The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
The truth about the "PC games are dead" debate
Triston
__BANNED USERS new member
__BANNED USERS new member
As i am sure all of you have read over the past year or so, there are constant debates about whether PC games are truly dying. I constantly find at least 37 articles a day on how the PC game genre is dead. Even worse, there are an endless amount of articles written on how Consoles are a dying fad due to Angry Birds and mobile gaming. And at the bottom of the evolutionary gene pool are the articles about how the gaming industry as a whole is dying. To keep on topic i will address the most prolific debate to date: Is PC gaming dying?
It is a known fact that PC hardware is generally 5 to 10 times more powerful than its console brethren, yet games have failed to look 5 to ten times better...
A strong example is Dragon Age Origins VS. Dragon Age II....even at maximum settings, Dragon age II looks much worse than the original; As if Dragon age origins took a dump and created Dragon age II. With the arrival of Crytek's much anticipated Crysis II, many are worried that the graphics will not be as cutting edge as the original, with strong evidence of this being true with Crysis II being a cross platform release...
With few developers still being PC centric,(Blizzard, Crytek.) its obvious to see that the gaming industry is based strongly on making a profit. With Pirating, loss of sales, and overall dominance of console sales, is it safe to assume that PC games are indeed dying in terms of cutting edge?
In my opinion, we have indeed arrived at a plateau for cutting edge...Crysis is still the most beautiful game on the market and is 3 years old. Developers just do not have the resources, money, or ambition to create the next generation of graphical gaming, and its not their fault. With the cost of producing such a game so high and the possibility of failure greater with a PC only income, its safe to say that we may have to wait awhile for the next big thing....
Weigh in your opinion!
It is a known fact that PC hardware is generally 5 to 10 times more powerful than its console brethren, yet games have failed to look 5 to ten times better...
A strong example is Dragon Age Origins VS. Dragon Age II....even at maximum settings, Dragon age II looks much worse than the original; As if Dragon age origins took a dump and created Dragon age II. With the arrival of Crytek's much anticipated Crysis II, many are worried that the graphics will not be as cutting edge as the original, with strong evidence of this being true with Crysis II being a cross platform release...
With few developers still being PC centric,(Blizzard, Crytek.) its obvious to see that the gaming industry is based strongly on making a profit. With Pirating, loss of sales, and overall dominance of console sales, is it safe to assume that PC games are indeed dying in terms of cutting edge?
In my opinion, we have indeed arrived at a plateau for cutting edge...Crysis is still the most beautiful game on the market and is 3 years old. Developers just do not have the resources, money, or ambition to create the next generation of graphical gaming, and its not their fault. With the cost of producing such a game so high and the possibility of failure greater with a PC only income, its safe to say that we may have to wait awhile for the next big thing....
Weigh in your opinion!
Triston on
0
Posts
But seriously, there's a point where more (pixels,polygons,AI elements) reaches a point of diminishing returns, and the only place to go is laterally across all the stuff that got neglected in the race to better graphics.
And PC gaming isn't and won't be dead. It just found itself in a bigger pie.
Also, if you ask me, PC gaming is getting better every year. There's nothing dying about it.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
But no, PC gaming is not dieing. The graphical arms race? Yeah, probably but PC gaming as a whole is alive and well.
Of course, the vast majority of those gamers are playing PC games like Farmville or various and sundry browser-based games, which for some reason don't count as PC games if you have a vested interest in selling graphic card hardware.
But yeah, the PC hardware arms race has slowed to a crawl for a whole host of reasons. That's not inherently a bad thing unless you define "cutting edge" as simply "more photorealistic graphics."
PC Gaming isn't dying and never really will, console gaming needs PC gaming to avoid the market crash that was experienced in the 80s when the customers choices were flooded with poor quality, imitation knock offs of the most popular titles of the time. It wasn't until later when PC gaming revitilized the tech, the software, and the gameplay mechanics that consoles followed suit really.
But that is just ancient history as far as PC and console gaming is concerned, eh? Well, then time to point out the biggest reason(s) PC Gaming will never die: The death of retail, the rise of digital distribution, and its impact on the growing influence of Indy Developers (which I define as those who do not need to have a publisher act as a intermediary to have their product reach a market such as Steam or Impulse or their own website and thus own their IP and a larger share of the profits to reinvest into further development of entertainment software aka gaming). Remember when Valve used to need a publisher to put out PC games? Ever take note of when they currently still need a publisher? (hint: retail)
PC gaming isn't dead, its just been abandoned by those perceiving and/or convincing others more money was to be had in advertising consoles, thus creating a power vacuum that Indy Devs have been able to step into. Right time, right place, right tech and now we have people like Notch (Minecraft, Mojang). And now those who abandoned PC game development are scrambling to have their games on Valve's Steam.
Perception.
As for Crysis II, speaking as someone whose computer (a decent one) couldn't play the first Crysis when it come out I don't think losing graphically bleeding edge games is a huge loss for the average consumer.
I'm more worried about regression in gameplay than I am about regression in graphics when it comes to console vs. PC.
Of course, that could be a trend that exists outside of the PC/Console thing.
Man, I love it but.. that interface
There was a time when you had to go to the PC to play games like Quake and Half-Life and Rainbow Six and Battlefield and FreeSpace. Not anymore. They either moved to the consoles, or died out.
Now you go to the PC to play... Starcraft 2 and WoW. That's fine, but it's a far cry from those glory days.
MMOs in general: PC only
Anything good in the strategy genre: PC only
Dwarf Fortress: PC only
My 360 sits around as a glorified DVD player these days.
People were saying PC gaming is dead back when I first started posting on these forums, like 6 years ago. Its not going anywhere, and will always be where the interesting games are. I guarantee more people bought and play even the Paradox entertainment titles I play these days (which usually don't even get retail launches) than ever played most of the PC games I grew up with.
Really it's probably true that the atx style box personal computers are going the way of the dodo (although I contend later rather than sooner), I think too many people are in iPad fadgasm mode to realize that people aren't going to give up having a device of some kind that is called their computer that they do their social networking, business, etc on. I don't see that going away, even if everyone switches to laptops
Maybe I'm a genetic freak, but typing multi-page e-mails or going over my expenses on my couch just... does not feel correct. My coffee table is not an ergonomic place for a keyboard and mouse.
I mean if predictions like the one I linked were imminent threats to the PC's existence, then everyone would be hooking their PCs up to their TVs via HDMI. There is nothing stopping everyone with a laptop from the last 2 years from doing that, but most people only do it to show pictures and stuff.
The force that is threatening the PC (and by extension, PC gaming) is actually more of a threat to consoles. What the hell is going to be the point of a game console in 10 years when a unit the size of a modern cell phone will have enough CPU and graphics processing for photorealistic games? There won't be a technological reason we can't just have everything integrated into the television itself.
Yea...if you wanna play a sports game or a fighting game, consoles are the way to go...not for me so much, I don't even watch sports. But there's a ton of games that just work so much better on the PC. Especially when you consider mods. Some games get moved a few ranks up on the awesome scale just because of the mods there are for them.
Also, while I am a bit of a tech person, I've never had a game just not work for me. With Steam, installation is just clicking a button that says "Install". The worst I'll ever get is crashes, and most games don't even do that.
You still have to hook it up to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, thus literally making it the same as a PC.
Does make consoles rather obsolete, though.
Also, my set up doesn't support HDMI, or I would be using that as default. Instead I just have an HD TV set up through VGA.
Games like Crysis were always edge cases of development, with most studios making lower than cutting edge graphics due to... wait for it... a large damned potential install base. It makes no sense to make something that only runs on a ~$600-$1100 video card setup. Especially in a down economy. The nice side effect is that you can also port it to consoles and have an even larger install base.
The reason things seem "dumbed down" in that vein is that nobody bothers to make the UI significantly different, so they design for the limited UI (few buttons on a console you could map), and then halfass it over to PC (hit space to select the menu item! What? click? Why would we let you click a menu item??)
But there's really no financially viable reason to crank out a new Crysis every six months when the video card market upgrades again. Better to develop on the assumption that you will be targeting a card that's 2-3 years old by the time you release.
I think you're being a bit optimistic there. We'll have cell phones that can make great looking games, but not photorealistic games. We're maybe just barely at that level with CGI in films, and those visuals require a hell of a lot of power and time to render. The render farms at ILM took weeks or even months to render the scenes in Transformers 2, right? Games require graphics to be rendered in real time.
I had it written off as a tech demo, but when I actually got around to playing it (with a computer I put together a year after it was released, of course), I was impressed. Especially as the FPS genre is as good as dead to me.
I honestly believe that after the next generation of consoles, graphics will not be a defining factor anymore in a game's success, we're very close to the limit of how much people give a shit. Regardless, right now a top end sandy bridge processor has a low end geforce card built right on it.
What about the next generation of CPU? The one after that? It's entire possible that we'll get single-unit computers that are just a motherboard with a couple of surface mounted components and a big ass heatsink capable of playing games that make the PS3 look antiquated.
People will still call this thing their computer. Like I said, I honestly believe the homogenization of features is more of a threat to consoles than anything.
Of course, one day we will have photorealistic games, and then it'll have to stop. I mean, how do you make something look more real than real? But even then, there will be always be more stylish stuff. There's still animated movies, after all.
Once we hit that point, hardware need not get more powerful, just smaller and more efficient and cheaper
Like..........Star Trek: Borg?
I'm waiting to see how Thief 4 will fare in this regard.
It'd be nice to get levels like Thief II again. God, what a wonderful game.
At any rate, with the "PC gaming is dying" meme - I think it was reeling with the potential for a pretty solid chance at death blow a few years back, but the trend has largely reversed, and it's completely, 100% thanks to Valve. Steam is such a great delivery platform that it's allowed a method for people to release games in a unified manner on PC, allows the content providers to feel that they're being protected without draconian DRM - which was driving a lot of people away - and (frankly) is doing a damn fine job of ensuring that games are cheap, too.
But in terms of "dying"? Really? This is the year you're going to talk about it? Let's COMPLETELY ignore MMOs for a sec. PC exclusives coming out this year: Shogun 2: Total War, The Witcher 2, Heroes of Might and Magic VI, DOTA 2, Tropico 4, Stronghold 3, Diablo 3, Neverwinter, etc. This year is shaping up to be one of the best PC years in a LONG time. And that's not even touching on some of the other games coming out which you'd be a fool to get on console vs PC if only because of the modding community - Skyrim, for example. Ah, my love of mods has recently been rekindled by Left 4 Dead 2.
It's a damn fine time to be a PC gamer, and there's more than enough reasons it's my primary gaming platform.
Mass Effect 17 Rachni crew member + Asari spectre love scene in glorious photorealism
What I think is likely to happen in the long term is that consoles will continue to adopt marketable characteristics of PCs until the two are functionally interchangeable for most entertainment applications. It's already possible for your console to be a media center, netflix box and game platform, in addition to managing and updating your game software. I wouldn't be surprised if in the not-so-distant future I could plug in a proper keyboard and use my Xbox Sphere to download games from steam, play WoW 2, and post on the new vanilla-based PA forums.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Appended for Rainbow Six.
edit: that said, I agree with the earlier poster that it seems like we had the most recent iteration of this topic of discussion less than a month or two ago, and I'm also wary of anyone who starts a thread on their first day and includes a link to a website with advertisements.
LONGEST.DEATH.EVER
Sega sold a KB+M peripheral for the Dreamcast (leading to the sublime weirdness that was The Typing Of The Dead) and I'm pretty sure the PS3 supports USB keyboards and mice although I'm not sure if they can be used as game input devices rather than ways to browse the OS and use the web browser.
In my 10 years of gaming, all of which has been invested in the PC, it seems to have gone from strength to strength. From the flourishing indie scene, to the growing e-sports business. The game industry as a whole I think is healthier now than it has ever been.
So that Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft can make money selling own-brand peripherals. Microsoft in particular are very expensive for no damned reason other than to make money. And all three consoles will accept a keyboard (except the 360, maybe?), but I can't see a company like Nintendo decide that keyboard and mouse are the perfect control combination.
Edit - Also, I'm really surprised that we haven't seen or heard anything of the successor to PCI-Express. Graphics cards are getting bigger, heavier and more power-hungry, stressing the motherboard and requiring ever more power connections. The next graphics interface is surely going to be an external one, where graphics cards will have their own power supply. You won't need a bazillion watt PSU anymore, you won't have issues of space with how big the cards are getting, and the heat in your pc will drop significantly.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Because keyboards and mice are for nerds. I ain't no nerd gimme my Haloz.
I don't know how people would feel about that. I already have enough stuff sitting on my desk to the point that I'd rather not have anything thing sitting outside of my tower.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Those are practical for people other than gamers though. Who other than gamers and people dabbling in real-time GPU rendering would use it?
It would be a tiny market with higher prices than you deal with now.
PC: "Disc?! In the drive to play the game? What is this? Last Century?"