[pandaman]

> All it means, that most of those who use consoles don't want to play high end games.

It's actually opposite. Console audience (maybe with exception for Nintendo) wants to play high end games. This is why high end games sell much more on console SKUs. If by "high end" you mean AAA, of course.

[shmerl]

Well, if they really want high end games, they shell out for PCs and high end GPUs, because as you said, current consoles simply are behind. No API can work around that.

By high end I mean demanding, those which heavily load the GPU, and benefit from better ones.

So IMHO those who stick to current day consoles, are OK with not getting the max settings in demanding games. But why those who do want more, can't play their games using controller / sofa style gaming? I.e. I don't see an inherent relation between console style gaming and avoiding more expensive hardware.

[pandaman]

API works around just fine like I said. I cannot recall any recent (in the past 10 years) AAA games, which don't run on the consoles. PC exclusives have not been setting graphcis bar for a long while.

[shmerl]

> API works around just fine like I said. I cannot recall any recent (in the past 10 years) AAA games, which don't run on the consoles.

But they all run with reduced settings, and their non console versions offer higher quality on better hardware (if developers of course took care of taking advantage of that and make it all configurable).

So I'm really not sure how API can change the simple fact that current day consoles are underpowered in comparison with modern high end PC hardware.

[pandaman]

>with reduced settings

Not sure what you mean by this. MGS V, for example, runs with more effects on PS4 than on my PC with Geforce 980Ti (which alone costs as much as two PS4s btw). Anyways, this conversation is stupid. It's not a Console vs PC flamewar. Nobody forbids you from buying a $10K PC with colored lights everywhere and setting all the settings to 11. And if you think it's a good business, this being an entrepreneur site, you should starting making those and selling to others, driving stupid console developers out of business and laughing while doing so.

[pjmlp]

SteamMachines have proven how receptive the market is to such ideas.

[shmerl]

Steam Machines forced incumbents to start moving faster. Which actually highlights the point. There will be high end incumbent consoles.

[shmerl]

I haven't played it myself yet (waiting for Wine to support it on Linux), but I'm sure I've red somewhere, that The Witcher 3 uses reduced settings on consoles and you can't change them there. Developers explicitly recommended running the game on better hardware for those who want max graphics settings. It makes perfect sense to me. Developers use what the hardware allows.

[fsloth]

"Developers use what the hardware allows."

Nonsense. Developers use hardware as well as they understand within given project constraints.

Optimizing modern game engine to run fast is generally considered a non-trivial task. The more arbitrary the hardware platform, the harder it is to optimize.

Yes, if PC port had to target only a specific, known, hardware and software combination (say a specifiv i7 with gtx 1080) then they could probably optimize the shit out of it.

A console is a fixed, known target. Thus it takes much less resources to optimize for it - thus developers can reuse their understanding from project to project.

The AAA game scene is full of recent examples with crawling PC ports, such as Arkham Knight.