The lights are on
In a GDC discussion panel titled "The Connected Future of Games," Valve director of business development Jason Holtman and Blizzard executive vice president Rob Pardo made strong arguments championing the PC platform's flexibility and deriding the rigid framework of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
"One of the great strengths of the PC is that it's open," Holtman said when talking about the second part of the Portal 2 promotion in which they changed the ending to the original game. "That's a thing that we can do on the PC. You can go back and as you think of things you can react to them – you can wake up the next day and say, 'I learned this yesterday and I want to do this today.'"
In contrast, contemporary consoles suffer from lengthy processes to get new content, patches, and game updates approved and delivered to customers. This is often a bane to development teams that want to fix a game-crippling bug (think Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's Javelin glitch) or deliver new content on their own schedule. This troubling fact was also harped upon by Blizzard's Pardo.
After the panel wrapped up and the Q&A session began, one attendee asked the Blizzard exec what it would take to bring games like World of Warcraft to consoles."A better cert process," he said. "You have to go through all sorts of cert processes to get it to the platform, and I think that's a real challenge for all of the stuff we were talking about. If we want to put World of Warcraft on a console, and you want to run patches – one of the things we have to do all the time is put up a patch when you find a bug that will completely unhinge a game. We'll actually do a hot fix."
No such avenue currently exists on consoles.
Until Microsoft and Sony loosen their grip on console accessibility and allow development teams to make changes and provide services to products as they see fit, don't expect to see Valve and Blizzard ditch the PC as their primary platform.
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That still means consoles have a chance to see Diablo 3 doesn't it? Doesn't it?!
*sobs quietly*
Why dont they do some research on cloud computing. Naughty dog makes changes to Uncharted 2 all the time...LIVE....NO UPDATE...NO PATCH. I hate when developers whine. Its their job, they chose to do it. I dont always like what I have to do to make my job run the way it needs to, but I do anyways.
HELL YA GO VALVE GO BLIZZARD WE SHALL WIN YOU CONSOLE WHORES
i also like how they did not mention the nintendo as a console lol HAAHHAHAHA
Well i don't care about Blizzard but i wish Valve would show consoles a little love like updating TF2 on the 360 or making sure Portal 2 comes to Xbox 360.........*cracks knuckles* it better come to 360...>:I
they sit up there and defend the PC but a large percentage of pc gamers dont even buy they game they just download them...you think they will go out and spend money on a game after it cost them a small fortune to trick out there pc to even play it.
In response to Keo528.
No one was whining in this article. Blizzard and Valve merely pointed out the issues that plague console gaming and showed what PC has to offer. and if you honestly think that you could update WoW with no patches then your dumb as hell.
In response to Wardlaw...you have no idea what you're talking about. Have you played WoW or any of the Valve Steam games? You have to buy them. These companies aren't stupid.
And as far as PC gaming goes, the developers aren't the ones whining, it's the gamers. There are times I'd love to see WoW on the 360 but it works better on the PC. And if I couldn't get patched content in a timely manner I'd be pretty ill about it.
Who cares about WoW anymore? its mindless questing with tedious tasks with nintendo 64 graphics.
And I for one don't blame these guys. Being on the pc is like being a freelance artist. No one tells you what to drawn and how. But working on consoles, well it's like being hired on at some big graphic design firm. You do what they want you to do, when they want you to do it. F*** those guys. BLizz, valve and all these other companies that prefer making games on pc, I believe and support you.
PC4LIFE.
PC gaming will never die.
P.S. WoW or Diablo on console sounds horrible.
@Forsberg - I wouldn't doubt that. I know my friend pirates on the 360. I'm so glad the PS3's firmware hasn't been hacked... yet =/
Go whine to someone who cares, Blizzard and Valve. If you think everything is going to be easy you're wrong.
Untill then I'll play Diablo II and Starcraft on my compy...lol
@ Wardlaw
Do you know how HARD it is to try and steal one of their games? With Valve games especially, you need to be logged into steam and all that crap just to play it. Besides, quite frankly, I see more 360 games being pirated by my friends than pc games. As for myself, I go out and buy the games. The only time I ever downloaded a pirated game was when I tried to install crysis warhead using the disc that I bought. There was some error, so I ended up downloading off a torrent site BUT I STILL BOUGHT THE GAME.
In most cases when it comes to games, THAT'S what pc people (at least the people I know) tend to do. Those really enthusiastic pc gamers spend so much money fixing up their computers like it's a god *** exotic import that laying down 40 or 50 bucks for a game doesn't even dent their pockets.
Now music and games is another issue entirely...heh...
I'm glad that somebody is still in this camp...people are all too quick to forget where most of the shiny new features that make today's consoles so great really came from.
The Console vs PC argument always cracks me up... From an electronics point of view the only difference is who owns the parts. In console the unit is solely owned where as in PC its multi proprietary and even that isnt a good example cuz the 360 has a computer dvd drive in it. Not to mention ALL games no matter what wore created on a Computer then port to something. So PC are like the backend and console the frontend, easier for people use terminals. Anyways Console are good from mario and god of war type games but PCs owns fps and rts... rpg are good on console and mmorpg are best on PC... Luckly I own must of them(consoles) except for the ps3 but find my self on my PC most of the time.
it's funny how the refer to the flexibilty of PC's while seemingly ignoring the fact that if u want a good gaming PC u have to spend more than the price of all 3 consoles combined and then a year later that PC that cost u so much will already be outdated to the point it's an expensive paperweight.
If PC gaming becomes convenient, I will join the ranks