Dark Souls - PC port "having a tough time"
 

I suppose From Software is being honest - which is more than can be said for many game producers - but it's hard to get excited about Dark Souls when From Software themselves sound so unenthusiastic.
A new article at Eurogamer quotes Producer Daisuke Uchiyama, saying From Software is having a "tough time" porting to the PC and they won't be fixing the framerate problems:
More information.

If they can't do it right, why bother?

They are doing it mainly for the money, and probably to try the digital distribution path of pc games that they are far behind.

Announcing this information at this late stage might be to justify introducing further delays in the release, or to dampend the impact of the poor final product when it is released.

Well, sometimes I wonder if it's a dev-pub powerplay.

From Software wants to make an excellent port but would need additional funding for it. The publisher only allowed it because of fan requests but isn't willing to allow the resources that would be needed (both in Yen and in time, it really looks like they have a deadline and not a when it's done philosofy from the publishers). Them admitting openly they are having trouble with the port feels like they are trying to get the publisher to allow them more time and resources.

Anyway that's just me looking optimistically at the developer and pessimistically at the publisher.

If the publisher actually allowed that interview, then yeah, I agree: "why bother?"

Also the PC has never really been a big platform in Japan, and as it has been said the Japanese games industry is already in trouble because they fail to do well in the west and the attitude with this game looks like just another example of how they just don't get it.

The producer made these comments, and I thought that the producers are associated with the publisher.

They don't have computers in Japan….or not enough to constitute a PC audience?? That sounds like a lie or sheer lunacy. /boggle



-Carn

They will release this and it will fail miserably. Probably a good thing though if this is how they plan to do it.

You spend time adding content rather than fixing frame rates and properly supporting the platform your releasing it on.

They deserve to fail.

That's something that always bugged me about Japanese developers there fine making big budget console games, but can't be bothered on the pc. I'm not counting dating sim games those don't count.

Back on topic it looks like the game is going to fail despite not even being out on the pc yet.

In an unusual twist of events, game developers are promising to underperform and deliver a sub par experience!!!

Actually there is a fairly large PC industry in Japan and a large amount of low to medium budget games coming out for it. It is just that these big console devs ignore it. There probably are more PC games coming out in Japan then most other countries.

For whatever reason, I respect this statement.

It's bad news but the honesty of the developer is refreshing, since we usually get endless hype and positive spin everywhere else.

I wouldn't say the PC release is doomed already though. Even if they manage just a straight 1:1 port in functionality it will still be a great game, which PC gamers wouldn't have had the chance to play otherwise. Ideally they would have had tons of time to work on it and optimize, but the publisher is probably making them rush it out the door ASAP.

Producers can be part of the dev team or the publisher, and some projects have both. This one might be the dev team producer.

What the heck do they program their console games on?

I picture a PC Emulator on a PS3 and them using the controllers to type in one letter at a time to spell out int main(int argc, char **argv).

no wonder they are having problems. that must be extremely tedious. they all must be having to pull out their college textbooks to remind themselves just how (cross platform compatible) OpenGL works!

I'm assuming the low to medium budget games aren't always running on hardware that runs AAA games. Although, I admit, 7 years into a console cycle even budget PC are probably caught-up in power to consoles.

And still no new generation of consoles announced. If I were Valve I'd team up with intel and Nvidia and throw a PC packaged as "Steam-console" on the market…

Fair play really. They didn't want to do a PC version originally, it was only because PC players asked them with petitions and such like for a port that they are doing one at all.

Still, it makes the case for handing it to someone like demiurge instead - I can't see why they'd waste their own resources on learning how to make a PC port unless they are interested in doing something like it again in the future.

It's called more R&D time. Sony and Microsoft were going to but decided not to.

Ehh, even if they don't fix the "framerate" issues in certain locations. Wouldn't a fast PC / graphics card fix that ?

I mean poorly optimized yes probably…. but also much faster hardware….

I am sure the game will run fine, but as gothicness said you will need high computing power to run it at a good frame rate (imagine running a console game on PC using an emulator!). This also means that the UI will be, in my view, horrible with very large fonts and menus which probably would require the keyboard to navigate instead of the mouse.

These things do put me off personally, and I do notice them clearly when I play a poorly console ported game and then switch to a game well designed for PC and consoles.

It might be that the typical Japanese home, which is actually a tiny apartment (and when I say tiny, I really mean t-i-n-y), usually smaller than the living room and kitchen of a typical American household, has something to do with it.

After the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom, there is likely just enough room to have a 'living room' with a sitting area and TV and not much room for anything else. So it might be that while most Japanese have a TV in their apartment (allowing for the connection of a console without taking up much more space), they may quite literally not have enough room for a PC space. I know there are great laptop gaming PCs these days, but they're a lot more expensive than their desktop counterparts.

I'm just guessing though but I've been to Japan many times and most live in unbelievably small apartments by American standards and even European standards.

I agree. I'm hoping that they're taking an 'underpromise-overdeliver' strategy as I'd like to play this game on the PC if it ends up being any good as a PC port. Time will tell.