   Ze PC game scene
  Yo,I thought I'd post my observations regarding the relationship between games and computers atm. I'm not sure if it's just me and my head but do you people agree that probably for the first time ever, the amount of performance that the bleeding edge PC hardware is now giving and what the newest games need is actually getting pretty immensely apart from eachother?I remember a time when a game would always be made to suck out all the juice out of the latest hardware, but now really, the cheapest 600€ machine will be able to run any of the latest games in full settings, and then you have all those machines that cost up to 2k still on the market - and if you were to buy those machines you would indeed have an overpriced computer not worth it's custard at all imo. (And for how long now has Crysis been the most graphic intensive game around, and it's already god damn old innit' O_o )If it's not just me, I'd say the reasons for this must be the latest paradigm shift to move all games to be developed first and foremost on consoles (for the obvious monetary benefits / non-piracy), and because of the non-changing hardware on those machines, and the ever-changing PC platform - I think we're experiencing something completely weird now for the first time.This all just brings serious sadness to my mind, is it just me? :PAnyway, just random ranting from me, over and out :D   
  I'm not really bothered.I've always had an impression of PC-first, hardware maxing games as the kind that will hurl a billion polygons a second at a guy who opens a door by waving his hand in front of it because they were too lazy to animate him opening the damn door.Or like ED4 Oblivion. The faces are hideous! They look like they outsourced the modelling to Alpha Centauri and only sent a text description of what a human looks like.Many of these games look really grotesque compared to what's on my 10 year old Gamecube.Even the shinier ones are typically just plain banal - without creative spark whatsoever - safe as can be. Elfin Space Marine Commander Dragathor type stuff.I understand there are better looking games on the PC and vice verca, but they're not the ones that try to measure how good something looks by meaningless technical metrics.Looking good is about art, fundamentally.Legend of Mana looks splendid. Technologically, its just a bunch of squares on screen.   ;  It's not just you, everything you said are true facts. Companies go to console to prevent piracy. Most consumers went to consoles because it's easier, you put the disk in and it start, no need for patchs, drivers updates, configuration files tweaking, in-game settings tests until you get fluid gameplay. Still, some people, like me, actually like playing with those settings, and I always stayed a PC gamer.But as you said, the latest game not created to be a console/pc hybrid was Crysis and it's been a while. It actually sold very well, more than most crappy console games. You can't count on big corportations (EA, Activision, Ubi, etc) for that yet, the finances analysts don't have a clue and they keep with their business model. You have better chance with independent foreign companies, like Ukraine's based A4 Games who recently released Metro 2033, for wich the PC version is 10x better than the console one, graphically speaking.Fortunately, this will change in the near future. MS and Sony both said they won't release a new console in the next years, only work on the "motion sensor input". PC keeps getting better, and will have a massive edge, so they won't have choice but to switch back.   ;Quote:Original post by ShinpouI think we're experiencing something completely weird now for the first time.I used to play Wing Commander on 386/33. It was OK, it really pushed the limits of hardware.Then, some 6 months later, I bought 486/66. And suddenly, the game was unplayable, since it ran too fast and original developers didn't write the simulation loop correctly to account for such incredible leap in computing power...No, grasshopper, the history in computing just keeps repeating itself.Quote:It actually sold very well, more than most crappy console games.Sales don't matter much - it's return on investment that matters, as well as opportunity costs. A project that earns $5 million from sales, but cost $20 million (a conservative budget for EA these days) is a complete flop. Even if it earned $25 million, it would be a poor performer - it only leaves $5 million for the next title.Tools are the king. Anything that allows a project to be completed, idea to release in 6-12 months is good. Anything beyond is simply no longer viable. This goes for almost all of software today. For web, idea to release is measured in single-digit weeks.   ;Quote:Original post by DungePC keeps getting better, and will have a massive edge, so they won't have choice but to switch back.Not really, no. The PC is a much harder platform to develop for, multiple configurations abound and you have to work on everything from your lowest spec machine right up to the high end and work well in all cases.Alternatively you can shoot for a well entrenched console market where you'd have years to get to know and target a well defined piece of hardware knowing that what works on your stuff will work just as well on the stuff the end user has. The second option remains, and will remain, a much more attractive route for large AAA studios who don't want to deal with the problems of the first setup.The other reason you don't see this leap is because of the legacy effect on PCs; up until recently most PCs still only had a single core, its only in the last 12 months or so that this balence has shifted to systems with 2 cores making up 55% of the market from Steam (which is important to note because there are going to be differences for different market segments) in the last month. Quad-core adoption still lags behind, never mind 6 or 8 thread systems, and it wasn't until DX11 appeared that the tools to effectively render using multiple threads has appeared in the PC space. So every new game has had to run well on a one or two core system which pretty much covers your $600 market nicely. Those who buy higher priced systems do (I hope) understand that games won't fully push it and have their own reasons for doing so (for example I've spent a crap load on my machine but I've done so because that is my current development target; 8 thread, large amount of ram and a DX11 GPU.. the SSDs are just gravey on that [grin]).So, it's not sad and it's not a surprise if you just sit down and consider it for a while.   ;  I'm not saying I liked the fact that your hardware used to run out of juice basically every cycle a new game was released, I'm more saddened by the fact that what it implies is in fact as you guys also said, that the whole PC game market is dying. Quote:No, grasshopper, the history in computing just keeps repeating itself.Only difference this time, is that the 486/66 was a great leap in performance, and thus made a plethora of new games appear, as it was the de-facto best gaming platform of that time I spose.This time tho, there is no good motivation to make games for a PC. I see all the studios using game engines which can cross-compile the same work to all the platforms, and thus you get underwhelming games for the PC until a new generation of consoles is made.Quote:Many of these games look really grotesque compared to what's on my 10 year old Gamecube.Very true, and I agree it being way more important to have the art down properly, however I see the whole point of generating cutting edge technology (game-engines and stuff) to take out all that juice from cutting edge computers, was to have that active community of R&D, when the game industry sets on a never-changing platform the amount of innovation will also decrease, and I for one don't love that prospect.I'm not saying it doesn't take innovation and creativity to get all the juice out of your platform when it's a clearly limited platform you're working on (any console) but I'm saying using cross-compiling game engines on all the platforms will make all the games boring, monotonous and they will show us nothing interesting in terms of innovation.   ;  And as one more thing that comes to mind we'll lose with generalized cross platform game engines is that evolution of games you would see happen on a single platform, while that platform always remained the same.Like on the ps2 you would in the very end of it's time see final fantasy 12, and my god you wouldn't believe your eyes for that game and those graphics to be running on that platform.That's what I loved to see, I loved to be completely mind-blown by games, for it is a fact, that when a mind is blown, it cannot be unblown.;Quote:I'm not saying it doesn't take innovation and creativity to get all the juice out of your platform when it's a clearly limited platform you're working on (any console) but I'm saying using cross-compiling game engines on all the platforms will make all the games boring, monotonous and they will show us nothing interesting in terms of innovation.Hmm, what sort of innovation are we talking about? I'd assume that as soon as the graphical capabilities/limits of the target platform are well known, development can return to actually making innovative game concepts and mechanics instead of catching up with the hardware and updating the same "boring" games to "innovative" new versions that just add more eye candy.Adding more realistic shadows and stuff doesn't make the yet-anoter-fps-game very innovative...[Edited by - japro on April 15, 2010 11:46:12 AM];Quote:Original post by ShinpouIf it's not just me, I'd say the reasons for this must be the latest paradigm shift to move all games to be developed first and foremost on consoles (for the obvious monetary benefits / non-piracy), and because of the non-changing hardware on those machines, and the ever-changing PC platform - I think we're experiencing something completely weird now for the first time.I agree.There was only a limited number of processors in the old days. 486DX/33, 486DX/66, 486SX/50, etc and the limitations were quite clear.  Tomb Raider, for example, added detail by IDing your Pentium chip.Now there's 32bit, 64bit, Single, hyper-threading, Dual, Quad, etc.  And while there are theoretical advantages to each one, there is no clear practical one to target.  Even the "Best" OS can be split between XP and 7.I say that and the PCs inability to offer anything extremely revolutionary in terms of graphics and content compared to consoles like it did in the past are the reason why we're not seeing too much aimed at extreme computer gamers.Much more logical to aim right at a console which guarantees everyone can play it.   ;  What I find amazing is what people are willing to spend for hardware vs what they're willing to spend for actual games.ATI has claimed to have sold over 3 million 5x series cards, and trying to purchase the new NVidia graphics cards (the 470/480) is extremely difficult at this moment in time because they're sold out within minutes of being listed (well, the 480 is, not so much the 470).People are willing to spends thousands of dollars on their machines, but for what?  If only the games were selling as much as the hardware.   