NVIDIA: Consoles Don't Threaten PC Gaming

So just how many pc games did Nvidia finance in the last couple of years? Their point of view carries about the same weight as a fart in the wind.
 
As long as there are PCs there will be PC games.

Some game companies may leave the PC market, but someone else will take their place.
 
Valve, finalize some pc hardware settings, and make a Steam Machine console

I dont want one, but if was as simple as plug into a tv + keyboard and mouse support
pc gaming would be alot eaiser for a whole new market, thus making Developing PC game a really viable option. It would already support every game on steam and have heaps at its launch.

You could even sell steam cards so you can buy of steam without a CC

A just-add-water online pc gaming console
 
Valve, finalize some pc hardware settings, and make a Steam Machine console

A lot of the people here would absolutely hate this considering how fanatic the DIY attitude can be (pre-built computers suck, consoles are for n00bs, home built PCs good!). That said, if there was good support, quality components, and it didn't cost an arm-and-a-leg like the obscenely overpriced gaming rigs by HP/Voodoo, etc, then yeah, I could see getting into this.

Not gonna happen, but I guess my knee-jerk response shows how implicitly I trust Valve at this point. :)
 
I don't own a 360 or a PS3, if anything I'm a PC fanboy, but I can objectively look at my own platform. The number of good games for the PC is down and the number of good PC exclusive games is almost nill.


I can totally agree here. I am a PC fanboy and PC gaming is not dead, but getting ill.
I do own consoles (PS2, WII) and I sadly say I have bought more console games in the last 2 years than I did PC games.

I don't enjoy seeing games get the shaft because of porting (bioshock..) and even many of the big name games are just not fun and/or just ride the name. I havn't played a game on the pc in a long time that has just grabbed me in and pulled me in for the ride.

We need Monolith to go back to their old ways! They always made the greatest games. (Shogo, Blood, NOLF, Tron 2.0)

The plus side....

At least we finally have budget video cards that are worth their money. Sub 150 dollars cards that can give you a good experience. We never really had this before and it does make the PC a much more viable option, specially to retail PC makers. Now if they could all figure this out and just put the cards in the machines, even the cheap ones.
 
I can't take it anymore!

I can't count how many times I have heard people say that with PC gaming you have to upgrade yearly. This is so false! You don't have to upgrade every year or every 6 months. It always takes 12 to 18 months for the software to catch up to the hardware anyways in most cases. Then about a year after that you will most likely need to upgrade lol

So while consoles give you up to 5 years before a new upgraded system is released you have around a 2 year (give or take) with PC. Also the argument that with consoles you can have your friends over in front of the big screen. Yes, this is true but you can also just buy a cable fit it to the back of your PC video card and you get the same thing. Also the lack of mouse/keyboard for consoles is a huge thing that consoles just can't get right. It just ins't the same trying to use a mouse/keyboard 8 feet from your screen sitting on the couch or on the floor in your living room. It just dosen't work. If it really work all consoles would be releasing there basic systems with mice and keyboards instead of those stupid awkward controllers!

I would bet the barn that if Sony and Microsoft allowed everyone to upgrade there consoles like we could PC's everyone would, and that would kill the price argument as well which is the only thing I can even think of that consoles have over PC gaming....
 
Forgot to add: This is why I hate the way [H] benchmarks. They use the "highest" playable which gives a false sense of performance. If they used "the most common" you would see the cheaper lower end cards giving perfectly playable performance in todays games as well. I don't consider the super high resolutions that [H] always uses common by any stretch....
 
Forgot to add: This is why I hate the way [H] benchmarks. They use the "highest" playable which gives a false sense of performance. If they used "the most common" you would see the cheaper lower end cards giving perfectly playable performance in todays games as well. I don't consider the super high resolutions that [H] always uses common by any stretch....

This is a preformance enthusiast forum. These are the numbers we want. Most of the people here own bigger than a 19" LCD. Frankly, I'll never own smaller than a 24" LCD now that I've got one.

The fact of the matter is a 8800GT will play nearly any game at max settings at at 1280x1024.
 
Quite a few people are not taking into account the new online content delivery mechanisms.

Things like Steam, and MMO's. These new mechanisms count for what, Billions of revenue?

I'm not scared.

exactly, i will say it again

count the number of people on

WoW
CS:S
TF2
CoD4


those numbers alone will dwarf anything on console.
 

While I don't necessarily disagree with what your saying. I also agree that the next big thing to push people back to regular non-wow type gaming will be more then good looks (look at what Nintendo did). I just have reservations about all the aforementioned techs. Outside steam all of these are new business models that haven't been tested (these are the tests) and could easily fail as much as succeed. My second reservation would be with the infrastructure MS offers through Live or and eventually replicated by Sony almost all of these can be done on the console itself. Specially anything using download base, as even for the Xbox which doesn't have a HD on all of their consoles, any downloaded media with common sense require a HD.

I didn't say Crysis doesn't look better then UT3 on the PS3 I sad that for many its not that much better. Quake 2 was leaps and bounds better then Quake 1. Quake 3 and Unreal engines where the same over Quake 2, Unreal2, Doom3, Source, and Crytek where again gigantic steps over the ones previous. This Gen starting with Unreal3 and Crytek2 engines not only don't look that different from each other, but its a first for them to be available at release, with little changing, on consoles (a frame rate lock and reduced rez don't count). I am not talking about the finer points that the Crytek engine might look better overall, in comparison to previous generations these look very close.
 
While I don't necessarily disagree with what your saying. I also agree that the next big thing to push people back to regular non-wow type gaming will be more then good looks (look at what Nintendo did). I just have reservations about all the aforementioned techs. Outside steam all of these are new business models that haven't been tested (these are the tests) and could easily fail as much as succeed. My second reservation would be with the infrastructure MS offers through Live or and eventually replicated by Sony almost all of these can be done on the console itself. Specially anything using download base, as even for the Xbox which doesn't have a HD on all of their consoles, any downloaded media with common sense require a HD.

XBL can't really support free-to-play models. The reason is that Microsoft wants a cut of all of that, and that tosses some of those models to the verge of profitability. The situation becomes even worse when you chuck ads in because Microsoft already plasters ads all over the place (despite charging $50 just to use XBL) and would once again cut too deeply into the developers'/publishers' pockets. In short, while all of those models could theoretically be transported to consoles, they would require Microsoft and Sony to heftily back-off from the only way that they turn a profit on their consoles (which means they'd need to revert to turning a profit on the consoles themselves and then... well, then in order to stay even remotely competitive with PC hardware you're looking at PC prices).

As for CryEngine 2 vs. UE2/UE3, imo there is a huge difference, but whatever. Perhaps some of these improvements are starting to get into the territory of the not-easily-noticeable, but they're blatantly apparent to me. And as far as CryEngine 2 being available on consoles goes, it isn't yet. Crytek is still working on it, and by all accounts they've been having a ****load of problems with it (ironically, just getting their AI to work has apparently been one of the biggest PITA's). Undoubtedly much like Far Cry 2 they'll need to drop shadowmapping on the console version and reimplement lightmaps and similarly scale down numerous other technologies that push CryEngine 2 over the top on the PC. If FC2 is any indication, you may start seeing "benefits" from this with Crysis: Warhead as some of the scaling-down they'll be working-on for consoles can also be applied to older/low-end PC's. Either way, imo CE2 is going to have a tough time on consoles because what makes it such a great PC game engine (its significant future-oriented approach and upward scaling that allow it to sport visuals that nothing else has yet matched) it won't be able to leverage on consoles.
 
Bioshock on PC sucked because it didn't have proper mouse controls. 1.0 version had mouse acceleration which you couldn't remove even with .ini tweaks, patch 1.1 fixed that but there was still a very noticable amount of mouse smoothing.
If you've played fps games without mouse acceleration for a long time like I have, it is very difficult to feel comfortable when playing Bioshock.
 
Personally, PC games have been sleep for the past 2 years or so. Consoles have advanced so much. The way I see it is simple. Consoles gives you a good 5 year use before needing to upgrade to "next" gen. PC is an pretty much an annual upgrade.

Erm, my PC is almost 5 years old, the hardware inside dates back to the last 3-5 years (read my sig) and it plays the games I want to play...granted I'm sure it can't handle Bioshock or Crysis, but I can play World In Conflict without any problems. The rule of PC's hasn't changed, you buy top end parts, the system should last three to five years, at the time my system was on the bleeding edge of high end (2003), the only things that have changed are the graphics card, and the RAM, the original card developed a memory glitch and the RAM was a free upgrade.

I'm pretty sure it's every three years on average for consoles to change, the new revised 360 should be arriving anytime this year, and the PS3 is only going to last so long.
 
8800 Ultra will still be the single GPU king for another 2 weeks and it is nearly 2 years old.
 
XBL can't really support free-to-play models. The reason is that Microsoft wants a cut of all of that, and that tosses some of those models to the verge of profitability. The situation becomes even worse when you chuck ads in because Microsoft already plasters ads all over the place (despite charging $50 just to use XBL) and would once again cut too deeply into the developers'/publishers' pockets. In short, while all of those models could theoretically be transported to consoles, they would require Microsoft and Sony to heftily back-off from the only way that they turn a profit on their consoles (which means they'd need to revert to turning a profit on the consoles themselves and then... well, then in order to stay even remotely competitive with PC hardware you're looking at PC prices).

As for CryEngine 2 vs. UE2/UE3, imo there is a huge difference, but whatever. Perhaps some of these improvements are starting to get into the territory of the not-easily-noticeable, but they're blatantly apparent to me. And as far as CryEngine 2 being available on consoles goes, it isn't yet. Crytek is still working on it, and by all accounts they've been having a ****load of problems with it (ironically, just getting their AI to work has apparently been one of the biggest PITA's). Undoubtedly much like Far Cry 2 they'll need to drop shadowmapping on the console version and reimplement lightmaps and similarly scale down numerous other technologies that push CryEngine 2 over the top on the PC. If FC2 is any indication, you may start seeing "benefits" from this with Crysis: Warhead as some of the scaling-down they'll be working-on for consoles can also be applied to older/low-end PC's. Either way, imo CE2 is going to have a tough time on consoles because what makes it such a great PC game engine (its significant future-oriented approach and upward scaling that allow it to sport visuals that nothing else has yet matched) it won't be able to leverage on consoles.

I am sorry if I was implying that Crytek2 was available on the console, considering the massive difference in hardware to run Crytek2 at a decent resolution, it may not ever fit. I think that says more about Crytek programming then the quality of the Engine. Again I am not saying that U3 is even on the exact same level of Crytek2. I am just pointing out that outside looking at just the strengths of the engine and pointing them out on screen, the two are decently matched specially to the unknowing, and just happen to both be Gen 5 engines. With that in mind one of them (U3) happens to be available on both the Xbox360 (GoW1 and soon 2) and the PS3(UT3).
 
Basically, consoles are better than pc only in that it is more difficult to cheat. Pc is better in every other category such as graphics, sound, mouse and keyboard support, tweakability but not cheating. The sole reason I think that I went to console only is cheating. I cannot play and fps on a console. It literally is painful.

Mix the two. Get the best of all worlds and I am IN.

mouse and keyboard support? Srsly?
 
Anyone who suggests Consoles will bring about the end of PC Gaming are not PC Gamers.

Why? Simple. Decent Video cards today cost as much and more than any Console System. And thats just the Video Card. When you add up all the components a Gaming PC needs to Perform, you see that PC Gaming is a very expensive hobby, at least more so than console gaming.

Having said that, PC Gamers who spend this kind of money will keep spending it regardless of whatever console the put out.

BOTTOM LINE: Gaming experiences are different on each platform and each has its intended audience.

As a bonus, PC Gaming will always stay on top of Consoles in terms of game innovation, storyline and in Visual Quality.
 
Regarding the U3 / CryEngine 2 graphic engines, this is the same case we say with the Doom3 Engine and the Half-Life 2 Engine. They are just diferent Engines. They both look really good doing what they do. But I would not imagine trying to build a game like UT3 or GoW with the CryEngine2 and I would not imagine trying to make a game like Farcry 2 on the U3 Engine.
 
As a bonus, PC Gaming will always stay on top of Consoles in terms of game innovation, storyline and in Visual Quality.

I would tweak that slightly, in that so long as companies like Valve, Blizzard, and a few others like them stay loyal to the platform, then you will have all that stuff you mentioned. :)

Any platform, be it Nintendo's, Sony's, Microsoft's, or the PC, they all depend on the artists that are producing for them. No matter how much power your platform is packing, it is irrelevant if you don't have the right people making the software. There is no direct correlation between innovation, storyline, and the power of a platform. Nintendo has made groundbreaking games for over 25 years on what is decidedly "weak" hardware.

Fortunately Valve and Blizzard are staunchly pro-PC, so you'll continue to have great games from those two companies at the very least. :)
 
I am sorry if I was implying that Crytek2 was available on the console, considering the massive difference in hardware to run Crytek2 at a decent resolution, it may not ever fit. I think that says more about Crytek programming then the quality of the Engine. Again I am not saying that U3 is even on the exact same level of Crytek2. I am just pointing out that outside looking at just the strengths of the engine and pointing them out on screen, the two are decently matched specially to the unknowing, and just happen to both be Gen 5 engines. With that in mind one of them (U3) happens to be available on both the Xbox360 (GoW1 and soon 2) and the PS3(UT3).

Gen 5 my ass... CryEngine 2 is a generation ahead of UT3. And take two, monitors and slap them side by side- one of them running UT3 at PS3 settings (lower texture rez, worse lighting, 30fps, slower gameplay, 1280x720, etc...) and then set-up Crysis on the monitor next to it running on High settings even at the same resolution. If you don't think the monitor running Crysis looks a hell of a lot better, then you REALLY need to speak w/your eye doctor...

CryEngine 2 and UE3 are different, but you could certainly make UT3 on CryEngine 2 while Crysis would be impossible to replicate on UE3. To use CryEngine 2 with UT3, you'd just need to scale down the shadowmaps, tone down the texture rez, and then apply a ****load of shaders. UE3 doesn't support shadowmaps so you'd be quite hard-pressed to replicate Crysis's image quality based on that alone. But there are other issues... Though I would say that CryEngine 2 would likely run its UT3 rendition slower than UT3 just because it uses technologies like shadowmaps which are more gpu-intensive. But it wouldn't have a problem matching UT3's image quality (it would actually likely exceed it because it just can't scale some of its tech down to where UE3 is).
 
..cm'on steam machine :) (earlier post)

it would be some low level thing that we would all laugh at but if it came with a free copy of TF2 i can bet your sweet ass that someone who only knows halo multi with thumsticks would see the light, we need to combat to scourage of thumbsticks ppl!
 
as long as both exist and are both good i think its great :)

I agree. A true gamer doesn't care about the platform he or she is playing on, just so long as the games are good. Hardware is great but it is secondary to software, and fortunately every single major platform has tons of great games to play.

This isn't like the early 90s, it was brutal back then. You had the PC and the SNES, that's it. :) Choice or lack thereof is no longer a factor.
 
I agree. A true gamer doesn't care about the platform he or she is playing on, just so long as the games are good. Hardware is great but it is secondary to software, and fortunately every single major platform has tons of great games to play.

This isn't like the early 90s, it was brutal back then. You had the PC and the SNES, that's it. :) Choice or lack thereof is no longer a factor.

What happened to the Genesis?

Anyway, if the game is good that's fine, but the point is that PC games designed specifically for PC's tend to be better thanks to better graphics, superior interfaces, greater performance, and best of all- modability. And when I say modability, I don't just mean maps and mods themselves, which alone are great additions to PC games, but rather the ability to really customize your experience. For example, I use my Wiimote and Nunchuk with the Devil May Cry 4 PC Demo. I simply can't do that on a PS3 or Xbox 360 because of their closed nature. Therefore, PC games present gamers with more opportunities to enhance their experience.
 
consoles keep the PC online experience slightly more free from the worst smacktards.
 
Gen 5 my ass... CryEngine 2 is a generation ahead of UT3. And take two, monitors and slap them side by side- one of them running UT3 at PS3 settings (lower texture rez, worse lighting, 30fps, slower gameplay, 1280x720, etc...) and then set-up Crysis on the monitor next to it running on High settings even at the same resolution. If you don't think the monitor running Crysis looks a hell of a lot better, then you REALLY need to speak w/your eye doctor...

CryEngine 2 and UE3 are different, but you could certainly make UT3 on CryEngine 2 while Crysis would be impossible to replicate on UE3. To use CryEngine 2 with UT3, you'd just need to scale down the shadowmaps, tone down the texture rez, and then apply a ****load of shaders. UE3 doesn't support shadowmaps so you'd be quite hard-pressed to replicate Crysis's image quality based on that alone. But there are other issues... Though I would say that CryEngine 2 would likely run its UT3 rendition slower than UT3 just because it uses technologies like shadowmaps which are more gpu-intensive. But it wouldn't have a problem matching UT3's image quality (it would actually likely exceed it because it just can't scale some of its tech down to where UE3 is).

Thats if you scale it down. Look I am not going to debate which one is better, but in no way is the engines generationally different and if you think so then you have issues. I have both a PS3 with UT3 (my only game and normally I would have gotten it for the PC but I needed at least one game for the PS3 didn't want to be only a movie player), and Crysis. Its a great wide open environment engine (with great water), but its poorly written, because they still can't get people or up close trees to look right, even on the PS3 I think the UT3 textures are more detailed specially for player models, and they over use motion blur (which they also did well) to cover up the fact they couldn't get heavy POV movement to work with out the frame rate dropping to low. That said the Crytek2 is probably the better engine technically but if they can't get it to run well on current gen systems, I wonder how well someone who licenses the engine will do. Just because the U3 can scale down well and look as you put it crap on the consoles, doesn't mean its a bad engine, I am sure people could show you its massive PQ on a PC system, but the fact that it runs on the consoles without years of taking a hacksaw to it is something that no 3d console gen has accomplished. If you truly compared Crysis and U3 against Farcry or Quake 4 you would see what I am talking about.
 
Thats if you scale it down. Look I am not going to debate which one is better, but in no way is the engines generationally different and if you think so then you have issues. I have both a PS3 with UT3 (my only game and normally I would have gotten it for the PC but I needed at least one game for the PS3 didn't want to be only a movie player), and Crysis. Its a great wide open environment engine (with great water), but its poorly written, because they still can't get people or up close trees to look right, even on the PS3 I think the UT3 textures are more detailed specially for player models, and they over use motion blur (which they also did well) to cover up the fact they couldn't get heavy POV movement to work with out the frame rate dropping to low. That said the Crytek2 is probably the better engine technically but if they can't get it to run well on current gen systems, I wonder how well someone who licenses the engine will do. Just because the U3 can scale down well and look as you put it crap on the consoles, doesn't mean its a bad engine, I am sure people could show you its massive PQ on a PC system, but the fact that it runs on the consoles without years of taking a hacksaw to it is something that no 3d console gen has accomplished. If you truly compared Crysis and U3 against Farcry or Quake 4 you would see what I am talking about.

What settings are you playing at...? There is a monumental difference between the quality of Crysis's textures and UT3's- particularly up close.

And I still don't see how UE3's ability to run on consoles keeps it in the same generation as CryEnigne 2, when, in fact, CryEngine 2's technical superiority is what makes running it on consoles nearly impossible. From your comment, PC game developers should simply sync their development with console tech, which is completely fallacious thinking imo and is quite backwards. Technologies such as shadowmapping are next generation technologies that will become the norm for new game engines over the next couple of years (PC game engines, that is; the consoles don't have enough juice to support lightmaps, as Dunia and numerous other attempts have revealed).

And Crysis's performance, as has already been pointed-out, is due to its vastly superior image quality- it does way, WAY more tha UT3 does and hence why Crytek is having a hell of a time getting it working on GeForce 7xxx series hardware (aka, the consoles) and looking respectably. Certainly, to adapt CryEngine 2 to consoles would be to strip it of its benefits, but why should an engine constrain it to what consoles can do?

The current generation of PC graphics cards, while quite superior to the 360 and PS3, do not appear to be outstripping the consoles much atm largely because of PC gamers' standards versus console gamers' standards. I cannot think of a single 360 or PS3 game that runs at 1080p. The fact is, most run at 720p- if even that (Call of Duty 4 runs at 1024x600, Halo 3 at 640p, etc...). However, PC gamers increasingly expect to run their games at 1920x1200 resolution- or above! Do the math and you'll see that 1920x1200 rez has 2.5x as many pixels as 720p. When speaking of 2560x1600, the difference is over 4x as many pixels- and this is assuming that your console games are actually running at 720p as opposed to the 600p and such that many opt for to keep their framerates somewhat acceptable. But the PC doesn't stop there. No, PC gamers also want to layer 16xAF (Halo 3 runs at 640p with BILINEAR FILTERING) and 4xAA on top of those vastly greater resolutions. Console games typically (and particularly UE3 games- there is not a console UE3 game that uses AA) use Trilinear filtering (to clarify, that means no AF) and zero AA and still often struggle to maintain 30fps and 720p (many simply don't- the only way CoD 4 could sorta run at 60fps was by downscaling to 600p). And speaking of framerates, I would not run UT3 on my PC at 30fps- I vastly prefer averaging at least 55fps in UT3 and maintaining my minimum framerate to only ever drop to 40fps, which I can accomplish at 1600x1200 with the highest settings, 16xAF, but unfortunately no AA b/c UE3 handles AA so poorly. In fact, running UT3 at 30fps on the PS3 forced Epic to decrease the entire gameplay speed by 20% which detracts from the UT3 experiece.

But now with the GTX 280 and HD 4870 en route, we're finally able to talk about conquering Crysis at 1920x1200 at Very High settings and 36.7fps. We can now finally start to factor in total visual improvements as opposed to just compensating for higher rez textures, better lighting, higher resolutions, AA, and AF. But by your suggestion, we should stick with UE3 and remain in the veritable stone age- do not progress because your sorry PS3 can't handle anything better than UT3 with downscaled textures, lighting, and 720p of rez with no AF or AA at anything more than 30fps.
 
What happened to the Genesis?

Anyway, if the game is good that's fine, but the point is that PC games designed specifically for PC's tend to be better thanks to better graphics, superior interfaces, greater performance, and best of all- modability. And when I say modability, I don't just mean maps and mods themselves, which alone are great additions to PC games, but rather the ability to really customize your experience. For example, I use my Wiimote and Nunchuk with the Devil May Cry 4 PC Demo. I simply can't do that on a PS3 or Xbox 360 because of their closed nature. Therefore, PC games present gamers with more opportunities to enhance their experience.

I wasn't a Sega kid. ;)

And yes, I agree on mods, been playing them ever since the Aliens total conversion for Doom back in 94. :) It is something unique to PCs that consoles do not have. But again, I was talking about the unique experiences and games that each platform can offer. And let's face it, not every platform is going to get the same games, and they all have great games at this point.
 
I wasn't a Sega kid. ;)

And yes, I agree on mods, been playing them ever since the Aliens total conversion for Doom back in 94. :) It is something unique to PCs that consoles do not have. But again, I was talking about the unique experiences and games that each platform can offer. And let's face it, not every platform is going to get the same games, and they all have great games at this point.

Yeah- was just pointing-out that if every good game got at the very worst a good PC port, there would be no need to own anything else, xD

Anyway though, this generation I've found that with only a few exceptions (ok, MGS 4 is really the only exception 'cause GTA 4 is definitely going to hit the PC eventually), the PC has received every console game worth getting, and the Wii really is where it's at for those games that you just can't get on the PC. Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, Mario Galaxy, and Smash Bros Brawl (I would have added RE4 Wii but though I don't have the PC version of RE4, I'm pretty sure there is a GlovePIE script for it or one could be made).
 
Yeah- was just pointing-out that if every good game got at the very worst a good PC port, there would be no need to own anything else, xD

Anyway though, this generation I've found that with only a few exceptions (ok, MGS 4 is really the only exception 'cause GTA 4 is definitely going to hit the PC eventually), the PC has received every console game worth getting, and the Wii really is where it's at for those games that you just can't get on the PC. Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, Mario Galaxy, and Smash Bros Brawl (I would have added RE4 Wii but though I don't have the PC version of RE4, I'm pretty sure there is a GlovePIE script for it or one could be made).

I totally agree with you there. And yes, you buy a Nintendo console to play Nintendo games, period. :) Its the plus side of having proprietary hardware that is pushed by some of the best first party developers around.
 
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