fahrenheit/indigo prophecy, controlled pretty damn well on a pad, though character movement was sucky compared to a lot pad driven games. i have no idea how it’d play on a mouse and keyboard, but joypad control doesn’t equal ‘consolified’. a lot of genres naturally play better on a joypad… for example, a game with a fixed camera system like Fahrenheit, they’ve always been better off on a pad, regardless of platform. same with platformers, racing games, and others.

Many X-Box ports of PC games suffer from the games not being tailored properly to the X-box version. The controls may suck, the menus may not be very well supported on a pad.

Hell yeah. Unreal Championship was an absolute joke. Playing with 4 players and a couple of bots meant the game ran at a healthy 5-10 frames per second. Controls were awful, and it really did feel like they just ripped the game out of a PC and crammed it into an Xbox, trying to make it fit. Of course, Unreal Championship 2 seems to have fixed all that, but really, UC2 should have been the first Unreal game on the Xbox, not the second.

I would have to agree that it’s not just the developers we can blame - many of them are just victims of the industry’s structure, and if they have too many time and money constraints, there’s not much they can do about it. They have legal obligations to fulfil as far as getting games to the publishers goes.

Naturally this doesn’t apply to developers like Blizzard, but then it makes me wonder why the guys at Epic didn’t bring out a properly done port for Unreal Championship… surely they’d have enough weight to ensure they have enough time? I mean, it’s Epic.

On the flipside, I do prefer FPS games on a console; not for the control standard, but rather for the stability.

However, do not chalk up crappy ports entirely to developers being lazy. Essentially the publishers are at fault here. It is not because console gamers are dumber or cannot handle more advanced titles. It is all about money, much like Vermouth has hit on. Developers have a budget and a timelimit. It is just not feasible to create a game that will run on 4 platforms and be perfectly tailored to each. The end result is, to stay within budget and time constraints, make the game for the lowest common denominator then with extra time/money try to beef up the other versions.

Fable is a perfect example of the ideal situation for a developer working on a multiplatform game. With Fable: The Lost Chapters development never stopped. With the pull molyneux has in the industry he could give his team almost an entire year extra to bring the game the the PC and fully tailor it to the PCs needs and strengths. The game can look better, run at higher resolutions, the control scheme has been suited to the PC and the combat system tweaked. The extra harddrive space (and ability to permanently store game data there) allows the PC to increase the overall size of the game. Sure they probably could have released Fable as a 2 disc Xbox game but how well would Xbox Fable sell right now with Xbox 360 so close?

Releasing a stellar game for the old console at the release of a new console is not necessarily a great marketing technique. Remember Vectorman for the Sega Genesis?

Generally developers just do not have the time or money to properly port. The only exceptions you will find are ridiculously high profile games like Fable, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and the like. Marketing powerhouses that are guarenteed to bring in the cash so the risk of extra money spent on the PC or Xbox (in the case of PS2) is worth it.

The real tragedy of “consolification” that PC gamers worry about is games like Halo. Games that were stolen from their PC roots, totally rearranged and released on a console. Halo was never supposed to be a generic first person shooter. Halo was originally a PC and Mac bound squad based game. This was before squad based games were common. Halo was going to be a risky PC title. The game looked amazing for the time and I was quite excited for it. The form, after a 2 year delay, that Halo was finally released in is why PC gamers have a general distaste for it. We do not dislike Halo because it is a popular Xbox FPS. It is what never was that leaves the scar.

Rainbow Six is becoming another example. Rainbow Six’s allure was the planning stage. Rainbow Six was not a “squad based first person shooter”. A victory in rainbow six was about thinking ahead. Planning out complex multi-squad assault plans. The franchise is now a shadow of its former self. It is a squad based action game with tactical elements. Gone is 50% of the actual “game”. You no longer create complex plans before even stepping into the boots of a counter-terrorist. Rainbow Six was the only game of its type. Now it looks as though we will never have another. The game itself was never “consoilified”. They did not try to bring Raven Shield to the Consoles or Lockdown to the PC. They took the ideal and concept of the game and bastardized it so it would sell like crazy. I am sure Lockdown is a damned fine squad based tactical action game, but it is not Rainbow Six anymore.

ubisoft have been doing a great job of late at multiplatform titles… giving each something special, pandering to the strengths of each system and polishing the heck out of their games, which are less generic than most of the mass market stuff you other studios of that sort of size putting out there. the PC hardcore though, need to realise that they’re not the big source of revenue any more. they’re a niche now, and they’re certainly a big enough niche that it’s profitable to make a game aimed at them… that’s always going to be true and they’re always going to get games aimed at them, blaming any watering down of their beloved franchises on consoles though, is the sort of format war stupidity that makes you look stupid to anyone but your fellow devotees.