Support NeoGAF

[ISee]

I don't really understand what the benefit is for sacrificing 50% of my performance as a consumer. I can already use my games on various systems without much trouble thanks to the forced on digital nature of PC gaming and cloud saving. I'm of course forced to use Windows for most games, which isn't optimal.

For developers on the other side this is a great way to develop for multiple operating systems at a lower cost. Great for them, irrelevant for me. My interest as a consumer is only how things are benefiting my experience and having 50% less performance on Windows just for the possibility to run the same game on a mac isn't a worthwhile trade off.

 

[KonradLaw]

Performance easily. I don't use non-Windows systems on PC and I wouldn't want to play PC games on phones, so portability is useless to me

 

[GhostTrick]

Both. The very fact that I can play my games with the best performance on my PC and then play some of these games on my GPD Win, at no fee, with the same game save, is amazing.

 

[danmaku]

Performance without a doubt. I don't have that many devices and certainly I don't care about playing my games on all of them. Actually, I just want to play on pc, I don't have games on my tablet or my phone.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

So let's paint a hypothetical situation; Let's say there was a parallel universe where your entire PC gaming library as it stands right now runs in a web browser, and all games by default run across Windows, Mac, Linux, (if the hardware can manage it) iOS, Android, and any future Operating System that may not exist yet.

Sounds terrible. I'll take performance. Unless I guess in your hypothetical iOS and Android have hardware of equivalent capabilities.

 

[Trace]

Definitely performance. Portability is fine, but not if it incurs significant performance hits.

 

[peakish]

Never having to mess with incompatibilities or weird front ends to boot up Monkey Island 2 and the entire ginormous library of PC games? For a measly 50% performance loss, which will be recouped in just a few years time?

Hell yes.

 

[MattKeil]

Performance. The notion of portability in that sense would never even enter my mind. I don't change OSes for fun on the weekend. Taking a 50% performance hit is a bad idea in any context, but completely nonsensical in this particular hypothetical.

 

[pottuvoi]

Performance.
I also dislike idea of game running on a browser. (Even if only losing 50% of performance.)

 

[GLAMr]

So many people just responding to the thread title without reading the OP...

 

[Vintage]

People pay thousands on Titans X or whatever to get that 10% performance increase. There's your answer.

 

[MoogleMan]

Performance all the way.

 

[whalleywhat]

Could be records being set for not reading/misunderstanding the OP.

I'm intrigued by OP's notions. The number of games still shackled to DirectX is always disconcerting. But something about the notion of it being tied to browsers is unpleasant, even though the performance hit is all that's relevant.

Never having to mess with incompatibilities or weird front ends to boot up Monkey Island 2 and the entire ginormous library of PC games? For a measly 50% performance loss, which will be recouped in just a few years time?

Hell yes.

Yeah, it's kind of compelling.

 

[MaxiLive]

I would like the option for my games to run everywhere but I would rather development time to be spent on performance optimisations than compatibility.

I mean if the performance drop was like 5% tops then fair enough have it run on anything but at the moment the performance drop or the amount of time learning the code etc would outweigh the benefit imo.

 

[Franziska]

Performance.

I'll likely ignore a very portable game with poor performance while I won't ignore a game just because its locked to a single platform.

Which is not to say that I don't appreciate portability. I am willing to sacrifice some performance if it means not being tied to a single vendor but all things said and done, I give higher weight to performance.

 

[Chobel]

Performance all the way, or at least until these "portability" technologies start offering acceptable and reliable performance on anything not "mobile game"-ish.

 

[Possumowner]

Yup,chalk me down as another one for performance.

 

[Dre_G_Writer]

PC Gamers: Do You Prefer Performance or "Portability"

Performance

 

[Ragnaroz]

Performance, easily.

 

[HungOverOnATues]

I was going to say portability until I saw your suggested 50% performance hit.

 

[patapuf]

I don't think this is an either or thing.

It's a scale.

You want your PC stuff to be portable, but you also want good performance. I don't need PC games to be as portable that they run in every webbrowser. But i also don't want a situtation like on phones where a single update can break portability.

It think we have a decent compromise right now.

 

[wildfire]

People pay thousands on Titans X or whatever to get that 10% performance increase. There's your answer.

They're the 1% of pc gamers.

Totally irrelavent.

The top selling GPUs used to be in the $100 to $250 price range until the GTX 970 came out.