Originally posted by: Gatt
Originally posted by: T101
It is time to face the music, PC gaming is finally heading towards it grave. This has been said many times before. But this is the first time I believe it to be true. And if it is not true, then at least it is the death of innovative game-play and new ideas for games.
Actually, Consoles are about to buy the farm. Their development costs are about to spiral to the levels PC games cost, and the studios will fold just as PC studios did in the early 2000's. Only difference is, Consoles survive by volume, because the manufactuers make all of their money on volume.
Exactly my point. And part of the reason why there is a larger number of consoles are the simple fact that they are easier to use, and they cost loss than what a top-end graphics card on the PC cost, and runs their sofware at a rather high level of eye-candy compared to how powerful the hardware they utilize use.
Originally posted by: Gatt
PC games, OTOH, will enjoy a resurgence. With micro-payments and Online distribution decreasing costs and increasing revenues, along with a familiar and well known development environment, PC's are the far more attractive platform.
Well, this is something that currently hangs in the balance. But I agree, the indications are that it might become more attractive for the developers. This however does not mean that there will be better or more innovative games. The one does not guarantee the other.
Originally posted by: Gatt
Consoles have survived and thrived over the past 5-6 years solely because the graphics do not need to exceed the very, very, low capabilities of standard TVs.
That is true. And this is why I have not mentioned other consoles than the xbox360, which is the first console that will have to address this problem.
Originally posted by: Gatt
Now, they need to be as good as PCs, that alone is going to balloon the budget. Combine that with the expenses involved in multi-platform launches, and you've got the recipe for disaster.
It is no strange thing that expenses for development have increased. But the effect yet remains to be seen. There is no guarantee that console sales will diminish because of it. The number of titles available might, but not the total sales and the revenue the companies get from relasing a game for the consoles.
But now this discussion has ended up being more about consoles vs PC, which was
not my intent. My intent was discussing the fact that PC games at the moment (latest titles, Oblivion as a focus) are rather poor at utilizing the hardware in a way that provides high performance compared to the level of eye-candy. Oblivion can, and easily does, bog down a 7800gt, as well as most of the most powerful graphics cards available today (x1800xtx and 7900GTX) unless you use two of them, which is more or less insane considering the cost of buying that hardware.
Originally posted by: Gatt
90% of the stuff released for consoles are crappy games, now those crappy games are going to take the studios out. Consider too, every console game sold has MS, Sony, or Nintendo taking a cut, unlike PCs. The bottom line for console houses is very dark.
As for wheter console games are crappy games or not, that is something that is highly subjective, same as what constitutes a good PC game. Because of this I think we can ignore to discuss that matter further.
As for the companies taking a bite out of the cake that is the revenue, you have the same thing happening on the PC, but to a lesser extent - as can be seen if you compare what a title cost for the PC compared to what it cost on a Console.
As for the future of console games. Yes, they will diminish in the number of titles available. But the sheer number of consoles compared to PCs used for gaming, will still be more worthwile for developers, as sales will outnumber sales of the same title on the PC many times over. That said, the day may yet come when the middlehands will take a large enough cut of the revenue that the developers will find it economically unsound to produce cosole titles. But the fact is, that many PC developers say that we are already long past this point for the PC. Given the number of sales for a title, coupled with the rife piracy going on with PC titles, many developers are ready to give up.
This coupled with the increasing costs of developing titles, is part of the reason I think, to why PC games are becoming less innovative, and it is easier to use a tried-and-proven formula for a game, than to try something new. If you look at the RTS genre, there have been some innovation over the year in this genre, but the market has more or less been flooded with clones of every successful title, where the game content is on the basic level the same as a very successful RTS title, with only the graphics having been changed.
Originally posted by: Gatt
The Grave you've found my friend is the Grave that Consoles will shortly be buried in.
The grave of innovation perhaps. But the point is that the PC pretty much is already there. Depending on your point of view, this is as bad as it gets and it can only become better, or it is the end of PC gaming, since we will not see much new innovative titles in the future, on the PC or consoles.
But now, this thread is so much off-topic that it is nearly hard to believe. What I wanted to discuss is the PC developers use of hardware to achieve eye-candy, and the reasons to why game developers are unable or unwilling to try to improve performance on available hardware, rather than to try to coax some more performance out of the game engine on available hardware.
To start this discussion off, and to not make it revolve around the issue; I know that part of the problem is the sheer number of hardware configurations as well as different "power levels" of hardware being available.
What I want to discuss is;
- Price/Performance ratio of PC hardware in aspect of games utilizing the hardware. Which in my current point of view is insane. Where will it end? at what point will the end result eye-candy that the game devolpers create stop being worth of spending $ on new hardware for the end users? how short a life span will we eventually end up haing on hardware, if we consider that we are going to run games on reasonably high eye-candy levels (which is part of the marketing for a developer) at a no lower than 40 fps?