I’ve been trying a few PC games from Sega recently, and I’m feeling quite disappointed.
Phantasy Star Universe features a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 with no widescreen option, which should have been added given that the game was also ported to 360.
Condemned: Criminal Origins won’t even load after installing on my (brand new) PC under Windows XP and there’s no sign of any upcoming patches.
Does anyone else feel that Sega’s PC effort is less than satisfactory?
Sega’s efforts just suck, period. Ever since they became a third party, it’s like they don’t even care anymore, and it certainly shows. I, honestly, can’t name one good game Sega has made in the last five years. Then again, I can’t say I’ve played a really good game by anyone else in that time, either.
SEGA been on top from of late what with Virtual Tennis III (one of the best sports games ever), Football Manger 2007, VF 5 , and its up coming line up is the most soild in years and years .
Not sure about SEGA PC games other than Football manger , but to me SEGA Japan In-House games have always been a bit lacking onthe PC, The likes of Rally , Dragoon, VC were miles off thier Saturn counter parts . I do agree that the 360 and PC versions of PSU really wasn’t up to much. The game is nice, but little more effort could have been put into he ports, but I’m still thankful it came out onthe 360 inthe 1st place
Sega’s translation of Hundred Swords for the PC was good. That’s at least one thing they did right with a DC title that would have been left in limbo otherwise.
The last time I saw my bro he had Condemned running fine. This is was coded to be a PC game from the start anyway (it had both platforms in mind) so you shouldn’t have any issues.
I have mixed feelings on PSU. I really think it would have shined more if it wasn’t developed with the PS2 in mind first. Sega took the pure numbers route on that, which is fine, but it shows even with upgraded textures and better depth with more screen lines.
I think you’ll find most Japanese companies’ efforts in porting console titles to PC are more or less the same. Take the latest example of Resident Evil 4 from Capcom - C&VG review - and that’s quite a high profile title as well.
I guess none of them really bother with spending any real amount of resources for ports like these. Maybe that will change in the future… At least I hope so.
Wow, that is sloppy work. But maybe it would have been too much work to tweak the controls for the PC. 
Actually, porting from console to PC is always a tough thing to do. Look at ports for games even from US developers like Halo. Had plenty of issues. Now, games that are made concurrently have a much higher chance of being of comparable quality, of course…
As for Condemned, what’s your setup? The Condemned PC code is actually fairly stable, so it’s a bit surprising that you’re having issues.
But for Sega PC games, remember that the Total War series is now a Sega brand. Med 2 was completely developed under Sega’s supervision.
He spoke of ports though, and Sega PC handles those as well, or they should. Ending up with a solid, stable PC title after taking a previously PC-only developer under their wing in order to publish their next title which as a series also has a long history on PCs is hardly surprising, things would have to be pretty fucked up over there to end up with anything different.
Which is why if you don’t have the ability to create something internally, you acquire that talent, or you farm out the work.
But, to your point, Sega’s PC departments have always been overlooked. Which is the likely reason for the acquisitions of CA and SI at SOE. Rather than force fit console games onto PC that the PC crowd really isn’t looking for, get teams that understand the PC crowd and can deliver what they want.
Then why make any ports at all? If they’re going to do something, they should do it right. Not fuck it up like that only to later claim there’s no market for such titles on the PC. It is true in a sense but “such” would mean the quality level rather than the type of game.
Well, define “fucking it up.”
PSU - It’s a competent port of the console version. Is it super high quality? No, but it offers users access to the game that prefer to play on PC.
Condemned - This is actually a solid port to PC. Aside from Solo’s issue with the game, it has generally proven to be fairly solid and of at least decent quality.
Is doing a straight port considered “fucking it up”? That’s like saying a game released on Xbox that is later released on PS2 with no additional features is screwed up, when the purpose of that SKU is simply to bring the title to more gamers.
Or hell, even with simultaneous launches - do you complain that multiple releases on different consoles are identical? There is very little market on PC for console-style games. But it is still there.
To be honest, with the exception of Condemned, I think it’s less of an issue of the PC versions being barebones and more of an issue that the game quality of, say, PSU isn’t up to par (IMO - There are plenty of people who enjoy it, mind you, but it simply isn’t for me).
You build a platform exclusive game and fans who don’t have that platform complain. You build a multiplatform game and people complain about how you’re “building to the lowest common denominator.”
Condemned, as someone else said, was as much a PC title as a console title so it makes sense it came up better. It’s also not a SoJ title. Perhaps others didn’t make that distinction but I did.
The likes of PSU however are horrible in my opinion considering they don’t even bother properly adapting the controls to what PC users have available and at best they only offer gamepad support while at worst all they do is set the buttons on random keys and not even make any use of the mouse. Any kind port should, aside from being solid & stable, be properly adapted to the preffered control method on the system they are porting it to.
From console to console it’s easy because most gamepads are more or less the same (though the Wii changes that and it is obvious which companies are making an effort and which aren’t). With the PC however you simply CANNOT do that and consider it a good port in any way. As I said in a previous reply, it’s not only Sega that does that. Metal Gear Solid 2 on PC was just as bad. Resident Evil 4, a seemingly obvious PC-centric game which would have worked GREAT with the established FPS-like controls ended up as a complete mess that didn’t even use the mouse.
It really baffles the mind to see shoddy results like these, especially when the titles in question, while Japanese in origin, can have obvious western examples (bigger PC games market than in Japan which is why I “divide” them in regions) for the control types that should be adopted over gamepad or shoddy keyboard support, without saying they shouldn’t offer those options.
Your last paragraph is quite off topic.
Wasn’t really off topic, but just a semi-sarcastic side note.
As for PSU, it had similar issues across the board. The fact that (while less of a problem than the PC version) on the X360 version, the lock-on function was mapped to a shoulder button instead of a trigger was very annoying, as was the fact that the offline single-player mode doesn’t pause when you open the X360 HUD. In my opinion, it was just an overall uneven experience across all platforms, and not necessarily a “crappy port.”
Not saying that it can’t be done better. Far from it. However, it is issues like that that has likely caused SOA and SOE to look elsewhere for good PC content.
I thought control wise the 360 PSU port was ok and like I said the game was still nice enough. My problem was in the poor textures and the fact they was still slowdown inthe 360 version . I understand most of this was to do with the Lead platform holding the other version back, but when I see the effort and improvement that the likes of Travels Tales put in the Star wars Lego on the 360 , even thought the PS2 was the lead platform, I was disappointed,. I mean no effort was put in the to improve the self shadows on the 360 of PSU
Heh… Don’t get me started 
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86 GHz (note that this CPU runs a lot faster than a Pentium of the same clock speed)
2 GB DDR RAM
nVidia Geforce 8800 GTS
Windows XP Media Centre Edition & Windows Vista Business (the process becomes “Not Responding” after doing a fresh install and loading the game on both OSs)
My main gripes with the PC port of Phantasy Star Universe is that it’s not even up to the standard of the 360 version. No widescreen option or voice chat.
Just as well Microsoft now have the “Games for Windows” brand which will force publishers to retain a certain level of (technical) quality for PC games if they want to have this label. Every Games for Windows game must support 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10, run properly on 64 bit processors, and support the 360 controller (where applicable).
As long as the 360 controller compatibility doesn’t allow companies to pay even less attention to proper keyboard + mouse controls. That hardly addresses my main gripes with ports as developers have been content with making no effort whatsoever other than providing dodgy (or not dodgy) gamepad support in the past.
Microsoft endorsing that could (I think it will) simply make it worse instead of better. It’s called a 360 and not a PC controller for a reason. I think it’s ridiculous developers now have to support it or run the risk of people thinking it’s not 100% compatible with Windows because it lacks the “badge”. Who would chose that controller over a mouse to play a RTS with for example?
What happens if a given concept simply CAN’T work well with a gamepad? Will the developers have to compromise and change the whole design of the gameplay from day one because one of their goals will now be to offer 360 controller compatibility that is up to the standards Microsoft will want to enforce?
After writing this last paragraph I think it’s a really horrible concept. Maybe Microsoft should focus on realy promoting Games for Windows as they want to call it instead of attempting to use it as a vessel for added Xbox 360 support. I was ok with Live for Windows since it’s optional and not enforced on any developer (other than crossplatform PC-360 titles I guess) but the more I think about what you wrote the worse are the scenarios I can come up with.
I think it’s more a matter of console-style games being required to work with the 360 controller (and hopefully any other controller which uses the standard game controller “interface” in Windows Vista). It would be quite ridiculous if, like you said, MS forced all Games for Windows to work with the controller. I think this is unlikely though… who would really want to play a game like Sim City with a controller after all? (sorry, fans of the SNES/Saturn versions, I found it awful…)
For games like Phantasy Star Universe, I would rather the developers spent their time getting other parts of the game running well than redesigning the user interface to work decently with the keyboard and mouse. Especially when it was clearly designed with a controller in mind from the start. But that’s just me.
With Games for Windows we’re probably still going to end up with lots of half arsed ports, but its a step in right direction to up-ing the quality of PC games IMO.
I edited my previous post a bit before I saw your reply. Anyway, where can we get official information on that? You said if they want to have the Games for Windows badge they will have to do this and this etc. I didn’t see a distinction for ports or standard PC titles.
As for PSU-style games I’d rather they do some effort in all areas, including proper support for the PC controllers. If I wanted it on console, I’d get it on console. Price of Persia worked fine with keyboard + mouse as a third person action adventure with sword fighting elements that were even more demanding than PSU since that is an RPG and therefor simpler in regards to the action. Why can’t it work similarly then? Is it really so hard and time consuming to let the mouse control the camera and the mouse buttons to work for the basic actions as seen in countless third person titles?
If a game is really not a PC title, then don’t port it to PC at all rather than bring it in a way that it will only appeal to people who would rather get it on consoles on first place, and probably already have done so which is another reason ports so rarely sell well.
My source is Microsoft’s website: msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/librar … ection_1_4
Scroll down to the “Support the Xbox 360 Common Controller for Windows” which describes it in a reasonable level of detail.
My interpretation of this, is that any game which uses a controller (and therefore also uses the standard XInput API in Windows Vista) will be required to let gamers only use the controller and not have to touch the keyboard and mouse until they exit to the desktop. But if the game only uses the keyboard and mouse, this won’t be a requirement.