Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Expect plenty more of these kinds of updates leading up to next week’s web-wide SOPA protests: it’s an enormously important issue for the future of the internet and everyone who uses it, so we’re giving it our all.

Also declaring themselves strongly against the online culture-trashing folly today are Minecraft-makers Mojang, who intend to make a right old song and dance about SOPA next week, NVIDIA, Trine chaps Frozenbyte, Torchlight devs Runic and retromancers Good Old Games. Positions, statements and assorted protests below.
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Take this with a pinch of salt, I think, but Techgage is reporting the findings of a recent Nvidia conference call in which the graphics company suggested that PC games revenue will pass that generated by consoles in 2014. THAT MEANS THE PC WILL BE BEST. That’s not format-war. That’s math. Or something.

The blame for this lies with the rapid growth in digital distribution, microtransactions, and the free-but-not sector (as I am now calling it). The report also features a PC performance vs consoles graph (above) which made me laugh with the blatantness of it. Yes, top end PC graphics actually are 900%+ more powerful than console hardware. Thanks, Nvidia.

(They don’t do nothing – I just wanted to make the gag).

NVIDIA’s current big deal is true 3D gaming – a funny pair of specs that blesses on-screen worlds with depth and pop-outery, just like movies from the 80s or late 00s. Which one of those two it is most akin to depends on the spectacle technology you use – old fashioned red/blue sillies or complicated and expensive stereoscopic shutter thingers. I’ve been having a poke at the former which – in theory – works with most every 3D game, so long as you have a recentish NVIDIA card.
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There’s been plenty of predicition lately that the age of supermegapixelshaderooed blockbuster games on PC might be drawing to a close, in favour of lower-spec, lower-profile inventiveness from the indie, MMO, browser-based and casual scenes. What there hasn’t been is much hard data that reflects this possible sea change. The news that current 3D card king NVIDIA recorded an eyewatering $30 million loss last year (that’s after a $797.6m profit in the preceding year) could have something to do with it.
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Edit – direct from LucasArts – “I can tell you definitively that there is no PC version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed planned. I would assume Vik was talking about a PC version of Digital Molecular Matter.”

Vik Sohal has also been in touch to say this is all nonsense. Heavy sigh. Apologies for the false alarm. I can promise you our source was absolutely convinced by what he told us, and that we’ve got a recording of the exact quote below (and can provide it to terrifying lawyers if necessary), but guess Vik Sohal just expressed it badly and our source got the wrong end of the stick.

It’s crazy that this isn’t already in the wild, but turns out plans for a PC version of heavily-physicsed Star Wars Sith ‘em up The Force Unleashed were quietly revealed at NVIDIA’s recent NVISION 08 conference. RPS’ super-secret spy at the event has sent us an audio recording of Pixelux Entertainment (the company behind The Force Unleashed’s physics tech) COO Vik Sohal saying this in the middle of his talk about game physics:

“It’s just been released last week on the internet, the Force Unleashed demo on both the PS3 and Xbox 360. We have a PC version as well.”

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You may remember Kieron doing science a few weeks back about NVIDIA’s CUDA system – clever trickery that allows a GPU to perform processing feats other than pixel-pushing. There’s a lot of real-world algorithm-crunching applications for it, but of most interest to gamers is that it can make your GeForce 8, 9 or 200-series card behave like a PhysX board. NVIDIA bought out PhysX makers Ageia a while back, and we’re soon to see the fruits of such money-labours.

The big question is to what extent simulating cratesplosion will slow down the graphics rendering. We’ll get to find out next week, with the release of the GeForce Experience Pack.
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The rivalry between Nvidia and AMD is hardly kept underwraps, but things have gotten pretty catty of late. Back in April, bit-tech spoke to Nvidia’s chief scientist, David Kirk, about their current competition. Dismissing Intel’s forthcoming GPU, ‘Larrabee’, Kirk went on to sneer at ATI and AMD as well.

“Well, ATI’s CTO left about six months ago and AMD’s CTO left a week ago. Now, what does that say when the chief technical person at a company quits? AMD has been declining because it hasn’t built a competitive graphics architecture for almost two years now—ever since the AMD/ATI merger.”

Read on for the depths of wit that followed.

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And because I like my shout-out to lovefoxx strap for this piece so much, I’m going to re-use it here. The most influential man in British videogames journalism, Eurogamer’s Tom Bramwell, showed the sheer extent of his influentialitude by making me trot off and actually cover a hardware event. Me! In this case, NVIDIA talking about their near-future plans involving - basically – allowing you to turn your 3D card into a PhysX card via software and even repurposing your old 3D card as a PhysX one when you upgrade. Apparently. They could have told me computers would be able to produce milk and I’d have been equally credulous. Go read here. There are jokes and local colour.

I keep seeing this story doing the rounds, and originally didn’t deem it worthy of a post, but seeing as this week seems to have inadvertently been Hot Button Issue Week on RPS, may as well give you folks a chance to have a shout about Assassin’s Creed too. I know you do like to.
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Some potentially promising news from the hardware side of PC gaming. Gamesindustry.biz has been chatting to NVIDIA’s Roy Taylor, who’s admitted that the graphics card company’s dreadful naming conventions (should we buy a GeForce 8800 GS, GT, GTS, GTX or Ultra? And with 320, 512 or 640Mb of memory?) are a little on the bewildering side, and proferred vague promises to simplify them. Somewhat ironically, Taylor is “VP of Content Business Development”, a title which does absolutely nothing to explain what his job actually involves – but hey, he sounds important.

Imagine, though, a world where choosing your next graphics card didn’t involve an hour of head-scratching research. Does a bright future await us? Mild venting beneath the cut.

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