By Alec Meer on February 11th, 2009 at 10:16 am.
There’s been plenty of predicition lately that the age of supermegapixelshaderooed blockbuster games on PC might be drawing to a close, in favour of lower-spec, lower-profile inventiveness from the indie, MMO, browser-based and casual scenes. What there hasn’t been is much hard data that reflects this possible sea change. The news that current 3D card king NVIDIA recorded an eyewatering $30 million loss last year (that’s after a $797.6m profit in the preceding year) could have something to do with it.
Of course, it could also have something to do with the general worldwide moneypocalypse, or of eejits shouting about the death of the PC potentially having something of a point. Nah. I suspect it’s to do with the lack of a game that really demanded a system upgrade last year. 2007 was the year of Crysis, and despite that game’s debatable merits, it was a waving flag for a new graphical generation – a spur to buy a better graphics card even if you weren’t interested in that game specifically. 2008 lacked such a game – the PC’s biggest titles were either less graphically ambitious or reworks of console titles. Poor optimisation may have meant that half the time the latter did need a powerhouse 3D card anyway, but that’s not a card-shifter in the way LOOK AT THESE AWESOME GRAPHICS is.
I wonder if NVIDIA’s investment in Physx, and (presumably) expensively rolling out physics-via-GPU support as a result, is an experiment that really didn’t help. It’s not something that’s proven its usefulness to Johnny Average Gamer – until there’s an NVIDIA physics killer app, it’s not likely to sell many cards. In other words, it could repeat the failures of Physx back when it was Ageia’s struggling baby.
Here’s NVIDIAn emperor Jen Hsun Huang’s thoughts on the bad news:
The environment is clearly difficult and uncertain. Our first priority is to set an operating expense level that balances cash conservation while allowing us to continue to invest in initiatives that are of great importance to the market and in which we believe we have industry leadership. We have initiatives in all areas to reduce operating expenses.
Which sounds worryingly like it could mean job losses, always upper management’s sucker punch response to money problems. Let’s hope not. Whatever they do, can the big N pull it back, or are 3D card upgrades only going to go more out of fashion as integrated chips grow ever more capable and the bulk of new PC games less demanding? ANSWER.
Yes!
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I think the loss is far more likely to be due to the write-off they had to do over the mobile graphics chips that were defective as well as AMD/ATI actually having a competitive card with the Radeon HD4XXX series rather than the abysmal HD29XX and HD39XX.
That being said, AMD/ATi will run out of money pretty soon even if they hit all their sales targets, so the field is still wide open. I’m fairly interested to see what intel is going to bring to the g/card table with larabee or whatever it’s called.
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It could also be related to the return to form of ATI cards. Is it possible to find out how much of a profit/loss they made, or would it be skewed due to being owned by AMD?
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I don’t really see this as a particular problem, I imagine most companies, irrelevant of their product, probably had a record drop in sales in the last year or so. Indie gaming may per se have a hand in it but if that forces developers to make their games interesting as well as beautiful then it can only be a good thing. In the end we may be getting the back lash that hollywood recently had where people were sick off jumped up spectacle and wanted better plots and films full stop. Please let this herald the return of traditional Lucasarts. Day of the Tentacle 2 anyone?
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More helpfully I intend to upgrade and invest into a new PC soon, my 6800 is good enough for L4D but could not cut the Fear 2 mustard and it never managed Crysis even.
Yes I think that we’re seeing the beginning of the end of high performance graphics cards being really big business, atleast for the time being. As you say there was no figurehead killer-app last year and I don’t think there’s going to be one this year either, PC exclusive cutting edge games are probably a thing of the past, Crysis was the last of this breed of games. In 2009 they’ll have to bundle Solium Infernum with their GFX320 XT eXtreme cards instead.
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Isn’t the word on the street that they’ve burned so many bridges with Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo that their long-term strategy needs to be aggressive, since they won’t be seeing any console deals any time soon?
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I always thought that the big N was Nintendo…. Nvidia are small fries compared to them :)
To be honest Nvidia made a stupid mistake and there are more reasons why they made that loss:
First, Nvidia kept concentrating on the super expensive over the top, high-margin and low volume graphics cards. When AMD/ATI came out with the 4870 and 4850 at reasonable prices and excellent performance (with single slot cooling as an option) it meant that Nvidia had to cut the prices of all of its mid-range cards – which is where the bulk of the money comes from.
Of course, AMD/ATI have also been squeezing Nvidia on the high volume, low end market of the 7300 level of cards so that’s a reduced income as well.
Second, there’s the whole problem with their solder (or whatever it is) with at least 3 generations of graphics cards from the low-end to the high-end (including laptops) being potentially affected by it – which means lots of returns and either reimbursments or ‘free’ replacement cards – which means a big loss of income and consumer faith.
Third there was the acquisition of PhysX – which meant that they will have posted a loss on the amount they paid for the company.
Finally, the future of graphics cards is definitely 1 card and a complex CPU to handle physics/etc. This whole multi-GPU malarky was a long, drawn-out waste of money for both ATI and Nvidia just as it was when the idea first came around in the late 90s.
The other end of the problem (i.e. not controllable by Nvidia and ATI) is that development focus is shifting to consoles and as a result the nunmber of high-end gamers available on PC is also either diminishing or their preferred games are as a result.
The second part of the development problem is diminishing returns. Graphically we’ve reached a point where it’s no longer feasible to keep pushing the graphics envelope. The huge cost increase isn’t justified when small improvements in gameplay, AI, story and usability (which have been left at the wayside a few years ago) will accomplish much more for a fraction of the cost and time.
This all means that you don’t (and won’t) need a super-high end brand new computer to play dedicated (or well-ported console to) PC games. My PC (P4 3GHz, AGP X1950 Pro 512MB, 2GB PC2100) will still handles everything i throw at it with the exception of stupidly buggy or unoptimised games or something like Crysis. If that hunk of lovely junk can make it through almost everything while still managing to make the games look pretty and at a playable framerate then what does that say about the newer mid-range PCs which have a a really cheap (but more powerful) dual core CPU and sub £100 PCIe graphics cards?
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My graphics card is the one thing I haven’t looked at upgrading, at an 8800GTX I look to be sitting pretty for at least 2 more years. Hell I may even be able to run everything on high for those two years.
The one thing I have noticed holding me back however is my CPU, but that’s because I run CPU intensive games like Dwarf Fortress.
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Yeah, well Nvidia does release too many monstrous gfx cards in too short a time-span if you ask me. Add to that a global financial crisis and cheaper and competitive cards from Ati.
Short of Nvidia starting a game studio of their own, and pumping out increasingly demanding games, there isn’t that much need to go for their high end cards at the moment.
Then again, seeing that games are increasingly lacking in everything but the gfx department, slowing down that arms race is probably not a bad thing.
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As soon as Intel’s on core gpu/loadsa core is ready non of this will matter.
The whole concept of rendering graphics externally from the core is kind of stupid and limits development of graphics anyway. For example, AI characters dont actually see, they are presented with an abstraction.
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They need to slow the hell down, as stated there is nothing recently that has required all this grunt. I have an 8800GTX that I got for about £150 new and a 2 year old E6600 and I’ve really had no problems running anything in the current crop.
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nvidias fab transition was a disater the g92 is a broken component and most people know it nvidia need to sell it cause of the r&d cost but consumers don’t want it cause it’s broke hence nvidias GTX cards equivelent to ati’s costing £30 – £60 more than ati’s they need to make the money off those
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Rubbish. As I’ve said before, in a previous comment: the PC has become the proving ground for future console technology. All the innovation happens on the PC, and then filters down to the consoles later.
If companies like ATI and nVidia stop creating new high-end graphics cards . . . then who will want to buy the next console, if it doesn’t have/benefit from the advances made on the PC side? If the next generation of consoles doesn’t offer much better – in the way of visuals – than the previous generation, there isn’t going to be much incentive to buy.
It pisses me off, though, to think that the PC and PC gamers have become the guinea pigs for what’s to become future console technology. Companies like Microsoft, Intel, ATI, and nVidia are just going to turn around and provide all the benefits of what they developed on the PC to the consoles, and continue to leave us in the lurch from now on.
Sure, they’ll throw us a bone now and then and continue to prop up PC Gaming, but only because they’re constantly thinking about how they can bring these things over to the console space. It’s disgusting.
And nVidia only have themselves to blame for their miserable last quarter. They became way, way too arrogant and ATI smacked them silly for at least 6 months. Then add in the whole economic downturn toward the end of 2008, and it spelled complete doom for nVidia’s sales forecasts.
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@Heliocentric
i don’t think that’ll happen any time soon waste of resources when in development and for the comp when it’s easier to fake it, side note mit blew through a massive budget to try and get a machine to recognise objects from any angle as ‘seeing’ would require and they failed misserably
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Funny Story: I bought a new GPU last year because my old one started to cause trouble at exactly the point where Dwarf Fortress refused to start. (Source Games etc. still worked with a few crashes sometimes)
I actually paid about 100€ to play DF O.o
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The word on the street it that Dell are going to sue the crap out of them for the laptop shenanigans. I doubt Nvidia are looking forward to 2009 too much!
You make your bed, you lie in it, i guess
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How have ATI fared under the money-melting then?
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@Nallen
Yeah I agree, I think most people seem to be making the point that there is no need to really shove this uber technology at everyone. I’ve also been running the same card and had no problems, I played Crysis and it nearly made my PC foul itself but I thought, “I’m not shelling out hundred of pounds just to play one game”. A year later Left4dead arrives, its a better game and it runs like a dream. Innovation for innovation sake is a pointless endeavour if only a few can afford to experience it.
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A couple of points from the comments and story above:
Nvidia seem to have done everything the possibly could to destroy their business over the last few years. Alienating their potential console customers and losing that business. Designing broken components and then trying to cover up the story. Alienating their PC manufacturer partners with misinformation about such, and then being stung for hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to make up for their mistakes. Their products are overpriced and they’ve lost the middleground of the GFX market to ATI, which is where the volume sales and real money lies. Flagship cards are all well and good, but they’re rarely actually available to buy, and sales are so small that any profit from them is simply a drop in the ocean.
Their share value has gone through the floor, and frankly I’m amazed that Jen-Hsun Huang hasn’t been ousted in a boardroom coup.
Anyway, redrain’s comment made me think. His analogy reminds me of Formula 1. If top-end PCs are the F1 cars of the gaming world, leading technical development which then filters down to other, lesser machines, then doesn’t the PC games industry needs to make some noise about this?
Maybe we’re in the same situation as F1, where the races are boring and there’s dwindling interest. Just as F1 needs a shakeup to recapture the attention of the wider world, so PCs and PC gaming perhaps need something similar. I’ve no idea what though.
Any ideas?
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@Magic if it’s a g92 chipset underclock it you’ll get some more life out of it.
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The problem for Nvidia is also that devs have finally realised that pushing system specs for their own sake is killing their sales. We largely reached the peak of what this current generation of consoles can achieve, nd developers aren’t really going to push graphics beyond that level until the next console generation, several years from now. The problem is that an 8800 will pretty much suffice for that level of graphics
Whilst a GTX 260 or 280 might be nice to smooth things out and add in a bit more of the shiny, they aren’t actually needed in order to keep up with modern release games, and probably won’t be necessary until the XBox 1080 (or whatever they want to call it) comes out.
I think that’s also part of the reason that Nvidia have made a recent push with trying to renew interest in “3D” gaming with the goggles and stuff. You need much higher grade hardware to run games when you’re effectively rendering each frame twice from separate angles. Unfortunately, I expect it’s not going to take off (like it failed to the past 3-4 times they tried) and that’s just going to remain a gimmick.
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Is it okay if I be really boring and just say that it’s probably just down to people’s unwillingness to spend silly amounts on what is essentially a frivolous purchase, particularly when every swinging dixie is proclaiming the economic meltdown to be on a par with the end times.
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I believe that slowing the rapid pace of GPU adoption is a *very* good thing. As the gaming market adapts to games with a broader appeal than the traditional core gamer – spearheaded by titles like The Sims and, latterly, Spore – the need for the latest ultra-whizz-bang graphics accelerator declines. The push for realism is one thing but what this completely ignores is that people don’t need such hi-fidelity graphics to enjoy a game. A reasonable level of overall graphical maturity is enough: millions of WoW players can’t all be wrong…
And, as already noted, if you concentrate on graphics, the other things that can sell a game lose out – story, gameplay, etc. It’s long past time devs got back to using their creative bones instead of relying on graphical polish to gloss over the game’s jarring faults. Valve have the right idea – they have the metrics to pinpoint the graphical level their games should run at and pitch their games accordingly, avoiding the exceptionally elitist Crysis technique of demanding people spend 100′s of $/£ on hardware to be able to run it at a decent clip (God, how could they have been surprised that their game didn’t sell?)
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Another point: I wonder if PC graphical fidelity has now reached the DVD/Blu-ray point, where plain old DVD seems to be good enough for the masses and only enthusiasts/hobbysist see any benefit in the HD format?
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@Pags: Well sure you can, if we want to bring real life into things. And who wants that?
Realistically, I think it’s just a combination of what everyone’s already said, there’s plenty of reasons why Nvidia should be doing poorly right now. As far as I can see:
- Global economic downturn
- No need to upgrade given current gen games
- Significant investments that didn’t turn out the way they were hoping (or perhaps just not fast enough)
- Problems on the console front
- ATI getting their act together a bit better this gen
- Supply issues
There’s probably a few others too.
Personally I think that if the graphics market starts to slow down, that’s good think. What I really hope is that someday integrated graphics make a comeback, but that’s likely a pipedream, at least for the moment.
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For me, I don’t think the ATI factor can be underestimated. The 4×00 range has been an undeniable field leveller.
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Part of the problem with physics in games is that it’s not immediately obvious. Cell Factor just looked like crate porn with dubious gameplay, so you do need something more subtle – but at the same time I didn’t notice that, say, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter had noticeably better physics than games without PhysX. Better graphics is much more obvious.
I think there’s a technological gap in game physics that requires a leap to game mechanics that people don’t even know they want. For example – fluid physics (for wind, explosions, water, etc) could add interesting dynamics to games, but it’s very computationally expensive to do properly and I don’t know if there’s really the impetus to see games that have it.
Other than that, “physics” at the moment just means more solid-body physics and more crates flying around.
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Personally, when I built my current rig about this time last year I picked up a 8800GT, because it was about the right price, and seemed to be quite good.
Now a year later and it’ll still play new games at full everything, even on my big widescreen monitor. Guess how long it’s going to be before I upgrade?
(mind you, I tend to switch back and forth between ATI and nVidia, started with a 3DFX Voodoo 3, then a Geforce 2 something, then an ATI 9600XT, then an nvidia 6600GT, then I forget).
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http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?FilingID=6395696-5826-33809&type=sect&dcn=0001045810-09-000005
The problem was a complete collapse in 4th Quarter (eg Christmas) revenue – $480 million instead of the $1.2 billion they made last year.
Kind of fits with the general economic meltdown scenario, rather than an industry specific problem. Up until October 2008, they were actually slightly ahead of where they were in 2007, albeit with a significant slow down already beginning.
So I would suggest that consumers simply failed to pony up for big ticket graphics cards upgrades in this uncertain economic times.
As for write downs from stuff ups etc, these were not too serious, only around $330 million for the full year. Not that big in the overall scheme of things
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Even the layman will appreciate the quality of Blu-ray over DVD when they get a 50″ screen, and the same applies as standard PC monitors get to 22″, 24″ and 30″ screens.
I think graphics still have a very important role to play in gaming, and until our games look like live-action movies, the demand for better and better visuals will not go away.
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(0-0) 3D STEREO needs twice the frames.
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Could we have reached the graphics plateau? Could we have come to the point where it is simply not economical to make graphical content so complex that it requires the latest hardware to take full advantage of it? Might people have caught on to the fact that it saves money to be a generation or two behind? Could developers have learned that they will be better served by ensuring games can run on lower-end machines? Have, in short, the various influences on the GPU market finally demonstrated an ounce of sanity and common sense?
It is a great mystery.
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I said this before but I really do think that the touted poor sales in PC games has less to do with piracy and more to do with the rise of the affordable net book.
With the rise of consoles that have the perception of being as good as a high end pc why anyone would buy a near equivalently priced component instead is beyond me.
I think this downturn in the gfx card industry is an effect of that and wont be easily turned around.
Integrated chips are one thing but the days of the ‘killer’ gfx card are numbered.
[Not to sidetrack this wonderfully over my head technical discussion.]
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Integrated chips need to be far better, I think. Basic computers come with utterly shit graphics cards, so it’s possible that the low end is holding up the market.
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About software-ish rendering, I will make a comment, with no words, with a few screenshots.
Sim Copter
http://z.about.com/d/compsimgames/1/7/e/C/1/20051121_CityLife_18.jpg
Magic Carpet
http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/5647/magiccarpetbo8.jpg
Dungeon Keeeper
http://www.rakrent.com/rtsc/pix/rts/dk2-battle.jpg
Liquid War
http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/v5/img-000131.jpeg
Cortex Command
http://www.indiegames.com/blog/images/timw/cortex/cortex6b.gif
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I hate this tiny ass comment text entry area.
It’s like reading back your post through a letter box.
I feel like I need to feed it money or its going to slam shut.
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postdata:
There are not a Lemmigs screenshot because I hate Lemmings. I hate soo much, that I would love to play a Turrret Defense Kill All Lemmings Game.
Humm,…. I lied, heres a screenshot:
http://www.silverchaos2k.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/0_lemmings.jpg
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There’s plenty of ways to expand, especially on the procedural front. PhysX and GRAW sucked, and will continue to suck, if it’s an option. I explain myself: “physics acceleration” in GRAW consisted of throwing more particles out of the explosions — that’s no change in gameplay, only in eye-candy.
Physics has always been one of the underappreciated catalysts for games. Games where you interact with a world are simulations in a broad sense of the word. And the vast majority of game types: FPSs, FRPGs, platformers, are all simulations.
So you can see why nVidia would go the PhysX route, and why it would seem to make sense. But then a hardware specialist will point out that a graphics card has an end result that is outside of the computer box (the display), and 3D acceleration is a bunch of tools to describe objects in space.
Physics? Time and eternity, space and void, motion and rest. Weren’t CPUs developed in the first place to deal with physics problems?
Anyway, heck, nVidia took a $330M writedown, made $800M less in Q4 2008 than in Q4 2007 — a full two-thirds less — and still only lost about $50M? That’s not so bad. Everybody knows these are rock hard times.
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Lots of people are commenting on how ATI have seized the middle ground with the 4850, and saying NVidia focussed too much on the flagships.
But looking at Tom’s Hardware, and other sites, ATI seem to be king of the top end too, with the 4850×2 and 4870×2, either of which seem to be better than NVidia’s corresponding price point offererings. Hence why I recently upgraded to the 4870×2 from my old NVidia card.
But looking at market share, on something like the Steam survey for instance, NVidia are still miles ahead of ATI. I think this is mostly due to the credit crunch, and so people are not buying new PCs or upgrading their old one.
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I don’t think we’ll see an end to increasingly powerful GPUs, I know companies which are creating engines that make better use of the amazing parallel processing power of modern GFX cards. I’m told my 8800GTX blows my 2.6Ghz Duo away for many processing tasks, I expect to see this utilised and for graphics cards to get increasingly beefy.
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It’s a fair point, Garg, but the fact is that top-end cards sell in (relative terms) single-digit numbers. You’ll only buy one (or two) if you’ve got money to burn and you’re after cock-waving bragging rights.
The manufacturers want the top spot because it’s great advertising, but those cards are, to all intents and purposes, loss-leaders. It’s the middle ground where the battle’s fought and won, especially now that more and more people are realising that a new £100 card each year will give you consistently better performance over time than a £400 top-end card that you hang onto for four years.
With the 4xxx, ATI have cut the ground out from underneath nvidia, and, rabid fanboys aside (of which there are mercifully few), most people are not brand-tied, and will buy on perceived value, especially in times when money’s tight.
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I want to know the SALES difference.
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I cant edit and info is on the link. Revenues are down 16% but the profit was a lot lower. So, where did they spend the money.
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Garg, rereading that, I don’t want to sound as if I’m insulting you for buying a 4870×2 – I’m not! I’d have one if I had a monitor large enough to warrant one.
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Goddamned right, I just got done watching The Thing on Blu-Ray and by Jesus does that film look good.
Also I’m glad Talorc provided the figures to back up my oh-so-wildly speculative theory. Namely “maaaan these things are pretty expensive, I probably shouldn’t buy one right now”.
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“Physics? Time and eternity, space and void, motion and rest. Weren’t CPUs developed in the first place to deal with physics problems?”
I’m not sure exactly what the first sentence means, but no, processors were first invented for code-breaking, as I understand it. If it helps, the NVidia Tesla is specifically designed for HPC (so complex physics problems and so on). The reason is that lots of slower cores can use less power per flop, so if you want to use thousands of cores to solve a big problem, you’re spending less on electricity. That, and solving some problems on GPUs can be many times faster.
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I think in a way, graphics are like robots (bear with me). The closer they look to reality, the more horrific it becomes. Something that looks 95% human is much scarier than something that looks 20% human. So graphics may not be scary, but the closer they get to looking real, the more we’ll realize it isn’t real. It seems like computer games are about to have a full on renaissance, with a focus on a more artistic style rather than realism. No more shiny human skin (CoD 4), hair floating just above the skull line, or creepy marble eyes (G Man, HL2). Kinda glad about all of that to be honest, and I’m looking forward to games that more artistically present their ideas. I’ve always thought style preceded anything else, World of Warcraft (no, I’m not a fanboy, I actually don’t play WoW) is a prime example. I would much rather run around in a less graphically impressive world with a ton of character than vice versa.
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The “uncanny valley”, Jeremy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley
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Jeremy: they call it the Uncanny Valley. It’s a well recognised problem.
I’m inclined to think the problems are more from the global downturn and general belt tightening. But I have often wondered if we’ll reach a point where creating extraordinary fidelity in games simply becomes economically non-viable simply from the amount of labour it takes to create those worlds. While I accept that one needs the PC to push the graphical envelope so the consoles can follow, I wonder if only the consoles can generate the sales volume to sustain the expensive to make, high graphicsability titles. I think this will lead to a slower increase in quality, as people have to work out how to do less with more, rather than just throw cycles at it.
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Hmmm, I think most people in this thread are right, the cards are overpriced, the companies are overhyping, the games are not coming and the important thing is gameplay anyway.
BUT, Empire Total War, Armed Assault 2 and Flashpoint 2.
March 4 is coming, so next week i’m buying a new computer, with of course a stupidly expensive graphics card.
My head and my wallet tell me to not do it.
And I’m still doing it…
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I haven’t really understood this thread, so i’d just like to say that The Thing is awesome.
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@Arathain:
I don’t see how, considering that both Sony and Microsoft have lost billions of dollars on their console hardware, that they have yet to recover.
The PC and consoles have opposite problems. On the PC, the money is made on the hardware and not so much on the software. At least when it comes to games, anyway. But both ATI and nVidia make enough profit on their cards, to continue funding the R&D required to keep advancing their technology.
On consoles, the manfacturers lose shedloads of cash by subsidizing the cost of the hardware, in the hope that they’ll eventually recover it through software sales. But I don’t believe that either Sony or Microsoft have earned back what they lost. Then, considering that each wants to up the ante by bringing out another console in a few years time . . . they’ll never make their money back.
It’s the PC that’s paying for all the benefits that the consoles later receive. That’s why it’s so irritating that game publishers treat us like second-class citizens now. Without us, the consoles would not be where they are today.
If the PC hardware market went bust tomorrow, the future of console development would be in serious peril. Where would the hardware manucfacturers earn the money to fund their R&D?
Certainly not from console owners, who expect their hardware to be as dirt-cheap as possible. Heck, people are still complaining that the PS3 costs too much.
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Oh, it actually has a name? Who knew? Well, other than you guys of course. I agree that economics are at the heart of the problem though, since it does impact every person no matter where you are on the food chain.
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Arathain is spot on: there aren’t enough high-end PC gamers to support today’s game budgets. Which studios piss and moan the most about PC gamers? The “graphic whore” outfits like Epic, id, and Crytek. If you spend $20+ million making a game (most of that going to art and sound assets), then you’ll want to focus on the largest market.
The good news is that I think more people than ever are playing PC games and will continue buying mid-range graphics cards for years to come.
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Gap Gen, point of information: the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (1939) computer was developed to solve complex physics equations. The German Zuse Z3 (1941) was applied for aerodynamic analysis, the Harvard Mark I did calculations for the Navy’s bureau of ships and the ENIAC 1‘s primary role was developing artillery firing tables.Sure, Colossus did crypto, but that’s after the ABC and Zuse, and the ENIAC makes the claim to be the first general-purpose computer.In all seriousness, cryptography was a very important computing function, but physics presented a whole range of problems to solve.
as for the High-end stuff, guys: there’s three very good reasons why nVidia and ATI embrace the arms race. First, if you’ve got demonstrably the fastest thing out there, your audience is not price-sensitive. You can easily slap on a couple hundred bucks or quid to the asking price. So the margins on those things are huge. If you’re down in the trenches with a hated competitor (like nVidia and ATI in the mid-range), the margins are much slimmer. So what if it’s only 1% of the market share? If your margin is 100 times that of your midrange product, it makes sense to ship.
Second, high-end drives midrange. The dudes who spend the big bucks are often the ones who spend the most time working on their rigs. In the PC world, they’re also the ones who give free customer service to their circle of acquaintances. If they’re running a high-end nVidia, and their cousin wants to buy a $100 card, which brand will that guy recommend, especially considering Cousin High End will be the guy answering the phone when there’s a driver incompatibility or an optimization issue?
Third, high end gets press. The folks who publish on-line and print hardware reviews, and the ones who read them, care about flash. They like something with some slink. Being the best deal in the midrange ain’t gonna win many headlines.
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nVidia is not the big N. nVidia is the little n. Nintendo is the big N.
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But being best deal in midrange sold s**t loads of 8800gt’s didn’t it?
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The big N was when Nintendo used to make games. Now they just make toys :P
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I would love to see combat games where the smoke of explosions, rockets, motors, etc.. are persistent. Most game engines remove the smoke as fast as posible to make the player happy, and to save fillrate/polygons. But this remove the “fog of war” precisely from the war. It seems people can live with a war game where is raining strong, but not one where a tank is burning more than 7 seconds. Another interesting change could be to have some level of deformation on the terrain, so a tank tracks mark on the terrain, or explosions create scorchs, etc.. Thats more “eyecandy” stuff most today games avoid.
There are lots of interesting “eyecandy” effects most today games skip, that I will love to see implemented.
One of the latest more interesting tecnical features are (IMHO) Call of Duty 3 sound engine and FEAR rendering engine. But is me.
Talking about sound,… more effects applied to sounds could be a interesting thing. Like how a tank is supose to sound, if the tank is crossing a forest, and you are outside of that forest in a street. And how a tank sound, if the tank is crossing trough a wood house, and you are on the 2th level of that house.
More games sould be played on very extreme escenarys, like.. a infantry combat game that is played on a area just before a nuclear explosion, whiting the explosion and just after the explosion. Some small tactical nukes are designed to clear a area for the infantry to take it over (in the style of artillery).
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Dinger: I was unaware of those machines. However, I’m not sure it’s necessarily true that since CPUs were designed for physics calculations (and at least one of your examples can’t really be said to have a CPU) it’s not true that they are the best hardware for any given physics problem.
The GPU is still a powerful physics solver in every level, from HPC-level research to gaming. A paper by Mark Harris (here) showed a six times speed-up by using a GPU over a CPU implementation of a 2D fluid solver.
Granted, there may come a time when massively-multicore CPUs make graphics cards redundant for a while, but that time isn’t now.
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I’m glad I provided you with an excuse to post.
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@Tei That’s what I’m hoping Modern Warfare 2 will be. It’s going to be a day 1 buy for me no matter what though.
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On Blu-Ray: I’ve only witnessed these in store, but I would say that the improved quality doesn’t particular warrant the expenditure of the player and the disc (and HDTV if you haven’t already got one.) It isn’t exactly the dramatic leap from video to DVD, something which actually made me start buying films, and the quality of a well done DVD is still phenomenal. Look at Casino Royale for a great example of this.
On the topic at hand: I expect, as others have said, that the economic situation is probably the biggest dent in nVidia’s takings. The threat from ATi will no doubt have had a big impact as well (I bought a 4500 myself early this year and have encouraged a mate to go the same route.)
Also believe that we have reached a sort plateau on computing power used for games and that my system should be able to stand tall for a good while yet. The vast majority of systems being sold today are dual cores, so my quad core should be happily reaping the benefits of increased developing for multicore processes whilst also being faster than the standard. Microsoft is still catering for 32-bit systems, and looks to be continuing in this vein with Windows 7, so few games are going to be looking for much more than 3GB of RAM. Graphics cards is the one area where it may continue to develop, but looking at these numbers, combined with the ever increasing multiplatform development, it looks unlikely that well coded games are going to be designed for high-end hardware.
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10 Minutes ago I installed my shiny new GTX280, right now I am installing Crysis.Damn I am one hardcore PC gamer : ).
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Graphics card development may slow down for a while, especially with economy, but I definitely don’t see it stopping. Yes the consoles are acting as a brake, and PC only developers are becoming far and few between. The forces that have been pushing graphics forward are not gone though. I think a big secret with graphics is that Crysis would not have cost that much less to make if the visuals weren’t cutting edge but merely average. But EA and Crytek have reaped the dividends of free publicity. And besides it’s not hard to spruce up the graphics of the latest console hit to take advantage of the latest video card.
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As soon as Intel’s on core gpu/loadsa core is ready non of this will matter.
Intel has never, EVER done gaming graphics well. Maybe that will change in the future, maybe not.
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Why do PC games with a 400$ top-of-the-line card run slower than their console ports on 4 year old hardware?
Why?
GOD DAMN IT, WHYYY?????!!!???
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Could we potentially be running up against the limits of Moore’s law?
Probably not quite yet, there’s still a lot to be done with parallel processing. Still, the consoles are acting as more of a bottleneck now than in the past, and the law of diminishing returns has begun rearing its ugly head in the graphics department in the past few years. Some think we might not see a new console generation for another five or six years, which would throttle things down even further. All these factors suggest to me that the age of the six-month upgrade cycle could well be at an end, which doesn’t put the hardware manufacturers in a great position. But it does mean that our rigs will probably start lasting a lot longer, and graphics are pretty sweet already, so I think for the typical PC gamer this is a good thing.
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@lumpi: Hum??.. my videocard is much less than $200 and make all consoles look like toys. Anyways I suppose your question is retorical. For a fixed hardware is easier to write code to is also easier to write poor code. Poor ports mean these limitations are still on the software, but not more on the hardware, so most console games are not designed to use all the potential of the PC. But, why would you want to play a console game? If you really want to do that, use his native hardware.
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“Intel has never, EVER done gaming graphics well. Maybe that will change in the future, maybe not.”
Remember when ATI were the third-rate also rans who cornered the crappy integrated graphics market? That wasn’t all that long ago. Wasn’t all that long ago Intel were playing second fiddle to AMD in their main market either.
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“Hum??.. my videocard is much less than $200 and make all consoles look like toys.”
Sorry, I just don’t buy this argument. It only works if you’re talking in terms of pure graphical grunt, things like maxing resolution, AA, AF and all that, which is only a small part of it.
A lot of modern console games have production values that put most of the pc market to shame. Even with the second-string stuff – what are the chances of the PC getting a modern turn-based strategy game that looked even half as good as, say, Valkyria Chronicles without cross-platform development? Never mind the poster boys like MGS, Killzone and all the others. Relative quality of the games aside, there’s almost nobody left who’d be crazy enough to lead mega-budget titles like these on PC. Not when there’s a ready market of fixed-spec consoles happy to buy them up at a premium.
Yes, I’d agree that the PC has the hardware potential to blow the consoles out of the water, but the games aren’t there, the money isn’t there, and seemingly nobody outside of the niche hardcore crowd gives enough of a toss to try.
Controversial one, this – but if you’re looking for brash, mega-budget graphical showcases, you’re on the wrong system. And I’m glad, frankly. With the surge in Indie gaming and some fantastic foreign imports (Hello Russia!) I’m enjoying PC gaming now more than ever.
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Probably because there weren’t even any significant leaps in graphics cards this year, most people were probably absolutely fine with their 8800 GTs and anyone who did need a new card probably went with AMD this year.
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> Basic computers come with utterly shit graphics cards, so it’s possible that the low end is holding up the market.
That’s not even the half of it. Basic computers *used to* come with utterly shit graphics cards, but at least they had a graphics card slot to be upgraded. The default form factor was a minitower full of air with a crap graphics card, or perhaps a half-decent graphics card for users who’d been upsold by the shop on the idea that it ‘was better’ even if they weren’t really thinking about games.
But today’s average computer is not even one of those crap store-sourced minitowers. It’s a laptop with useless integrated graphics that can’t be upgraded, and that’s if we’re lucky. Otherwise it’s a netbook. Sales of desktop PCs of the sort that can be made into gaming PCs are plummeting.
PCs are more widespread than ever, but potential gamers are dwindling — at least from the viewpoint of the big 3D-heavy major releases. (Obviously Casual is a completely different story.)
Today, just having a normal midrange graphics card puts you in the ‘hardcore’. SLI/Crossfire is so far out of the mainstream it’s utterly irrelevant. And anyway, who really wants those enormous, noisy-fanned, heat-spewing monsters? Why is the graphics card continuing to grow, as everything else about the PC shrinks?
Unless integrated graphics improve to the point where major-release games will run on them, and until Intel and AMD start mixing up their CPUs and GPUs as promised, we’re going to have a balkanised marketplace for PC games. And that will mean more big titles going to console.
It would be great if a workable standard for external graphics could be created. Every other upgrade is now external; all the things people used to put in PCI cards are now USB devices, it’s only graphics cards that remain. An external graphics unit one could plug into an otherwise-hopeless laptop would open up a new generation of gaming potential. Technically quite tricky though, and AMD’s XGP appears to be going nowhere fast.
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Good, now with any luck the prices will keep dropping and we’ll find an 8800 class card standard in every PC, so every PC will be on par or better than a console and PC gaming will become the dominant platform.
Eh, I can hope =<.
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Pet peeve time!
Why do people keep using the word quality? Wouldn’t quantity (in terms of pixels and such) or fidelity be much more accurate?
In photography, for example, a black and white photograph or a grainy photograph could be better in terms of quality, even if they don’t have the fidelity, of a modern day colour photograph.
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PC only developers are becoming far and few between.
Heh, PC gamers supported Epic, DICE, Westwood, Maxis, Bioware, Ensemble, etc. for years, back when they made awesome PC games. Now they’re either nonexistent or part of mega-corps that’re interested in console games and shitty ports. These studios’ old titles are infinitely better than what they make today, which is why I think game quality is regressing, at least for the genres I like.
I agree with cheeba: the PC is no longer the “graphics whore” platform for a number of reasons, the chief one being that graphics are extremely expensive to make and, with a few exceptions, PC game sales have always been comparatively low. Still, look at how many people still play CS 1.6, WoW, Diablo II, StarCraft, and other ugly games :p
Redrain85′s post is also damn insightful. I wonder how long the console system as we know it will survive, given the risks and huge expenses incurred by the manufacturers. Nintendo deserves much respect for making a self-sustaining videogame business; Sony and Microsoft have profitable arms that can subsidize the losses of their respective console divisions.
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I will simply say that the ‘graphic card prices are too high for what they do’ idea is dead on.
That said, I managed to get an nvidia 9800 GX2 for about 250 bucks — at the time, it was 600 Canadian.
I do not regret my purchase, as my 1200~ dollar computer fucking annihilates any game I throw at it* (except for bizarre issues with high quality shadows, which is apparently a known bug.)
Let’s just say I wept a little in happiness when I was playing the FEAR 2 demo, got all the way through without lag, and realised I had a 6 tabbed Google Chrome browser open (all with videos/etc), Firefox (for something Chrome had trouble with), 10 MSN windows, Quake Live, and still had WoW running.
I was… pleased.
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Given the economy, the fact a 2-year old 8800GTX is all you need to run a decent frame rate, and stats surveys like Valve’s don’t show a rush for uber-fast GPU cards (1.7% of users in the Valve Hardware survey have more than one GPU in their PC’s)…why would anyone think there’s a huge market right now?
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Given the economic situation and the prices of these cards, I still don’t see the benefit performance wise (and to the bank wallet), of having more than a single graphics card on my rig that’ll go ‘old’ in 6 months time.
Nvidia releases too many cards and sku’s over a year. Mid-range and top-end cards are too pricey to have them in multiples. SLI’ing them and making them really work has their own troubles as well – costs to benefits are just too small IMO. And all it can do is primarilly just for games anyway.
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FuzzDad, there’s a difference between multi-GPU setups and powerful GPU’s, I could be running 2 6600GT’s and I’d be part of that 1.7% which, according to you, is an “uber-fast GPU”.
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Yea…but the point is there’s no real market outside guys/gals with lots of disposable income AND are hardcore modders, overclockers, and Futuremark whores. Is that group of enthusiasts enough to sustain both ATI and nVidia in their current headlong pursuit to bash each others skulls in with the latest and greatest card nobody can afford?
Just because I resemble that remark (modder/overclocker/score keeper) doesn’t mean I’m in the majority and the majority rules w/their spending habits. No spending…no marketshare.
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I thought Crysis did more harm than good. It was the annual reminder that you need to upgrade your system, but it took it way too far. Has consumer technology even caught up to its level of demand yet? It seems that maybe there was a little hesitation, and everyone trying to take a new perspective on pushing the technology. They even had to scale back Crysis to accommodate.
So really, two steps forward, two steps back. Or maybe three steps forward in 2007, but no room for improvement in 2008 (i.e. should have obeyed Moore’s law like the CPU manufacturers). We’ll probably see the trend continue in 2009 or 2010 and this hiccup will be forgotten.
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Crysis may well have been demanding, but didn’t warhead prove that it was also badly optimised? I’ve never been entirely convinced that Crysis was barely playable on high-end systems at max settings due to the limitations of current hardware and not because of dubious coding.
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“I still don’t see the benefit performance wise (and to the bank wallet), of having more than a single graphics card on my rig that’ll go ‘old’ in 6 months time.”
My GF has had the same computer for 2 years now, that cost 600 back then (including a decent LCD 19″ monitor”) played crysis mostly maxed, and hasn’t had a single problem running new games. So.. I think the days of computers doubling in capacity every 6 months is over.
And, frankly, those times brought about great advances, so they were worth-while.
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The high-end graphics game market for the PC is circling the drain. People are fed up with having to upgrade their computer every 6 months just to keep up with games that will do nothing better than the last except render prettier leaves. Developers are fed up with shoveling millions into a project for a platform that will have the lowest sales and highest piracy rate. The only graphics pushing software the PC will get from here on out is console ports that are usually unoptimized and buggy (GTA4) because of the absolute mess of hardware configurations they would need to code for.
And for the poster who said consoles thrive off innovations on the PC, Uh what? Even if you are only talking graphically, consoles graphical direction has been ahead of the pc for ages. Games like Jet set radio, okami, and windwaker hit years before anything similar on the PC. Another poster mentioned Valkyria Chronicles which is another example of consoles trumping PCs when it comes to innovation graphically.
As for indie devs, more and more will move to the downloadable platforms of the consoles. Its a much more safe enviroment for them to get their small games out on without as much fear of massive piracy (90% piracy world of goo) plus get some free advertisment and exposure from the big three. There are tons of innovative games hitting PSN/XBLA these days, just look at the newly released flower for PSN and braid for XBLA for examples.
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@catska
Uh, no. Wrong. Don’t confuse artistic style with graphic capability. Those games were artistically beautiful, but a PC could have just as easily produced those graphics with a modest graphics card.
Both the Playstation 1 and 2 may have had a brief periods where they were ahead of PCs at the time, in terms of rendering capabilities. But in both cases, it didn’t last long. Since then, consoles have leeched off the innovations on the PC, and were only on par at their time of release.
Both the 360 and PS3 are using GPUs derived from PC video cards. At their time of release they were not significantly ahead of their PC brethren, if at all. The 360 Xenon GPU is derived from the ATI X18XX/X19XX architecture, and the PS3 GPU is derived from the nVidia GeForce 7XXX architecture.
The next wave of consoles is set to repeat the same trend. The Xbox 720 (or whatever they’re going to call it) will have another ATI GPU derived from their current video cards, and the PS4 is rumored to be getting Intel’s Larrabee . . . which will show up on the PC, first.
Funny, then, that a developer like Valve always seems to make games for the PC that run really, really well and don’t cause people a lot of headaches.
I wonder why that is? Surely Valve has to deal with just as many different PC configurations, as any other developer? So why do their games always run so well?
If Valve can do it, why can’t the other game devs do it? Oh, right . . . they have to give a damn, first.
That’s where the problem really lies. Not because PCs are too difficult to code for. Quick, lazy ports with absolutely no effort being put in. Valve actually gives a damn, and polishes their games to an iridescent shine on the PC.
As for the rest of your comments, they’re great hyperbole.
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Software is what matters, hardware advancing is inevitable. You really think next-gen consoles wouldn’t get much improved graphics if high-end video cards stopped coming out for the PC? Theres really only one direction to go.
All the Ultra Extreme QuadFX 500$ cards in the world won’t matter at all if no software comes out to take advantage of it. Look at when Gears of War came out for the 360 and was the absolute best looking game out (on anything) for a year or so until it showed up on PCs. This wasn’t that long ago. If the big developers are making their games for consoles (which they are), they arent going to be pushing the boundaries of high-end PC tech.
And as far as Valve goes, they are making games on an engine thats 5 years old. Of course they run well on older hardware, that was the entire point of the source engine. If you are using them as an example of graphics-pushing then I don’t know what to tell you. Also check the steam techsupport forums if you think valve games don’t cause any headaches.
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@catska:
No. But the pace would certainly slow down, and the consoles wouldn’t enjoy the free lunch they’ve been getting up until now. The time between console releases would probably grow even longer, or the improvement between generations would diminish.
Anyway, you seem to miss the point: the latest consoles (except for Nintendo) have lost money. Lots of it. Neither Sony, nor Microsoft, have made their money back yet.
How can they keep sustaining new console releases, if they never recover their expenses? Right now they have to cheat, by taking money from their other divisions in order to keep the consoles going. For Microsoft, they take the money from their Windows and Office profits.
They can’t keep it up forever. It needs to become self-sustaining. But I don’t see how that’s going to happen, if the PC side of innovation – and people willing to pay the full costs – goes away.
Why do you think a graphics card costs $200 or more? Somebody’s got to pay for the R&D, and console owners sure ain’t that group of people. Unless you want to pay the true, full cost for your next console? Which will end up costing almost as much as PC?
I don’t think a lot of people would agree with you, on that one. Off the top of my head, I would say that Oblivion and the first Far Cry game were in the same ballpark.
And how old is the Unreal egnine? Unreal 3 is based on the previous version, which dates back just as long. Just because Valve’s Source debuted in 2004, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been dramatically rewritten under the hood in the meantime, like Unreal has.
If you are using them as an example of graphics-pushing then I don’t know what to tell you.
You said “console ports that are usually unoptimized and buggy (GTA4) because of the absolute mess of hardware configurations they would need to code for”.
My point was that whether or not a developer pushes the visual boundaries with graphics, is irrelevant. It all has to do with how much care they put into their work, and how much testing they do.
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the first far cry game was in the same ball park graphically as gears of war?
I think you need to go back and look at far cry 1 , it came out 2 years prior to Gears of War and it looked great at the time but theres no comparison.
Were you thinking of the sequel or something?
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GFWL advertisements that force you to close them to even view content? hasta la vista rps.
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