this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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On the one hand, this is bullshit. A 14 y/o game shouldn’t cost more than its successor. On the other hand, I remember reading, the reason for RDR having never been released for pc (until now) was that the version of the RAGE engine they used was based on the one from GTA IV but severely modified with features that were originally meant for the version of the engine that would ultimately power GTA V. Those modifications apparently weren’t documented particularly well, making it unprofitably difficult to port to PC at the time. So my guess is, that the steep price isn’t just corporate greed but to some extent actually for a lot of work making sense of a 14 year old frankenstein monster of an engine and getting it to work well on modern architectures.
And it's the gamers problem that rockstar is shit at documenting their own engine? It's not like they used someone else's engine that went out of business, it was their own code.
Just makes me have even less faith in the near non existing faith I have in this company
It‘s the gamers' problem that they complain but then buy it anyways for that price instead of waiting until the game is on sale. Rockstar has no reason not to charge full price, as long as some idiot pays it. All I‘m saying is, that greed isn’t the only reason for the price, if that interview I read was to be believed.
If they only released RDR on PS3, this explanation might make sense as the engine would be heavily optimised for PS3. But they also released on Xbox 360, which is the closest console platform to Windows in terms of architecture. It wouldn't have been that expensive to port.
I think there must be a degree of truth to the spaghetti code backstory, otherwise Rockstar would've just ported it already and raked in the cash
The one thing that could cause serious porting pain would be the need to support high/variable frame rates. That could require a whole bunch of code to be refactored.
To windows, sure. But the 360 and PS3 have PowerPC processors while PCs and modern consoles have a very different architecture (x86). And porting to that is more effort.
That applies to all ports from PS3 then, doesn't it?
Of course. But usually you’re not porting 14 y/o spaghetti code
You're right in the first half. I don't see why anyone should pay more for inefficient work. I don't want to go to the mechanic who drags his feet and bills me for an extra 2 hours of work that wasn't necessary.
Oh absolutely. Anyone who wants it should wait for a sale at the very least. You‘ve waited 14 years, you can wait a few more months.