This has been an age-old debate, with both console and PC gamers at loggerheads regarding the matter. So what exactly are the advantages of bringing games or franchises which were perceived as PC exclusives, to consoles? Or is it actually harming the gaming industry in general?
There are several aspects we need to analyze, before we can draw any satisfactory conclusion. The first one would be the profits, of course! Every game maker (or publisher) would obviously increase their profits if a successful PC game (or franchise) is brought to consoles, due to the increased user base. Also, people who only play games on consoles would also get a chance to experience these games. So, this would certainly result in immediate gains, both for the publisher/developer and the console gamers. But when the long term implications are considered, it paints a somewhat different picture.
When porting PC games to consoles, developers need to make a lot of compromises and trade-offs because consoles in general are a lot less powerful compared to gaming PCs. They need to find a balance so that the game performs reasonably well on consoles, while still making it as enjoyable as possible. Its a really tough task, which may sometimes even be unachievable due to the hardware limitations of consoles.
Ok, lets just say the developers did manage to port a PC game to the console along with some compromises, and the console gamers enjoyed it. This results in more game sales, which obviously translates to more profits. The game company gets buoyed by this response, hence they obviously plan the next game in the franchise so that it offers a similar experience to PC and console gamers right out of the box. Since consoles are quite underpowered compared to PCs, they have to develop the game primarily for consoles and then port it to the PC. On the surface, this may not seem like a problem. But doing this would result in a watered-down game for the PC, with only some graphical enhancements compared to console versions. This will surely alienate core fans of the series, which definitely hurts the game-makers in the long run. One way to achieve this without any compromise is to develop two different versions for PC and consoles, but it requires a lot of work and developers often feel that taking this approach would be a waste of their time and resources.
A classic example of this would be the Crysis games by Crytek. The first two games of the franchise (the original Crysis and its spin-off Crysis: Warhead) were technically marvelous open world games. Both were highly praised for their technical capabilities as well as their gameplay. When they were initially released, they remained exclusive to the PC. For the next game, the developers wanted to 'expand' the series to the consoles (read "make more money"). But it was impossible to create vast open worlds on current generation consoles at that point, due to technical limitations. Hence they eliminated the open world altogether, and settled for a game which played just like most other corridor shooters. The PC version did offer much prettier graphics, but no changes in the world or gameplay compared to console versions. This game (Crysis 2) sold well across all platforms, which prompted Crytek to even port the first two Crysis games to consoles. But the result was a mess, as reported by those who played them on console after initially playing them on PC. These decisions by Crytek (or maybe EA, who knows?) also left longtime fans of the series fuming. To combat this issue, Crytek decided to make the environment in Crysis 3 much bigger than Crysis 2, but it was still not a open world. The maps in Crysis 3 only gave the illusion of an open world, but they were just reasonably large areas 'boxed in' by clever use of environmental effects like hills, tress etc. Once again, the only 'advantage' it offered to PC gamers was the extremely gorgeous visuals. But Crysis 3 turned out to be such a dull and boring game that it failed to meet EA's sales expectations.
Crytek worked on another game called 'Ryse: Son Of Rome" exclusively for XBox One, but it turned out to be a massive critical and commercial failure. Now, Crytek just has one project (the Homefront reeboot), and several reliable sources are indicting that Crytek may not survive as a game development studio for much longer (they recently laid off a lot of their employees). So its pretty much obvious that Crytek seems to have dug their own grave by focusing on short term profits over long term benefits.
Of course, this doesn't always have to be true. Some types of games can be brought to consoles without too many compromises. But usually, that just wouldn't be possible for most games because PCs are always technically superior to every console of that particular generation.
