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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

Ugh NMS. Didn't get superhyped but bought it at launch, listened to that soundtrack by 65daysofstatic for a few weeks, played the game for about 30 minutes. It was just so boring. They had the tech to make universes but made the core gameplay so boring you didn't care. How is that possible?

The game is now what it could have been, but it makes me uncomfortable even enjoying the game because I remember the dev lying on the day of release about multiplayer. That breaks some kind of contract between producer and consumer. Oh, and the FOV on the PS4 version is horrific, interesting way of extending a consoles lifespan.

I think NMS is a glimpse of the future, but hopefully someone else will take their formula mainstream.

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> Oh, and the FOV on the PS4 version is horrific

Eh? There's an option for that.

It was recently added in an update

"The game is now what it could have been"

The commentator was talking about one of the latest NMS releases. I was simply stating that their idea of "latest" is not what it is right now.

>> The game is now what it could have been

Do you mean that like "it's got as far as they can reasonably take it, it could never have been more than that" or "it has fulfilled everything that it was ever supposed to be"?

Because the former is a little tautological but likely correct, and I'd be surprised if it's really the latter.

I think all games should focus on one platform, the PC platform. Consoles drain developer's time and attention from making the actual game. And don't get me started on knuckle-dragging VR.

The consoles are much easier to develop for -- debugging GPU problems across hundreds of GPUs by three manufacturers is so much harder than doing so on a single (or two, if you count the two major consoles) GPU type. They also make a larger share of the revenue than PC games do. They don't drain attention, they put attention where the most revenue for the least work is.

And from a user point of view, PC gaming just got exhausting for me. Driver updates, keeping up with GPU upgrades... or I can plunk down some money on a box that Mostly Just Works. Yes, there's parts of console gaming that annoy me. I dislike having to have a PS4 and an Xbox One, which are like 80-90% of the same damn hardware, to play all the games I want. This goes doubly because the PS4 has marginally better hardware (minus the controller, which is improved from previous generations but not as comfortable as the Xbox controller) and the Xbox has outrageously better software, so I'm missing out on something no matter which console I'm using and I can't crossplay with friends on a different console. But those annoyances are small potatoes given how much time I've sunk into getting PC games to run optimally.

I have a PC that's nearly 5 years old, that wasn't top of the line (budget about £800 without screens) when I bought it and took me half a day to put together. It runs every game I've tried on it at least at medium and usually on high. I've spent zero time optimising it, not put a single h/w upgrade in and driver updates get run about every 6 months for a few minutes. PC gaming is way beyond "mostly just works" and has been for some time from my point of view.

Was that around windows 95?

Consoles are lock-in death to me.

It looks like PS4 [1] sales almost doubled Steam Sales [2]. There were probably a large amount of non Steam PC sales, but Steam being one of the largest distribution platforms, I imagine its a large portion of total PC sales.

[1] http://www.vgchartz.com/game/84663/no-mans-sky/ [2] http://steamspy.com/app/275850

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