Slashdot Mirror
Is the Gaming PC Dead?
An anonymous reader writes "Rahul Sood, HP's CTO of gaming, argues that the days of a market that wants PCs running three $500 GPUs is history; he argues that it's really a tough or impossible sell. '... let's face it, high-end hardware has delivered diminishing returns in terms of value. This is why you don't see ridiculous offerings like Quad SLI and 2-kilowatt power supplies coming from our company.' But don't the ideas of customization and market pricing for components tend to undercut that? Is the gaming PC dead?"
Until Netcraft confirms it, I won't believe it.
No, but I did throw granola at a deaf person once
no.
Every time someone needs to sell an issue of something. they say PC gaming is dead. As long as mmo's or there are Hard core games some one will cater to them.
Game titles shouldn't drive hardware requirements. Outside of Portal, something I can play on my xbox 360, and I don't have to upgrade every 6 months to continue to play new titles, I haven't seen anything new from game makers other than new requirements for my machine to somehow be better to play the same dumb first person shooter remakes. Oh, need I mention that now days you even need a pretty kick'n system to play what amounts to MUDS? Yes, please die. While you're at it, make mouse and keyboard style FPS navigation a standard and supported option on consoles -- the claw is not acceptable. That would be gaming Utopia: A supported console that worked for a few years and continued to play the latest titles while also offering a control system that leveraged something other than my fine motor control abilities of the digits that spend 8 hours a day inaccurately whopping the damned space bar.
Less demand for high-end machines full of superpowered parts miiiight have something to do with people concerned about spending too much now, maybe.
Of course, midrange parts becoming 'good enough' is a good factor for me, too. I don't feel the need to run things at stupidly high framerates on the largest resolution screens available.
What is dead is the days of companies (like HP) being able to deliver a capable gaming PC. This is much different to "gaming PCs are dead". Rahul Sood's argument is correct though. HP "gaming PCs" really would be difficult to sell. This says nothing about gaming PCs in general though. It merely says that gamers are not looking at HP to fulfil their needs. The argument that Sood is putting forth is a well known fallacy (A means B therefore B means A; HP gaming PCs are dead, and therefore the gaming PC is dead... which is of course rubbish).
Seriously, again? "Not in first place" does not equate to "dead". Yes, PC gaming has waned from it's heyday, but it's still got a solid player base in MMOs, casual gamers, online shooters, RTS games, and simulations.
Bad summary, incidentally. From the article:
I am not saying PC gaming is doomed, because it's not--far from it--but the PC with four GPUs, a 2-kilowatt power supply, 16 gigabytes of memory, and a stack of hard drives is all but distant memory, at least for the PC gamer.
Uh, what? A distant memory? Who would even think this is required for gaming? I've never had a computer even close to that powerful. And I *never* bought ultra top of the line hardware, even when I was very much into PC gaming (and could have afforded it easily). I bought mid-upper tier equipment, as it has the best price/performance ratio.
Nowadays, I play both console games (having a big-screen TV and a comfey couch makes a pretty big difference), and some older games such as Bauldur's Gate that I never played (picked up I & II for cheap on Amazon), as they play well on my moderately-powered laptop.
No, PC gaming isn't king, but it's nowhere near an also-ran either.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Has he looked at what the company he works for has been selling for well over a year now?
I walk into a coffee shop with people using WiFi and chugging coffee. More than half of the people at these coffee shops are using Macs.
I hang out with my geek friends, most of them have switched to Ubuntu, but a couple of us are Debian hold outs. Many of us have completely given up Windows.
Everyone seems to be pissed off at Windows and Microsoft issues.
Game developers make everything for Windows. I used to be a gamer, when I switched to Linux I played games on Linux. Now the companies that used to make Linux Games (Hello Unreal 3!) have decided not to do it anymore because they're kissing Microsofts ass.
People aren't moving away from gaming rigs, game companies don't cater to gamers who are on the cutting edge - i.e. ditching Microsoft!
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
You'll always have SOMEONE who wants to put down a wad of cash for a gaming PC.
Does someone seriously think the current requirements on some PC games are unavoidable?
If computer hardware stops growing at the same pace we've grown accustomed, what will die isn't PC gaming but game software careless programming.
Just as games in a single console have better graphics as time passes (on the same hardware), even a full stop in PC hardware would just force a cleaning and perfectioning of base algorithms.
Traditionally, this reasoning ends by pointing at the high quality graphics and ridiculously low requirements on the last Blizzard game, but it's been a while since they released a new one. I'd just wait to see the requirements of D3 or SC2 before talking about the effects of a slow down in affordable computer hardware on games quality and future.
most gamers would rather build their own gaming rigs, especially those willing to do triple or quad SLi, watercooling, etc.
It seems every year is starting to be the "The year of PC gaming death."
And, we all know that every year is the year of linux on the desktop and that the year of Duke Nukem is coming.
Thus, clearly, next year will be the year of playing Duke Nukem on a dead linux desktop*.
*: According to the latest casting of bones, the prophecy can also be interpreted as: "Penguins will nuke ducks dead from the top of their desks". But I don't think that will happen next year.
... I cannot justify buying three $500 video cards just to play a game.
Was this ever a requirement just to play a game? Granted, I haven't been around THAT long, but if my current rig and its pair of $200 video cards in SLI mode can run Age of Conan at 70 FPS on maxed out settings, I fail to see why anyone would be shelling out $1500 on graphics hardware alone.
An often-missed point in this discussion is, even with bleeding edge $500 video cards available, there isn't a game out there that requires more than one of these behemoth cards to run at max settings. None that I've encountered, anyway, and this was true even four years ago when I built my current rig's predecessor.
As for the gaming PC being dead, mine seems to be alive and well despite being a year old now. I generally build a new rig every three years or so, and it seems to cost roughly $1500 for the entire machine each time. I tend to jump on new games fairly quickly, and I have yet to see my computer choke on one. I never really understood the whole "six-month upgrade cycle" thing for hardware, but maybe my luck with hardware is just that good.
Either way, the article sounds like more sensationalist over-stirring of the pot to me. Move along, nothing to see here.
PC gaming consists of more than just people willing to pay 2000$ for a PC. That kind of expense is plain stupid, the additional gain is too small to be worth the cost and the system will need replacement only slightly later than a much cheaper (e.g. 500$) gaming system. From what I've seen videogame requirements are tapering off anyway, my 600€ system from a few years ago still runs fairly new games at minimum details, my previous systems that cost as much didn't last more than 2 years before upgrading at least one component to get a playable framerate. People can game with much cheaper computers, linking the sales of extremely expensive over-the-top hardware to PC gaming in its entirety is completely stupid.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
First, he equates horrid price/performance setups to "THE GAMING PC" as if "THE GAMING PC" had always meant morons with too much money and too little sense.
Second, he assumes that this was commonplace before (it wasn't).
Third, he assumes that the entire software market fails to take advantage of these INSAAAAANE GAMING PCs, after just having attempted to make the point that those PCs only "eke out a few more frames per second".
What exactly is he trying to argue here? If he's attempting to make the claim that the enthusiast market is dead, why hasn't that same enthusiast market died well before now? It's not just lately that dumping more and more money into a setup gives you diminishing returns, it's always been that way.
... I think the days of SLI as a gaming thing is numbered since Nvidia and others have been attempting to take GPU acceleration of applications more seriously. SLI is more now mostly for those who buy these cards for computation, and only secondly as a gaming card for those with the disposable income IMHO.
I never understood why people would pay so much for SLI, in the voodoo days it was neat but the average person didn't have SLI. I also never fully grasped why people were so obsessed with high resolutions, @ 1280x1024 I was fine and I kept watching the benchmarks go up to higher and higher resolutions and I was thinking we've reached a point of diminishing returns.
I just picked up an 8600GTS OC from BFG and I run 2 monitors and can render basically any game I care about at full blast. Oblivion I have to tone down slightly but other than that, UT2004, Halo, and Fable all fine. That's why nobody's buying quad SLI setups and dual quad processors and 8 GB of memory. Why spend an extra $500 on hardware that will give you +20% in speed when you could just turn antialiasing down to 2x and turn on bloom lighting instead of HDR and turn the view distance down ot 80%?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
First there's the assumption that you have to have some really powerful PC for gaming. Uhhh, no. I know lots of people who game on mid range or lower end hardware. Heck right now one of my friends is in my living room, happily playing WoW on his Lenovo Thinkpad. It's no high end mega machine, just a normal mid range business laptop with a reasonable graphics card (8600M I think).
However the bigger issue is one that these high end rigs DO exist and sell... Just not from HP. There's tow reasons for that:
1) Many people who buy those sort of computers want to build their own. I would fall in that category. While I don't buy latest and greatest all the time, I have a pretty high end system. It is also all built from parts. No OEM was involved. I like customizing my system, and I've the knowledge to do so.
2) A bigger reason in their case is that HP blows at consumer systems. You'll note that companies like Falcon Northwest DO sell high end (often ridiculously so) gaming PCs. HP's problem is they have a reputation for cheap crap, a well deserved reputation in my opinion and I do computer support professionally so I feel it is an informed opinion. They load their PCs full of shit you don't want, use second rate hardware, have poor warranty support, have an amazingly bad download site (anyone who has an HP printer knows) and seem to fail more frequently than our other brands at work. Is it any wonder high end gamers are not interested?
I find this "Gaming PCs are dead," to be a really stupid idea. Oh really? Then who the hell is buying all this stuff targeted at them? Who is buying GTX 280s, Logitech G15s, Razer Mice? Offices? Not likely. Further who is buying all the games? Best Buy has a whole isle devoted to PC games. That's about as much shelf space as they devote to any single console. Now retail space is expensive. You REALLY think they are doing that just to have them sit there and not sell? You think if they really didn't move that they wouldn't just be special order items? Not hardly. Their beancounters know math. They aren't devoting the shelf space to it because it doesn't move.
Sounds to me like he's mad that gamers don't want to buy the crap HP pushes. Well I tell you what, I'll give you the magic formula that'll make gamers buy:
Make a system that has the latest technology from trusted manufacturers, put it in an attractive functional case, don't install a ton of crapware on it, and charge a reasonable price. Done. Gamers will buy that shit. You keep selling crap boxes, well don't expect to get much gamer market.
This guy clearly doesn't know what he's talking about. You can't have more than 1800 watts in a power supply. Not unless you want to install a new, dedicated 20 amp circuit for your computer. Or move to a 240 volt system. None of which the average consumer would be willing to do.
Hyperbole: the lost art.
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
Sice one year ago, I almost don't play "hardcore games" in my PC, simply because I replaced my main desktop with a integrated graphics laptop (now I have two laptops, the main one, docked with a bigger screen and normal keyboard and mouse).
The point is that I have no intention at all to return to "desktop PC", nor "dedicated graphics", because the integrated graphics (Intel, but ATI/AMD is also OK, if not better) are just enough -cheap, and with longer battery time-. If the PC game runs OK, good, if not, I have a Playstation 3 for more fun (that also run Linux).
Ah. Now I'm reminded of why I don't have too many geek friends. They're obsessed with their operating systems more than what they can do with them. :)
Now the companies that used to make Linux Games (Hello Unreal 3!) have decided not to do it anymore because they're kissing Microsofts ass.
Or the economics of investing a lot of money to supply a product to a niche market which is rendered even more niche by rampant piracy (the one damned thing which *is* OS-neutral on the PC) are just far too marginal for it to be worth the money.
Cock-up before conspiracy.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
LCD screens? I have 2 choices. I run my games at 1680*1050 looking great, or any other resolution looking like...total crap.
Now picture 2 of those screens hooked to the same poor machine ;-)
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Can we please kill and bury this tired "PC gaming is dead" meme? It's not, and it won't be as long as the PC itself isn't dead. Games are played on any platform that supports them, and that includes cell phones, iphones, pieces of cardboard and yes, even PCs.
It's not TFA's fault, though. The summary is bad, wrong and desperately sensationalist. TFA doesn't say PC gaming is dead, it just says that it's stupid to have 3 $500 GPUs in your PC is ridiculous, which is kinda obvious in these days where you can get a high end PC for less than $1000.
Perhaps what is dying is what arstechnica calls "The God Box"... but they've always also run "The Hot Rod" and "The Budget Box". In days gone by you almost needed the God Box to run the newest coolest toys (I remember having my boot disk to run Falcon back in the day because it saved memory to load straight into the game) but now the only game my sub $700 system can't run at pretty much full power is Crysis - and I think that was designed to just show off. I think there's still plenty of market for the Hot Rod and Budget Box, depending on your needs.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
"PC gaming is dead" is dead
They didn't say PC gaming was dead. They said the gaming PC was dead.
The implication is very, very different. One means nobody is gaming on PCs any more - and that's very clearly wrong. The other means that few people are churning vast sums into making dedicated PCs just for gaming - and that quite likely is true.
I still game on my PC, but I'm one of many who have completely stopped customising my PC for the ultimate gaming performance, because it simply isn't worth the expense any more. I do most of my gaming on other platforms, and the games that do get played on my PC aren't really ones that benefit much from a mega powerhouse anyway.
So yes, the dedicated gaming PC is dead - or at least, in its death throes if you ask me. But PC gaming won't be going away any time soon. We'll just be gaming on the same type of machines we're using for work, mucking around with our photos and video editing, etc. etc.
"PC gaming is dead", "PC gaming is dead". Then this or that "expert" claims we won't play on PCs anymore in 5 or so years because everyone's moving over to consoles.
Guess what? That argument dates back to the first Nintendo console that pushed into the US/Euro market? And? Two decades later and we're still playing on PCs. We still didn't dump the machines and turned to consoles all of a sudden. And for good reason.
First, some games just do not make any sense on a console. Ever tried a sensible flight sim on a console? How? Oh, I'm sure you could invent some sort of input device that costs a fortune and guess what? Nobody but a few sim nuts would buy it. But the game is pointless without it because you can't pilot a plane sensibly with standard controllers. So the flight sim will never be made due to a lack of market.
RTS? Ever tried it with a console controller? Until they get a sensible mouse support, I'm not going anywhere near it. Same goes for FPS games. Yes, they made it somehow into the console market, but frankly, before I try to play Halo with a game controller I shoot myself in the foot. Actually, thinking about it, chances are that this is exactly how well I'd be able to aim with the standard controller out there.
Yes, I'm no fan of the console controllers. I love my mouse and I enjoy having a keyboard.
What's the next argument? Oh, the ever increasing update necessity. Here's some news for you: Don't make games that need more horsepower than the average gamer machine can muster and you have a bigger market to sell to. It is actually that easy. If you require a game rig with ten graphics cards to make your latest and greatest game even run mediocre, you failed. Simple as that. And no, gamers do NOT want that. They want a good game. Yes, that may include decent graphics, but we already have that, it can be done with normal, current standard PCs! Now make decent games that are still good after the new car smell is gone and the player looks past the shiny surface of your stunning graphics effects! The only damn reason why console games are not so hardware hungry is simply that the hardware is set in stone. You CANNOT demand more than what the console can offer, so the game maker has to adjust to what the game rig can. He can't simply go and tell you you need a better graphics chip for your X360, it won't fly.
Could we please finally drop this completely ridiculous claim?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hardcore gamers still flock to the PC...World of Warcraft, Diablo II (and soon III), Starcraft (Starcraft II!!!!!)...Blizzard is enough PC gaming for a large number of PC gamers and that's just the hardcore crowd. Once you factor in TRUE casual gamers it's the consoles that should be looking up to the PC.
If you openly interpret the definition of PC gaming then PC gaming is clearly the dominant platform. Flash games, web games, online checkers, online chess, online board games (Monopoly is extremely popular), online card games, online gambling games (though I think gambling is a horrid activity), emulation (those SNES games will never die), GGPO, MAME, etc. and then add in AA/AAA titles you have a massive community...
And way more people own PCs or MACs compared to the three main consoles right now (PS3, 360, Wii). In order to casually game on a PC you usually have the hardware already in your house, people buy a PC (or MAC etc.) for word processing, internet use, or personal use outside of gaming but casual gaming becomes a side usage of their PC.
My mother uses her PC for work and personal communication but she has started playing puzzle games for fun and actually spent over $100 on puzzle games in the last year. Is she included as a PC gamer?
Sure she's not killing hookers and cops in GTA or saving the world from mutant-zombies in Fallout 3 but puzzle-gaming is a legitimate genre so should she be counted as a gamer? Would she ever spend any money on gaming console? No. Would she purchase a 'gaming PC' as these manufacturers dupe people into buying? No. But does she game on her old Gateway 1.5GHZ/512RAM...hell yeah she does. She's a gamer....a puzzle gamer. Go mom...
Now for Christmas mom I need an Alienware 9.7gHz 1000lbs of RAM and 9.1 speaker setup and three ice-cooled (TM) graphics cards.
Just use Linux to get stuff done and buy an XBox to play games. Problem solved.
I recently got a cheap 9600GT are replacement for a faster card that died (shoddy Nvidia solder problem, 2 years warranty left). Turns out this card runs Fallout 3 and WoW without problem in 1280x1024, if a little less pretty. This tells me that high-end hardware is for people with too much money and too little sense.
Same with the ultra-expensive Intel CPUs: Nobody really needs them, except a few that use these as ego-prostetics.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The average gamer has a few hours to spend on gaming every day; and considering that all games can be played on bare bones computers (with a few exceptions), there is no incentive for the average gamer to drop a few thousand more on a computer that gets little mileage.
A hardcore gamer that spends 10+ hours a day on a specific game would love a gaming PC, however, as they would go faster.
However, internet connection plays in more than base computer settings for online games. If your connection sucks, you can't do much about it. A better investment for these hardcore mmo players would be to purchase the high speed, $60 a month internet connection.
Dave, don't you have PMI's to be doing or something? Seriously, this is a "Is PC gaming dead" discussion. Not a "Linux is superior" discussion. Besides, just because the industry is moving in a direction you don't like, doesn't mean you have to miss out on all the kick ass games that are coming out these days. You can dual boot. Your words smack of someone who switched over to linux for geek points or an e-peen enhancement. Don't get me wrong; I know linux is superior. I just know that right now microsoft calls the shots. And don't give me that "If we all join the cause we can change the industry" speech. Thats the kind of stuff that libertarians say. Microsoft is calling the shots until they get an awful ceo, make some terrible decisions, and completely destroy their multi kagillian dollar company. Developers go with microsoft because thats where the money is. The money will be there because developers go to microsoft. Microsoft wins. And I know I'll take flak from every active slashdot reader for saying it, but microsoft is just fine for gaming. If you don't think its a product thats worth paying for... don't pay for it. Yeah you know what I mean. And yes I have a $4000 multi GPU gaming rig. Get back to work. Sincerely, You know who
Unreal 3 is made and working for Linux, but it's not been released because there was a rumor Microsoft may want to buy Epic. The Linux release was shelved and never released, any mention of "Where's my promised Linux version?" on the message board gets deleted, sometimes so do the accounts of the posters. Because there's no profit in it, or there will be negative consequences if caught playing nice with others?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Trust me, you don't want to play that steaming pile of crap game called Unreal Tournament 3. The original Unreal Tournament was incredibly more enjoyable, more innovative, and most surely held my attention more than 2.3 minutes. Epic is a worthless company, they no longer make good video games, they make Microsoft Games.
I can only add my voice to the others above saying that, as a PC gamer, I'm baffled at this straw-man argument from the HP bloke. I'm currently playing Fallout 3 at maximum settings and resolution and at 85 frames per second on a PC that would cost today 450 (for CPU, memory, motherboard and graphics card) to build. And I recently bought a Dell laptop for 700 on which Crysis is very playable.
Yes, there are guys out there who want multiple GPU watercooled machines. But you don't actually need these. Just in the same way that there are guys who like go-faster decals and spoilers on their cars.
And companies like HP and Dell, by foisting the wretched integrated graphics chip on consumers, have done more damage to PC gaming than anyone else.
P.
I loved the original UT, and I still play it on occasion (I've actually had trouble slowing it down enough on newer systems), I played UT2K3, and of course replaced it with UT2K4, I loved them all. I only spent a few minutes on my cousins copy of UT3, I'm a bit annoyed that I bought it and don't get to play it. Even if it is steaming crap, I would like for them to keep to the promise of at least making it functional crap.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
No, UT3 is good, you're just jaded.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Been wondering what your username was, gonna go do some PMI's now, but I'll still be gaming on consoles, Linux, and Mac.
The "Mad Man" (I doubt you'll know him by that, but he's the grouchy one on duty) says console games are dead. I have to disagree with him.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
One of the big problems facing game programmers today is actually the requirement of an extra layer of abstraction. In order to get a simultaneous release on PS3 and 360 companies have to either a.) write parallel code for different platforms, or b.) create an API to deal with development for both consoles at the same time. Both options are a pain in the ass, and the easier option (adding an extra API) leads to less than optimal code. Of course, you can still improve the API over time, and you still only have to deal with 2 target systems, but its still more difficult than just dealing with a single platform.
According to some friends in the gaming industry the companies are going to stop developing PC games as they are cracked and distributed faster than you can buy them in the shops.
As an example they found out that 85 % of the Crysis online gamers used pirate copies.
If you consider the huge efforts that are needed to create a AAA-title and the risk of being copied the PC games will diminuish.
Way to only read the last sentence and read the completely opposite meaning to what the guy intended. He is pro PC. Everyone whomps the space bar all day - when they're typing.
You can connect a mouse, keyboard and headset to the PS3, though not all games make use of them. I just picked up a PS3 back at the start of the year to help wean myself off Windows gaming and it's worked great (meaning I can now use any OS I want on my laptop 100% of the time).
I don't miss the keyboard, but I definitely miss the mouse in FPS style games. I don't even use a headset despite most networked games supporting it.
As for "20+ easily reached hotkeys", you get 16 pressable buttons (not including the PS3 button), two analog sticks and tilt/accelerometer sensors on a PS3 controller. They are all accessible without shifting your hand to a new position like you have to do with a full sized keyboard. If you use one of the buttons as a 'function' key then you have up to 30 functions right there. Use a second button as a function key and you can have 58 functions, etc. Lack of keys isn't really an issue these days - well, apart from on the Wii.
which is totally what she said
It's quite common to drop the Tournament when speaking of Unreal Tournament games, as a matter of fact it's quite acceptable and common to just say "UT3", however to feed the troll, I'll rebutt with a note, it was originally promised at launch, in box. There were deadline issues which of course made it appear as though it would be a "soon after launch" thing. It's no longer soon after launch. I'm not the only Linux use who bought the game based on a "soon after" promise directly from the company.
Nobody said anything about fair, what was mentioned was what was announced by the company (then not retracted, but ignored/forgotten)
On another note, I actually do a bit of research and I just found updates on the situation. (since my initial post) I'm not dismissing the original Microsoft ass kissing statement, but I am suggesting that it may no longer be an issue.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Then explain why there are about a maximum of two populated servers, ever...I'm not the only one who feels this way.
Not until keyboard+mouse are the stock input devices for gaming consoles.
Well, for one thing I can update Linux from one release to the next in an hour or so. I used a version update disk to take Vista from Home Basic to Home Premium so I could join a clients notebook to the domain. I initally left it on his desk and checked back every 15 mintues. Finally I dropped it to once an hour. Took about 5 hours.
Another thing I can do with Linux (and to a lesser degree Mac) is chose all updates, applications and OS, hit "do it" without having to track down individual application updates and patches.
With other OS's I don't get the feeling I'm having to fight the OS to do everything I want. I can have as many people as I want mapped to my personal drive if I have a shared out section without hitting a "maximum connections" error - without paying extra. It may seem like a contradiction of terms, but it's actually getting to the point that GNU/Linux with KDE or GNOME is easier to use than Windows, of any version.
I will agree with you on 2K, Windows 2000 was a decent easy to use straight forward OS. XP was almost as good interface wise, but wasn't as good as 2000 in some ways, Vista is just slow and clunky. I know it's supposedly stable, but it's just slow to do technical things, like add and remove programs. As a tech I like to be able to get in, do it, and get out. Vista is an all day commitment.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
HP seems to be making the argument, that if it can't sell gaming PC's, then gaming must be dead, or something...its all straws.
The market isn't going to suddenly shift to consoles and not PC's like a snap of your fingers. Look at VHS! The last major VHS distributor closed shop, and VHS format has been around for almost 32 years, DVD format debuted in 1993, and we're only now phasing out production on VHS.
But the DVD replaces the VHS, here's the biggest difference. Console gaming doesn't replace PC gaming and vice versa, both methods can coexist just fine. And even with all the home gaming around, places like Gameworks thrive on their arcades. Arcade gaming will die before anything IMHO
Ah. Now I'm reminded of why I don't have too many geek friends. They're obsessed with their operating systems more than what they can do with them. :)
Actually, being able to do something with the OS, instead of fighting with it all the time, is one of the prime reasons while people switch to OS X. A lot of my friends did, over the past two years or so, and most of them come back a few weeks after they switched and tell everyone how much more productive they have become now that the OS has stopped being in the way all the time.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You failed in knocking me down a couple of notches, I've learned to be steadfast in my beliefs as those who disagree with me are steadfast in theirs. If Epic didn't want a conspiracy theory they should have just been open in reasoning. Answer one post, and respond to all the new post with links to the one with the answer, case closed, no conspiracy. Deleting post and sweeping the issue under the rug after initially being such a vocal supporter of being cross platform didn't help their case. The Gears of War thing somewhat supported the "conspiracy theory".
Agreed the actual Unreal series has never been officially ported to Linux, though I know the original Unreal can be played with Unreal Tournaments engine, I've had it working multiple times with the hacked installer. Unreal II the Awakening however, I've never heard of working without WINE, I'm going to have to look into that, see if anything has changed.
So, no, not knocked down a notch, not ruling out the possibility of Microsoft having been indirectly a cause of delay, glad they're finally moving to do what they said they would do. I'm just glad that Epic is one of the few companies that usually does pay attention to multi-platform users. Another note, I've had every version of Quake installed and working on both Linux and OS X (not had much luck with the original UT on OS X, but I've got 2K4)
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
And how many people know how to or want to do that?
The biggest market is casual gamers, and you can't beat the convenience of a console - drop the media in and play...
The Amiga was the best gaming platform of it's day, because it had all the advantages of a console (relatively static hardware spec, insert media and play simplicity, connects to your tv) all the advantages of a pc (optional hard drive to install games, keyboard, mouse, ability to do other things than games - so parents bought them as educational tools, can also support a monitor instead of a tv, homebrew) and a few advantages of its own, like an os that gets out of the way and doesn't impact on gaming performance.
The amiga hardware wasnt entirely static, but there were a small enough number of gaming oriented models to target... You basically had the A500 and A1200 to target for gaming, the A500+ and A600 were close enough to the A500, while the A1200 was somewhat more powerful and often had its own version of games...
The A1200 would run most games designed for the A500 but not all of them, the difference in performance, age difference and mostly-compatible nature make the A500 to A1200 transition no different to PS2 - PS3.
The higher end models (A2000, A3000, A4000) were mostly compatible too, but not targeted at gamers.
So what we need is another system like the Amiga, or perhaps a revised PS3 which brings something similar...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
SLI, $500 cards, etc. must be best for game developers, to develop now on what next year will be commodity hardware.
If you look at the overall history of computers, you get a good idea about why the big name companies can't really do well in the "gaming PC" area.
Back when the PC was running at 4.77MHz, even an increase of 3.23MHz was huge because the jump was a greater percentage increase. As time has moved forward, it has become harder and harder to make such huge jumps forward simply because of progress. Even a ten percent improvement in performance is considered very good these days as a result of this.
So, in these days where dual or quad core 2.3GHz processors are everywhere, it means that if you want to play games, the CPU power really isn't an issue for most people. The game development companies seem to spend more time focused on eye candy, rather than really taking advantage of what all of this CPU power can provide.
Now, the GPU market for the most part has been following this to an extent. For MOST people, including gamers, a single Radeon 4870 is enough to handle the games we play. Sure, there are some extreme players that want more, but for the most part, a $300-$400 video card is doing everything we might want it to do. The price of video cards has dropped like a rock over the past few years, so the need to pay even $500 for a single video card has dropped.
What the software developers need to do to revive the PC as a gaming platform is to really focus on the strengths of the PC, not just selling a console game on the PC and wondering why it doesn't do well. The PC has the potential of not just better GPU power, but also better CPU power. How many games have taken advantage of these things?
Areas the PC game market could really focus on would be the AI layer, roleplaying options(beyond having 3 verbal options that have only 2 different reactions from NPCs), more endings, different game branches beyond the 2-4 different endings that we have seen in games from back in the days of Wing Commander, and so on.
Game development that really takes advantage of the platform is what the consoles shoot for, but why does it seem there have been so few new AAA game titles for the PC? Why do these developers feel that first person shooters are the only types of games that will sell well when the console market attracts this type of player as well?
HP is focused on making a LOT of computers with the same design and selling them in large quantities. Even their gaming PC division has that same mindset. They could learn from companies like Cyberpowerpc where you have a starting point for a system, and then focus on being able to customize the machine to suit the needs of the customer. This includes different cases, CPUs, motherboards(something HP does not let you do), video cards, etc.
Then again, HP is still selling computers with that crappy NVIDIA 6150LE with integrated graphics, even though there are much newer and better chipsets out there. If the mainstream machines can't keep up with changes and improvements in the industry, people will assume that the gaming division may be as slow to adapt as well.
NVIDIA and AMD also have not shown us good reasons to go with multi-GPU systems. When the drivers require updates to make SLI or Crossfire work with a new game, rather than SLI or Crossfire working for EVERYTHING, it means those who play games that are not very popular see no advantage. Do you see DDO(Dungeons and Dragons Online) getting SLI or Crossfire support in the drivers? What about when Dragon Age comes out, do you think the current drivers will provide SLI or Crossfire support until the game sells at least 500,000 copies?
The game companies will turn to make Linux Games again if there are enough users of Linux PCs which are willing and able to buy those computer games. As simple as that... So far the overwhelming majority of users that are willing to spend some extra cash on computer games are the windows users.
"I have plenty of geek friends"
fixed it for you.
I do not know a single proper geek (i.e. knows about a lot more than just games and gaming PC hardware/tweaking windows to run games) who does not at least dabble in another OS, even if it just e.g. an unraid server or trying out smoothwall or even flashing their linksys with tomato firmware.
The hardcore gaming geeks are the ones who give the rest of us a bad name.
And even the most rabid OSX hating 'true' geek will acknowledge the OS kicks ****, the hatred is for apple's overpriced, hip image and users and uber-proprietary tendencies (for the FOSS zealot crowd).
Of course I could be just another opinionated geek on an internet soapbox so bah what do I know.
And yes I play games.
For my job i have to scan networks, fast scanning tools like synscan are not available for windows and run very slowly inside of a linux/bsd vm... I would be stuck with slower less efficient tools.
I have to do wifi sniffing, last i checked none of the wifi drivers for windows supported rfmon mode for sniffing...
I run a number of servers with no video support, windows at least needs a video card to install and if the os fails to boot for whatever reason you have to troubleshoot it from the local console, this is totally unacceptable for me since the servers are located far away. I could use graphical based lights out management cards, but they cost more and are much slower than the serial console based ones.
I need to install and remove a lot of tools, package management on linux makes that easy, cleanly removing something from windows can be difficult...
The interface is a lot more customizable, i can choose the window manager that suits my needs best, and i have multiple workspaces to arrange my applications on... windows can do this with third party hacks but none of them work very well since virtually no apps are designed to make use of them and will often open dialogs on the wrong workspaces (osx apps do this too, since spaces was only introduced with 10.5).. i find the default windows interface incredibly clunky and inflexible so it doesn't suit me at all.
Cut+paste in X11 is much easier than windows, and this makes a huge difference to my productivity - select with mouse, middle button pastes to wherever the pointer is.
Chroot - i can easily have multiple user lands installed, without the overhead of a vm and multiple copies of the kernel, which is incredibly useful for development.
security - vista achieves its out of the box level of security by having all the stupid msrpc services listening on the network and then filtering them (they're obviously not needed or filtering would break stuff, so why have them listening in the first place?) whereas linux simply wont have anything listening.
performance - linux outperforms windows on the same hardware for a similar level of functionality, and vista makes the gap bigger... linux has a lot more scope for performance tuning if you're so inclined.
While there are decent command line tools for windows, they aren't default and thus lots of apps are not designed to work with them, and you lose a lot of the flexibility offered by pipes and fifos... when something is default it can be relied upon by app developers, if its not default then app devs may never have even heard of it... how many windows apps let you write something to a pipe and process it by several other tools before streaming the output over an ssh connection to another box?
For a real world example, i have a small atom based box with tv cards connected to the tv (its small and quiet), when it records tv it then pipes the video over ssh to a noisy quad core box that sits out of earshot which strips out commercials and transcodes the video before piping it back...
But by far my biggest gripe with windows is that it has it's own nonstandard way of doing or storing things... Linux is incredibly simple... everything is a file, configuration is stored in textfiles which are usually well commented and that you can edit with an editor of your choice or parse using standard commandline tools (or use gui config tools if thats what you like), and all your data files will be stored in standard documented formats that can be opened by multiple programs. Windows on the other hand is insanely complex, and likes to store data in binary blobs the format of which is known only to microsoft and no other programs can use.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I really hope this was meant to be disingenuous.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Hmm. Since you asked so nicely. Try being a Smalltalk or Lisp programmer under Windows. It's doable but $$$ for uncrippled software.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Just look at what shoving as much graphic power in the 360 did for the price it was. You tend to get more when you pay more, and many people want more.
The 'Gaming PC' was never meant to be a massive market, it's supposed to be expensive, it's supposed to be uncommon. You don't buy a fucking Mercedes just to have a better car, you buy a Mercedes to say you have a Mercedes.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Look, no version of UT has ever been any different, really, from the first version (well, except for 2k3, which I can't judge because I haven't played it). If you say one is good or bad, you say the same about all of them. All Epic ever does with the game is put a new coat of paint on it.
And as far as populated servers go, I'd have to guess it's because the popularity of UT's gameplay is waning in favor of other FPS styles like Call of Duty. Something with a bit more structure and realism. Saying it's because of UT3 sucking, though, is ridiculous. It's the same damn game as they've always had, with a new coat of paint. Just like UT2k4. The game has never changed.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
The desktop computer as a gaming rig will never die until I can write game code for consoles or cell phones without a desktop computer being somewhere in the pipeline, as it is ground zero for any game development effort.
Its easier to get set up and develop games on the PC than it is any other platform. As such, it has a much larger independent development community and has more choices when picking games.
Don't even get me started on the cost of indy development on consoles either. Its gotten better in recent years, but you usually still have to buy a platform development kit, which usually isn't cheap.
As a Mac user, I'm seeing progressively more games wrapped up in Cedega by their own developers. It's not as good as direct port, but frankly it's still fairly good stuff and a start.
Apple's not taking games seriously though. Having had a conference about a year ago where they wheeled out EA and Id Software people to talk about how they were going to do games for the Mac, they then have epically failed to get sorted on the hardware.
My Mac Pro has a Nvidia 8800 in it. If I'd gone with an iMac, I'd have an older card and it wouldn't be upgradable. Even as it stands, I cannot buy any of the two generations of cards since the 8800, for my Mac. The Mac _needs_ to have upgradable cards in the high-end iMacs, and it needs to have cards out within 3 months of PC equivalents.
Anything beyond that is optional prettification and counts as luxury.
I have to agree, and how much of that will you really notice; especially for some otherwise lame FPS? I mean, how much detail are you going to notice while you're trying to kill the latest 20 hell-demons that are throwing flaming skulls at you?
Are you really going to pay much attention to the photorealistic framed picture of the Mona Lisa on the wall?
I see this sort of stuff being more realistic for a more laid back sort of game - and you generally don't have so much going along at once during such a game that modern video cards can't easily keep up.
I don't read AC A human right
Agreed -
I have a five year old. I got her a Power Mac Dual G5 off of eBay so it would play classic games (plenty of those out there) and new games. I will say first hand, the Mac ports of THQ Disney games SUCK ROCKS. Sure, you can actually get them to "work" but getting controls configured is a pain (why do I have to launch the installer hidden in some subdirectory to config a game pad?), the graphics are not written for a Mac. From what I've read they're PS2 games wrapped in a compatibility layer.
I will say the classic games seem to work fairly well most of the time, and most of the newer games that are NOT from THQ seem to work great. On my own Mac I have UT2K4 working great, just like the Linux version.
Cedega is sort of a cop-out to me. I'm all for just using SDL, OpenGL, and other cross platform programming utilities. Once a company gets set in their ways it's hard to change them sometimes.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The interesting thing about being in groups of people with similar interests as you, is the fact you feel like you are in the majority.
Yes you may see a lot of Macs at your coffee shop. But gamers are not going to be at coffee shops, at least they probably wont be doing to much gaming while they are there. It is more to the point that Apple has a very good line of laptops, if you look carefully you will probably see people with other good laptops such as Lenovos running Windows. (But they are not as eye catching so you may miss them), Most gamers agree that laptops are not a good gaming rig. So if they were to have a laptop it would probably not be a gaming laptop so they could have a Mac for Starbucks and a PC for games.
Although windows market share has dwindled to around 91%, 91% is damn good market share. With 7% of that being Mac 1% of Linux and 1% others. So there is no value in Linux Gaming, You can't make money off of linux gaming, companies have tried and failed. Because of the Numbers...
1% of the computer users are using Linux for desktop. 50% of that group would like to play games (0.5%) , 75% of them have computers powerful to play the games (0.357%) , 66% will run a game or app that isn't open source (0.236%) , 65% will be able to get Linux configured to play the games (0.153%)., 50% will be willing to pay money for the game (0.077%), 80% will be willing to pay that much money for the game (0.061%), 10% will actually want That Game (0.006%), 50% of that group will have a windows gaming rig already set up for gaming (0.003%), 66% of the computer user population will be in a location where you can get the game (0.002%), 70% of them will not pirate the copy (0.001%), Now with say an estimated PC owner userbase of about 4 billion people, that would be 56,605 copies sold. at $80 a copy $4,528,427 taking 20% off the top for store profit = $3,622,741. subtract $325,000 for the software developer team of 5 (with benefits) for 1 year of development porting to Linux ($3,297,741). Additional cost of $162,500 for the extra work of 25 game developer to stay open platform ($3,135,241)... (I really have to get to work, But if you keep trimming down the expenses you will find that they will be making either such a small profit where if they put those resources elsewhere that can make bigger profit, or will be running at a loss.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
for the time being consoles appear to have the
title for gaming platforms outside of the MMO's.
I don't game on my PC anymore but it's not due
to the hardware. Rather, it's the annoying
software issues that keep me from gaming on the PC.
You have to run a Microsoft OS for most games.
You have to run Vista for some to run at all.
A few are made for Mac ( very few )
Practically zero on Linux
SecureRom, limited online activation, and other
bullsh*t DRM schemes aren't helping.
There are several games I wanted to play on the
PC, but refused to load them due to all the DRM
sh*t that comes with them.
Spore and Bioshock being but two. . . .
The fact that I have yet, in recent years, been
able to purchase a game, install it, and start
playing it immediately without downloading a
mega patch to ' fix ' all the issues that should
have been dealt with prior to the damn thing
shipping.
If the console developers ever bother to stick
a keyboard and a mouse into the hardware mix, I
would be sold. Done deal. I would never load
another game on my PC again.
So,for me anyway, it's not the hardware that's
crippling the PC gaming capabilities, it's the
unfinished, bug-ridden, DRM laden software that's
killing it off. . . .
I Feel like i'm taking Crazy Pills! HP was never, nor will they ever be in the gaming pc market.
No remotely-serious gamer would use one of those machines.
Because of this, any opinions from HP are null, -or so abstract they require a post like this...
-
Kill your TV
The answer was no back then and hasn't change since no matter how many times the console fanboys tried.
Is asking "Is [insert overarching, overly vague trend here] dead?" dead?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Your points are all valid, but I hope you realize your needs place you in a small minority of all computer users. I'm involved directly in multi-platform software development and I rarely need to do the things you mention. When I do (e.g. command line tools) our Windows developer setups have done a lot to bring Windows capability to parity with Linux.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
I've seen quite a bit of that in the corporate world. An executive type user wants a Macbook Pro because they are really neat and have lots of features, then has no clue how to use one or gets completely perplexed with font changes, etc... in Office documents so uses Windows anyway.
On the other hand, the coffee shop/home users I've never seen use anything but OS X on modern Macs.
Personally my only Windows install is an XP virtual machine (VMWare Fusion) on my Macbook Pro. I rarely boot it, only when I want to update my contacts so my phone has a copy of the global address book (Entourage only allows 1 at a time where Outlook lets me highlight them all) or having a reference on my own machine is the only way to support a customer.
BTW - Bomgar is the most awesome remote support product I've ever used.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
it's as dead as the linux desktop.
You speak London? I speak London very best.
Starting a little early too to declare gaming dead. Get ready for the:
- 2009 the year PC gaming will die
- 2009 the year consoles converge with PCs
- 2009 year of Linux
- 2009 year of the Mac
- 2009 the year Google jumps the shark (oh wait... did that already happen?)
- 2009 the year the world ends
- etc....
I guess it's time to stop reading Slashdot until after April fools to avoid all the regurgitated year to year crap.
Far from defeat.
In 1994 if you would have told me (not yet an I.T. pro) and other I.T. professionals of the time that Windows was going to become a viable server OS they would have laughed. Novell Netware was king, Banyan Vines had a following, Apple had easy networking, Lantastic wasn't bad for a small network, but Windows was for a personal workstation.
There was a campaign of mailed letter F.U.D against Novell which Novell filed lawsuits over and won - after. There were "patches" to fix O.S. stability that broke the Netware client and Netscape, and every time Novell and Netscape fixed their products around the "patches" a new stability patch would come out for mysterious reasons and break them again.
After some time of this, Microsoft emerged as a leader in server networking.
Linux is established and respected in both the server and embedded devices arenas, desktop acceptance is gaining, but Linux folks are waiting for their inverse "NT Server" moment when they become a commonly accepted desktop.
Microsoft has actively strong armed retailers to keep them from distributing Linux machines, and even more so to thwart advertising them.
Why would strong arming software companies away from supporting other OS's be a stretch?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
A story exiled to the Games section on Slashdot will be lucky to draw fifty posts. Unless you press one of the geek's hot buttons. Then you are golden.
People aren't moving away from gaming rigs, game companies don't cater to gamers who are on the cutting edge - i.e. ditching Microsoft!
The bleeding edge is worth 0.8% of the desktop.
OEM Vista 20% -
and this Christmas that is the 64 Bit Vista Premium HP laptop or desktop with a quad core CPU, humongous HDD, 4 GB RAM and NVIDIA DX 10 graphics you can buy at any WalMart.
If the gamer's PC is disappearing, it is only because gamer PC specs have merged with those of the mid-line media PC. You aren't pumping out video to a monitor, you are pumping out video to a WalMart Vizio or the refurbished 42" Toshiba HDTV you bought from TigerDirect.
with cheaper computer pricing it's easier to enter pc gaming... dummy
UT2K3 and UT2K4 are almost the same game. They didn't have the vehicles down before the 2K3 deadline so they skipped them, but there was a way to get one working with backdoor knowledge. Originally the intent was to have UT2K4 clients capable of joining 2K3 servers, but they worked in enough protocol changes and improvements near the end they dropped that idea. 2K3 is by and large considered replaced by 2K4, as a matter of fact there were some decent discounts offered to exchange 2K3 for 2K4.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
No, i would not play an rts game or mmo on a console. Would be annoying and fps is better also on pcs then console but if people keep pirating games then i can see the trend of developers going to purely consoles.
PC gaming ain't dead but it's certainly different from the way it was a decade ago.
I remember when EB Games used to be Electronics Boutique. It was wall-to-wall PC games. Hell, a decade before that it was even better. Shake those boxes, you can hear the floppies jostling around in there. Yeah, that was good gaming! The consoles were shoved in the back corner as if to say "Yeah, we have to compete with Toys-R-Us. You'll see it in the corner along with the macs. Now look at the PC's!"
Today the PC games are shoved off in the corner the way the last beta rentals were in video stores in the 80's. Yes, you can buy a PC game at EB but it's mostly consoles. But you know what? It doesn't matter anymore. Online distribution is taking off by leaps and bounds. You've got stuff like Steam, you've got various other electronic distribution options.
Let's also not forget that PC gaming means different things to different people. Remember when all of us traditional gamers couldn't understand why people were so into Myst? Non-gamers went nuts for it. And don't forget that no matter how well the latest quake or splatterfest is selling, Barbie and Monopoly games on the computer do better. And remember how Sims tromped all over everyone?
Back further in the past, there used to be a huge difference between PC and console gaming. Console graphics really sucked in the NES and SNES era. But they did push for a more arcade-like play method. PC games tended to be slower and more deliberate. You had simulators, war games, the PC monitor had twice the resolution of a TV. You had adventure games, puzzlers, the works. Those were the kinds of games you sat down at the desk to play, they were brain candy.
By the PSX era, consoles could put forward some incredible graphics and people started debating the merits of paying as much for a graphics card as they could for a console. Even as the gamer market expanded to include kids and adults who grew up playing games and still played games, people were prioritizing their purchases. Some gamers wanted to be on the bleeding edge and play new games now, others decided to hold off for a few years and play those former bleeding edge games on newly-purchased modest rigs that could handle them easily.
And throughout all of these changes, both computers and consoles have increased their penetration into American homes. Back when I started playing around with computers, it was unheard of for girls to mess with this nerdy geek stuff. By the late 90's, non-geeks of both genders were on computers. Their parents bought the computers for school work and the internet the kids used them for that and socializing.
Two developments I find very fascinating in different ways are Steam and the virtual consoles on the current-gen consoles. Many people still don't pirate because it's too much effort. Steam makes it possible to play games you might not be able to find in the bargain bin at EB and older games can be resurrected to get a second chance at finding a market. On the consoles, games for the last-gen systems were essentially abandon-ware. You weren't going to be able to play an old NES cart unless you found a console at a garage sale or used an emulator to play the ROM. Now the virtual consoles are allowing companies to market their older games and non-geeks who don't have the patience to deal with MAME can play the older classics.
What remains to be seen concerning electronic distribution is how it changes the developer/publisher model. When it comes to retailing physical products, the 800lb gorilla always wins. You have to deal with him to get shelf space, he always gets the biggest piece of the pie, and the competition is merciless. With electronic distribution there's no supply chain overhead, just the cost of developing the game and either paying a cut to Steam or setting up your own distro servers. You don't have to press disks, put together boxes, ship them to stores, eat the cost on units that don't sell, etc. Marketing is still important but word of mouth becomes
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Only ice cooled? I want liquid nitrogen!
My rights don't need management.
PC gaming is dead.
Now excuse me while I take my flying car off to my paperless office.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Hmm. No, no, the gaming PC is just fine. Fan clatters a little bit when I turn it on because it impinges on the heatsink, but it still works fine.
They're obsessed with their operating systems more than what they can do with them. :)
Things to do with them? as in gaming, the entire point of the GP's post? or were you just trolling?
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Are built by hand, not bought from HP.
That's why he thinks it's a dead end. Nobody buys them from HP unless they are idiots.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
was there ever a PC game that *required* more than one gfx card?
Yes. Console games require one on-board gfx chip for four players. PC games in the same genres, on the other hand, tend to need one gfx card (and one PC) per player because major publishers don't want to use split-screen on an HDTV as a selling point vs. their competitors.
Crap hardware will make any OS piss all over itself. Most of the Windows people who have problems tend to have the absolute cheapest, underpowered, or simply malfunctioning hardware.
This is why Apple is stable, and your typical $400 Vista system is not. Yes, you pay out a lot more money for your Apple laptop or desktop system, but it tends to be higher quality hardware. This isn't much different than buying Sun or SGI hardware, FWIW.
I currently administer an office building with 100% Mac workstations and Open Directory. I used to administer a very large installation of Windows workstations and Active Directory. Before that I administered a building full of research scientists that had AIX, Irix, HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, and Windows tied together with NIS ans Samba. In every case, no one skimped on hardware, and as a result, I've never really had an issue keeping everything running smoothly, regardless of what OS was being used.
The OS is supposed to work, but that won't happen without decent hardware. Stop buying shit hardware for your Windows systems, and you'll find that Windows can be a very stable OS.
What we do need badly tho, is for console games to support mouse and keyboard
Wii games such as Animal Crossing 3 use an air-mouse (the Wii Remote) for pointing and a standard USB keyboard for text input. A lot of PS3 games based on the Unreal engine can use a standard keyboard and mouse in a similar manner to PC games. But Microsoft won't let most Xbox 360 developers use a mouse, or use a keyboard for anything other than text input.
But I thought the consoles' whole advantage was that four players could share a console and TV. Four keyboards and four mice require two hubs and a lot more physical space than four gamepads or even four Wii Remotes and Nunchuk accessories.
While you're at it, make mouse and keyboard style FPS navigation a standard and supported option on consoles -- the claw is not acceptable.
Are the very keyboard-and-mouse-like Metroid Prime Hunters (DS) and Metroid Prime 3 (Wii) acceptable?
I think you're right on with the FPS thoughts. I was never into the FPS wars, and as long as I could get 20-40FPS, I was fine.
Why people think 100FPS is better is beyond me, especially since most people don't even have monitors that will sync that high, or LCD panels that can refresh fast enough.
...why OEMs (HP, Dell, etc) can't put together a solid midrange machine for the life of them. If fly-by-night cut-all-corners places like iBuyPower and CyberPower can do it, why don't I see a (E5200|E7300|E8400)/(4850|GTX 260) sort of machine on these companies' websites? It's to the point where if someone wants to buy a PC and can't build it themselves, and asks for a prebuilt recommendation, I can't give them one. It's not even a question of price (of course you're going to pay a little more for warranty etc), these companies just don't or can't offer a combination of reasonable hardware anymore.
Does anyone know why this is the case?
There used to be a real need for high-end PCs. In the 1980s and early 1990s, you needed a specially configured PC to run AutoCAD. In the late 1990s, I had a $6000 PC (with a Pentium Pro and a $2000 graphics card) to run Softimage. Stock traders used to order special "trading workstations" with multiple monitor support. Avid had a whole industry selling expensive hardware in expensive furniture for video editing.
Now you can do all that stuff on stock mid-range PCs. You might need some extra RAM or a multicore CPU, but those are cheap options now.
Nobody writes games that require a quad CPU. When you look at the benchmarks for "high end" gamer systems, you see them doing maybe 30% better for 2x the cost. The price/performance isn't there.
So I understand that some games are better played on a PC because the input devices (keyboard/mouse) are just better than a 10button pad. Simulators/MMO etc.. Sometimes have a dozen shortcuts mapped beforehand is a bonus. However, the PC isn't attached to the TV in the livingroom, nor is it hooked up to my stereo, nor can multiple people play on the game at the same time (ie: party games).
Why can't the console folks just start shipping keyboard and mice adapters (so you can plug in a standard keyboard/mouse into some box and the box wirelessly connects to the console) so we can play WoW on our living room?
What you said, plus: I've never ever seen the kind of rig Sood descibes in his text as "distant memory" anywhere outside an NVIDIA or Intel fair booth. Actually I've never ever seen any machine with Quad-SLI in the real world. Not even our CAD folks have yet reached any limit on their hardware that would justify something like that.
It's not distant memory, it's a marketing gag.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
How close are consoles to PCs already? My take is... pretty close. "PC" gaming won't die until there are keyboards controlling console games. We're close to that already. The games don't yet leverage all of the keys, but they could. Also, all modern video output from both consoles and PCs are HDMI. The "console" is basically a PC already, too, but restricts user control over hardware upgrades. It does provides some control - choice of video output, wireless NIC add-ons, HDD upgrades, USB ports for wireless peripherals. All network settings are configurable for both. Once hardware out-performs personal demands (given 1 PC per person), the PC and the console will be indiscernible.
Exactly.
I was a rabid fan of the Unreal games. I was one of the few that bought UT3 for full retail on sale day. I played it for 30 minutes, uninstalled it, and it sits on my shelf.
I really miss the days of when we could get linux games. I bought everything released that was linux capable.
But it's moot now. My DS and PSP as well as the Wii and Xbox360 fill my gaming needs well. Hell I even 0wN noobs in Fuel of war by plugging in a mouse and keyboard while most of them playing cant understand how I can nail them instantly as they try to aim with a useless game pad.
the Keyboard/mouse adapter works GREAT and I was happy the software still had the code in it to react ot these controls.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One thing is clear, this guy lives in a bubble if he thinks this is the definition of 'high end' gaming.
If you take the average gamer's high end, there is nothing that with $200 worth of GPU hardware and 2-4GB of RAM and a cheap multi-core CPU that can't be rendered at 60fps.(Yes even Crysis)
Even in my 'bubble' high end gamers are playing their PC and console games on front project 1080p DLP units in their theater room with a 12' high wall/screen.
1920x1080 even with 8x AA or FSAA is not hard to do with the biggest games out there.
If HD moves beyond 1920x1080p (or 1920x1200), then we might need the hardware this fool is talking about, but until then it is all about the displays. PERIOD.
Gamers are moving into big screens and the HD televisions are the target resolutions unless they are going to drop $15,000 for a TV that is beyond 1080p.
So the question here isn't about PC Gaming hardware, but the displays they are used on, and until displays shove past 1080p, anything past Dual SLI GPU systems are insane and unnecessary.
Sure the economy doesn't help, but right now in the computing world, getting to 60fps at 1080p is something even budgeted people can get to if they save for the $100-200 last year video card. There are even 8800 cards (non-GS) for around $80, and they can shove some serious pixels.
This reminds me of gaming in previous generations. 320x240, 1024x768, and now HD displays 1920x1200 or (1920x1080p) are the target and the lock point for gamers. And these gaming 'goals' were/are ALL based on display technology and became overkill based on the display limitations.
Yes there are gamers that multi-screen, but even a large chunk of them would rather use the 50" TV and give up a few pixels. Heck even 720p is a limiting factor for some gamers, especially when you can buy a 720p DLP front projector for under $700 and have a 12'(diag) screen gaming experience in the living room.
I had been gaming on the PC forever... (cough in my 40s now...)
But I have NOT bought a PC game since my 1st xbox... And I do not plan on buying one. REASON: guess what, my main PC is 5/6 years old and it STILL RUNS great....
I upgraded and bought new PCs all the time in the past... now I only spend money on the games, not the games and a new machine each year...
Duke
FreeBSD: Nothing runs like a daemon with a pitch fork.
Look at South Korea. There will be a great resurgance again once StarCraft ][ comes out.
There's no Freedom like UFP-dom
The distinction between current generation consoles and PC's is shrinking. They have all of the same core components, just a different name. Console gaming is more convenient for those of us who don't build our gaming rigs and because it is more convenient it appeals to a wider market segment and therefore development companies focus on the broader customer base.
For those of us who want a high end experience the console will always be behind the cutting edge PC, but the console for all purposes is essentially a gaming PC for the masses.
A developer designed a "AAA" PC game that was designed completely around a dual+ GPU hardware spec?
Look at the past with the move to hardware 3d acceleration. Games designed (not sponsored) around a specific hardware requirement, spawned ... sales!
I don't want a game that barely supports SLI/Crossfire. I want a game that requires it by design.
For a real world example, i have a small atom based box with tv cards connected to the tv (its small and quiet), when it records tv it then pipes the video over ssh to a noisy quad core box that sits out of earshot which strips out commercials and transcodes the video before piping it back...
Just out of curiosity, where can I find a guide on doing that?...
THATS why nVIDIA and ATI are going out of business!
This article is way misleading. I play all games at high settings without a problem, and I'm running a single GPU, single CPU and 400W power supply.
If gaming PCs are dead, then why would anyone design this piece of awesomeness? http://game.ology.com/2008/12/19/item-3-on-my-xmas-list/ I think, just as someone said before me, that any hardcore PC gamer is going to building their own rig so the can get just what they want and not have to deal with extra bs. I like how the OP has the word "flamebait" as one of his/her tag
More than half of the people at these coffee shops are using Macs.
Strange, I recall Apple having a few games, including Spore, World of Warcraft, Prince of Persia, Command and Conquer 3. I'll agree that there aren't as many games as on PC, but there are quite a few that have been relatively popular.
Ubuntu [snip] Debian [snip] Many of us have completely given up Windows.
As someone who's been using linux for over 10 years, I find it hard to believe that anyone who plays video games gives up on windows. Yes, there is wine, but it is a hassle, has far too many problems with most games compared to just installing it on XP.
Now the companies that used to make Linux Games (Hello Unreal 3!) have decided not to do it anymore because they're kissing Microsofts ass.
Yes, because ultimately kissing ass is all what running a game-company is all about. Screw this whole profit thing and lets see how fast we can cover the entirety of Steve Ballmers behind with our lips.
Portability comes with a cost, extra development time, and the benefit is that you gain access to a very niche market that you're not sure of if they will buy your games. Supporting Linux would mean that now they have to test not 1 or 2 platforms like with Windows, but all of the major distributions.
Testing alone suddenly tripled in costs just so you can support a very niche market segment. A very niche market segment that is very likely to already own a copy of another platform you're already going to develop for. That leaves only the die hard Microsoft haters who will refuse to reboot unless their kernel panics. That's a very very small market segment.
game companies don't cater to gamers who are on the cutting edge - i.e. ditching Microsoft!
Gamers on the "cutting edge" are the fools who spend hundreds of dollars on the latest and greatest videocard. Gamers on the "cutting edge" don't have to wait for wine to be updated to support their game. The prevalence of the Xbox 360, despite all of its flaws, is a sign that few people are ditching Microsoft at the moment.
As much as I love linux, I can understand people for not wanting to support it. The diversity that it offers in the form of multiple distributions, while paramount to its success, is also its most major flaw. The desktop environment alone offers enough diversity in one distribution to create an amount of testing cases that scares off most sane managers.
IIRC, Ati/AMD and nVidia don't make all that much money on the high end card, most of the profit falls in the mid-range. The good thing about both companies releasing high-priced, ultra overkill card every 3-6 months, is that is rapidly makes any "old" card drop in price. An 8800GTS 512MB is a very powerful card, and is only 1 year old, but its price is like a third of its release price. Barring Crysis and SupCom, that card can play nearly all games at maxed out settings on reasonable resolutions. Only real reason to get the new cards is for the VRAM and larger buffers to handle super high resolutions (2560x1600).
FUCK NOE!
The reason nobody wants to buy 4xSLI 2kW computers from you should be rather simple to deduce - there's no diminishing returns due to hardware increases, there's diminishing returns because you bow down to Microsoft and all the other software vendors, load YOUR brand of machines down with all sorts of bullshit that has been horribly coded just so you can simply save a dime, and those crappy programs KILL PERFORMANCE.
Second - your hardware engineering teams SUCK, or at least the prototype QA engineers do. They couldn't spot a simple LCD hinge flaw for nearly a full year. I spotted it within my first week working as a laptop repair tech, and I got the hardware recall issued after sending HP's engineering teams the evidence.
You can't sell super-powered gaming computers because you don't build a gaming system. You're so out of touch with the gaming market that it's going to slip through your fingers.
You need to hire GAMERS if you're ever going to design and sell a gaming PC or Laptop, it's that simple. We can tell you what we want - No crapware, just a CLEAN OPERATING SYSTEM, it doesn't matter which, just don't load it down with BULLSHIT that kills performance.
THOROUGH TESTING - In the short time I worked as a repair tech - your laptops had about 30 different recalls, about a third of which I'm responsible for. You know it's sad when a person with a simple GED and loads of experience can spot screwups before your own prototype engies do. I can only imagine what your desktops are like nowdays given the quality of your laptops (I bought a DV9825nr, I've had to send it in TWICE within a year.)
Counterfeit Hardware - you boys are VERY susceptible to this. This is probably one of many reasons you lost 30+ million in inventory, because you don't have teams to spot counterfeit hardware. I've seen tons of counterfeit hardware, like LCD screens and RAM, roll through the depot. Your managers go "Get to work!" and we look at the hardware and go "Umm, this isn't even HP-branded memory, it's not even made by the same company, and these LCD screens have ribbon cable connectors too large for any of the cables we use."
There are so many problems with your company that makes nobody want to buy a gaming machine - the final one I'll mention is price - with the joys of pricewatch.com, I have a high-end gaming rig for about 500 bucks. A machine with the exact same specifications from you - 800 bucks minimum. Any wonder why nobody's buying your stuff or showing you demand for it? PRICES TOO HIGH.
If you want to fix this problem, feel free to contact me. I have plenty of ideas.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"PC Gaming" is not equal to "Gaming PC"
The Windows NT kernel was doing SMP when trying to run Linux on an SMP boxes was experimental and very immature, I should know I tested both back then.
The problem is that Windows hasn't moved much since then. 10 years later, you still got basically the same capability.
Which show lots of limitations :
- 2-cores CPU with hyper-theading. That's 4 virtual processor. When having to schedule 2 tasks, windows will randomly assign them to any 2 processors. That mean that the two tasks can happen to be assigned to the same core, one on the main "real" CPU the other on the virtual hyperthreaded CPU, while the second core sits completely idle.
That's why performance can severely be degraded with hyperthreading under Windows.
- any 64bit processor from AMD, or Intel's coming Core 7i architecture : there's no such thing as a classical northbridge anymore. Instead each CPU package has its own private memory controller on board. That means that you have to preferably schedule tasks on a core of the same CPU package which has direct access to the tasks' memory. Other wise, the core will have to fetch the memory over the Hypertransport/QuickPath interconnect from a different CPU package - all this adding latency.
Windows sucks at that too.
Whereas, there has been extensive research in the academies on the subject of scheduling. Most of this work is now integrated into Linux (and probably BSD, and thus Mac OS X too - but I'm not an expert on that subject).
Windows NT kernel was and is still good at SMP - *Symetric* multiprocessoring.
Whereas the real world outside has moved to Non-Uniform architectures.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
First, the blackbird series is not a gaming PC. It's a niche market item that rich idiots buy for their kids in boutiques.
Second, the gaming PC is built by the user. There are companies who sell ready made gaming PCs and they are real performance machines, but only rich dudes can afford them.
My PC is a gaming PC. Built for less than $1500. Constantly upgraded. Perpetually kicking ass.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Crap hardware will make any OS piss all over itself. Most of the Windows people who have problems tend to have the absolute cheapest, underpowered, or simply malfunctioning hardware.
Good guess, but *bzzzt* wrong. Most of my friends are IT professionals and they don't buy Dell. We're talking people with 10 years corporate windos administration experience here, who know what they need to do to avoid at least the worst nightmares.
Yes, you pay out a lot more money for your Apple laptop or desktop system, but it tends to be higher quality hardware. This isn't much different than buying Sun or SGI hardware, FWIW.
Or any non-crap PC hardware. The last non-Apple notebook a close friend bought before switching to a MacBook Pro was actually more expensive than the MBP. Quality costs money, Apple or not Apple.
In every case, no one skimped on hardware, and as a result, I've never really had an issue keeping everything running smoothly, regardless of what OS was being used.
Funny. I used to administer a couple windos systems running on the best hardware available back then. Ok, that was NT 3.5 so you'll claim things have changed. But it's the best I can offer in anecdotal evidence because after that I decided that the whole windos crap is hopeless and went for Unix. Anyways, we had an exchange server that was so prone to falling over, we finally decided that one of us had to be the first one in each morning and reboot the damn thing. After being rebooted daily, it had a 99% chance of staying up until the next reboot.
Funny how my private Linux systems on average hardware tend to have uptimes in the hundred of days.
Don't tell me it's never the OS. It isn't always the OS, I'll grant you that. But I've seen everything from AIX to windos first-hand myself and unless close your eyes, there are visible differences.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I guess that's why doze has more applications than the entire Apple / Linux / BSD offerings combined and multiplied many times.
Quantity does not quality make. In fact, a couple of the shareware stuff I run is better than a lot of commercial windos offerings. But please, stick with your overpriced crap if it makes you happy.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
and don't have any issues which require anything over the top or out of the ordinary
*nod*
Yes, that's the worst part. You've come to accept stuff as "normal" that by all means shouldn't be. I've run some large iron and worked a bit in HA. Maybe that's why I to this day think that a "blue screen" or other system crash should never ever happen, no matter what. Every blue screen you have ever seen in your life is a design defect. But most windos users don't see it that way, they shrug, reboot and continue working.
OS getting in the way? How difficult (or different on a Mac) is it to double click on an icon? You install a program once, and if UAC is still on, it taked all of about 15 seconds longer to install than putting the same software on a Mac. Maybe.
You should really try it. I'm serious. It's hard to explain because it's not one single big "wow" thing, but the total thing. I've not been a Mac fanboy for long, I used to be all about Linux just 3 years ago, and then decided to buy a MacBook Pro because OS X looked real cool and if it wasn't I could always install Linux on it anyways. Never did.
As far as productivity goes, this is a gaming thread. Take your productivity elsewhere. Oh, wait, I guess you can't do much else, since it taked 6 months or more (if ever) for the new, popular games to be ported to Mac.
*nod*
That's why I care about PC gaming, because if it goes then the small bit of Apple gaming goes with it. Though it's becoming better, but by far not as much as I had hoped.
Then again, it's not as if Linux gaming has gone anywhere, either.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
360 comes with a headset. I wish PS3 came with one too, it's mental that it insists on using bluetooth headsets.
Nick
If you connect your PS3 controller to your PC and run jstest you'll see it actually has an incredible 28 axis and 19 buttons. The buttons are pressure sensitive so count as axis. I think the 360 controller has a similar number of inputs, again due to pressure sensitive buttons; it may have less axis as I think some of those axis are the motion sensors.
Nick
The problem then is with users like you who chose to dual boot instead of telling the game companies to suck it. As long as people continue to dual boot and use Cedega they're telling the game companies it's ok to not support them.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
As someone who's been using linux for over 10 years, I find it hard to believe that anyone who plays video games gives up on windows. Yes, there is wine, but it is a hassle, has far too many problems with most games compared to just installing it on XP.
I am a gamer who gave up on Windows, close to 10 years ago. The last Windows game I bought for play on Windows was either Diablo 2 or Alice, and by that time I had been dual booting for years, I just slowly stopped dual booting and eventually chose to reclaim the drive. Once I got UT 99 working on Linux, along with Quake 3 I just didn't care anymore. It was around that time Blizzard pissed me off with over loaded Battle.net servers and lawsuits involving personal friends of mine who have connections to Bnetd. Blizzard actually helped to put the nail in the Windows coffin for me personally, Microsoft had already started the process with their anti-Novell and anti-Netscape campaign, both of those companies put food in my mouth. If it would have been a legitimate campaign instead of predatory patches and fake F.U.D I could have forgiven it and moved on. No, this gamer gave up on Windows during a great time of Windows gaming.
Portability comes with a cost, extra development time, and the benefit is that you gain access to a very niche market that you're not sure of if they will buy your games. Supporting Linux would mean that now they have to test not 1 or 2 platforms like with Windows, but all of the major distributions.
The Unreal Engine is the definition of portable. They brag about it. They were on the verge of releasing it and stopped. This game in particular is in a special nitch where the accusation I made can hold up. If you want to say that about any game not based on an Unreal or Quake Engine go ahead, in this case it stands.
The desktop environment alone offers enough diversity in one distribution to create an amount of testing cases that scares off most sane managers.
OpenGL.
That's the answer, the question is why is it so scary? Most developers write their programs with ActiveX in mind, write with OpenGL in mind instead all of the sudden this desktop diversity you're talking about goes away. I don't care what if any window manager is used, these types of games don't talk to the window manager, they talk to X and OpenGL. I don't care what video card they use, if the driver works and it supports OpenGL (drivers being another issue all together) it should work. I buy my video cards based on their ability to support OpenGL - which means I stick with nVidia when possible, see I'm not one of those purist. I wish there was a fully GPL compliant video card and driver out there that was worth a shit, but there's not. ATI is trying, but ATI tends to be a DirectX pushover where nVidia trys to keep OpenGL in mind.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The article is, "The Gaming PC is dead". Everyone is reading this to mean, "PC Gaming is dead". But those are two completely different things.
A little quote directly from the article to clarify:
"I am not saying PC gaming is doomed, because it's not--far from it--but the PC with four GPUs, a 2-kilowatt power supply, 16 gigabytes of memory, and a stack of hard drives is all but distant memory, at least for the PC gamer."
I can't say I disagree with this guy. Not that *no one* will build super-high-end rigs, but just that, from the perspective of someone like a Dell or HP, the market for that type of super high end system is shrinking. Just like the world will never run *out* of oil (but it will run *low* on oil, at some point), there will always be some small market of high-end gamers, but at a certain point, when that market shrinks too much, it makes no sense for manufacturers or software developers to target that market.
What I read this guy to be saying is that the market for PC Gaming is 'mellowing out' in terms of specs. A lot of people who are PC gamers are increasingly buying a slightly-high end stock PC, and maybe supe-ing it up with a $150 video card, and a little extra ram for another $100, but there are no longer *enough* people willing to pay $1000+ dollars more than other PC buyers, to get that mega-rig, to keep alive the 'boutique' Gaming PC 'retail' industry (the people who do want the very high end rig are probably building it themselves from components).
He points out something which I think is pretty true - aside from certain titles, most PC game developers have been releasing games for the past few years which scale pretty well (with various graphics settings and such, so that you can get it to run decently on a lower end machine, or tweak it up on a higher-end box for a better visual experience). Because of this, users don't *need* a super-rig just to run the games they probably want to play. Even if the games *did* require higher-end PC's, a lot of consumers will just not buy/play those games, because they can no longer afford to buy a Thousand Dollar Game.
I just don't see it, man.
I've got a Powerbook G4 that I love. Best laptop I've ever had, and I got it from a chum for $50 when he upgraded to a snazzy new Macbook Pro. Leaps and bounds nicer than the Inspiron 8200 I used to have. My home machine is running Ubuntu, and has been for a couple of years now. Never had any stability issues until lately, and that's 100% the fault of failing hardware. My work machine, which I'm on right now, is running Windows XP. This machine hasn't been turned off or rebooted for... I dunno. Maybe 2 or 3 months? Perfectly stable.
Out of the three, I'd have to say that Ubuntu's UI (I use GNOME over KDE, but let's not get into that debate right now) "gets in the way" more than any of them. I've spent more time trying to get stupid video drivers to work after an automatic upgrade than I care to discuss. I just don't get the "OS getting in the way" thing with Windows that much these days (granted, I haven't really used Vista much). I honestly don't even remember the last time I saw a blue screen.
Windows was truly bad back in the 95/98 days, but I personally have had very few issues with XP that weren't hardware/driver related, and Linux is often far worse in that regard.
The security/spyware issue is my biggest complaint with Windows from a user-support standpoint. I've never picked up any malware or virus, though I've spent hours upon hours helping people who have.
They all have their ups and downs, I guess, and I enjoy the fact that I have the opportunity to play around with all three.
"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
Yepp, XP doesn't crash that often anymore, and seldom to a blue screen. What it does have occasionally are spontaneous reboots.
It does get in the way all the time, however. Especially if you run fullscreen apps or games. *Boom* suddenly you're on the desktop, because it absolutely must tell you right now that new updates are available. Yeah, thanks. It also sometimes decides that it has to reboot in 3 minutes and starts a countdown - which you'll never see before the reboot if you're running something fullscreen.
That's just the tip. Try counting the mouse movements and clicks you need for some simple reconfigurations. I did that for fun a few times. It's horrible. XP regularily takes 3 times as many actions as OS X does. Stuff that you don't notice when you're familiar with the crap, but it's there and if you count them, you suddenly notice.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Dell IS crap hardware. I've been around the corporate IT block for over 10 years too, so I have my own experiences with thousands of workstations to pull from, like call center installations, corporate office desktops, and server farms of every "enterprise" OS on the market.
Thanks for agreeing with me.
Exchange is beast of an application. I've actually had it running on my own, but never had any issues with stability. That said, I'd never recommend it to anyone either. This has nothing to do with the OS, though.
So do my Linux systems. I've also had Solaris, BSD, and Windows systems with years of uptime as well. I know that means the Windows systems didn't get patched, but they were not publicly accessible, and heavily firewalled from the rest of the network as well.
I never said "It's never the OS". I said "Crap hardware will make any OS piss all over itself", and that in my experience, crap hardware is everywhere in the Windows world. It's all commodity, so it goes to the lowest bidder.
Translation:
"Commodity PC vendors are abandoning high-end gaming PCs due to low demand for luxury goods during a economic downturn and low margins given the high cost of support."
In the past, high-end gaming PCs were the purview of boutique PC vendors like Falcon Northwest, Overdrive PC, Voodoo PC, and Alienware. Alienware was bought by Dell, Velocity Micro bought Overdrive PC, and Voodoo PC was bought by HP. HP found out there was a REASON Voodoo PC stayed small (very low demand, very high support costs) and promptly ran Voodoo PC into the ground. Dell is doing slightly better with Alienware by gimping the service and support. Make no mistake, at least 50% of the cost of that $10,000 PC is the elaborate testing and support offered. Alienware, for example, used to offer free on-site install, tech support, and component replacement. You could call an Alienware tech to come to your house and install games for you.
The fact is that $10,000 gaming PCs have NEVER been that popular. During the tech boom of the late 90's people were pissing away money left and right so these kinds of LUXURY GOODS (a high-end gaming PC is almost the definition of a luxury product that nobody really needs) sold somewhat better.
High-end gaming PCs are the equivalent to very high-end ($10,000+) TVs. There is a a market out there. It is small market with demanding customers. They are not going away, the market is just shrinking, largely due to the economic downturn and mismanagement by HP and Dell. For example, Falcon Northwest still lists an $11,000 desktop on their site.
Another thing is the technical sophistication of users is slowly going up, and the difficulty of building a PC is going DOWN, meaning that more people on the high end are willing to build their own (especially given the increasingly bad support from Alienware and Voodoo PC). This isn't an option for laptops, but gaming laptops with really serious horsepower have major limitations, like size, weight, and battery life (basically, 20lbs laptops with 30 minutes of battery life). Most customers who originally go for a gaming laptop end up with a "fragbox" or Shuttle-type mini-desktop because they aren't willing to accept these tradeoffs.
I have to do wifi sniffing, last i checked none of the wifi drivers for windows supported rfmon mode for sniffing...
Wildpackets has supported this for a very long time. You have to use their custom drivers.
I run a number of servers with no video support, ... I could use graphical based lights out management cards, but they cost more and are much slower than the serial console based ones.
No, you're not. Most motherboards won't boot without a video card so there is almost certainly a video card installed in the hardware you're using. What you're doing is running the system headless and redirecting the video output to serial. This only works well with CLI operating systems like Unix/Linux. You can install Windows through a serial console. I've done it. It's just a PITA. Windows Server 2008 also has a CLI-only mode. It's also a PITA. This doesn't mean you can't remote-install Windows. Far from it. PXE works GREAT with Windows and I install this way all the time.
You shouldn't be using serial console anyway because it's too limited. Now that they're widely available, you should be using IP KVMs. What will you do if you need to break into the BIOS on that system you're connecting to through serial? You have to walk over to it and hook up a monitor and keyboard. I support Linux systems all the time and it annoys me that admins don't realize that if there's a disk error the serial console won't do them any good.
In practice, serial console really doesn't get you anything you couldn't get with SSH or Remote Desktop.
I need to install and remove a lot of tools, package management on linux makes that easy, cleanly removing something from windows can be difficult.
It's called .MSI. And package management works great in Linux right up to the point where you install a badly formed package that screws up dependences or you have to manually install something and handle all the dependencies yourself. I've had more problems dealing with library version conflicts in Linux than I have in Windows. A LOT more.
windows can do this with third party hacks but none of them work very well since virtually no apps are designed to make use of them and will often open dialogs on the wrong workspaces (osx apps do this too, since spaces was only introduced with 10.5).
Few apps in Linux are designed to work in multiple workspaces. Most Unix window managers "sandbox" workspace instances so apps tend to open dialogs in the "right" workspace because they think there's only ONE workspace. The default Virtual Desktop PowerToy works exactly this way. There are lots of other schemes available in Windows. I use Nvidia's.
I'd also point out that this customization comes at the expense of consistency. Many GUI Linux apps (GIMP, FireFox, OpenOffice, etc.) have radically divergent UIs that won't integrate seamlessly with your desktop. Windows apps have very standardized dialogs, widgets, etc. so users know what to expect. Many Linux vendors, the ones using KDE, agree with me on this.
Chroot - i can easily have multiple user lands installed, without the overhead of a vm and multiple copies of the kernel, which is incredibly useful for development.
Not having a real multiuser mode is one of the things that pisses me off the most about desktop Windows. I really wish they would have let people run just 2 simultaneous users in Vista. This is a licensing limitation, not a technical limitation. Run Windows Server and you can have all the instances you want.
security - vista achieves its out of the box level of security by having all the stupid msrpc services listening on the network and then filtering them (they're obviously not needed or filtering would break stuff, so why have them listening in the first place?) whereas linux simply wont have anything listening.
Again, simply not tr
Took about 5 hours.
Not enough memory in the notebook. Vista wants shitloads of memory (at least 2 GB) in the same way MacOS X wants shitloads of memory. 4GB of memory is around $40 nowadays. Vista will run fine on just about any $500 entry-level desktop shipped today as long as you upgrade the memory to at least 2 GB.
Another thing I can do with Linux (and to a lesser degree Mac) is chose all updates, applications and OS, hit "do it" without having to track down individual application updates and patches.
No, you can't. This is bullshit. Yes, most Linux distributions have software repositories. Not all of the software you will want or need will be the repository and/or the repository won't have the correct package. This was true of at least 50% of the software I wanted to run when I looked at Ubuntu last. The situation is even more grim with CentOS, the distribution I use the most.
No, you're not. Most motherboards won't boot without a video card so there is almost certainly a video card installed in the hardware you're using. What you're doing is running the system headless and redirecting the video output to serial. This only works well with CLI operating systems like Unix/Linux. You can install Windows through a serial console. I've done it. It's just a PITA. Windows Server 2008 also has a CLI-only mode. It's also a PITA. This doesn't mean you can't remote-install Windows. Far from it. PXE works GREAT with Windows and I install this way all the time.
You shouldn't be using serial console anyway because it's too limited. Now that they're widely available, you should be using IP KVMs. What will you do if you need to break into the BIOS on that system you're connecting to through serial? You have to walk over to it and hook up a monitor and keyboard. I support Linux systems all the time and it annoys me that admins don't realize that if there's a disk error the serial console won't do them any good.
x86 servers with lights out capability will give you bios access over serial (and serial over ssh on more modern ones), i have an HP DL145 which does exactly this.
Non x86 machines will frequently boot without any kind of video hardware whatsoever, i have several sparc servers and RS/6000 machines with absolutely no video capability onboard, buy a cheap sunfire v100 or netra t1 on ebay for an example.
Serial console, on hardware which supports it, gets you access to the firmware, ssh or remote desktop can't do that.
An IP KVM consumes a lot more bandwidth than serial, making it fairly useless over a slow (eg cellular) connection, and harder to script.
The "CLI only" mode of windows 2008 is actually a cli in a window with nothing else loaded, similar to "Safe mode with command prompt" on earlier versions, it's not a pure fullscreen text only interface, the video drivers and support infrastructure for window management etc is still loaded.
It's called .MSI. And package management works great in Linux right up to the point where you install a badly formed package that screws up dependences or you have to manually install something and handle all the dependencies yourself. I've had more problems dealing with library version conflicts in Linux than I have in Windows. A LOT more.
Does MSI even have dependency handling, or handle it's own uninstalls cleanly?
The reason you have less library dependencies on windows are twofold... For one there is only one "distribution" to target, and thus the set of expected libraries always remains the same, and second (building on the first) a lot of applications which require non standard libs will typically install them within their own directories... MacOS behaves in a very similar manner.
I'd also point out that this customization comes at the expense of consistency. Many GUI Linux apps (GIMP, FireFox, OpenOffice, etc.) have radically divergent UIs that won't integrate seamlessly with your desktop. Windows apps have very standardized dialogs, widgets, etc. so users know what to expect. Many Linux vendors, the ones using KDE, agree with me on this.
There is a lot of interface inconsistency among windows apps too, not least of all things like msoffice 2007, and how cut+paste is ctrl+c/v in everything but the command prompt?
Not having a real multiuser mode is one of the things that pisses me off the most about desktop Windows. I really wish they would have let people run just 2 simultaneous users in Vista. This is a licensing limitation, not a technical limitation. Run Windows Server and you can have all the instances you want.
chroot is not about multiuser, which as you pointed out windows is capable of if you buy the more expensive versions of, it's about having multiple copies of the userland installed with a single kernel, invaluable for testing....
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!