I hope you're right but if it's correct that consoles are around 30% of the player base then I'm not seeing how they recoup that, let alone expand. Plus this will surely be the last major update for a while even if the game is going well. So I hope you're right but concerned that I am. (And yes I'm a console player for practical reasons but will just switch to PC if they let me switch across my account - again, alarmed and distressed that that wasn't in the original announcement, so far from confident there, either!).
The irony of the console drop.
- Thread starter Dakron Nova
- Start date
That may be, but that doesn't mean it'd drop from the sky for free - it'd need to actually be programmed.
Whilst I agree with this post, and I feel this is what's been going on behind the scenes, there is still something I wonder about.
I am completely ignorant of software development and how these big projects are carried out but, coming from an engineering background, I can't help but think of it in more generic terms.
Developing for PC, but keeping an eye on consoles means that whilst their focus was 100% on PC, they still had to keep in mind what design contraints they had to apply for an eventual port, so they had to follow specific paths and perhaps not consider a few alleys that would make it much easier for PCs but unfeasible for consoles?
One more everyday similitude I can think of is the following: a building is designed to be standing right next to another, similar one, only a metre or so away. It has been decided to build them one at a time, and one of the design specifications is that the side that would be facing the other building will not have windows.
By design, it has been chosen to build the first building with features that take into account its twin.
Because of this, they start erecting the building with no windows on one side. At some point, the other building is cancelled: the constraint of a windowless side is no longer there, and so they decide to review the project and add windows, at least from the story they are at, and above. Could this be how EDO will be developed from now on, and for what it's left of its life?
The problem is of course, with what has been built so far: is it worth it to knock down walls and add windows to the exisiting portion? How expensive, useful, safe or sensible would it be? I imagine that the whole of EDO, up to the end of 2021 is basically this.
In this scenario, when they did put consoles on hold, they didn't go for "make it the best for the PC", but rather "do what we can while strictly adhering to those restraints that will* eventually allow the port".
How much of this could be going behind the scenes?
*: that was wishful thinking.
Obviously you can knock holes into walls. But what if games are more like teacups from porcelain? You make them in one go, but can't change much after you burned them into final shape in oven. Apart from colour and finish.
Honestly, I think not putting the game out on console just means that- the game won't be optimised to a level that it will be suitable to run on a console.
What this means is likely to be that any performance issues after a couple more updates will come with a solution of players needing to upgrade their PCs.
The CPU performance would still be an issue based on the PC performance. While the current consoles are significantly faster (than the old consoles), their Zen2 derivative CPU is already roughly 50% (or more) behind Zen 3 and Alder Lake desktop CPUs. Since even those CPUs cannot handle EDO consistently above 30 Fps, the issue will be even worse on current gen consoles.
FDev needed to fix CPU performance issues at least. And even then the GPU performance is also problematic, since even in space there seems to be a ~50% difference to EDO.