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There is no doubt pc's are much more powerful than consoles. Why do Consoles always have the best looking games?

RoboFu

One of the green rats
AAA Console games have very high budgets because they have very higher returns. Thats its plain and simple.
 
Because PCs vary drastically in quality while consoles have standard hardware. You can take two people who play on PC and one will have one that can run even the most demanding games at 60 FPS while the other has one that struggles to run a game like RDR2 or HZD at 30 FPS. If two people own a PS5 both of them have a console with the same capabilities.
Came here to say this. Devs know exactly how they can leverage the hardware perfectly since it's the same in everyone's home.
 
I don't know what OP be smoking but the moment the best looking console game come to PC it look better running on the PC lol Example Horizon Zero Dawn lol also Red Dead 2 and it goes for like all other console games that are ported to the PC.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
It's typical for the best and brightest games to be played or made on a console. Going back to the HD era of games this remains true with graphic king games. Gears of War, Uncharted 4, Read Dead Redemption 2, The Last of Us 2, and Ratchet and Clank a rift apart wipes it's ass when any game out period. Despite these high end pc's having graphics cards that can cost as much as 3x as much as a Playstation 5 the math doesn't add up. Sure on pc you can play at 300fps with much higher resolutions but I can't really think of a pc game that was a real graphics king since Crysis. In short? Why aren't these pc's blowing console games out of the water while costing 4x or more as much?
GPUs dont make games. Developers make games. And developers simply cannot afford to lose out on the 150 million console user bases.

What you need is Nvidia to step the fuck up and use their billions on creating some internal studios who develop games for their latest and greatest GPUs. Give PC gamers something to be proud of a la Crysis and Half Life 2. With valve now essentially a glorified retailer, and Crytek as irrelevant as they have ever been, the onus is on the people who charge exuberant amounts for graphics cards to show what these cards can do.

Nvidia's stock is over $800 right now. Their profit margins are insane. They clearly dont give two shits about PC gaming.
 

bad guy

as bad as Danny Zuko in gym knickers
Gamepad players tend to want a cinematic experience. KB&M players tend to need at least 60fps because gameplay demands it.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
There is no “first party” developers on PC and most PC developers don’t have the luxury of Sony or Nintendo funding their project.

Again this has less to do with consoles having “better” looking games and more do PC just being are much more open system.
 
I think PC is more about variety and innovation than graphics. The most popular games on PC aren't usually visually impressive.
But any console game would look and run better on a high end PC. The definitive versions of HZD, days gone, death stranding, red dead redemption 2 are on PC.
 

nkarafo

Member
Another problem with PC games nowadays is that you don't get "AAA" games anymore that target the PC platform.

Remember Doom? the Quake series? Halflife? DOOM 3? Far Cry 1?

These games were much better on PCs because it was the target platform.
 
Well, the way they look isn't irrelevant, since the topic of this thread is 'why do consoles always have the best looking games'.

If you wanted to have a thread about which games have the most impressive physics engines or raytraced lighting, you should definitely start one - I'll be right with you praising Minecraft RTX or Teardown.

This thread is about which games are the best looking. Pretending that you don't know what that means is silly.
Valid criticism; I meant the way they look to you.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
PCs range from high to low spec and games for them have to be scalable. No one can make a PC game that just supports the top end.

Some games are better at that scaling than others. Certainly many multiplatform games do look best on a high end PC. But that's different than something that is strictly made to leverage only that platform.
 

NahaNago

Member
Because you can get a lot more money for a good looking game on console versus on pc so the budget for pc games are usually smaller. You also have the developers who are pretty much trained to squeeze out everything possible to make a console game to look good. You probably have like one AAA like pc only game right now and that is star citizen.
 

Haggard

Banned
That's overstating things heavily. A game does not need to account for every possible component in a PC. Most of the hardware variations in PC are handled by the operating system. The minimum requirements of the game is set with CPU, RAM and GPU. There are not anything close to "infinite permutations" there and much of it is abstracted away in DirectX.
That's oversimplifying things heavily
 

Topher

Gold Member
That's oversimplifying things heavily

Meaning Go On GIF
 

jeffyjaixx

Member
Consoles have only 1-3 max specs to deal with throughout a console gen. Developers can optimize way better because of this and develop more to the metal.

PC's have a huge dynamic range from its low end to high end specs so the developers will always develop for the lowest spec, which is why you see minimum recommended and recommended are usually low to mid-end PC specs. The high end PC's will use its brute force to further increase the FPS but that's pretty much it.
 

Rivet

Member
It's typical for the best and brightest games to be played or made on a console. Going back to the HD era of games this remains true with graphic king games. Gears of War, Uncharted 4, Read Dead Redemption 2, The Last of Us 2, and Ratchet and Clank a rift apart wipes it's ass when any game out period. Despite these high end pc's having graphics cards that can cost as much as 3x as much as a Playstation 5 the math doesn't add up. Sure on pc you can play at 300fps with much higher resolutions but I can't really think of a pc game that was a real graphics king since Crysis. In short? Why aren't these pc's blowing console games out of the water while costing 4x or more as much?

1) Because biggest console exclusives mostly have higher budget. More money, more time, more talent (better artists and so on). It's a lot more important than "flops".

2) It's a lot easier to make a game for a single platform, you can optimize a lot better

3) Consoles have special optimizations you can't have on PC (special dedicated I/O hardware on PS5, custom geometry engine, variable frequency clock, things like that...). PC aren't actually "much more powerful" because of those. Being "powerful" doesn't mean much by the way, machines are generally better at some tasks and worse at others. If you have a bottleneck somewhere, having more flops on the GPU won't help you much. Hence the numerous shitty PC ports.
 
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FStubbs

Member
1) Because biggest console exclusives mostly have higher budget. More money, more time, more talent (better artists and so on). It's a lot more important than "flops".

2) It's a lot easier to make a game for a single platform, you can optimize a lot better

3) Consoles have special optimizations you can't have on PC (special dedicated I/O hardware on PS5, custom geometry engine, variable frequency clock, things like that...). PC aren't actually "much more powerful" because of those. Being "powerful" doesn't mean much by the way, machines are generally better at some tasks and worse at others. If you have a bottleneck somewhere, having more flops on the GPU won't help you much. Hence the numerous shitty PC ports.
I'd wager the number of gaming PCs out there more powerful than the Series X or PS5 is very small. And gaming PCs are a small percentage of the total PC market. Most PCs out there have integrated graphics.

That being said - as far as #2 goes, again there aren't that many configurations for PC anymore. Pick a CPU, Intel or AMD? Okay, now for your graphics. Intel, AMD, or nVIDIA? (Sony and MS go with AMD for both). Abstract this behind Direct X. Done.
 
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small_law

Member
Consoles will always enjoy certain advantages over PCs, some of which are standardization and optimization. This is particularly true for first party developers who, in the absence of cross-generation releases, have exactly one hardware spec to target. It's not that a PC couldn't run something like ratchet & clank, but accounting for different CPUs, GPUs, OS versions, driver versions, monitor capabilities, etc. has to be a waking nightmare.
 

Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
On PC you have to develop for a lot of different hardware configurations, on console you got one, maybe two. And they're very similar at that.

If you really think optimization plays no role, then how is it that you have several generations of software for a single console, with no additional hardware participation? You think there are different tiers of processing power that can be unlocked via software, every few months?

The games look better because they get further and further optimized.
 
S

SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member

Why do Consoles always have the best looking games?​


They do?

I don't man, Battlefield was leagues better on PC and is legit very impressive in terms of graphics and tech.

Flight Simulator is one of the best-looking and most technically prolific games ever.
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
You are making this way too complicated. You are clearly over thinking this and going off topic.
My point has been real simple, best looking games follow production values, ie. $$$.
PC isn't a platform that attracts that at the scale consoles do, thus it gets virtually no titles like that. FS2020 is basically the exception confirming the rule (getting the budget due to other mitigating circumstances that most projects won't).

Now I suppose, considering that FS2020 is actually on its way to console, my answer bears no weight and that is something I have considered since posting my original reply. However the best way to play FS is still on PC.
Yea I'd still say FS is 'built for PC' - everything from clunky UX to hardcore non-game focus runs counter to typical interests of console audiences, and I don't see it being limited by the console ports (I expect the opposite, if anything).
 

theclaw135

Banned
Holy shit, did anyone see Crysis pop up and tell TC "No, fuck you" after the HD era games?!

It ended the race for better graphics. There are no games universally accepted to feature across-the-board superior visuals, when compared apples to apples to the original, unpatched vanilla Crysis.
 

Kenpachii

Member
I don't know what you're on about. But you'll never build a PC that outperforms a PS5 for the same or less cost. Even with all your weird arbitrary requirements like 5 years of online and a second controller. You can barely get a comparable GPU for the cost.

I spend plenty of time playing games on PC, almost exclusively even. You know how many times over the last decade there's been some SK or Chinese company that's supposedly going to make the next big MMO? You know how many times the game has turned out good? Never. Both those games you posted look awful. I agree that Blizzard is a corpse of itself, doesn't mean I'm going to get myself hyped for a game from Pearl Abyss. BDO was a subpar game at best by all accounts, I don't know why that would give the company weight. If anything they've proven to not be a very good developer so I couldn't care less about some shiny trailers. Not sure who these people are that call them the next Blizzard but they seem like idiots.

Never saw so much diarrhea posted in one post.

From i can't find 800 dollar gpu's to everything is shit, even when it makes bank and is massively successful in its space, its still shit because i said its shit oke, and with that conclusion asia is shit ( they only specialize big time in online multiplayer games like mmo but hey )no its shit oke.

Dat logic.
 
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99Luffy

Banned
A good example is Witcher 3. The first trailer versus what we got is basically because the consoles couldn’t run that version of the game so they kind downgraded it and it affected the PC version.
I think this has been exposed to not be true. Supposedly the Witcher trailer ran on a GTX 780, a $500 card(especially in 2013)
Have you seen a 780 try and run HZD? 1080p 30fps low-medium.

The original trailer was bullshot, nothing more. Consoles werent holding the game back, Non Titan owning peasants were.
 
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Because games are almost always developed to first and foremost run on the consoles even if they are primarily developed on PC.

Result is, you can’t get away from certain aesthetics the console version has without massive modding.

A good example is Witcher 3. The first trailer versus what we got is basically because the consoles couldn’t run that version of the game so they kind downgraded it and it affected the PC version.

Star Citizen on the other hand is developed exclusively for the PC and looked excellent dating back to last gen.

I think a better take would be it was scaled back so it could run on 95% of gamer pcs and not the maybe 5% that could run that version of the game in 2015
 

MrA

Banned
They do?

I don't man, Battlefield was leagues better on PC and is legit very impressive in terms of graphics and tech.

Flight Simulator is one of the best-looking and most technically prolific games ever.
yeah seriously pcs usually have nearly the best-looking console games, but with the option to crank all the visuals up to 11, well if you have a good enough pc.
basically arcades looked best until the late 90s, then pcs took it away, well at least for 3d games, basically battlefield (just as an example) is always one of the best-looking console games when it comes out, but on the pc cranking everything up to ultra on a pc that could handle it would fly past anything on the contemporary consoles.
 

zkorejo

Member
Simply because if they waste time, resources and money to invest in a game that only high end pcs can run, they won't probably even break even, let alone make a profit.
 

Fare thee well

Neophyte
I think there is so much variety on the pc, it's hard to make this claim in the general sense. Some people can max out and mod shit to the likes few can enjoy or imagine. Other games on the pc are indeed glitchier or have a midbaked sense of polish. My personal reason for favoring pc though has to be the inclusion of certain strategy games and rts games you just couldnt ever enjoy properly on a console. Or maybe you are a simpit gamer and got a huge setup for microsoft flight simulator. I tend to not think of consoles or pc as better, just different. It's honestly why I work hard to afford both, haha.
 
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Akuji

Member
Game Budget and Talent in the developer Team are way more Importen then the Hardware your Rundung the game at. Had expierienced that on my ps4 pro already. Was rocking a 3900x 33gb RAM and a 2080ti full Custom watercooling because i love tech and building a beastly rig is more fun the playing with it anyway.

God of War 2018 Came along and slapped everything i Played on pc in the Face. Same with horizon before. But my rig atleast enabled me to run pubg decently in 4k. Upgraded to a 3080 just because and still havent played anything Look as good as demon souls or ratchet on my pc. Love Astro playroom. The game with out dualsense would be boring as fuck to me. But with dualsense? Love it. Endfight also is really nice glad i started it first when i got my ps5.

So yeah consoles were weak while ps5 and xsx are powerfull boxes for their price and size. The big exklusives will continue to bring the best graphics because of the ridiciouless amount of time and Talent needed to build such worlds and Animations. Not because of 50÷ more powerfull Hardware.
 

Armorian

Banned
Cyberpunk on PC is graphics king right now though.

(Screenshots with missing textures and t-posing characters from the PS4 version doesn't change that, if anything it proves a point)

Yes, CP is game that can be almost count as "PC exclusive", devs focused on making the best looking game at the point of release and they delivered: no downgraded compared to 2018 trailer. But... console versions sucked ass because of it so i think this is the last game made this way for a long time :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 

Romulus

Member
Because the days are mostly gone when PC devs would target the highest end machines. Everything is a shotgun approach for various hardware along with consoles. So, not only do consoles get nearly every game that's on PC, they keep them from looking next level too. Good times.
 

Esppiral

Member
Pc games have to be made with a wide range of configurations in mind, once a new console generation arrives the minimum bar gets raised.
 
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