KoA: Reckoning - Official System Reqs

sakichop said:
You know they could make higher quality pc games and you could still play your console games and not worry about upgrading.

It's time for games to catch up with technology and before you all get on your high horses and tell me graphics aren't that important, let me tell you, graphics aren't that important.

I'm talking about better Ai, Improved combat and combat animations, destructible environments,better npc's and npc routines,more detailed worlds (more wildlife with more realistic behaviors and just more happening in the world), the ability to use your environment in combat, etc., etc., etc. Everybody seems to think the only thing better hardware does is improve graphics and that's not true.

I'm surprised so many people are fine with settling for mediocre status quo games just to save some money on upgrading. I would prefer to play the best possible games I can than settle for games made with 5 years old hardware just to save some cash.

It's funny though I come to the watch daily and see thread after thread of people bitching about games because they don't have this or you can't do that. So I guess we want them to make awesome games with huge worlds and every options under the sun , but do it on five year old hardware because you don't want to have to shell out any extra money.

It's really time for games to start pushing technology again and gaming to move forward. I know I'm ready for it.
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Current hardware are more than capable enough to most of the things that you mention. Things you mentioned pretty much related with the CPU. And both consoles and current PCs have enough CPU power to achieve this. But main problem is these things needs extra (in some cases extensive) programming, quality testing, third party programs and more importantly time. And all of them increase the costs. Costs are the one thing that is hated by the publishers.
 
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JDR13 said:
Skyrim was an anomaly in terms of PC sales %. Most mainstream titles sell significantly more copies on a console, even if you're just looking at 1 platform.
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One of my theories is that it sells so good because all of its marketing perfectly hit the current "dark & gritty" vibe. Just look at the "hero" who is displayed in all of these advertisements, and his surroundings.
 
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Alrik Fassbauer said:
One of my theories is that it sells so good because all of its marketing perfectly hit the current "dark & gritty" vibe. Just look at the "hero" who is displayed in all of these advertisements, and his surroundings.
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And dragons. Dragons are cool.
 
Alrik Fassbauer said:
One of my theories is that it sells so good because all of its marketing perfectly hit the current "dark & gritty" vibe. Just look at the "hero" who is displayed in all of these advertisements, and his surroundings.
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My best theory is Skyrim sells so well because it's really a wonderful game. I've gotten my brother, sister, 2 cousins and a niece playing it since I've showed it off to them. All of them have been playing for at least 2 weeks now and all love it. I'd say that's the best theory. My brother and I play on pc, the rest on consoles. My sister and one cousin would have preferred the pc version, but their computers weren't up to snuff.
 
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Dhruin said:
To be clear, all the things you want would be great things for gaming as such - I just think they'll come at a price. I'm a PC gamer at heart but I also live in the real world.



Now you're arguing semantics. We're talking about games that would theoretically take advantage of high-powered PCs, right? Doesn't that mean such a game would only exist on the PC, therefore excluding any sales to the console market?
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no, they could scale the console version back.

Dhruin said:
Sure, it's unfair to the PC in terms of measuring individual platform sales. And? You grouped them together when you said "I love consoles dictating my pc needs" - why do you want to split them up now? If your point is that consoles are holding back gaming and the PC alone could theoretically have better games, then you are grouping the consoles as one inferior set. You can't have your inferior cake but eat your sales separately.
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I grouped them together based on performance not sales.

Dhruin said:
It's possible - maybe even probable! Let's say the PC gains a 50% market share…you're still asking for a more expensive production (you're not suggesting the super-duper AI etc comes at no cost, are you?) that you are going to sell to half the potential market. That's a hard sell for investors.
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Sure it would cost more. I payed 39.99 for morrowind and 59.99 for skyrim. That's $20 more per sale. Content wise the games are similar. Skyrim has improved graphics and full voice overs both of which I would sacrifice for improved ai, scripting and gameplay.

Dhruin said:
Really? For all its faults, Skyrim is a massive production - but I could easily imagine 5,6, 10x the scripting and dialogue options to deal with multiple approaches and solutions. I guess it might be physically possible for Bethsoft to pay for that (I don't know how deep their pockets really are) but the development assuredly cost 10s of millions already and noone else is building games this big - let alone with the extra dialogue I would want in a perfect world. Then, you are going to add more expenses on top.
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Last I saw sale were around 640 million so I think they could have afforded it. Really though most games are 15 to 30 hours long and could reach the limitations of consoles before running out of resources I would think.

Dhruin said:
I remember BioWare saying they would never work with licensed IPs. On the other hand, the most number of NPCs I can recall in a modern game would probably be Assassin's Creed/2 - designed for console and there are dozens of actors on-screen. I think there's more to the story than BioWare is publicly saying.
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I would not put it past bioware to lie about that but I've heard other dev's mention the limitations of consoles.

Dhruin said:
OK, I used a trite example but it was one of yours. Look, I think the things you want are great but the next step will come when the next consoles arrive because developers/publishers will want to spread the cost and risk across as big a market as possible. Railing against consoles as often as you do is pointless.
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I understand the reasoning and if console cycles were still 5ys long it wouldn't sting so bad. They want a 10 yr cycle with current gen consoles. What if they want 15 or 20 with the next gen. They will fall further and further behind and that's what our games will be based on.

Railing against consoles may be pointless in that it wont change anything but neither will any of the other posts here.It makes me feel better to vent and discuss it. I thought that was the point of forums.

Dhruin said:
Consider the other possibility. I'm not a PC doomsayer but without console ports, the PC might be home to indies-only - which wouldn't bother me too much because I spend a lot of time playing them - but it would be the opposite of the AAA+++ games you are asking for. Consoles are a double-edged sword but we get both sides - bad ports - but also some good games we might not otherwise get.
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I believe we started down that road when Microsoft made the xbox and abandoned the pc as a gaming platform. If the maker of windows won't back pc gaming who will? I just miss the days when pc games were made for pc and console games for consoles. It would have been a tragedy if instead of playing bg1 and 2 we had to play bg dark alliance ported from the xbox because they developed for the console first.

So while we might get some good ports from console that we might not have gotten. It's also quite possible we will miss out on some great games that will never be made because they don't fit the console or it's audience.

I will stop my railing now. Didn't mean to offend.
 
JDR13 said:
Skyrim was an anomaly in terms of PC sales %. Most mainstream titles sell significantly more copies on a console, even if you're just looking at 1 platform.
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I'm aware of that. I thought I admitted as much in my post. Maybe I didn't word it clearly enough.
 
sakichop said:
Last I saw sale were around 640 million so I think they could have afforded it.
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The production budget was reportedly $100 million. That sales figure you mention is the gross revenue.

After you deduct the retailer and wholesaler margins, Valve's margin, replication, pick/pack/ship, POS advertising, retailer discounts and rebates, and then deduct another $60 - 100 million for TV, print, web and outdoor ads, etc., it's a much smaller piece of the pie.

Keep in mind this game has probably performed better than their wildest expectations. I highly doubt they were expecting that they would end up shipping 10 million units within a month after release.
 
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CountChocula said:
The production budget was reportedly $100 million. That sales figure you mention is the gross revenue.

After you deduct the retailer and wholesaler margins, Valve's margin, replication, pick/pack/ship, POS advertising, retailer discounts and rebates, and then deduct another $60 - 100 million for TV, print, web and outdoor ads, etc., it's a much smaller piece of the pie.

Keep in mind this game has probably performed better than their wildest expectations. I highly doubt they were expecting that they would end up shipping 10 million units within a month after release.
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I know gross sale doesn't equal profit. I've ran 2 business and now own my own. Best pac i've ever acheived was 35% and the 2 companies I manages wanted to hit 25% pac. (profit after costs)

I don't know what kind of profit margins bethsoft shoots for but if we go with 25% they have $160 million net and counting.
 
sakichop said:
I know gross sale doesn't equal profit. I've ran 2 business and now own my own. Best pac i've ever acheived was 35% and the 2 companies I manages wanted to hit 25% pac. (profit after costs)

I don't know what kind of profit margins bethsoft shoots for but if we go with 25% they have $160 million net and counting.
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I guess what I meant was that they were already sort of betting the farm on that $100 million production budget, considering the level of sales for the past few TES games has only been in the range of 4 to 7 million units. Increasing the production budget higher would have been getting into MMO territory, but without being able to count on subscription fees to recoup the cost.

Personally I would have been absolutely thrilled to have more branching paths to the quests and more dialogue recorded. I imagine, however, the VA work was already a rather expensive undertaking with 70 voice actors just for the English tracks, not to mention a barbarian men's choir and 60,000 lines of dialogue dubbed into Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese versions.
 
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sakichop said:
I believe we started down that road when Microsoft made the xbox and abandoned the pc as a gaming platform.
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And they are *still* in the "PC Gaming Alliance". Probably only to exploit it and direct/nudge developers towards the xbox (kind of like : "oooooh, there's a new great and shiny PC game - we'll give you lots of money if you do it as an xbox exclusive !!!" - Like what happened with Halo.)
 
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Dhruin said:
No need to be like that; you articulated your point well even if I don't fully agree. Your initial post looked like a drive-by-console-bash to me - which I find tiresome - but we're well past that.
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I wasn't being sarcastic. I was being sincere when I say that. I know my droning on about this specific subject can get tiresome for some. It's just that i've been pc gaming since the 80's and it's something I feel really strongly about. I'll do my best to tone it down and not comment on every console thread.
 
CountChocula said:
I guess what I meant was that they were already sort of betting the farm on that $100 million production budget, considering the level of sales for the past few TES games has only been in the range of 4 to 7 million units. Increasing the production budget higher would have been getting into MMO territory, but without being able to count on subscription fees to recoup the cost.

Personally I would have been absolutely thrilled to have more branching paths to the quests and more dialogue recorded. I imagine, however, the VA work was already a rather expensive undertaking with 70 voice actors just for the English tracks, not to mention a barbarian men's choir and 60,000 lines of dialogue dubbed into Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese versions.
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Not to metion hiring arnold schwarzenegger.:D
 
Sadl, I doubt that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be doing voiceovers in the German-language edition of Skyrim, and that, although he is an Austrian.
 
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