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How the PC Is Making Consoles Look Out of Date
An anonymous reader writes "What has been clear from this year's Game Developers Conference is that consoles are beginning to show their age. With nothing beyond a possible Nintendo update on the horizon, developers at this year's GDC have turned their eyes to the PC. The article includes three videos that give a fantastic insight into where PC graphics are headed, including a version of Epic's Unreal engine, Crytek's Cryengine 3, and DICE's Frostbite 2 engine. Considering that these leaps in eye candy are only possible with the current state of PC graphics, we wonder how long consoles will be the target platform for development of blockbuster games."
Its not that PCs make consoles out of date really. The higher cost of the more powerful consoles required MS & Sony to subsidize the initial cost and to justify it by making them seem a longer term investment. PCs are very easily upgradable.
I'd bet that the next gen MS console will be a MIPS/ARM CPU system with GPU modules that can be upgraded. It'll run WindowsEntertainmentOS (a combination of WindowsMediaPlayer, DirectX and Windows 8/9). It'll be like a PC but locked down so the media/games industry won't moan too much. People are only just buying 1080p now. PCs took a big step backwards when LCDs became dominant. CRT monitors had much higher resolutions.
In the future you wont buy games you'll buy game engines then 'rent' the level/texture/map data which is only available via a steam-like streaming service. It'll kill most piracy and that hated second-hand games market. They might allow games to be sold but only if they get a percentage.
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As a PC and console developer with over 50 different consoles connected to my TV, including everything from the Fairchild Channel F to the 360 and PS3 Slims, I consider myself something of an expert on this. Since 1974 or so, the same pattern occurs. Consoles come out, with comparable graphics capability to the current-gen PCs. Everybody says, "Wow, look at these awesome graphics!" (I remember when they said that about the IntelliVision!) Then, the console is released, and it's the "current-gen" console for 4-5 years, effectively freezing innovation on that console. During that time, several revisions of the bleeding edge in PCs occur. Right now, the current-gen consoles are running on 2006 tech, so everybody correctly says, "Wow, the PC can do so much more with 5 years more evolution than the Xbox!" and they're right. But when the Xbox 720, PS4, and (insert ridiculous name Nintendo comes up with for new console here) come out this/next year, the gap will be closed, and everybody will sound stunned with their "Console gaming is back!" articles. Rinse and repeat in another 5 years. The only way to break the cycle would be more frequent updates of the consoles, which defeats one of the biggest draws to console gaming, the "No matter what, if you have an Xbox, you can play this game and have a good experience" factor. Compare that to the middle-to-high-end gaming PC I bought in May 2010, which now can't run 80% of the games being released this summer on their optimum settings. PC gaming is for people who want to pour money into upgrading their hardware every 6 months, and console gamers are people who would rather spend that $200 on the Assassin's Creed box set that includes actual DNA from Ezio Auditore than another 8 gigs of video RAM. This is a non-story.