Q&A Porting PC games to consoles whilst ignoring controller support on PC of said games, why?

[texhnolyze]

This is becoming more and more common lately. We can see examples from games like Titan Quest, Pillars of Eternity, and the recently announced Beamdog RPGs. Pillars of Eternity 2 and Pathfinder Kingmaker are also coming to consoles, and I bet the same thing will happen. The worst of all is games that were released on PC and consoles at the same time, but PC doesn't have controller support, like Bard's Tale 4 recently. This is 2019, more and more people use a controller on PC, even Valve has released the data several months ago, showing how big controller users on Steam are.

Is it engine limitations that prevent multiple input/UI for PC, budget issue, or just simple negligence?

 

[lashman]

i bet they mostly just don't care

 

[Alextended]

For some games like Titan Quest which is a diablo-like it seems they have to rework the game to a degree (ie have spells and classes work differently when you can't aim them with your mouse at will and such) and maybe they simply didn't develop it elegantly enough to be a feature you can turn on/off, rather it would be something that would require two different versions of the game installed so they don't bother (unless the console version actually can turn it off and has mouse and keyboard support, lol), or it would affect multiplayer in that case (like in Diablo 3 PC if they enabled the gamepad scheme) or whatever other reason.

Bard's Tale 4 was a botched release in many ways, hopefully patches will enable all that stuff.

Maybe you can try Steam controller since it's meant to semi-elegantly translate Mouse & Keyboard geared inputs to a workable gamepad form factor.

 

[texhnolyze]

Yeah, I've been thinking about getting a Steam controller too. But since it's not officially available here, it's like twice the price of a Dualshock 4 controller.

My wife would kill me if I bought one and learned how expensive it is.

 

[Alexandros]

This is becoming more and more common lately. We can see examples from games like Titan Quest, Pillars of Eternity, and the recently announced Beamdog RPGs. Pillars of Eternity 2 and Pathfinder Kingmaker are also coming to consoles, and I bet the same thing will happen. The worst of all is games that were released on PC and consoles at the same time, but PC doesn't have controller support, like Bard's Tale 4 recently. This is 2019, more and more people use a controller on PC, even Valve has released the data several months ago, showing how big controller users on Steam are.

Is it engine limitations that prevent multiple input/UI for PC, budget issue, or just simple negligence?

The most likely explanation is that they don't think that the work they will put in implementing these extra features will result in increased sales.

 

[C-Dub]

I think a lot of people, players and developers, just don’t consider that many people play PC games anywhere but their desk with a keyboard and mouse.

The numbers who think this way are definitely decreasing, but there’s definitely an attitude from some that PC has its place, and doesn’t really go anywhere else. Kind of crazy really, since it’s an open and flexible platform.

And while you’ve said it’s expensive for you, I echo the sentiments about getting a Steam Controller. Definitely worth it for playing keyboard and mouse games with a controller.

 

[PARANOiA]

It's super frustrating. I exclusively game on the couch and using a Steam controller to move a pointer in POE is way, way worse having decent controller support that was dropped into the condone port. Torchlight 2 will be another example they I hope gets fixed.

 

[gabbo]

I mean it's usually time and money constraints. I'm sure there is someone at a studio howling at the moon that proper controller support needs to be added to the game but it's either too time sensitive to put in or that budget goes to other things instead.

It's not like designing and then implementing and testing controller inputs from scratch is a quick and easy task, would probably fall on one devs shoulders at the end of a dev cycle too. I'm sure I've read ars technica articles about such things (or it might have been m&kb to console ports), which makes it seem like controls just have to be barely functional one way and its out the door.

 

[texhnolyze]

I mean it's usually time and money constraints. I'm sure there is someone at a studio howling at the moon that proper controller support needs to be added to the game but it's either too time sensitive to put in or that budget goes to other things instead.

It's not like designing and then implementing and testing controller inputs from scratch is a quick and easy task, would probably fall on one devs shoulders at the end of a dev cycle too. I'm sure I've read ars technica articles about such things (or it might have been m&kb to console ports), which makes it seem like controls just have to be barely functional one way and its out the door.

But they're not designing and implementing controller input on PC from scratch, because they've already completed all the major work for the console port. Wouldn't that be the case most of the time? In every game that has controller support on PC and console, everything is basically the same, from UI to input.

 

[gabbo]

I would think in a lot of cases it'd be one-to-one and m&kb would get the short end of the stick, but there might be more to it - testing how different controllers work - ds3/4, switch, etc

 

[StereoVSN]

It is a problem with some titles, but with games such as PoE, Beamdog fare (i.e. older Bioware titles), and others, KBM is by far the superior option. My guess is that developer doesn't think the controls would be used often, thus they don't think its worth the monetary investment and QA.

 

[texhnolyze]

I would think in a lot of cases it'd be one-to-one and m&kb would get the short end of the stick, but there might be more to it - testing how different controllers work - ds3/4, switch, etc

They don't have to. Even the biggest AAA devs only develop x-input support for PC, the rest can be done with Steam controller input via BPM.