The death of PC games is nigh!

Great Debates
61

I don’t think I follow a few of the claims in this thread.

To begin, in response to Erislover and Arwin, I am not aware of a console in recent times that exceeded mid to high PC capability or performance at time of release. As has been pointed out, consoles have the same components (and very similar GPUs) that are found in PCs. And not just for the fact that they both have transistors and processors, we are talking about very similar architecture and design here, if not identical products (e.g., the XBox’s Geforce3 GPU). Of course console makers have to source a specific component and stick with it for at least five years, so it’s clear that even if there is a console advantage at time of release (which doesn’t appear to be the case), that advantage logically cannot last very long.

We’re not only talking about top-notch PCs. This isn’t just about AlienWare drool machines, but any current product available that is of a fairly good standard – it might be a Dell or the box you custom-build on your own. If you pick it wisely, it needn’t be incredibly expensive.

The argument that there is less hassle with a console is undoubtedly true. But there remains the obvious trade-off between simplicity and quality, much as there is with the controller vs keyboard/mouse argument: one is indeed simpler and easier to use, but not necessarily better. Now, some games are designed exclusively for joysticks or controllers, and some exclusively for keyboard and mouse. I would fall over in astonishment if I saw, say, a controller-wielder beat a keyboard/mouser in an RTS or FPS contest. On the other hand, obviously controllers are the ideal choice for platform jumpers and 2D shooters, because you don’t need anything more than a directional stick and a couple buttons.

Yes, developers do learn all the secrets of the consoles they work for, and they become able to squeeze out every last drop of performance from the hardware. That’s great, and probably the most obvious case remains the hallowed C=64 (which was a PC, but of course well before the Age of the Upgrade Rat Race). Nonetheless, every time I read a PC review of a console game ported to the PC, either the port is of sloppy execution (and fails to properly use the superior power of PC hardware), or it’s a decent piece of work and earns the obligatory comment about how the game looks better/is faster/whatnot than the original console version (a good example is the KOTOR games). And, of course, both PC games and console games suffer from having no shortage of titles that are absolute crap, so the fact that not every game is well crafted or translates well across platforms is a given.

In addition to having significantly greater power in every possible aspect than a console, a PC is also much more versatile. If you want to insist on a cost comparison without taking into account that very few people use a PC exclusively for gaming, then of course you will cast consoles in a much more favourable light. But, in reality, that PC is also used for a myriad other tasks that come under consideration when a purchase is considered. That’s why most people are quite happy to pay, say, $1,000 or $1,500 or more for a PC, but no more than $400 tops for a gaming system.

The video game industry is a burgeoning one. Console games are indeed in a majority, but I suspect the PC platform will look rather better off if we do not consider consoles a monolithic entity, but rather a set of multiple platforms in fierce competition (e.g., PS2 is not the same thing as the XBox, whereas PC titles are virtually all for the Windows platform). The other problem is that piracy is hitting the PC game industry hard, and I am surprised that the decline was so very slight given the roaring sharing of games via P2P networks over the past few years. Consoles are somewhat safer from this hazard, for a while, because most users don’t know how to “chip” their game station or obtain illegal console games from the Internet, whereas it is second nature for PC games (you could say that you not only get free porn and music with a computer, but free games as well – beat that value!). So, in the end, it seems that more people are playing consoles games, and more people are playing PC games. Excluding piracy, I suspect that further consolidation is likely to occur more among competing console brands than among PC game production.

As for a shortage of good PC titles, I honestly haven’t seen one myself. Granted, I only play maybe 2 games a month, but I still have a stack of great titles to go through from Christmas and I could quite happily buy several more right off the top of my head (can’t wait to get my hands on Freedom Force 2).

62

PC games are nuts. If you want to play the latest iteration of Doom or Unreal, you have to have the fastest processors and GPUs. Even relatively old titles like Halo brought all but the fastest systems to their knees if you turned on all the bells and whistles.

I played Halo years before it came out on the PC or Mac, and damned if it isn’t the same game with some nicer graphics. Sure, you got online play with the PC vsn., but, surprise! cheaters and hackers ruin the experience. Even for the Xbox vsn. of Halo2, half of what you read on the Bungi site these days are complaints about cheats on Xbox Live, with fresh new stats about how many users have been banned. To me it’s like 'Nam: Body count means nothing when there’s hoards of enemy still waiting in jungle. You’ll win every skirmish, but lose the war without a more secure and self-regulating system.

So, for a campaign 1st-person shooter, the Xbox is fine. I sit on my couch and not propped up in a chair inches from my computer screen. I’ve got the sound hooked up to my stereo and get the surround-theater treatment without having to buy another one just for my den.

With the next gen. of consoles, full wide-screen 720p Hi-Def will be native, as will the latest sound standards. All the techno-geeks are going to have a big-ass plasma TV or equivalent in their living rooms, and that’s going to be a spectacular gaming exerience. What more does a gamer really need?

63

Now you are the one not coming close to modelling the situation.

A gaming console (e.g. XBox) IS a computer. It is not a blender with a microchip. It is a computer through and through…that is ALL it is. It has a motherboard, CPU, GPU, memory and even an operating system (to name a few items). I do agree with you that as a purpose built, single task computer it does gain some performance benefits over a PC with identical specs. For instance the OS is pared down to the bare minimum needed to just boot the system and set it up to do one thing…play games. This frees some overhead in the system to be used in the game itself. There are of course other advantages but that is the gist of it. Nevertheless a new console generally does not beat PCs (mid-range) at time of release and while they may actually outperform that identical spec’d midrange system the PCs will outstrip the game console in short orsder.

It’ll be interesting to see what console costs will be with the next generation. Part of the “better” performance of consoles is they were used to display on televisions which have low resolution. The next generation boxes claim (at least in XBox-2’s case) to have GPUs that can handle Half-Life 2 with ease. Consoles generally lag behind the graphics curve of PCs by a long shot and that at least allows them to saty cheap (not early adopters) but these days GPUs are fantastically elaboarte (and expensive) items. Building a game that runs smoothly while 4x (or better) Antialiasing, shadows, real time reflections, anisotropic filtering and so on are engaged requires some pretty serious horsepower and that is not cheap. Again though…to some extent GPUs that handle AA and such pretty well have been out for a bit so perhaps the price is becoming reasonable…guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Techno geek with big-ass plasma TV chiming in here.

I mentioned it before but will say again that the XBox puts noticeable burn-in on my plasma television. First time I saw it I nearly shit myself but fortunately with some normal use of the television the burned-in “shadow” of the game I had been playing faded away. Needless to say I took my XBox off of that set which was a bummer because it was cool as hell to play on it.

I do not know about other technologies displaying this issue. I know projection televisions used to say it was a big no-no to play video games on them but perhaps that has changed. As for things like DLP or LCD I have no clue (I would guess LCD would be ok but then LCD displays have always been crummy for video games). Heck…I would guess a CRT would be ok for a video game but with the new HD sets I do not know if even they are more sensitive.

Bottom line…check with the manufacturer first before you toast your new, killer HDTV with a video game. (NOTE: I actaully did ask around about this before playing on my TV but never got an answer…no one seemed to know. It is for that reason that I intentionally stopped playing after a bit to check and was glad I did…the burn-in was very noticeable).

64

Huh. What’s burning in, parts of the HUD? If that’s the case you should write to Microsoft, and maybe they’ll get enough complaints to develop measures to avoid burn-in with the Xbox2.

65

Images that remain static on the display start to burn an image into the phsosphor screen. That is, things like the box your score is displayed in stays in the same spot, unmoving and unchanging and over time the phosphors in that part of the screen are overworked (so to speak) and retain a shadow of that image even after the set is off. In the parts of the game screen where the image is ever changing this is not an issue. You can see this a lot on things like ATM displays where the same text is displayed non-stop (not all do this but you still see some where you can see the afterimage of the text when you use the machine).

In my case the afterimage was most definitely apparent but with some use it faded away as new images (regular TV) sort of overwrote it. Nevertheless it can get burned in enough that the display is essentially permanently ruined.

I am not sure what can be done to change that. Basically they need to do something to keep the image changing every so often so one thing does not display constantly. This might be done in game design…doubt it is an issue of the hardware. How you keep the score box moving (or the “panel” that contains your HUD or whatever) without disrupting game play I do not know. I wondered if a slowly rotating color scheme might help (i.e. the box slowly morphs from color to color) but I really have no clue.

66

Sounds to me like it could be a simple softare option to move and re-color normally static elements of the game periodically to prevent burn-in. For those without plasmas, if they found it bothersome, they could just shut it off.

67

I don’t understand what makes the two so distinct.

Again you change the context in order to mask the deficiency of a general purpose device. Consoles will always outperform a general purpose computer with similar specs. To make up for that deficiency, computer gaming is necessarily more expensive to achieve similar results, which it can only do by increasing specifications. This is all I am suggesting. The power of PCs in gaming is overstated when valid comparisons are made WRT cost and output. General purpose cannot defeat dedicated devices.

They lag behind PCs in terms of what is possible for an above-average machine. This is not, never has been, and never will be a realistic comparison.

Here is where PC gaming helps console gaming: were it not for PC gamers, I do not believe worthwhile consoles would ever be viable. I think it is pretty much universally accepted that PC gaming drives the technology we’re most interested in here. But graphics processors are becoming more general purpose, too, trying to meet so many different standards. How’s the saying go, “The best thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from”? :smiley: Consoles do not historically use off-the-shelf GPUs (PS2 and GC I believe both have specially-designed GPUs): the hardware is fixed, the development platform is fixed, a general purpose GPU is a waste of resources. You seem to recognize the efficiency gained when abstractions are removed, but you still insist on finding consoles comparable to any ol’ computer you can build, and then turn around and agree that they’re not general purpose again, while still asserting that consoles ARE computers! :confused: I can’t follow it.

What I think is the hangup of PC folks is the notion that people already have computers for something anyway—and that is totally true. But this also means that there is no real-world way to compare PCs to consoles, because PCs have never existed in such a state as a console does—and that is totally true. This is why I suggest bringing PCs hypothetically down to the console level and showing that they can’t compete with similar specs. It is as close as we can come and say, “All else equal, consoles are better than PCs,” by which I only mean: the dedication of fixed resources specifically for gaming means the consoles are more efficient, and so can use lower specs to achieve something comparable. A PC that performs at or better than a console is definitely more expensive than a console. And if you make valid comparisons (say, upgrading your PC every five years) the costs of PC gaming are much more obvious. Meanwhile, the PC gamer is missing the latest developments because of sluggish framerates, while the console gamer has a steady stream of gradually improving titles (as programmers become more familiar with the ins and outs of the hardware—something PC game programmers cannot usually assume).

But this does go to what has been claimed here (and never denied): that PC games are technically more advanced than consoles. I believe it is true that PC gaming generally drives the market, both in terms of technical issues (like GPUs) and building quality-of-presentation expectations. I don’t want to be in a world where PC gaming dies because of this. But as others have mentioned, the development costs are starting to become a much bigger concern than finding better hardware. This will give consoles more time to catch up. I wonder what the future holds for gaming because of that.

As a final note, quite a few games offer higher resolution if you have the setup for it. AFAIK, the Dreamcast kicked this off (Soul Calibur on a CRT was sweet!) but it wasn’t universally done. The GC has a high-res mode available as well if you use component cables instead of your standard AV lines. Of course, your television must be capable of dealing with such an image. I’m sure there are signal converters for CRT/LCDs available if one were so inclined.

68

I’ve always had a more powerful PC than any console on the market. Granted, I buy high end PCs, but no console has ever caught up to me, much less outperformed me FIRST.

At the moment, this is nothing more than hype. I believe it when I see it. At the moment, I’m far more worried about how the games I enjoy are deliberately design-crippled and simplified so that they’ll play on consoles and appeal to console gamers (Deus Ex2 anyone?).

And I’ll continue to enjoy user-created modifications like Natural Selection as much if not more than cookie-cutter games from big studios.

69

We should also note that consoles are a little weird if we want to talk pricing in that many consoles are HUGE loss-leaders: meaning you get them for FAR less than what they actually cost. The companies usually hope to make the cost up via liscensing deals and expensive games/accesories.

70

That is correct. You could get a vga box for the dreamcast and if the game supported it, play at 640x480. All current consoles support 480p via component cables. The xbox and gamecube games support it more often than the PS2. Their output is better as well (especially the gamecube one. Why? I don’t know). It should also be noted that the gamecube component cables are outrageously expensive ($30) whereas the PS2 and Xbox cables can be had for $10 or less. What’s worse is that the GC component cables come without sound cables so you have to keep both regular and component plugged in to the console.

Unfortunately, decent component to vga converters are hideously expensive and monitors that support component out of the box are still rare and very expensive

71

“A gaming console is a computer”
This is correct.
But they are not the same as a PC.
You mention comparing a console with a PC with identical specs, but, for some platforms that will be impossible. There is no identical spec available.
To some degree they do use the same components, and in some areas they don’t.

Here are some examples of differences:
PS2=Custom CPU
PS3=Custom CPU
Xbox2=Custom variant of Power architecture
New Nintendo Box (whatever it’s called) is also, I believe, getting a custom Power processor.

But economics is a key part of this equation. Even though it may be possible, people typically choose cheaper options. And yes, you have a valid point that it may be an unfair comparison due to console’s selling at a loss, but that doesn’t change the trend.

72

I’ve got a great reason why PC games will always be around: easily pirated! :smiley:

Fact is - and this thread is excellent evidence - everyone is so wrapped up in graphics and hardware that the core concepts of gaming are being neglected. It’s up to the developers to put the gaming back into the systems, and with the PC having a greater prospective crop of developers, there’s a good chance that the next landmark game will emerge from the PC market, and not the consoles. Just look at the plethora of games on the web; true, many are simple and don’t look too great, but they have huge fan bases and provide a really addicting experience. (IIRC, there’s an old anecdote that despite all the new improvements in games, Minesweeper is still played the most - or something like that.)

At the same time, when I looked into developing for consoles (mind you, it was some years back) it cost several thousand just for the SDK. You can start developing a game on a PC for free, and that’s quite a plus.

In any case, we will not see the death of PC games until the hardware and interfaces of consoles and PCs converge.

73

Quite right. And I would like to elaborate on the experience you touched in your post. I also read a fair amount of PC game reviews. And one recurring theme among game reviewers is how multi-platform games are toned down in the PC version in order to keep more of the work cross-platform. Lower texture quality, sparser enviroments, jerkish controls. And this is especially true for ports from console to the PC (think Deus Ex 2). It’s understandable, but it also annoys me

A truer word has never been spoken. To believe that one can get more simplicity and better quality for less money is ridiculous. One needs just to look at the screen resolutions offered by the various platforms. The best console can do is, what, 640 x 480? An average computer gamer these days plays at no less than 1024x768, and the gamer can even double that if s/he wants to pay for it.

You’re turning the debate upside down with this argument. For me, this isn’t about how efficient a console run game code when compared to a computer. For me it’s about the gaming experience. I don’t need the best graphics or the biggest maps to enjoy a game (though it may have sounded so based on my previous post). I’ll rather have interactive design and advanced AI. But this also requires a lot from the game machine, and the truth is that while consoles are easy to use, yes even fun to play on, they do not have the juice nor the precision offered by computers, even mid-level computers that is.
It’s really this simple: PC games and console games serves two different markets, the couch people who like sport games or similar games playing against yourself or friends - and the people who like campaign-oriented action games or strategy games in all their lonesomeness. I prefer the latter over the former, but for many it’s the other way around. And isn’t that the way it should be?

74

I notice there’s also some recurring misconceptions in this thread:

1. You’ll need a high-end computer to play the latest games
You don’t. Simple as that. You can play games like Doom 3 on a several year old computer, simply because you don’t have to play a game on its highest settings, you can play a game on Normal and get the visuals of 2-3 years ago, which will still surpass the quality of a 5 year old console. I have a 4 year old computer, with a 2 year old processor + graphics card. All the main parts were bought at mid-level prices, meaning that those parts actually were the top of the line 5-6 years ago and 3-4 years ago, respectively. I usually play the newest games on the next to highest settings, opting out of special effects like anisotropic.

2. Computer games are poorly written
No, they are not. Granted, now and then this is true, noteable examples are Deus Ex 2 and Morrowind. But these games represent the exception, not the rule, and I believe the same is true for consoles. Some posters have also mentioned patches. Well, I haven’t downloaded a patch in several years (the last time was when I played Hitman 2), and I do play a fair bit of PC games. A patch isn’t necessarily a fix, it’s often just slightly improved code, or tweaked AI.

3. Games manufacturers are not making money on PC games
This is also wrong. On the contrary, successfull “blockbuster” computer games are making money like never before. The challenge (or fear) for manufacturers is that it’s a do or die business. Every year there’s a few dozen games which gets a lot of attention and usually sells very well. But if the game doesn’t get the needed attention it will sell poorly, even if it’s a good game, and the manufacturer stands to lose a lot of money. This is the reason why a lot a games these days comes with a massive marketing budget, manufacturers needs to get reviewers and hardcore gamers to talk about their game. Also, this means that every year there are several good games that the average gamer have never heard of. Just before last Christmas I picked up the (for me) unknown game Chrome on sale for about $10, a Far Cry type of game which was quite good.

75

Alien:
“I’ll rather have interactive design and advanced AI. But this also requires a lot from the game machine, and the truth is that while consoles are easy to use, yes even fun to play on, they do not have the juice nor the precision offered by computers, even mid-level computers that is.”

Previously I was talking about the PS3 and cell processor, but because that is vapor, let’s talk about Xbox2:

3 PowerPC 976 Cores at 3.0ghz, each with dual instructions per cycle.

I am going to make the assumption that this is the Power5 architecture (most recent, not vapor) and not the Power4.

1 Power5 core, in most benchmarks I’ve read beats all others. Itanium is the closest. x86 is a fair bit behind both Power and Itanium.
So here is my question to you: What kind of PC are you buying that will match that kind of processing power?

A PC with similar processing power using x86 (AMD or Intel) would have to have 4 to 6 processors.

Please explain how you can claim the PC’s have more juice and precision. What kind of precision? Floating point? Single and double precision floating point operations have an IEEE standard, maybe I’m not understanding what you mean by precision.

76

In the end, we will have to see how the new machine performs once it becomes available, it’s as simple as that. PCs seem to be moving towards 64-bit computing as a standard – Intel has been shamelessly dragging their feet on this subject but it seems like they are finally moving, and of course AMD has had some absolutely roaring CPUs available for quite a long time. That means that even if the Xbox starts out with a power advantage, you may not see it maintain the lead for very long.

At any rate, it’s worth noting that assuming the Xbox2 proves to be that powerful, it would be the advent of something completely new: a console that is more powerful than PC counterparts. In other words, it would be a colossal exception to the trends in recent times, and therefore can hardly be used to argue on behalf of consoles and against PC as gaming platforms.

Incidentally, consoles are that cheap because the games for them are more expensive and contribute revenue to the console companies. If PC game publishers had an agreement with hardware vendors to share revenue in return for subsidies, you would see dirt cheap power PCs too. Instead we get another trade-off: fully functional computers for a higher price, but slightly cheaper games.

77

Abe

64bits processors have next to no effect on gaming performance and they won’t for a very long time. Therefore, there is no correlation with how long the xbox 2 will maintain it’s lead.

Now that’s just plain wrong. Consoles significantly outperform PCs in gaming performance at launch and they keep that lead for 2-3 years as mentionned earlier.

Incidentally, consoles are that cheap because the games for them are more expensive and contribute revenue to the console companies. If PC game publishers had an agreement with hardware vendors to share revenue in return for subsidies, you would see dirt cheap power PCs too. Instead we get another trade-off: fully functional computers for a higher price, but slightly cheaper games.

Again, that’s just plain wrong. Both console and pc games cost the same (about $50).

78

This is complete and utter bull.
The thing you have to consider is that a PC is still based on the same model as all PC’s are.
That is a concept that is over 20 years old.
They cannot revolutionise anything, because then it wouldn’t be compatible with all hard- and software out.
Console developers are not restricted by anything.
Therefor a console can be created which can not be surpassed by PC’s as we know them.
You can keep putting in faster memory and faster processors, but the fact remains that you will always have a motherboard with channels to the processor and memory-modules, which is a very inefficient way of transporting data.
The newer consoles have 1 processor in them with the memory as an internal component of the processor.
These processors take care of both graphics, sounds, physics, whatever you program it to do.

In short, there will be a time that a console surpasses all PC’s.
We are not there yet, but the improvements with PC’s are slowing down already.
Consoles have just begun to realise their potential.

79

Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The Xbox might be quite similar in architecture to a PC, but a GameCube or PS2 is as far removed from the architecture of a PC as a microwave is.
The PS2 for instance does not have a separate processor, sound-processor and GPU, it is all handled by one small processor.

80

Are you sure? And wouldn’t this in fact be a more inefficient design?

Either way, the poster you quoted was not incorrect, in his statement that consoles just do not match up in the performance and graphics quality with high end computers.

Atleast not so far.