It probably hurt a lot of desktop feelings when it was revealed Alan Wake would be an Xbox 360 exclusive. Remedy has always been a PC developer first, and Alan Wake was slated to arrive there even before it was announced for PC, leaving many fans thinking Remedy -- like so many original PC devs -- had jumped ship to the more lucrative console development world.
Of course, those thoughts of betrayal can now be laid to rest as Alan Wake was finally released for PC last week replete with updates and plenty of tweaking, making it the more superior release over its console counterpart, but even more importantly, Remedy has revealed that in just 48 hours on sale, Alan Wake PC has recouped all costs for releasing it on the platform.
"We are very happy with the sales and hitting #1 on Steam at launch was nothing short of amazing,"
read a post on the Alan Wake forums by Aki 'AJ' Järvilehto, Remedy's EVP. "We recouped our development and marketing expenses during the first 48 hours. And yes, we're certainly very excited about PC."
What exactly this means for the future of Alan Wake and Remedy in regards to PC remains to be seen, but hopefully any new projects they do post Alan Wake's American Nightmare will share a day and date release with whatever console they inevitably wind up on.
Posted 11:18am 21/2/12
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Posted 12:21pm 21/2/12
How do you figure that? As I recall, the Xbox 360 had much more impressive looking games at launch than anything on PC at the time. And also remember that current games like Gears of War 3 are running on 6+ year old hardware. Yes, it'd look better on a modern PC, but I doubt it'd run on a computer as old as the 360.
Posted 12:22pm 21/2/12
Posted 03:11pm 21/2/12
Disagree. Nearly every launch game for the 360 was just a scaled down port of the PC version. Quake 4, Need for Speed, Gun, CoD 2, King Kong - they all looked way better on a good PC.
Games like GoW 3 would run on 6 year old PCs if they designed them for 6 year old PCs, but there's no point because most gamers dont have such archaic hardware.
I'm with Eorl on this. There's a reason that gaming PCs cost 2-3 times more than consoles, the hardware in them is far superior and they pack way more processing power. Given that high end PCs dont seem to be going anywhere Im guessing this trend will continue.
Posted 03:14pm 21/2/12
I think people are more willing to accept DRM provided they get a quality game for their trouble. If they get something that only lasts 6 - 8 hours they no doubt will be angry and be against it. Give them something like skyrim and they are too busy playing the game to complain.
Posted 05:29pm 21/2/12
The way I see the whole console vs. pc thing. Consoles are pretty much outdated very quickly by newer PC Tech, and the biggest thing that bugs me with consoles is all the big developer's with all backing from the publishers with real money to be able to fund something big enough on effects are all console orientated (or at the very least multi-platform). When was the last time we saw a big publisher/developer make a game solely targeted for the PC platform (Don't say BF3 because they did switch their focus to console later on)?
When a multi-platform title is released for PC it is always held back in some way because of the console. The only dev's that really do make games just for PC are more on the indie side with the HUGE back on big name publishers. I don't think PC has had a chance to really shine in a long time since the first Crysis (that blew EVERYTHING away graphically to the point that the current hardware couldn't run it as we all know). Imagine what could be made now days if a big name studio had the funding of a big name publisher. BF3 is close to that, but I think it just falls short. It's not exactly the PC GFX killer that we expected or what DICE made it out to be. (Not to say that it isn't a gorgeous looking game, especially with the FXAA injector).
Posted 05:31pm 21/2/12
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Posted 06:48pm 21/2/12
On a side note, the creators of Dark Souls did a funny thing with anyone who got the game earlier then they were suppose to, by putting level 99 mobs into their game, and thus pretty much 1 hit killing them. Was super funny listening to all the crying that they couldn't finish the game etc.
Posted 08:12pm 21/2/12
I think the real difference though is just PC gamers are more tech savvy than a lot of console gamers. I'm not trying to make some insinuation that if you have a console you're dumb, more than consoles are a mass market thing and you've got everyone from meathead jocks to grandmas playing on them. Those sort of people wouldn't even be aware that a method of piracy exists, let alone how to do it. Whereas I would imagine your average PC gamer who has steam hooked up and buys games online and follows sites like this would be a lot more tech savvy, a lot more educated about the possibilities for piracy, and a lot more capable of executing on those possibilities if they so desired.
That being said, I think the big bad threat of piracy is pretty much bulls*** anyway. If you make a good game people will buy it, if you make a crap game people wont, I don't think piracy is killing anything its just crappy ports and shovelware that kill games.
Posted 08:21pm 21/2/12
Posted 12:06am 22/2/12
@DM Hear, hear to that.
Posted 02:46am 22/2/12
Maybe Gabe isn't selling (or maybe only just API access to Sony for their PSN crowd), maybe it would be a conflict of interests in more than a few ways for both Gabe as a former employee of MS and the content delivery market that Microsoft are able to dictate through their Xbox 360 strategies.
A lot of successful PC developers that publish on Steam have Gabe to thank for providing them with a positive revenue model that ties in almost transperantly with your banking account.
Without it they would be relying on the retail biz model where lightning doesn't seem to be striking so often anymore...
Posted 10:58am 22/2/12