they are listening to PC gamers?
31 May 2011 ~ 10:57pm PirateNinja I have the feeling that once cloud gaming takes it's place in 5-10 years that the entire notion of a gamin pc is going out the window. All we are going to be left with is consoles, and the console competitors will compete over control systems, user interactivity, and exclusive title rights. Until then ... pc ports are often times ugly.
31 May 2011 ~ 11:07pm Thrax I keep seeing the cloud pitched as a viable replacement for the gaming PC, but it won't happen. You cannot deliver the horsepower or the latency without a drastic change in the way Internet infrastructure is provisioned and deployed, especially in North America.
31 May 2011 ~ 11:54pm PirateNinja

Thrax wrote:

I keep seeing the cloud pitched as a viable replacement for the gaming PC, but it won't happen. You cannot deliver the horsepower or the latency without a drastic change in the way Internet infrastructure is provisioned and deployed, especially in North America.

It's debatable, but the future holds the answers I think. I want to agree with you, but OnLive is actually pretty slick. On top of that compression, latency, and bandwidth are only going to improve in the next five to ten years in all major markets.

To me this is equivalent of trying to tell someone about eight years ago that there would be a market for streaming hd television and movies. Some would agree and some would say there just isn't enough juice. But here we are and here is NetFlix.

I think if you look at the 720 DVD, then 1080 BluRay, and whatever is next as stepping stones .. the time between the in home hardware and cloud based streaming solution will become less and less. At some point in the near future you reach a point where it doesn't make sense to have the in home hardware anymore, and industries will just jump straight to the cloud.

Of course I've been wrong a million times before. I'm just saying if I had to gamble my money on what the future holds (invest), I'd throw my money at the cloud and get out of the in home hardware market.
1 Jun 2011 ~ 12:35am Cliff_Forster On Demand cloud based gaming is the future for all gaming. Seriously, all of it, console, PC, it won't matter. Its only a debate on how long it will take the internet infrastructure to get there to support it, but it will happen. Its the logical evolution.

Consider this, once it gets to a point where they only develop for the cloud, they get rid of all the proprietary hardware and multiple ports, as well as eliminating the need to support different configurations on the PC end. Think of how much money developers will save on multiple ports and support. Also, the control they will gain by delivering over the cloud on a distributors hardware infrastructure, so piracy gets tricky too. I will miss my graphics cards, but one day, I just won't need em anymore.
1 Jun 2011 ~ 8:06am CB Someday all computing will be cloud computing. Every "computer" will just be a smart terminal connected to the internet, where everyone's everything is available behind a login system of some kind. It's an inevitable step in the development of personal computing.

Also: someday cars will drive themselves. It may be ten years from now. It may be a hundred years from now. But, someday it will happen. It's inevitable.

Also: eventually marriage will be a contract for three people rather than two. It may take another dozen generations to realize it, but it's the most practical system, and is thus inevitable.
1 Jun 2011 ~ 8:13am Cliff_Forster Also: If a thread exists on the internet long enough, eventually a wise ass will post on it.

If said thread is on Icrontic, its not likely to take long.
1 Jun 2011 ~ 8:40am CB I'm being totally serious.

My point was only that 'eventually' could be a very long time.
1 Jun 2011 ~ 8:48am Cliff_Forster

CB wrote:

I'm being totally serious.

My point was only that 'eventually' could be a very long time.

I know, I'm just pickin on ya.

We have all had this debate, I think realistically ten years is an easy call, five is a little on the optimistic side. Split it down the middle, I'm betting seven or eight years it is no longer emerging tech, but its just the way we will all do it.
1 Jun 2011 ~ 9:41am AlexDeGruven

Gravite2090 wrote:

It's debatable, but the future holds the answers I think. I want to agree with you, but OnLive is actually pretty slick. On top of that compression, latency, and bandwidth are only going to improve in the next five to ten years in all major markets.

To me this is equivalent of trying to tell someone about eight years ago that there would be a market for streaming hd television and movies. Some would agree and some would say there just isn't enough juice. But here we are and here is NetFlix.

I think if you look at the 720 DVD, then 1080 BluRay, and whatever is next as stepping stones .. the time between the in home hardware and cloud based streaming solution will become less and less. At some point in the near future you reach a point where it doesn't make sense to have the in home hardware anymore, and industries will just jump straight to the cloud.

Of course I've been wrong a million times before. I'm just saying if I had to gamble my money on what the future holds (invest), I'd throw my money at the cloud and get out of the in home hardware market.

'sup OnLive buddy.

With the notable exception of AT&T U-Verse (Brian and a friend of mine have it, and OnLive is completely unusable for them), top-tier consumer bandwidth is plenty for "Cloud Gaming". I've been using OnLive since launch, and it's only improved over the 11.5 months I've used it.

I would love to see the eventual abolishment of the console and have what I do with OnLive: A small box, not much larger than my cell phone with network in and HDMI out + a wireless controller and/or Keyboard/mouse connectivity for FPSs + access to my entire games library.

Ports aren't QUITE as bad as they used to be now that things like Microsoft's XNA Game Studio exist for PC, but there's still a long way to go.
1 Jun 2011 ~ 11:32am primesuspect Us talking about what the future is going to look like:

<object width="640" height="510"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EC5sbdvnvQM?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EC5sbdvnvQM?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="510" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

In forty-five years, we'll see this thread and it will look this hilarious, yet we'll say: "Wow, some of that was sort of right, it was just implemented WAY better."
1 Jun 2011 ~ 11:41am MiracleManS Sure, broadband is going to be more pervasive, but what about the caps on usage? You mean to tell me those aren't going to cause huge problems for cloud gaming? I'm pretty sure that the mass market of "gamers" are going to want to be able to game all the time and on more than one game.
1 Jun 2011 ~ 11:51am Annes

CB wrote:

Also: eventually marriage will be a contract for three people rather than two. It may take another dozen generations to realize it, but it's the most practical system, and is thus inevitable.

I'd like to hear the reasoning behind this. Never occurred to me.
1 Jun 2011 ~ 11:53am MrTRiot I didn't think this article would spark such a good debate but I was wrong. Great debate guys!
1 Jun 2011 ~ 11:56am AlexDeGruven

MiracleManS wrote:

Sure, broadband is going to be more pervasive, but what about the caps on usage? You mean to tell me those aren't going to cause huge problems for cloud gaming? I'm pretty sure that the mass market of "gamers" are going to want to be able to game all the time and on more than one game.

It will definitely cause problems, for sure. I'm sure my playing DiRT2 for 14 hours last month (streaming 720p video) created quite a lot of bandwidth. Consumers will need to vote with their feet, and companies will have to think through their PR lenses.

US GSM carriers have implemented caps for cellular data. They caught a ton of flack for it. The CDMA carriers have not, and they get lauded for it.

EVENTUALLY (and I'm talking way out there in the future), completely unlimited home high-speed (real high-speed, not AT&T DSL's 5mbLOLSPEED) bandwidth will be the standard (if companies like Google have their way in particular), rather than the exception like it is now (Charter currently does not have caps on their top-tier service).

It's a long road ahead, for sure. Just look at the video Brian posted. It looks ridiculous in implementation and downright quaint, but if you look at the actual activities portrayed in that video, it's all the stuff we do now.
6 Aug 2011 ~ 4:04am Butters So I've logged 20 hours of playing NBA 2K11. Its is actually decent on PC. It reeks of console all over it but and I don't think its a bad port at all. Graphics are fine, and dual analog joysticks are actually a written system requirement. A $20 game controller will provide a much better user experience.

I don't think NBA 2K11 has a place in this article, except as an example of how good an obvious console port can be.

However, FIFA 08-11 should, as not only is it heavily modified console port to be not-so-consolish, but its a generation and a half behind console port. Though, I'm thankful that is still supported on PC.
6 Aug 2011 ~ 1:49pm MrTRiot

Butters wrote:

So I've logged 20 hours of playing NBA 2K11. Its is actually decent on PC. It reeks of console all over it but and I don't think its a bad port at all. Graphics are fine, and dual analog joysticks are actually a written system requirement. A $20 game controller will provide a much better user experience.

I don't think NBA 2K11 has a place in this article, except as an example of how good an obvious console port can be.

However, FIFA 08-11 should, as not only is it heavily modified console port to be not-so-consolish, but its a generation and a half behind console port. Though, I'm thankful that is still supported on PC.

You missed the point. I put it in the article because of it being mandatory to have an Xbox controller to play it, no questions asked. If you DON'T have a controller then you can still attempt to play it but you'll fail. There isn't a "warning" saying you NEED a controller. PCs and Consoles are different systems and should be treated as such.
6 Aug 2011 ~ 1:58pm Thrax In my book, it's a shitty console port when a gamepad is required. I'm a PC Gamer so I don't have to use a gamepad.