Again, you are talking two different, but related markets. One is a behemoth - the global Pc market, the other is a subset - the global PC GAMING market. The difference between the two is fairly gargantuan. So we could have a lot more people (in fact we DO have a lot more people) purchasing gaming desktops, and gaming laptops, while the global market as a whole is in a recession.
By the way, it’s not all doom and gloom for everyone. Some PC manufacturers have seen growth. Which si amazing for such a saturated market, and the fact that we’ve been ina recession, and just about EVERYONE has seen losses.
And you can absolutely build a gaming rig for $580. One better at playing games than any current gen console.
Reading comprehension fail? Try re-reading the OP. He is clearly including the PC in the discussion.
Also, I’m not saying consoles aren’t profitable. That’s nonsense, so I’ll kindly ask you to stop putting words in mouth.
It is the contention of OTHERS that PC gaming isn’t profitable, which is untrue.
We need more hands on information. The dev kits out there right now are only prototypes.
So far, the reaction is very positive though. From non-devs it’s usually all about how awesome the experience is. From devs is an interest in the device, while also pointing out some caveats with the tech.
Apparently, latency is something of an issue, as is the required hardware to run 2 full 1080p frames at a high frame rate.
I think there hasn’t been incentive for new PC sales from a gaming standpoint. Read build advice threads and the same things come up: No reason to buy an i7 since an i5 is more than sufficient for gaming. No reason for 16GB memory, even 8 is probably more than enough. My old GTX 9800+ video card (c.2009) played Skyrim on high settings. PC tech has outpaced what the software community is producing so there’s not much reason to chase new technology and upgrades.
Perhaps the new consoles will spur new PC software that pushes the limits a bit more and makes new technology purchases more desirable. As it stands, the old days of wanting a new processor and video card once a year just doesn’t make sense.
This is all ignoring business PC sales or people who just don’t game. My wife has zero need for a desktop aside from maybe comfort reasons when typing. 99% of the time, a laptop or even tablet would handle her needs. But her buying habits shouldn’t really fit into a discussion about PC gaming. Be more interesting to see the sales of PC games rather than sales of new motherboards.
If anyone thinks I have been saying that, they need to brush up on their reading comprehension, because not only have I not said that, I think it’s an absolutely idiotic statement and all concern about it should be banished from this thread.
What -may- not be profitable is making huge ass budget AAA releases for the PC ONLY. Certainly, none of the major publishers except Blizzard do this, but whether that’s because they are just trying to maximize profits or whether they actually can’t support their dev budget from the PC market alone is unclear, and I don’t really think it’s worth debating, simply because there’s a lack of information. You can try to infer from the business decisions of companies, but that can be like trying to read the future in goat entrails.
No it isn’t. And to say so is really ridiculous. You were clearly saying that Mario Kart Wii was similar in success to WoW. And when I pointed out how ridiculous that was - suddenly you’re talking about the entire revenue of one of the big console makers and game developers and publishers vs the game. And even then you said they were comparable, which was ridiculous in the other direction.
Incidentally, Airk, using REVENUE as a comparison in this particular is meaningless. You’re talking about an entity that makes a significant amount of revenue selling high price (relative to games) hardware units with a small margin of profit against an entity that sells a digital product with a far greater profit. If Nintendo makes $20 off the sale of the Wii U, it’s still going to show up as $300 (?) in revenue. You’re comparing that to a $15 sub fee on which probably like $14 is profit.
Incidentally, the idea of WoW being bigger than the entirety of my Nintendo wasn’t my argument. It was mocking Justin’s position by implication, he was embarrassed to be off by more than an order of magnitude when comparing Mario Kart to WoW, so he tried to make it sound more sane by comparing the entirety of Nintendo to WoW, but failed at that too. You’re arguing against him on this, not me.
But it’s not a standard “sell it and forget it” digital product; They have to maintain large server farms, and bandwidth costs, and a team constantly working on free patches/updates. That’s a far cry from “sell it to the consumer once and maybe maintain a phone hotline if people have technical support issues”. I’m not necessarily arguing that WoW isn’t more profitable than a “Traditional game” but it’s not the license to print money you’re making it out to be either. And additionally, WoW is NOT all of ActiBlizzard; I gather it PROBABLY cost them a couple of bucks to make Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2.
Also, the Wii U wasn’t out when this data was released, so Nintendo was probably making fairly large profit margins off most of its hardware sales.
But mostly, we don’t know. Except that apparently all of Actiblizzard is not really that big, and it’s the biggest “PC gaming” company (and definitely not even all PC gaming. I suspect Call of Duty makes a couple of bucks on the console side.)
I’m not actually arguing with EITHER of you, I’m just trying to inject some facts into a conversation that is basically about people making up numbers and then arguing about whose imaginary model is correct.
As I said above, I’ve played with it and its not a game changer.
Is it better than VR rigs from a decade ago? Yes. It’s smaller and cheaper and the latency isn’t too horrible.
But there’s still perceptible latency. Turn your head quickly and you still get swimming. I didn’t have to try very hard to make myself sick using it – aggressively circle-strafing was sufficient.
I can imagine it being a fun way to play a handful group of games that are designed specifically to work with it. But most gaming experiences will be worse with it. It’s not a replacement for a normal screen by any means.
It’s kind of like gestural interfaces. They’re sexy design fictions. They look all next-gen when you see someone else using them. But they don’t actually improve your interactions. As an employee of Sony, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that Microsoft has made the Kinetic a centerpiece of their new system … .
There’s no motivation. Blizzard does it because their PC exclusive franchises require a PC interface. You can’t play SCII with a gamepad without turning it into something else, and the market for an RTS on consoles is practically non-existent anyway.
But ultimately, the PC isn’t sponsored by anyone. There is no Microsoft or Sony behind it that is willing to shell out money and marketing for an exclusive AAA game.
The only reason the PC has more exclusive games than any of the consoles is that it’s much easier to put a game on an open platform than on a console.
Yeah, there’s no way in heck that running data centers and a development team for patches and updates compares in any way shape or form to the massive cost involved in pushing hardware. Marketing, legal, support, shipping, retail. The infrastructure required to build, sell and support hardware has got to be orders of magnitude larger than supporting a virtual good.
Look at other MMO’s. They host millions of players and the teams behind them sometimes can be counted in one hand.
There is a lot of merit in what you say. I just want to point out that Wiimotes and Kinect were genuinely new experiences that were out on consoles first. They relied on specialized hardware however, and when it comes to software, I agree with you.
Very true. Gears of War 3 was 640p upscaled to 720p@30fps and Uncharted 3 was 720p@30fps.
The most graphically demanding games will run at 1080p@30fps of course. But I expect 1080p@60fps to be as common as 720p@60fps is today (street fighter 4, Bayonetta).
I fully expect Nvidia’s latest GPU to run 1440p@60fps by the end of next year, leaving console resolutions in the dust once again.
When it comes to Movie theater vs TV vs Monitor, the further away the screen is from you, the more you can relax your eyes (the best being focus at infinity distance) so even though the image might be the exact same sharpness, and take the same amount of your field of vision, the movie theater experience will be much nicer, followed by the big HD/4K TV, followed by the monitor.
As an aside, the Oculus Rift uses lenses that focus to infinity, so it won’t suffer from this problem. Your painted retina will also be awesome when technology advances enough.
If you mean that today’s AAA games require SCORES of graphical artists (3D, textures, Shaders, etc.) and are more expensive to produce, you’re right. That’s why the price of console games went to $60.
Otherwise, you’re wrong. The added power lets the software community churn games out faster. For example, they can write less optimized code (easier to maintain), or use pre-written, 3rd party, general-purpose code that does not need to be optimized and saves them money and time.
The secret sauce is supposed to be Low Latency + much wider field of view (FOV).
I haven’t tried it but I “know” that it’s too pixelated, I “know” the FOV, despite being a big improvement, is still a too narrow to feel like real life and I know both things are its smallest issues and require only waiting on better displays/GPU(/lenses?).
How did the FOV feel to you? Since how the current screen is 720p, how much resolution do you think it’ll need to wow you?
Now this is a huge deal. I’m not too worried about the sickness as most people have reported their brains (and stomachs) adapted to it fairly quickly (days, not months). I’m sure one gets conditioned not to move one’s head too fast to avoid exacerbating the latency problems. We’ll have to see what the consumer version does, but I don’t expect a breakthrough until the entire VR stack is optimized for low latency (gpu, screen, sensors, etc)
I’m not so sure about that. I’ve been reading through this OR owners thread and people are thoroughly enjoying Doom3 and HL2, which were not designed to work with it.
It appears some First Person games (FPS, Racing, Flying) may transfer very well with minor modifications which could spur publishers to re-hash their old titles and release OR-optimized versions for loads of free money.
Kinect had potential. Kinect 2 is an absolutely fantastic piece of engineering which has lots of really neat features. But…
As you well know, the problem with Kinect is the huge latency. Total latency (Kinect hardware + 360 software/game) for the first gen was around 200ms. Microsoft announced they cut the hardware part of it from 90ms to 60ms for the kinect 2, which is awful news since it means the total latency will be cut only by 15% (200 to 170ms), instead of the 50% of more that is really needed to make it good.
This was a huge disappointment to me, and another reason not to buy an Xbone . But will developers use the new facial recognition, biometric feedback features and improved voice recognition to make it rise from Gimmick to a gaming must-have?
If history is any indicator, nope. Even at 100ms total latency, it might have been mediocre. At 50ms or less, MS would have killed Sony (unless, say, they sabotaged themselves by crippling used games and requiring daily internet :smack:)
As things are now, Nintendo will again depend on first party titles as developer enthusiasm for it is pretty low. The extra screen is only really useful for local multiplayer when it’s the only way to hide information. I expect most PS4 and Xbone games will be downscaled to run on the WiiU after the next mario galaxy / zelda make the install base big enough.
Because the PS4 will be the easiest to develop for, thanks to its magnificent 8GB of GDDR5, I wager that most devs will use it as the primary platform, removing the advantage Microsoft had with the 360, which allowed games to run better on 360, even though the PS3 had more (potential) horsepower. Ain’t nobody have time for Cell!
Granted, Microsoft’s software stack is awesome and some 3rd party studies will develop for the x1 first. No matter, porting to the PS4 will be easy and it will make the game look better with minimal or no effort, thanks the near-identical architecture.
Following the same reasoning, PC ports of PS4/X1 games will be even easier than they were in the last generation. In fact, if you’re porting your game from PS4 to X1, you might as well port it to Windows PCs since it uses Directx11 and park it on Steam/Origin/Whatever for free money.
If, on the other hand, Valve’s Linux-based Steam-boxes become wildly popular, they will use OpenGL, same as the PS4, and Sony can then benefit from easy porting. In fact, It just occurred to me that a Valve-Sony partnership makes a lot of sense in this regard.
Either way, it removes barriers for PC games. They will still be console ports, with textures that were created and optimized for 1080p. They still might come out after the console versions because of the usual piracy concerns but they will be easier to port than in previous generations.
Sure, right after you provide the cites I requested. I mean, if you’re not too busy making up conspiracy theories about how console manufacturers are flooding the market to cover up how they’re unprofitable. I can also name Wii titles that sold better than 15 mil off the top of my head, but you know them already.
So, MMORPGs represent almost 20% of the global videogames market. It is expected to reach ~17B out of ~80B in 2015 which would put it around 22% and growing.
of course, MMORPGs can, and do, run on consoles too (and facebook, and tablets, and…)
Back to the Oculus, does anyone know how it connects to the PC? Is it a video out + usb for power, data?
I imagine the next generation of video cards might be able to do something about the latency. They’re changing the way the CPU interacts with the GPU memory and the GPU with system memory. It might be able to lower latency between the device and the rendering frame.
Video out + usb for data + power cable for the dev kit, though some people were able to mod it to make it draw power from USB (they have beefy motherboards who deliver more voltage than the spec allows). Only one cable goes to the headset.