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Attention PC Master Race: All Games Shouldn’t Be Ported!

Attention PC Master Race: All Games Shouldn’t Be Ported!

PC owners are wonderful people who deserve plenty of games. They’re entitled to libraries as robust and exciting as console owners. But, they aren’t really being treated right when it comes to titles. Instead of getting games made especially for them that work perfectly at launch on their hardware, they’re getting problematic ports. While it’s nice for a game to be inclusive and everywhere, maybe we’ve reached a point where a PC port of every AAA game isn’t exactly good news.

Let’s look at Dark Souls III as one of the latest examples of a port that wasn’t quite what people were promised. For some, it’s working fine. It’s as good as the console iterations. But for every one person who’s doing fine, it seems like we’re also hearing from someone who had the game crash while they were making a character, at the first bonfire, or headed to the Firelink Shrine. These kinds of game-breaking issues aren’t right, especially when the console version is fine. It makes you wonder if Bandai Namco put the right amount of effort into the endeavor. Judging by the company’s Tales of Symphonia PC release, it’s unlikely.

Quantum Break is another example. The game isn’t right on PCs, even though the Xbox One version runs mostly fine. People playing on computers are playing a game that can’t deliver a 60 FPS experience, has a broken 30 FPS frame rate lock, isn’t displaying 1080p images, and doesn’t work properly with Nvidia drivers. Considering Microsoft’s push going forward to have all Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs get the same exclusives, the Quantum Break treatment isn’t encouraging.

It also isn’t alone. Even Killer Instinct had launch issues on PCs that were absent on the Xbox One. See, its framerate was based upon your monitor’s refresh rate. If it had 60hz, that was fine. You’d have a 60 FPS game. But if you had anything with a higher refresh rate, the game would start running at that speed. It moved far too fast and became unplayable. This was another Microsoft and Rare game that had plenty of time to go through the testing and development process.

Attention PC Master Race: All Games Shouldn’t Be Ported!

The result is unfair treatment for everyone involved. It isn’t about exclusives being taken away or about suddenly deciding PC gamers should get fewer games because they’re somehow less deserving. It’s about making sure things are right for everyone who experiences a title.

As sad as it may sound, maybe the solution would be to hold off on day-one PC ports. Maybe developers and publishers should think more about the people who’ll be playing their games than the money they could make off of them. They need to seriously look and determine if their games should even be on every platform. If they can’t deliver an equivalent experience everywhere, then maybe a title should be exclusive to one system. It’s only a matter of time before we have another Mortal Kombat X or Batman: Arkham Knight on our hands.

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