Unreal Creator Proclaims PCs are Not For Gaming

An anonymous reader writes "TG Daily is running an interesting interview with EPIC founder and Unreal creator Tim Sweeney. Sweeney is anyway very clear about his views on the gaming industry, but it is surprising how sharply he criticizes the PC industry for transforming the PC into a useless gaming machine. He's especially unhappy with Intel, which he says has integrated graphics chipsets that 'just don't work'."

I'm not worried, because...

[PC and Sony Fanboy (1248258)]

There aren't many GOOD pc games coming out lately. So, if the manufacturers drop the ball on hardware ... it doesn't REALLY matter, because the software developers aren't doing much better either.

I don't think that it is a downward spiral, either - software companies aren't focusing on consoles because the PC hardware isn't great ... they're focusing on consoles because there is more money in consoles!

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[DuncanE (35734)]

Personally I find that only games that require a mouse are worth playing on a PC now anyway. And I dont include FPS's in that either. So really I only play RTS's on the PC, but I would happily play them on a console and then wouldnt have to worry about driver issues and bugs due to odd hardware conflicts.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Oh please. I don't understand you console jockeys at all- FPS can. not. be played on a controller. None of them can. Halo came somewhat close to playability, but anyone who ever seriously played the terrible PC port of one of the first two Haloes can attest that without the added challenge of dealing with a joystick input, the game is ridiculously easy, and multiplayer is a joke- anyone with moderate railgun skill can just crank up their resolution, grab a sniper rifle, and score nonstop headshots from a mile away. Sorry Wii, the input should be seamless and not the only thing that makes a game challenging. The mouse is obviously the easier input device for FPS, so it alone should be used. Ever wonder why the console versions of multipleyer FPS can never play with the PC versions of the same game? The first time they tried that was with Quake 3 on the dreamcast and on the PC. Even if you've never played the game yourself, you know the reputation- ridiculously fast amphetamine-twitch gameplay. The PC players absolutely curb stomped the dreamcast players until they were drowning in the blood pouring out their eyes.. it was a huge joke at the time because the dreamcast players just couldn't even score a kill- you'd look at the scoreboard and it would be like naturally the top half of the scoreboard is reserved for PC players, the bottom half for dreamcast players.. the controller just sucks that much.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[Telvin_3d (855514)]

regarding the Wii; It's taking a while for the various companies to figure the quirks of the new control scheme. However, some are getting there. Drop a few dollars and rent Resident Evil or Metroid for the Wii for a weekend. I've seen it happen with a half dozen people now where they bitch about the controls for a hour and then everything clicks and away they go.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[reidconti (219106)]

Maybe we care more about having fun than about worrying about optimum input devices, highest possible mouse resolution, upgrading our video cards every 6 months, and so on. All to end up with a "gaming" PC that makes too much noise and crashes all the time (or is down for repairs).

I like to come home, flip on my 360, know it'll work (joke's on me I guess) and play games for an hour or two.. then put it away and go on with my life. It's nice to have a system that just does what it's supposed to do. The game makers know what hardware I'll be using and optimize the game for it. Perfect.

Go ahead, tar and feather me as a Mac user, but I work with computers all day; the last thing I want to do is come home and mess with one too. I love my job, but home time is relax time.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[by Anonymous Coward]

I'm a PC gamer and that's exactly what I do with my PC. I play the recent Valve games. Last upgraded the motherboard and CPU in 2004, and last upgraded the graphics card a year ago. It just works. It doesn't crash because I don't use it for anything other than gaming. The problems you list are myths I think, there is no need to be a "hardcore PC gamer" and continually upgrade. PC games are not so demanding.

I guess I am using the PC as a games console, but it's a games console with cheap games, decent controls and no software restrictions, and I can reboot into Linux. For me, that is a much better deal than the 360. I suppose another advantage would be that I could replace the parts myself if they failed, whereas if I had a games console I would have to send it back to the manufacturer (red ring of death?). However, this has not happened yet.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[Andrzej Sawicki (921100)]

Maybe we care more about having fun than about worrying about optimum input devices

Unfortunately, as with RTS games, this is directly correlated. Every FPS I tried playing on a console has had me screaming (and I mean screaming, even though I'm usually very patient) in minutes because of the crappy interface. All I usually do on my PC, is pick the right mouse sensitivity, tick off antialiasing, and I'm set for fraggin'. (Plus, on my PC, I get to play Civilization.)

All your other points are well taken, though. It does take some thinking ahead to make a PC that is silent (as in the hard disk being the loudest component), and suited for gaming at the same time. And it doesn't end with the hardware, you also have to know how to choose the right settings for each game.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[totally bogus dude (1040246)]

If you're constantly have to repair your PC or if it "crashes all the time", then you're using it wrong. I get home from work, flip on my PC, surf the 'net, check my email, watch a video, play some games, and it just does what it's supposed to. Has done since I built it, and I even swapped out the motherboard to replace my Athlon CPU with an Intel Core Duo a year or two ago and it still works (okay, I admit I was a bit surprised by this).

Yes, every now and then I may replace a component; I got a new video card about 6 months ago for example, and while the cards I had then were pretty good it did give a noticeable boost to performance, and it was worth it. On a console, you get what you're given, and the only way to upgrade it is to buy a new one when it comes out. That has its benefits and its drawbacks; clearly you think it's a benefit and I can understand that, but I do like to be able to make my gaming PC more powerful whenever it suits me and my budget rather than having to wait until a new console is available with games to make it worthwhile. I suspect the XBox 360 will be showing its age compared to PC titles by the time it gets a replacement, but this is the first generation of console games that have actually been comparable to gaming PCs so I could be wrong.

Also, games for the consoles seem to be noticeably more expensive than PC games. It might just be because it's easier to pirate PC games, but it may also be to help make up for the manufacturer's losses in selling you the console hardware in the first place.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[crossmr (957846)]

I don't get people who claim how frequently they have to upgrade their machine, or how much time they allegedly spend maintaining it. I'm calling it BS and the person who modded you up some clueless console fanboy.

I upgraded last summer to a core 2 duo, an 8800 GTX, and a SB X-Fi. I bought the machine 3 years ago. In that 3 years the only thing I'd done was add 1 GB of ram to it and a TV Tuner card. During that time I played all the latest and greatest including first person shooters all the way along.

I have no plans to upgrade 6 months from when I bought that unless I travel back in time, and likely I won't upgraded the graphics card for another year and a half.
I can't recall the last time I had a problem so severe on my machine that I had to stop anything I was doing and focus on it rather than do what I wanted to do on the machine.

But if you fool yourself in to thinking that a Radeon 9250 is a good upgrade choice, or that you'll get a free ipod for punching that damn monkey, I could see why you might have to upgrade often or spend a lot of time "maintaining" your machine.

Not everyone who plays a PC is some kind of hardcore lan player who spends hours every day optimizing his water cooling device and trying to squeeze another MHz out of his overclock. However optimum input goes hand in hand with fun. Its not much fun stumbling your way through bad controls, which used to happen on the PC, when some developers thought it was a good idea not to let players map controls (that only happens in bad console ports now). Anyone who can look at it objectively should be able to realize that there are certain types of games which just lend themselves to a mouse/keyboard input and that joysticks fail at.

As another benefit, should something actually go wrong with my PC, I'm only inconvenienced for as long as it takes me to get a part and put it in. If its something non-critical, like one of my storage drives, optical drives, sound card, tv tuner, etc. I'm only without it for as long as it takes me to power it down and put the new one in and turn it back on.

I don't have to sit around twiddling my fingers while Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony get the unit back to me.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[Ephemeriis (315124)]

I don't get people who claim how frequently they have to upgrade their machine, or how much time they allegedly spend maintaining it. I'm calling it BS and the person who modded you up some clueless console fanboy.

I upgraded last summer to a core 2 duo, an 8800 GTX, and a SB X-Fi. I bought the machine 3 years ago. In that 3 years the only thing I'd done was add 1 GB of ram to it and a TV Tuner card. During that time I played all the latest and greatest including first person shooters all the way along.

I have no plans to upgrade 6 months from when I bought that unless I travel back in time, and likely I won't upgraded the graphics card for another year and a half.
I can't recall the last time I had a problem so severe on my machine that I had to stop anything I was doing and focus on it rather than do what I wanted to do on the machine.

I used to be a pretty big gamer myself... Used to spend almost every spare dollar upgrading something. Birthday, Christmas, whatever - the ideal gift was an upgrade of some sort. I never had the income to be "bleeding edge", but it was a fun hobby.

That all ended about four years ago. I changed jobs, my lifestyle changed, bought a house, and I just didn't have the time or resources to put into constant upgrades like that. That computer served me very well over those four years. I was able to play pretty much anything I wanted to - World of Warcraft, Condemned, Half-Life 2, Portal, WarCraft III, Oblivion. Sure, I had to turn down the options on some of them...some of them ran a little slow...but I was still able to enjoy myself.

This year, for Christmas, I decided it was time to upgrade. I spent approximately $600 to build a new PC from scratch. Dual-Core CPU, 4 GB RAM, decent video card, LCD monitor... Nothing bleeding edge, but a substantial upgrade for me. I can play absolutely anything on the market right now, most of it with the settings completely maxed out. And unless the industry changes dramatically in the next year or two, I should get the same 4+ years of use out of this computer.

And my old computer has been recycled into a very nice media center PC.

The folks who claim that you have to constantly pour hundreds of dollars and hours of time into PC gaming are simply doing it wrong. Sure, some folks get a kick out of being bleeding edge... But you don't have to do that just to play games on the PC. You can get a perfectly good gaming PC for nearly the same price as a console, and get nearly the same life out of it.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[Ash Vince (602485)]

Maybe we care more about having fun than about worrying about optimum input devices, highest possible mouse resolution, upgrading our video cards every 6 months, and so on. All to end up with a "gaming" PC that makes too much noise and crashes all the time (or is down for repairs).

Sorry, but you must have last played PC games quite a long time ago.

I currently own a PC bought several years ago (Athlon XP 3200+, GTX6800 and 1 Gig Ram). Ok, this was fairly expensive when I bought it but it has been good for me ever since. We are not talking about 6 months between upgrades, we are talking 3-4 years, long before your 360 came out. That discounts your first point about upgrades, I will only need to upgrade when games I want to play start comming out Vista only and that hasn't happened yet.

Optimising mice and video cards? If you mean selecting what resolution to run each game this is hardly a chore, most games will autoconfigure by looking at your PC specs now. It is also amazing how many games still run at the top resolution my monitor (1280*1024) even though the PC is now several years old.

Makes too much noise or crashes all the time?? Nope, never. If a PC crashes nowadays then something is wrong with it, probably in hardware. I know windows has a reputation for being buggy, but I have had very few issues with windows XP.

So now I have shot down all you bad points about PC gaming let me elabourate on the better points:

1) Multifunctional

With a PC you can do other stuff as well as play games. You need to write the occasional letter, no problem. Almost all of us nowadays need to do the CV thing occasionally and alot of companies now accept word document CV's so you do not even need a printer.

2) Higher Resolution

PC's can support much higher resolutions than your TV, this has been true for years.

3) Cheaper games

Since your 360 is actually a cheap PC in disguise that was sold at cost Microsoft have to make money somehow, they do that by adding an extra licence fee to the games. They then use a patent or hardware device to prevent people producing software for the system without paying MS a licence fee. This fee makes console software more expensive.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[Ephemeriis (315124)]

The PC is fundamentally flawed ... by being a moving target. How fast is a PC? What graphics chipset does a PC have? A developer has to make the game tweakable, so that it works on everyone's PC and the people with the lithium-cooled turbofan graphics card can stop moaning that it doesn't play at 15241x19841 in 64 bit colour.

I've always thought this was part of the appeal of PC gaming myself.

Sure, not everyone wants to stay on the upgrade treadmill... I fell off it a while back myself, and my system is nowhere near "bleeding edge" anymore... But it's nice to be able to constantly push the limits of what the hardware and software can do. The Wii/360/PS3 is only capable of a certain level of performance even under the best of conditions. And in a few years it'll be obsolete, and replaced by a new console. And everyone will rejoice because the new console lets you do new and wonderful things that you couldn't do before.

But on the PC you don't need to wait a few years for your entire platform to be declared obsolete to get new and wonderful things. All you have to do is throw in a new video card, or physics accelerator, or more RAM, or a faster CPU, or whatever. This lets developers constantly push the envelope. And it isn't even just a matter of making new games do cool things. I can throw a new video card in my system and see better performance in my old games as well.

And, to be honest, most PC titles are fairly scalable. I was able to play Oblivion on a machine that had not been substantially upgraded in about four years. It didn't look great, but it played, and I enjoyed myself quite a bit. The same thing can be said for Half-Life 2, and Portal. So you certainly don't have to constantly upgrade your machine if you don't want to...

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[Z34107 (925136)]

Absolutely right; upgrade treadmill is easier than ever nowadays.

Get a nVidia chipset that can support SLI. Buy one "second-from-the-top" video card for today (8800 GTS or GTX) and when it becomes obsolete, pick up a second one from the bargain bin. 2x videocards doesn't necessarily mean 2x the framerate, but it helps.

Intel just switched to a 45nm process and is rolling out their new architecture, so I doubt any new CPU sockets are going to crop up. Heck, I heard a lot of existing motherboards may support Nehalem with a BIOS patch. Plus, Intel's low-end dual- and quad-core chips overclock extremely well - instead of upgrading, overclock until you burn the shi*t out of it. By the time that happens, what you were originally going to upgrade to will be dirt cheap.

DDR3 memory is coming out, but probably won't supplant DDR2 for quite a while yet. If your motherboard doesn't support DDR3, you'll still be good for a long time. <baselessprophecy/> Memory is cheap - $120 last year got you 1GB; nowadays, that'll get you 4, at least according to Maximum PC.

Storage is cheap, and the new terabyte drives will eventually come down in price. $1500 can get you a "no compromises" PC, and with planning, will be upgradeable for a long way to come. My little brother's gaming rig was purchased January of 2001 for <$2000 and has had no work done to it other than a vid card upgrade (nVidia 8600 something-or-other.) But, it does just fine on everything but Crysis.

Interestingly enough, I play Team Fortress 2 on a LCD HDTV through the component out dongle on my 8800 GTX video card. It kicks the pants off of the Xbox 360 version. Oh well for console superiority.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[try_anything (880404)]

I've always thought this was part of the appeal of PC gaming myself. Sure, not everyone wants to stay on the upgrade treadmill... I fell off it a while back myself, and my system is nowhere near "bleeding edge" anymore... But it's nice to be able to constantly push the limits of what the hardware and software can do.

I think this is the point of the article -- PC gaming only works for people who think this way. People who want to be able to play games without understanding what goes on inside their computer are screwed. Say a kid's dad buys him a computer for his birthday. Then the kid can't play any games, because his father didn't understand that most computers have insufficient graphics to play currently available games. PC gaming is *only* for people who can at least name the major components of their computer, decipher the requirements on game boxes, read gaming websites to get the scoop on upcoming technologies and games, and spend their money efficiently to get the hardware required to play the games they want.

I don't blame PC retailers. They should sell cheap computers. They shouldn't artificially inflate the price of PCs just so every PC is a gaming box. The responsibility falls squarely on game creators who only want to work with the latest technology and make the prettiest games. Obviously this attitude alienates them from the majority of potential buyers, because most people aren't obsessed with the latest computer technologies. Given $300 to spend, many people will not choose to upgrade their computer. They might spend it on a tent, a new outfit, brewing equipment, clothes for their kids, medical care, or a trip to see their favorite band instead of blowing it on gaming technology. According to Tim Sweeney, this makes it impossible for him to market games to those people. Those ignorant bastards, spending money on their favorite pastimes instead of spending it on video cards and RAM upgrades. How horrible for the gaming industry to have to put up with that kind of behavior.

The computer industry should not take that choice away from them, and it seems to me that is what Tim Sweeney is asking for. He wants to close the 100x spread between gaming boxes and cheap retail boxes and reduce it to 10x or less. From the interview, this is how I understand his logic:

1. I only want to create games targeted at the newest and most expensive gaming platforms.
2. I can only scale a game's processing requirements down by about 10x.
3. Many people prefer to buy cheap computers with integrated graphics, which are 100x slower (for gaming) than high-end machines.
4. Clearly we would all be better off if every PC owner could buy current games.
5. Therefore, the PC industry should not enable people to make the "mistake" of buying cheap computers with integrated graphics. Retail sellers should only allow people to buy machines that have at least 10% of the gaming capacity of the newest machines.

Obviously if Tim Sweeney is concerned about people with integrated graphics, he could design games that run on integrated graphics. He wants to have his cake and eat it too -- he wants the prestige of designing for bleeding-edge gamers and the large market inherent in designing for average computer users. And he wants the retail PC industry to accomplish this for him by forcing everyone into a narrow range of hardware choices.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[sqldr (838964)]

"Those are fundamental flaws of Windows, not PCs."

and linux. and bsd. and mac os.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[GauteL (29207)]

"Those are fundamental flaws of Windows, not PCs. Don't blame the hardware manufacturers for Microsoft's blunders."

Please.... you can't blame Microsoft for everything. It isn't Microsoft's fault that ATI has shoddy drivers. It isn't Microsoft's fault when two hardware manufacturers implement a spec subtly differently so that the system crashes if you combine the two pieces of hardware in one system. It isn't Microsoft's fault when a hardware manufacturer releases a firmware update that fixes a bug which some other manufacturer actually depends on as a 'feature'.

The number of different combinations you have to test to cater for every possibility is simply staggering, so the best you can do is to test the most likely combinations and hope that most follow the specs so well that this works for most people.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[FredFredrickson (1177871)]

However, I do have to agree with you about the performance fanboys. Most games these days (and consoles haven't been spared either) seem to be more like tech demos to show off better and prettier graphics, while sacrificing gameplay.

Agreed! Look at CNC3. Just came out in the past year, but the graphics don't even touch games like crysis. So why is it such a good seller? Gameplay. It's proven time and time again, gameplay trumps graphics by far. I'd rather have a game I think is fun than a game that's got flashy graphics but is just another FPS.

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Not many good pc games coming out? Who cares about new games when you have such a massive library of games available? Just have to have your madden 09? Then go away. Like a good game despite Windows 95 graphics? Break out Chip's Challenge [therhogue.com] and see if you still remember how to beat it. Craving something new? How about Steam's library, which is massive and is actually priced reasonably unlike any console game at all. And has free mods for the more popular games that are good for more play hours than the game itself-- how many people have bought Half-Life 2 Deathmatch just so they they can play SourceForts, and never even launched HL2DM? How about Insurgency [insmod.net]? PC gaming is dead? Does netcraft confirm it?

Re:

[PC and Sony Fanboy (1248258)]

Thats my point - who cares if PC hardware isn't on par with consoles - there aren't any games coming out with those requirements, so stick to the old ones!

Re:I'm not worried, because...

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

And who said PC hardware isn't on par with consoles? Have you seen those new NVIDIA cards? From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

Two 65nm process GPUs, with 256 total Stream Processors (128 per PCB) Supports Quad SLI. 1 GiB memory framebuffer, possibly up to 2 GiB [this is insane 2ghz GDDR3 memory] 128 GB/s memory bandwidth

Re:Unreal Tourniment is a game?

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

Why the hell do EA men and Sweeney make the crapiest games and then complain about the gaming market?

In his defense, Tim Sweeney (and by extension, John Carmack) create gaming engines for a living. The games they put out (Unreal and Quake/Doom respectively) are mostly technology demonstrations, and not really games in of themselves. Tim expects licensees like Activision to produce "fun" games off his work.

Sooo... in the grand scheme of things, Sweeney has found himself a free pass out of the creative side of game development.

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[smellotron (1039250)]

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TFA Clarification

[GWLlosa (800011)]

He's not saying that the PC is not a gaming platform, or that it shouldn't be. He's saying that there are 'high-end' PCs that can play games, and 'low-end' PCs that can't, and the gap between them is large and transparent to the average consumer (who doesn't realize that buying a PC with "Integrated Extreme Graphics" is the same thing as buying a PC that "can't play modern games").

Re:TFA Clarification

[iainl (136759)]

But, as ever with Epic staff, he seems to labour under the frankly ludicrous idea that the solution is to stop home and business users who don't need an 8800 from buying anything slower.

If he's not able to label his game box clearly enough as needing a £300 graphics card, that's his problem, not Intel's. They make chipsets that are perfectly good enough to accelerate Aero Glass, and there are plenty of consumers that only need that.

Re:TFA Clarification

[MightyYar (622222)]

You nailed it. Furthermore, his message is very confusing:

You pay twice as much money for 30% more performance... That is just not right.

Fair enough, but then a few questions later:

The biggest problem in this space right now is that you cannot go and design a game for a high end PC and downscale it to mainstream PCs. The performance difference between high-end and low-end PC is something like 100x.

I mean, I get what he is trying to say, but it's not a very consistent message. He's just spouting facts that support his flawed argument that everyone else should be concerned about how hard it is for him to design a game.

He also doesn't consider reality:

A PC should be an out-of-the-box workable gaming platform.

So the interviewer then asks "what about notebooks?":

There is no room to put a fast GPU into that compact form.

So now he wants EVERY computer to be an out-of-the-box workable gaming platform... well, except for 50% of them. So apparently portability is an acceptable trade-off, but cost is not?

He also makes this odd statement regarding Intel's integrated graphics:

They're not faster now than they have been at any time in the past.

Weird thing to say, since integrated graphics seem much, much better to me. In the bad old days integrated graphics meant watching the windows redraw... if you were lucky you got some 2d acceleration. Now you can actually run in 3d. I'm presuming that he means they aren't faster in relative terms - which is probably true.

By the way, gamers:

My work computers are Dell workstations. Currently, I have a dual-CPU setup, dual-quad cores for a total of eight cores, and 16 GB of memory. We at Epic tend to go to the high-end of things. Until recently, we used to buy high-end consumer PCs, simply because they tend to deliver the best performance. However, as time goes by, we constantly run into stability problems with CPUs and graphics, so we decided to switch to workstations. We just need very, very stable computers and they perform very well.

I think that it is very interesting that he does not try to use super high-end gear. It really tells you where the sweet spot is for gaming - might as well use the gear that the developers do.

You're way off the mark

[Nicolas MONNET (4727)]

I just bought a new motherboard with integrated Intel GMA3100 graphics. I ended up buying a low end Nvidia 8400 for 40 EUROS because it sucked so much. The Intel can barely run Google Earth. It runs Quake3 worse than a 6 year old Geforce. The 8400 runs ET:QW at 30 fps @ 1680x1050, medium-low settings with shadows disabled. That's not £300, just £30, and it's capable of running recent games decently.
So yeah, the guy's right, Intel's graphics adaptors are terrible. I don't know about the X3xxx series, they're supposed to be much better, but I wouldn't count on it.

* OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE /. still can't display the EURO sign, what the fuck is wrong with you people? *

Re:You're way off the mark

[mdarksbane (587589)]

I agree 100%. The difference between an integrated graphics chip and a $50 consumer-grade card from *two* generations ago is staggering.

A Geforce 6600 will still run new Unreal Engine games with the graphics turned down to medium. A 5900 will run them on low (I think, anyway.. they might be missing a few extensions needed). That's hardware from several years ago.

An intel integrated graphics card still can't run Quake 3 well.

He's saying we need to get into that 10x range from low to high, not that everyone needs an 8800. When the average new product gets trounced by a low-end standalone card from four years ago... how are you supposed to develop games for the platform?

Re:You're way off the mark

[MightyYar (622222)]

So yeah, the guy's right, Intel's graphics adaptors are terrible.

But you aren't seriously arguing that every computer buyer should have to pay extra money to make the life of game developers easier, are you? Because I maintain that integrated graphics will always suck as long as they are using system memory, and giving them their own memory will cost money. If for no other reason, integrated video will always exist for the corporate market - and that by extension makes it available to the broader market.

Re:TFA Clarification

[Weegee_101 (837734)]

I think you're missing the point here though. It sounds to me like he's more pissed off with the fact that Dell, HP, and the other vendors are slapping the cheapest video card they can into the computers, ripping out the PCI-X slots, then selling the computer for $800 and marketing it as a "Entertainment PC". I admit I agree with you a little, but the Intel chipsets really are pretty terrible. Usually they pull out most of the flashy shaders and such for video games leaving the developers a tiny toolset that they could make an engine reminiscent of the Quake engine.

Re:TFA Clarification

[p0tat03 (985078)]

Because you, the consumer, demand flashier and better graphics. Not to mention that the level of graphics we're talking about is *impossible* to implement on CPU - the GPU trounces your CPU's performance many times over for matrix math and other calculations.

Scalability is certainly a problem that game developers face - your game should look fairly decent even on a relatively old card, but PC gaming (especially of the 3D graphics variety) has always been an enthusiast thing. If you're not willing to buy a new $200 video card every year or so, you have no hope of keeping up.

I object to your description of game devs as "lazy". The usage of the GPU is a matter of necessity, and it's not easy either. Game developers are not taking the lazy way out by "not writing code" (they are), and relying in GPU functions - what does that mean anyway? Do you think there's a magical "awesome graphics" API on your graphics card that we can call to make things shiny? The kind of work we do on the card (shaders) is sometimes a LOT more complex than what we do on the CPU.

Oh, and DOOM works fine on integrated chipsets because... *drumroll* it doesn't use it! All your 3D work is done on-CPU, and I'm sorry to say that as fast as our CPUs have gotten, they are FAR from fast enough to power all of the pretty graphics you're used to seeing. We are, what, 100 times faster than the CPUs of the DOOM era? But our performance needs for games have progressed leaps and bounds beyond that.

I'm so tired of buying games for my 10 year old, then having to disappoint her when it won't install because it doesn support pixelshader 1.N, and 10^27 polygons per second etc

Read the requirements on the box! Every PC game I've ever bought has been *perfectly* clear about its video card requirements up front. After all, PC developers don't want pissed off consumers any more than you like getting disappointed when a game won't run. And seriously, if you're buying things like Lego Star Wars for your child, anything higher than a GeForce 6600 will run it buttery smooth, and that's a $50-100 card these days.

Honestly speaking, IMHO PC devs have been doing a good job with scalability. The only game recently that required a massive upgrade just to play was Crysis, everything else (Portal, TF2, C&C3, etc.) scales VERY well down to some downright low-end hardware.

RTS

[hansamurai (907719)]

I really believe the last bastion of PC gaming lies in real time strategy games, a genre that essentially requires at least a mouse. I guess many die hards would say the same about first person shooters, but I am comfortable playing with either a mouse or controller, and ever since Halo came out back in 2001, the FPS scene has been migrating to the consoles at a pretty quick rate. The PC will always have Counterstrike, but when it gets pretty popular console games such as Gears of War a year after their console release, you can tell that times have changed.

But yeah, real time strategy games, I don't think we'll ever a decent port of say Starcraft 2 to the consoles, but I suppose if anyone can pull it off, Blizzard can.

I'm not really sure if PC games losing to consoles is entirely a bad thing, I think people are just fed up with trying to keep their system up to date with hardware, nasty CD protection schemes that kill their drives, and console ports that can play just as well and in the comfort of their living room.

The (sorta) myth of upgradeability

[JSBiff (87824)]

"Better hardware. You can always throw in a new (or extra) graphics card (relatively inexpensive) or more memory (cheap) in three years and bring your PC up to spec for the latest games. You have to buy a whole new console system at $400-$600 every three years."

That's sorta true. . . but not so much. . .

• You can't upgrade the CPU (usually) without upgrading the mobo (that is, while you might be able to upgrade to a slightly faster CPU, usually you can't upgrade to the next generation of CPU which gives the big performance gains vs. the incremental upgrade from 3.0 to 3.2 GHz)
• You might be able to upgrade the graphics card, once; about every 2-3 generations of graphics cards and mobos use a new physical interface (i.e. the recent transition from AGP to PCI-X), which requires a new Mobo
• You can upgrade the amount of ram, but ram is constantly getting faster, and to use the faster ram requires a new mobo
• Then the new Mobo might possibly require you to get a new hard drive (if, e.g. it supports only SATA, and not PATA. . . or it supports the same physical interface standard, but at a slower speed, e.g. the transitions over the years from 33Mbit/s to 66 to 100 and beyond) - yes, you could by a PCI card to provide the old interface, but at that point it might make sense to use the money instead to get a new hard drive (so that the HD isn't a performance bottleneck in your upgraded system.
• Then when you upgrade the Mobo, so that you can upgrade everything else, the new mobo might require a new case and power supply, or other new components (almost certainly it requires new RAM, but you were planning to buy that anyhow)

By the time you finish upgrading your computer, you've spent enough money that it might have made more sense to by a medium-spec next gen machine, instead of trying to upgrade your last-gen machine to high-spec (for that generation). Because the medium spec machine will likely be more powerful than the high-spec last-gen machine. Or, you have, really, bought a new computer, one part at a time, anyhow, and probably spent $400-$600, at least, to do it.

Many good points, but I don't quite agree

[amazeofdeath (1102843)]

For example:

[...] a problem that we have today, and that is the fact that every PC should have a decent graphics card.

Why would a computer meant for browsing the Internet and reading email need a separate graphics card?

i915

[westcoast philly (991705)]

Of course integrated graphics aren't for gaming. that's what a dedicated video card is for. If you want to use your PC for gaming (Which I do, casually.. with dual geForce 8600GTSs) you have to add on.. it's a simple procedure as everyone here is probably aware. but integrated graphics are VERY useful for office environments where they don't NEED 3d performance. wow.

Creativity

[c_g_hills (110430)]

I fully agree with the sentiment. In the good old days, you had to be creative to get the most out of the hardware you had, and gameplay was at the centre (or center) of attention. These days it is all about how many frames per second you can push from your graphics card and cpu.

If the consolers will get off their high horses...

[Evil Kerek (1196573)]

and stop having an anuerism everytime someone tries to add a mouse, I'd pretty much stop using my PC to game with.

I will NEVER use a joystick to play an FPS. Period. It's inferior. Period. A good mouser can beat the best joysticker everytime, given a level playing field (and before you start, it's almost NEVER a level playing field - so don't tell me how good you are on a console. The target areas are programmatically larger. The AI is dumbed down. Etc, etc. These are facts - look it up)

If you even START to suggest adding a mouse option to consoles, the kiddies starting pitching a fit and immediately begin insulting your mother. It's pathetic - the fear of having their asses handed to them in combat is funny. I really enjoy my 360 - but not having a mouse as an OPTION prevents access to a lot of what is cool on it.

Until that time, the PC platform will remain strong. Consoles need a mouse. It's just silly they don't have them. If M$/$ony will EVER gets some balls and support a mouse, I think you'll see the PC side take a huge hit. I'd rather play on my 65" HD.

EK

Re:If the consolers will get off their high horses

[abaddononion (1004472)]

If M$/$ony will EVER gets some balls and support a mouse

Hmm?

Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3 can be played with mouse and keyboard just fine.

Keyboard and Mouse

[tripmine (1160123)]

I used to be a complete hater when it came to keyboard and mouse fanboys. But even since my friends and I started playing UT2K4 together about a month ago (yeah I know it's an old game shut up), I have seen the truth. FPS's are meant for the mouse. Until a console fully supports this, I will refuse to believe that PC gaming is dead.

Re:Keyboard and Mouse

[abaddononion (1004472)]

Again with these posts. Clearly Im going to have to give up on pointing this out, but:

I cant speak for the 360 (I just dont know), but the PS3 already supports mouse/keyboards fully. It uses USB interfaces, so there's no difficulty finding a mouse or keyboard to hook up to it. If you want to go wild, you can buy an expensive bluetooth keyboard for it and save a port. Game support might be running a bit lower. I dont know about CoD4, but UT3 fully supports playing with the mouse/keyboard on the PS3. You have to set it up, but it's not a hard process and can be googled.

Im not sure what more people are looking for with this "I demand full support NAO!" thing.

Before the mouse vs. joystick wars begin.....

[acvh (120205)]

this article and interview are NOT about mouses and joysticks. this article and interview are NOT about PC vs. Console.

This article and interview ARE about how the overwhelming majority of PCs sold in the US do not come remotely close to being able to run current game software. It is almost a plea to Intel to stop making integrated graphics chips, because they suck at running games. If 90% of the PCs sold can't run the software you write and publish, then you aren't going to be a big fan of PC gaming at the moment.

Yes, we know, if you're posting here you can build your own PC, upgrade your graphics card every six months, and use your mouse and keyboard to headshot Osama Bin Laden in his cave from orbit. That doesn't change the fact that you are a part of a minority, and can expect that other game publishers will begin thinking of bailing out on the PC as a platform.

Who's fault is this?

[GauteL (29207)]

If 90% of all PC's sold can't play 90% of the games sold, who's fault is this? Is it the hardware manufacturers that sell people PCs at a reasonable price, or the game manufacturers who target hardware only found in 10% of PCs? Even if only 1/9th of all the people buying low-end PCs wanted to buy games, that would still double the target market (and that is assuming that all of the people buying "capable" machines want to buy games).

Games manufacturers could easily start to target the 90% instead if they wanted to increase their market. Even an Intel GMA 950 (which is in an awful lot of PCs and laptops) should be capable of playing 3D games if the graphics are scaled down properly.

Personally I think a lot of games manufacturers are pissing away the chance for a large increase in their sales, by being way too '1337'. They want to show off their game, and they want to make it look super slick, which is fair enough... but don't come complaining if this rules the game out for a large part of the market.

Re:Who's fault is this?

[aarku (151823)]

We do scale down graphics to the GMA950 ... and below. The fun part happens when you get this big divide in user reviews due to the scaling down. Some claim the graphics "sux" and others claim the graphics "rox". There is also only so much you can scale down. It takes a ton of resources to remodel/re-rig a character at a low-poly for the integrated cards and a high-poly for everything else. We end up just shipping ridiculously low polygon models that anything with hardware T&L is barely taxed. In short, we game developers are generally intelligent people and we do our best, and there actually is a problem in these integrated cards... A pc may not have been purchased as a gaming PC but little Timmy is still just as pissed when the game doesn't perform well on it.

Windows is a terrible gaming platform

[phozz bare (720522)]

I personally think that the PC, particularly under Windows XP, is a terrible gaming platform. I find myself cringing every time people complain about how bad Linux/Mac are for games, as opposed to the great and wonderful Windows. Here's a little list of annoyances I can think of off the top of my head right now:

* The need to install a game on your hard disk. Why can my Gamecube run any game within seconds of plopping the CD in and turning it on? (...and it's not like I can legitimately run the game without the original CD anyway.)
* The horribly slow and ugly process of switching from the Windows desktop to full screen. First the screen flickers. Then the screen turns black. Then the desktop shows up for a second, "magnified" (because the resolution is lower). Then more blackness. Finally, the game shows up. Hard disk grinding throughout this time. Reverse this process when the game is over.
* Occasionally some stupid popup (like an instant message or a warning about my swap space running low) will force the game out of full-screen mode and back to the desktop. This cuts you out of the action for at least 30 seconds, as the disk grinds its way to swap everything back in and the resolution change as described above occurs yet again.
* The occasional background process causes the game to stutter or jump slightly every once in a while.
* I've rarely ever seen a 3D, or even a 2D game on the PC that has consistent smooth moving animation and scrolling at the refresh rate of the monitor with no tearing - things that are a given in almost any console game. That is, it should be that FPS == refresh rate, and refreshes occur while screen is not updating.
* When quitting a game, very often all windows that were previously open are now confined to the upper-left corner within bounds equal to the size of the game's full-screen resolution.
* Sometimes the same goes for all desktop icons. So what if you've spent time arranging them in a particular way? They're all bunched up in a 320x200 corner now, sorry.
* No matter how good your hardware, a game will always give you the impression that something needs upgrading (see the stuttering phenomenon mentioned above).

In my experience the Mac is much better in most of these respects. I've never tried gaming under Linux or Vista, and I do realize some of these points may have been fixed in Vista.

Re:Windows is a terrible gaming platform

[owyn999 (856162)]

all of the issues you have described sans the change of desktop to game resolution are apparently only you. I personally have never had these issues of course I'm one of those crazy people who read the packaging before I buy a game... and if it says "4 GB RAM" and I only have 2 I don't try to force feed the game down my machines throat. I politely put the game back down and go home. Wait a few months until I have the money to afford the upgrades that I need. Considering that my machine is near 5 years old. Upgrade the component and then go find the game only this time in the bargain bin for 15$ instead of $60.

The stuttering that you are talking about is because you are trying to run the game at settings that the developer made for the game that only the absolute top of the line machine can handle.

When quitting a game if you have all of your icons/windows bound to a corner of the screen... Try checking your settings... as this absolutely should not happen. If it does maybe you should go look for a patch for the game you are playing or update your drivers.

I have played a number of both 3D and 2D games that always and I mean ALWAYS run stunningly.

oh yeah and finally... KILL YOUR AIM/use the AWAY message so that it doesn't pop a window up, I know really... I have to do things to make my machine behave the way I want it to... WAH... get Xfire, or trillian and shut the Notify and open new windows off on trill. Xfire will solve most of your issues. Especially with the Xfire Plus pack that is being developed that will let you message people while in game.

Don't blame Intel

[cerelib (903469)]

Blaming Intel and integrated graphics for the decline of PC gaming is a cop out. These game companies have been operating under the principle that a game with better graphics is a better game. Instead of creating new an innovative was to game on a PC, they enhance the graphics of an old game and call it a new game. Don't blame Intel if your game does not work on their GPU platform and you are using the latest, cutting edge, extensions and expecting the latest amounts of video ram. The fact that some of these companies are listing specific graphics cards as system requirements should indicate that there is a problem. At that point you are limiting your audience on your own. If you want a big audience, you should target machines with integrated graphics and then find ways to scale up when there is more power instead of targeting the latest and greatest and then complaining that you can't scale back to make it work. By promoting the idea that better graphics equals better game, they entered into a stupid race and they can only blame themselves.

An opposing viewpoint...

[Bob-taro (996889)]

Here is an opposing viewpoint [gamasutra.com] from Doug Lombardi.

I tend to agree that PC gaming is not going away. PC game programming definitely has it's challenges. The console programmer is programming for known hardware so he can optimize much more easily than a PC game programmer who has to deal with unknown graphics capabilities, cpu speed, memory size, monitor resolution, etc. Good graphics APIs help, but do not take the problem away. OTOH, once you have programmed for this variability, you have a more portable game. When I buy a new PC, I don't mind paying a few hundred more for discrete graphics card (I don't buy consoles anyway), and I enjoy loading all my old games onto it and knowing they'll (usually) still work. Sometimes I even find that some group has created a modified version of the game that improves the experience on faster hardware (like open GL versions of doom or descent). Also, user created content (maps, characters, campaigns, etc) is an area where PC games outshine their console counterparts.

Re:Judging from the recent Unreal sales numbers

[Lumpy (12016)]

Have you even tried to play Unreal III? It takes far more PC than most people have. and that same problem plagued ID on it's last 2 releases for almost 2 years. Hell I know people that STILL dont have a pc capable of running Doom III at any playable speeds. Gaming companies are killing themselves. They are selling games that require a 4ghz dual core, 4 gig ram, and a $500.00 video card. While the world is happy as hell with their 3 year old Pentium 4 3ghz running that $45.00 Geforce 6600 card.

you cant sell a crapload of games that runs on hardware that most people dont have.

Re:Judging from the recent Unreal sales numbers

[c6gunner (950153)]

Have you even tried to play Unreal III? It takes far more PC than most people have. and that same problem plagued ID on it's last 2 releases for almost 2 years. Hell I know people that STILL dont have a pc capable of running Doom III at any playable speeds.

What the hell? Unreal 3 runs like a dream on my machine, and here are my component costs, at the time of purchase:

CPU - $90
Motherboard - $140
2 gigs RAM - $80
Graphics card - $160
HD - $120

Grand total? $590. Considering I built this system almost a year ago now, it's safe to say that you could purchase the same components for under $500 today. 5 years ago I couldn't have even bought a basic system for under $1200, let alone one capable of running the most recent games!

Re:Judging from the recent Unreal sales numbers

[MORB (793798)]

That's twice that someone from epic say pc gaming is dead. I think that's because they have sour grapes that UT3 sales failed.

The problem is that they failed on many points:

1. They shouldn't have released an unfinished games to meet seasonal sales, because in the end they missed much more than just christmas 07 - they made people ignore the game altogether.

2. When you release a primarily multiplayer game with the idea that it's third parties who'll host most of the servers, you have dedicated linus server binary available on the release day. On release day people had to host servers on windows with a retail CD in the drive for fuck's sake.

3. When you release a successor to ut2004 that had tons of maps and mostly the same gameplay and game mechanics (minus the bugs and unfinished features of ut3 like spectating), don't expect people to upgrade just for the visuals - especially since ut2004 can run so well on today's machines.

4. And they should have listened to complains and answered them on their forums instead of deleting any post suggesting ut3 is far from a perfect game in the hope that other potential buyers wouldn't otherwise find out (how stupid can those PR fucks be?). That or just don't have forums at all.

Re:for those 1337 3D games

[dreamchaser (49529)]

Show the the console that can play Crysis. For that matter show me a console that plays the newer 'Total War' games. Show the the console that supports various MMO's.

Drink your coffee before you post!