Slashdot Mirror
How the PC Is Making Consoles Look Out of Date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."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
er
Wii :
* CPU: PowerPC-based "Broadway" processor, made with a 90 nm SOI CMOS process, reportedlyâ clocked at 729 MHz[120]
* GPU: ATI "Hollywood" GPU made with a 90 nm CMOS process,[121] reportedlyâ clocked at 243 MHz[120]
* "Starlet", part of the Hollywood package: an ARM926EJ-S processor reportedlyâ clocked at 243 MHz.[122]
PS3 :
CPU 3.2 GHz Cell Broadband Engine with 1 PPE & 7 SPEs
550 MHz NVIDIA/SCEI RSX 'Reality Synthesizer'
XBox 360 :
CPU 3.2 GHz PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon
500 MHz ATI Xenos
Not really off the shelf parts you'd find in a Dell!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Its not that PCs make consoles out of date really.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.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Doesn't matter, as long as your opponents have the same limitations. It's still frustrating at times, but it got me out of the PC upgrade cycle for a while, and it's been a good experience. Console graphics of this generation have definitely been approaching "good enough" in my book, and the next generation will definitely last a good while too. Even in PC gaming recently there haven't been many games pushing the latest hardware to the limits.
which is totally what she said
FTS:
"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.""
PCs have, for the most part, outclassed consoles in terms of graphics for years. For most games which are available on the consoles and PC, the PC version will almost always feature higher resolutions and better textures and other graphical bells and whistles (even in cases of console ports). However, pure graphical power isn't why people buy consoles and not PCs. People buy consoles because it's cheaper (at least, it's cheaper than buying a state of the art video card every two years), it's accessible, and its better integrated with their home theatres. I think consoles will stay the target platform for blockbuster games for a long time.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
In the scope of things, the fact that the 360 and the PS3 are showing their age doesn't translate to a mass migration of developers to the PC platform. For a long time now, consoles have gained and held the larger gaming audience compared to the PC, and that market continues to be the biggest and most profitable market. For the majority of the time, PC's hold a significant technological edge over consoles, which is nice for when you want to punch things like Crysis ahead of the graphics curve, but it isn't as if all the console gamers converted to the PC platform because Crysis was pretty.
Even in PC gaming recently there haven't been many games pushing the latest hardware to the limits.
Thats usually because most PC games are being held back by developers pandering to console version limitations from the very start of the development cycle.
Fun fact, you can play those games on a PC in the living room. The Wii emulator dolphin can do HD. Which a real wii cannot.
It's going to take a quantum leap in hardware design
You mean the smallest possible change?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
With a keyboard/mouse setup, I can spin 180, while leaping through the air, target and kill someone all the way across a map almost effortlessly.
Honestly, that's one of the reasons I dislike modern FPS. Players tend to be hopping, somersaulting, whirling dervishes that have nothing in common with any sort of real human behavior on the battlefield.
A jump should take you no more than a foot in the air while carrying combat gear, and COMPLETELY ruin your accuracy during and for a bit afterward. If you're going to make your soldiers behave like low-g ballerinas, at least recognize that your game is silly, like Quake Arena.
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.
Hundreds of pounds every year? My 3.5 year old PC still plays games well enough and the only things I've done to it are add more fans and hard drives. If you are forced to upgrade every year you either bought a very cheap PC to begin with or are upgrading without reason. My PC is finally starting to strain under new games like Dragon Age 2, but my 8800GT and 6850 still get by well enough for most games. The need to upgrade ever year is a fallacy.
It's going to take a quantum leap in hardware design
You mean the smallest possible change?
No, more like theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, then leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that the next leap, will be the leap home.
The rest of my PC I _already have_, and would already have even if I didn't use it for gaming at all.
Yeah, this is a point that almost always get skipped.
Every single person on slashdot owns a computer, to within statistical margin of error. Everyone hear debating is debating via a computer they own.
And in general, I would be astonished if more than 1% of households with consoles in them did not have a computer. And 90% of that 1% of households probably have a Wii, which is not really what we're talking about here. All gamers have a computer.(Please do not think I'm dissing Wiis, which are amazing ideas, an epic win for Nintendo. You got my mom to buy a game console! My mom! You broke the entire damn product market. But they aren't really in this discussion.)
Now, so all households with gamers own a computer. Maybe 20% of those households do not have one that 'could have been' a gaming computer...they only have Macs or laptops or something.
But for the other 80%, the question isn't 'What is the price of a console compared to a reasonably powerful computer?'. Everything thinks that, but it's not right.
The question is 'What is the price of a console compared to simply purchasing a $100 video card and maybe another gig of memory?'. They already have a computer. Everyone already has a damn computer. This is 2011!
Now, there are other reasons to get a console, but the comparison isn't '$200-$300 PC' vs the console price...it's a $100 video card for the PC you probably already have vs. the console price. Unless you only have laptops or Macs or something, then, sure, you'd have to build a whole computer, but that's not normally true.
And $100 is plenty fine for a video card, you do not need to spend $250 or whatever 'half a PS2' is. ;) I always go somewhere between $100 and $150 when buying a new one, which I have to do about three times a decade.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?