A Rant on Porting Games

I have noticed a large trend for this generation in console gaming. That trend is remaking games from last generation. The difference between the Playstation 4/Xbox One, and last generation consoles was not that large of a jump. Remember the jump from Playstation 2 to Playstation 3? The jump was unfathomable. The PS2 had the ability to play games and DVDs. It also had an online play feature, which almost no one knew how to use, or even cared about. The PS3, however, had a slew of sweet new features. It had amazing graphics, an operating system to interact with, it could play Blue Ray DVDs, online gaming was streamlined, it had a web browser, and…it could hook up to a printer. Okay, maybe not that last one, but you get my point. Now consider last gen and the current consoles. Updated graphics, and some additional features for online play. Not that amazing.

http://i.imgur.com/BEL7Vrq.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/BEL7Vrq.jpg

http://jagatplay.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/GTA-V-PS-4-vs-PS3-3-11-600x337.jpg

http://jagatplay.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/GTA-V-PS-4-vs-PS3-3-11-600×337.jpg

And this is why I believe game developers are porting all these games from last gen. All of the assets do not really require updating. They just make it run at 60fps and ship it. The problem is, there really isn’t that much reason to play these updated games. If you never played the game last time, sure, it is a fantastic way to get into an already proven franchise, but if you played them on last gen, there usually isn’t anything too exciting to make you want to jump back in. It just feels like every other game coming out is just a port. Maybe they do this to bolster the game libraries of the current gen consoles while they are relatively new, and they’ll soon stop, but somehow I doubt that. I also predict this will happen all over again in another 8 years when the next generation of consoles comes out.

http://gematsu.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/DS2-PS4-PS3-PC-Compare-IGN.jpg

http://gematsu.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/DS2-PS4-PS3-PC-Compare-IGN.jpg

 

 

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4 Responses to A Rant on Porting Games

  1. Terry Lee Miles says:

    There are some games where porting is useless and irrelevant like you stated i agree with that. I personally believe that some older games such as ps1 remakes are great for the die hard fans that may have sold their old consoles and or lost the games they once loved. So sometimes these ports or remasters are more than graphical content sometimes its about reliving a story that you a player has not had access to in a long time. Although you are correct sometimes developers literally do nothing when they move games over to the newer consoles but calling all of these bad i could not agree with. Some games make a viable attempt at remastering and do not deserve to be downgraded as a whole. With that being said many games are ported over for the simple fact of an audience. We didnt ask why a company would make the same game for ps2, ps3, xbox and 360 isnt this the same as adding another generation to the list. they want to expand the audience their games can reach so they just port it over. All remasters and ports are not bad but i will agree that some are a waste of time.

  2. John Walter Stockwell says:

    Developers port old games to newer consoles to cash in on the money, and Sony keeps letting them because they need to bolster their library. Fact is, consoles are just crappy computers, and to think that there’s even going to be anything resembling a “next generation” is laughable. The truth is the next generation is likely going to be a series of media PC’s that are optimized for use with controllers, like the steam box, with variants made by Microsoft and Sony. If not, they’ll probably steadily alienate their target audience until 10 years later they make a half-assed attempt at making their own variant steam boxes, and continue profiting from less informed gamers. Nintendo will probably continue making whatever strange contraptions they keep coming up with, taking informed chances hardware and continue profiting off their IP as usual.

    Fact is, consoles shouldn’t exist in the first place because they’re crap altogether, (except for Nintendo because they actually try to innovate). Get a computer.

  3. Max Marze says:

    Very Good post, even if it was a rant. I do have to say that I agree with you whole-heartily. I think like so much else in the current game design landscape we are seeing a lot of bad practices emerging. Studios and Publishers decide to capitalize on a decent game by making remakes which is not only a shitty way of doing business but just ridiculous. I feel we as player’s are to blame though, we keep buying the remakes. I think a problem too is that when a remake is released we see a lot of review sites giving it positive reviews for it being a good remake. The thing is, none of these are even remakes, they are ports. You have badly ported games where half the time new bugs that weren’t in the original game are introduced which is just unbelievable unacceptable. I think that porting games has a place, depending on what it was originally released on. No one is going to fault a developer for porting their PC game to console if it will let people play a good game they would have otherwise not have been able to. Either way I think the rampant illness that is porting games needs to stop. Hopefully when you cut off the head of the porting serpent it doesn’t grow two more like Hydra.

  4. Matthew William Fink says:

    I totally agree with how pointless it is to re-buy a game that you played on the previous generation of consoles. However, I want to take it one step further. Not only is the graphical improvement almost nonexistent — sometimes I cant even see a difference, if there is one — but sometimes when games are ported to the pc; it’s horrible. For some games it is almost impossible to play with a keyboard and mouse, but the developers either don’t care or are pressed for time that they don’t even make it possible to use a controller.

    Recently I was on steam and got the Devil May Cry 3 port and was super excited to play it. Unfortunately, it was a bad port that required a lot of work to get the buttons to sync up with a Xbox 360 controller and the resolution had some issues as well. I should have done some research first, but the hype had been engaged and it was too late by then.

    No big deal I’ll let that slide since it is a slightly older game. Okay now lets look at Dark Souls 1 and 2. Once again, there were a lot of complaints about resolution and what not. Luckily for me, I waited till some fans made fix for that. The one thing that did bother me — and I’m not sure if they fixed this yet — was the fps issue in Dark Souls 2. Because the game was locked at a 30 fps, when I got it on the pc, my weapons would break abnormally fast because I was running it at 60 fps. This caused certain moves and dodges to be a bit more difficult and what not. These may be minor gripes, but the point still stands that no one like a bad port.

    I forgive Dark Souls a lot more than other games because it is easy enough to fix them, but I think my main point is that developers have to put a little bit more TLC with their games. Lazy porting is one of my biggest pet peeves

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