I'm sure gamers would love an external graphics card, for all the reasons I listed above, and for ease of replacement, also. You have external hard drives and sound cards - why not external graphics cards? You could sit them on top of the subwoofer, or something.
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.
I'd say the market size would be about the same as it is now - and why not? The benefits far outweigh the additional costs, and I wouldn't say they'd be extensive in the least. A little more plastic to cover the card, and however much an external power supply will cost?
Rohan on
...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
I must not be in the target market for that sort of thing. I don't care about better graphics at all. I'm not going to buy a widget to improve something I don't think needs improving.
Eventually you're going to need a better set of components, unless you really don't care about 3D games at all and just play something like Farmville. How many times do we see people complaining about a new game not running on their pc due to the game not supporting an older card? They are told to get a new card. Well, not everyone feels they are competent enough to open up their pc and replace a card inside, so the external is a good idea there. Saves them the exorbitant money they have to pay for someone behind the counter at their local retail shop to put the card in for them.
It just makes sense to me, and I'd imagine to a lot of people, also. It's easier to replace, you can buy one knowing that you don't have to worry about it fitting into your Hewlett-Packard's shitty case with absolutely no room inside. For gamers there's no need to worry about the extra heat, or how many free power connectors your PSU has, or even if your PSU is capable enough to power your new card. AMD and nVidia no longer have to worry about the ever increasing heat each new generation brings with it. Manufacturers like HP and Dell can repackage their pc's in more attractive, smaller cases.
Everyone's happy!
Rohan on
...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
I'm sure gamers would love an external graphics card, for all the reasons I listed above, and for ease of replacement, also. You have external hard drives and sound cards - why not external graphics cards? You could sit them on top of the subwoofer, or something.
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.
I'd say the market size would be about the same as it is now - and why not? The benefits far outweigh the additional costs, and I wouldn't say they'd be extensive in the least. A little more plastic to cover the card, and however much an external power supply will cost?
I know I would love to pay three hundo or so every few years for a universal piece of hardware that I knew would play all the games I wanted.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
You really don't think Fallout 3 was dumbed down at all for consoles? Really?
Man, I love it but.. that interface
Never played it on the console. I thought the PC version was pretty good.
When I talk about "dumbing down" I mean more along the lines of how the Baldur's Gate, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon franchises have evolved, for example.
Complexity for complexity's sake isn't actually a good thing. I love Baldur's Gate but 2/3E or whatever they called that rule system was for shit. The problem with Deus Ex: Invisible War wasn't that they streamlined inventory management.
To the extent that series "dumb down" for consoles, it's often not as bad a thing as it gets credit for.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Complexity for complexity's sake isn't actually a good thing. I love Baldur's Gate but 2/3E or whatever they called that rule system was for shit. The problem with Deus Ex: Invisible War wasn't that they streamlined inventory management.
To the extent that series "dumb down" for consoles, it's often not as bad a thing as it gets credit for.
AD&D 2nd Edition. I don't think it's complexity for complexity's sake, though. The games basically got turned from deep, story-driven RPGs into "mash A as fast as you can and pick up the loot."
Eventually you're going to need a better set of components, unless you really don't care about 3D games at all and just play something like Farmville.
[snip]
There's a vast gradient of game styles and quality between Castle of the Winds and Crysis. What if I don't care about the sum of interactive dimensions? Lots of people don't. They're the ones playing Farmville and replaying LttP.
Graphical fidelity is a tool, just like AI, control, narrative, and art direction. If a developer needs a bigger GPU to make the game better, then that's fine.
isn't kinda a huge thing about the speed of graphics cards the whole thing where they have just shitloads of bandwidth? Like, a couple hundred pins tied right into the north bridge with all sorts of dedicated access to main memory and shit?
Like, you move all that out of the case, pair everything down to a couple dozen wires, add in an extra controller to stand between it and the PC, isn't that going to add a huge amount of latency? Don't you need pretty good bi-directional communication for the whole offloading physics to the GPU thing to work?
Like, for the amount of work the CPU does, it would be much better to just stick a not too huge CPU in the external GPU box, and just send all the stuff from the hard drive and the network and human interface stuff to the external graphics+processing unit.
Are you sure you don't just want a console that lets you use a mouse+keyboard?
Meh, there's the whole Thunderbolt ultrafast, fiber-optic/copper, peer-to-peer USB-like dealie Apple has been flogging about. It, or something similar, combined with few dozen of these external GPU thingies, would have some interesting implications for the whole commodity HPC cluster building crowd. I just don't see it actually being a particularly great architecture for gaming.
A strong example is Dragon Age Origins VS. Dragon Age II....even at maximum settings, Dragon age II looks much worse than the original
...are you serious?
Uh, anyway, on PC gaming being dead, this assertion is getting pretty tiresome. It isn't dead, nor is it dying. The PC has lost market share, and certain cross-platform series have become console-oriented, in some cases arguably to their detriment (R6 being the most salient example to me). This can be unfortunate and regrettable...but are we really going to hold it against developers for following the law of supply and demand? To blame companies, or even the industry as a whole, is narrow-minded. Any changes you might have perceived are the result of shifting demand, so if you want to blame anyone, blame consumers.
I might be in the minority, but I think that while the PC is no longer dominant, the experience of being a PC gamer has gotten categorically better. Digital distribution alone makes being a shopper easier, and allows extremely competitive pricing as well as special sales no longer bound by wholesale cost. Shitty ports of multi-platform titles exist, but they're in the minority- usually, the PC user can expect to get the absolute best experience possible, if they invest the time and the money in hardware.
And that last point is why the PC arguably has no place being the dominant platform. Most people don't want to fuck around with computers, and greatly prefer sticking a disc into a box and having the game just work. They can't be blamed for this, and it follows that the industry can't be blamed to catering to them.
Finally, in terms of breadth of games available and innovation, how can we possibly complain? Indie games are more prevalent and accessible than ever, and even smaller developers now have unprecedented means to distribute their product. Instead of a small demand simply not being met, smaller developers are now able to create niche products without many barriers to their audience.
What plateau have we reached, exactly? So Crysis is arguably the best graphical achievement and it's a few years old. What is this indicative of? Nothing. There were better games out then, and better games have been released since. If visuals are the whole of what innovation means to you, I'm not even sure what to say to that. According to the law of diminishing returns, you are in for disappointment for the rest of your life.
The wheels of innovation are still turning, some times slower than others, but the fact remains that the industry will be bringing us improvements and inventions for the foreseeable future. Some of that innovation is bound to be positive.
I understand that there is nostalgia for how games used to be, and in the cases of some franchises quality has indeed slid. If we're talking about the gaming industry as a whole, I fail to see how things are not demonstrably and obviously better now than they were five, ten or fifteen years ago.
EDIT: And it just occurred to me- if the improvement in visuals and implementation of DX11 are slowing, shouldn't PC gamers be happy because it's saving us money?
I'm really glad the industry has made efforts to grow beyond the graphics-obsessed few. I haven't bought a game in almost a decade because I got tired of paying $10-50 for pretty junk. The Wii 2 will probably be my first purchase in a long time.
And I don't do PC games after being burned by too many bugs and the "whoops, no refunds" thing.
Is two games, the last one being released in 2001. Both run on the same engine.
They released a console action game with Baldur's Gate in the title, and it was terrible.
Anyway, love that external video card idea. Fund it.
DisruptorX2 on
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
edited March 2011
BTW the video card with it's own power cord idea was almost tried back in 2000 with the Voodoo 6 but 3Dfx got bought by Nvidia before it was released. It was a silly idea then and it's a silly idea now. A graphics card that needs that much juice would be silly.
I doubt if. If anything it seems to me PC, and consoles will grow into each other. You can already surf the net, store music, photos, and customize your console layout. The next generation of console games may feel really damned complete.
isn't kinda a huge thing about the speed of graphics cards the whole thing where they have just shitloads of bandwidth? Like, a couple hundred pins tied right into the north bridge with all sorts of dedicated access to main memory and shit?
Like, you move all that out of the case, pair everything down to a couple dozen wires, add in an extra controller to stand between it and the PC, isn't that going to add a huge amount of latency? Don't you need pretty good bi-directional communication for the whole offloading physics to the GPU thing to work?
Like, for the amount of work the CPU does, it would be much better to just stick a not too huge CPU in the external GPU box, and just send all the stuff from the hard drive and the network and human interface stuff to the external graphics+processing unit.
Why not have this next-generation connector on the edge of the motherboard? Why should it be a tiny USB-like port? I don't see the need for a controller or anything like that. A lot of proprietary computers, like machines from the 80's, for example, had ports jutting directly out of the machine. Like the User Port on a Commodore 64, for example. I can't really see any problems with it.
Are you sure you don't just want a console that lets you use a mouse+keyboard?
I very definitely don't want that. I'm not gaming on pc just because of the keyboard and mouse combination. I don't see why people are reacting negatively to this idea, or in the case of MKR who seems to be thinking that I'm saying we should have external graphics cards so we can get to some mythical ultra-lulzy level of graphics.
I'm saying that graphics cards are getting bigger and heavier, they're requiring more power than ever before, they're giving off much more heat than before... and wouldn't it just be simpler to have an outside the box solution?
And Kagera, that is nowhere near the same thing. The Voodoo5 6000 had four effing GPU's on it, it was a silly decision by 3dfx to stave nVidia off, getting past VSA-100's shortcomings by simply adding more physical GPU cores to the card until they could get the forever-delayed Rampage out. There hasn't been a single card since with four cores on it, not even today, when the biggest would be something like the Radeon 6990.
And even then the Voodoo5 6000 was a single-slot solution, requiring only the bare minimal with a fan on each die - a far cry from today's massive two-slot monstrosities, with their single massive fan surrounded by a bloody great huge plastic cover to hide the heatsinks.
Rohan on
...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
I don't see why people are reacting negatively to this idea, or in the case of MKR who seems to be thinking that I'm saying we should have external graphics cards so we can get to some mythical ultra-lulzy level of graphics.
Took a lot less time to reach the "gross misrepresentation of opposing ideas" phase of this topic than I expected.
Are you sure you don't just want a console that lets you use a mouse+keyboard?
I very definitely don't want that. I'm not gaming on pc just because of the keyboard and mouse combination.
what is it that you think the fundamental difference is, then
The freedom to do whatever I want to do on my machine without having to agree to some corporate license (open this console and you suck, etc.). Mods. Freedom of choice in software and hardware - hard drive filling up? Add another! Case too small? Get a bigger case, that kind of thing. Nobody censoring what I put on my hard drives, no company telling me I can't do this or that.
Keyboard and mouse support on consoles would be great, but it still wouldn't entice me away.
Edit - Actually, I think I'm even more comfortable sitting at my desk playing games than sitting back on my couch and staring at the television much further away.
Editedit - I don't know, guys. I don't want to argue with anyone. I just see it as a natural progression of the hardware.
Rohan on
...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
PC games had it pretty rough between the release of Starcraft and Half Life 2 or so. Major retailers stopped carrying them because everyone had a burner and access to easy no patch codes on the internet and consoles really stepped up. Combine that with the wild west marketplace of video cards at that time and woo boy.
Hardcore PC gaming never died though and now that costs are in line and the ceiling has basically been hit on graphics that you can actually still deliver on and turn a profit it has become a healthy alternative to consoles. Some genres still don't show, just like some genres don't show on consoles.
I mean, near as I can tell you're talking about mounting the graphics processor in some kind of drive-cage-esque apparatus that can quickly and easily be removed and replaced?
But that doesn't even really work because it doesn't cover power use, so you need another external source of power too, and even if you included that and had some kind of highend switch that could connect the PC to your 3d processor box without any loss of performance... what have you accomplished? A thing that's a lot more expensive and probably not that much easier to install than a 3d card is now.
I ironically said it earlier, but I'm totally on board with the idea of a discrete, external hardware platform with long-ish term forward compatibility. But we have them already, and they're called consoles.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
And consoles lack a hell of a lot of customizability that PCs have in droves, Pig.
It sounds to me like Rohan's idea is for PCs to eventually have very small, non-intrusive form factors by relocating what typically takes up a decently large amount of space in tower PCs and what typically mandates having very large power supplies also in said PC. My guess is that he is seeing an eventual goal of something the size of a Mac Mini but without sacrificing much, if any, of the power of a tower PC. This sounds pretty great to me.
Well right, but all that stuff still has to go somewhere. And putting it in a bunch of little boxes instead of one larger one means you have to duplicate a bunch hardware (like PSU) that can serve multiple parts in a conventional tower.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
isn't kinda a huge thing about the speed of graphics cards the whole thing where they have just shitloads of bandwidth? Like, a couple hundred pins tied right into the north bridge with all sorts of dedicated access to main memory and shit?
Like, you move all that out of the case, pair everything down to a couple dozen wires, add in an extra controller to stand between it and the PC, isn't that going to add a huge amount of latency? Don't you need pretty good bi-directional communication for the whole offloading physics to the GPU thing to work?
Like, for the amount of work the CPU does, it would be much better to just stick a not too huge CPU in the external GPU box, and just send all the stuff from the hard drive and the network and human interface stuff to the external graphics+processing unit.
Why not have this next-generation connector on the edge of the motherboard? Why should it be a tiny USB-like port? I don't see the need for a controller or anything like that. A lot of proprietary computers, like machines from the 80's, for example, had ports jutting directly out of the machine. Like the User Port on a Commodore 64, for example. I can't really see any problems with it.
Are you sure you don't just want a console that lets you use a mouse+keyboard?
I very definitely don't want that. I'm not gaming on pc just because of the keyboard and mouse combination. I don't see why people are reacting negatively to this idea, or in the case of MKR who seems to be thinking that I'm saying we should have external graphics cards so we can get to some mythical ultra-lulzy level of graphics.
I'm saying that graphics cards are getting bigger and heavier, they're requiring more power than ever before, they're giving off much more heat than before... and wouldn't it just be simpler to have an outside the box solution?
And Kagera, that is nowhere near the same thing. The Voodoo5 6000 had four effing GPU's on it, it was a silly decision by 3dfx to stave nVidia off, getting past VSA-100's shortcomings by simply adding more physical GPU cores to the card until they could get the forever-delayed Rampage out. There hasn't been a single card since with four cores on it, not even today, when the biggest would be something like the Radeon 6990.
And even then the Voodoo5 6000 was a single-slot solution, requiring only the bare minimal with a fan on each die - a far cry from today's massive two-slot monstrosities, with their single massive fan surrounded by a bloody great huge plastic cover to hide the heatsinks.
And yet, somehow, I can play Shogun 2 on my laptop.
Honestly I'm thinking within the next decade Intel will have given us on die CPU+Mobo graphics solutions that are powerful enough for the games of the time, because graphics aren't going to keep getting better at the rate they did in the past, hardware is going to keep getting better.
I see zero problem with the current double-slot GPUs, other than mobo manufacturers failing to account for them and always always always placing a PCI-Ex1 connector under the second slot (when usually you only have two, or even one, of those). Maybe that's some kind of stupid-ass ATX standard, in which case it needs to change.
The PC is the only platform that can sustain itself, it can never die. Until another platform allows the same freedom to develop software and hardware for it as the PC, or if the PC will lose this freedom, this will never change. It doesn't matter if it's hard to make money off of it due to piracy or lack of popularity.
The best examples of how this freedom advances game development are games like Dwarf fortress and Minecraft. You just can't make their kind of development model, low barrier of entry (in the case of minecraft, just opening a website), constant updates and moddability possible on any other platform. Maybe the android platform will one day come close.
I guess big developers don't care about those freedoms, but it's not their right to declare a platform dead just because they can't innovate new ways to make money off of it.
IMO the phrase "PC gaming is dying" often comes up, when the PC gaming looses the media focus after a burst of "attention".
External graphic cards:
With a high speed interface, which is suitable this kind of data transfer, I could see that. Imagine: You use a laptop at work for -lets say- word processing. Later at home, plug it in the external graphic unit for demanding games / entertainment software. You still retain your installed applications, your own configured environment and your machine still has the same portability when you take it to work next day. Plus, you have one machine less to configure.
Of course price and usability factor in there too. If I pay for the external GPU as much as for a good equipped PC, I would get the latter of course. If I have to reinstall graphics drivers everytime I connect my PC than it would be faster to boot up another machine instead.
Dratatoo on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
Complexity for complexity's sake isn't actually a good thing. I love Baldur's Gate but 2/3E or whatever they called that rule system was for shit. The problem with Deus Ex: Invisible War wasn't that they streamlined inventory management.
To the extent that series "dumb down" for consoles, it's often not as bad a thing as it gets credit for.
AD&D 2nd Edition. I don't think it's complexity for complexity's sake, though. The games basically got turned from deep, story-driven RPGs into "mash A as fast as you can and pick up the loot."
AD&D 2e is pretty much complexity for complexity's sake in itself.
Though seriously, the Dark Alliance games were less sequels and more interplay trying to make more D&D/forgotten realms games after losing the actual D&D license.
Handsome CostanzaAsk me about 8bitdoRIP Iwata-sanRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
The" bro gamer" culture is in it's infancy. they are basically like we were when we were 6-12. With rare exceptions most people got their start on an Atari or an Snes or a genesis. Then as the years passed that group as a whole matured to PC games. They may have dabbled in PC games before that time, but there is an unmistakable, legitimate point in gamer evolution where one realizes that to get the maximum from your gaming experience you need to be primarily focused on PC's. It's the natural progression of a gamer, anyone who has put serious time into gaming knows that the PC is superior in quality (more options, no-ceiling on graphics capabilities, mod ability etc.) Give them a good 5 to 10 years and everyone will be rockin' PC's. Just watch.
The" bro gamer" culture is in it's infancy. they are basically like we were when we were 6-12. With rare exceptions most people got their start on an Atari or an Snes or a genesis. Then as the years passed that group as a whole matured to PC games. They may have dabbled in PC games before that time, but there is an unmistakable, legitimate point in gamer evolution where one realizes that to get the maximum from your gaming experience you need to be primarily focused on PC's. It's the natural progression of a gamer, anyone who has put serious time into gaming knows that the PC is superior in quality (more options, no-ceiling on graphics capabilities, mod ability etc.) Give them a good 5 to 10 years and everyone will be rockin' PC's. Just watch.
I think you're overestimating how much bros really care about gaming.
Consoles: "I just want to put the disc in the drive and have it work"
PC: "Disc?! In the drive to play the game? What is this? Last Century?"
Actually, it goes like this:
Consoles: "I just want to put the disc in the drive and have it work... Crap I have to update the PS3 Firmware... Crap, it won't let me play online... Crap, my xbox 3rl'ed"
PC: "Disc?! In the drive to play the game? What is this? Last Century? Oh, I have more than 300 games installed, a simple double-click away from playing any of them... OMG I CAN'T CHOSE ONE THEY'RE ALL AWESOME <curls on a corner and cries>"
jefe414"My Other Drill Hole is a Teleporter"Mechagodzilla is Best GodzillaRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
I actually went from PC to Xbox 360 only because I had to if I wanted to play anything other than single-player games. Once I did this, I stopped keeping my PC even remotely up to date. Games being dumbed down? Perhaps. Rainbow Six Vegas certainly was a different game from the earlier ones in the series, that's for sure.
Considering it, I would love this external graphics card idea. That way I can play games on the road with my laptop, and have the burning hot sun not contained inside my tiny little laptop, under one of my palms.
@Stormwatcher: I run into that problem sometimes. I can glance through my installed games in Steam and just can't decide what to play!
Consoles: "I just want to put the disc in the drive and have it work"
PC: "Disc?! In the drive to play the game? What is this? Last Century?"
Actually, it goes like this:
Consoles: "I just want to put the disc in the drive and have it work... Crap I have to update the PS3 Firmware... Crap, it won't let me play online... Crap, my xbox 3rl'ed"
PC: "Disc?! In the drive to play the game? What is this? Last Century? Oh, I have more than 300 games installed, a simple double-click away from playing any of them... OMG I CAN'T CHOSE ONE THEY'RE ALL AWESOME <curls on a corner and cries>"
This is a joke right?
Seriously, the PC is a pain in the ass for gaming.
My xbox and PS3 just work.
If you have had nothing but good luck with the PC, that's great, but it doesn't change the fact that myself and many other people find the platform to be irritating as hell.
Consoles: "I just want to put the disc in the drive and have it work"
PC: "Disc?! In the drive to play the game? What is this? Last Century?"
Actually, it goes like this:
Consoles: "I just want to put the disc in the drive and have it work... Crap I have to update the PS3 Firmware... Crap, it won't let me play online... Crap, my xbox 3rl'ed"
PC: "Disc?! In the drive to play the game? What is this? Last Century? Oh, I have more than 300 games installed, a simple double-click away from playing any of them... OMG I CAN'T CHOSE ONE THEY'RE ALL AWESOME <curls on a corner and cries>"
This is a joke right?
Seriously, the PC is a pain in the ass for gaming.
My xbox and PS3 just work.
If you have had nothing but good luck with the PC, that's great, but it doesn't change the fact that myself and many other people find the platform to be irritating as hell.
Shouldn't there be something about how the PC wants you to have the disc in to play even though all its content is already on the stupid hard drive?
Well, my PC has hardly ever had any problems whatsoever, cost me less than half what I would've paid for an Xbox 360, and has carried me over five years of almost problem free gaming(one or two games have had issues, that's it).
In comparison, a friend of mine is going on his fifth xbox by now, and they seem to keep breaking down every 6 months or so. His PS3 keeps doing the firmware bullshit and other internet-related hijinks when everyone would just like to get to playing.
Consoles these days can be every bit as pain in the ass as PCs in the past, and in my experience I've had fewer difficulties with the PC.
Anecdotes lol. But seriously, xbox and PS3 just work, except when they don't. Just like PCs, which is not such as huge surprise, when they are practically media PCs.
Consoles: "I just want to put the disc in the drive and have it work"
PC: "Disc?! In the drive to play the game? What is this? Last Century?"
Actually, it goes like this:
Consoles: "I just want to put the disc in the drive and have it work... Crap I have to update the PS3 Firmware... Crap, it won't let me play online... Crap, my xbox 3rl'ed"
PC: "Disc?! In the drive to play the game? What is this? Last Century? Oh, I have more than 300 games installed, a simple double-click away from playing any of them... OMG I CAN'T CHOSE ONE THEY'RE ALL AWESOME <curls on a corner and cries>"
This is a joke right?
Seriously, the PC is a pain in the ass for gaming.
My xbox and PS3 just work.
If you have had nothing but good luck with the PC, that's great, but it doesn't change the fact that myself and many other people find the platform to be irritating as hell.
Unless you're building your own PC, the issues only seem to stem from shitty ports which are disappearing left and right, ever since Windows 7, if you just have a functional PC new games seem to run pretty trouble free (aside from minor annoyances, but blue screens and games that just don't run are rare these days)
Running older games or running custom PC hardware leads to issues, but if you're doing either of those that's to be expected.
I have a PC, 2 consoles, 2 portables, and I think I bought more games on my PC in the last four years than everything else combined.
It's actually annoying that I have to install updates and then install the game in the drive whenever I decide to buy a console game.
PC, it's either preloaded or I'll start the loading while I'm still at work so it's nice and ready when I come home.
Portables are the closest thing to "just works immediately" nowadays except they're starting to get dumbass region locks.
And yes a huge hard drive and steam just means I have lots of games I can play without having to hunt for discs. It's almost a negative because sometimes I'm paralyzed with choice and end up doing something else instead.
Posts
I'd say the market size would be about the same as it is now - and why not? The benefits far outweigh the additional costs, and I wouldn't say they'd be extensive in the least. A little more plastic to cover the card, and however much an external power supply will cost?
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
It just makes sense to me, and I'd imagine to a lot of people, also. It's easier to replace, you can buy one knowing that you don't have to worry about it fitting into your Hewlett-Packard's shitty case with absolutely no room inside. For gamers there's no need to worry about the extra heat, or how many free power connectors your PSU has, or even if your PSU is capable enough to power your new card. AMD and nVidia no longer have to worry about the ever increasing heat each new generation brings with it. Manufacturers like HP and Dell can repackage their pc's in more attractive, smaller cases.
Everyone's happy!
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
I know I would love to pay three hundo or so every few years for a universal piece of hardware that I knew would play all the games I wanted.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Never played it on the console. I thought the PC version was pretty good.
When I talk about "dumbing down" I mean more along the lines of how the Baldur's Gate, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon franchises have evolved, for example.
To the extent that series "dumb down" for consoles, it's often not as bad a thing as it gets credit for.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
AD&D 2nd Edition. I don't think it's complexity for complexity's sake, though. The games basically got turned from deep, story-driven RPGs into "mash A as fast as you can and pick up the loot."
There's a vast gradient of game styles and quality between Castle of the Winds and Crysis. What if I don't care about the sum of interactive dimensions? Lots of people don't. They're the ones playing Farmville and replaying LttP.
Graphical fidelity is a tool, just like AI, control, narrative, and art direction. If a developer needs a bigger GPU to make the game better, then that's fine.
Like, you move all that out of the case, pair everything down to a couple dozen wires, add in an extra controller to stand between it and the PC, isn't that going to add a huge amount of latency? Don't you need pretty good bi-directional communication for the whole offloading physics to the GPU thing to work?
Like, for the amount of work the CPU does, it would be much better to just stick a not too huge CPU in the external GPU box, and just send all the stuff from the hard drive and the network and human interface stuff to the external graphics+processing unit.
Are you sure you don't just want a console that lets you use a mouse+keyboard?
Meh, there's the whole Thunderbolt ultrafast, fiber-optic/copper, peer-to-peer USB-like dealie Apple has been flogging about. It, or something similar, combined with few dozen of these external GPU thingies, would have some interesting implications for the whole commodity HPC cluster building crowd. I just don't see it actually being a particularly great architecture for gaming.
...are you serious?
Uh, anyway, on PC gaming being dead, this assertion is getting pretty tiresome. It isn't dead, nor is it dying. The PC has lost market share, and certain cross-platform series have become console-oriented, in some cases arguably to their detriment (R6 being the most salient example to me). This can be unfortunate and regrettable...but are we really going to hold it against developers for following the law of supply and demand? To blame companies, or even the industry as a whole, is narrow-minded. Any changes you might have perceived are the result of shifting demand, so if you want to blame anyone, blame consumers.
I might be in the minority, but I think that while the PC is no longer dominant, the experience of being a PC gamer has gotten categorically better. Digital distribution alone makes being a shopper easier, and allows extremely competitive pricing as well as special sales no longer bound by wholesale cost. Shitty ports of multi-platform titles exist, but they're in the minority- usually, the PC user can expect to get the absolute best experience possible, if they invest the time and the money in hardware.
And that last point is why the PC arguably has no place being the dominant platform. Most people don't want to fuck around with computers, and greatly prefer sticking a disc into a box and having the game just work. They can't be blamed for this, and it follows that the industry can't be blamed to catering to them.
Finally, in terms of breadth of games available and innovation, how can we possibly complain? Indie games are more prevalent and accessible than ever, and even smaller developers now have unprecedented means to distribute their product. Instead of a small demand simply not being met, smaller developers are now able to create niche products without many barriers to their audience.
What plateau have we reached, exactly? So Crysis is arguably the best graphical achievement and it's a few years old. What is this indicative of? Nothing. There were better games out then, and better games have been released since. If visuals are the whole of what innovation means to you, I'm not even sure what to say to that. According to the law of diminishing returns, you are in for disappointment for the rest of your life.
The wheels of innovation are still turning, some times slower than others, but the fact remains that the industry will be bringing us improvements and inventions for the foreseeable future. Some of that innovation is bound to be positive.
I understand that there is nostalgia for how games used to be, and in the cases of some franchises quality has indeed slid. If we're talking about the gaming industry as a whole, I fail to see how things are not demonstrably and obviously better now than they were five, ten or fifteen years ago.
EDIT: And it just occurred to me- if the improvement in visuals and implementation of DX11 are slowing, shouldn't PC gamers be happy because it's saving us money?
And I don't do PC games after being burned by too many bugs and the "whoops, no refunds" thing.
Is two games, the last one being released in 2001. Both run on the same engine.
They released a console action game with Baldur's Gate in the title, and it was terrible.
Anyway, love that external video card idea. Fund it.
Why not have this next-generation connector on the edge of the motherboard? Why should it be a tiny USB-like port? I don't see the need for a controller or anything like that. A lot of proprietary computers, like machines from the 80's, for example, had ports jutting directly out of the machine. Like the User Port on a Commodore 64, for example. I can't really see any problems with it.
I very definitely don't want that. I'm not gaming on pc just because of the keyboard and mouse combination. I don't see why people are reacting negatively to this idea, or in the case of MKR who seems to be thinking that I'm saying we should have external graphics cards so we can get to some mythical ultra-lulzy level of graphics.
I'm saying that graphics cards are getting bigger and heavier, they're requiring more power than ever before, they're giving off much more heat than before... and wouldn't it just be simpler to have an outside the box solution?
And Kagera, that is nowhere near the same thing. The Voodoo5 6000 had four effing GPU's on it, it was a silly decision by 3dfx to stave nVidia off, getting past VSA-100's shortcomings by simply adding more physical GPU cores to the card until they could get the forever-delayed Rampage out. There hasn't been a single card since with four cores on it, not even today, when the biggest would be something like the Radeon 6990.
And even then the Voodoo5 6000 was a single-slot solution, requiring only the bare minimal with a fan on each die - a far cry from today's massive two-slot monstrosities, with their single massive fan surrounded by a bloody great huge plastic cover to hide the heatsinks.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
what is it that you think the fundamental difference is, then
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Took a lot less time to reach the "gross misrepresentation of opposing ideas" phase of this topic than I expected.
:?
The freedom to do whatever I want to do on my machine without having to agree to some corporate license (open this console and you suck, etc.). Mods. Freedom of choice in software and hardware - hard drive filling up? Add another! Case too small? Get a bigger case, that kind of thing. Nobody censoring what I put on my hard drives, no company telling me I can't do this or that.
Keyboard and mouse support on consoles would be great, but it still wouldn't entice me away.
Edit - Actually, I think I'm even more comfortable sitting at my desk playing games than sitting back on my couch and staring at the television much further away.
Editedit - I don't know, guys. I don't want to argue with anyone. I just see it as a natural progression of the hardware.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Hardcore PC gaming never died though and now that costs are in line and the ceiling has basically been hit on graphics that you can actually still deliver on and turn a profit it has become a healthy alternative to consoles. Some genres still don't show, just like some genres don't show on consoles.
But that doesn't even really work because it doesn't cover power use, so you need another external source of power too, and even if you included that and had some kind of highend switch that could connect the PC to your 3d processor box without any loss of performance... what have you accomplished? A thing that's a lot more expensive and probably not that much easier to install than a 3d card is now.
I ironically said it earlier, but I'm totally on board with the idea of a discrete, external hardware platform with long-ish term forward compatibility. But we have them already, and they're called consoles.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It sounds to me like Rohan's idea is for PCs to eventually have very small, non-intrusive form factors by relocating what typically takes up a decently large amount of space in tower PCs and what typically mandates having very large power supplies also in said PC. My guess is that he is seeing an eventual goal of something the size of a Mac Mini but without sacrificing much, if any, of the power of a tower PC. This sounds pretty great to me.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
And yet, somehow, I can play Shogun 2 on my laptop.
Honestly I'm thinking within the next decade Intel will have given us on die CPU+Mobo graphics solutions that are powerful enough for the games of the time, because graphics aren't going to keep getting better at the rate they did in the past, hardware is going to keep getting better.
The best examples of how this freedom advances game development are games like Dwarf fortress and Minecraft. You just can't make their kind of development model, low barrier of entry (in the case of minecraft, just opening a website), constant updates and moddability possible on any other platform. Maybe the android platform will one day come close.
I guess big developers don't care about those freedoms, but it's not their right to declare a platform dead just because they can't innovate new ways to make money off of it.
External graphic cards:
With a high speed interface, which is suitable this kind of data transfer, I could see that. Imagine: You use a laptop at work for -lets say- word processing. Later at home, plug it in the external graphic unit for demanding games / entertainment software. You still retain your installed applications, your own configured environment and your machine still has the same portability when you take it to work next day. Plus, you have one machine less to configure.
Of course price and usability factor in there too. If I pay for the external GPU as much as for a good equipped PC, I would get the latter of course. If I have to reinstall graphics drivers everytime I connect my PC than it would be faster to boot up another machine instead.
AD&D 2e is pretty much complexity for complexity's sake in itself.
Though seriously, the Dark Alliance games were less sequels and more interplay trying to make more D&D/forgotten realms games after losing the actual D&D license.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
I think you're overestimating how much bros really care about gaming.
Actually, it goes like this:
Consoles: "I just want to put the disc in the drive and have it work... Crap I have to update the PS3 Firmware... Crap, it won't let me play online... Crap, my xbox 3rl'ed"
PC: "Disc?! In the drive to play the game? What is this? Last Century? Oh, I have more than 300 games installed, a simple double-click away from playing any of them... OMG I CAN'T CHOSE ONE THEY'RE ALL AWESOME <curls on a corner and cries>"
@Stormwatcher: I run into that problem sometimes. I can glance through my installed games in Steam and just can't decide what to play!
It ain't going anywhere.
This is a joke right?
Seriously, the PC is a pain in the ass for gaming.
My xbox and PS3 just work.
If you have had nothing but good luck with the PC, that's great, but it doesn't change the fact that myself and many other people find the platform to be irritating as hell.
I mean with PCs it boils down to this: either you have a piece of shit computer, or you are too stupid to know how to use it properly.
In comparison, a friend of mine is going on his fifth xbox by now, and they seem to keep breaking down every 6 months or so. His PS3 keeps doing the firmware bullshit and other internet-related hijinks when everyone would just like to get to playing.
Consoles these days can be every bit as pain in the ass as PCs in the past, and in my experience I've had fewer difficulties with the PC.
Anecdotes lol. But seriously, xbox and PS3 just work, except when they don't. Just like PCs, which is not such as huge surprise, when they are practically media PCs.
Unless you're building your own PC, the issues only seem to stem from shitty ports which are disappearing left and right, ever since Windows 7, if you just have a functional PC new games seem to run pretty trouble free (aside from minor annoyances, but blue screens and games that just don't run are rare these days)
Running older games or running custom PC hardware leads to issues, but if you're doing either of those that's to be expected.
It's actually annoying that I have to install updates and then install the game in the drive whenever I decide to buy a console game.
PC, it's either preloaded or I'll start the loading while I'm still at work so it's nice and ready when I come home.
Portables are the closest thing to "just works immediately" nowadays except they're starting to get dumbass region locks.
And yes a huge hard drive and steam just means I have lots of games I can play without having to hunt for discs. It's almost a negative because sometimes I'm paralyzed with choice and end up doing something else instead.
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