For those that are new to the concept of PC ports, PC porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed (e.g. different CPU, operating system, or third party library). It is important to mention that while porting is very important in many aspects of making our common apps work around different platforms, like having the same app on apple and android, this commonly used instrument has had some unwanted results especially in the line of video game porting.

PC porting is the use of the aforementioned technique to change games that were first designed for consoles to PC games. On paper, this technique is solid as it reduces the time and energy needed to bring the game to the consumer market, but when we dive down to the details of how the game would perform on pc it is a whole other story.

Although there are console games that have amazing ports to PC, there are a multitude of failed games on PC that were, that’s right you guessed it, horrible ports from console. The underlying problem behind porting games is that the systems found on consoles and PCs are different. Moreover, a console doesn’t have a wide range of specs as a pc has so games that are designed for a certain console are tailor made to its specifications while PCs are different even among themselves. In other words, a game designed for pc would have to meet a wide range of specs to work efficiently while the converse true for a console.

A lot of games that we have played in the past are PC ports of console games and with some having flawless stats most have flaws in one or more ways ranging from a loss in fluidity of the game, controller problems, save game issues and, critical issues.

Most games that are designed for consoles are made to the consoles specifics, but you might argue PCs nowadays have better hardware than consoles and you are right; the problem stems from the major difference in the systems of the two gaming platforms. One key example would be the increasingly seen use of unified memory in consoles – the merge of VRAM and on board RAM on a system. Technically this would make sense on a console simply because a console is designed for video intensive processes only. Anyway when games are designed for such systems and then converted to run on other systems that do not run the same way then certain problems occur in which the overall performance of the game is reduced which in most cases is shown by the drop in FPS (frames per second) when compared between the console and PC.  One instance in which this was the case was Call of duty Black Ops 3, this game was designed to run on the original PS4 which has the following specs: a quad core processor with an onboard AMD HD 7850 or NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 660 TI equivalent, but was struggling to run at 60 fps on pcs with far more fire power. Moreover, in some games, there are limited graphic tweaking settings making the fluidity on PCs even more horrible.

Well to be fair this is a problem that happens on the worst PC ports. This is when you are playing games whose controls are tailor made to fit the description of console controller. This problem is eradicated on the best ports, but is still a prevailing one on some ports with varying levels of problems on different games. In some these problems are limited to the games displaying the image of the console controller buttons on the menu map. However, in some like NBA 2k16, the problem is so severe that a person can’t play the game without having to buy a controller and plug it into the computer.

Critical crashes are also among the reasons that porting games to PC are not recommended. With the vast differences in the systems that run consoles and PCs there are bound to be some key divisions that a port will not get to address and as such on running these games might crash. This is, for obvious reasons, a deal breaker as people don’t buy games just to see them crash five times in arrow without even loading the game. This was also the case in the first PC release of Black Ops 3 as most low specs pc gamers were complaining of repeated crashes. Would you pay 60$ for a AAA game that would crash on multiple occasions? The right answer is NO and that is why the majority of the PC community loathes ported games, granted it is harder to build a game from the ground up let alone building it for the PC platform which has complications as compared with consoles.

So with all these reasons telling us to stay away from ports why is it that more and more games are being ported instead of being made for PCs. Well sadly the answer is simple: ports are quicker to make. Certain games require years to make for reasons clear to all of us, but porting is comparably a fast process. This is a sad reminder that even though pc gamers are vast in number and PC gaming is arguably better; they are still treated as the unloved child in a family that is spat on every time by its cruel parents (game designers). Furthermore, statistics show that more and more games are being ported rather than made and with the current rate almost every new game released is bound to be ported for PC in the near future. And so with each game being ported for PC, every gamer must ask the central question “Am I going to have to change to a console to game in peace?”  This doesn’t mean there aren’t any good games for PC with a vast library of almost 5000games (good and bad) a PC gamer has a multitude of choices and should not be discouraged by this ongoing trend. My advice to you is to either go for PC exclusives and non-ported PC titles, and bask in amazing games like Dota2, Counter Strike, Player Unknown’s battlegrounds just to name a few or to read reviews solely prepared for the PC port of the game if you are going for multiplatform titles whose developers have just ported the game to PC. I did not write this review to direct hate at video game porting, but instead to advise my readers and fellow PC gamers to be wary of ports and do the appropriate amount of research before sinking their money into games.