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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!
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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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Dramatic optimization through a consoles lifespan happens for several reasons:
* It's a consistent piece of hardware, so you can get very specific in your optimizations.
* Each new generation means new hardware to learn, so it's an abrupt transition at the beginning of the product cycle. As such, the unoptimized games are easier to spot than on a PC, which is a more consistent upgrade cycle.
* You don't need to waste effort on things like scalability or compatibility / fallback coding.
* Vendor APIs, compilers, and tools tend to significantly improve over the lifecycle of the console.
It's a little different for PCs, which operate on a more continuous upgrade cycle (witness the slow adoption of Vista and DX10). Also, keep in mind that, by nature, PC programming has to have more layers of abstractions and a heavier-weight OS than a console. As such, consoles will *always* be more easy to optimize than a PC over the long term.
For PC games, the basic problem is one of Moore's Law versus diminishing returns. Once you get the biggest issues (optimization-wise) out of the way, it doesn't make sense to try to spend hundreds of valuable programmer-hours trying to squeeze a percentage point or two of runtime performance out of your engine, when statistically speaking, in the time you took to do this (and not programming other features), the average PC spec just compensated for that optimization. So, your game may run 5% better than your competitors, but in the same time, they may have added some gameplay features your engine lacks, and simply reduced their content budget by that percentage.
Or, it's a question of usability versus optimization. Yes, it would be faster to hard-code the game instead of using a scripting engine, but what would happen to the development timeline? Again, the extra time spent developing the game may have actually accounted for the performance difference within the target market in aggregate.
Computer hardware is not going to just magically stop advancing because you wish it so. But the question of what type of system to target - that's entirely up to the developer. I've seen a number of smaller games running great on very low-spec system (Stardock games, for instance). MMOs tend to take up the middle ground, with a reasonable compromise between visuals and system requirements. And, of course, some PC developers prefer the high-end niche.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
"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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.