Studios that consoles destroyed

List the game studios/franchises ruined when studios tried to cater for the console audience , dumbed down the games, neglected their established audience that resulted in their total collapse after which they were never the same.

Some from the top of my head that were destroyed in last gen:

1. Crytek with Crysis 2

2. Monolith Productions with Fear 2

3. Pyro Studios with Commandos Strike Force

4. Remedy with Alan Wake/Quantum Break

Well, PC gamers kept pirating their games. Can't blame them. There's a reason why PC gaming is only early access and kickstarter games now.

Developers moved to consoles.

It's all good.

Don't know if Consoles were behind the problem but these games were inferior and/or dumbed down compared to previous games after going multiplat:

• Thief: Deadly Shadows (Still great)- Looking Glass Studios > Ion Storm
• Thief 2014- Eidos Montreal
• Deus Ex: Invisible War- Ion Storm
• Crysis 2- Crytek
• Far Cry 2- Crytek > Ubisoft
• Commandos: Strike Force- Pyro Studios
• FEAR 2- Monolith Productions
• Syndicate- Bullfrog Productions > Starbreez Studios
• Divinity 2- Larian Studios
• Mafia 2- Illusion Software > 2k Czech
• Supreme Commander 2- Gas Powered Games
• Doom 3- id Software
• Unreal Tournament 3- Epic Games
• Max Payne 3- Remedy Entertainment > Rockstar Games
• Rainbow Six series- Ubisoft
• Ghost Recon series- Ubisoft
• The Elders Scrolls series- Bathesda
• Broken Sword 3- Revolution Software

But Denuvo got rid of piracy. :P

It comes to no surprise that the list in the OP are all games that were ruined by M$ and lemmings. Why must our Sony have to carry the gaming industry on their back? It's not fair but you never hear our Sony complain about it, I'm so proud of them.

Agreed

Can add Bioware to that, if it weren't for consoles technical limitations we'd have graphics like the one shown in the Mass Effect 2 Cinematic trailer. Miranda would have looked 100x hotter.

Crytek by far. first crysis was one of the greatest FPS ever made. then suddenly console happen and turn it into mediocre shooter. then crytek got bankrupt. and now they are making F2P games.

Gamespot gets st00pider by the day

@Cloud_imperium:

That list right on the money.

I really do not get the partisan fanboy-bashing/blaming on this forum. Some people here are taking the other side too personally.

@onesiphorus: I agree one hundred percent but someone will be along shortly to tell you this is system wars and you are supposed to act like a moron. Keep system wars stupid they chant.

I ain't gonna put the blame on consoles , these studios brought it all on themselves

All I know is starbreeze makes good shooters, i'll have to play this.

Before consoles happened all the studios I listed were on their prime delivering epic masterpiece after another.

Indeed.

It's like blaming CoD (a series I dislike) for ruining the FPS genre.

I didn't know consoles had a mind of their own and could develop games. I could have sworn the ones responsible for ruining games were developers.

While some games have been made worse by console technical and control limitations.... indeed, the big problem was for a good 5 years (you could see it here on System Wars) where publishers and console peasants alike were spinning a picture of "PC Piracy" that actually influenced studios into thinking "there is more money in consoles" just because of some trademark games on consoles do so well.

Not realising that a MASSIVE portion of piracy numbers were people that A) couldn't afford, B) Never would of purchased C) Trying to see if they were worth it. ... so sales loss was actually less, fast forward to 2016 and finally developers are realising a game profits on its quality and the service it delivers.... and PC platform is still the most profitable outside of certain rehashed boring big franchises.

Look how fast Star Wars Battlefront tanked on PC? why? because beyond its (great) graphics, and its heavy franchise marketing .. the core of the game was utter dog-shit ... not designed for pc, no standard pc features. just s*itty gunplay with 1st/3rd person mix (why the hell would anyone use first person?... with cheater corner peaking 3rd person morons... stupid decision to keep 3rd person view imo... BAD DICE) terrible aerial combat etc....

Console gamers are easy to market too, so upfront sales over simplistic popular titles are higher... but Indie/AA/Kickstarter/AAA free2play/MMOs/AAA mouse/keybaord genres do far better on PC .... a bigger market.... despite peasant opinions,

But yes, some of it is down to developers following the pie. World of Warcraft technically "ruined" the mmo genre, because you don't see anything other than WoW clones now... and it forever cemented the "Max level then the end game starts" mentality.

Are people really so stupid to believe developers make worse games because they're made on consoles? Oh SW you never cease to amaze me with your stupidity. Hey OP you realize Alan Wake was an awesome game right? You also realize F.E.A.R 1 came out on the 360 and played great?

+1

Seriously man, I've stated the exact same thing so many times that at this point I just completely ignore comments like that.

Totally agree with you and I was one of those fools in 2008-09 era who actually thought that PC Gaming is dying (teh piracy) because media couldn't stop shoving that bullshit down our throats.

But my opinion changed with each passing year and now when I look back, I laugh at my stupidity. Can't believe some people still think like that. And it's ironic considering it's Consoles that are loosing exclusives left and right and only get handful of worthy exclusives.

PC pirates never kill studios...

Hermit logic.

Has nothing to do with consoles vs PC. Those devs simply lost their talented people to other studios/projects.

Nobody put a gun to anyone's head and made people develop for console. If anyone got 'ruined' they did it to themselves.

Maybe if PC gamers stopped stealing games off the net and lost this 'I'll wait till it's five dollars in a Steam sale' mentality, the PC would have got more exclusives.

Many PC gamers are their own worst enemy and have forced developers to other platforms where they can actually make money.

Consoles don't destroy anything.

Studios collapse under the weight of bad management.

...was about to write something just like this....

what a load of horseshit

The truth hurts.

Had nothing to do with the machines. Had everything to do with how those games were designed, and last I checked that falls on the devs. If they are too stupid to know how to design a game that works within the limitations they put themselves in (the consoles limited horse power for instance) that's on them. It's not a shocker that a once good dev had a game that was maybe not that pretty but had bitchin gameplay, went on to have sequels or successors for that studio that focused on that studio's presentation skills and what not. So that's mother fucking 1, way too many studios forgetting what actually made their initial games good (the fucking gameplay) and focusing on things they actually aren't all that good at (telling a story) or something more shallow (look at how pretty our game is)

Yes the consoles have limitations, yes the consoles have a bigger mass market audience, which is fucking necessary for a triple A game in this era (why PC plebs have never accepted that a triple A PC exclusive, just isn't easily justified, is beyond me, but it is what it is), and yes certain games are made a certain way because it's popular on a console. But did you notice that none of Call of Duty's many imitations are actually all that successful? Because the most popular FPS games on consoles would be what?

-Call of Duty
-Battlefield
-Overwatch
-Destiny

None of those games play the same. You can argue the quality all you want, but the thing that sells them, probably has as much to do with what unique thing those games offer on the gameplay front versus their direct competitors. Yeah marketing is huge, but no one is wanting to play knock off Call of Duty, they'll pay the 60 bucks for the real thing. So all those devs that chased a formulaic thing because "that's what sells" got thoroughly fucking exposed.

Otherwise yeah streamlining can be irritating, crazy thing though Human Revolution and Manking Divided is a pretty streamlined take on Deus Ex, I'd personally argue it definitely doesn't match the depth of Deus Ex (at least Human Revolution), still a damn good game to a lot of people. Rainbow Six Siege is a perfect example of a game that's been streamlined to work on a pad, but plays brilliantly and stacks up favorably to any tactical shooter. It's one of the better playing games this gen.

Too long; didn't read - a bunch of devs put too much stock in aspects of their game that weren't as important as the gameplay, and they got burned for it by focusing all their time and money on that shit, instead of making the best possible game they could have with the weaker hardware.

Agree with most of those. Also: Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Operation Flashpoint (Dragon Rising/Red River),

It's funny people use piracy as the excuse for a developers greed for those COD sales; yet they forget that before console centric development made them bankrupt or destroyed their franchises the devs of said games were making enough money from PC sales to be able to afford producing these crappy multi platform sequels.

Yep truth hurts ignorants >> http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-piracy-survey-results-35-percent-of-pc-gamers-pirate/

PC Plebs are semi-correct in saying that piracy can't be the only issue, and steam sales can't be the only issue, and yeah some of it came down to a lot of shitty PC ports, poor optimization, and all that jazz. But, they are also a bit on crack for acting like piracy had no impact on the PC market. Piracy was a much bigger deal, and the strawman of "you can't prove that every pirate who pirates would have bought the game anyway" is wank, because it ignores the basic counter of there is no fucking proof that they wouldn't have bought the game either if piracy wasn't an option for them. Any percentage of the pirates being people who would have bought the game otherwise, is pretty fucking significant. And it's poor business to just accept it as is.

As far as steam sales, on one hand yes, it's pro-consumer as **** and it's a blessing. The one con, and it's a fair con to bring up from a dev perspective, is that it's more or less devalued a lot of ips and games. Which is its own discussion, personally the Triple A space has never learned that not every triple A game benefits from being 60 bucks, and would do itself a favor if it launched cheaper to begin with.

PC gamers killed Crysis after Crysis 2 by refusing to play it because Crytek didn't pander to them. They spent months before and after it released telling gamers not to play it and to boycott it, that's entirely on the PC gaming community. And the sad bit is that Crysis 2 was far more fun than the original game ever was.

FEAR 2 was actually pretty good too, another instance where the PC gaming community snubs another series for not pandering to them. Far better than the original in its story, setting, level design. Much better paranormal sections than the first game easy.

starting to see a theme here

what do you mean? PC gets all the good games but unsharted 4 and the last of us. We even get all the xbox exclusives now and we can play it with much better resolution and framerate.

Source ?

Couldn't disagree more. Piracy is not a problem. As gabe newell said ''PC gamers are willing to pay a lot of money for a good product''

Yep, if Gabe Newell said it, it must be true and refutes the idea of piracy entirely.

He's the ceo of steam, the biggest game platform in the world. I think he knows what he's talking about. Piracy is not an issue. If a game is good, PC gamers will pay for it.

Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk You could learn a lot

Yikes, studios destroy themselves. Just use some common sense since if they make a great product and the ROI is great than none of them would be destroyed.

The PC market has definitely been branded as unprofitable since right around the time that focus shifted to universalising development for multiplatform release. Declining PC sales could have been interpreted as the result of trying to sell sofa and thumbstick games to desk and mouse players, but publishers had the pie charts and bar graphs ready, and instead, pirates got the finger and PC was the enemy.

What's stupidest of all is that those "potentially profitable" PC franchises, which had actually been very successful when they played to the PC's strengths, once acquired, compromised and hyped to death, now got received with a shrug from both console and PC gamers alike.

It's sad to see an expanding industry gut and discard healthy and productive studios. Sure, sometimes it's mismanagement, sometimes it's foul play but generally it's all just about where the money is at. Talented individuals get relocated into more profitable but also more restrictive ventures - from PC to console to touch screen.

I don't see it as all doom and gloom though: VR, AR, MR or whatever might yet nudge development investment back towards the slower paced, more involved kinds of game I like most.

Oh, list... right. :)

I really like this one:

...but I thought FC2 wasn't that bad, and Oblivion really wasn't that different from Morrowind.

That's a lovely delusion you concocted there.

But reality was, Crysis 2 was a mediocre game, it lost any of its original charm, it pushed no boundaries... and was mediocre on ALL systems....

That console piece of the pie that they were after (even though it cost them alot more in royalties, multi-system development and a ridiculous marketing budget) never came because funnily enough, most console gamers want the same damn franchise year in year out.... even if the quality or innovation is poor.

PC gamer's had no effect on console version sales... the bottom line is, investing in consoles, and fitting the franchise around them , killed Crytek and Crysis.

Crysis 2 inferior to the original, stupid incomprehensible story in the players face, smaller less interactive environments with contrived tactical options and some sections that outright use endless respawns until triggered to stop.

But, it still gave the player options to play, used vertically and significantly improved the aliens over the original, when not having the nervous breakdown in the corner of a wall the alien AI is pretty dam good and challenging on delta.

Better than most modern shooters, but a bad Crysis game.

Except that is totally wrong

C'mon. We know better than to blame inanimate objects. Developers and publishers are to blame.

Crysis 2 was good, definitely more than just a mediocre game. The game's hardening and stealth mechanics work really well and every bit as good as the original (if not better), and evolution of the Ceph was far more interesting than that floaty amoeba and flying squid shit of the first game. And, it was maybe the best looking console FPS game in its time. Crysis 2 was more linear, sure, but it still had open tactical sections of the games for planned attacks, overall I think the pacing is better improved. Besides, the original Crysis was still much a linear game it's not the Far Cry game you PC people claim it is. You PC elitists just refuse to accept you acted like a bunch of goddamn children, and for such petty reasons like a developer didn't stick their tongue in your ass. And you'd be foolish to think that PC gamers coming to places like this and for months on end to repeatedly say how nobody should buy it and that it sucks (without playing it), or that if anybody should play it then they should just pirate it, if you think that common narrative doesn't hurt the game's commercial performance, doesn't effect how the public sees it, then you're just out to lunch. Of course that has a tremendous influence. I'm pretty sure that's the effect the PC master race trolls wanted.

The studios destroyed themselves. If they saw a need to abandon PC gaming for console gaming and failed thats their fault. If you are struggling to make a successful game on a console then your studio is not resilient enough.

Yeah sure, that's why they also rooted for the flop of Withcer 3 and are the sole reason Witcher 3 sold so bad and is now a fucking disaster. Oh wait.

In general, glad to see that people agreeing that consoles results in the downgrade of gameplay since their target audience is dumb and also limited by crappy controllers.

What Xbox did to Ion Storm (Deus Ex: IW) was a tragedy. Warren Spectre and Harvey Spectre have commented on it a lot, both directly blame the consolization which ruined that game and killed the Studio.

@lamprey263

Crysis 2, Ryse, and Crysis 3 did not make the revenue of Crysis 1.

Crysis 1 also has a much higher metacritic score than all 3.

heh.

Because PC Gamers only ever play 1 or 2 games for 10+ Years straight despite owning 800 games on steam.

That is the main problem. PC gamers have this mentality/obsession with only playing 1 game forever. You see it all the time. Steam stats prove these losers have no lives because they pour in 3000 hours into freaking counter strike.

No developer can make a profit when PC gamers have such a rotten entitled mentality. You see it everyday on System Wars when all you guys do is complain there is no more good games, then you go back to playing only LoL, WoW or RTS 500.

Then you pirate all the time. You wont admit it, but you still do. You brag all the time how you can play every game from the NES to the PS2 or even later games. You guys don't care about gaming. All you want is just 1 game to play for 10-15 years straight and claim it is the greatest thing of all time. You have a disease. A sickness. PC gamers are the reason they invented game addiction rehabs.

OMG!!!!! TEH CONSIOLES ARE TEH MUDERZ!!!!!

You're a BEEEOTCH!!!!!!

Business happens, get over it. Stop getting emotional about it.

If anything, consoles make PC gaming better if they can get some console games on the platform. Most PC exclusives suck.