Forgive my stupidity, but are you saying it is stronger than the Gamecube by 2x, or that it is…not really that much stronger.
Article about how they’re demoing all the games on PC and pretending that something that looks that good came out of their console.
The frustrating thing about that, by the way, is that people will watch the demos and think “oh wow, it’s amazing what they’re still making on the 360/ps3, I guess they don’t really need replacement after all!”
The Watch Dogs trailer is really impressive. I have to assume that title was developed under the assumption that the next gen xbox and playstation would be coming out this year, because there’s no way the game is going to look anything like that on the current generaton machines.
Interesting, so is the PC market already on the next generation of games?
Top end PCs have always been way ahead of current generation consoles.
Not especially. Few games make use of those high-end techniques and almost none of the most popular games. Plus there is more to a new console generation than just prettier graphics. The beefier CPUs and RAM allow for deeper simulations and other gameplay-enhancing things. You don’t find that in current PC games either.
You do actually, you just don’t see it that much.
But you do catch glimpses of it here and there like Crysis 3’s upcoming DX11 improvements. They will make the game look considerably better than the console version.
Max Payne’s textures and lighting make the in-game cutscenes look like a joke - and the in game cutscenes look better than what console renders in real-time.
Enhanced Physics make Arkham City come to life like consoles simply cannot do.
Something like my battle last night in Shogun 2 with well over 10,000 troops on the field all running pathfinding and AI and animations, etc is not something that could fit in a current gen console without some serious dumbing down.
Talk about “deeper simulations” how about what’s going on under the hood in the upcoming SimCity?
But I do agree that we really haven’t seen software that takes advantage of all of these or even any significant number of these “next gen” offerings in one single package.
And that won’t come until the consoles finally catch up with modern hardware and companies can invest in a (what will certainly be a largely multi-platform ) market where they can spread the risk (and profit) around.
I’m probably not getting a next gen console. I have no interest in buying yet another specialized gadget to do a couple of things half-assedly when I have the tech savvy to use a more general purpose tool that I can customize to do just about anything I want.
But I’m glad they are finally coming.
For me, its way too early to think about the next generation of consoles. It took me a couple of years to even get the PS3 (I think I bought it 2 years ago) and I’ve only played about 5 games on it. It will be another 5 years before I even think of getting a new console, assuming all of the old games I’ve recently bought from Steam and GoG.com have been played thoroughly
Dude, I won’t even get the PS3 until the 4 is out or the 3 is down to $100. I bought a PS2 for $55 with a few games and a couple controllers a few years ago. I’ve played it a ton and am happy. Having said this, I’m quite content being behind on games.
There’s no set generations when it comes to the PC. The hardware is continually getting better. Games are designed to run on a range of systems depending on the settings used. So there are no clear demarcation points to signal that there’s any sort of generations.
And the problem is that most games are multiplatform. 80%+ of PS3/Xbox games also come to PC. And unless the developer takes the time to tailor the game specifically to the superior capabilities of the PC, then the technical capabilities are limited to the least powerful system. So, for example, since consoles only have a combined 512mb of memory to share between the entire system and video memory, their worlds have to be small and lack detail. So you get things like corridor shooters where you can only see one small slice of an area at once, or heavily segmented games where there are a lot of compartments that can be loaded seperately. Sure, the PC can run those at a much higher resolution, at higher frame rates, with more particles and better physics and better lighting better anisotropy and better anti-aliasing, etc. But the fact remains is that I’m still playing Corridor Shoter #512 because the game was developed with the limitations of the least capable system.
PC Exclusive games don’t have that limitation, so they can indeed be “next gen” - in fact, beyond it. Take Arma 3 for example. (And that engine is still in alpha, being developed by a relatively small team). That’s beyond what even the next generaton of consoles will do.
Unfortunately, due to changes in the market, there aren’t nearly as many PC exclusives as there used to be, so there are fewer games that try to keep up with technology. So we’ve been stuck in a technological rut, where since 2004 the gaming hardware has gotten 10 times more powerful, but we’re still playing games that were designed with the limitations of the 2004 console technology in mind. Gaming has basically been in stasis for a decade, which is just disgusting, because one of the amazing things about gaming is how fast it advances. We’ve got these miraculous increases in technology and we’re just deliberately throwing them out the window because console makers decided to use a subsidized-hardware marketing model and have a disincentive to improve their products.
The PC I own now is already almost certainly better technologically than the next generaton of consoles - I’m just hoping that more companies start making games to take advantage of it.