I'm getting conflicted reports from different people, so I'm confused: is it a bug, or was it designed that way?

It could be both.

Are you referring to being unable to directly click on items in some menus / inventory screens?

It's a "porting error" from the console selection version which has no pointing device, so they have to scroll through all the menus.

Evidently there were bitter complaints from consoles about the menus / inventory (not without cause) in Oblivion, so now PCs have to get the limited console interface?

Seriously, SERIOUSLY needs a complete UI overhaul.

Is that their official reason for the way the UI is now?

80% of all copies sold will be console versions of Skyrim. Now try to guess which audience gets the bigger attention...

Money makes the world go round - and keeps gamedeveloper jobs.

My mouse scrolls wonderfully fine/normal in the inventory/looting menus, and I can click on the text too, which sounds like a good thing, but ... then in the system/quest etc. menus it has some input lag that seems to go up & down in severity from barely noticable to a few seconds. Which means I don't often like going into those menus. Quest list? What quest list... hehe

I'm guessing mouse input lag/no clicking is a bug....the poor (for pc's) UI design, however...was on purpose.

Have sales figures already, do you? ... yea, I do agree console sales will be the majority, because of two consoles vs. 1 PC, so to speak, but not sure quite as high as 80%. Steam sales are supposedly not counted (yet) and there's a lot of those, so it wouldn't shock me if PC's actually were somewhat close to 1/3 of total sales (if you could count digital downloads on top of retail boxes).

But we get the editor and mods, .ini tweaks and console commands. Giant sandbox. So I'm content enough.

When the game is released, the console versions seem better due to "Design for Them".


But after mods, .ini tweaks, etc. the PC version seems better. Is that how this usually works (I wasn't here for the OB release)?

Yes, the PC port usually has that capability. Unfortunately, that doesn't excuse a poor porting job. And second, Todd Howard has stated that they're looking into ways of making PC mods available to console gamers more fluidly. I think that might actually kill PC sales to the point where it just wouldn't be profitable anymore. Why play a poorly ported PC game when you can play on the Xbox like the designer originally intended, and still get the mods that the PC port is cherished for?

Especially when the console is cheaper. If they figure out a way to bring mods to a console, I will never buy a PC port of Bethesda's games again, and just stick with the console versions because the PC version just feels too hand-me-down for a 60 dollar game.