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DirectX Architect — Consoles as We Know Them Are Gone
ThinSkin writes "DirectX architect Alex St. John swims against the current and predicts the demise not of PC gaming, but of game consoles, in an exclusive two-part interview at ExtremeTech. In part one, Alex blasts Intel for pushing its inferior onboard graphics technology to OEMs, insists that fighting piracy is the main reason for the existence of gaming consoles, and explains how the convergence of the GPU and the CPU is the next big thing in gaming. Alex continues in part two with more thoughts on retail and 3D games, and discusses in detail why he feels 'Vista blows' and what's to become of DirectX 10."
A DirectX architect says that console games are on the way out, and PC games are coming back. Surprise, surprise.
No, it's making money. I used to be more into consoles, even though I've always had a PC, because when I'm not being paid to use computers I don't like struggling with installing software, finding drivers, testing patches etc etc, but now PCs are more competitive on price, and less of a faff to do gaming with, it's less of an issue. Still not ever going to pay more than £100 on a graphics card though, which usually limits me to either slightly older games, or running current games with less eye candy. Still, not my loss.
Consolations as you know them, gone! No more trouble with your joystick -- just 100% pure hard disk action!
For gaming, consoles are about as "Just Works" (no Xbox jokes, thanks) as you get. For people who lack computer expertise, but like playing games, how can PCs beat that for the time being?
No argument there, of course, but how does he think game consoles are dead/will die and regular computers will win back the gaming scene, if the savior OS for Windows is so dead in the water?
Something else he is missing is that game consoles have introduced lots of people who aren't computer savvy to gaming. I think they will tend to stick to consoles especially when consoles don't have all the problems with malware and viruses that PCs do.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I use a console when I want to step away from the computer. Console games have some advantages over computers, one you never have to check for system requirements.
As to the demise, I mean lots of people (me included) are still playing vintage game consoles. Heck I got an Atari Paddle Set that works of AA batteries that I still play. But perhaps that says more about the timelessness of Breakout and Pong than consoles...
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
WildTangent actually gained some attention back in 2001, when the offered a web 3D plugin and a dev-enviroment that didn't cost a bazillion dollars. They let their heels drag, only kept offering their plattform for Windows and basically ignored any opinion-leaders in multimedia or VM-based gaming & 3D. WildTangent today is next to insignificant and their 'Orb' VM console (which afaict only runs on MS OSes) is nothing but a pimped WildTangent Plugin/Player and won't gain any traction beyond some niche group who wants to play a console game on the PC. For whatever reasons there may be.
Bottom line: Nothing to see here, move along.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Shit, anyone who commissions a huge model penis for the initial launch of his product can't be all bad.
Seriously, check your history, am I right or am I right?
OEM video is for gamers in the first place. OEM video is just fine for what it is - people who use computers at work on office documents, presentations, and web browsing.
No matter what GPU is on the on-board video, it won't be enough for gamers.
That worked out well.
insists that fighting piracy is the main reason for the existence of gaming consoles Honestly, can you blame the console makers for this? I have my old hacked XBox and was pirating content. I have my 360 and have bought plenty of content for it. The game makers are getting their money, pushing newer, more advanced games and will require more advanced hardware. Making pushing its inferior onboard graphics technology to OEMs future redundant
.
You're having a laugh. Both the top selling current game units, the Wii and NDS are both pirate magnates and trivial to mod accordingly. Nintendo left the Wii open to get the masses buying the boxes knowing most people will get the modded and download "backup" games, the NDS requires nothing more than a plug in cartridge. The 360 a bit more difficult to mod, but the full library is available. Clearly the big selling consoles are not doing anything against piracy. Whereas the PS3, still a long way from being hacked, doesn't sell as well. Go figure.
He's obviously very very excited about this glorious WildTangent Orb business, which I (as a somewhat-in-the-know gamer) have never heard of. Ever.
I gave up around the time he started talking about booting up an HP or Toshiba or Gateway and doing something with Orb. I was just getting nothing out of this article.
Curious question though. As far as I knew, the 'future' of gaming is all about more specialization in chips. He's talking about merging the GPU and CPU, but the big things I keep hearing about include more specialization (PPU and PhysX anybody?). What gives?
Why should they? What I'm saying is PCs for work and consoles for games. I think it's good that there's a specialty computer for games. That'll relieve some of the pressure on PC makers from having to make these boxes "for everybody". I don't know about you, but most of the graphics capability for my PCs goes unused. And the only reason I can think of is that Intel or whomever designs them that way so that these things "fits all". I'd like an even cheaper mother board for just business type of applications - I don't need the sound cards, super duper video, etc... for email, web browsing, word, exel, or any of the server apps when I'm running Linux on the board.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Console gaming will eventually kill PC gaming. It is cheaper for developers since they don't have to make the game to work on 20 million PC configurations, only 1 console configuration. Plus, consumers have to spend a fortune to upgrade their systems to play the newest games. Even some video cards alone are more pricey then a whole console system.
Break out the board games ladies and gentlemen.
Consoles are winning and will eventually win. The reason is simple:
Updating your video driver (or other drivers) is not a fun part of gaming. But for PC games, it's usually the first level you have to play.
Now that consoles have comparable graphics and sound to a mid-level PC, there's little advantage to using a PC over a console for games. And there are often large disadvantages.
I just recently bought a console. The main reason was because I was tired of needing to buy a new graphics card every year in order to to display the best graphics and have the best performance for the newest games and the only reason I needed to upgrade was for games. I did this when I went from PCI to AGP many yeas ago, thereby needing to buy a new motherboard, new processor, memory, etc. (I have also upgraded the motherboard several times since then in order to have a faster processor and memory.)
I didn't want to do that again in order to upgrade to PCI-E, so I bought a 360 console for less than half the price and I don't intend to upgrade my PC again for at least two or three years. I think a 3.2 GHz processsor and 2 GB of memory will be fine for software development for at least that long.
I also wanted to play games on a large screen and not have to sit in the same chair where I work all day when I'm relaxing.
Intel may have a "crappy graphics chip" for games but I bought a new computer a few months ago and after spending a lot of time reading about hardware, so I could make sure I was getting the parts that were right for me, Intel graphics was the first thing I knew I wanted. Crap or not, if I wanted free drivers that was the best choice. ATI had just started with their open source thing but I needed something that worked right away, not sometime in the future. The next computer I buy might have an ATI card but who knows, for now I'm very happy with what I have, and I reckon I'll keep it for a long time.
It sure beats the ATI card that I had on my old computer, I had trouble switching from Windows to GNU/Linux because everything felt so sluggish. And as if that wasn't enough I remember having to install proprietary drivers for the motherboard which was a real PITA. I'll never again buy another piece of hardware that doesn't come with good free drivers.
> In part one, Alex blasts Intel for pushing its inferior onboard graphics technology to OEMs
Remember, this also hurt them when Microsoft rewrote the "Vista Capable" specs to include some of the low-end chipsets. Intel's chips may not be very powerful, but the fact that they're so well documented makes them a lot more useful to free software people.
Unless I missed something, no where did he even explain why Vista blows, other than a vague reference to DirectX 10 being "bloated". I would have sure appreciated just a little bit more elaboration here.
I read Usenet for the articles.
Computer gaming is always going to slant the playing field in favor of the gamer with the biggest budget.
I predict this guy is wrong, if only because some of us don't care to perpetually upgrade a machine so we can play games with our friends.
1) He claims to be a 3D expert, but for some reason he only worked on the 2D aspects of DirectX while he was at Microsoft. (DirectDraw, etc)
2) His current software and games are very much NOT 3D, so he is commenting on the 3D market why again?
3) His argument about PCs not being good gaming platforms is that they don't contain enough DRM? Truly, go back and read this again. What the hell does he want, a gun pointing a peoples faces if their mouse gets near the rip or copy button?
4) Throughout the article they keep talking about WildTangent Orb, which is a program that competes DIRECTLY with Windows Vista & Windows Marketplace & Games for Windows, in Rating games based on system performance, and providing a consistent expectation for the gamer.
5) WildTangent huh... Ok, anyone that installed this software or has removed it from a friends computer would shudder to think that this guy has any insight when it comes to programming at all, let alone 3D gaming. (WildTangent is borderline Spyware, and the games are kludges, slow, etc.)
6) He thinks DirectX is bad and Vista is bad, but argue that they the best that can be done with 3D gaming. Hmm..
7) He talks about the DirectX hardware abstraction levels and implies DirectX 10 is further from the hardware than previous versions. This is really really inaccurate, as DirectX even opens a new diret pipeline for shoving calculations and physics to the GPU. The only place DirectX 10 is 'further' from hardware is the removal of DirectSound, but this has been replaced in 10.1 with a new hardware layer that is compatible with the new Vista sound subsystem. This stuff makes me think the guy is insane, has a chip or both.
8) His argues about current 3D technology is tricks, but raytracing is real 3D? Um, raytracing is also freaking tricks, especially if you work to get any performance out of it. (And this is just in studio level rendering we are talking about, let alone gaming). Moving raytracing to games or adding it to current 3D technologies would be great, but it is going to take more 'tricks' for good performance and STILL WILL NOT BE REAL 3D, any more than current gaming technologies. He is an expert and yet doesn't understand this? Holy cow...
9) The only thing I can agree with in the article is the portion about onboard Video being a bane to the gaming industry, and Intel being a horrible proponent of bad entry level 3D chipsets that can't even run Flight Sim 98, let alone a current game with more than 15fps.
Each can coexist and have their own niche, and perhaps that is the way it should be. Some games you absolutely need a keyboard for. That being said, I had zero interest in reading TFA until I saw that he admits "Vista blows".
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
and then I found out this guy did WildTangent, after which I immediately closed the window. Wildtangent if remember correctly only did really crappy online games that bundled spyware, and one of their most popular products was some computer animated stripper screensaver, or something similar.
Anything he has to say isn't worth listening to.
Getting great graphics from the next generation of raster engines is going to cost even more. Sure, you can sit there and micromanage every goddamn thing on the screen and get graphics that look good enough that you can't tell them from optically correct rendering at a glance. But that costs you five times as much as building a model and telling the graphics engine to render it, and letting the software figure out where you need shadows and hilights and bloom.
The other side of this is the Myst problem. Remember Myst? Remember how you could only go where they're rendered the scenes? Now in many modern games, guess what, you can only go where they've prepared the scenes. You can't even walk across a flowerbed and around the back of the tavern, because they haven't prepared the back of the tavern. you get puzzles that involve figuring out what rope to grab to climb up a 45 degree slope, and if they haven't decided that you're going to be able to climb that slope you can't... even if you've got elf boots and a magic rope.
Why? Because it's so damned expensive to get them looking good.
Let the computer do the stuff that we know how to make a computer do... simulation... and let the humans worry about making the simulation fun.
How about some improved software? Why do NPCs in supposedly advanced games often just stand around or walk back and forth continuously for the entire game? When are simulated game realities going to become interesting enough that interacting with virtual elements is as interesting as shooting them?
This guy's on crack. Nothing will change from the way it's been the last decade or so. There will always be console gaming for the economics/simplicity factor, and there will always be PC gaming where the latest 3D card blows consoles away... at the expense of economics/simplicity.
-J
http://linerider.com/
http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html
http://www.wiicade.com/playGame.aspx?gameID=213
http://www.wiicade.com/playGame.aspx?gameID=22&gameName=Paintball
Simplicity is beautiful.
10 years from now the biggest gaming platform will be the mobile phone.
As long as pc's have free online play and user mods and maps that are free Consoles will still be behind.
There are some payed for mods on the consoles but they are not the same as the free stuff on the pc.
Also who would want to pay for LIVE and for the game as well paying a monthly fee for the game for something like WOW?
There are also a lot of cool free and open pc games that will never be a consoles.
Also there are games that work better with a mouse and mouse are not used that much on a consoles.
Games also like to use the web and other stuff on the same system that they game on.
FTA: The first one is that, from many points of view, Microsoft and Intel come from an enterprise background. They're enterprise-centric. So in many respects the consumer market, from their point of view, is an after market for stuff really designed for the enterprise
... Nintendo correctly observes that graphics is no longer a differentiating feature; it's a commodity
This is because enterprise customers have a higher rate of legitimate purchases than home consumers (what is the rate of Windows piracy in China and India?). Furthermore, while enterprise customers may receive deeper discounts on their bulk-OEM licenses than home consumers, they counter that buy purchasing more lucrative packages (how many home users are using XP Server or Advanced Datacenter?).
FTA: So certainly Intel is producing a new generation of chips that have CPU and GPU on the same die which share access to the cache--the L1 cache--coming out in maybe 2009.
You know, Cyrix tried something similar back in the late 1990s with their MediaGX 5x86 processor. Granted, the MediaGX did not have the level of integration that Intel is proposing, but one has to ask: is this really a good thing? Will the video run as a separate core, with a level of autonomy, or will it be more tightly coupled? Will this cause contention between the VPUs and ALUs on die?
Also, how many video cards does the average person have before they toss a system? My current K8/3800+ is on its second video card (upgraded from dual 6600GTs to a single 8600GTS). I'll most likely keep this system for another two years. Although I doubt it'll be my primary system by then, I do bet that it'll have a new video card.
Since the days of Cyrix and AMD keeping "outdated" sockets are over (remember the Am5x86 for Socket3|5, K6-2/500 for Super7?), I suspect that the life cycle of existing sockets will get shorter (I think SocketA's longevity was a fluke). So, if GPU/VPU systems are integrated on-die, how can we keep systems updated when they are 3 or 4 years old? Will Hypertransport direct add-on GPUs be in our future?
FTA: [Nintendo] shipped off the shelf, cheapo, ATI video chips! And they're killing it!
The use of off-the-shelf components for consoles is nothing new. As an example, the Texas Instruments TMS9918 (and variants) were used in an arse-load of consoles during the mid-1980s (including the ColecoVision, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear and others). It did quite well versus Nintendo's semi-custom chipsets at the time.
So, it is the same game, just with higher-end gear and more expensive R&D budgets? As ray-tracing takes over from current 3D technology, will new coprocessors that are designed specifically for that task be utilized? Yes, you could use more generalized processors (such as POWER, Cell or x64), but then, the original Voodoo cards could have been equipped with a MC68020, too. Right?
I think one thing the author is seriously forgetting here is the social aspect to console gaming. I've never seen 4-8 people crowded around a single computer laughing, talking shit and having a great time. Consoles are far superior to the PC in this aspect, you may still have online, but nothing compares to playing madden, mario kart, or any other group game on a bigscreen with a few friends.
If only for that one reason, consoles are here to stay.
Now, on the mailing list for this driver, I immediately got access to the lead developers. OK, they knew I was Bruce, but it looked like they were treating all callers the same way. They connected me with Intel BIOS programmers, etc.
Now, imaging having this problem in the Windows world. You would be routed to a call-center employee in India who would go through a script with you.
I am using the same driver with i915 in an old Sony laptop and i965 in a new duo motherboard. Both seem to work fine. I don't know how much lower-level DirectX is than GL.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
game consoles will go away??
No, just the opposite. Soon we'll see the PC replaced by appliances/consoles.
Recently bought an Asus P5E-VM HDMI and I'm happy runing ubuntu 8.04 beta (with E8200@3.2Ghz intel CPU) it's MUCH faster in everything (including GoogleEarth OpenGL using 1600x1200) than my previous system with AthlonXP3000+ and nVidia FX5200.
I just chose this board cos intel released specs and open documentation for programing the graphics processor, unfortunately actually there are no separated graphics card from intel.
I'm also planing to buy an EeePC witch use an integrated intel graphics and it seems to be more than adequate even for XGL.
There is a third alternative. We have consoles. We have PCs. We also used to have stand alone games. We could have them again.
Given that computer power keeps getting cheaper and smaller, it is reasonable that game cartridges could also contain the cpu and gpu. That solution would completely clear up the piracy problem. (Well, OK, it would make it hard for casual users to pirate games. There would still be a steady stream of pirated games, Rolex watches and Gucci handbags.)
Many posters talk about the problem with GPUs, video cards, etc. At some point, those problems will go away. Remember sound cards? Given increasing computing power, the necessity for high end video cards will also go away eventually. The other thing that people seem to be ignoring is that many game players (of the lan party type) reduce their graphics quality to reduce latency and get a competitive advantage. Amazing graphics only go so far to increase the fun of game playing.
So, consoles or PCs? Maybe neither.
I just tried to install Peter Jackson's King Kong on my PC, only to yank it off because the Starforce copy protection causes all sorts of problems. Plus, I don't like having to upgrade my hardware every 2 years to keep playing. I'm basically lazy, and I like just poppint in the disk and playing a damn game.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Both modes of gaming have their merits. PC gaming has free online play and better 3rd party support (mods, etc. although there are some fine console modding communities, the PC mod community has always been and will always be bigger and better). Consoles are more appealing to the masses (you practically don't need a brain to run a console). As a gaming platform, both options will have exclusive titles and both options have their fanboys. Some games are better played with a mouse + keyboard, other games are better played with a controller.
There are too many blithering idiots on the internet claiming that console or PC gaming is in jeopardy. It would be better for the rest of us to ignore the morons and realize that both forms of gaming have their merits and that there really are no big reasons for either form of gaming to die.
The single most important thing for gaming, IMHO, is a consistent operating environment. PCs cannot deliver that. There will always be a faster, more capable machine out there. Consoles definitely have the right idea as one is the same as the next. This offers a more level playing field when competing. (Of course, the superior network connection ends up playing a role in cases where that's relevant, but it can't be helped.)
This guy is just doing what they did at Initech -- interviewing for his own job and justifying his existence.
"You don't understand! I'm good with people! I have people skills!"
Only Microsoft can come up with such a conclusion... I mean seriously; nothing compares to the power of a Playstation 3. PC's as we know them today suck at games because the mainstream PC architecture is simply not made for it.
Here be signatures
Brickers. The new consoles have firmware that updates itself over the Internet. A computer vandal could corrupt the firmware so that the console no longer shows its system menu.
But that's not nearly as profitable as spam. Lots and lots of spam. The consoles of the PS3 generation do a lot more on standby than the previous consoles did. Nintendo even advertises its "WiiConnect24" as a feature of its Wii console: games can install channels that update themselves while the console is sleeping. What if all those sleeping consoles were sending unsolicited advertisements?
connected up to a television set.
They have hard drives, DVD drives, USB ports, can use flash memory sticks, and install the program to the internal hard drive for faster loading.
Indrema had it right the first time when they tried to build a Linux gaming console, but they blew their VC and didn't have a good business plan. I would like to see development on a Linux based game console to compete with the other game consoles out there, and then see different hardware companies following the same Linux open source standards for developing a Linux game console. Just use PC technology to build an under $300 Linux game console and the OS will be free and open sourced. You can even port the PSX, etc emulation software to the Linux game console to run legacy console software on it.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Isn't it really odd that the most console-like of all current gen consoles is the most wanted/profitable? The Wii is making a profit even with inferior hardware and less games. Where the PS3 is more or less a supercomputer, and the Xbox 360 is a decent-end PC, the Wii is a console, underpowered but still fun. Where the Xbox and PS3 can be found in almost every major retail store the Wii has constant shortages even with Nintendo making around $50 on them and Sony and MS is losing money on the PS3 and Xbox. I call that Consoles are here to stay, the hybrid PC/Console is going away.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Have you ever played a Wii game that uses pointing with the remote?
Also there are games that work better with four gamepads and four gamepads are not used that much on a PC. Many of these console games are designed for four players in the same room, like Bomberman, Super Smash Bros., and Mario/Sonic/Crash/Shrek Party, and they will never make it to the PC because most PCs are hooked up to monitors that are much too small for four players to sit around.
They are different types of machines optimized for use in different ways. If the console were going to kill the PC it would have done it sometime in the last twenty years or so, doncha think? In the meantime, consoles have gotten more and more expensive (making them less attractive to the casual consumer than, say the SNES was in its day), and PCs have gotten cheaper and cheaper in real terms.
The console is optimized for a group of people sitting around a living room. It sucks for any game requiring a mouse and keyboard.
The PC is optimized for a single person sitting 30 cm away. It sucks for multiplayer local play.
They are different machines. Neither can kill the other, no matter what the fanboys say.
At any given time, the top-end PC will always be more powerful than the top-end console, because the top-end PC costs $5000 and the top-end console is a tenth of that. There will always be gamers who demand that level of power. Likewise, there will always be gamers who enjoy the simplicity of load-and-go gameplay that consoles offer, and don't want or need a PC.
I piss off bigots.
Anytime!
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Actually, companies probably see that as an incentive to move away from the PC. PC gamers have higher expectations. We won't pay more than $50 for a game unless it's a collector's edition. The graphics better look awesome on a 8800GTX, and at least playable on a 6600. You can forget about PC gamers paying for something like LIVE. And of course piracy is much less of a problem on consoles. Of course, we also put up with installing multiple patches on a just-released game and waiting a year for a game poorly ported from a console.
As much as I dislike the proprietary, expensive world of console gaming, I suspect that things will keep moving towards consoles. It took a long time for them to get an online service for the consoles, but they did eventually. Now they also have digital downloads, and they could probably figure out a way to allow free mods. The PS3 lets you use a keyboard.
From TFA: "Because what it means is that game and media support and keeping the operating system out of the way is secondary to, in many cases, silly security infrastructure and a lot of useless OS junk that impedes the real-time performance of games unnecessarily."
This has to be the first guy ever to say that Microsoft cares too much about security when designing Windows.
Consoles will continue to be the dominant platform, though they may very well converge with other tech. The simple fact is that the PC is not an especially profitable or popular platform to develop for.
PC gaming wont go away, but Consoles are not going to disappear either. At the moment many big PC titles are essentially ports of the Xbox 360 version. near the end of any given console cycle, that reverses for certain PC titles, but it is generally the rule, not the exception.
Until the PC version of most games is also the reference platform for development, the consoles will continue to be more important.
END COMMUNICATION
That's part one of the article where he complains that Windows has too much security stuff that slows down games. In part 2 he complains that Windows isn't secure enough.
So basically this guy can't even stay consistent throughout one interview.
Wow. So to summarize that novel, Intel graphics has the following "grievous sins":
- the Windows drivers suck, and
- they're not as fast as more expensive cards
While both of these statements sound entirely true, I fail to see how it distinguishes them from any other graphics cards ever made.
I'm using Linux full-time now, and if having a graphics system which is documented, has good free drivers for X11, and is far faster and more reliable and consistent than the $50 ATI I had 2 year ago (much less the $100 Matrox card I had 5 years ago) makes it "utter garbage", then I wish Intel more luck in "marketing inferior products instead of [...] pleas[ing] their customers". With one exception, so far, the OpenGL support is the most consistent and reliable I've ever seen in a sub-$100 graphics card.
Why can't other companies sell me utter garbage half this nice?
Hey guys, let's tie DX10 into Vista only. This will force people to use Vista!
*Vista fails*
Hey, why isn't DX10 being adopted?
God spoke to me.
What do you get in exchange for that? A PC (complete with hard drive, internet connection, support for usb, etc), excpet you can't use it like a PC.
That's the whole point.
When was the last time your Play station got a virus? How much do you spend on your Play station's anti-virus software every month? How many controllers can you plug into your PC? When was the last time you had to install a game on your XBox? Or install drivers for your newest controller? Or work through compatibility issues between your latest game and your PS3's GPU?
It's also true that for the price of a microwave, I can get a nice laptop, that connects to the internet and all that. But it kinda sucks at heating food, doesn't it?
There's a reason the Wii is selling so well, even though it doesn't even support HD graphics. People don't want something with internet, that can do their taxes, that catches viruses, that they can read their email on, or that has the bestest fastest hardware.
They want something they can play fun games on, with other people, in their living area where the television is, on something that isn't the size of a desktop PC. And they want those games to work when they plug them in, every time. About the limit you can expect from a console consumer is blowing the dust off the cartridge pins.
Are PC's more powerful? Sure. But there is a whole bunch of overhead that comes with the advantages of the PC over a game console that are just not worth it to the majority of console players.
paintball
Well you could hook up 4 controllers to a PC (USB), but most games don't support them.
The other advantage to game consoles is that they hold up better than most regular PCs. That may change with hard drives and other parts to fail. I have a NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii, Genesis, 32x, Sega CD, Dreamcast, and GBA all working. i can play the same games on them now I could play in the past. With Windows, games that ran on Windows 98 no longer run. Many games don't even make it to the next windows release. For instance, LucasArts games have terrible compatibility issues. Some of the win98 era games didn't even make it past a DirectX update! Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic has terrible memory leaks and graphics card bugs. (its' great otherwise) I've got a pile of games I can't play anymore that also won't run in emulators yet due to 3d or opengl requirements. I don't have a PC that will run Windows 98 handy anymore either.
It is very rare that I get rid of a game console, but PCs come and go. (and windows versions) In fact, the only console I've sold in the last 12 years was my xbox.
PC gaming has a place, and some companies like id and blizzard know how to make games run on several os versions (or patch them). I couldn't imagine WoW on a console or QuakeWars. I hate FPS on consoles. They look bad and the controls suck. SImulations tend to be better on PCs and Macs too.
I think there is a market for both. If you look at articles, it seems like cell phone gaming is the hot ticket right now anyway.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
MS gave the world the 360 with its smaller textures, smaller world sizes and bright lighting.
Now they want to tell the world about what Intel is doing?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Though I'm no hardcore PC game player, I occasionally play UT2004 with no problems at all using the onboard Intel GMA X3000 with Intel® Clear Video Technology. I don't know what these hardcore players are on about. Nobody can experience 600 fps rate anyway.
... not just gaming.
:)
There is no magical physics simulation system used in films that are different than the ideas behind game physics. Yes, there are more complex physics simulations etc...
but what he seems to be talking about mostly is scene setup. What he fails to realize is that many of those films dont render full 3d scenes in a single pass. Even full 3d films, use extensive compositing techniques. Rarely is everything rendered in a single pass. The reason... we just dont have the processing power.
As processing power increases, so do the many things we can achieve, but it all requires extensive processing well beyond where we wish we were.
There is no magicial character animation process that is different between games and film production. Its the same. Granted in film we use a lot more complex rigs with complex expressions and transformations that would choke a game.
I do agree that we would benefit by improving, hell, eliminating the task of doing all of the deformations/translations etc on the cpu and then rendering on the gpu. Tieing the two together might help... if its possible.
Lots of 3d software would need to be rewritten though, and who's to say that these super 3d cpu/gpu integrated systems will serve all the needs of a 3d animation software package?
After all its the 3d animation software packages that we use to make all of this wonderful shit
I dont know... I think what he says is some what sound, but a ways off in the future. Its less of a reality, and more of a "where we should be... if we can do it" kind of thing.
Its a bit of a pipe dream. No gpu/cpu combo system is going to simulate light (raytracing, global illumination, color bleeding, and handle high res geometry deformations without taking a serious amount of power. Are we there yet?
No.
Its worth working towards... But we're not there yet. Games are the way they are because speed came first above all and for a very important reason. ALL of these fancy things we want in games take a lot of power. The stuff hes talking about takes even more.
Its a ways off.
The reason I bought game consoles is because you can put the disk in and it works. PC games rarely work, there's always some driver problem or install problem.
Considering you seem to be posting at -1, which is the default for trolls and crapflooders. Besides, this whole article is nothing more than the usual Slashdork hack piece, written by a guy who left the company eleven years ago and is currently employed by a known crapware pusher. Not garnering a lot of simpathy with your "M$" thing, either.
And so if you see a PC that is not denuded by things interfering with it by Microsoft and Intel, in many cases like an Intel crappy graphics chip, or a bloated Vista operating system, it's a fantastic gaming platform. And the shame is, if the low end of the PC market, the mass market PCs that everybody buys did not come with these crappy graphics chips on them and was not burdened with a fat OS, that the PC would be a larger contiguous gaming platform than all the next-generation consoles combined, probably would be clearly superior;
and then proves how great the PC gaming market is by mentioning the success of a game that does not need much in the way of graphics hardware,
the PC is the home of the most profitable game in history generating more revenue than the top 10 console games combined--that's World of Warcraft generating a 1.2 billion dollars a year in revenue, that's a pure PC game.
I am so tired of the PC gaming industry blaming its demise on Intel giving people cost effective graphics that do exactly what their users want. The whole reason for the demise of PC gaming is because the market split because consumers want different types of computing devices at prices they can afford. The PC has tons of possibilities, but all the industry seems to create are rehashes of the same old ideas; mostly FPS and RTS. Traditional PC gaming is not dead, but it is in a losing battle with the consoles because it is failing to innovate. The real PC gaming growth is in small games that are fun, addictive, and sometimes are the center of online communities. Hell, I had to kid a Yahoo Pool addiction a few years ago and I don't think I will ever see anything like that on a console.
For an analogy to explain better what I mean -- if you have a toaster and a waffle iron, and compare the two, the toaster can only make toast, and the waffle iron may be of a kind that can both make waffles *and* sandwich toast. Let's say that the waffle iron sometimes has a problem in that it burn the waffles a bit. However, this is of course still no disadvantage if comparing just making toast (= playing games). It's a problem in a different area of use that the toaster doesn't even support. So personally, this is slightly in the apples and oranges territory for me. I can much easier swallow the "disadvantage" in risking viruses on a PC, since that is in an area of use that we aren't even talking about on the PlayStation. It's very rarely about catching viruses from having purchased a game in a retail store, or having viruses sneak onto your computer from an open World of Warcraft game port in your router. I would agree that would be more in conflict and a direct disadvantage of a PC as a gaming system. How much do you spend on your Play station's anti-virus software every month? There are free-for-home use antivirus tools (AVG, Avast) that have even performed better than common commercial alternatives like Norton Antivirus in tests.
I'm not sure why people think good antivirus tools have to cost money. I guess I blame aggressive marketing from Symantec etc... They want something they can play fun games on, with other people, in their living area where the television is, on something that isn't the size of a desktop PC. It's simple enough to connect a laptop to your HDTV if you want to though. And they want those games to work when they plug them in, every time. I'm not sure why a game on a PC should only sometimes work? I can't say this has ever been much of a problem on my PC's since the 90's. Maybe if you make major software changes you can break something, but that would also be breaking the console analogy, because you don't make such changes to a console (this is again not even an option). And you don't have to make such changes on a PC to keep playing games. Yes, you need to make upgrades and those can break things, but the equivalent there is purchasing a new console and often having to forget that your old games will even be compatible with your new one.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
DirectX is about lock in.
Much more than about graphics.
Alex St. John is delirious
He seriously thinks that consoles are going to no longer exist and PCs will take their place? For almost 5+ years, PC gaming has gone down a landslide and the sales of console hardware and software go up every year. On top of that, most people buy cheap PCs or laptops that do not have a $500 video card to run most PC games. I remember a little while back when the Epic Games exec said that PC gaming was in trouble because people use integrated video and sound cards and do not have the proper hardware. From my experience, more and more people are converting to laptops (or Macs) and to see a big tower with a 20 inch monitor and keyboard/mouse is decreasing.
I get the point you were trying to make, but you obviously havent bought a microwave in the last 10 years. average price here is about AU$80. asus eeepc is AU$499 (cheapest laptop i know of off the top of my head, but I'm a mac guy so I dont really follow the windows subsidized market so there could be cheaper ones there).
...you sound like a dork. Say it like it's spelled. That is all.
When was the last time your Play station got a virus?
PCs may be notorious for viruses. That's if you don't keep them secure.
Besides, a PC game-only PC wouldn't have to worry about viruses if they never downloaded anything from the internet. Granted, even if they download stuff, it takes, what, under 20 seconds to scan a file? I've gotten a couple of game patches with viruses.
How much do you spend on your Play station's anti-virus software every month?
AVG, many FOSS alternatives, etc. are free as in beer.
How many controllers can you plug into your PC?
Lets see: Joystick, keyboard, mouse, gamepad, guitar...
You don't even need some of those. A standard keyboard has over 100 keys and replaces gamepads. Then the mouse replaces joysticks and, again gamepads.
When was the last time you had to install a game on your XBox?
Good point.
Or install drivers for your newest controller?
Never, since all mine are plug and play. When's the last time a wireless controller was standard with your PC and you had to buy extra things to make it so you don't have to use batteries?
PC: Mouse to USB, Keyboard to USB, headphones to headphone jack, microphone to microphone jack
360: Batteries to controller, trial and error making controller work since I didn't read manual, headset which I never use except on Live, batteries to trash after only 12 hours of straight playing then find more batteries. OR: Go to store, try to find a freaking charge pack, plug in controller, then plug in 360.
Or work through compatibility issues between your latest game and your PS3's GPU?
Or had the ability to work through customizing graphics to meet your tastes?
It's also true that for the price of a microwave, I can get a nice laptop, that connects to the internet and all that. But it kinda sucks at heating food, doesn't it?
What? That makes no sense. Okay, it makes sense, but not in context.
There's a reason the Wii is selling so well, even though it doesn't even support HD graphics. People don't want something with internet, that can do their taxes, that catches viruses, that they can read their email on, or that has the bestest fastest hardware.
So I suppose Xbox Live is wasted since people don't want internet? I suppose people don't have PCs, but have Xboxes now?
They want something they can play fun games on, with other people, in their living area where the television is, on something that isn't the size of a desktop PC.
How big is a PC case? You do also realize that there are S-Video hookups, right? There's also other ways to hook up a PC to the TV. No monitor required.
And they want those games to work when they plug them in, every time. About the limit you can expect from a console consumer is blowing the dust off the cartridge pins.
The secret to stable PC gaming: Clean installations of Windows without viruses and other malware.
Are PC's more powerful? Sure. But there is a whole bunch of overhead that comes with the advantages of the PC over a game console that are just not worth it to the majority of console players.
So, customizable graphics, modding, (generally) free internet play, 100+ keys, a mouse, and fully customizable controls are not worth it? Their loss.
As far as I am concerned, they both have their pros and cons. PCs cons are major compatibility issues if you have borderline hardware, a dirty system, or old drivers. Drivers also have to be updated all the freaking time.
Consoles, on the other hand, seem to lose par with PC in terms of graphics after the first year and a half (unless they have super powerful hardware unavailable to the PC market). They also have forced control schemes like FPSs: Maybe I want melee to be 'right trigger'? But, no! It won't let me! It must be 'B', 'ri
http://sourcemage.org/ - Have fun
The games on NES scrolled better and more smoothly than Commander Keen. Gran Turismo or Ridge Racer IV felt faster and smoother than Grand Prix Legends or CART Racing from Microsoft. I loved GPL and CART Racing, but there ya go.
I respect Alex St. John, but as Apple and MS proved, the most technically superior solution doesn't always win. For me, the choices are down more to comfort and ease than technology: TVs and couches are more comfortable environments than monitors and desk chairs. Disc --> console --> playing is easier and faster than PC startup --> install --> driver download --> install --> restart --> startup --> run --> crash --> patch --> STEAM ID check --> etc.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I cut my teeth as a console gamer.
On an Atari 2600, Then a Colecovision. I admit, I never owned an intellivision, but I did get intellivision thumb.
I eventually became a PC gamer because that's where the action was with the C64 and Amiga (or my friend's mac) before I bought my first ludicrously expensive PC when I started working for a living, primarily to play games and get on the BBS scene. Fast forward a decade or two and I left a veritable scapheap of PC parts behind, mostly spent to waste time on games, since my masters provided my programming needs with 24x7 internet connected computers with dev tools.
From this, I can presume that I'm at this point a wizened geezer-gamer.
The universe has changed. PC games only get 3 things these days:
- Sports
- FPS
- RTS
All of the inventive games happen either on the web as flash games, or on consoles.
I don't play FPS or RTS games any more. When my kid was 2 and he stumbled in on me playing counterstrike, I realized how....wrong....it all seemed in a broader sense. That gaming PC was the last I ever bought. Almost 7 years later, it's useless for 'gamerz', but it's still good enough for my kid to use for what little he uses a computer for.
I bought a Wii when they first came out.
It's fun.
I play with my kid, and I kick his ass, unless I want to make him feel good .
I now use a Macbook, because I pretty much just browse, email, etc...on my computer. And I like the feel of the hardware better than the Windows systems, and the OS better than Windows or Linux.
PC my ass.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Ok, look at it this way: what if the next time nitendo or sony decides to make a console, they made a software that turns your existing PC in a console?
That is, porting the playstation's firmware to the PC. Ok, you would have the drivers issue, but someone with money to invest could easily get hardware manufacturer to make him some drivers. Even if they have to publish a list of the compatible hardware.
Then you'll see that there is not ONE positive point of the console you dont have this way (except maybe the price for the first time you buy such a 'console').
On the contrary you have loads of bonuses, mainly that you can keep the hardware for something else than playing games, or to play other "console's" games.
Of course console makers try to avoid exactly that.
Selling console is like selling "media centers": it makes you buy a fully fonctionnal PC again (after all, they're hardware sellers). How many idle fully fonctional machines do you have right now?
PS: by the way, do you really spend money every month on antiviruses? I use linux to surf the web (and everything but games,actually).
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
I just put 4 Gigs of RAM in my laptop, so it heats up food just fine, thank you very much.
Well you are right in the sense that the technology for consoles are easier users and developers to create content on but for a different reason. Consoles have a huge advantage because of seamless integration of DRM style technologies will assure that developers can create expensive content that the average user must pay for.
It isn't the graphics or drivers on the XBox 360 or the PS3 or the Wii. It is that every gamer out there must pay Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo to pay to play games on their systems through royalties. Too boot these platforms also feature many lock ins that are more attractive to producers. When compared to a semi-open, royalty free platform like Windows PC with the specter of compatibility and support problems where many things are hacked if not pirated, I'm not surprised at all many companies are flocking away from PC. I'm also not surprised that one of the best systems on PC today, Steam from Valve, wholeheartedly embraces this DRM style technology.
I see PC gaming in a state of transition away from the middle ground/mass market game to the more eccentric and exotic style. Anything that isn't a traditional sit down and play end to end game will probably have an easier sell on PC where MMOGs are a classic example of this. Another example is any time you allow the user/gamer to author stuff in game it because a bigger challenge on the console than it is on a general platform like PC. The other type is the simple style web based game where again it isn't that consoles can't support these games but PC as a general platform lends itself to supporting this easier. In any event, these many not have much to do with DirectX, especially when looking at web games.
I see this debate every so often and laugh at both sides as they tout the demise of the other. A simple fact when dealing with 2 different objects that interject and have pros and cons; is that you need to focus on just that. Consoles are cool because you hook them up straight to the TV and power box and they just work. If you want to game that is what you do and nothing else, this is good for simple people. If you are a computer lover you enjoy the fact that your rig can do that and so much more, thats what you paid for. There will always be those that just want to game and nothing else and those that love computers and want to also use them for cutting edge gaming, these are two markets and they will always exist. I don't see a demise of either one because they exist for different reasons, as the market evolves one will get stronger and the other will get weaker as far as games are concerned, but never will we see one completely dying, it will just adapt. They both serve a purpose and thats how it will always be, end of story. P.S. how many offices are still completely drowned in paper even though digital is everywhere? P.S.S. how many people still have landlines even though cell phones are abundant? P.S.S.S. how many people still use windows even though Linux is free? just kidding It all serves a purpose and each one has its benefits, they're still there for a reason.
You have a hard time with teh computerz dont u?
Sounds more like you have a problem with M$, not PC's, and rightly so. Just don't go thinking that because your Windows ME piece of shit doesn't work that everyone else's doesn't.
Sooo, consoles still behind? Not by your qualifications.
Capability for price
Plus for PC, you can run your game faster if you pay more
Minus for PC, compared to a console you may have to pay much more than you'd like for acceptable performance (would you want to do serious gaming on an eMachine? All 360s are even...)
What's on a console can be better optimized (you KNOW what they're running), what's on a PC? Do theey have feature X? How fast does it run? Uh-oh, the feature is only emulated by DirectX on this PC...
"It just works" (tm)
Plus for Console, usually, if it's FOR that console, it works seemlessly with it, always, forever, if not replace or fix the console
PC, is the game bad, is something in your system bad? Will upgrading the OS break it? Upgrading to a different model video care? Do you have enough RAM? (Although there are exceptions, the N64 had an add-on memory card)
Worse, old action games with no good timer that you can't seem to adjust for the proper speed. I've seen it mentioned at one point that Linux played some old PC games better than some version of Windows because with either you needed to emulate these days and the better emulator writers (that this guy knew of) were on Linux. I can't vouce for the accuracy, but not all games were written to scale gracefully on different machines. Neither are NES games, but the NES is a discrete target, the PC is a set of general blurs. You can expect a Win95 game to have capabilities between W and Y, a 98 between X and Z etc...
Will the PC randomly slow from spyware? Will a popup from an anti-virus program or IM kill your game?
How long will the PC take to boot? Consoles don't take nearly as long. (Although with what we've seen on the net with ROM based loading, either Windows or Linux booting can be VERY sped up, I'm sure many people would pay a lot for a USB based Windows install that "just worked" within seconds when you booted from it. We'll probably see something like this coming up.
If something breaks, will your main PC be broken? (Bad memories of DX 3 and 4)
Of course, what if someone was to make... "Game OS". Forget just a virtual machine, a plug-in USB based OS (maybe based on a stripped down version of Linux, Puppy or DSL, perhaps a smaller OS with a published spec that peripheral makers could write to or not, no different than writing / building for DirectX) Guarenteed better speed and reliability from not running ANYTHING extra in the background if the OS can get unloaded from memory by whatever game you choose to run. There's the nasty problem of who will / won't release new hardware / drivers for this OS. (A single driver that all devices could be made to fit would be beautiful, but good luck)
How many PCs do you want?
If you game on your PC, you may or may not be able to use it for other things at the same time. How seemlessly can you swap between your gaming, IM etc? With a PC and console, one right next to the other, best of both worlds. Dedicated machine that no amount of playing on your PC will slow down.
Cheating
There's always been cheating and always will. From Game Genie for infinite lives to patches for PC games for see-through walls in FPSs. If you want a fair online game, the best system is a console front-end (technically hackable, but difficult that not nearly so many will bother as will on PCs where it's much easier) with as much as possible handled on a central server.
In this, the whole virtual machine idea becomes more practical. If we get a fast enough, reliable enough net connection, we can theoretically treat EITHER a console OR a pc as just a tv and controller, a dumb terminal that advertises its capabilities, sends keyboard, mouse, controller info and returns a video feed from the server.
Screen
Computers tend to have monitors instead of TVs
Monitors look better but are usually smaller. HDs look nice. The Dreamcast has a VGA adaptor. Many HD TVs take PC input. This is becoming moot. In the future you'll get a monitor,
Sooo, consoles still behind? Not by your qualifications.
Only if you're content to rely on vaporware.
Hell, there have been consoles that allow you to use a keyboard since the SNES, but how many GAMES have you seen that use them? Why? Because a part from a few actions, most games are far more efficient to control via a gamepad. Gamepads were designed with gaming in mind, keyboards are a bastardization of a typewriter... why should they be better?
You can always use a wrench to pound in nails, but why not use a hammer instead?
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Oh good, you made the point I was going to make, I heart Linux on video game consoles. Yeah I said "I heart" on Slashdot.
From my own anecdotal experience, I just helped a friend repair his 360 3 rings of death issue, and even a buddy with his Wii has had random disc reading errors.
Consoles aren't as sturdy as the old NES days. Hell, I have a C64 that still works till this day. I don't think we are ever going to see that kind of reliability again.
Last I checked you could go buy a PS3 whenever you wanted, moron.
ha ha ha ha ha ha, oh you must be joking, or else not old enough to remember the old days.
There was a time when computers were expensive and not everyone was guaranteed to have a joystick. So devs put in keyboard controls...in action games. Which sucked, and even if you could control the game with a keyboard it wasn't optimal, or fun, or comfortable.
Now you might have a mouse for analog aiming, but what about analog movement. console controllers have two analog sticks, plus analog buttons. And these days they also have USB and bluetooth, for things like mice and keyboards.
By the way, most PS1 and PS2 games allow fully configurable controls. Was that an Xbox you were making an example of with that "B button"
"but consoles alwasy just seem to have better games, presumably because PC game makers always have to build their games for a lower common system that is less powerful that the state of the art.
The games on NES scrolled better and more smoothly than Commander Keen. Gran Turismo or Ridge Racer IV felt faster and smoother than Grand Prix Legends or CART Racing from Microsoft. I loved GPL and CART Racing, but there ya go."
Speak for yourself there, there are plenty of PC games that do much better then console games. Many console games STILL don't have AA. All of the need for speed games were better on PC, try playing most wanted on a console over the PC, I'll take the PC version every time. Or what about Prostreet? Prostreet looks amazing on a PC over a console, easily hands down. I could name more but those are the ones that stuck out, even Halo 1 was better on the PC. Playing with a mouse over a gamepad was much better.
I haven't had to install graphics drivers (or any drivers) to play any games for a long time. The whole couch vs chair thing is bs, one can easily hook their PC up to a modern HDTV since HDTV's are essentially big monitors.
Why not make a standard PC gaming spec.
A small factor PC, $250.
1.6ghz dual core min
512mb min
Run of dvd or HD, storage is flexible.
All controllers USB/Bt, not an issue, comms is wifi
Graphics... well there arent 100s of choices, its only two, ATI or NVidia. OpenGL is enough or DX.
It can hardly be trivial to use a $40 cpu $40 mb + $99 video card with $20 ram.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Something in your comment bothered me slightly and I had to make the following tangential point...
My computer has not had a single malware infection in years, but I don't have any sort of anti-virus software installed. My system is Windows XP SP2, always on, always online via NAT (my gateway computer never had any problems either). How do you figure?
Well, turns out common sense can save you a lot of money, and here's my recipe:
IMPEACH XENU
Many of us have 10 years old, or even older, computers that would run just fine if we bothered to plug them in. Also it's a bit unfair to blame those Windows 98 games for poor compability with future operating systems and hardware. Since you have all those old consoles lying around, just add a PC with Windows 98 to your collection.
Last time I checked PC's had over a decade of heaving modding from end users, compared to the possibility that people might make mods for the PS3. Fucktard.
For Windows 98 try running Linux, then Vmware and then Win98 and ur game.
You will find most will work.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
1. Use Firefox. .exe/.wmv/(etc) filespam on file sharing networks (if that's your sort of thing). .exe format en masse is legit.
2. Use a firewall (Windows Firewall does the trick).
3. Avoid suspicious
4. For the love of God, use Firefox.
5. Never click on ads.
6. Never install bundled adware or browser toolbars.
7. Nobody offering free screensavers/themes/ringtones/pr0n/minigames in
8. Train yourself to recognize spam in all forms, on all media. Every trendy Internet product, service, feature or meme will have a spam-clone, made either to spread badware or to conduct phishing scams - and you must be ready for both.
9. ???
10. No viruses and no anti-virus! Enjoy your new computer experience. You're welcome.
So that's the list for the PC. Looks like you have 7 legitimate items that you have to do. While they all may be common sense for you or me, they're not common sense for the average consumer.
For comparison, here's the list for the console:
1. Uh.. nothing.
See?
paintball
Computer games are still subjected to DRM, possibly more, on WildTangent's game delivery platform. When compared to consoles, WildTangent's platform is still not optimum solution for users, even though it offers innovative time-base subscription model.
It's interesting how a lot of people here are discussing the hardware.
The reason why consoles succeed is because of the software. So long as the content is there, the hardware really isn't important. I despise the Wii, but that underpowered, overdressed (and less reliable than we are led to be believe) contraption proves the point perfectly. While Sony and Microsoft have gotten into the e-penis war just like the PC community, Nintendo went with... "unusual" software, and is now walking away with billions in revenue. Lesson learned?
The 360 is hailed by many as having the best software lineup of any next-gen console, but sales of the PS3 have been catching up to the 360 very quickly. Why? Wasn't the PS3 a piece of expensive junk with no games just a few months ago? There's a lot of factors involved, but the summary is that Sony is far better at making exclusive games than Microsoft, and their 1st and 2nd-party titles are looking to be much more interesting than all the 3rd-party 360 games that will also be available on the PS3, the PC, and practically every other architecture.
Well, except for the Mac. Maybe Apple would have a shot at those titles, too, if they actually gave a s**t about games.
What he said, almost word-for-word. (Atari, Sinclairs, Amiga, BBCs, PCs, Macs)
A group of us at work go over this argument most weeks. I'm the oldest of the group (38) and I use a Mac for computing and an XBox 360, PSP, DS for gaming. A PS3 will shortly replace the XBox (media and noise issues). I have less than no interest in FPSes (amongst other things I get the equivalent of vertigo when I play them for more than a couple of minutes and like the parent poster, they ask awkward moral questions of me - my answers to those questions mean I've put FPSes aside). I have a few emulators on the Mac (BeebEM3 being my favourite) to remind me why I got into this business in the first place (Elite, Thrust, BBC Basic, in no particular order).
The younger members of the team are still totally into PC gaming (although most of the games they play are available for or originated on consoles). It must be some kind of masochistic streak though - I've got the largest disposable income of the lot of them and my total gaming investment for static and mobile gaming is less than one of their PCs, before we even get onto the whole upgrade issue. I get more hours' use out of them and I suspect more fun. Other than an occasional network glitch with the XBox (and one RRoD), I've had no other maintenance issues to deal with. As a consumer I'm afraid I can't understand the PC gamer's position. As a hobbyist it maybe makes more sense, but really I don't want to deal with nuts and bolts when I sit down to play - I just want to play.
The son of a friend of mine regularly suggests we have a go at some recent racing game on his "kick-ass PC rig" whenever I visit. Normally, the first 20-30 minutes of these sessions involve talking about the latest over-clocking problem or why he's "had" to upgrade his video card again. His brother has a Wii - my wife and I have regularly beaten him at tennis or bowling without even having to know that we used a computer...
Different strokes I suppose.
"The other advantage to game consoles is that they hold up better than most regular PCs. That may change with hard drives and other parts to fail. I have a NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii, Genesis, 32x, Sega CD, Dreamcast, and GBA all working. i can play the same games on them now I could play in the past. With Windows, games that ran on Windows 98 no longer run."
This is a really bad example. Your NES still works but its "operating system" hasn't magically changed over the years, has it? All your incompatible PC games can also work just fine on an old PC from that era with Win98 and supported hardware.
To be sincere, it may seem you just described a mac.
1. It is much nicer to play a game from your couch than it is at a desk
2. Consoles are cheaper (partly because of video cards)
3. You know it'll work. While some recent consoles have had hardware problems, at least you don't need to screw around with drivers for two hours before even being able to start the game, after which it still crashes every five minutes (I'm looking at you, Witcher)
There was a time when computers were expensive and not everyone was guaranteed to have a joystick. So devs put in keyboard controls...in action games. Which sucked, and even if you could control the game with a keyboard it wasn't optimal, or fun, or comfortable.
Doom and Doom 2, arguably the landmark games for FPS are an excellent example of what you're on about. There was no mouse look and you had to have the ridiculous situation of shooting straight forwards at a target several levels above you and the shots actually hitting.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
His whole argument rests on the assumption that better 3D = better games. Everyone knows that's essentially untrue. UT3 is a case in point. Is it more fun to play that UT2004 simply because the gfx are way better? WoW is another case. Of course it would look nicer with better gfx, but would it be more fun or more popular because of it? Doubt it.
One of my fav games was Beyond Good and Evil. I *liked* the stylised, cartoonish characterisations. Anyone who loves Anime feels some trepidation at the rise of completely 3D-rendered visuals. They have their place, but better 3D doesn't make a better movie or a better game.
I with they'd put more effort into AI and character movement. What we really need for *immersion* (and better 3D is not equivalent to better immersion either) is dynamic character movement and AI. Sod all this 3D stuff, it's just serving the hardware industry and in the meantime real innovation is being sidelined.
You've gotten older, more set in your ways, lazier in adopting new ideas, and likely more complacent. The younger guys are hungry for new and best and are willing to put more time and energy into their interests to get it. You want good enough. Not so hard to understand. Happens to most everyone as they get older, have more responsiblities, less laser focus on their interests.
I just bought a PS3 and Wii in recent months. I decided to take the plunge into consoles.
I have the *exact* same thoughts as you and my experiences have played that out. For FPS, I find it much more difficult on a console that good old keyboard/mouse. Other types of games are great on the console but FPS is a special niche that just controls better on a PC.
Sure the Wii hardware is nothing special. A PC could easily provide the horsepower. The problem is getting Wii software to run as well on that cheap hardware with the hardware abstraction and multi-process environment of a modern OS. I'd rather just have another box to handle my torrents, emails, TV show recording, etc than have to stop all of that every time I want to play a game. If I'm going to need a separate box anyways, might as well be one with a standardized hardware platform and control scheme.
Many games don't even make it to the next windows release.
And a lot of the time, that's no fault of the game, but rather of the copy protection. I have games that won't run on XP, but crack them, and then they work fine there.
But in Linux for the ps3 the 3d chip is locked out and you only have 256 ram + 256 vram
Because m$ has to be morons and try to sell their horrible Vista to gamers (btw I have had serious issues with Vista gaming, like for some reason older games don't run good with newer high end cards), holding the entire PC gaming market back because no one can make DX10 games because no one is running Vista!
The only ones that don't have to worry are game developers using the Unreal Engine for game development!
You will find most will work.
What is this "ur" word?
Please don't send a Word document when a text file will do the job.
The advantage is I don't have to buy a console to play games. I already have a PC.
Oh, and I don't see World of Warcraft or the Sims add on pack infinitum working on the PS3.
And I still can't download patches for my games, or install any of a thousand mods for HL2 on my Wii. And before this generation of consoles, the PC was the only place I could browse the web, download some silly game and install it without driving to target. I can go to gamedev.net or linuxgames.com and download thousands of unique non-commercial games, some of astounding quality. The PC is the easiest platform to access for the independant or outcast developer.
The PC will have it's spot (even if it's a smaller one) as the more flexible platform for as long as we have them. That is certain. And it will always offer console style retail box, blockbuster commercial gaming as well.
Put simply, as long as people have had general purpose computers, there have been games for them. Maybe the market will shrink, maybe the limelight will fall to the shiniest new consoles for a while every 5 years, but this fact is not going to change. It's a general purpose computer, not an "only for work and old people who don't play games" computer. That's the thing, people see consoles with the momentum, winning.. but it's not like they could ever end pc gaming andwin.
"There's a reason the Wii is selling so well... People don't want something with internet..."
[Pedantic mode on]
The Wii is actually designed to make use of an internet connection, for online gaming, shopping for downloadable games, sharing Miis, obtaining the latest news and weather updates, and for the Opera-powered "Internet Channel" web browser. Internet capability is actually a selling-point on one of Nintendo's in-store promotional videos. "The Wii will revolutionize the relationship between your home, the TV, and the Internet."
In general I agree with the point you were making, but you were a tad off with that one detail.
And while I do agree with Alex St. John that DRM is the reason that consoles are popular with developers,I do not agree that the answer to pc gaming dominance is more DRM for the pc. I believe that micro transactions in addition in game advertising and bonus content for those that register their games would be a better solution.Let us face it,there are folks out there that simply can not afford to shell out $50 up front at retail.Would you rather that they never play your content,or would you prefer to make what money you can from them buy selling them things such as new weapons,levels etc while rewarding those that register with "exclusive" content and getting paid for ads in the game that could be updated if the user went online.And I believe that with the addition of micro content to your product you could make significant revenue off of those "pirates",maybe even over and above what they would have payed at retail.
I've seen that a lot of folks simply don't keep up with the $1 and $2 purchases and when done right in game advertising can add a nice touch of "real world" to your game while being a source of extra revenue for your company. This could also be a good source of funds for older games that no longer get shelf space or buzz. I know there are plenty of older games that I personally can't see myself hunting down and spending good money for,but if their website offered me cool things like new weapons for a few bucks and "premium content" for a registered game I'd be happy to pony up some cash But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The idea of the Orb just plugging into a PC to parasitize its resources - processing power, memory, internet access, etc - makes pretty good sense. This could either be a piece of hardware plugging in as a peripheral, in which case it really would be like a console, or it could just all be done in software, in which case it would capture the original intent of DirectX and provide a virtual console on the PC.
Your points are all still valid, but the stuff this guy has to say that's interesting is how his company is going to address exactly the things you mention.
A-Bomb
Watch this Heartland Institute video
And still no one has mentioned a critical reason mentioned in the article and a reason I have always suspected for console popularity: piracy. Console gamers just aren't as smart as PC gamers, so why not sell to the rubes who aren't going to pirate?
There is yet another glorious feature of Consoles that noone has mentioned: Lock-in. If you sign an exclusive deal to put your hot game only on the 360, you get to milk, use and abuse your heard of gamers (cattle) for great profit. You get to price fix all day, get kickbacks for lockin, the possibilities are endless!
The majority of PC users want portability (notebooks), lower power consumption (long battery life), and cooler running systems (no burned laps, hot keyboards).
All three of those are at odds with what graphic card and console makers want. The trend has been toward uber-powerful video cards and to hell with heat or power consumption. The low end and high end graphics cards differ by an order of magnitude in terms of power consumption.
Cheap, reliable, excellent drivers. Why would anybody "normal" want anything else?
How can you possibly blame Intel for the woes of the Game industry? Do you also blame Ford for holding back dragster racing? How about blaming Toys-r-us for holding back Nasa? Can you do that one too?
No sig today...
I agree completely, but I found "on something that isn't the size of a desktop PC" amusing as my PS3 is substantially larger than my MacMini.
The cake is a pie
Dude, you got ripped off on your graphics card. Big time. No graphics card in the past two years that cost that much should be struggling. A $100 (£50) card from two years ago shouldn't even be struggling (not able to run in highest settings is not the same as struggling, and only the most recent games should be unable to run at the highest settings graphics-wise)
In the world of PC games, it really makes sense not to try and future-proof your system, rather, it's more cost effective (as long as it's graphics-bound) to buy the cheapest hardware that runs the games you want adequately, which if you're willing to settle for scaled back graphics settings (you can scale them up when you upgrade in two years, and it's like getting a new game!) that means just about the second cheapest card in best buy.
I'm sorry that you bought an old PC, new, though. Two years ago, DX10 was on the radar. What you did by purchasing that expensive graphics card that apparently isn't supported for it was a lot like paying roll-out prices on ebay for a PS2 six months before the PS3 was set to be released.
There are legitimate areas where the consoles are superior to PCs and vice versa. Although it's a mystery to me why the consoles are *still* vastly inferior interface wise. How difficult would it be to use USB peripherals and have mouse-control (or trackball) as an option for FPSs, anyway?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
More than a possibility.
The cake is a pie
ha ha ha ha ha ha, oh you must be joking, or else not old enough to remember the old days. Apparently I must be old to play old games from the old days. No, I am probably not old enough, but I have played old games with the same control schemes. Ageism doesn't win here. There was a time when computers were expensive and not everyone was guaranteed to have a joystick.So devs put in keyboard controls...in action games. Which sucked, and even if you could control the game with a keyboard it wasn't optimal, or fun, or comfortable. Those times are past us. Besides, have you forgotten the SNES? It had Doom on it. SNES controllers had not a joystick to be found.
Besides, I've played those games. They are fun even with the keyboard only. It's normal once one gets used to it. Now you might have a mouse for analog aiming, but what about analog movement. console controllers have two analog sticks, plus analog buttons. And these days they also have USB and bluetooth, for things like mice and keyboards. Do we really need more than two or three speeds to run/walk with? I mean, if one is so inclined, I guess they can get that gamepad. Or find a way to use analog movement while aiming the mouse. In any case, I fail to see how analog movement beats over a hundred usable keys AND full customization to said 100+ keys. By the way, most PS1 and PS2 games allow fully configurable controls. Was that an Xbox you were making an example of with that "B button" Yes. And, yeah, right. I've played things like Ghost Recon, Ratchet and Clank, Ghost Recon 2, Splinter Cell, etc. None of them had controls that were 'comfortable'. They were clunky and disgusting. Now, Splinter Cell on Xbox had nice controls, and it had the best controls on PC.
I had to get way too used to a different control scheme for every game with the PS2.
http://sourcemage.org/ - Have fun
Supreme Commander takes longer. And there's some install time for all the consoles if you don't have an internet connection. Every new Wii game I've bought has had a firmware update.
PC = Personal Computer. Everything has some sort of computer chip in it today, a surprising number of things are running on the same family of chips that used to run PCs. For example, the Apple ][ processor family powers NES and SNES as well as powers many devices acting as a microcontroller.
Personal Computers of the 80s didn't have much for OS, GPUs etc. but they are still personal computers. Why only call the newer machines personal computers?
Consoles ARE computers and they are heavily "personalized" to the task of gaming. Since they can be programmed and has user accessible input/output why not classify as a type of "PC"?? (think about it)
The term PC has come to mean something beyond the literal acronym; however, I am surprised when computer savvy users confuse the TINY differences between generic use computers and the specialized ones.
Specialization is only natural; its foolish to think that everything is best served with one kind of hammer. Even more so to think a single hammer is all you need when they constantly break and you have become so dependent upon them.
To be sincere, it may seem you just described a mac.
I've also just described my refrigerator, microwave, coffee maker, and vacuum cleaner, but you can't play games on those either.
(duck)
paintball
It's an ancient city in Mesopotamia. Of course.
...and the game cannot include copylefted free software because the console makers outright refuse to allow the developers to provide Installation Information. That's the point of "Copyleft"; it aims quite explicitly not to co-operate with any software not distributed under the same terms. Its viral nature is why it spreads so effectively, and also why its operating principle is considered one of the greatest hacks ever.Complaining that a bunch of mean ol' publishers "refuse" (such petulant language!) in their licensing agreements to allow your pet interoperability concern is hypocritical. Their platform, their prerogative to do it that way. I get tired of encountering such a sense of entitlement and positive-rights around here. This self-righteous indignation is explicitly and unequivocally what Stallman is all about, but it is not an enlightened tack.
Certainly I agree that the ability of a platform to include content by literally any author is a strength which the PC/Mac/yesevenLinux platform enjoys but which no console shares, and that's the primary reason (perhaps only, in some cases) that I would/do choose the PC version instead of the console version of a game. The PC/etc. platform also gives access to the majority of extant game content. There are sound reasons without resorting to whining about Stallman's particular flavor of openness, which he and his (often unthinking) followers disingenuously call "Free", co-opting and bastardizing the meaning of "free" as in "freedom".
And yes I would say that lockout chips are clearly Evil.
It's also true that for the price of a microwave, I can get a nice laptop, that connects to the internet and all that. But it kinda sucks at heating food, doesn't it?
You've obviously never used a P4-based laptop.
Of course I remember SNES DOOM, that was the first version of DOOM I played. Now although the SNES controller has no joystic, it does have a very nice d-pad which is a heck of a lot better than WASD.
How do you run at 3 or more speeds using WASD? modifier keys. So how do you effectively use them with any comfort when you've got your left hand on WASD, and your right hand on your mouse.
That brings up another point, you may have 100 keys on that keyboard but you cannot easily and effectively use them all because one of your hands is on the mouse. How do you hit "\" when your fingers are on WASD. So truly you have no more than say 36 keys you can use effectively some of them being modifiers.
And shouldn't games be designed so you don't need to be a three handed person to use 100 keys? Why should every game control the same as every other. games differ on gameplay, game balance, speed, intended market, etc. Why should a third person character based platformer control like an FPS? Besides, it doesn't take long to get the hang of controls, they become second nature.
I'm sorry, but your completely wrong on the games from 98 that no longer run. Lets see here, taking a cursory glance at my currently installed games on Windows XP comes up with Descent, Incredible machine, Creatures 3, and Starflight 2 from the DOS era (without emulation). Move on a bit further and we have Diablo, Carcassonne, Starcraft, Unreal, System Shock 2, Serious Sam, Thief, also without emulation. Enter into dossbox and I've even more goodies. Point being, that the strength of a general purpose PC is that (with enough elbow grease) it can run anything. Btw, I also have four wireless 360 controllers hooked up to my pc, with which I can play N64's Goldeneye in glorious 11-foot wide 16x9 720p.
only one everything
How do you run at 3 or more speeds using WASD?
Mouse Wheel?
only one everything
Computer games seem to not play very well when on a HDTV, sitting at the couch. Due to the overscan of the TV, you need to set it up carefully so that all stuff appears onscreen, and then the controls visible are often too small to see at a distance... most games lack a UI size option, too, so you need to turn down the resolution to a non-native size. I tried it.
:)
Console game developers *target* standard hardware where you're going to be using one or more of a standard type of handheld controller and sitting a few meters away from a (HD)TV of a standard resolution. Designing games to work like this requires effort, and until PC game developers consider this as a use-case at the very least, then PC gaming will not take off in the living room. A worrying amount of games still don't even support USB gamepads, let alone wireless stuff with weird features like motion sensitivity.
Plus I was pretty disappointed when my £1000-1-year-ago PC didn't play Crysis on anything above a combination of low and medium on 1024x768. I was going to upgrade to a new gaming PC with the latest graphics and CPU, but decided against it. I now own a PS3, and I am very happy with it.
Sure, backwards compatibility on the windows platform is less than perfect, but at least it's correctable with software. Good luck sticking an NES cart in your Wii, or playing a PS1 game on your late model PS3. Hell, there were a bunch of PS1 games that wouldn't even smoothly on PS2s.
First of all, Alex St John was hardly a primary DirectX Architect. He was, however, the first official DirectX Evangelist. That's like comparing Spock to Uhura.
I can't believe this sailed over people's heads without a compliment.
That's got to be the quote of the month for me.
"When was the last time your Play station got a virus?"
When I had a PlayStation, it never got a virus, but then again none of my PCs have ever gotten one either.
"How much do you spend on your Play station's anti-virus software every month?"
Nothing, but then again I don't pay anything for antivirus on my PC either. avast! is completely free for home or personal use. It is also, IMHO, the best antivirus software.
"How many controllers can you plug into your PC?"
My PC has 4 USB ports on the back and 2 in the front. So 6 controllers. More if I plugged a USB hub into one of the ports.
"When was the last time you had to install a game on your XBox?"
A PC is perfectly capable of running a game directly from removable media. I guess you aren't old enough to remember the time when most PCs didn't even have hard drives and booted most software directly from floppy disks. The main reason it is preferable to install games is because hard drives are much faster than common removable media such as CD and DVD drives. This is not a limitation of the PC, it's a choice for better performance.
"Or install drivers for your newest controller?"
Plug and play has come a long way. Most PC game controllers are treated as USB-HID devices when they are plugged in and do not require a special driver to function. There are instances where a very specific type of controller needs a driver for reasons such as programmable layouts, but that isn't a valid comparison because that level of functionality is far beyond what console control devices offer.
"Or work through compatibility issues between your latest game and your PS3's GPU?"
I have had very few compatibility issues with PC games running in their recommended environment. Most of the problems are from old games that were intended to run on old operating systems like DOS or Win9x. The resolution is usually trivial (ie. set compatibility mode). As far as I know, the Playstation 3 also suffers from compatibility issues for some PSX and PS2 games, so it is no better there. One thing is certain, I have never had a PC come up with a RRoD (die) due to a game being played on it.
The games on NES scrolled better and more smoothly than Commander Keen
Not even remotely true. Commander Keen had smoother graphics and a higher frame rate than any NES title.
I'm not sure if you mentioned CK because it is a representative of that era of PC gaming, but if so, you should've chosen one that wasn't so well programmed.
In addition, PCs of that era were far more standardized than they are now, largely owing to the presence of IBM in the market.
So is the PSP and the PS3. Both ship with web browsers, RSS/podcast support, net radio, etc. built-in. PSP slim also has skype.
:/
DS has the Opera Browser cart available.
The XBox 360 has MSN Messenger (or whatever they're calling it this week), and that's it
I would have to say that Sony has the best set of Internet programs. And I say that as someone who owns all the current systems.
It isn't the machine that made games scroll smoothly, it was the programming. I could just as easily compare the smoother PC version of Prince of Persia to the NES version. PC games could also display more colours, higher resolutions and didn't have problems with flickering sprites (I can't think of a _single_ NES game that didn't have flicker).
PCs have always been ahead of consoles in terms of ability and in my opinion, game quality. Console games tend to be the pick up and play, brainless action-fests. I prefer the intricate stories, intelligent strategies and character building that PC games tend to have.
I get the point you were trying to make, but you obviously havent bought a microwave in the last 10 years. average price here is about AU$80. asus eeepc is AU$499 (cheapest laptop i know of off the top of my head, but I'm a mac guy so I dont really follow the windows subsidized market so there could be cheaper ones there). While the less expensive counter-top microwaves cost about the same here [USA] when converting using the semi-standard pricing ratios (which seem to have no relation to the actual exchange rate), the "built-in" microwaves found over the cooktops in a fair number of American homes do have a cost similar to that of a nice laptop.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
That is a petty and greedy approach for the HDCP/HDMI cartel to take, but you just have to remember that it's their content goddammit, and you're just holding onto their money until they graciously share their "content" with you in exchange for such the pittance of $30 for a two hour movie. After all, you get to watch their movie whenever you want (+$15) and, gasp, in "high" definition, whatever that means, and that's +$15 too because a movie contains more movie-ness if it contains more pixels. (That has got to be a Little Edgar Bronfman original.) And you get to pay for the digital chains that bind you --er, keep you (--er, the media cartel) safe from "unauthorized viewing", otherwise you don't get to play with their ball.
Nowhere is it written that consoles, or any other input device for that matter, must become HDCP licensees to avoid some "gatekeeper" display blocking their output. If anyone wants to make a console that doesn't use HDCP, they're welcome to do it.
The Evil of HDCP is in the measures taken to prevent me from enjoying, fairly, the entertainment I bought in ways of my choosing. It's called prior restraint. The notion that music (or movies, etc.) are "licensed" to the buying public at retail has crept up in corporate boardrooms only because of the similarity in distribution of software, which is licensed. They both come on disks or over the internet, after all, duh, they should be the same thing, right? Wrong. You license the use of someone else's music (sense 1) to record, for sale in recorded form, music (sense 2) of your own. You do not license instances, such as vinyl records or CD recordings or whatever (no matter how high the "definition"!); you buy them, whereupon they become yours and you may listen to them as you please. Zomba Label Group has no more place dictating how you can and can't listen to your Britney Spears album than Ford has telling you how to drive/fix/modify the truck you bought from them.
The short, cynical, overly-simplistic answer is that the movie cartel just simply has the power (moneymaking ability) to push anything they want down consumers' throats and drag hardware manufacturers along through fear that the dee-vee-whatchamuh-disc buying public will have to buy a competitor's product to watch movies. In reality, the hardware vendors, and the public at large, are slightly (for now anyway...) less over a barrel.
But despite the limited scope of use over which the mean ol' publishers actually are the gatekeepers (i.e. the stuff they sell), it's a valid complaint and one that I share. Just keep in mind that Copyleft seeks to dictate the terms of use in exactly the same way, even though the terms themselves are different. Stallman's GPL (and family) is not Freedom; it's just a different master with whose proclamations you may or may not agree.
Apologies, but you've clearly never worked with high-quality raytracing.
If by that you mean "I don't care about getting that last 20% that makes me go 'ooh, aah'", well, you're right. I don't care about that last 20%, because if raytracing gets you an 80% solution with 20% of the effort then the same budget will deliver five competitive games instead of one blowaway one... or else a company that can't afford ten artists can get into the market with two. Sure, you're still going to have top of the line houses that are doing blowaway work instead of merely being "realistic"... but maybe they can put their energy into doing things that are better than "real" like Wind Walker or Okami instead of wasting artist's time creating 3d photographs.
vista makes even games like World of Warcraft unplayable. Even my 700 amd comp(from 1997) can play wow and a uber double core cpu and brand new GPU(with vista) cant run it with out laggin on every frame(even with the most up to date drivers)... Are U Fn kidding me!!!!!!
If i didn't know any better id think microsoft is trying to kill PC gaming so you will go buy an xbox... Tho vista is really what needs to be terminated. DIrectx10 is a joke just like SP1 which killed my comp.
So dont make the same mistake as me, dont buy a computer with vista if u ever intend to play any games that need 3d graphics.
If an xbox360 ran vista it would have the capacity of a SNES...
At least there is still windows XP....
The big thing a console brings to game devolopers and customers is a known platform.
If I buy a playstation 2 game and the reviewer found it stable and run at acceptable speeds I can be pretty damn sure it will also be stable and run at acceptable speeds on my playstation 2. This is NOT the case with windows games on generic PC hardware and I doubt it will be with any other OS on generic PC hardware.
The known platform extends to other areas as well. A console has a known controller pattern so the game developer can design thier game to fit that controllers strengths and limitations well.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Side point, but the wii I have is hooked up to a 13" tv and it still can accommodate at least 3 people at the same time easily.
...he's just not quite right on the timeline. Physical media is going to going to disappear; it's just not going to disappear in the next few years. He's vastly underestimating how much people want to have a hard copy of the things they buy; for example, all of my game collection is on a physical disk, somewhere with the exception of the games I've bought for my consoles that can only be bought from their online service. Sure, I -could- have bought the Orange Box from Steam; but I want the physical disk too, it's proof that I own it, that even if your online service crashes and burns I can still play my games (before anyone brings it up, you can play Steam games in offline mode). Online services for buying games may be pretty well-used now, but some gamers (myself, for example) won't use them unless they send you a physical copy as well or we're absolutely forced to by changes in the market.
PC vs Console? No problem. All I see is convergence.
Imagine a Sony VIAO with a PS3 docking station attached. Instant console on your laptop. This means 3 things: 1) PS3 games made for this unit can utilise your mouse and keyboard. Instant revolution in console games. 2) Opens up console games for MODDING. Another revolution in console games. Just create/download the mod, put it in a special game folder on your HD, or maybe the PS3 DS has its own RAM or HD area for user content. Lastly 3) You don't have to boot into Windows to use you PS3 DS. Flip the console-only switch and when you turn the lappy on it's merely a PS3 - with mouse and keyboard if you want. You don't even need to open the lid, just plug in your controllers and turn it on.
But in Windows, you can play PS3 games and also use the games' Construction Sets or whatever to create your MODS and test them.
Best of both worlds, it seems to me. What this ALSO means, is that game companies won't need to "dumb-down" game interfaces in things like Oblivion (remember the hoo-ha about the "console" look). Real RPG adventures on your PS3 at last.
MS should do the same with their XBox. This would also give Wii's position a bit of a kick. Merging PCs and Consoles would, as far as I can see, be a huge benefit the gaming industry and players in so many ways, I don't know why it's not happening right now. The only losers would be NVidia and ATI, because less and less ppl would need their cards. Just get your gaming docking station and you're away with both PC and console games and all the benefits of both.
In that sense, PC-only games will be a thing of the past. It'll just be console stuff, with some titles made to utilise keyboard & mouse, allow modding, etc. That will be cool to see.
This is a joke, right? Free versions of good anti-virus software such as AVG or Antivir provide excellent protection and don't nag you to buy the non-free version.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
One mod. Big golf clap. Compared to PC mods probably running in the tens of thousands.
Last time you died in CounterStrike: Source, I used: Headshot via wallhack. And you never knew.
But say a game can't run well on the PS2 (or PS3 or whatever), what then? You are either stuck with low framerates, or they have to cut the graphics down to a low poly, blurred mess. At least on a PC, you can adjust settings for any balance of performance/quality that you want. You can also upgrade whatever component you want to make that game run at its best. You can't do that with a console.
On a PC, you can also come back to a game years later, probably find a free updated engine/high resolution textures for it and then play it again on modern hardware. Just look at all of the updated engines/textures for Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Heretic, Hexen, Hexen 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Wing Commander Privateer, Star Control II, etc.. The list goes on and on. With a console, not a chance unless the game company decides to make an update, one which you will undoubtedly have to pay for (again).
That's why I like to play with a gamepad in one hand and a mouse in the other.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Yeah, neither of them are going anywhere in our lifetimes. Do you people not understand the market that they both currently have? It's not the same market. Ooooh, gosh! Have a nice day, Fucktards.
former Microsoft Alex St. John resigns after Xbox division of MS had a discussion with Bill Gates this afternoon...
The thing that sucks about competition is the "exclusive titles." Maybe you like a bunch of games on the 360, but one of your favorite series/titles is a PS3 exclusive. Despite the fact that you've got a current-generation fancy console, you're not able to play all the current-gen titles due to vendor exclusivity. I'd bet this applies to many fans of, for example, the Final Fantasy series, of which the next title is supposed to be PS3-exclusive.
Forget everything else. The one reason consoles win any war is due to their ease of use. I was just talking to my parents last night who are avid PC game players. They just picked up their first console last week. Why? They were sick and tired of having problems installing and/or running their PC games. Sure, they were happy once the game was installed right, but they were tired of it all. Even I lately have been finding myself buying console versions over a PC version. But that is mostly due to not having upgraded my hardware in the past two years. I hate not having the best hardware for the newest games, so I just end up not buying the games. However, because they are cheap, I do have the newest consoles!
There are advantages and disadvantages on either side. You are being a bit intellectually disingenuous about the disadvantages of PCs though by over-stating them a bit (e.g. I have free AV software and don't have game compatibility problems). It is kind of odd to me that this even is a big deal considering consoles are just PCs with specific hardware that can only run locked-in vendor software. Which is selling better...the Wii or PCs? (dumb question, but just as dumb as your point about the Wii) I guess I don't see why either side is so defensive. You guys are all like prom girls pissed off at each other for wearing the same dress. Both markets can exist and be successful. Both have their strong points. Just shut up and have fun.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Ugh. Different genres fit different systems better. There are games that are more enjoyable on a console and ones that are better on a PC (FPS's are the obvious example). I don't turn my PC off, but I turn my consoles off. Oh dear lord, there is an extra step...it must be inferior! Yeah, you install games on your computer...and you know what? It runs faster since it isn't being read off of a disc. After that, I just double click on an icon rather than having to trade out discs every time I want to play a new game. Is that a big deal? Does is make consoles worse? Of course not. Gaming on both is good. I don't know if you are bitter about not being able to afford a nice gaming rig, but your points to justify it are based on hyperbole rather than fact.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Of course I remember SNES DOOM, that was the first version of DOOM I played. Now although the SNES controller has no joystic, it does have a very nice d-pad which is a heck of a lot better than WASD.
How do you run at 3 or more speeds using WASD? modifier keys. So how do you effectively use them with any comfort when you've got your left hand on WASD, and your right hand on your mouse. Sticky keys? Mousewheel? That brings up another point, you may have 100 keys on that keyboard but you cannot easily and effectively use them all because one of your hands is on the mouse. How do you hit "\" when your fingers are on WASD. So truly you have no more than say 36 keys you can use effectively some of them being modifiers. Go with a YHGJ or other similar exotic control scheme. And shouldn't games be designed so you don't need to be a three handed person to use 100 keys? Why should every game control the same as every other. games differ on gameplay, game balance, speed, intended market, etc. Why should a third person character based platformer control like an FPS? Besides, it doesn't take long to get the hang of controls, they become second nature. Why not? It's just a different camera position.
Besides, maybe I want to pick up and play instead of play with clunky crap. PC = customization and control schemes that can be transferred over many games. Standardized controls aren't that bad, either.
http://sourcemage.org/ - Have fun
"PS, are there any good FPSs for Wii?"
Did you ever play Meroid on the NES, SNES or GameCube? If not, imagine walking around a 3D environment, aiming at the screen with your arm-cannon.
Also, Resident Evil 4 on the Wii is awesome!
Both games have that arcade feel, using the IR bar and Wii-mote for aiming at the screen and feel very accurate.
But say a game can't run well on the PS2 (or PS3 or whatever), what then?
You blame the developer, and don't patronize them anymore.
At least on a PC, you can adjust settings for any balance of performance/quality that you want.
The overwhelming majority of gamers prefer to actually play games rather than tweak settings. That's why consoles are far more popular.
You can also upgrade whatever component you want to make that game run at its best. You can't do that with a console.
Again, most the majority of gamers would prefer to play the game. They don't want lazy developers delegating the performance duties to the gamer. They don't want hidden costs in the form of new hardware and the hours spent configuring it. The "performance enthusiasts" that live to overclock will never be a significant market.
Because of the inherent complexity of PC gaming, it will never reach the level of popularity of console gaming. That's not good or bad in itself, just a fact.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
See a pattern? The computer, despite its expensive hardware, and buggy drivers, has outlived them all, and will continue to do so in the forseeable future. When all you dreamcasters and HD-DVD owners, all the atari jaguars and nintendo virtua-boys are extolling the virtue of your console, into game provider oblivion, I'll still be playing the latest and greatest games on my PC, albeit updated.
Sorry guys, but my money is on the PC.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Well thank the freaking gods that be, I thought I was going to have to return my Nerd ID card, but apparently I am not the only 'professional' tech out there that is just dumbfounded by the notion that PC gaming is inherently superior.
It sucks. Sucks bad.
As I said, I am a professional nerd as are most here and as such, I have no fear of getting my hands dirty with the nitty gritty.
But when I want to game, be it video, board, role-playing, etc. (gasp! there are like, literal "gamers" WTF!) I WANT TO PLAY. Period. That simple.
This is my entire thought process for GTA4: When does it ship and what can I do in-game?
and that is exactly as it should be. Versions, drivers, 'recommended hardware' specs...these are SO far removed from gaming that each of you should have to eat a 20 sided die for suggesting otherwise. See, that's what cheeses you, I think. They gave games back to gamers. Back in the day, you had to have a certain amount of knowledge about computers to pretend you were role-playing on a machine. Today, completely clueless pen-n-paper nerds can get their FF on (still pretending to role-play, but at least you don't even have to know what a megahurtz is if you don't want to) while being utterly and completely clueless about that magical device you have convinced yourself is soooooo important (hey, its you guys that equate things like 'freedom' and 'rights' to you options at Best Buy) and I think that irks yah a bit.
I can be more precise with a mouseblahbuhblah blah more frames per second buhblahbuhblahblah. I can shoot something and high five my buddy, that is gaming. To get my geek-snob on, I would say that the greater majoirity of you here aren't even real gamers, just games provide you with the most engaging technical playground.
At the end of the day, we are not talking about mips and forward compatibility, we are talking about playing games. I don't care what techno-babble you pull out of your wazoo, under the current reality of the world, a PC just cannot touch a console when it comes to *playing games*. That's why the Wii is killing, because they did something pretty simple: focused on playing games.
After that, I just double click on an icon rather than having to trade out discs every time I want to play a new game. Is that a big deal?
You only play PC games which install themselves completely onto the hard drive, and dont require the CD to play?
But say a game can't run well on the PS2 (or PS3 or whatever), what then?
Then the game developer didn't do thier job properly. Thier job is to produce a good game using the resources they have availible.
a game with unacceptable performance or graphics quality below the norm for it's platform will get picked up on and scored low by review sites who are testing on the exact same hardware you are likely to have (unlike pc game review sites where the reviewers being hardcore gamers are probablly going to be using very recent high end hardware)
It is annoying when you are following a series and hit a shit title but quite frankly unacceptable performance and terrible graphics are pretty rare with other types of shittiness being far more common..
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Resident Evil 4
Metroid Prime 3
Your username is so fitting for this comment...