[SCdF]

Initially I was excited for Ouya. Not because I was ever going to own one (console/tv gaming sucks for my lifestyle) but because it would mean there would be better games on Android.

Except now I'm not so sure.

Making a game work on a touchscreen 30cm from your face is a completely different proposition from making a game on a controller 4m in front of your face. It's nice that the underlying OS is the same, but it's not that nice.

It's not a case of just adding controller support-- your entire game changes. Fruit Ninja works on touchscreens, it doesn't work on controller. Street Fighter works on controllers, it doesn't work on touch screens. And FPS works well on neither (go go mouse + keyboard).

It's not just the controller either: playing games on a couch in your living room has different motivations to playing a game on a smartphone. Shallow 'toilet games' make sense on smartphones, they do not make sense on consoles. Deep 1hr+ strategy games, or games with consistent network access etc, make sense on consoles, they don't make sense on phones.

So I think one of two things will happen: games will either heavily target one platform or the other, and have either no support or horrible crippled support for other control schemes and mechanics, or games will genericise to the point where your controls and 'motive' is less important.

I'm not a big fan of either result.

Note: Console vs. PC is a good case study. They've had years to get this right, and there are still lots of horrible console ports. I'm not talking about bugs or graphic quality here either, but stuff like the controls on PC being awful, the UI being targeted toward consoles (Play Skyrim of Oblivion to see what I mean), hilarious console-focused messages about not turning off my computer while the game is saving, etc. If Bethesda can't spend the money getting two UIs right I can't imagine an indie dev being able to.

[chucknelson]

"And FPS works well on neither (go go mouse + keyboard)."

Crazy sales and millions of console FPS players would disagree. I think playing an FPS on a controller is "normal" and just fine as of the current generation of consoles. Of course there will be edge cases, too (quake 3, CS, etc.).

[SCdF]

Yeah, I considered leaving that example out ;-)

So FPS games have changed dramatically to work on consoles. They are often third person, and it gives you a better sense of space on a display so far away. They have become 'slower' and the fighting has become mostly horizontal and far less vertical, because controllers just aren't as good as a mouse in terms of aiming. The games tend to have lots of 'shooting' gallery style situations since it's harder to both move and shoot. The whole chest-high wall thing is another by-product, as is auto-aim.

I'm not saying you can't play FPS: you definitely can, but a mouse fits better. I find console FPS / TPS games are easier on PC because the mouse aiming is just so much easier.

I can't think of a way of phrasing this in a way that doesn't sound like "my dad could beat up your dad", so I'll simply say it and hope for the best: I'd wager than an average FPS player on a mouse + keyboard would be 'better' than a good FPS player using a controller, due simply to mouse superiority.

(I haven't played a console FPS in a couple of years though, perhaps things have changed)

[pacmon]

It's clear you haven't played FPS on console in years. Neither had I. I've always been a person who believed a PC was a must for FPS. Then my friend decided he was going to get Battlefield 3 on 360 not PC, so I did the same(with great hesitation about how I would do). It turns out - it's not so bad. I crank the rotation sensitivity way up, turn off auto-aim (frankly, it makes things worse) and I do well enough. I will, however, agree that aiming with mouse/keyboard would still be better & faster (at least for me). Battlefield is also a real FPS it's not third person like Gears of War. Luckily console and pc players don't play on the same servers, so the issue of having a leg-up on PC is moot.

[timee]

It's fairly clear when games are designed for console first or for PC first. For example, Battlefield 3 on the console didn't have some of the fundamentals of a AAA first person shooter title, such as making sure it runs at 60 frames a second. Details like those were reflected in their Metacritic score, where the PC version stood significantly above its console counterparts.

Ironically, Battlefield 3 has sold roughly 2M PC copies, 6M Xbox copies, and 5M PS3 copies. [1,2,3] It was numbers like these that caused most of the game franchises to switch to console if they weren't already focused on them. A lot started out being PC-focused such as Ghost Recon, Call of Duty, Splinter Cell and The Elder Scrolls come to mind, but all of their latest franchise titles are heavily designed as console games first.

I would argue that first person shooters are a dying genre on PCs through just looking from the competitive scene with gaming. While there is still may be a lasting Counter Strike scene, the focus has gone to the latest Halo or Call of Duty being played on a console for competitive FPSs.

It just happens to be that some game genres really don't work well on the console no matter how hard you try. Halo Wars was well done as a console designed RTS, but just doesn't have the same depth as its PC counterparts such as Starcraft or Warcraft due to the restrictions on the interface and controls.

Even if you do manage to design for the platform, a lot of games just don't work.

[1] http://www.vgchartz.com/game/35315/battlefield-3/ [2] http://www.vgchartz.com/game/40231/battlefield-3/ [3] http://www.vgchartz.com/game/40230/battlefield-3/

[liquid_x]

Ah, but there you see, for fps with a controller to work you need a lot of assisted aiming and a slower pace.

Microsoft tried cross platform halo but it didn't work that well: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/rumor_microsoft_killed...

[slantyyz]

>> Street Fighter works on controllers, it doesn't work on touch screens.

I dunno about that. I've got SFIV Volt, SF II and King of Fighters on iOS, and they're not nearly as bad as I thought they would be. I normally use a fighting stick over a pad on consoles, but I definitely prefer the touchscreen over a game pad.

Sure you don't get the purist's 6 button controls, but then again, you don't on some of the other handheld versions either (SFA3 on Game Boy Color comes to mind).