Orchestras and top-tier voice acting is triple-A?

Can't wait till they stop developing for PC altogether.

I don't care about Orchestras and top-tier voice acting as long as gameplay is there.

I do care about consolization in PC gaming. As long as you don't rape the game as Infinity Ward has done with MW2, I don't care that you release console versions. The more the merrier.

Please, go ahead. If you can make a better game for all platforms, why not do so? Just don't forget your roots.

If they don't consolifie the game and make it dumb like Ubi did with Rainbow Six, then I don't care...

BUT DON'T DARE YOU WRECK MY PC GAMING!!!

I am all about PC games, have not owed a consol since N64. The PC gives me the mouse and arrow keys the make my gaming play so much better.

Wow, that's a lot of vehemence people. He's just saying that he would rather work on a higher end project that where he can get the kind of flexibility that a higher budget can give. Not making cuts due to budget is a good thing for the overall product vision.
The PC market doesn't produce the kind of sales that would support that kind of budget. That's all he's saying.

“Consolization” is such an insipid, meaningless term employed by people delusional enough to believe that PC gaming occupies some higher tier of quality when in reality that has never been the case. Console gamers are just as dedicated and "hardcore" as any PC gamer and the FPS as a genre has seen tremendous growth on all fronts but some people insist on claiming that certain genres are being scaled down for consoles even when the evidence points to the contrary. I've done plenty of PC gaming and the biggest difference between the two, other than the delusions of grandeur that some PC elitists suffer from, is that certain types of games are better suited for the PC and vice versa. PC gaming has always been a viable and important part of this industry so it really is a damn shame to see so many enthusiasts of a great platform continuously whine because they feel marginalized in today’s market.

It's all well and good to expand to new markets.

The hard question is whether the technical constraints of consoles force most games to be simplified compared to the depth they could have had as PC-focused games.

At that point, that *does* constitute "leaving the PC market behind" because it's no longer supplying the kind of product desired by the people who prefer to game using PCs.

@ Hélder Gomes Filho
I totally agree. If games are dumbed down on consoles, it's because game developers are thinking that there is a need to try to make more casual oriented games, but it's a big misconception of the moment... at least the last few years.

Wanting to sell games on all platforms? Want to support PC communities? Then why the hell sell consolized games on the PC?
Their last one was a tragedy. No comm, no support, obvious nerfed console gameplay, and a net code which would have simply not passed if the game had been sold for PC only.
Even mods truly struggled to bring a semblance of PC style back into a game that had an incredible potential.

Perhaps they should really split the damage for once, and do both pure console shooters and less expensive PC shooters with a faithful hardcore gameplay. You know, everyone has been waiting for a new Wolf, and the last one seems to have failed.
Boy, I even reinstalled Quake 3 recently, and put back all the thousand of megas of custom maps I had and even new ones (http://lvlworld.com).
Why? Because the gameplay is unique and exclusive to the PC, you cannot play Quake 3 on a console, and it has never been bested in a decade! It is truly THAT amazing!

SD had no bucks for a proper PC and modding strategy, which is pretty much id's big mistake as well. Epic, for all their faults, have understood to place their efforts on the production of an all-in-one fluid edition tools package, and now their Unreal Engines are even used outside the game industry.
There is a huge demand for complete packages, and the duo id-SD failed there. Now id's been bought, because they had just too much of a garage mentality, without taking notice that community stuff was taking more and more time to produce, and that it required making the task much easier for the fans, not harder.

@ Bill Boggess
"[...] it really is a damn shame to see so many enthusiasts of a great platform continuously whine because they feel marginalized in today’s market."

I do not think this is the source of the complaints, and it's rather surprising that you miss what PC gamers understand by consolization when you have almost cited the core rules of this problem in your own reply.
It is merely asking for the understanding that a PC shooter isn't built like a console shooter, because it relies on a gameplay that perfectly suits the controls of the PC (mouse + keyboard) and is fully compatible with a dedicated modding community, putting the emphasis on said community which has to be taken care of in its very own way, to increase the game's lifespan.
Not to say that the FPS genre was given birth on the PC and is tailored for the PC. It is rather painful to feel that the Holy mouse has become a thumbstick transvestite. It is absolutely silly to pretend that you can make a FPS that plays exactly the same on consoles and PC, yet that's what studios pretended to be capable of doing. In reality, they had probably seen the PC as a burden and were just making a PC offshot for the sake of it, for some extra sales and that was all. Now they're probably going to be much more honest with everybody and themselves, and just make pure console shooters, and forget the PC altogether.
Mind you, despite what you think, this is an accurate analysis of the situation, and above all, it is nothing new. Years ago, PC gamers knew from the beginning what was going to happen since the day they heard that their games were ported to consoles. Some laughed hard, true, and others thought oh noes. Missing this critical fact is only explained by not looking at the issue properly, or not knowing what PC gaming is, despite claiming to do.

@Bill Boggess,

I'm with others that dumbing-down or "consolization" isn't delusional, and you even go on to point out that out later in your whine/rant when you contradict your previous comments with this; "is that certain types of games are better suited for the PC and vice versa."

That's exactly the problem, most PC derived games are not suited for a console and it's primarily because of their limited input. When a developer chooses to focus on a much slower input like a gamepad, which for the the most part is all-thumbs, there are compromises that must be made to a game that was originally designed for a M+K combo, which from a PC stand point usually means a slower and dumber AI, a gimped UI that behaves differently than practically every PC game prior, along with points made by others.

At least with a PC, one can generally choose the input that's best suited for the type of game, where as on a console, it's generally only one choice. But with most developers treating the PC version as a port, we've ended up with games that have tacked on mouse support -- this creates noticeable lag, or even worse the UI doesn't even support it -- or very little support for any input outside of a 360-controller or a mouse. This is a slap in the face, when PC games in the past supported most available inputs.

++++++++++++++++++++

Anyways, good luck to Splash Damage, as focusing on AAA titles seems to have been incompatible with staying in business these past few years.

Just to prove my point:

Rainbow Six series demanded mouse because you had to draw the waypoints of your characters on a planning stage... The first version that was native to console (and not a port), removed that... And changed the game genre totally (now it is a "normal shooter" while before you could even not even shoot, just watch the planned action).

Lost Planet on PC: Seriously, each robot has a diffrent control scheme, and the control schemes were presented to me with a F****ING STUPID PHOTO OF A 360 CONTROLLER!!! And I hate the 360 controller (I use a PS2 controller with USB on my PC \o/ And every time that I lose one I buy another PS2 one)

NFS series after underground (including): You travel the UI with... Z? X? Seriously, who use Z and X and backspace instead of Enter and ESC?

Assassins Creed for PC: Huh... the four actions are shaped like four gamepad buttons... But there are no similar shape on a keyboard (only "close" shapes). At least this one is not that problematic (it does not hamper gameplay, it only shows that the game was not for PC at first place).

GTA series for console: awfull to aim, even with the "auto-aim" button that sometimes make your character aim everywhere but where you really want (and in GTA San Andreas and Vice City results in your character shooting madly upward when you managed to aim behind you).

DMC 4 for PC: No marketing, I never heard of the game before capcom complained of piracy... (and I never played it too, dunno how the gameplay is).

Mass Effect for PC: Bizarre UI control scheme, the game is stupidly unbalanced (I killed the final boss with the pistol while playing engineer... in the first try... not losing even half of my HP... and I am a pretty bad FPS player, I am always the last place in Unreal Tournament, Quake or CS...)

Commander and Conquer for N64... This caused a trauma on me... how the gameplay is bad there... I made me think so bad of the series that I only returned to CC in Generals (in a borrowed copy... that some people would say that it is piracy...) and found that actually is a good series.

Pro Evolution Soccer on PC: well, I only see people playing that with PS2 controllers, seemly the game is awfull to be played on keyboard.

Sonic R for PC: Another game that you advanced and returned menus using "Z, A, F and other arbitrary keys"

And the list happily goes on...

I am not saying that is impossible to make a game that work both on PC and console (well, but the aiming that is awfull on console, GTA series is pretty cool on console for example). But companies need to understand that the two are separate markets, and separate platforms...

I still feel that console manufactuers are trying to trash PC, specially MS with their stupid "GFWL", DX updates that only create graphic demanding stuff that are not really better (seriously, if DX10 was that awesome, why half of Vista users still game on Steam using DX9, and Vista is a minority?), and they deprecated DirectInput (so some games force me to use a XBOX 360 controller... that I don't even own, so new games does not support my PS2 controller :( )

long live PC and its developers! (btw: I asked Romero if PC was dieing, and his awnser was: "Are you mad? Hell no!" and I agree with him \o/)

I must resist the urge to fire-up steam and play TF2 or Audiosurf, or R6 3 or Trackmania, or Osmos, or AI War, and return coding my PC platformer game...

Aw, GFWL, I keep having problems with that thing. Have you ever tried to modify an account, while fiddling with your related email account? Painful. Simply, painful... and expensive if you really want to push the modifications far.
Or even suppress one? Well, all I can say is good luck. Contact some service and waste your time with some distant anon in the Microsoft underpayed staff?
And that UI. A sort of dumbed down "MSN in ur gAmez".
Not to say that while it works in game, trying to launch GFWL from windows XP, with all the updates, tweaks and all that, is a true misery.

From what I have seen the biggest difference is the UI. Take a game like dragon age, both the console and PC version have UI that work. Then you have borderlands, NFS shift and a half a dozen others where they fudge the PC version on at the end and then wonder why the PC versions don't sell well.

The good or even the well hyped PC games do well. Good games sell, broken games stop selling once people find out they have issues. The other thing is a single console game that makes as much money as mmo or free to play games? Zynga much make stagger amounts of money and Blizzard's wow make staggering amounts of money, especially in light that the game is five years old!

There is a definite and regrettable dumbing down of games due to the so-called "consolization". However, the PC gamer is every day sounding more and more like the Cowboy criticizing the car. Consoles are progress, of a sort. Without the wide attachment rates of consoles, the amount of content available to you would be considerably less.

That being said, I see a pendulum swinging. Consoles will become more and more sophisticated and this gradual process will create more sophisticated games and gamers.

All of these PC arguments belie the fact that this is a business. And business will do what they do best, make money by providing a product to the largest audience possible.

"Where there is no solution, there is no problem".