» Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:02 pm
The XBox 360 version of Dawnguard being released first should be unsurprising. The reign of "PC-first" gaming is sadly....over, and has been some time now. Skyrim is a prime example of games being developed for the consoles FIRST....and then ported to PC. Bathesda realizes - like so many other game developers - that they need to put most of their money on the console market, first and foremost. Then, port it to the PC.........maybe.
Why? PC piracy, of course. This has been largely instrumental in crippling the developers' ability to make any money. Granted, the console is not 'piracy proof' but they're much more likely to recoup their investment money in developing a game for consoles first. And sometimes the only way anyone will ever get to play a particular game, is on a console. People who don't understand how the game development industry works, don't know that the investment to develop a particular game uses up money that they cannot recoup for literally years. They have to pay their artists, programmers and all the overhead operating costs during those years. They don't make ANY money on a particular game until it is released. So, like any other company who is trying to make money, they lose a lot of it due to piracy. There's been examples of games being so popular that people might think, "Oh, they're making billions on that game". Not so. The game was popular, but due to the pirates, they never actually SOLD very many actual game product. The pirates cracked the game, and had distributed it even before the game was released. While certainly not impossible, it's a lot more difficult to pirate console games, due to the hardware in the XBox, for example. Generally, the console has to be hardware-modified to accept the pirated games.
So, in a nutshell, if you're looking for a single place to put the blame for this kind of thing happening, then yes.....it's the pirates.