Removed? As far as I know it was *never* intended for PC, never promised, and any questions have always been rebuffed since it was announced.As a fan of lucasarts games I was really looking forward to force unleased but that game has been removed from pc. .
I can't understand why this Force unleased must be x-box exclusive. Why not make pc version and earn more money? Star wars is a huge thing on pc too.
I might come to the conclusiion that LucasArts "forces me" to buy a console - because I'm a fan.
...and developing for two systems (or porting from one to the other) is another way of sinking money; it certainly drives the point of break-even towards the ceiling.But - developing an PC game consumes more development money which can be saved by NOT developing it - leaving MORE profits as the result !
This is another - imho - mosaic stone in how LucasArts thinks.
Does anyone else smell that foul odor surrounding this issue?
Smells like Micro$oft.
Quote:
While The Force Unleashed will be coming to higher-end consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, there will be no Wii or PC versions for the time being. "At this time, we are not planning a PC release," said Blackman. He said that current PC hardware constraints would prevent the game from reaching a broad audience and added, "The minimum spec for a PC version right now is just too high."
Source: TGDaily
IMHO a rather lame excuse from SW:TFU's project lead when one considers the fact that the game is being released on Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2, Nintendo DS and N-Gage. The reasoning would hold more water with me if they were only going to release the game for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. But of course that isn't the case and you didn't ask for a good reason...
With Jim Ward (marketing & advertising background) at the helm, LucasArts believes that consoles and handhelds are the way forward and I can't really argue with that decision based on the sales numbers I've seen. So I expect they won't release much in the way of PC games for at least the next couple of years, excepting any new SW MMORPG they may release.
TheForce.net recently spoke to a LucasArts representative who spoke about the much wished-for PC version of The Force Unleashed. They did not respond very positively.
“It definitely will not be coming to PC.”
Many fans will probably be very disgruntled over this. The question was asked because HMV.co.uk had listed a PC version of the game on their site.
You can discuss this story in the forums.
The PC version will never be released if MS refuse to concept approve the game for the XB360 due to there being a PC version. What means is that, rather than ship a PC version, I would finish the XB360 development and ship that instead because obviously the XB360 version is more beneficial to us.
Sometimes MS will allow the PC version of a game to be released a short while after the XB360 version. That being the case, if they don't say "no PC version, ever", then the PC version may follow after the XB360 version. Given how that works, I wouldn't expect to see it inside of a year after the XB360 version.
http://www.3000ad.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=49000001&st=20
Wii directs imho to a rather different nice - not the "real gamer", but rather "family-friendly".
I love to play them all, but I guess I'm not the target group.Well ... Would you expect someone with a love for Unreal or WWII games playing Endless Ocean ? Or Mario Party ?
Piracy is probably as solid a reason as any to postpone the PC release. Once the hype for the console version is over you can release a port (at little extra cost) to cater to the fans who dont have a console...
Piracy is always brought up for PC, but it is much larger on console, because of rental. In any event, I cannot see how the PC games industry can complain about piracy and at the same time talk about Oblivion and Fallout 3 and STALKER and Witcher and others all selling 3-5 million units! That's as good as a decent hit on console! I don't see how those sales could be reached if piracy was so rampant!
Piracy is always brought up for PC, but it is much larger on console, because of rental. In any event, I cannot see how the PC games industry can complain about piracy and at the same time talk about Oblivion and Fallout 3 and STALKER and Witcher and others all selling 3-5 million units!
Cevat Yerli of Crytek, the makers of Far Cry, Crysis and Crysis Warhead has publicly stated:
We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy, to the degree [that PC gamers who] pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future.
John Carmack, often called the 'father of PC gaming', and co-founder of id software, makers of the Doom and Quake series, recently stated:
It's hard to second guess exactly what the reasons are. You can say piracy. You can say user migration, but the ground truth is just that the sales numbers on the PC are not what they used to be and are not what they are on the consoles.
Cliffy B, lead creator at Epic Games, makers of the Unreal Tournament and Gears of Wars series, has been quite outspoken on this topic:
Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC. Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.
Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games, makers of Supreme Commander, also chimes in with his assessment:
...people are going to stop making [games] on the PC because of my earlier point, what's happened on the PC with piracy. The economics are ugly right now on the PC. You're not going to see these gigantic, epic investments of dollars on the PC when it just doesn't work. The economics have to work. You're going to see those investments made on the console side and it's going to become a more console-centric investment. And then you're going to see them ported back over to the PC and that creates a different experience on the PC.
Robert Bowling, Community Manager at Infinity Ward, the makers of games such as Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 4, provided a fairly blunt opinion on the issue. He made a blog post entitled 'They Wonder Why People Don’t Make PC Games Any More', the title of his post along with the contents clearly linking the move away from PC game development with piracy:
On another PC related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn’t fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online).... the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding.
The people quoted above are some of the most successful and prominent PC developers of our time. Virtually every PC gamer has played one of their games, and all of them have demonstrated a high degree of dedication to PC development over the years. I doubt any of them would suddenly start abandoning PC development based only on flimsy information and false perceptions. The logic of their argument is quite sound: if the same game has the potential to sell many times more copies on a particular platform because sales are not being undermined by piracy, then quite clearly the priority of the developers and publishers should be to focus on that platform in their design, development and marketing decisions. As with any other business, games developers and publishers want to best accommodate the needs of the majority of their paying customers. Unfortunately all of these developers have received public abuse for making the above claims, the problem being that on the surface the disparity between PC and console game sales appears to have nothing to do with piracy. It seems to be a simple case of there being many times more console gamers than there are PC gamers. It's only when we take a closer look at the available data that it becomes apparent that things are not quite that simple.