RDR2: Where is PC?

[Hunter S. Compton]

The reason the first game wasn't on PC was because, as has come to greater light in the Benzie lawsuit, RDR was barely functional. They had an incredibly difficult time designing it even for the specific architecture of consoles and contrary to popular belief you can't just turn off all the caps and just release sh*t on PC and let the players mess around with the settings. And that was in Rage, which had worked on PC for GTA IV before. Not perfectly, of course, but it was released. As evidenced by the two trailers they've clearly made a lot of changes (improvements) from the time they developed GTA V and it's entirely possible that those changes will preclude their ability to create a broadly functional PC release. Sorry.

As for the quibbling on PC sales, no matter how high they were I don't think that any of you would be willing to claim that PC sales had anything even close to console sales. Plus I feel confident in saying that the money generated from GTAO microtransactions were even more heavily on console. If there's one crowd who loves microtransactions it's casuals, and there's a lot more casuals on console than PC.

[Igor Bogdanoff]

I like how it's always PC x console sales. Like making one version for PS4 and xbox one and the other version for PC.
It should always be PC x PS4 x X1 (x Switch x PS3 x X360) sales. Other way doesn't make sense and seems like when you develop X360 version it magically works on PS3 with no effort

[Jason]

The reason the first game wasn't on PC was because, as has come to greater light in the Benzie lawsuit, RDR was barely functional. They had an incredibly difficult time designing it even for the specific architecture of consoles and contrary to popular belief you can't just turn off all the caps and just release sh*t on PC and let the players mess around with the settings. And that was in Rage, which had worked on PC for GTA IV before. Not perfectly, of course, but it was released. As evidenced by the two trailers they've clearly made a lot of changes (improvements) from the time they developed GTA V and it's entirely possible that those changes will preclude their ability to create a broadly functional PC release. Sorry.

 

As for the quibbling on PC sales, no matter how high they were I don't think that any of you would be willing to claim that PC sales had anything even close to console sales. Plus I feel confident in saying that the money generated from GTAO microtransactions were even more heavily on console. If there's one crowd who loves microtransactions it's casuals, and there's a lot more casuals on console than PC.

 

GTA V has sold roughly 8.3m copies on Steam alone and the only place to buy the Steam version is on Steam. RDR isn't GTA, obviously, but it's a Rockstar title and a sequel (or rather prequel) to a game of which there is a huge interest for on PC. Don't let GTA's 15m+ per console sales delude you into thinking that a measly 5 million sales on PC wouldn't be worth it for Rockstar/Take-Two.

 

As for RDR's technical issues in development and GTA IV's PC port issues - that's all completely meaningless today. It was an argument back when V was coming around for sure, but they now have two good PC ports under their belt in Max Payne 3 and GTA V. Couple that with the fact that PS4, XB1 and PC all share the same architecture, which last gen did not, a PC port would be straight forward all things considered.

[MarshallRawR]

GTA V has sold roughly 8.3m copies on Steam alone and the only place to buy the Steam version is on Steam. RDR isn't GTA, obviously, but it's a Rockstar title and a sequel (or rather prequel) to a game of which there is a huge interest for on PC. Don't let GTA's 15m+ per console sales delude you into thinking that a measly 5 million sales on PC wouldn't be worth it for Rockstar/Take-Two.

 

As for RDR's technical issues in development and GTA IV's PC port issues - that's all completely meaningless today. It was an argument back when V was coming around for sure, but they now have two good PC ports under their belt in Max Payne 3 and GTA V. Couple that with the fact that PS4, XB1 and PC all share the same architecture, which last gen did not, a PC port would be straight forward all things considered.

 

The efforts from IV to V PC port wise are enormous.

I don't see why they would take the time to learn from their mistakes, polish and get better with RAGE on PC and succeed to then only stop releasing PC titles.

The first RDR was a mess, and it's a valid reason why it wasn't on PC. GTA IV was an improvement but far from perfect, served as a good stepping stone and finally GTA V (and MP3)

are the results of some good work.

[Hunter S. Compton]

First off, GTA IV pc port came out before Red Dead so calling it an "improvement" seems a little inaccurate.

My answer to the rest of what both of y'all have to say is if it's so easy and so worth the money how come they didn't announce it for PC?


On a more speculative note, The Benz was the lead developer on GTA V and executive producer for Max Payne 3 (a title he only had for that game). He last worked for the company in August 2014, and the PC port came out in April of 2015. It's almost impossible to say how large of a difference that will make on the technical side of things, but to say that it has none at all would be recklessly optimistic.

[Jason]

First off, GTA IV pc port came out before Red Dead so calling it an "improvement" seems a little inaccurate.

 

My answer to the rest of what both of y'all have to say is if it's so easy and so worth the money how come they didn't announce it for PC?

 

 

On a more speculative note, The Benz was the lead developer on GTA V and executive producer for Max Payne 3 (a title he only had for that game). He last worked for the company in August 2014, and the PC port came out in April of 2015. It's almost impossible to say how large of a difference that will make on the technical side of things, but to say that it has none at all would be recklessly optimistic.

 

I'm going to be recklessly optimistic then, it makes no difference. They haven't announced a PC version of RDR2 simply because what they did with GTA V worked so well for them, they can focus on the console versions and get them out and then release the PC version at a later date and get people to buy it twice.

 

Also, GTA IV PC came out before RDR yes, but RDR ran on a version of RAGE that predated GTA IV's.

[Biter]

I have to say the PC player community has brought this on themselves.

 

Modding has been embraced by the PC community. R* becomes C* whenever they try to do anything about the rampant cheating that is going on. Why spend money developing for PC when all the community does is vomit abuse about shark cards being unjust and embrace modders cash drops or injections as legitimate. They even think its good to be screwing over the big bad capitalist R* that wants to make money.

 

No sympathy from me.

[zmudziak32]

PC version will probably arrive sometime later after console versions. RDR 2, also will be enchanced on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.

[ryuclan]

Every 3d open world game that has ever been developed by R* has seen a later release for the PC. Every single one. I know it's easier said than done, but why torture yourself by getting your hopes up on a simultaneous release?

Edited November 10, 2017 by ryuclan

[Spider-Vice]

The argument is that RDR1 didn't release on PC but let's consider we're in a whole different generation of consoles, based on PC architecture, and also a whole different view on PC gaming and a different Rockstar in terms of PC releases too. For instance, the RAGE engine on PC is extremely mature now compared to IV's release.

 

We're getting it on PC. Just not at the same time.

Edited November 10, 2017 by Spider-Vice

[Hunter S. Compton]

The argument is that RDR1 didn't release on PC but let's consider we're in a whole different generation of consoles, based on PC architecture, and also a whole different view on PC gaming and a different Rockstar in terms of PC releases too. For instance, the RAGE engine on PC is extremely mature now compared to IV's release.

 

We're getting it on PC. Just not at the same time.

I think a lot of the uncertainty also has to do with the fact that The Benz isn't on the development team for this, which is a major factor it shares with RDR. I think that wthout his software dev guidance they made a lot of mistakes with that game that we will never know the full extent of since it never released on PC. Maybe aspects of the engine were tied to framerate, other things that would make it non-ideal for PC port, hardware aside. Maybe decisions like that are being made again.

[Jabalous]

I don't see a reason why Redemption 2 won't eventually make it to the PC platform, except for additional development time to optimize it? If I've to guess, it could release as early as Fall 2019 on PC, one year and a half after its debut on consoles. There's been a strong demand for Redemption, so I imagine the demand for the sequel-prequel is higher. If Grand Theft Auto 5 is constantly the 4th-6th most played title on Steam to date, Redemption 2 could end up being constantly in the 7th-10th place, especially when you consider the presence of a large Online component. The cowboy/outlaw fantasy exists.

Edited November 11, 2017 by Efreet

[Claude_Lib]

Do you guys really still want it to happen? I mean, look at this: https://www.pcgamesn.com/take-two-service-games-only

[Jabalous]

Do you guys really still want it to happen? I mean, look at this: https://www.pcgamesn.com/take-two-service-games-only

 

“That's a sea change in our business. Recurrent consumer spending is 42% of our net bookings in the quarter. It's been transformative for us, and the only reason it's transformative for us is because it's transformative to our consumers. The business that once upon a time was a big, chunky opportunity to engage for tens of hours, or perhaps 100 hours, has turned into ongoing engagement, day-after-day, week-after-week. You fall in love with these titles and they become part of your daily life.”

 

Quote says it all. Consumers demand content and they're willing to pay for it. You vote with your pocket.

[Jason]

I think a lot of the uncertainty also has to do with the fact that The Benz isn't on the development team for this, which is a major factor it shares with RDR. I think that wthout his software dev guidance they made a lot of mistakes with that game that we will never know the full extent of since it never released on PC. Maybe aspects of the engine were tied to framerate, other things that would make it non-ideal for PC port, hardware aside. Maybe decisions like that are being made again.

 

By his own words Benz's talent was bringing order to the chaos, keeping everyone on the same page and heading in the same direction, rather than being some God-like coding guru who Rockstar's game and engine coders simply can't function without.

 

But yea, as has been said many times in this thread, it's been long speculated and assumed that the reasons as to why the first Redemption was never released on PC was primarily due to the fact that the version of RAGE they used wasn't optimised for any hardware at all - it was such an early version. So they had to make it up and MacGyver the sh*t out of it as they went long, leading to two very messy versions of the game that are unportable to PC unless they ported the entire thing over to a modern version of the engine or something and who knows how challenging or time consuming that was. Regardless of exactly what the issue was, modern RAGE doesn't have any of those problems at all, it's made for the hardware used in all modern platforms.

 

Or to put it another way, I imagine working with the version of RAGE for the original Redemption was case of them having to create the engine as they went along, where as nowadays RAGE is more like using a publicly available engine like Unreal, where it's ready to go and easy to use.

Edited November 11, 2017 by Jason

[Thalyn]

I have to say the PC player community has brought this on themselves.

 

Modding has been embraced by the PC community. R* becomes C* whenever they try to do anything about the rampant cheating that is going on. Why spend money developing for PC when all the community does is vomit abuse about shark cards being unjust and embrace modders cash drops or injections as legitimate. They even think its good to be screwing over the big bad capitalist R* that wants to make money.

 

No sympathy from me.

 

In fact, The PC community is not the problem.

Just f*cking kids buying cheats/hacks (and not "mods" because Mods are = enhancement, contents addition, customization etc...).

These kids are not PC gamers. They already have the game on PS3/360 or PS4/One... and buy the PC version just to have more fun with "Mods" (real mods and Hacks).

In fact the problem is : theses Hackers selling their cheats/Hacks just to make money (like R* or C*).

 

The first Hacks on GTA Online, called "mods" by ignorant consol players, were "free": Avoid to have "free money and other things" in lobbies with some modifications (IP addresses etc.).

After that, R* fix the problem, lot of players were ban by R*... but lot of banned players rebuy the game....

Then, seeing all theses impatient kids playing the game, seeing all theses ban idiots rebuying the game, the capitalists (lol) hackers decided to sell their hacks .. to make money (and R* love it: idiot buy hack, idiots cheats, idiots are ban, idiots rebuy the game, idiots (re)cheats, idiots are (re)ban, idiot rebuy the game, etc. until dad & mom are ok... and they are often ok because when their stupid kid play to GTA V/Online they can f*ck (or other things...) "when they want".

 

(The Real and true) Modding is the future of gaming... It's not cheat!

Modding is not the problem. Hacking is! And companies (like R*) too (because they ban kids cheaters, and these kids rebuy the game....).

Lot of hackers love to see the words "Mods" and "cheats" mixed, because kid can easily buy "Mods" with Dad/Mom money. But they can't buy "Hack/Cheat", because dad & mom are scared by this words.