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."

Comments

Consoles...

[i_liek_turtles]

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?

Why Microsoft Dislikes Intel Graphics

[Bruce Perens]

Microsoft dislikes Intel graphics because they're publicly documented for full 3D use by Linux and other Free Software. Intel has put a tremendous time into developing X for them, employing many of the key X developers. I use them on a laptop and desktop, and they work excellently. They are not yet as fast as some other graphics chips. But then again they are better than anything we had at Pixar when I was there :-) Time flies.

Bruce

Re:Why Microsoft Dislikes Intel Graphics

[JanusFury]

That's interesting, but this article is about someone who doesn't work for Microsoft anymore, and hates Intel graphics chips for the same reason any other game developer hates them: They're utter garbage.

I'll enumerate the primary reasons quickly, since I don't expect you to be intimately familiar with the relationship between graphics programmers and graphics driver developers (it's drastically different from Intel's relationship with the X developers):

1) Intel graphics drivers are possibly the most inconsistent drivers on the market. Any given user with a particular Intel chipset might have one of a hundred different driver configurations, as a result of the fact that the chips are bundled with different motherboards which then come with their own driver package... and when you add pre-built machine vendors into the mix the situation is only worse. If their driver quality was extremely high across the board, this wouldn't be an issue, but...

2) Intel graphics drivers have a bad stability track record, at least on Windows. They have a tendency to return invalid/nonsensical error codes from driver calls that shouldn't be able to fail, or to silently fail out inside a driver call instead of returning the error code they're supposed to... resulting in graphics programmers having to special-case handling of individual Intel graphics chipsets (and even driver revisions). In my case, I ended up just having to shut off entire blocks of my hardware-accelerated pipeline on Intel chipsets and replace them with custom software implementations to avoid the incredible hassle involved in coming up with specific fixes. (The wide variety of chipsets and drivers out there meant that for my particular project - an indie game - it was impossible to ensure that I had worked around every bug a user was likely to hit, so I had to just opt out of hardware accel in problem areas entirely).

3) Intel graphics chipsets have sub-par performance across the board, despite marketing claims otherwise. This is mostly problematic for people developing 'cutting-edge' games software, where it creates a 'he-said-she-said' situation with a game developer/publisher claiming that a user's video chipset is insufficient to run a game while Intel claims the complete opposite. (in most cases, Intel is lying.) This is particularly troublesome in areas like support for cutting-edge shader technology, where an Intel chipset may 'support' a feature like Pixel Shader Model 3.0 but implement it in such a way to make it completely unusable. Users don't benefit from this, and neither do developers.

4) Intel graphics chipsets harm the add-on graphics market by discouraging users from picking up a (significantly better) bargain video card from NVidia/ATI for $50 and dropping it into their machine. This hurts everyone because even though that bargain card is significantly better (and most likely more reliable), the user already 'paid' for the integrated chipset on their motherboard, and the documentation that comes with it attempts to make them believe that they don't need a video card. I consider this a dramatic step backward compared to the situation years ago, when integrated graphics chipsets were unheard of and people instead had the option of 'bargain 2d' video cards like Trident or Matrox that would do everything needed for desktop 2D, but also had the option of fairly affordable 3D accelerator cards if they wanted to play games occasionally.

On the bright side, most integrated ATI/NVidia GPUs these days are mature enough to be able to run games acceptably and meet the needs of a typical user. The only thing really holding the market back here, in my opinion, is Intel's insistence on marketing inferior products instead of partnering with ATI or NVidia to please their customers.

Of course, this is unrelated to your point that their Linux/Free Software support is superb, as is their documentation - I'm inclined to agree with you here, but it unfortunately doesn't do much to outweigh their other grievous sins.

Re:Go figure...

[Naughty Bob]

DirectX architect Alex St. John swims against the current...

He is clearly making his way back to his birthplace, in order to spawn.

His mind is clearly a-buzz with hormones, let's not be too cruel.

This guy is on crack

[SilverBlade2k]

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.

Re:Why consoles will win

[lycono]

I happen to like FPS games. I also happen to hate FPS games on consoles because I much prefer using a mouse over a joystick to aim. Chalk it up to my inability to learn how to use the console controller correctly or chalk it up to the inadequacy of the controller for these kinds of games. Either way, I still prefer playing with a mouse. This is a huge reason I don't play many console games.

That's great, but this isn't a hardware problem.

[raehl]

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.