What can we do to save PC gaming?

[Stanley]

When you look at specs like this you have to wonder who will bother when you get the same/better performance from a £200 console.

[TehStu]

You should run a poll to see who has that kind of spec. Everyone's got a dual core these days. Would probably need to specify a slightly better graphics card and more ram than they usually give as standard, though.

And people just buy one of those as the general family computer.

Still, not all games need that and, yes, you'd probably be daft just to buy a PC for assassin's creed.

[layten]

The bulk of people at nVidia were at Silicon Graphics until about 1999/2000 (by which time SGI already had floating point colour and pixel shaders), and as I pointed out the console group at ATi are derived from the N64 team, also from Silicon Graphics. This is well after the supposed technical superiority of the PC was supposed to take hold, yet no PC technology from that era has successfully evolved to today. If we were going to talk about technology derived from the PC world we'd have to be discussing the place of Voodoo or Matrox chips in the modern computing environment.

The use of graphics chips in PCs is for way more than just games. Simply scaling up a video in media players involves a lot, as of course do modern GUI APIs. The golden era for nVidia and ATi was when customers had to buy their cards to get decent performance for these everyday functions. Of course the flipside of this is the emergence of on board graphics, which can support the GUI features most people use, but are stripped of the more esoteric things some games require, and this has been the nail in PC gamings coffin. This is why nVidia are showing serious signs of leaving the PC market (very odd chip was announced at 3GSM allowing mobiles to output 720p . . ), and ATi allowed themselves to be acquired by a CPU manufacturer.

The real kicker has been MS themselves, who in creating the XBox have transitioned many of PC gamings most loyal cohorts to being console consumers.

If the PC gaming scene suddenly died on its arse, who exactly would be building the next gen gfx tech to slap into the next Xbox/Playstation?

The fact Nvidia and ATI have been locked in a tech cold war with each other since the early part of this decade is the reason we all have such powerful machines under our TV's. Take that away and development will slow to a crawl, which will be good for nobody.

[Rudi von Starnberg]

You should run a poll to see who has that kind of spec. Everyone's got a dual core these days. Would probably need to specify a slightly better graphics card and more ram than they usually give as standard, though.

And people just buy one of those as the general family computer.

Still, not all games need that and, yes, you'd probably be daft just to buy a PC for assassin's creed.

Weren't those specs debunked as being bullshit, too?

Which isn't to say that they aren't ridiculously high. They are. And if they were indeed the minimum, they'd be the mark of a shoddy port with no optimisation for the system rather than an indictment of the cost of equivalent PC parts.

[TehStu]

Take that away and development will slow to a crawl, which will be good for nobody.

See, I imagine it's precisely the PC cockwaving that has spurred on development of these parts. Will a big wodge of money every 5 years be enough to see ATI and nVidia make suitably advanced console parts?

[Super Craig]

You should run a poll to see who has that kind of spec. Everyone's got a dual core these days. Would probably need to specify a slightly better graphics card and more ram than they usually give as standard, though.

And people just buy one of those as the general family computer.

Still, not all games need that and, yes, you'd probably be daft just to buy a PC for assassin's creed.

No they don't.

[TehStu]

No they don't.

I'll reword that - try and buy a non-dual core machine these days.

Even the laptop my sister was given at the school she works at has a CPU which matches the minimum spec Assassin Creed wants.

[Stanley]

I'll reword that - try and buy a non-dual core machine these days.

Even the laptop my sister was given at the school she works at has a CPU which matches the minimum spec Assassin Creed wants.

Yeah but who wants to play it at minimum spec?

[Gwynster]

Even the "ATi" chip in the GameCube has bugger all to do with PC graphics, having been designed by the N64 graphics chip team, who had formed their own company and completed the design for the cube chip before being bought by ATi. nVidia is largely staffed by ex SGIers as well.

I think you'll find that microelectronics is all built on top of multiple silicon patents licensed from many different companies at different times. As far as your argument works out, the ATi chip in the GC has everything to do with PC graphics. Whoopsie! Never mind.

Yeah but who wants to play it at minimum spec?

Who wants to answer loaded questions like this?

[TehStu]

Yeah but who wants to play it at minimum spec?

No one, but then I think we're all agreed Assassin's Creed on the PC is unoptimised shite? So, in this case, minimum spec is above minimum spec for devs that have put the effort in.

[Marzipan Travolta]

As big a PC fan as I am I don't think the removal of the PC would have a detrimental effect on graphics hardware. Indeed, there being a 5 year development cycle per graphics chipset might actually push things along a bit. The incremental upgrades in the PC world do however smooth out the learning curve significantly. 360 development undoubtedly benefits from being closer to PC development. New things are coming in regularly, you get time to play with them.

If you think about something like the Unreal Engine, that's being used to startling effect in 360/PS3 games at the minute. It made it's debut 4 years ago on PC.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermov...91.html?id=9091

Look familiar? Again with technologies being talked about, stuff like HDR that was used so well in Oblivion was out there for public use on Half Life Lost Coast 3 years ago.

[MK-1601]

You're joking, right? The words you deliberately missed out for fear of derision are inserted in bold below:

"If there wasn't the commercial incentive of selling PC games to use the PC as a lab for new tech, then you could expect even longer lead times before developers were able to effectively utilise new console generations."

Erm, "commercial incentive" rather implies selling things, don't you think?

I can't think of any other meaning for your sentence; and LBP, the Wii, the community features in the likes of Halo 3 (party based server transfer) and so on all quite clearly show that the commercial incentive of selling lots and lots of console games will lead to innovation on the console platform.

Incidentally, any arguments about "but so and so indie / freeware game did that first" are rendered null-and-void by the use of commerical in your sentence; so you needn't bother.

Well, no, I would cite the commercial games that featured those innovations on the PC, many years prior. I don't see why innovation in a non-commercial environment doesn't count, by the way, unless you're claiming that innovating in this context is impossible on consoles so it can't be as valid. In which case I can't find a big enough cabbage to LOL you into.

Daytona USA came out the same year, technically trounced Doom. Like I said, back in the day, arcade gaming set the bar.

Daytona USA didn't need to run on a 386. What a spectacularly bizarre comparison.

The Sega arcades were developed with cooperation from Lockheed Martin, and Nintendo famously pulled on Silicon Graphics. (The N64 was actually made by NEC). At one point Square actually went passed the US Defense Department to become SGI's single biggest customer.

This kind of collaboration was the only option available at the time, though. I think the modern approach, where there's actually some semblence of communication between the GPU manufacturers and games developers, is probably preferable.

[whizzo]

Nobodys told me why the orange box was a risk yet

[Gwynster]

See, I imagine it's precisely the PC cockwaving that has spurred on development of these parts. Will a big wodge of money every 5 years be enough to see ATI and nVidia make suitably advanced console parts?

The fact there are ATi chips in the Wii and 360 are the only thing keeping them in the race. They were on top for about 5 seconds when they released the 9x00 series, and Nvidia resumed stomping them into the muck very shortly afterwards.

[Gwynster]

The PC has never really been a champion of either technical or gameplay innovation. Even if you go back to the roots of id, they started out by trying to clone Mario.

You must surely realise that Commander Keen was the most technically innovative 2D platformer of its day. You must surely. If you don't, why are you saying this?

[Stanley]

No one, but then I think we're all agreed Assassin's Creed on the PC is unoptimised shite? So, in this case, minimum spec is above minimum spec for devs that have put the effort in.

It is? I wouldn't know, but if it is it's another sign that devs don't see the benefit of all the extra effort required to optimise it for PC.

There was a time when owning a PC was essential for gaming, but as graphics have got better, and consoles have got more power, the gap has got less and less. What's the point in forking out mega bucks to play Crysis or Alan Wake when the consoles will do the job just as well?

[Gwynster]

Nobodys told me why the orange box was a risk yet

Don't worry, there's a lot of strange people talking bollocks in here. We'll get to the bottom of it eventually.

[TehStu]

On a more general point then, if 360 and PC development are similar, isn't it just a case of porting across the 360 version (with varying degrees of eyecandy settings) and getting a few more sales for your efforts?

[TehStu]

It is? I wouldn't know, but if it is it's another sign that devs don't see the benefit of all the extra effort required to optimise it for PC.

Are we going to tar everyone with the same brush? Ubisoft apparently didn't see the need to optimise, I expect others do.

There was a time when owning a PC was essential for gaming, but as graphics have got better, and consoles have got more power, the gap has got less and less. What's the point in forking out mega bucks to play Crysis or Alan Wake when the consoles will do the job just as well?

I couldn't agree more. This C2D box I built a year last november will be my last gaming PC. MMO engines scale enormously to capture as much market as possible, so this thing will last an age.

[Beertiger]

Daytona USA didn't need to run on a 386. What a spectacularly bizarre comparison.

Not at all, this is about technical innovation and Doom was given as an example of having 3D graphics compared to the 2D we were playing with on consoles. Joyrex-J9 even conceded that point, give it up. This could fast turn into another "Motorstorm and Killzone vids are the real!" for you. Keep claiming that Doom was technically ahead of stuff like Daytona and you'll be carted off into the funny farm.

[Gwynster]

It is? I wouldn't know, but if it is it's another sign that devs don't see the benefit of all the extra effort required to optimise it for PC.

There was a time when owning a PC was essential for gaming, but as graphics have got better, and consoles have got more power, the gap has got less and less. What's the point in forking out mega bucks to play Crysis or Alan Wake when the consoles will do the job just as well?

I think you're confusing an optimised console game being lazily ported by a team with nothing else to do for a while, with one game that has no console version yet, and a game that isn't out yet.

[Marzipan Travolta]

Don't worry, there's a lot of strange people talking bollocks in here. We'll get to the bottom of it eventually.

Reasons why I think that:

It offers fucking stunning value for money. They might have been tempted to split it all up.

Team Fortress 2 is a highly stylised game with a wonderful sense of humour, aimed at the kind of humourless players of hardcore team based online FPSes.

Portal is nuts. It's a game with no guns, about cake.

It separates out, almost completely, the single and multiplayer aspects of the package. You might get people that like HL2, those that like TF2 and those that want Portal, but would they really be willing to part with that much cash for the bit of game that they want?

Team Fortress 2 was in development for 8 years, but they waited and waited.

Super Mario Galaxy is a worthy competitor for that accolade, certainly. But it had Mario, it was always going to sell.

[TehStu]

Another general point. When lamenting exorbitant PC prices as compared HD gaming on consoles, I think it's fair to include the price of your HDTV, to be honest. Obviously it's going to see a lot of other use outside of gaming, but then so do PCs.

[Gwynster]

Not at all, this is about technical innovation and Doom was given as an example of having 3D graphics compared to the 2D we were playing with on consoles. Joyrex-J9 even conceded that point, give it up. This could fast turn into another "Motorstorm and Killzone vids are the real!" for you. Keep claiming that Doom was technically ahead of stuff like Daytona and you'll be carted off into the funny farm.

Only by people who don't really understand that technical advances aren't really one-dimensional. If you don't think Doom was advanced, then you can't argue that Daytona was either.

[Stanley]

On a more general point then, if 360 and PC development are similar, isn't it just a case of porting across the 360 version (with varying degrees of eyecandy settings) and getting a few more sales for your efforts?

But won't we just end up with even more "unoptimised shite"? Even good stuff, like GoW requires a pretty beefy PC, to play a game a which came out a year ealier on the Xbox.

[layten]

The fact there are ATi chips in the Wii and 360 are the only thing keeping them in the race. They were on top for about 5 seconds when they released the 9x00 series, and Nvidia resumed stomping them into the muck very shortly afterwards.

ATI led pretty much from the 9x00 series up to the release of DX10 parts. The purchase by AMD messed things up, something I am more than sure will be resolved sooner rather than later.

[Beertiger]

Only by people who don't really understand that technical advances aren't really one-dimensional. If you don't think Doom was advanced, then you can't argue that Daytona was either.

I do thing Doom was advanced but this topic has got onto hardware influencing the consoles and PC leading the way. I was just pointing out that back in the day only one place lead the way in graphics and that was the arcade. Comparing Doom to Daytona is like comparing snes to playstation.

[Marzipan Travolta]

But won't we just end up with even more "unoptimised shite"? Even good stuff, like GoW requires a pretty beefy PC, to play a game a which came out a year ealier on the Xbox.

True, but then Gears of War for the PC will still be commercially available in 8 years time, to play on whatever gaming rig you have at the time and it will still be a good game.

[TehStu]

Depends on the quality of the port. It would be interesting to know the money spent on the PC version of Assassin's Creed, versus what it pulled in.

[Gwynster]

Reasons why I think that:

It offers fucking stunning value for money. They might have been tempted to split it all up.

Team Fortress 2 is a highly stylised game with a wonderful sense of humour, aimed at the kind of humourless players of hardcore team based online FPSes.

Portal is nuts. It's a game with no guns, about cake.

It separates out, almost completely, the single and multiplayer aspects of the package. You might get people that like HL2, those that like TF2 and those that want Portal, but would they really be willing to part with that much cash for the bit of game that they want?

Team Fortress 2 was in development for 8 years, but they waited and waited.

Super Mario Galaxy is a worthy competitor for that accolade, certainly. But it had Mario, it was always going to sell.

TF2 is a sequel to a massively successful game that has been about since Quake. I don't know when team based FPS became humourless in your eyes, but it never happened.

Everyone wanted TF2 because it looked awesome. Enough said.