5 Games That Were Held Back by Console Hardware

The Witcher 3

In light of recent news from developer Obsidian that Fallout: New Vegas was held back technically and creativity by console hardware during the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 generation, here are a few other games that have also been limited by console ports.

CD Projekt confirmed to Eurogamer leading up to the release of The Witcher 3 that the game was indeed held back somewhat by its console brethren. It was a necessary evil, according to company co-founder Marcin Iwinski, who states that if the game didn’t release on consoles, the studio wouldn’t have had the necessary resources for development. If the sequel would have released exclusively for PC, however, more could have been done from a technical standpoint.

“Developing only for the PC: yes, probably we could get more as there would be nothing else – they would be so focused, like if we would develop only on Xbox One or PlayStation 4,” Iwinski stated. “But then we cannot afford such a game.”

Crysis 2

A lot of the dichotomy that exists between PC gaming and console gaming exists because of console hardware’s inability to upgrade as time goes by. Though this may have been solved with the introduction of mid-generation upgrades like the PlayStation 4 Pro and soon to be released Xbox One X, a line still divides each method of enjoying the medium.

According to Crytek boss Cervat Yerli, PC gaming will always be ahead of console gaming by at least one generation and is one of the reasons why Crysis 2 was held back quality-wise on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. What’s more is that the studio believed that it wasn’t the only company who faced this dilemma, stating, “we believe the quality of the games beyond Crysis 2 and other CryEngine developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is.”

Whether or not this statement rings true in this generation of consoles is dubious at best, though fans will often find a lot of belligerents on either side of the fence.

Destiny

This entry is a bit different from other games on this list. The first Destiny on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 didn’t hold back anything in the way of a PC version, seeing as how it didn’t have a PC version in the first place. Rather, it held back the title’s next generation console ports on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

In an official video from Bungie, lead world artist Rob Adams explains how Destiny would have been a much larger game had it been exclusive to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game’s Cosmodrome was intended to be five to ten times bigger than it actually was and a memory buffer had to be used in order to get the game’s “Steppes” and “Divide” areas adjacent to each other. Due to technical limitations of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360,  large objects would be purposefully placed to obscure the player’s vision and keep him or her from noticing significant frame rate drops, too.

The Division

In a Team Epiphany interview with one of The Division’s developers, the question of whether or not there were any limitations holding back the PC version of the game due to consoles was raised. The unnamed man in the interview responded, “We do have to keep it (the PC version) in check with the consoles – it would be kind of unfair to push it so far away from them.” Though he goes on to mention that the team treats PC as a separate platform, the man did concede that the game’s graphical showcase from its debut at E3 would not be featured in the title upon release.

The Division went on to sell well despite the controversy it accrued with a supposedly downgraded PC port, but the idea remains that the technical showcase revealed at Ubisoft’s E3 conference might have been achievable should the title had released exclusively for PC.

Watch Dogs

The original Watch Dogs is perhaps the most infamous case of a PC port of a game being held back by its console counterparts. Keeping the controversy of the game’s E3 debut compared to its presentation upon release in mind, hidden graphic files found in the PC version of the game indicate that a better visual presentation for the game was possible but inhibited by Ubisoft for the sake of reducing the disparity between ports of the title. Countless users documented this through YouTube videos and deemed mods that utilized the files “E3 2012 mods” in reference to the game’s first official unveiling to the public.

The fact that Watch Dogs did not live up to its presentation upon release was criticized by many fans and critics across the industry, but the discovery of these files within the actual game seemed to only add more insult to injury.

There are plenty of other PC ports that fans have speculated to be downgraded for the sake of console support. Let us know which ones are most noteworthy in the comment section below.