Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Thanks For Screwing The PC Over, Genuinely

By Alec Meer on November 29th, 2010 at 6:06 pm.

I had a chat (registration required, and yes I’ve heard every argument against that) with Markus ‘Notch’ Persson for my day job recently, and was rather taken with one particular observation he made about the current state of PC gaming. To crudely paraphrase: the big publishers pissing off to console because they thought the PC wasn’t as lucrative as platform as they’d like actually turned out to be a good thing.

With all the sound and fury of big, PC-specific, graphically intensive games gone, there was space for something new – something better, I’d argue – to come through. Leading on from that, I’d like to thank the graphics card companies for making such a right royal mess of the PC. I’m not being sarcastic. They did us a favour.

Here’s the quote I’m on about:

The games industry started moving away from PC and into console a lot. While there are a few hardcore PC studios around, most of it seems to be focused on the console versions. They only really port the PC versions. The indie market really could blossom because people started realising that we’re actually doing interesting ideas in the indie games. Something like in the early 90s, games that were made by id Software or Epic – small developer teams who actually took chances because they didn’t have huge projects. So the indie scene could blossom; there are a lot of indie games on console too and they’re selling really well as well. But I think it’s one result of the sort of abandonment of PC gaming.

The other thing leading on from that, which we touched on very slightlly in the interview, was that perhaps the ‘abandonment’ was caused by gamers feeling to consoles to escape the tyranny of expensive graphics card upgrades, which is a fascinating idea: the vainglorious pursuit of ever more power and speed led to a perhaps inevitable downfall. I’ve blogged (in my biz voice) a little more on that here, but I’d like to be a little more emotive with you trusted souls.

Admittedly, my experience of 2001-2007 was coloured by working on PC Format and thus being required to keep up with the pixel-pushing Joneses, but the need for new graphics cards seemed constant. A steady flow of graphically-intensive, milestone titles gave NVIDIA and ATI cue to keep on pumping out ever-faster cards – which in turn led to a weird sort of terror amongst PC gamers both existent and potential. Every year or so, we’d need to splash out again, usually in the form of hundreds of pounds/dollars. It was exhausting. Worse, it was bewildering.

The furiously complicated naming conventions the graphics card companies used/use is, as far as I’m concerned, unforgivable, as was the sheer range of different boards available at any one time. Numbers, letters, ‘ultras’ and ‘pros’. Once I kept up, doggedly. Now I don’t care enough to try to. Not only did that overblown marketing vampirism make selecting which was the best card at a given pricepoint incredibly hard work for casual upgraders, it meant sub-par boards were put out with names incredibly similar to decent ones. Just a GS or GT at the end could make all the difference, and you could too easily end up buying an absolute lemon by mistake. What was the purpose? To trap us into endless upgrade cycles from fear and confusion alone? Or was the PC simply such an unregulated Wild West (something that otherwise serves the platform well) that the graphics card companies didn’t really know what they were doing either?

Now, it’s all change. Gaming-capable PCs are much cheaper, and few new games require a high-end machine – either because they’re ports of console titles or they’re lo-fi, marvellously interesting indie fare. While I miss being able to decisively say that the PC is the most technologically progressive platform, I wouldn’t swap this age for that one. RPS circa 2004 would probably have been wall-to-wall FPSes. Tedious. Now, with the big publishers off pouring everything into their Call of War Honor on console and the graphics tech companies seeing a dramatic decline in card sales because there’s not much that demands an expensive upgrade, PC gaming is wall-to-wall wondrous unpredictability, left to free-thinkers unbound by technological and budgetary restrictions – which means I can decisively say that the PC is most creatively interesting platform.

I haven’t upgraded my graphics card for going on three years. I don’t expect to have to any time soon, unless I’m planning on picking up a ludicrously big, high-res monitor. I don’t see another Crysis on the horizon*. And I’m glad.

* By which I mean a technological landmark of a title, which both fuels and is fuelled by a massed rush for system upgrades. So don’t give that ‘wot about Crysis 2 hurr’ claptrap, bucko.

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258 Comments »

  1. 29/11/2010 at 18:15 Cunzy1 1 says:

    Yes. This is why I rarely play games on a PC. On my downtime I don’t want to buy a product and then potentially have a chance to play it without upgrading this or that or messing around with deleting files or downloading bits of software.

    Console on, Game in, Game on.

    Well until the Xbox 360 and the PS3 came along which seem to want to emulate the PC experience by downloading this n that whilst a non real time loading bar sort of moves along. HOW HARD IS IT TO MAKE REAL TIME LOADING BARS?

    • 29/11/2010 at 18:31 Rich says:

      If you could attach a console to a proper monitor, which runs at Stupid x Big resolution, sit it at a desk and use a mouse and keyboard to play it, then maybe I’d agree with you. Not that I normally have to do much to get a game that’s already installed going, besides turn it on, double click the icon, wait for it to load, play. I don’t even have to put anything in, since most games these days don’t actually need disks.

      Also, unlike the black boxes that consoles basically are, I rather like that I can generally solve any problems my PC throws at me. Consoles have less problems to solve, generally, but when you get one the thing is going in the bin, unless you want to spend silly money, or whatever mega-corp built the thing as eventually admitted that it was their fault anyway.

    • 29/11/2010 at 18:40 Gap Gen says:

      I think the 360 and PS3 are the reason graphics haven’t really changed much in 3 years. If all the big-budget games are coming out on console, and consoles haven’t changed in 5 years, there’s no point in blowing your console love-in by making a version of your game that looks ten times nicer on the PC. Hence there’s no demand for graphics cards any better than the top end 5 years ago.

    • 29/11/2010 at 18:42 Rich says:

      “consoles haven’t changed in 5 years”
      Indeed Microsoft have reportedly said that the xbox 360 is only in the middle of its life, and will continue to be their main platform until 2015. That’s a long time for hardware.

    • 29/11/2010 at 18:42 Diziet says:

      You can attach a console to a proper monitor. In fact my PC runs quite happily through my Philips TV and my consoles also run quite happily through my Acer Monitor. Both setups are used depending on what I am doing with each device. The wonders of hdmi/dvi.
      I find games a pleasure on both systems and find most of the PC/Console argument quite sad. With the exception of FPS games which are better with a mouse and keyboard. I rarely enjoy them these days though.

    • 29/11/2010 at 18:58 Rich says:

      Yeah, I appreciate that you can. I just need a better TV… or a bigger living room in which to fit a small desk and fancy monitor.

      An xbox 360 really is just a (fairly flimsy) PC anyway. I actually recognise all the bits inside.
      I have no idea how the architecture in a PS3 works though.

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:36 TotalBiscuit says:

      “If you could attach a console to a proper monitor, which runs at Stupid x Big resolution, sit it at a desk and use a mouse and keyboard to play it, then maybe I’d agree with you.”

      I can, I own a PS3. All 3 of my consoles run through my 30″ Dell 3008WFP.

      ITT : People that don’t know what they’re talking about.

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:43 Danarchist says:

      The only thing keeping me from buying a console is quite frankly the lack of mouse/keyboard. My thumbs lack the agility of my other digits and the guy at the top of this stack of comments had it right. I hate how big and “pixley” everything looks on a tv from a console. Whereas hooking my laptop up via hdmi and using my wireless keyboard and mouse produces 80″ of pure eye candy.
      But if someone came out with a mouse and keyboard that works on the 360 and all games past and present I would go buy one tomorrow just to play some of the console only games I missed out on. Doesn’t seem like THAT technically difficult a thing to do, I always wonder why no one has.

      There is no way in hell you can convince me that aiming a targeting reticule with your thumb is as precise/easy/pleasurable as it is with my razor mouse.

    • 29/11/2010 at 20:08 Rich says:

      Well excuuuuuuuuuuse me TotalBiscuit. What about the mouse and keyboard bit?

      I primarily play real time and turn based strategies, and FPSs. The first two just don’t work without a keyboard, and I’ll never get used to the last one using a controller.

    • 29/11/2010 at 20:28 UW says:

      TotalBiscuit: Oh so your consoles maximize the potential of said monitor with an output at a 2560×1600 resolution? I see, I see. That’s surprising, I didn’t think that was possible.

    • 29/11/2010 at 20:31 Kryopsis says:

      The PS3 has integrated support for standard USB mouse and keyboard, as well as most generic USB peripherals (with the exception of the Xbox 360 controller, of course).

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:14 MaXimillion says:

      TotalBiscuit: Your console is not capable of running at Stupid*Big resolution

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:16 DrGonzo says:

      Ah! Beat me to it. I was going to say that too, you can play with a mouse and keyboard on PS3.

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:28 dadioflex says:

      But only PS3 game that supports m+k is UT3 AFAIK. Which you really want to play on the PC for the mods.

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:32 Clovis says:

      I don’t think many games actually support the mouse on the PS3. For FPSs this is generally preferable. The super-majority of console users are perfectly happy (auto) aiming with their controllers. They wouldn’t be too happy if someone else was sniping them with a good mouse. One of the few advantages of the consoles is that they at least level the playing field for multiplayer.

      I have a PS3, but, wow, those games are bloody expensive.

    • 30/11/2010 at 02:37 Radiant says:

      “Your PS3 is not capable of playing at stupid big resolutions”

      To be fair neither can most pcs or most games.

      Ok they /can/ but unless you love 20 fps slideshows or only using googledocs then they can’t.

      I stick in a dvd in a console and I know it will look exactly like the screenshots and videos that sold me the game in the first place.
      There’s no getting away from that.

      Whether the game is /actually/ any good though is anyone’s guess.

    • 30/11/2010 at 03:03 Nick says:

      “I stick in a dvd in a console and I know it will look exactly like the screenshots and videos that sold me the game in the first place.”

      My how shallow.

    • 30/11/2010 at 03:38 LyskTrevise says:

      http://www.amazon.com/Xfps-360-Keyboard-Mouse-Adapter-Xbox/dp/B0010ZH3V8

      XFPS: Mouse and Keyboard for Xbox 360. Attach xbox to monitor. Get 1080p resolution for cheaper price than TV, have mouse and keyboard precision.

      Enjoy.

    • 30/11/2010 at 04:17 jer says:

      I dunno…I haven’t upgraded my PC in 2 or 3 years and I can still pretty much play anything I install at max or near max settings. The only one I had to “bump down” from 1920×1080 to 1280×720 was Crysis and that was if I wanted all the fancy stuff turned on except for FSAA.

      Honestly, my PC is no powerhouse by today’s standards (dual 3.6, 3GB RAM, nV 9800GTX+) and it cost me something like $900 to put together. I can still play the new games that come out and they look excellent on the HDTV. Yes, I recently caved and got an Xbox as well for some console exclusives and so I could finally play online against console-only friends, but the games on my PC still look better. Considering that my machine is basically a modest video card and wireless kb/mouse away from a mainstream PC these days, I would argue that it costs less to game this way than it does on Xbox.

      Either way to each their own. I’m glad to see that other people find the lack of big-name enthusiasm to have a positive side as well.

    • 30/11/2010 at 06:29 nessin says:

      Isn’t the real heart of the problem that:

      A) When someone says Game A looks awesome on a console but crappy on a PC (or comparing Game A or Game B) they’re really saying Game looks awesome at *x480 or *x720 (Console) and crappy on *x1020 or *x1200. The XBOX 360 and PS3 don’t look nicer (or equivalent) to a PC because they’re more advanced or longer lasting, they run at a much reduced capacity than your average current gaming rig.

      B) A lot of the upgrade is overblown by advertising and deliberately vague statements. The race to have the top video card for the latest game has really only taken off in the past five years, and was only an issue of note for a few years before that.

    • 30/11/2010 at 08:16 Dawngreeter says:

      “I stick in a dvd in a console and I know it will look exactly like the screenshots and videos that sold me the game in the first place.”

      That’s odd. I usually expect a lot better than a YouTube-grade trailer or 800×600 screenshots. But maybe that’s just me, snobishly expecting to actually use a 1920×1280 monitor for displaying 1920×1280 pictures.

      Not to mention using my computer as if it were, you know. A computer. And mine.

    • 30/11/2010 at 14:13 opel says:

      @LyskTrevise
      Oh, goodie. A mouse+keyboard adaptor that costs more than a mouse+keyboard.

    • 30/11/2010 at 16:18 el Chi says:

      “The race to have the top video card for the latest game has really only taken off in the past five years, and was only an issue of note for a few years before that.”
      Not at all. I’d say graphics cards started to become a really big issue when nVidia started to take on (and eventually vanquish) 3Dfx, in the late ’90s/early ’00s. Quake II and especially Unreal were notable battlegrounds.
      If anything, the importance of hyper-beefy graphics cards has begun to slow over the last few years.

    • 30/11/2010 at 18:47 Fiatil says:

      Hell I bought my laptop two years ago for $1100 and it can still run most everything out there at max settings. Hook it up to my 40″ TV and I can play New Vegas or any other multiplatform game at higher settings and (most of the time) a higher resolution than my PS3 can do for the same thing. If I would have bought a desktop instead (college woo!) it wouldn’t even be close.

    • 01/12/2010 at 14:46 battles_atlas says:

      Disappointed that none of you have returned to the branding issue. As Alec says, PC hardware buying is made fantasically more complicated than it needs to be by wilfully confusing naming systems. Rather than a problem that’s going away, Intel appears to be embracing this ‘strategy’ with its insane i3/i/5/i7 dual/quad 1156/1366 bullshit. Nvidia are of course veterans of this game. Even ATI have been at it recently with their dumb 6870 which *obviously* is the successor to the 5850.

      Its a tradegy of the commons type situation.

  2. 29/11/2010 at 18:16 man-eater chimp says:

    It is very nice being able to play all manner of games on this nice newish laptop, including games such as TF2 and L4D2, while not on the highest graphics settings, still giving me more than an adequate gaming experience. While I can also play all these fantastic new indie games!

    On the other hand, I do like watching my brother playing TF2 on his huge iMac (yes, I know) on full graphics settings and sometimes programs running in the background with no slowdown whatsoever.

    In all honesty though, I’d be content with a computer that could run Foot-to-ball manager and nothing else.

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:18 DrGonzo says:

      I tried to play TF2 on my parents iMac last time I was visiting home. But Steam crashed almost constantly, the game was an insanely big download for some reason, then it ran like shit had artifacts and crashed a lot. I can’t say I was impressed.

    • 29/11/2010 at 23:49 outoffeelinsobad says:

      I also have a nice, not-so-newish laptop, on which I only expected to be able to play maybe Risen. Turns out, it runs Crysis at max. Thanks, console devs! And thanks, ASUS!

  3. 29/11/2010 at 18:16 Navagon says:

    This is more or less what I’ve been saying for a long time. But also factoring in how big publishers and developers alike have lost touch with their audience.

    Whereas indies often talk directly to their customers and take into account their views and opinions, developers are increasingly designing by committee and publishers are lacing their games with DRM. Not to stop piracy. But rather to control how their paying customers may use their purchases and also to please their shareholders.

  4. 29/11/2010 at 18:18 Alegis says:

    I haven’t upgraded my desktop in centuries.

  5. 29/11/2010 at 18:18 KBKarma says:

    I’d agree with this. However, my desktop machine has a very low-end graphics card (namely, an onboard one without hardware T&L), which limits the games I can play on it. I’m planning on building my own rig, and am planning on having a nice big card in there so I can play all the big games I missed.

    It’s odd, now I come to think about it: all the really REALLY graphically-intensive games I enjoy are a year or more old (the last one was Borderlands). With a nice processor and graphics card, I can play older games that I enjoyed or missed, as well as all the newer, less power-hungry ones.

    Well, I thought it was odd. I still agree, and, in fact, will be following the same route you have: stick in a nice big graphics card, and not upgrade for years.

    • 29/11/2010 at 18:56 Jason Moyer says:

      No Hardware T&L? Has anyone even released a GPU without that in the past decade?

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:26 KBKarma says:

      Yes: Intel. ;_;

      Having perused this, I’m beginning to think I don’t even HAVE a graphics card, and all the graphical work is being done by my CPU. If so, that explains the problem rather succinctly.

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:34 Optimaximal says:

      That was a link to motherboard chipsets, most of which have GMAs in them.

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:51 Tacroy says:

      Just FYI, even a ridiculously cheap graphics card (think $30 – $50) will probably do wonders for your desktop nowadays. They’re relatively easy to install, too! Just make sure you get the right kind – if your computer is old enough (> 5-6 years, I believe), it will have an AGP slot for the graphics card, otherwise it’s PCI-E.

      Also, upgrade your RAM while you’ve got your case open. There is only one rule about RAM: if you have less than 4 GB installed, you need more. No exceptions.

      Since you have what sounds like a store-bought computer, you can crack it open, find some serial number (usually it’s relatively large and in white) and google that; this will generally get you some specs on the motherboard, which will give you all sorts of useful information like what kind of RAM it takes and what kind of card slots it has.

    • 29/11/2010 at 20:11 Lilliput King says:

      Given that you don’t even have hardware t+l, it’s pretty incredible you actually managed to play Borderlands.

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:21 Mr.GRIM says:

      No, you don’t need more RAM if you have 4 gigs. I have 3 Gigs of RAM running windows vista, and I run everything at max settings without any kind of problem at all.

  6. 29/11/2010 at 18:19 Ybfelix says:

    I think the production cost of games has also hit some kind of a ceiling, too?

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:12 Dave says:

      I’m not sure about that. BioWare Austin is busting through that ceiling with gusto.

      I think we also have Microsoft to thank, for completely screwing up DirectX 10 by making it Vista-only at a time when nobody wanted Vista. Brand new triple-A titles are still targeted for DX9.

    • 29/11/2010 at 23:25 Nathan says:

      But so are games targeted at consoles, given how the 360 is (as far as I remember?) also on DX9.

    • 30/11/2010 at 05:19 Benny says:

      Yup, 360 is dx9 with a few shiny bits added on which made their way into dx10. And yes making it vista exclusive was a bit silly, when no gamer wanted a gig of OS overhead on their PC.

  7. 29/11/2010 at 18:19 Bungle says:

    I have been slowly coming to this same conslusion myself. While it’s a bit boring to be stuck in this gaming nether period, I know I’ll be on the ground floor when the next renaissance begins. Although, like many gamers, I only care about multiplayer from here on out.

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:21 Babs says:

      I like many players, care very little about multiplayer. Thankfully the wonderful indies cater to us both. :)

    • 29/11/2010 at 23:33 Casimir's Blake says:

      Actually I’d argue that even though there are many single-player-centric indie games, few of them provide a compelling experience. Interesting character development is a rarity.

    • 30/11/2010 at 09:33 Babs says:

      And I would say that character development, or in fact any worthwhile story at all, is vanishingly rare in videogames as a whole. Independent games simply mirror the wider trend, and in fact the best story I can think of recently is from Amnesia.

      But then, I play games primarily for their mechanics. If I want deep meaningful story I’ll read a book or watch a film, it’s just not where I see the medium’s strength lies. Though I acknowledge that I’m perhaps n the minority there.

    • 30/11/2010 at 11:11 Grandstone says:

      @Babs

      You may be in the minority, but I maintain it’s the correct one. What are the stories of chess and go? Of Tetris? Does Counter-Strike really have a story? Is it poorer for not having one? Is it worse to have a bad story than no story at all?

      I’d say the only thing that matters is mechanics if it didn’t imply that I would be fine with games about mobile obelisks shooting hope at flying bananas, but that would be ridiculous, so I suppose I’ll say that a game should have the minimum dressing necessary to justify its mechanics.

    • 30/11/2010 at 14:12 skalpadda says:

      “What are the stories of chess and go? Of Tetris? Does Counter-Strike really have a story? Is it poorer for not having one? Is it worse to have a bad story than no story at all?”

      Would Planescape Torment be as good if it didn’t have a story?

      Stories in games, when used well, are not just something that’s tacked onto a framework of mechanics, but used as mechanics and rewards integral to the game. Half Life doesn’t have a score counter, for example; the reward is to move forward through the world and story, finding out what happens next and getting to the next challenge. Many RPGs and adventure games make the story a game mechanic where you explore and shape it through dialogue and choices.

    • 30/11/2010 at 17:33 Grandstone says:

      @skalpadda

      Well said. The answer to your question is obviously “no”.

      Just the same, Half-Life motivates me not through its story but through thrilling me and promising to continue doing so. The game does most of the work, and the theme does the rest. “I am a disembodied something shooting some other things in a black-and-white corridor”, while still fun, isn’t as gripping as “I am a scientist shooting aliens in a chaotic lab”.

      I think we agree with each other. I don’t see what Half-Life’s lacking a score counter has to do with anything.

  8. 29/11/2010 at 18:19 Paul says:

    Hmmm, I upgrade once every 4 years with roughly 400 bucks and do just fine. The superior quality of everything on PC is worth it so much. I think internet and its widespread availability is much more a cause for the indie scene being so big, rather then big guys leaving PC.

  9. 29/11/2010 at 18:22 H.Bogard says:

    What’s interesting is that despite keeping below the latest and greatest graphical standards, indie developers have ready horsepower in today’s desktop PC’s in this era that they can still churn out some exceptionally eye-popping visuals with the power of artistic vision alone. Trine, Amnesia and Machinarium come to mind.

  10. 29/11/2010 at 18:24 Mark says:

    Frankly, it just makes good business sense to push the technological envelope, at least software-side, on relatively standardized platforms. Maximized the audience and all. PC has glorious wonderful everything, but when what you need is numbers, that’s what the appliances are there for. Enthusiasts are a subset of all the people who will be interested in a game. In the transaction between player and maker, somebody has to eat the cost of making the game work reliably. The PC is for those who aren’t afraid of that overhead. Those who are afraid are still welcome, of course; with the likes of Steam, they are more welcome than ever. But they are guests.

  11. 29/11/2010 at 18:26 Clovis says:

    During Black/Friday or Monday I’ve been searching for upgrades. Maybe just a $200 graphics card, but maybe also a new cpu/mobo/memory for around $500. However, my current computer can pretty much play any game out there, and only handles badly optimized games like GTAIV sub-par. I can’t max out Crysis, but even on lower settings it looks better than anything on the consoles.

    Stranger, even though I’ve been buying new graphics intensive games, I’ve mostly been playing Desktop Dungeons and Minecraft. I can’t decide if I want to continue my Dragon Age: Origins campaign, or instead start playing Recettear. And, oh, look, Super Meat Boy unlocks tomorrow!

    This is all very annoying actually. I’m finally at a point in my life where I could easily drop $1000 on a super top of the line computer, but there are simply no games to play on it. I’m definitely happy that the indie scene is so great, but I still like a good graphics fest every once in awhile.

    • 29/11/2010 at 20:25 Shagittarius says:

      Indy games are not the answer. New blood in the old industry is. Besides Minecraft, I haven’t found a single redeeming indy game in the last 2 years that was more than a glorified flash game I already played endlessly 15 years ago when it was state of the art.

      Sorry, Indy is not the be all answer, you fooling yourself.

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:35 Clovis says:

      lulwot? I’ve no idea what you are talking about.

    • 30/11/2010 at 09:36 Stephen Roberts says:

      One of the most graphically impressive games I’ve played is Just Cause 2. But you can’t justify going out and spending all your cash on new hardware because the swines went and made a really stable, smooth-running experience of it.

    • 01/12/2010 at 15:06 battles_atlas says:

      Totally with you Clovis on the mistiming of my life cycle relative to the graphics industry. Spend years not able to afford an upgrade, the minute I’m flush I’ve nothing to spend it on.

      As much as I wish I could, I can’t feel this whole indie love-in thing. I’ve never seen an indie game that came within light years of having the impact on me that HL or Deus Ex did. Indies may have some neat ideas, or artistic flourishes, but the package is just too limited right now. Portal is a telling example – great idea that started as an Indie, but without Valve’s support and funding it would never have been the masterpiece it was.

      As it stands, for me the celebration of Indies is just a rather desperate attempt to put some gloss on a pretty awful situation.

    • 01/12/2010 at 16:25 iniudan says:

      @Shagittarius

      Go play Aquaria, then I challenge you to say that again.

  12. 29/11/2010 at 18:26 wcanyon says:

    Don’t forget that PCs do more than just play games.

    Also, I spend on average $100 on a video card every other year and do just fine. I’ve never tried to get it to run Crysis, but I don’t care enough about Crysis. I don’t really want to drive a Maserati when a Camry gets me there in comfort and something like style.

  13. 29/11/2010 at 18:26 Caleb367 says:

    Meh. This sounds like the OMG COMPUTER GAMES ARE DEAD that gets out about monthly since, well, twenty years ago . NES will kill the C64! SuperNES will kill Amiga! PS1 will kill PC! And so on and so on and so on. It still ain’t an excuse for releasing shitty console ports. Besides, get me a console which runs ArmA2. Or EU3. Or DCS Black Shark. (sarcasm intended)

  14. 29/11/2010 at 18:27 Risingson says:

    But then, what will happen when all the indie developers move to consoles? Like Limbo, for example.

  15. 29/11/2010 at 18:30 strange headache says:

    I’m sorry, but I’m not glad. Yes I DO enjoy my fair share of indie games, but I also enjoy technically advanced games requiring a decent PC. Why is it so impossible to have both? And to be honest, PC gaming never has been cheaper:

    1. graphic cards have become much cheaper, You can get a good one for 140 Euros.
    2. generally PC games are sold cheaper than their console counterparts.
    3. General hardware has become a LOT cheaper, so upgrading your system every 2 years won’t hurt that much.

    I agree that the PC is a very creative platform, but it has been like that since forever. In the past small games weren’t called “indie games” but “shareware games”, so while the name has changed, in essence they are the same. I’ve been playing games from small garage developers since the ATARI ST.

    Besodes we should not forget that more and more indie developers are moving over to the consoles, with XBLA gaining increased popularity. So while the PC can still hold onto his creative indie market, consoles are gaining ground in that area.

    Last but not least, many PC games now suffer from consolitis. Yes I know it’s a tired discussion but the fact remains. Now I don’t care for the most fancy graphics, but an advancement in hardware not only means better graphics but better gameplay, more immersion, bigger worlds, more player freedom, etc…

    I’d really hate it so see all that go to waste. While indie games are much fun, they seldom push the limits of what’s possible on a Computer. I’d really like to see more of that again and a couple a hundred bucks every few years will be worth investing into my favorite past time. Compared to the rest of all possibly hobbies, PC gaming is still amidst the cheapest ones. Pushing the technological envelope once in a while, won’t change that fact,

  16. 29/11/2010 at 18:31 Xercies says:

    I agree with this i just wish that there would be mid studios comeing out of it. indies and big companies are all well but wheres the good ideas with a medicrum of budget. because i don’t know about you but well…it seems the indies are full of platformers and stuff which wile interesting. i would like something like say pschonaughts or beyond good and evil made by these middle companies.

    But this is exactly what i have been saying, PC was just to damn hard to get into before so people went to consoles since it was easier. now a days 2 year old computers can play modern games well. i like this and I want it to continue…just with better games.

  17. 29/11/2010 at 18:34 Dave says:

    For a while there I was in a “build a new PC every two years” cycle, but I’m coming up on the third anniversary of my current machine, and I don’t feel the call to upgrade at all. My trusty 8800GT is still plugging along in a perfectly satisfying way, although to be fair I haven’t been demanding it do much more than play Dragon Age lately (must…finish…before…2).

    I realize this is by no means an original observation, but it’s interesting how the slide away from massively demanding PC exclusives toward console ports has the side effect of putting some (most?) of the burden on the community. I’m thinking specifically of the Oblivion/Fallout games here specifically: the graphics and game play are all well and good for consoles, but the mod community has put in a massive effort into upgrading every facet of those games in order to more fully take advantage of the PC’s capabilities.

    Which, arguably, they shouldn’t have had to do. I just wonder if that sort of thing isn’t going to become the norm.

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:37 Droniac says:

      I think that has more to do with getting everything to fit on a single DVD than with the move of high profile developers to consoles. There are several PC exclusives, like The Witcher and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, that see similarly massive community undertakings with huge texture mods, lighting mods and NPC reskins. Those games may not need it quite as much as the likes of Dragon Age or Fallout: New Vegas, but there’s still an enormous difference between playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. vanilla and modded.

      This may have gained a lot of popularity with Bethesda’s more recent RPGs, but it’s hardly a recent phenomenon. Modders have been overhauling their favorite games with better graphics for well over a decade now. Just look at the resolution mods for Infinity engine games (Baldur’s Gate, PlaneScape: Torment), the high definition texture pack for Deus Ex, the texture packs for Neverwinter Nights, the high-res texture packs for Unreal (Tournament) and the FreeSpace 2 Source Code project.

    • 29/11/2010 at 20:32 Mistabashi says:

      Low res textures are rarely due to storage limit; if you take Fallout 3 as an example the game takes roughly 6.5 GB on the disc, which leaves about 2GB free – easily enough to double or quadruple the texture resolution.

      The reason all these console ports have low-res textures is because all the assets are designed for consoles, which have very limited amounts of memory. It really wouldn’t be a lot to ask for developers to work at higher resolutions and downscale them for the console version, but it seems they either don’t care enough about PC users or they don’t want their console version to look significantly inferior to the PC version.

    • 29/11/2010 at 20:53 Droniac says:

      @Mistabashi
      Which leads right back into my original point: it’s not – always – due to console ports, because there are plenty of PC exclusives suffering from similarly poor texture work. That’s either a result of lazy artists or excessive culling on texture quality when trying to make it fit on a single DVD. The latter sounds far more likely when you consider how much work went into the engines for games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and The Witcher only to have them suffer from relatively low-res textures in the final, PC-exclusive, product.

      You’re definitely on the mark when it comes to Bethesda’s games, but they’re not the only ones making games with muddled and low-res textures.

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:44 Mistabashi says:

      Well I’m not sure about The Witcher, but I wouldn’t agree that Stalker suffers from low-res textures on the whole – most are between 1024 and 4096, which is perfectly adequate. A lot of texture mods for Stalker are the same resolution, just heavily sharpened in Photoshop (one of the reasons I tend to dislike most of them). And of course modders are generally amateurs, so they won’t necessarily realise that most of the percieved sharpness issues are down to the mip-maps rather than the actual resolution. There are a few that could stand to be higher-res, such as most NPC textures, but the reason for this is simply that they’re really old – the first game was in development for over six years, and some of the most recogniseable textures (such as the rookie Stalker for example) have been present since the really early builds.

      The fact that modders make texture packs isn’t necessarily a relection on the objective quality of the game’s original textures. Stalker just has a very dedicated and active modding community.

  18. 29/11/2010 at 18:35 Alex Bakke says:

    I’ve had my current GPU for 2 years now, plays everything on high still, around 40FPS. Good enough for me.

  19. 29/11/2010 at 18:37 Cables says:

    I don’t understand why people keep complaining about upgrading hardware. I haven’t upgraded my computer for years and it still runs fine. It’s even older than the 360 and it can still run games better than it.

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:39 sebmojo says:

      My benchmark is the 8800 GT – anything faster than that is gravy (unless you have a huge monitor, natch). Three years old.

    • 29/11/2010 at 20:03 LionsPhil says:

      Yeah, L4D2 and TF2 seem happy at native res with everything at high on mine.

      Shame it’s such a noisy, hot, power-hungry thing. But then all the newer cards are worse. I can’t wait for integrated Intel stuff to finishing undermining nVidia and ATi because my goddamn Intel HD-powered ultraportable LAPTOP can run those two at medium-ish settings, and it does it off batteries for hours with a single fairly quiet fan while just getting warm.

    • 29/11/2010 at 20:29 noobnob says:

      Actually, the latest ATI graphics cards (5xxx/6xxx series) aren’t power hungry at all, are considerably less noisy and run cooler, save for the bulky Dual GPU cards. Can’t say the same about nVidia’s latest cards, except for the GTX 460 and the odd entry-level, fanless cards.

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:59 Sir-Lucius says:

      I think part of it is that people have a natural tendency to want the best. I’d actually argue that much of this “upgrade every year mentality” didn’t come from an inherent NEED to upgrade to run the game, but from a desire to upgrade to run the game at it’s max settings. I actually did most of my gaming from ~2004-2007 on a laptop when I went off to college, and while granted it was a gaming laptop, I never felt like I NEEDED to buy a new machine. Granted, this was near the end of the graphics rush era of PC gaming, but I was able to play Crysis on the system at a mix of low/medium settings just fine. Was it ideal? No, but turning down the graphics options from high to medium or lowering the resolution from 1920×1200 to 1680×1050 or so still let me enjoy games just fine.

      I certainly agree it’s nice that smaller indie projects have taken a bigger spotlight within the PC community, but I do feel like this notion that you have to upgrade every year has been misrepresented, even from within the PC community. Sure, hardware wouldn’t let you run new releases completely maxed out for 3 years like people can do now, but I also think it was an exception, not the norm, to literally HAVE to upgrade hardware in order to play a game.

      PC games have these nifty little sliders that let you customize the visual fidelity of a game according to your own specific hardware, but I do think a lot of people are turned off knowing that they COULD have a better looking game available if they had a different set of hardware.

    • 30/11/2010 at 01:48 LionsPhil says:

      So what you’re saying is that games should take a more Apple-like “you don’t need to know about controlling this” mentality and replace all graphics options with autodetecting.

    • 30/11/2010 at 01:49 LionsPhil says:

      Thanks, comment system, for stripping out the </devil’s advocate> that greatly affected the tone of that post!

    • 30/11/2010 at 02:38 malkav11 says:

      I think part of it is that people -are- seduced by the gigantic gorgeous monitors. Little do they realize that that mega monitor commits them to equally megalithic resolutions that up the computing power they need by huge, expensive steps. I ran at 1024×768 for years and enjoyed new games at high to maximum graphics settings (resolution aside) and decent framerates on decidedly inexpensive hardware. And it was certainly never required to upgrade my video card every year – I do it maybe once every other generation, so…oh, every three years or so, I’d say. I have at times gone longer. Oh, I upgrade -something- every year, just because I like to, but not infrequently it’s something less expensive like hard drives. Now that I’m making a livable salary, I’ve allowed myself to go up to a 1440×900 native res monitor, which is great, and still allows me to go without monstrously expensive kit, if less easily than 1024×768 did.

  20. 29/11/2010 at 18:37 Lewie Procter says:

    I’d also say that developers of PC exclusives are also catching on to the idea of optimise their games for the mid/low end of hardware specs.

    If only the top 10% of computers can play your game, then that is a lot less potential customers.

    I’d probably say that is a combination of digital distribution earning them more money from older titles than they would have from budget ranges of old software (as the margins are higher) in the past, and the now long in the tooth 360 squirting out ports that will run nicely on a three year old PC.

    I don’t think we have to worry about indies moving over to consoles. It mostly happens when Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo throw money at them, and they don’t have unlimited funds.

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:45 Sinomatic says:

      Indeed, I think this idea that PC gaming is for enthusiasts and consoles are for everyone else is incredibly limiting. With more and more gaming capable PCs, laptops and macs about these days, and the ease with which games can be bought and downloaded, restricting PC games development only to titles that push the top tier of gaming hardware is just silly.

      Besides, I’m not a PC gamer because I have prettier graphics than I’d have on a console (well, with the exception of the wii perhaps), but because I prefer the type of games, or I prefer the control scheme, or the ability to mod and get custom content…….or a bunch of other reasons that have very little to do with hardware.

    • 29/11/2010 at 20:06 PlayOm says:

      I think that HL2 was the first game to do this. It was an advanced game (if not perhaps eyeball-meltingly pretty) that ran pretty well on low-spec machines. As with everything else Valve does, its taken the rest of the industry a while to catch up

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:53 Malibu Stacey says:

      There’s a difference between what VALVe does & what Lewie is describing. VALVe make their games to look like the dogs bollocks on top end hardware & scale down. If you target the low to mid range of system specs & don’t give a monkeys about the top end, that’s pretty much the complete opposite of how VALVe do it/did it.
      I’m all for games scaling their visuals/features to fit the system they’re running on but it’s very disingenuous to think that is what is what the majority of developers are targetting in the present day.

  21. 29/11/2010 at 18:43 dogsolitude_uk says:

    Another thing that helps Indie devs and bedroom coders is that it’s comparatively easy to develop on the PC.

    Sure, you need to understand about loops, variables, Object Orientated Programming and suchlike, but if you fancy getting started there are a number of free and cheap entries to game coding that will allow you to create executables that run on most Windows machines.

    There’s stuff like Game Maker available if you’re not too sure about coding, but if you’re comfortable with curly brackets then C# and VB are both available with compilers from Microsoft, and they’ve even got the XNA add-on for those languages which allow you to use 3D graphics and sprites with the .Net framework.

    It’s not as simple as Spectrum Basic, but still a bit easier than Z80 assembly language, and IIRC Blitz Basic is still around too, and now compiles for the Mac and Linux.

    Stuff like Blitz and Game Maker may not give rise to the next VVVVVV(sp?) or Minecraft, but they cetrainly allow kids to experiment with code on their own at home, perhaps getting used to objects and methods in the process, thus making C#, VB and XNA easier to understand, perhaps moving on to C++ with all its little pointers and so on.

    If anything, I believe it’s that kind of thing that will keep the PC in Indie and Bedroom-coder heaven for ever and ever. And ever.

    Edit: oh, and on-topic, I’m still on my dual-core 6600+ with 640MB 8800GTS in case anyone’s bothered. I’m not, and really haven’t felt like upgrading because for some reason I can run everything on max anyway. Maybe I should buy some more recent games or something, but I’ve been as happy as a pig in shit playing The Witcher, STALKER, and the Indie stuff that gets covered here.

    • 30/11/2010 at 00:44 TSA says:

      Yes, and if you don’t mind getting 3D rendering and physics, and high-level scripting for free, there’s Unreal and Unity with their free-as-in-beer versions. Then there’s stuff like Blender, Panda and various flavours of Ogre, Irrlicht, Sauerbraten, Darkplaces, Fixel etc if you care more about free-as-in-speech. Really, there are no excuses to not make games.

    • 30/11/2010 at 08:40 Harlander says:

      Lies! Vile lies and slander!

      Laziness is, and ever shall be, the perfect excuse not to make games!

      Besides, with the huge PC coder scene, you can just wait a bit and someone will probably independently implement your idea. My cliché roguelike, Game Involving Zombies, went into indefinite hiatus, but only a couple of years later, someone made Rogue Survivor, the same idea but much, much better.

  22. 29/11/2010 at 18:45 Humppakummitus says:

    Now that we have all this power, we should use it for something. I mean, where are the Pixeljunk Shooters of the PC world? Little innovative games that use the processing power for gameplay instead of cloth physics. Dwarf Fortress is a very good example, by the way. Hmm, I have a nasty feeling Flash is keeping them down…

    • 29/11/2010 at 18:48 dogsolitude_uk says:

      “Now that we have all this power, we should use it for something.”

      Good. We should use it for Good.

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:58 Malibu Stacey says:

      See up thread re: Dwarf Fortress.
      My machine is a 2 & 1/2 years old Core 2 Quad with 8 GB of RAM. Dwarf Fortress can’t use more than 25% of either my CPU or RAM & doesn’t even touch the GPU (an 8800 GTX, was an 8800 GT but a RMA in April got me a free upgrade).

      If you people want to uphold some indie game as being the be-all & end-all of PC gaming at least use something like AI War which can actually use modern multi-core CPU’s to some of their potential.

    • 29/11/2010 at 23:20 DMJ says:

      No! Evil!

    • 30/11/2010 at 07:06 Ken says:

      Pixeljunk shooter! I WANT FOR PC! Please!

    • 02/12/2010 at 20:51 Nesetalis says:

      I cant really complain as to that.. Toady doesn’t really know multithreading.. and that is NOT something you want to create something real with until you know exactly how to do it.. multithreading is the biggest problem with most video games these days, specifically toward memoryleaks.. in ram and vram.. then there are race conditions, ring locks, and all kinds of other things you have to be aware of.

      if toady tried to make dwarf fortress threaded right now, he would create a mess.. if he stopped and went and did something else to learn proper threading.. he would anger his fan base :p

  23. 29/11/2010 at 18:50 Hunam says:

    The idea that you need to upgrade your GFX card every year is ludicrous, i’ve never, ever done that and I try to keep up. I upgraded this year, but before that, it was 3 or so years ago when the sublime 8800 GT came out and that could handle almost anything that was thrown at it if you were reasonable with your options.

  24. 29/11/2010 at 18:54 CMaster says:

    And there we have an interesting counterpoint to Jim’s article the other day.
    He specifically wants another PC-eating mega-game.

  25. 29/11/2010 at 18:58 President Weasel says:

    I upgraded my graphics card this year when my old 8800 blew up. I also went up to 4GB of slightly faster RAM when my old 2GB died on me. Other than that I’m typing this on a PC that must be 3 or 4 years old, and it still handles today’s cutting edge titles of tomorrow as though they’re from yesterday.

  26. 29/11/2010 at 19:02 _michal says:

    I have three years old PC, I haven’t upgraded anything, just bought another 2GB of RAM. I can play almost any game maxed, with few exceptions – that’s why I’ll be upgrading in spring. I can’t play FSX, DCS, Rise of Flight on high settings and I believe I won’t be able to play Storm of War: Battle of Britain too. Oh, wait, those are PC exclusives ;)

  27. 29/11/2010 at 19:02 Vinraith says:

    In a lot of cases modern indies are the size of what we called “big developers” 20 years ago, and are producing innovative and unique games in a similar way. I haven’t even bought a console this generation for lack of anything particularly interesting on those platforms, so needless to say I’m not particularly concerned about the continuance of most “AAA” games on PC. Give me Minecraft and AI War and you can keep your CODBLOPS.

  28. 29/11/2010 at 19:11 Inverness says:

    It’s been a fantastic experience to not have needed to upgrade my graphics card in years in order to be able to play the newest games. I don’t particularly like how some games seemed to have been “consolized” in the gameplay and interface areas, but the sort of standardization of hardware requirements is a major plus.

    I just hope the big upgrade that will come after the current console generation makes up for all the progress that wasn’t made in this generation.

  29. 29/11/2010 at 19:18 noobnob says:

    You won’t have to worry much about asinine graphics cards naming conventions, which I reckon it’s much better now, and dozens of different models from different AiBs manufacturers in the future. Both AMD and Intel are developing all-in-one solutions that have both CPU and GPU in a single chip (it’s more than that, a bit complicated), which should effectively kill all of the entry level market for graphics cards and raise the bar on integrated graphics processing in mainstream computers. Basically, makes the whole process of buying X hardware to run Y Game a whole lot painless. These solutions aren’t exactly graphics powerhouses, but they’ll be great to introduce most folk to PC gaming and expand the market.

    Well, that’s what I hope, anyways. The chips will be out in 2011.

  30. 29/11/2010 at 19:23 InsidiousBoot says:

    New gameplay… Yes.. We need that, I don’t see the point anymore in playing overdone games.. I mean.. seriously whats the freaking point, I’ve been there seen that e.t.c… atm I’m playing through ARMA2. all other FPS isn’t that fun anymore, must say that SH did tick me for a year but its a bit dead atm, and playing against bots and new players isn’t all that much fun considering I’m one of the top players and theres too much of a gab between. And I’m quite tired of the game, I want a new gamemode really.. Capture the Flag, and We’ve been asking for it quite some time.. sigh. I was hoping Crysis 2 maybe would be having a good MP but meh… I’ll see if its any decent. RPG’s have been boring for me aswell. Haven’t even played the Mass Effect series, Dragon Age was kinda fun for a little while, didn’t finish it though. Race games are pretty lame aswell.. this one game called BLUR sucks hard. I don’t get the fuss about it. Played it at a lan party a week ago.. I didn’t like it, and besides that the only racegame I really like is GRID, DIRT2 is plagued by windows live, which doesn’t save games.. uhm.. ofc WoW garbage is out there.. and no I don’t like that anymore. I’m kinda in the middle of maybe trying out Vanguard Saga of Heroes, further more.. oh.. I could learn Starcraft 2, but meh RTS isnt really my thing. Although I tried it. I have it, but I’m not really going to play it.. I know myself well enough. I have Minecraft.. but I’m waiting on a patch that fixes MP mobs and what not.. I only like MP because its more social, and for some reason, I kinda skipped SP after the last patch. Maybe I just don’t like endlessly digging for resources while no ones looking, if that makes sense. But yes.. My thoughts of the moment right here. Its a shame, I love PC. I do love arcade shooters, SH is kinda like that. but only because of MPR Boosting and some exploiting of game mechanics. but still, maybe Brink will give me back some enthusiasm. I’m waiting on Portal 2, HL Black Mesa, EPI 3, TDU2, Dungeon Siege 3, Diablo 3, Deus EX, Red Orchestra 2, and not much else except maybe Crysis 2. All other games that are planned for release are either not known by me or aren’t all that special. once again…. Sigh, as I’ll have to wait some while to get my hands on good old hack and slash and fun and puzzling platform jumper first person Portal 2. Yes.. Now that I think about it, the only really good thing PC still has is STEAM. Gabe Newell ftw, only thing I’d like is to get info about Half life epi 3… takes forever damn it. hey… yes.. Duke anyone?

    This lap of text is way too long.

  31. 29/11/2010 at 19:23 Carra says:

    Hardware development seems to have stopped.

    Three years ago I bought a new pc. 4 gb of ram, 1tb harddisk, a nice dual core and a 8800 GT. All for less than 800 euros.

    These days it still manages to run everything I throw at it. Even in higher resolutions. New pcs these days still seem to come with a 1 tb harddisk & 4 gb ram. Why upgrade?

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:39 Baines says:

      I’d honestly like to see hardware stop focusing on more power and instead spend a few years working on more efficiency anyway. The power arms race has made PCs one of the more electricity-hungry devices in a home, and then you burn more electricity trying to cool the waste heat being produced by that PC.

      But energy efficiency was always going to be a hard sell when games and hardware were pushing system requirements every year, and software coders were being told to not care how much code pushed a system because there would always be more power available. Maybe, just maybe, things might get a bit more reasonable for a while.

    • 02/12/2010 at 20:55 Nesetalis says:

      i agree whole heartedly! lets have some highly efficient GPUs, CPUs and hard disks (its amazing how much energy HDDs suck down)

  32. 29/11/2010 at 19:28 Monchberter says:

    Splash out on a nice (neutral, pref Antec) case, keep your hardware mid level and buy a low-mid end GFX card. It’s a philosophy that’s seen me good for the past 6 years or so.

    I’m still running a quad Core Duo on DDR and a low end DX11 card through a 3 year old mobo, and it absolutely CREAMS Crysis in 1080p.

    Beyond this, everything is just willy waving.

  33. 29/11/2010 at 19:28 ZephyrSB says:

    Another punter here that hasn’t upgraded since the release of the trusty ol’ 8800GT. It really does seem this was the point where the diminishing returns of such an aggressive technology race began to kick-in. That, and nVidia probably kicking themselves over how cheaply they priced it.

  34. 29/11/2010 at 19:29 Chris says:

    Also, nice to be able to get a realistic gaming rig to run without browning out the neighbourhood. More performance/Watt = cheaper electricity bills, less overheating problems, save the planet, etc…

  35. 29/11/2010 at 19:31 geldonyetich says:

    It’s not exactly a new thought that indies were given a great opportunity in the vacuum left when the big wigs found other platforms to be more lucrative. It’s mostly been what PC gamers had to tell ourselves to keep the faith.

    The fundamental problem is piracy: it’s easy to do on the PC and weakly enforced to the point where some projections put it st 90% of blockbuster copies of a game are being played by pirates – never mind their excuses they could not afford them anyway or that they hate DRM. I’m not sure I blame the pirates, as a problem before piracy was undoubtedly the boring clones.

    Indies jump right on board in this lousy environment because they’re not nearly as starved for money. If only a couple thousand people in the entire planet pay you $5 then, hey, that was $10,000 worth doing. When your game costs millions of dollars to make, that can be a problem, but indy games don’t. In fact, a lot of indies pretty much give their games away for free, this is the flash games, game maker games, BYOND games, things like that: it’s almost as bad as piracy to provide people the efforts of hard programming for free, as it devalues the medium, but they figure being noticed in itself has value.

    Notch is a great exception to the norm. The man developed a cool tech demo in Minecraft, and this managed to nail the human imagination partly because something so rudimentary as a block-based world is easy for people to manipulate. However, it’s almost criminal how much money he’s made selling a highly incomplete game… it’s not like A* is all that hard to do in a grid-based game, so wonder why it is that his mobs have no apparent pathing ability. Now that he’s a few millions and a company started, I would be very disappointed if he didn’t reach a sophistication near Dwarf Fortress or Love.

  36. 29/11/2010 at 19:32 Monchberter says:

    HAIL THE 8800GT THE LAST OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GPU’S!

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:37 TotalBiscuit says:

      I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome my new 580GTX is.

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:38 Optimaximal says:

      Erm, how can a die-shrink be called revolutionary?

      It was just a minified version of the 8800 GTS/X.

    • 29/11/2010 at 19:45 Monchberter says:

      Minified maybe and slightly dated, but it represented the best bang to buck ratio for quite a while, and judging by the RPS readership, it’s still very well regarded.

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:18 Starky says:

      The minified bit helped a lot though, drew less power and as a result ran cooler so lots of manufacturers were selling it with a 10-15% factory over clock, which was and still is huge for a GPU.

      I just traded in my 3 year old 715mhz 512 8800GT (G92) (inno3d ichill), for a 1GB 5770.

      Which basically gives me the same graphics settings (usually high/best), and the same frames per second I used to have… the difference is my 8800GT did that at 1440*900, and my new one does it at 1920*1080 over HDMI to my 32″ LG TV.

      Massively beats any console… I can play games at proper 1080p, unlike the consoles (except a few ps3 titles)…

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:00 CraigB says:

      I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome my new 580GTX is.

      Well, yeah. It’s a Nvidia card. You can’t hear ANYTHING over one of them!

    • 01/12/2010 at 01:06 Deuteronomy says:

      The 8800gt is awesome for the fact that you can run it fanless. I’ve had an accelero s1 on mine for 2 years without a problem.

  37. 29/11/2010 at 19:34 BrightCandle says:

    A lot of people have been complaining about the performance of Call of Duty Black Ops. A core 2 duo and basic graphics card isn’t really enough to play it smoothly, and there is a good reason for it. While a 3 year old PC might be equivalent in power to the console the graphics in the PC version are significantly better. A Decent PC is required to run it at a reasonable frame rate (which for such a fast game honestly needs to be 60 fps to be competitive).

    There have been plenty of games that on high settings or with Eyefinity (well worth trying if you’ve not got to play with it) that require more than the current crop of the very highest cards can handle.

    But I also agree somewhat with the whole point of the article. The removal of all the junk ‘AAA’ titles from the PC scene does mean that the console games list gets filled with dross while the PC indy games and shining examples get more time in the market.

  38. 29/11/2010 at 19:39 Jetsetlemming says:

    I’ve never ran into that constant demand of upgrading, mostly because I couldn’t afford it. Somehow, I’ve still managed to play most PC games acceptably. My current PC cost around $350 and can play modern games perfectly (My Radeon 4670 is astounding for something that cost as much as a single call of duty title). Before this machine, I had a Pentium 4 and Radeon 9250, and that also was quite impressive for the $40 plus shipping I paid for it back in 2004 so I could play Half-life 2.

    PC gaming’s always been cheaper for me than console gaming. I need a PC anyway for schooling, and upgrading that existing machine for gaming is a lot cheaper than a whole console. I still don’t even own an HDTV because all my console gaming is on a Wii. I have my nice, big, cheap ($99 on sale for 1440×900 and decent quality) Samsung LCD on my PC for things in HIGH DEFINITION.

  39. 29/11/2010 at 19:44 Rat says:

    Real classy move putting a picture of Crysis up there. Stop giving the Crysis haters something to troll about.

    The only thing I agree with this article is the obfuscating naming conventions of graphics cards–that’s pure marketing assholery, plain and simple, with no purpose other than to confuse and deceive consumers.

    But. The graphics arms race is a great example of competition spurring innovation. Better hardware is a Good Thing, full stop. It has made new types of games possible and old types prettier. The only “tyranny” here is in your imagination–if you have a problem with the demand for these cards or the games that require them, the blame lies with the consumers (and the developers, to some extent, but they would go out of business if the market wasn’t there).

  40. 29/11/2010 at 19:52 Adam says:

    GPU Companies are partly to blame, true. And so are companies that make other types of computer hardware. If people only knew how easy it is to install a new graphics card and give new live to their PC’s again, there would a lot more PC love out there.

    But sadly, most people consider a PC upgrade equivalent to getting a whole new tower and all.

    Simply put, PC gaming is for many about pushing the limits of graphics, FPS and getting the most out of our hardware.

    Consoles are great too, no need to upgrade as often and with HD shiz, games admittedly look amazing as
    well.

    But the article stresses the selfishness of hardware companies and their tricky naming of GPU’s. And yes, they are to blame for the downward trend of PC gaming. But I still believe deep down in my heart that PC gaming is alive and well : )

  41. 29/11/2010 at 19:52 Jambe says:

    While I miss being able to decisively say that the PC is the most technologically progressive platform, I wouldn’t swap this age for that one.

    Perhaps it’s because you don’t follow hardware anymore, but yeah, you can decisively say that PC’s are still technologically more progressive than consoles. The 360 is five years old and the PS3 is four — in that span, we went from ATI’s R250 (x1300-x1950) to their HD 6000 series, and from Nvidia’s GeForce 7 to their GeForce 4/500 series, both of which represent performance increases in orders of magnitude. Meanwhile the consoles have stagnated and the PS3 has actually regressed in terms of capabilities. A modern $200/£130 graphics card is more powerful than an entire console, CPU + GPU combined.

    Also, as Hunam points out, the suggestion that one must constantly upgrade a PC’s graphics card to be able to play recent games is just hooey. Again, it might just be a bias you developed from working in the industry, but the vast majority of gamers play on relatively small screens (most under 1.5 megapixels — check out the Steam Hardware Survey). $100-150 graphics cards drive modern games at those resolutions now, and they did in the past, too (scaled, of course, as the average panel size increased). If you bought a card from the $200-250 range you could see three or more years of good performance out of it.

    *shrug* The PC is a wild west compared to consoles, sure, but it’s really not hard to make a good buy. There are umpteen sites out there (I like the Tech Report) with down-to-the-component buyers guides which anybody could easily follow given a touch of patience and manual dexterity. Heck, you can get a run-of-the-mill OEM product with a good GPU already inside, or get one with integrated graphics and pop in your own discrete GPU, and you’ll have something that can run modern games at 1680×1050 for $5-600 (including Windows 7). If you spend $650-700 you could go up to two megapixels (1920×1080) or more.

    This article is more than a bit sensationalist. As is the norm, the capacity of technology continues to skyrocket forward as Moore’s Law predicts; it’s just that more software developers now think there’s more money to be made developing stuff to a lowish baseline standard of technical complexity. They’re not wrong. There will continue to be Cryteks and Futuremarks pushing the complexity of PC games higher, and those bleeding-edge markets will continue being tiny niches as they always have been. Nothing is really new… all this hysteria over console-portification of PC titles is overblown. Yeah, more AAA titles are multi-platform ports, but we have more good PC games now than we ever have.

    • 29/11/2010 at 21:16 Alec Meer says:

      I’m unconvinced you’ve actually read the piece sir.

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:48 mujadaddy says:

      @Alec:

      That’s cute you think these articles are read. Simply adorable.

      Statistics show that upward of 90% of people that make it to the jump read one or two sentences, then look at the pictures, then have already made their minds up about what the article said. Some might watch a trailer, especially if it’s gameplay. Some will post a comment. Fewer will read any comments first.

    • 29/11/2010 at 23:28 eric evenstad says:

      Not only did I read the entire piece (round of applause, please) but I read Jambe’s entire, almost as long post and I am equally unconvinced he did any reading.

  42. 29/11/2010 at 19:59 Tei says:

    The real important even on gaming is not this. This is not important, but theres other even that is making this moot point. And is the democratization of gaming. Seems that gaming is now something everybody do, even old people and the guy that drive your bus, and the policeman that control the trafic.

    We have achieved this making games playable for idiots. Take a game, a good game like Lost Colony 2. You can play with other 3 friends, and shot the wall in a corner for 1 minute, and you will WIN, FOREVER, EVETHING. A WINNER IS YOU. And probably 3 achievements will unlock. Save your judgement!… I am not making a opinion here!… all these videos about people playing COD withouth shotting, and people playing a kinect game withouth moving, all what mean is this.. games that almost play itself, ….. interactive experiences with a bit of gaming in it. “Light” games. And I don’t even have to talk about FarmVille.

    I kind of like part of this democratization. Huge budgets, and lots of talented people, can make themeparks really fun. Aventures where you just press the fire button to play. There are a lot of these mindless games, games like Dungeon Siege, and others. The important point is.. are these games fun? and the answer is yes and not,… are fun for some people, or for some people some time, and are not fun for other people, and other people sometimes.

    The only thing to moan about, is the dead of the “hardcore game”. These games that used to exist, where the player have limited lifes, and a pixel to pixel colision means he lost one life. Games like Ghost n Goblins. We don’t see games that hard anymore.
    So where are the challenged addicted people? probably playing multiplayer games, where skilled players can fight other skilled players. Games like DOTA,. or maybe games like Counter-Strike or Starcraft. The challenge addicted gamers can launch Starcraft, and fight the ladder with other of the “same race” gamers.

    All in all, I am happy with the current status of gaming. I only see two problems.

    – Console games are awnfully boring and bad. BAD TASTE. Is just that, these games are BAD, the people that play/make these games seems to have his taste neutered. Theres a reason why “Consoley” mean “bad game”, because the consoles make bad games!.. consoley don’t mean good game, because the consoles are filled by crap, average crap, and poorly designed games!. If I have to see another screen “Don’t shutdown the computer while we save the savegame” I am going to murder some people. How stupid is that fucking message and the people to put these in his games?
    – The dead of AAA in the PC. Is more a risk than a fact. But IF the AAA games ultimatelly dissaper from PC gaming, I would miss then. I like to play some AAA games, not everything is indie creativenes. Me likes some explosions and boobs.

  43. 29/11/2010 at 20:10 Po0py says:

    The thing about people rushing out to buy a new GFX card to play Crysis wasn’t just about all the prettyness of the game. It was also the fact that it was actually a rather good game. The sandboxy nature of it and multiple ways to complete missions and all that stuff was quite a newish thing. Nowadays with Far Cry 2, Stalker, Just Cause 2, RedFaction; sandboxy games are a dime a dozen. People won’t be rushing out to upgrade for Crysis 2 in the same numbers as before. I simply can’t see the same kind of novelty factor as a means to shift copies. But of course, by this stage, Crytek won’t care much because they’ll be shifting Console versions of the game for the first time.

  44. 29/11/2010 at 20:13 Greg Wild says:

    I’m hoping I can indeed just rely on my current system for a good few years to come: Phenom II 945 @3ghz, Radeon 5850, 4gb DDR2 RAM. Should be fine, I think, despite the older RAM.

    At any rate, no way I can afford a new Mobo/CPU/RAM any time soon. MAs are not conducive to PC gaming. Or spending money on anything but food and books.

  45. 29/11/2010 at 20:15 Hoernchen says:

    So, indie developers are going to create a new fallout2, planescape torment, dragon age – just minus all the content, you known, because that actually requires more people and money ? I should thank the consoles for holding the graphics back as much as the gameplay, just look at the current modern call of warfare duty XIIV which uses 90% of 4 cores and looks like shit, or more precisely just the way the same game number minus one looked a year ago and two years ago ?

  46. 29/11/2010 at 20:23 Eduardo says:

    and what about cpu companies? and memory? and motherboards? they dont count? lol

    anyway, its pretty fucking dumb to point your guns at hardware companies. do you think it would be possible for them to stop improving thier products just so devs dont feel like they should use the hardware to their full capacity? lmao.

  47. 29/11/2010 at 20:29 Jimbo says:

    For this argument to hold up then graphics card sales would have to have fallen off a cliff in recent years. Have they?

    My impression is that there’s no shortage of people out there with decent hardware, just a shortage of those people willing to pay for software when they can just as easily steal it.

  48. 29/11/2010 at 20:34 JFS says:

    I like this article. It speaks the truth. And who needs a X87999GTXhi-power ULTRA+ graphics card when you got Recettear (plus others) for five €-money. Oh. Hell. Yeah.

  49. 29/11/2010 at 20:48 Wixard says:

    I remember PC gaming hitting its stride around the turn of the century, and almost in free fall by the time Doom 3 came out.

    By that time, the newest most snazzy version of FPS XIV was hitting the market almost yearly, demanding higher and higher levels of hardware power. Indeed that very quickening of pace is what ultimately killed Voodoo.

    Yet the PC at this time was viable, and still popular. So what did in the exclusive? Well that just doesn’t boil down to one thing.

    A fracturing of naming conventions in the video card market. Around the time of the Geforce 4 and 3, Nvidia became far more liberal with it’s name and what allows a card to exist in a certain family. The geforce 4 MX was for all intents and purposes a Geforce 2 MX rebadged. Given that the lower the cost of the card the more popular, this caused obscene amounts of confusion. It got worse from there: a Radeon 9550se was slower than a 9500np. It was a mess.

    By the time of the Geforce 7800 this had settled down quite a bit. But by then the damage had been done. Nvidia and ATi both caused their market to shrink, quite possibly for good.

    Then came the production costs. Going from making a game for say a Super Nintendo to a Playstation 1 is a decent leap. From a PS1 to a PS2 is even bigger. Then from a PS2 to a PS3 can be several orders of magnitude.

    Art teams exploded in size, the cost of middleware went up compared to before, suddenly there wasn’t quite as much room in the budget for risky games. Outsourcing became more common. Game (and software development in general) exploded in areas like Eastern Europe and China.
    Gone were the days of being able to afford a 1 platform AAA title. Now it’s generally multiplatform or bust. Sometimes even then it’s still bust, with many games failing to even break even.

    Then there’s the elephant in the room; Game Piracy.

    Around the same time the market began shrinking, faster and faster internet connections became more common. Following that rise closely were torrents and other piracy sites.

    They cry “Stop, don’t blame piracy! Those people wouldn’t have bought it anyway!”.

    Probably because many have been pirating games for so long it’s a habbit by now!

    Throw whatever percentage you like at it, but piracy eats a huge amount of sales. I couldn’t imagine any sane person would say otherwise. People that could have or would have purchased the game but didn’t.

    Ultimately I think nothing by itself caused the death of the AAA PC exclusives as we knew them, I think it’s more a combination of factors.

  50. 29/11/2010 at 20:49 TheApologist says:

    I have consoles and a gaming PC. My feeling these days is that the consoles update more often, break more often, and are more expensive, and more of a hassle. Console gaming is no longer the simple option.

    I have to have a PC for work at home, and I’ve always just made sure it runs games. That is clearly easier now than it was. I have never gone this long without upgrading (nearly 4 years), and that feels good. Another factor in this is Steam however. I’ve by and large stopped caring about buying games the minute they come out. I keep track of what’s good, and pick it up in sales when I can. Steam keeps it all there, ready for when I want it without accumulating more disks. Windows and the games update quietly in the background. I rarely find myself staring at progress bars. And as for xbox live gold – paying for online? Fuck that.

    • 30/11/2010 at 09:14 Radiant says:

      xbox live is indeed bullshit.
      Why do we even have to go through their servers? They don’t do anything; they don’t even have lag compensation! That’s been part of pc gaming for years.

    • 30/11/2010 at 10:36 ShineDog says:

      Plenty of (most?) Xbox games have lag compensation, and thats more of a clientside thing anyway.

  51. 29/11/2010 at 21:04 duke of chutney says:

    how many DX10 games are there? either pure DX10, or games that were argueably designed with dx10 in mind more than dx9?

    I can only think of 2

    shattered horizon and metro 2033, but there are probably others.

    I considered going out and buying a new gaming monster this year, when i realised there wasnt any point since there arn’t many new high spec games i want to play. Id quite like to have a crack at metro 2033, and deus x 3 when it is released, but i cant justify buying a £700+ pc just for 2 games. Generally speaking i play indies, mid weight graphics or replay old games these days.

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:08 Malibu Stacey says:

      Halo 2 & Shadowrun are the 2 others I know of.

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:42 kyrieee says:

      Just Cause 2

    • 30/11/2010 at 00:24 Snuffy (the Evil) says:

      Halo 2 isn’t really a good example. As far as I know, it didn’t really use DX10 anyway- it was only a gimmick to promote Vista or something. It was especially egregious because (at least, I heard) the original Xbox used some variant DX7 or 8 anyway.

    • 30/11/2010 at 01:24 Malibu Stacey says:

      I know Snuffy I was just posting the games I could remember off the top of my head which Microsoft cleverly decided they never want me to buy. Shadowrun is pretty much the same from what I’ve seen.

      Also Metro 2099 isn’t DirectX 10 exclusive. It runs fine on DirectX 9.

    • 30/11/2010 at 01:40 Mad Doc MacRae says:

      Shattered horizons is DX10-only. But you can play it fine on an nVidia GeForce 9800 which is like $100 these days.

  52. 29/11/2010 at 21:04 mandrill says:

    Another reason all the publishers seemed to abandon the PC is highlighted here(link) and the reason B&M retail stopped stocking PC games is because they got huge backhanders from M$ and Sony to fill their stores with their products and the software that runs on it. There is no other reason why PC games (which I would guess have higher margins) would be shoved out in favour of the hardware (which stores make next to nothing on) and console games (which they make only slightly more than the hardware on).

    This also ties in nicely with an article I saw last week (it may have been RPS that pointed me at it) which was talkign about how some developer bloke (from CryTek I think) was saying the PC’s are now a generation ahead in terms of performance.

    Last year I had to replace my graphics card due to wear and tear for the first time ever. Every other Gfx card replacement has been simply to keep up with the latest games. I kept this one until it died and it was still handling some of the latest games.

    • 30/11/2010 at 16:40 subedii says:

      Thanks for the link, haven’t seen it before and certainly casts a new light on things.

      “I remember fondly the meeting in my office with a red-faced publisher who was explaining why their initial order from a major retailer for one of our new releases was just 30 units. At the time I had my browser open on the Steam product data page, which updates sales numbers every few minutes.

      “They have taken one unit for each of their top 30 stores” he told me. “There is just no demand from their customers”.

      I glanced at my screen, hit refresh and advised him: “In the time it’s taken you to tell me that there is no demand, Steam has sold 45 units”.”

      Yeah that pretty much highlights the problem right there.

  53. 29/11/2010 at 21:10 Chris R says:

    “The furiously complicated naming conventions the graphics card companies used/use is, as far as I’m concerned, unforgivable…”

    I agree completely. I’ve been PC gaming for decades, built multiple machines, and I just cannot fathom why ATI and NVIDIA think these naming schemes to anything but hurt them. The GT GS GTX nonsense is just ridiculous, but even at a macro level the numbering makes no damn sense. I was running an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro years ago, but somehow we’ve got back around to ATI Radeon 6800s today as the latest tech. Seriously?

  54. 29/11/2010 at 21:13 Flappybat says:

    Seems I’m an unusual case as I own a 360, PS3 and gaming PC. I do almost all my gaming on my PC, the games cost less, have better graphics and much longer lived multiplayer communities. A big ignored problem on consoles is that multiplayer for games can only keep communities for a few months, anything outside the big releases just dies off.

    The PC still has issues with compatibility and support (partly developers fault, look at Black Ops problems) but for example I got Splinter Cell Conviction on the PC as it was cheaper and I could still play with a 360 gamepad. Same experience as the console overall.

  55. 29/11/2010 at 21:24 Pantsman says:

    This is what I’ve been saying for years.

  56. 29/11/2010 at 21:28 Badger says:

    The main problem with gaming on consoles is how bloody awful the graphics are, compare l4d2 on both, on the xbox there’s hardly any shadows at all, which is a massive issue in a zombie game

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:12 Malibu Stacey says:

      It’s just as well we all play games only for the visuals & not that nebulous concept known as gameplay right?

      Although I’ve played plenty L4D2 on PC & having seen how bad the gameplay is on the XBox 360 comparatively, one has to wonder why anyone would buy it on that platform. I guess if you don’t know any better………

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:21 Mark says:

      L4D2 does look awful on the 360 and plays just as bad. This is, however, the exception rather than the rule.

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:25 Y3k-Bug says:

      They play it on 360 because they own a 360. And, because a $300 game console is alot cheaper than what a PC would cost that could run L4D2 well.

    • 29/11/2010 at 23:21 thinsoldier says:

      But a $300 upgrade to an existing PC could be a wonderful choice. The problem is most people’s pc just aren’t upgrade friendly. Either there aren’t any free PCI-E slots, or not enough room or the power supply is too weak. The last few machines I’ve looked inside of didn’t even have a sticker saying what wattage the power supply was.

      If anyone thinks their Christmas PC this year is a pretty good one they should consider a proper video card for $200, more RAM for $50 and an XBox Controller for $50. It’s worth it. And they just might have that $300 if they’re wise enough to just buy the PC and use the monitor they might already have.

  57. 29/11/2010 at 21:47 Watch says:

    “the graphics tech companies seeing a dramatic decline in card sales”

    Alec, do you have a citation for this? It’s not the impression I have, e.g.
    http://hothardware.com/cs/forums/t/46406.aspx
    “All three vendors increased their total volume of shipments in absolute terms [in Q4 2009]…”
    “The 2009 sales figures mark the eighth straight year of volume growth in the GPU market…”

  58. 29/11/2010 at 22:23 Anonymous says:

    PC is the way they meant to be played. Consoles are just stuff between two generations of engines.

  59. 29/11/2010 at 22:26 BAReFOOt says:

    Give me a single day, and I can sort that entire problem out!
    Make very specific specifications about the features a PC has to have, to support games with the “GamePC $YEAR” certification. Now talk to all the big studios, and tell them there’s this new console with fixed specs for at least $X years, and it’s called the “GamePC $YEAR”. Tell them it’s the biggest market in the world (well, it *is*), and they can get the certificate for free, if they support at least the last $X (>4!) generations/years of tha “console”.

    In essence: The PC gets fixed spec milestones that are guaranteed, just like with consoles. And users get to be able to play with older PCs with that certification.

    Then call Dell, and tell them, they can get that certification too, and can advertise it for free, if they follow the specs 100%.

    There will even be a “platinum” version of the spec for longer backwards compatibility of games.

    The whole thing will be treated exacly like with consoles and their new generations.
    So all excuses will be gone!

    There, solved it!
    If I had any interest in supporting those greedy motherfuckers a EA and other big companies, instead of destroying and replacing them, I would have already started such a program. (You’re free to do it anyway.)

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:27 BAReFOOt says:

      Aaaah, stupid post-submit typo! My t key is a bit stuck.

      s/exacly/exactly/g

    • 29/11/2010 at 22:50 Y3k-Bug says:

      Problems with your solution:

      Who handles the certification?

      How do you get hundreds of companies (video card makers, CPU makers, HDD makers, RAM, power supply creators) to agree to this? What incentive is there for them? Making customers happy is all well and good, but if there isn’t a direct line to this making the company money, investors and shareholders ain’t tryin’ to hear that shit.

      Basically you’re saying you want a minimum spec to cover all bases; a good idea in theory, but there are problems with putting a minimum spec on an open system like the PC; you end up with a massive amount of fragmentation. Millions of PC owners using the “PCGame $Year” spec from different years.

      And you’re right back where you started. Millions of users all having PC’s that work at completely different specs.

    • 30/11/2010 at 01:28 Malibu Stacey says:

      Vista & Windows 7 do this to all intents & purposes already. Right click on Computer in the Start Menu & select Properties. It’s called Experience Index or something (not on either myself but I use them at work every day).
      It’s not a massive leap for Apple to add something similar to MacOS if it doesn’t have it already too.

    • 01/12/2010 at 06:39 wengart says:

      One of the problems with that is the inaccurate figure it will give you if your hdd is not the greatest. I have a 7.4-7.8 on everything but, because of my hdd my rating is 5.8.

    • 02/12/2010 at 10:26 PC_Gamer says:

      The word the OP is really looking for is DirectX.

  60. 29/11/2010 at 22:33 Y3k-Bug says:

    I agree with the article. I have no desire to upgrade my system constantly in order to play video games. Some people have no issue with that, and that’s totally fine; I don’t begrudge them.

    For me however, it’s just a massive pain in the ass.

  61. 29/11/2010 at 22:36 drewski says:

    You never needed to upgrade your graphics card constantly to play the latest games – you only had to do that if you wanted to run them at stupid resolutions with absolutely every possibly bell and whistle turned on.

    If you were prepared to accept a slight loss in graphics fidelity you’ve always been able to run games with older hardware. I remember when Far Cry came out and everyone was going on about it being a system killer, but it ran fine on my three year old PC with most graphics on medium, and still looked amazing.

    In other words, we did it to ourselves by being absolute graphics whores.

    The good news is now that graphics tech has, more or less, plateaued and you can now can astonishingly powerful tech for almost no monies. It’s a fantastic time to be a PC gamer – we get almost anything that runs on a console, plus we get it prettier.

  62. 29/11/2010 at 22:56 Muzman says:

    I would say that, if we’re going to use Crysis as the last upgrade touchstone we can’t leave Bioshock out of shouldering some of the blame too. Yes it wasn’t a true PC game in the same sense, but its PC pedigree and graphics fanciness was endlessly hyped to us lot(and it also happens to, on the whole, run worse than Crysis on my 8800GTS).

    But indeed, I haven’t felt like I’ve had to upgrade for a long time too. I see spec reviews of some of the newer ones destroying my poor old card, but I get some new game demo and discover that my card is still fine really (and some games like Mirror’s Edge have some pact with satan to run better than a lot of older games I’ve got while looking insanely good. I guess in some ways it’s not that complicated to render. But still..)
    This must be that plateau they used to tell us about.

    Good to be here, I must say. My memories of the first half of the decade are that same horror show of spineless devs repeating the ‘consoles are the future’ mantra. Worst of the lot was the vague picking up of the Looking Glass torch by Ion Storm, only to hear the exact same stuff from them. I expect ‘get on consoles or die’ was the message to a lot of mid size developers. In their case it was; hobble and half strangle your two best franchises to get them on Xbox and then die anyway. The demise of console domination can’t come soon enough.

  63. 29/11/2010 at 23:03 thinsoldier says:

    Could the Author get an interview with some marketing people at the video card companies to find out the reasoning behind the NONSENSE product names?

    Even when I was in the habit of regularly updating my videocard I always as long as I possibly could because I first had to wait for the benchmarks and forum discussions to get a clue as to which Turbo-GT-WhiZBang-GTS-Radeon-XT-NitrO-VTS contraption would actually be good bang for buck.

    If they weren’t named so foolishly there could have been EPIC competition for highest DAY ONE SALES of video cards between ATI and NVIDIA. They would have made more money, gotten more and better free press and had a MUCH LARGER install base.

    Who knows, sensible naming could have resulted in Crysis actually selling 2 or 3 million more than it did.

    • 30/11/2010 at 01:04 skinlo says:

      Its really not as bad as you make it out to be anymore. Generally within a generation (aka the ATI Radeon 5xxx or Nvidia 4xx), the higher the rest of the numbers, the faster. I understand it might get more complicated if you compare between generation, but I don’t know about you,but I tend to research products before buying them, so will be able to check out benchmarks etc :)

      And when it comes down to it, usually the more expensive a card is, the faster it is.

  64. 29/11/2010 at 23:03 Popish Frenzy says:

    I’m not really persuaded that shift away from pc’s and the boom in indie development have much to do with each other. I’d be interested if Notch or any indie devs you’ve spoken with have provide more specific examples of this.

    I dont think its controversial to say the biggest factor in the inde boom has been the growth in digital distribution. So lets say, for argument, that the downturn in the big budget pc market did have a significant positive impact on indie development. If that shift away hadnt happened we’d still have a healthy big budget sector as well as pretty large indie scene. I think i would have preferred that.

  65. 29/11/2010 at 23:18 Torgen says:

    I’ve been in the habit the last several years, of upgrading CPU/mobo every three years with a $200-225 combo, and the video card whenever I can get one for $80 that is at least two tiers higher than my present one on Tom’s Hardware’s “Best Graphics Card for the Money” chart

  66. 29/11/2010 at 23:46 Grey_Ghost says:

    I think I might have slipped into console gaming had a Mouse / Keypad option been officially supported from the start (still isn’t last I checked). I simply cannot play any type of FPS with a controller and have any fun doing it. I’ve sat for hours in front of my TV trying with my PS3 (Which I actually only use for Blu-Ray movies), but just cannot get the hang of it.

    I’ve always found it amusing that console geeks laud controllers as the superior control device, but if someone manages to get a mouse working on a console they consider it cheating.

  67. 29/11/2010 at 23:50 Lambchops says:

    I think I lucked out really as I went to uni and got a laptop during the whole “let’s make faster and prettier graphics and constantly need upgrades” phase and as such I only had a non gaming laptop to play on. As a result of this I got into indie gaming and realised there was a whole wealth of games out there that didn’t need a big fancy new upgrade.

    Then when I evnetually got a reasonably capable gaming laptop (almost two years ago – it can manage Crysis on mid sort of settings) I was able to catch up on the titles I couldn’t play at the time which were actuallly genuinely good with the full benifit of hindsight and enjoy the new titles, and there is yet to be a sign of a need for an upgrade and I’ve got a smorgasbord of indie and big name games to choose from.

    Happy days indeed.

  68. 30/11/2010 at 00:07 noodlecake says:

    Consoles are more affordable, if anything. I’m lucky that my laptop was stolen last year and that I could add to the insurance money and get a new one that can just about run Dragon Age on it’s highest settings. The reason people are sticking to making console games is because only very wealthy or very nerdy people can afford to spend £800+ pounds on a gaming PC. That does include me (when I finish Uni and get a proper job). Most people wouldn’t spend such an abominable amount of money on a computer even if they had it.

    • 30/11/2010 at 01:00 skinlo says:

      Except you can make a perfect good gaming PC (as long as you don’t go crazy on the screen resolution) for £500.

      My over 1 year old £500 laptop can play all source games on max settings and Mass Effect 2 without much trouble. A £500 desktop today should have no troubles.

  69. 30/11/2010 at 00:17 FRIENDLYUNIT says:

    “I haven’t upgraded my graphics card for going on three years. I don’t expect to have to any time soon, unless I’m planning on picking up a ludicrously big, high-res monitor.”

    Agree. I’ve stopped caring. I used to be quite interested and think about stuff like that a lot but I’m lazy now and acting like one of those dumb consumer types. I’ll possibly consider upgrading one day if things stop working. Till then I’m feeling very sanguine about the whole affair.

    Also, I’d rather buy a new graphics card every now and again than a whole new console system that will probably make all my old games redundant.

  70. 30/11/2010 at 00:17 Flatfingers says:

    If I understand the initial argument clearly, it’s that the rise of the consoles as the dominant computer gaming platform has actually been better for gamers than if we’d only ever had PCs. And this (if I’m reading correctly) is because less-capable but standardized hardware has allowed/forced game developers to make simpler games.

    If that’s a fair reading, then if I’m feeling generous I could see some truth in it. “Simpler” means more games, as well as relatively fewer bugs, than large, complex games that use every speck of an uber-PC’s resources.

    But that’s with my Objective Industry Observer hat on. When I doff that cap and don my Exploration-loving PC Gamer hat, I’m still frustrated and infuriated that the potential of even average PCs is being wasted by dumbing down every game to what the toy boxes can handle. I love the simulation of big, complex worlds, which is what computers are uniquely brilliant at doing, and I love exploring those worlds. (I’m 80 hours into Fallout: New Vegas and I haven’t even set foot in the Strip yet.)

    So while I appreciate the argument from commerce that fewer, simpler games have been good for the industry, here’s my counterargument from art: where would the design of computer games be now if the potential had not been blocked for the past ten years by making consoles the default platform?

    What incredible new worlds might we be playing in now if PCs had remained the default design platform?

    I resent the consoles for costing ten years of lost opportunity to make computer games with ever-increasing depth, rather than the pile of kart racers, coin-collecting platformers, and mindless shooters we actually got.

    So, on balance, it’s hard for me to feel that ten years of letting the console manufacturers push their crippled wares on us has been more positive than negative — not when I think about the worlds that might have been. But maybe that’s just me.

    • 30/11/2010 at 04:25 Al3xand3r says:

      You don’t. He’s saying big publishers left for consoles, so smaller developers have more of a chance on PC, with creative new titles that couldn’t succeed previously. Obviously if he was talking up the actual consoles by saying what king of games you can get on them it wouldn’t be RPS material.

  71. 30/11/2010 at 00:58 skinlo says:

    Maybe its because I actively follow computer hardware and especially graphics cards, but I have no major problems with the naming system of graphics cards.#

    For ATI (now AMD), the first number is generation (aka 5), the second number is the rough performance level (aka if its 8, we know its going to be for the higher end) and finally the third number (7) which I guess you could call the sub level, how well the card performs within the rough performance level. They then chuck a 0 on the end. So in this case, it would be a ATI Radeon 5870. Following that, a 5770 won’t be as good as a 5870, and a 5750 won’t be as good as both.

    I under stand there might be possible confusions regarding generations, those out of the know might presume that a new generation means every card from that generation is faster than every card from the previous generation, and that isn’t the case (aka a 4870 will beat a 5450), but when purchasing a expensive item, you should always to research beforehand.

    Nvidia have a different naming system, but it works on a similar principle, a 580gtx will be stronger than a 480gtx.

    They have seemed to simplify the naming, to be fair I got confused between all the gl, gs, xt, pro, xts, gtx etc etc of previous generations, but that doesn’t seem to be so common now.

  72. 30/11/2010 at 01:17 Grape Flavor says:

    Yeah, how DARE they give us a myriad of (usually) logically numbered choices at different price points, to make sure everyone’s budget is accounted for! It’s not like there are dozens of sites that will educate you on what performs how, in an easy to understand format! Or maybe you just can’t be bothered to educate yourself?

    You sound like a console fanboy, regurgitating up the same talking points about how PCs are too complicated and expensive, not realizing even most “AAA” games will play just fine on less expensive hardware if you turn down the settings.

    And absolutely no mention of the rampant PC piracy either. No, what drove publishers away from the PC was the graphics card companies! Are you kidding me? Maybe the ugly truth that PC gamers are killing their own platform doesn’t fit with the RPS worldview, so you had to find some big bad business interest to lay it on.

    Less gaming choice is NEVER better. You might like indie games better than traditional, and I admit many of them are marvelous, but losing the mainstream games, doesn’t make the indie games scene any better. Quirky pixellated platformers alone will never be better than the choice of quirky pixellated platformers AND big-budget AAA games.

    Sometimes I wonder if RPS even really IS a PC gaming website, in the usual sense. Its editors openly welcome the loss of the big titles for PC, and have little to no interest in PC hardware and technology.

    Perhaps it should really be, “Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Indie Art Games and Discourse on Misogynism Since 1873!”

    • 30/11/2010 at 01:41 Malibu Stacey says:

      Get a hold of yourself.

    • 30/11/2010 at 02:03 Rat says:

      @Grape Flavor
      Sadly, it is trendy right now to ignore (or pretend to ignore) high-end hardware. Even an objective technical analysis can get you labeled a pixel-counting graphics whore. Fans of those quirky pixellated platformers will be quick to drown you with vague claims about “FUN” and “GAMEPLAY” as if they have a monopoly on those terms. The possibility that a game can be deeper, more interesting, and prettier all at the same time is anathema to them–especially if it is expensive.

      RPS does better than most sites on this front, but is not immune from the trend. You are right that more choice is always better, of course. But articles like this one don’t help; no.

    • 30/11/2010 at 02:06 Grape Flavor says:

      And another thing, when people write off the loss of the “big-budget games” and “console ports”, that doesn’t just mean the loss of derivative shooters like Medal of Honor, of Modern Warfare 2.

      That also means the loss of games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Psychonauts, Beyond Good & Evil, Fallout 3, BioShock, Arkham Asylum, STALKER, KOTOR.

      Even if it WERE an either/or proposition (it’s NOT), personally I’d have to take those over a handful of neat little indie games.

    • 30/11/2010 at 02:08 Grape Flavor says:

      @Rat

      Exactly. People keep acting like they’re mutually exclusive, fun/innovation and budget/graphics. It’s a false choice.

    • 30/11/2010 at 11:22 Alec Meer says:

      “You sound like a console fanboy.”

      Read! It’s not hard! Read!

    • 30/11/2010 at 12:53 Grape Flavor says:

      @Alec
      Okay, I’ll read it again, slower this time, lol! See if I missed something.
      And hey don’t take it personally man, I’m just an opinionated guy who’s quick to react. ;)

    • 30/11/2010 at 12:57 AndrewC says:

      Yes, there’s a word for ‘opinionated guy who’s quick to react’.

    • 30/11/2010 at 16:48 Grape Flavor says:

      @AndrewC
      Please do tell. If you can insinuate it, you can say it to my face, err, bottle cap, hmm?

      “Opinionated” does not mean “wrong opinions”, or “opinions carelessly or rashly formed”. It means you HAVE them and are not hesitant to voice them.

      And “quick to react” means one has grown jaded with playing rhetorical games with numbskulls on the internet, and therefore expedites one’s response when a familiar pattern of argument is perceived to have shown itself. Not a good thing, mind you, but I think understandable.

    • 30/11/2010 at 19:14 yessureuhuh says:

      yea piracy is nonexistant on consoles and of course borrowing/renting/lending cartridges and then later discs never happens at all with consoles as opposed to with pcs.

      also piracy completely prevents being able to bring out a blockbuster hit. starcraft 2 and COD:MW2 only managed to be profitable because they had virtually 0 pirated copies out when the official release date came around and to this day remain completely unpirated.

      also there obviously is a direct link between someone pirating a game due to having no money to purchase it and a lost sale, thereby attempting to sell the same game as a console title to the person with no money makes a lot more sense than before.

      wait. what?

    • 30/11/2010 at 19:46 Grape Flavor says:

      @yessureuhuh
      Nice straw man argument there. Piracy does exist on consoles but you’d have to be utterly delusional to claim the scale (especially relative to the market size) is anywhere near that on PC. The controlled nature of the consoles places an obstacle that no software-based PC DRM could ever match. I highly doubt even borrowing (exchange of physical media that can only be used by one person at a time, unlike digital PC piracy) makes up the gap.

      And if you have the money to afford a PC capable of running the latest, cutting-edge PC games, you probably have the money to buy them. If not at first, then on sale. This whole “but think of the poor people” schtick garners little sympathy from me – it just doesn’t make sense.

    • 01/12/2010 at 07:41 wengart says:

      Its not that people have no money to spend, but that they have a limited amount of money to spend. If I have 40$ i can buy Football manager 2011 however, if I choose to pirate games I can play Football manager 2011 , CIV5, Fallout: New Vegas, COD:BLOPS , and Metro 2033. Football Manager 2011 lost a sale, but the other 4 games did not.

      I could go even farther and say I never had any intention of buying any game on the PC, and that my decision to purchase a PC was predicated on my ability to pirate all of my games. In that case no company lost a sale. And a sale is only gained by going to console development if I decide to buy a console and then pay for my games on that platform.

    • 01/12/2010 at 11:03 Huh says:

      I think grape flavor just doesn’t get math/economics.
      A currency unit can only be spent once, the end.
      After that it’s either debt or no more purchases.

      As for him calling the piracy stuff a straw argument – the thing is that nobody in the world can reliably gauge either side and _ESPECIALLY_ the borrowing/lending amongst peers bit.

      I have grown up beating games and then lending them people and vice versa, and infinitely more so on console than on PC.
      So it’s basically him feeling superior in calling other arguments “straw” while having just as little evidence to the contrary for his own.

      Duh, I say.

  73. 30/11/2010 at 01:48 cHeal says:

    Avoiding the dreaded piracy debate I know years ago when many were raging at pirates about the death of PC game I had a simple philosophy. Original and well executed PC games were not being pirated the same as console ports, boring sequels and cash cows. Thus if the publishers of such games decided to move to consoles then let them. I have little interest in their games. Epic put it’s weight behind Gears of War instead of UT3 and UT3 ended up feeling like the retard child of the family. The community treated it as such and Epic went on a whinge about it.

    I’m not advocating piracy, it’s not something I have ever done for a game I could purchase legally. My point is that the sky didn’t fall in and as I said at the time, what will be left once all these big publishers leave the format, will be entertaining, innovative and imaginative indie games. I couldn’t have hoped for the breakthroughs in Indie gaming which have come to pass but I knew something would take over, it was inevitable.

    Triple A titles for PC could not sustain their costs without going across the other platforms, but never was the PC gaming market going to die. The console market may die and the portable device market may die but PC games and mobile games are here to stay. Why? Because PC’s and Mobiles are here to stay, and as long as people have PC’s to code (and play) on and Mobiles to play on, there will be games for these devices.

    Indeed I argued at the time this debate raged that it is actually Consoles that have a finite shelf life. They will become surplus to requirements for the next generation unless they do something more than “gaming” in which case they will become a some sort of standardized PC and cease to be “gaming” consoles.

    • 30/11/2010 at 19:20 withoutgoingtoodeep says:

      Ideally a functioning market will reveal crap as crap.

      Piracy interestingly enough has often simply “shadow mirrored” titles insofar as that huge successes financially also had insane amounts of pirate copies floating around, and crap titles that were crap simple got less attention, even when offered for free.

      Of course, the other way around does not work. People WILL download and install and usually then within 30 minutes delete a pirated copy of a game everyone says is crap. Because it’s free.
      They would never buy it, just to see if it really is that bad.
      Yet if that very example because of this produces only half as much sold copies as claimed downloads, they whine that those would have been sales.
      No, they would not have been. They were free glances to confirm if you really were that shit in game making.
      Yes, you were!

      In turn: Stop trying to sue profit out of the marketplace if your product was never eligible for it in the first place.
      That’s not how a healthy supply&demand mechanic works.

    • 01/12/2010 at 01:02 rocketman71 says:

      This and this (to both comments above)

  74. 30/11/2010 at 02:05 Rat says:

    @Grape Flavor
    Sadly, it is trendy right now to ignore (or at least pretend to ignore) high-end hardware. Even an objective technical analysis can get you labeled a pixel-counting graphics whore. Fans of those quirky pixellated platformers will be quick to drown you with vague claims about “FUN” and “GAMEPLAY” as if they have a monopoly on those terms. The possibility that a game can be deeper, more interesting, and prettier all at the same time is anathema to them–especially if it is expensive.

    RPS does better than most sites on this front, but is not immune from the trend. You are right that more choice is always better, of course. But articles like this one don’t help; no.

  75. 30/11/2010 at 02:53 adam says:

    fail indeed, lol : )

  76. 30/11/2010 at 03:21 A-Scale says:

    I agree, it’s 2.5 years since I upgraded last and I’m still chugging along quite well as well. It used to be that 2 years was the point of being outdated.

    I’m still afraid that gaming PCs cost too much. I’ve been trying to talk my buddy back into buying a decent PC for years since he went console, but he’s still reluctant to make the 700 dollar initial investment necessary to get a decent gaming PC.

  77. 30/11/2010 at 04:21 Al3xand3r says:

    It took people that long to realise this happened? The PC has been thriving on less than “AAA” productions for many, many years, although there’s still the occasional such release. By publisher terms I mean, ie, gigantic game budgets and metacritic crap.

  78. 30/11/2010 at 04:46 negativedge says:

    It’s not the indies that are going to tip anything in the favor of the PC. Most “big” indie titles are also on consoles, and I’d imagine that from here on out they all will be. And iphones. Don’t forget iphones. The people that make indie games are usually either console gamers or people that don’t really play games at all (and thus associate them with consoles). I mean, yeah, we have Kongregate and so forth, but only for so long, and to little effect.

    The strength of the PC right now, and for the forseeable future lies in two things, one of which is the same as it’s always been: mods. Mods are released for all kinds of games at all times, and anything big on consoles that is open at all on the PC is going to be better on the ol’ box for precisely that reason. The other big advantage is smaller or mid level developers that simply can’t afford to be on a console in this day and age. Eastern Europe in particular is becoming the place to be for inventive PC design that you simply can’t find on a console. Niche genres like sims, intense strategy games, robust online games–anything with lots of options, lots of customization, and an active community that persists for more than one release cycle: that’s the strength of the PC. That’s always been the strength of the PC. This site has a massive hard on for STALKER, Men of War, Pathologic, King’s Bounty, etc: games like that are released all the time on the PC, but even this site spends too much time talking about CoD and shit indie snoozefests rather than actually delving into what’s happening out of the spotlight.

    I mean, you can trump up some manufactured low-fi revolution all you want. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to stuff like Storm of War, and any other gorgeous, precise, nuanced, open, and complex game that I happen to accidentally stumble across.

    • 30/11/2010 at 06:02 RobF says:

      “Most “big” indie titles are also on consoles, and I’d imagine that from here on out they all will be.”

      They are? Oh.

      You better tell Microsoft to start greenlighting some more indies instead of blocking them pretty bloody fast then if that’s going to happen. And get Sony to drop the costs of development, natch. And get a trust fund set up to pay for devkit/cert/offices for all these indies to move onto the console market to make this pan out.

      “The people that make indie games are usually either console gamers or people that don’t really play games at all ”

      What?

      “Niche genres like sims, intense strategy games, robust online games–anything with lots of options, lots of customization, and an active community that persists for more than one release cycle”

      And orcs. Don’t forget orcs.

      “I mean, you can trump up some manufactured low-fi revolution all you want. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to stuff like Storm of War…”

      Isn’t that from an indie studio?

    • 30/11/2010 at 19:09 hurrow says:

      “Most “big” indie titles are also on consoles, and I’d imagine that from here on out they all will be. And iphones. Don’t forget iphones. The people that make indie games are usually either console gamers or people that don’t really play games at all (and thus associate them with consoles).”

      what is this i dont even..even..what

  79. 30/11/2010 at 05:47 Impossible says:

    The problem with building AAA titles that push a modern PC is the budget for such a title just doesn’t make economic sense. This is true in gaming in general, its one of the reasons why publishers, developers and hardware manufacturers do not want a new console generation.

    Even ignoring all other factors (install base of high end PCs, piracy, etc.), if a company was to make a somewhat traditional game that pushed a high end PC they’d either have to sell it for a high price, sell an insane (but not unheard of) number of copies or develop new tools and processes to bring down the budget. A new console could perform as well or beat a high end PC, but I imagine many publishers would end up bankrupt trying to compete. Expanding the overall audience of people willing to pay for games would help. Hollywood blockbusters that cost $100+ million are routinely successful, but I don’t think there are enough hardcore gamers to support multiple $100+ million games on any platform.

    It seems like many RPS readers want a PC game that isn’t “dumbed down” for the masses but pushes a high end PC to its limit, but I just can’t imagine a game that fulfills all of those requirements (expensive production values and complicated gameplay that only appeals to a hardcore niche) ever making enough money to be viable. How much would you be willing to pay for such a game if it was good? If someone built your dream game would be you willing to pay $100s to support it?

    I would like to see games that have low production costs but require high end machines, but its still hard to find a market for games like that. As an indie developer I occasionally think about making a game that requires a really high end PC to be playable, probably something that makes heavy use of GPGPU. Every time I think about actually releasing that game, even for free, I visualize the hundreds of “this game looks cool but doesn’t run on my machine” comments it would generate in the best case, and in the worst case “why does this game require such high end hardware? the programming must be shit”…

  80. 30/11/2010 at 06:43 Guildenstern says:

    Funny thing is that PC gaming is a cheaper hobby here in Russia then console gaming. You can get PC games for equivalent of 20 dollars, while console games are around 80. After buying several games price difference between high-end PC and a console disappears, even if you upgrade your video card every year…

    • 30/11/2010 at 07:32 negativedge says:

      And I hope it stays that way, because you Russians are beginning to pump out some damn fine PC games. God only knows what kind of stuff stays within the borders that no one else has heard of. I hope you guys end up with a kind of PC boutique renaissance that approximates what the Japanese console scene was for most of the last twenty years.

    • 30/11/2010 at 12:35 bill says:

      people used to say (correctly imho) that that was the implicit deal with PC gaming. You pay a fortune for your PC, but then you download all the games and software for free get cheap games. Ahem.

      But then DRM broke the bargain. Suddenly you had to pay full price for games as well as a fortune for the hardware – so everyone moved to consoles.

      I distinctly remember, over 10 years ago, me and my friends discussing and making a concious choice to go with PC over console because the games were “free”. It’d be cheaper in the long run we said.

      Of course, now i’m grown up and i pay for my software… but that means i sure don’t upgrade as often as i used to.

    • 01/12/2010 at 06:49 wengart says:

      DRM only broke it if you don’t purchase from Steam and other online stores. I’ve got GTA 4 for 5$, liberty city stories for 10$, Dirt 2 for 5$, Company of Heroes for 5$, the newest red faction for 10$ or so. Thats 25$ for 4 great games while it would of cost me nearly double that just for GTA4 on a 360.

  81. 30/11/2010 at 06:54 TheTourist314 says:

    Totally agree with this article. Good job, mate.

  82. 30/11/2010 at 07:34 cdm says:

    I like buying video cards

  83. 30/11/2010 at 07:41 luckystriker says:

    Amazing how many people bought, and still have, an 8800 GT. I have one too. I guess the RPS Hive Mind just know what’s up.

  84. 30/11/2010 at 08:48 Player1 says:

    I have always been gaming on different systems. Consoles for arcade and party games and PC mainly for shooters and simulations or open world games like GTA. My current PC is… here it comes… from 2004. 3.2 GHz P4, 2GB Ram, x1950pro ATi (AGP), Windows XP. I always thought i should upgrade, but that would have been a complete overhaul to switch to multicore and PCIe. Let alone the constant upgrading of the GPU every one or two years. Thing is i didn’t and i’m still happy with it, because the only games i still play are the older Battlefield games like 1942, Vietnam and BF2, the Half-Life series with its excellent mods, L4D2, and some great indie games or older strategy games. Recently i have been playing GTA: SA with the great MTA:SA multiplayer mod. All newer games didn’t interest me too much up to now and now that developers and publishers have gone crazy about the consoles, my friend gave me his old PS3 and i wont be looking back so soon. The point is the following: I play BFBC2 on the PS3 and although it’s a shooter and i would normally play it on a PC, the console just gives me way better performance for the money, and another important fact is, that you know that all players on the server are using the same hardware an no one is better because he has more fps due to his much better computer. It looks gorgeous on my new 24 inch monitor with HDMI and even though on the PC i might be able to run it at a higher resolution, it would come at a hefty price. Therefore i don’t see myself buying a new PC anytime soon, unless my actual one should break down.

    EDIT: another thing i’m seeing is that the range of pc hardware people use is getting broader because of that. I know many people which have rigs that are more than 3 years old and some which have brand new ones. That’s a developer’s nightmare, because they have to make sure their games run on as many configurations as possible. With consoles it’s pretty easy: one size fits all.

  85. 30/11/2010 at 09:06 Huggster says:

    Has RPS never heard of Toms Hardware? That and other sites regularly have “Best card for under $150″ each month. Okay there is a stupid amount of choice I agree, but that is partly because they are still constantly improving technology and die sizes, always with the aim of reducing heat.

    I recently upgraded to an i5-750 with ATI 4870. I don’t upgrade that often. My previous was an FX-55 w. GTS8800.
    People who get caught up in the “new card every year” cycle are just silly – most intensive games get a few extra FPS but big deal. Crysis is only good for one play through anyway! same with most FPS, (personally).
    The way I see it, upgrading and fixing your PC is similar to having basic DIY skills – its cheaper to do many everyday tasks like basic plumbing etc. rather than pay through the nose for someone else to do it.

  86. 30/11/2010 at 09:28 b_baxter says:

    Whilst I agree with what you say – and feel that this may also explain the rise of GoG and the rejuvenation of vintage titles (they run on notebooks!), I also feel that there may be another major factor at play.

    The advent of (fairly widespread) high bandwidth connections is a major aid to the indie games trade. Now that this network is in place the opportunities for distribution are rapidly expanding. Whereas previously gamers felt tied to hard copies of games and buying from either shops or online shops the ability to directly retail digital copies allows indie producers to produce games and successfully market them themselves.

    This also explains some of the success of the indie market on the consoles – this current generation of consoles are the first where a large number of individuals are online, in the last gen this was a fairly complicated, finicky process – now it’s easy, so the marketplace is open and profitable.

  87. 30/11/2010 at 10:32 Kevin says:

    I think the most egregious example of misleading graphics card naming was the saga of the Geforce 4 MX series. Back when I was 13, I had my friend tell me that what I essentially bought was merely a slightly buffed up Geforce 2 and told me that it was the Ti 4600 I should have gotten.

    How Nvidia and Radeon have gotten away with this for so long is beyond me.

    • 30/11/2010 at 11:25 Carra says:

      I remember that card. A “4″ which was actually based on a “2″ chipset.

      The magazines screamed a no buy recommendation.

  88. 30/11/2010 at 11:20 dlcl says:

    Great piece Alec, a well-considered counterpoint to the recent ‘what we really need now is a high-spec PC shooter’ shenanigans from the last couple of days (sorry Jim!).

    That’s why I /heart/ the PC – even its staunchest advocates can’t pin down what its true strengths are. :D

  89. 30/11/2010 at 11:51 Rinox says:

    I don’t see another Crysis on the horizon. And I’m glad.

    Wot about Crysis 2 hurr?!

  90. 30/11/2010 at 11:54 Ashen says:

    The only reason why the hardware race has slowed down is because the game development costs have skyrocketed to the point it’s completely unfeasible to push the envelope even further.

    It’s also why this console generation has been on for so long and there’s no new one in sight. It already costs a bajillion dollars to make an AAA game with current-gen graphics (and consquently, really difficult to earn that money back) – noone’s in a rush to increase the costs even further and make the ROI that much smaller.

  91. 30/11/2010 at 11:55 Nick says:

    But Crysis was playable on a vast number of systems =(

    • 30/11/2010 at 12:10 Alec Meer says:

      But people (me included) upgraded en masse anyway, because it was a technological milestone. There’s nothing wrong with that.

    • 30/11/2010 at 12:25 bill says:

      but no-one wants to play a game on minimum settings. It’s like the way we get upset if the console has better content than the PC version – even if the PC version is perfectly playable and fun.

  92. 30/11/2010 at 12:14 bill says:

    The graphics card thing was ok if you kept up with it – i used to know the difference between the GS and GT. But if you didn’t upgrade for a while, and didn’t religiously keep in touch with hardware developments, the next time you tried to upgrade you’d find it had all changed.

    Then you had to ask for advice on forums, where regulars would sneer at your lack of knowledge.

    ASIDE 1: I’ve noticed that almost every game-specific forum i’ve visited in the last few years has had numerous posts from people wanting to know why the game they bought doesn’t work. And numerous tired regulars asking if they have an intel card and saying that’s why. If your game doesn’t work on intel cards then you’re cutting out a big market i think.

    ASIDE 2: I used to have a desktop, and i was always updating one bit or another of it. 6+ years ago i moved to a laptop, and I’ve bought one new laptop since then. (ASIDE to the ASIDE: last year. In the electronics wonderland of tokyo. where there were a billion laptops and 90% of them had intel cards. I had to really search to find one (other than a mac) that had a decent (but not great) gaming card. )

    As far as i know, sales of desktops have been in decline for years, and sales of laptops have been on the rise. Games that don’t work on regular laptops are limiting their audience. Hardcore gamers sneer at laptops – yet I don’t know A SINGLE PERSON who has a desktop anymore. Not one.
    Then netbooks came along. Now tablets and smartphones. And those last two at least have shown that there’s a huge market for easily accessible, low priced games THAT JUST WORK.

    ASIDE 3: As we’ve discussed before, it’s daft that windows doesn’t have a decent built in software store that can recommend games based on the power of your PC. I thought that the Windows Experience Rating was a great idea to avoid all the confusion – but it seems unused and abandoned.

    About 7 years ago i was really bored of PC games and all the hardware updating, so i bought a cheap gamecube on ebay and had a great time. I could rent software. I could buy games and play them instantly (no hassle with drivers or requirements). Then I got my laptop, got steam, and indie games resurged – and now i’m back to mostly loving pc games. Purely down to indie games.

    So I think you’ve nailed it on both points.

  93. 30/11/2010 at 12:43 pistolhamster says:

    Indeedy do, well written. I am running for 2½ years on my Core 2 rig with a then-state-of-the-art-graphics-card. I was kind of expecting that I’d have to upgrade it at the end of this year latest. But Wait! Games still run fine on this rig.

    Since 2008 I have not seen any reason to shove more cash at my pc for it to run faster. Instead I got meself a nice extra screen.
    These days I play a funny mix of indie games like Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, AI War and some big-name stuff like Wow and Call of Duty, but I just can’t feel the need for speed as badly these days.

    Indeed, I am happy to see the greedy soulless marketing vampires giving up on the sucked-dry husk of the pc. It has gotten some soul back again, whereas the consoles are having theirs sucked out. You will never see me buy a Xbox 360, but I am glad I have the Wii because of Nintendos great soulful games.

  94. 30/11/2010 at 12:45 Joe Duck says:

    The way I see it, if I look what I have missed by not having any console, some interesting titles come to mind, like Mario Galaxy or stuff like Heavy Rain, Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted or Gran Turismo. But they are lost in a sea of stuff that I do not care that much about, like the Halo, Forza or Rachet and Clank series.
    Now, if I put myself on the other side of the equation, my god I would not be happy having missed Minecraft, Rome:TW, Europa Universalis, EVE, Starcraft or Torchlight.
    I guess I simply like PC games better…

  95. 30/11/2010 at 14:35 pistolhamster says:

    Yeah, same. The types of games made for the pc just catches my fancy more than the types of games made for the console. I have a very intelligent and smart friend who abhors pc-games. Takes too much time, requires too much nerdiness. He prefers pick up and play games, and that is why his main gaming platform is a Wii and an iPad!

  96. 30/11/2010 at 14:44 Ravenger says:

    Paradoxically the company which has done the most to kill off PC gaming has also done the most to support it – Intel.

    They produce excellent processors, but their integrated chipsets are poor by comparison with discrete graphics cards, and are incapable of running most modern games at acceptable frame rates.

    If Intel’s graphic chipsets – particularly those in laptops – had been more gaming capable the PC gaming market would be much bigger.

    ironically in 2006 Mark Rein of Epic made exactly this point – before Epic of course almost abandoned PC gaming entirely.

    http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/12/epics-mark-rein-intel-is-killing-pc-gaming/

  97. 30/11/2010 at 14:58 Vodka & Cookies says:

    Completely agree with this analysis 100%, the decline of the graphics snobs was a great thing for PC gaming. There are two camps on PC gaming those who like the stuff that RPS covers (even before it existed) and the PC enthusiasts (you know the type) who use PC gaming as a means to justify their expensive hobby with perpetual upgrades.

    Most of the PC enthusiasts from my years of observation [and sort of being one for a while] are absolutely no different from the bulk of console gamers, they aren’t interested in the indie to little known titles. They want the big budget, graphics heavy AAA title that all the console players are playing, whats most popular is what matters not whats good and quick to dismiss anything that “looks crap”.

    The further isolation/diminishment of this faction within PC gaming will only be a good thing.

  98. 30/11/2010 at 15:48 Lavitz says:

    I love upgrading my hardware for console ports now :) …… Seriously no one should have needed to upgrade an 8800 gt.. except we have had to go to nvida 200 series (4 series for ati) 400 series and now 500.. all these gpu are not needed with the software we are getting. Cod blackops is not running well on $2000 machine runs fine on $200 hardware. With gpu being released every year not only is diffcult for users to upgrade but developers need to understand the new hardware. GPU are barely being used for games now alot of the load is put on the cpu. PC GAMING is all messed up now. Its gonna be truly dead in the next couple years. Other w/e facebook gaming or indie gaming which i don’t care for.

  99. 30/11/2010 at 19:01 oppositeman says:

    I had my Pentium IV 2.8 Ghz + 2GB RAM from 2003-2010.
    I upgraded the 9800 nonpro ATI card once by replacing it with the then last high-end AGP Nvidia 7800 GS.

    That’s one upgrade in 7+ years. Only as the end of 2009 came around did I decide it was time to move on.
    Had more than enough games to fill every single day of those 7 years.

    No idea how you “had to” constantly upgrade. I know that the usual posers and “Have to have it” dudes did, but imho they are just as bad as the people that will buy a console for a single title.

    There was no “must”. There was only a question of restraint.
    What 5-6 high-end graphic fests I did miss over the last 5-6 years I beat faster than 3 months, as the most high-end GFX games ironically were the shortest to complete(i.e. usually FPS).

    Personally, I would have much preferred us not now living in an age of save points, mediocre ports and force-crippled weapon slot limits, “Go here next please / Follow the leader” handholding and magic self-healing and just stayed in the same healthy state of Giants: Citizen Kabut / Sacrifice / Psychonauts etc creativity that we were in before the consoles took off.

    Graphic card race or not, it feels to me more like an utter fail of the consumer, who was mostly dumb enough to actually follow with the arms race all herpy-derpy as well as succumbing to “xbox/ps3 excluisve!!!11″ marketing schemes, instead of just turning their nose at being blackmailed into console-dom (or rather -dumb) and gfx-instead-of-content onslaught.

    So, yea.

    I disagree. We had everything we needed, we just crapped all over it ourselves. Not the marketplace. They only went after the areas where we showed our weakness.
    “We” were the idiots buying the consoles and cards.

  100. 01/12/2010 at 02:34 Deadpool46 says:

    Interesting stuff Alec, I have to disagree though. Respectfully of course.

    Firstly I think it’s a bad thing that development focus has shifted away from the PC and all it entails. One of the core benefits of the PC platform is the ever evolving hardware technology.
    I’m slightly bewildered to why you think it’s a good thing that developers aren’t taking advantage of the new hardware (yes, I have read your article. And more that a few times ;). I’m not just talking about new super-wizzo graphics, I mean new experiences, new worlds.

    Take for example Alan Wake, originally slated for the PC. Intel demonstrated the game running a quad-core CPU back at IDF 06: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3HybhZjcGE&playnext=1&list=PL0C3B0B2A24411D4C&index=27
    Compare that seemingly open and destructible world (admittedly only a tech demo, not a final product) to what shipped when the game was squeezed onto the 360, sub-HD and all. This is subjective, but that early PC demo looks far more interesting and engaging. A game worthy of an upgrade?

    Secondly (sorry, still rambling) I have to disagree on a couple of points about the card makers.
    Admittedly they haven’t been transparent with their naming conventions but they have improved considerably in the last couple of generations of cards (AMD especially from the HD 4000 series onwards).
    But more importantly, that’s why there’s sites like PC Perspective and The Tech Report to guide you when you need an upgrade. If new hardware befuddles you, ask the PC community. You know how great they are with helping fellow gamers.
    Also, as someone that has been upgrading and building PCs for the last 10 years so I can play games at their more attractive settings, I’ve never had to upgrade on a yearly basis. I’ve been on a steady 2 year upgrade cycle ever since I’ve started to build my own.

    I’ll end with one more, because I have been rambling-on. You said ‘I wouldn’t swap this age for that one. RPS circa 2004 would probably have been wall-to-wall FPSes. Tedious.’
    I couldn’t disagree more. 2010 is littered ‘wall-to-wall’ with multi-platform FPSes. Linear, multi-platform, FPSes.
    Go back to 2004, some of the highlights include; WoW, HL:2, Rome: Total War, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Dawn of War and Far Cry. Great year!

  101. 01/12/2010 at 07:01 Sigma957 says:

    Nice thing about performance PC parts is that you can buy them used and they will still perform like they should if first bought in a shiny new wrapper. XFX repairs their graphics cards (RIP BFG).

    I bought a refurbished geForce 9800GTX OC+ 1 GB for 119.00 via eBay last December, warranty in place. I now have 2 of them since then but don’t need the added GPU power of late. 1 card runs Crysis/Warhead/Shattered Horizon etc just fine. I may add the second just to try out this SLI thing. After they die I will return them to the defunct BFG graphics division for proper burial.

    So you can realistically build a good PC rig for less that 400.00 USD (368.00 was the last one). With new parts.

  102. 01/12/2010 at 10:23 Dreamhacker says:

    Yes, PC is where the innovation is. Is there big money in PC game development? Maybe not, or atleast, not anymore.

    But you know what? I’ll take innovative OR retro OR experimental games over state-of-the-art graphics, polish and a guarranteed sequel in 12-15 months any day.

  103. 01/12/2010 at 14:50 Hmm-Hmm. says:

    Yes. Yes. YES!

    Exactly.

    I’d wager most of us here would pick gameplay over graphics any time. And that doesn’t mean the graphics of games with good gameplay are necessarily lousy.

    • 01/12/2010 at 22:38 Flatfingers says:

      What about where gameplay and graphics meet? For example, the apparent size and complexity of a level in a 3D game is determined by graphical capability, but it also affects gameplay — a game with lots of relatively small, cramped levels (with lots of loading screens) plays differently than one whose target platform supports expansive levels filled with lots of stuff.

      While it’s possible to finesse that somewhat (the Gamebryo engine allows Oblivion and Fallout to present an overworld that appears seamlessly infinite), ultimately all 3D RPG type games made first for the console wind up bounding you in a nutshell instead of treating you to the dizzying vistas (such as in Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight) made possible by a real personal computer. (I’m waiting to see whether BioShock: Infinite follows suit.)

      The point is, sometimes graphical capability really does dictate the kind of gameplay you’re able to enjoy.

  104. 02/12/2010 at 08:03 mythokia says:

    The problem seems to be the fact that developers forget that what we want is firstly and foremost, playability, and that pushing the limits of technology is secondary. This is the same reason why Blizzard is largely successful with WoW, and that UT3 is less successful.

    Developers are just fucking themselves, and potential PC gamers over when they release something that will only run on The Newest Technology(TM). The ubiquity of the PC these days poise itself as a platform where developers can easily reach a large crowd without them having spend on additional hardware. They just gotta make their games work on the majority of them. Upgrading for every new game released just to experience pixel shaders and shadows might have been cool in the early 2000, but with economy doing badly and a larger number of people living from paycheck to paycheck, it’s no longer a feasible option.

  105. 04/12/2010 at 10:51 BobsLawnService says:

    I don’t buy the whole “expensive videocard upgrade cycle” deal.

    Since about 2000 I’ve owned four video cards : Some no-name brand VESA SVGA card, an nVidia Riva TNT2, nVidia 6600GT and my current card is an nVidia 9600GT. I’ll be ipgrading to the latest mid range card early next year. It’s only an expensive treadmill if you choose to make it one.

  106. 05/12/2010 at 21:53 John Peat says:

    Coming late to this but just have to stick in my 10p – “Nonsense”

    My 20p is more like this…

    The ‘graphics card wars’ only really fuelled sales of graphics cards (the reason they happened, of course) which has, in turn, caused both nVidia and Ati to pump loads of cash into gaming, over the years (all a good thing really??)

    The reason developers are moving away from the PC is because the console markets are larger and they can make more money – simple as. It’s worth remembering that the 360 is really just a gaming PC which has been freed of the need to run MS Office and DOS programs tho – and the PS3 is, erm, running a long way behind :)

    Anyway – bottom line is that I don’t think the ‘graphics card wars’ did anything but promote gaming/inject it with some money and technical challenge

    So there

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