Next gen consoles effect on PC gaming?

R

RamonGTP

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Nov 9, 2005
Messages
8,150
This is more of an opinion thread, just wondering what everyone thinks is going to happen with PC gaming when the next gen consoles hit?

While there is nothing official yet, all the rumors point to the next PS and XBOX as not being as huge of a step up from the PS3 and 360 as they PS3 and 360 were from there predecessors.

Probably largely due to economic times. Sony is not in the same financial position it was 5 years ago and probably cannot afford to lose money on each console sold, especially if they have to invest the crazy amount of R&D they did with the PS3.

Microsoft I'm sure is doing ok financially, and on top of that, they seem to know what works as far as price point and probably learned an important lesson thanks to Sony that the market will not support an over-priced console (especially with today's economy) seeing how long it took for the PS3 to gain traction.

Anyway, assuming the rumors are true, that new consoles will be far more evolutionary than revolutionary, Initially I thought this was bad and that we were going to be stuck with more mediocre games that didn't take advantage of our hardware. Which to a certain extent, I'm sure will be true.

The flip side is if the two big consoles both use existing PC hardware perhaps lightly modified (which are the rumors) that could lead to more and better quality ports than what we've been seeing the last several years.
 
Well neither MS nor Sony has to spend much R&D on consoles. Sony was rather stupid for trying to develop an entirely new kind of processor for a consumer device, normally you roll that out in research/test environments, then dedicated servers/compute units and so on working it down to the consumer market eventually. A better option, and what MS did, is just have someone else provide you with shit they make. They gave IBM specs for a processor and got a PPC process, and ATi the graphics specs and got something based on the X1900.

Same shit can be done this time around. The GPU companies have plenty of technology to adapt to consoles, and they've got a number of CPU company choices. No R&D dollars, just a commitment to buy parts.

The issue is console cost. There is just only so much people will pay, and the less you charge the more people will be inclined to buy. So someone could make a console like a high end PC, they could whack an i7, GTX680, and 16GB of RAM in to a console setup... However it would cost $1000+, just like an actual PC with that hardware would. So they have to scale it back to a level that is cost effective.

In terms of PC gaming it won't hurt it. Console ports will look better because, well, they look better on the consoles. Higher rez texutres, better physics, that kind of thing. Also if the consoles suck, it may lead to even more interest in improved PC versions.

Part of the problem this generation was when the consoles came out, they were pretty heavy hitting. You needed a fairly good PC to match them, and a real high end one to play their ports at 1080 to 1200. So porting a game was a feasible thing to have it look good. Hell you had to offer options to reduce it on the PC. Publishers got to like that and got complacent.

However now PCs are so much visually better there is getting to be a reason to support them better, to give those higher end visuals, for ads if nothing else.

Thus I think it'll make things better no matter what. Maybe not a lot, but still.
 
I think your initial post is spot on. The economic climate has changed big time since 2003-2005.

Yes Sony cant afford to lose money so cant be as radical or generous and I'm sure the developers have told both Sony and MS that there is no way they are going to develop for both if the two systems are way too far apart in performance.

I bet this time around there has been quite a few meetings between MS and Sony to make sure the products are similar power wise. I've noticed far less antagonising between the two firms lately.

To be honest the most sensible thing to have done would have been for them to team up.

Yes team up. Sony come up with the console design and MS come up with the software and development side. Never happen but it would be interesting.
 
Remember that the 360 and PS3 are based of the last gen DX9 card (x1900/7800 respectively) with some of their initial DX10 designs thrown in. Think have far we have come since then, think of what those consoles still create graphically so even a designed based on the $150-200 chips should be 5-10x more capable.

Two things though:
1) we probably won't see a new console till x-mas 2013 at the earliest, later would be my bet though. So the design process is only just getting started (they probably had a small group thinking up plans and intended purpose/designs for the last 6 months or so). Some inescapable conclusions and design goals are probably being targeted. How to stop used games/piracy (always online) balanced with the need to be standalone for those without internet. The increasing attractiveness of Digital downloads and further along live stream tech like OnLive. How Microsoft and Sony tackle these challenges will be interesting.

2)The next gen consoles will be able to have plenty power and be very graphically advanced. However to the layman who usually can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p content you show him the new consoles and he will say, meh not much difference for $400-600. So how can they Microsoft and Sony sell these new consoles (ties into first point). They other side of the graphic debate is that it is already prohibitively expensive to develop current gen AAA games and their art/graphical assests, Imagine the cost increase of a 5 fold increase in power!

Honestly, you probably could not pay me to be on the the team to develop the next console because it is one big damned if you do, damned if you don't. In reality this gen is the last of the stanard console model that joe public will accept. The customer will have to be educated to rethink what his "game" console to do so that he will buy, but really what both companies need is a way to appeal to more people to sell games to as many people as movies do so that the larger install base will make up the increased cost. Gaming needs to go mainstream enough that not playing games is wierd like not watching movies is wierd so that we can evovle gaming, but then you start the chicken and egg concept(which of course has and answer, the egg)

Wow, sorry for all that.
 
Typical game console lifecycle suggests that if you're a no show at E3 in the year 2012 then nothing is showing up on the streets in 2013. This is what we're looking at from the big 3. Nothing new. Nothing teased.


If we're at the point where it's going to be 2014 at the earliest before we see anything, then stagnation is the easy bet to make as far as an effect on PC gaming right there unless some developers suddenly start caring about pushing the envelope on creativity again.


By all rights, MS is arguably overdue to present the next Xbox. It should have shown up at last year's E3 but they decided to inject artifical life support with Kinect and it worked for them to a point. Certainly this E3 should have been it but they're going to punt the ball again.

I'd say they should be the ones that go first but you never know. Whichever console hits first: Sony's or MS, will simply be the raised "lowest hardware bar" for console ports same as it is now unless some developers decide otherwise.

Until this happens, we're looking at mostly stagnation for PC gaming with few exceptions. It's a shame that's the way it is by and large.
 
Related, via Wired. TL;DR Epic is petitioning hardware makers to keep pushing limits rather than settle down, Wii style (no big surprise, they need hardware to run Unreal 4 engine). At the same time, U4E will have an easier creation pipeline to combat the ballooning costs of making AAA games.
 
it might suck, the component that cost the most and will have the most effect on gaming is system ram.

since all the cards will be directx 11 compliantant overall level of power is not important. what is important is level design and textures and that's all on memory.

if we could get 1 gig system memory that would be a step in the right direction.
 
ikarinokami said:
it might suck, the component that cost the most and will have the most effect on gaming is system ram.

since all the cards will be directx 11 compliantant overall level of power is not important. what is important is level design and textures and that's all on memory.

if we could get 1 gig system memory that would be a step in the right direction.
Click to expand...

Yeah it always seems to be the scrimping on ram, cache and bandwidth between the components that causes the issues not the actual core parts.
 
I'd be interested to see either MS or Sony make good on their promise not to show any new hardware at E3 this year, but instead hold a separate press conference sometime this fall announcing it. Really though, as long as developers have some form of dev kits to start working on the games, they can announce the consoles a month before they go on sale and I think they should sell well. As long as they do a good job of getting the correct message out, and the hardware and price are right, I don't see why they would need a super long lead up.

As far as the OP goes, it seems like towards the end of every console cycle PCs get a little more focus from the devs and I think we are seeing that right now. With more PC like architecture in mind for the next generation, I would hope the devs might be able to scale a little better between the two. Now with the rumors being AMD GPUs in both consoles, I wonder what that means for PCs using NVIDIA. Will some parity develop there?
 
I heard that only Sony was playing it safe (rumor) but that MS was still upping the anti quite a bit. Keep in mind that MS rumors are split between 2 rumored devices.

2 Xboxs, 1 the "Loop" is a more of a set-top type box .. think Roku/Boxee/AppleTV thats primary function is media delivery but has power to play digitally distributed games. Mostly XBLA but some may be full downloads, no optical media. The other Xbox is is the "Durango" or Xbox "8" (new leaked name). This is the full successor to the 360, feature rich.

I think any kind of underpowered Xbox rumor is most certainly talking about the "Loop" and not "Durango/8".
 
I think you are going to see more convergence between the PC and the game console with the next batch. Also there is probably going to be a far bigger push on Sony to stop doing proprietary BS. It is far easier for companies to make games for the Xbox than for Sony. It can be argued that Sony has the better hardware, but what is it actually improving in games? There seem to be more features and 'extras' in Xbox games than in equivalent PS3 games.

So you will likely see a step to newer, but cheaper hardware, more home media integration, and a bigger step to downloadable games and content. I would probably be surprised if the new systems didn't come with larger hard drives or options to include larger hard drives internally or externally.

As for who will come out with a new one first? I honestly think the ball is in Sony's court. Microsoft has no real reason to come out with a new version as they have the best selling device now. Sony has been plagued with problem after problem between the unit costing so much to develop, to the poor initial online capabilities, to the constant hacking of their databases. Sony may have won the blu-ray battle, but even that couldn't help salvage the console battle. And this coming from someone that owns a PS3 instead of an Xbox.

As for how it will affect PC gaming? Honestly? I think it is too early to tell. Already there has been a big impact on PC gaming with dumbing down the graphics and extremely slow/poor adoption of Eyefinity and NV Surround capabilities. I honestly feel there is going to be a convergence of the two sides which is sad in the short term for PC and [H] gaming enthusiasts.
 
Last edited:
RamonGTP said:
Probably largely due to economic times. Sony is not in the same financial position it was 5 years ago and probably cannot afford to lose money on each console sold, especially if they have to invest the crazy amount of R&D they did with the PS3.
Click to expand...

You have to remember that Sony lost a ton of money on the PS3 because of its commitment to the blu-ray technology. Blue ray players were almost as expensive as a PS3 when they were released. I think the PS3 blu-ray combo has paid off for sony, but it cost them a fortune off the back.

RamonGTP said:
The flip side is if the two big consoles both use existing PC hardware perhaps lightly modified (which are the rumors) that could lead to more and better quality ports than what we've been seeing the last several years.
Click to expand...

The graphics on a ps3 are just terrible now. I had stepped away from PC hamming for the last 2 years and was mostly PS3. Now that I've returned to PC gaming, it almost hurts my eyes to game on a ps3... lol

Sycraft said:
In terms of PC gaming it won't hurt it. Console ports will look better because, well, they look better on the consoles. Higher rez texutres, better physics, that kind of thing. Also if the consoles suck, it may lead to even more interest in improved PC versions.

Part of the problem this generation was when the consoles came out, they were pretty heavy hitting. You needed a fairly good PC to match them, and a real high end one to play their ports at 1080 to 1200. So porting a game was a feasible thing to have it look good. Hell you had to offer options to reduce it on the PC. Publishers got to like that and got complacent.
Click to expand...

Yeah graphics will definitely be better. I think we will be surprised how powerful the new systems will be. I bet any money they will rival a $800 to $1000 PC just like last time. Since they will be so powerful we should see some truly amazing console ports.

NoOther said:
So you will likely see a step to newer, but cheaper hardware, more home media integration, and a bigger step to downloadable games and content. I would probably be surprised if the new systems didn't come with larger hard drives or options to include larger hard drives internally or externally.
Click to expand...

I completely agree. Think of technology in general in 2006. The iPhone didn't come out until 2007 and in 2006 Facebook just became available to non .edu users and special companies. Social networking and downloadable features were things that were added to both systems. The next generation systems will be built around these features. Should be interesting to see what steps they take.

NoOther said:
As for who will come out with a new one first? I honestly think the ball is in Sony's court. Microsoft has no real reason to come out with a new version as they have the best selling device now. Sony has been plagued with problem after problem between the unit costing so much to develop, to the poor initial online capabilities, to the constant hacking of their databases. Sony may have won the blu-ray battle, but even that couldn't help salvage the console battle. And this coming from someone that owns a PS3 instead of an Xbox.
Click to expand...

Again I agree. Sony shot themselves in the foot with the PS3 release. Letting Microsoft get the jump IMO had a lingering devastating effect. The PS2 made Sony cocky, and Microsoft capitalized on that cockiness with the 360.



IMHO, I have always been a sony fan. I have refused to buy in to the crapbox; however, I am 99% sure I will be switching to Microsoft. I think the new xbox will usher in new world of PC - Console integration. Microsoft has a huge advantage since it puts out the OS for most of the computers in the world. Could we see a modified version of Windows OS in consoles? I have a felling that the new consoles will basically be PCs, and Microsoft is in the best position to capitalize.
 
doug_7506 said:
You have to remember that Sony lost a ton of money on the PS3 because of its commitment to the blu-ray technology. Blue ray players were almost as expensive as a PS3 when they were released. I think the PS3 blu-ray combo has paid off for sony, but it cost them a fortune off the back.
Click to expand...

Actually I would say Sony lost money because of the Cell processor development for the PS3 and much less to do about the Blu-ray player. The Blu-ray player cost as much as they say it cost, since it was their technology. And its the same technology in a ton of Blu-ray players which they licensed. So actually they have made out like a bandit on Blu-ray. However, the cell processor and overall hardware design of the PS3 was expensive, and that did not pan out with them as Microsoft proved they could build a comparative product with cheaper parts. Microsoft proved yet again, that software mostly drives user's decisions on purchases with their more streamlined online experience and ease of connecting with friends and playing online with them. Sony never really caught up, their online system is still complete crap compared to Microsoft's.
 
I think its going to be roughly similar to now, with proponents of each playing their device of choice. One of the big advantages, pc had over consoles, was online playing. Now every console has it. Also while there is some overlap in games, it will still be helluva easier to get a group together and play consoles then pcs. Thats part of the reason why consoles are popular and stole some of the pc thunder. pc is great for the solo gamer at home, but if you have friends coming over, kinda hard to split screen gaming on pc...
 
Last edited:
I can see a next gen console having initially high sales. Its the latest and greatest and will play games at some epic level of detail. But eventually, like the current consoles, they will become outdated again.

Computer users will have the ability to keep up with the latest and greatest hardware then suffer in the long run when games are being created to support the now-old next-gen consoles. Just like it is now.

The freedom with a PC and what I do with it outweighs a pretty console that will have a static build until I buy a new one.

So what is the effect? Games ported to PC from the console that are dumbed down, clunky, and buggy. Poor UI and controls. Games being developed for a console that won't push the ability of modern computers.

In other words, there won't be an effect at all. History will repeat itself.
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
If new consoles have less than 4GB of RAM they will suck
Click to expand...

They will. Consoles have always been limited by RAM. I have never heard of one that wasn't limited by the paltry amount of RAM they always use. What's worse is that video and system RAM are shared as well. If console manufacturers haven't figured out that adding more RAM could go a long way I doubt they will when the next consoles release. It was understandable before the xbox generation, but now with RAM prices so cheap it's a pretty poor place to cut costs.
 
D-Wiz said:
How to stop used games/piracy (always online) balanced with the need to be standalone for those without internet. The increasing attractiveness of Digital downloads and further along live stream tech like OnLive. How Microsoft and Sony tackle these challenges will be interesting.
Click to expand...

Sony will keep the blu-ray. MS will adopt blu-ray, if they're not too [censored]rdly. Not just for the off-line market, but because console disks make popular Christmas presents. I just don't see a market for something like Steam gift cards.

However to the layman who usually can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p content you show him the new consoles and he will say, meh not much difference for $400-600. So how can they Microsoft and Sony sell these new consoles (ties into first point). They other side of the graphic debate is that it is already prohibitively expensive to develop current gen AAA games and their art/graphical assests, Imagine the cost increase of a 5 fold increase in power!
Click to expand...

The hardware cost premium for 1080p over 720p has mostly evaporated. Modern high development cost is more a matter of making vast worlds than of modest differences in resolution. (Between higher resolution and DX11/12, consumers will see obvious improvements to image quality between console generations.)

In reality this gen is the last of the stanard console model that joe public will accept.
Click to expand...

Indeed. I have long said this next generation will be the last generation of dedicated game console (as a cultural phenomenon). The simple reason is that games will no longer require dedicated gaming hardware sold at a loss, to provide a platform that people will buy games for.
 
I think there will be some new tech that will out date our pc like last time. I just bought a brand new latest, greatest single core pc and it was instantly outdated when 3 core xbox came out.
I am holding off on pc upgrades in till the next gen console come out.
 
455olds said:
I think there will be some new tech that will out date our pc like last time. I just bought a brand new latest, greatest single core pc and it was instantly outdated when 3 core xbox came out.
I am holding off on pc upgrades in till the next gen console come out.
Click to expand...

If there's new tech thats going to instantly out-date our PC's it's doubtful it will be from a performance perspective. If you read around, there's nothing to suggest the next gen consoles are going to be power houses. They may incorporate a new player interface not yet seen on console or PC but I doubt they will be as powerful as high end PC's at their given time. It would simply be too expensive.
 
RamonGTP said:
If there's new tech thats going to instantly out-date our PC's it's doubtful it will be from a performance perspective. If you read around, there's nothing to suggest the next gen consoles are going to be power houses. They may incorporate a new player interface not yet seen on console or PC but I doubt they will be as powerful as high end PC's at their given time. It would simply be too expensive.
Click to expand...
I was thinking more like,they will have 13 core cpu or dx12. Something like that.
 
It has been stated by Sony that the PS4 will not have exotic hardware like the "cell processor" but regular PC centric hardware.

So in all actuality the PS4 will be a PC.


I see no effect on the PC market.
 
It seems like the ROI that Sony and Microsoft got with the last generation of consoles wasn't as high as expected nor did they break even as soon as they expected, my gut tells me that they'll likely go for fairly tepid GPU solutions for the next gen consoles, if the rumours of AMD powering both next gen consoles with mid range 7xxx parts is true, then that pretty much confirms my suspicions.

However it depends on how they choose to spend that additonal GPU power, fundamentally if you take a look at console gaming as it is right now you have several fairly big problems:

Games in low graphics settings, 720p or below, low texture budgets and bad quality effects.
Games with low frame rates, often dipping way below 30fps
Games with no real image enhancement like decent AA or AF

You could take the leap in graphical performance that the new consoles would bring, and spend that additional GPU power almost exclusively on running all the current gen games in proper 1080p, at a steady 60fps, with something like 4xAA and 16xAF to tidy up the image which badly needs doing in most cases.

If they were to do that I wouldn't expect any improvement in quality what so ever, there's so many corners cut with the consoles now that you could use all the extra GPU power to simply correct those issues.

If however they stick to a measly <30fps for most games, decide to stay in 720p or below and keep leaving out essential graphics enhancements like AA and texture filtering, then they could potentially spend that additional GPU power on higher polygon environments, better shader effects, more post processing etc, and those benefits would carry over to the PC.

Honestly I don't see the point in doing something like doubling the polys on a player model if you're going to stay in rubbish 720p with no AA, you're probably not going to appreciate that detail.
 
I think that the next gen consoles will bring alot of graphical advancement to PC gaming on the mainstream end. There will always be cool eastern european companies pushing PC graphics but that will be absent in most main stream games. I personally think (with no evidence of course) that valve will deliver a new engine with significant upgrades when the new consoles release. I think it will accompany HL3 or some major game. I think people will finally start developing on UE4 and so on. I feel like sadly PC gaming for a long time is going to be married to console development cycles.

So basically I think alot of game development is sitting stale in the graphical department and the only way to break out of that is to wait for the next gen consoles.

Also this is not just because of consoles, it is also because the average PC user has moved away from the upgradeable desktop to the laptop, and some have moved to stupid all in ones. All this means that integrated and low end graphics are becoming harder to get around.
 
Microsoft should make their next console a PC. Everything compatible with Windows PC. They should make it that.. making a game on the next XBox make it work on PC and vice-versa. This would give them a BIG edge over both Sony and Apple. They could also continue improving DirectX for both devices. They could even start selling hardware upgrades for it and the next XBox would basically become a PC with proprietary hardware. Money for everyone and no way for Sony to keep up.
 
BoomWav said:
Microsoft should make their next console a PC. Everything compatible with Windows PC. They should make it that.. making a game on the next XBox make it work on PC and vice-versa. This would give them a BIG edge over both Sony and Apple. They could also continue improving DirectX for both devices. They could even start selling hardware upgrades for it and the next XBox would basically become a PC with proprietary hardware. Money for everyone and no way for Sony to keep up.
Click to expand...

I can see more integration between the console and pc, but i dont see playing pc games on xbox.. I could see maybe them doing xbox games on pc, but never vice versa.. Reason being royalties. PC has no royalty to release a game. Though i really doubt xbox games would sell good on pc, due to the inherent differences in pc vs console.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top