PCs Losing Out as a Gaming Platform? 778
Snibor Eoj writes "The Boston Globe Online has an article by Hiawatha Bray discussing the state of gaming on PCs and consoles. He points out that PC users now suffer the same fate as Mac users have for years, that of waiting for a great game that's already out on another platform. Consoles continue to gain market share, and software companies are noticing that and writing more and earlier for consoles than for PCs."
copy protection (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)
Tell that to Viewsonic, who has a 4+ megapixel TV [viewsonic.com] on the way. I assume that qualifies as "soon?"
Re:Simple Math (Score:4, Informative)
But how many of the consoles could you buy for the price of that gamer's PC? Pretty well all of them and you would have the assurance that you'll be playing games without upgrades for at least three years after a console's launch and probably five.
It doesn't make economic sense to only play games on a PC. It hardly even makes economic sense to keep your work PC at a standard where you can keep playing current games on it.
TWW
MY GOD! (Score:5, Informative)
Yesterdays comic:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?dat
And Gabe's rant this weekend:
"Wow, the response to Starcraft: Ghost has been pretty insane. I took some time this morning and visited a few message boards just to get a feel for what people thought of Blizzards latest title. It seems that an overwhelming number of you guys are pretty pissed off. I have seen links to no less than three different petitions asking Blizzard to make a PC version with robust online support. I can understand how all you PC gamers might be upset over Blizzards announcement but I for one couldn't be happier. If you have any questions about why I might be uninterested in a PC version of Ghost Just take a look at this quote from one of the many angry threads out there on this subject:
"if you honestly think 1 game is going to increase console sales you're an idiot. i'm not going to buy a console under any circumstance. if they came out with the game on pc i would've bought it, but oh well. hopefully they'll make up for the loss by becoming a 10 minute fad for teenage console kiddies."
Oh if only Ghost was a PC title with multiplayer support, then I could play it with this fucking winner. You want to know what the worst part about Blizzards past games has been? PC gamers. That's right, it's you petition signing sons of bitches that have ruined every other Blizzard game I have ever played. The thought of enjoying a well designed and masterfully produced Blizzard creation on my favorite console is just shy of erotic. No whiny bitches complaining about a huntress rush. No junior high school kids using hacks to kick my ass while calling me a n00b. No, just me and my console of choice playing through a well thought out single player campaign set in the thrilling Starcraft universe. I'll go a step further and say I hope that Blizzard decides not to include online support for their console versions. If I want to play a tactical shooter on a console while someone relates a wild tale of sexual debauchery with my mother, I'll play SOCOM. If Blizzard simply must include some kind of multiplayer experience I hope they limit it to a split screen mode. At least that way I can choose the assholes I want to play with from my own stable of friends.
-Gabe out"
Region coding (Score:2, Informative)
Really? Then what's this [copy of Star Fox Adventures] I have in my hand right now?
Games for the three DVD-based video game consoles are region coded. A game that's out in Japan may not be out in the United States or Europe. A game that's out in Japan and the United States may not be out in Europe. Some games never cross the pond(s) because of copyright licensing issues. Just because you hold a copy of a game in one hand and one-handed-type[1] in the other doesn't mean that anybody in any other country can.
Games for the Game Boy Advance handheld system, on the other hand, are completely not region coded.
[1] Judging by your other messages, Mr. Coward, you seem to have a lot of practice at one-handed typing.
Re:Bleh (Score:3, Informative)
As much as I would like to agree with the statement that "you can get the latest and greatest graphics on a PC", I believe it too be somewhat misleading.
Yes, you may be able to buy a Geforce 4 Ti 4600, or an ATI 9700, or (insert card of choice here), but how many games actually take advantage of said card. Unfortunately there is a _long_ lead time between features being available in a card and them actually being used. So, in that sense, PCs are on a very similar technology slope to the consoles - since all the programs for them are for _older_ generations.
Example: 8 bit stencil buffers became available many years ago, but how long was it before games started using them? I've only recently seen games that actually started to use them to their full capacity. Yes, Quake III had support for stencil volume shadows, but they were very simple, only supported a single light source at a time, etc etc. Unreal hacked a few vendor specific versions that supported them, but again we're _vendor_ specific.
A more recent example is Doom 3. What are the main visual features that stand out about this game? Per-pixel bumpmapping and cube map support (and realtime shadows etc etc). And these were available in.... the Geforce 256, but they have only _just_ become mainstream. John Carmack even mentioned this problem in his recent QuakeWorld speech - buy the time a piece of hardward is fully utilised by a game, the hardcore gamers have upgraded past that many times over.
Consoles may be a generation behind at release (debatable, but beyond the scope of this reply), but they have very specific capabilities that you can target immediately. You can code for them directly _now_, without a shadow of doubt that it'll will be consistent for every gamer. Something that, at present, is beyond the realms of the PC with it's ever-shifting horizon of technology.
Of course, most of this is business driven. It would be financial suicide at present to release a game that would only run on a Geforce 3+ or ATI 9700, since you'd be eliminating about 95+% of your market.
All that said, I only use PCs (well, mostly, the occasionaly console sessions at a friends aside). I only code for my PC. And all of my work (film post-production) is done on Linux workstations. But it can be very frustrating when you know that you have a pile of very impressive hardware specs - that you simply _can't_ take advantage of, since not everybody has upgraded to them yet (and likely won't for a long while). Of course, I'd like to see this change. HLSLs which allow you to specify an arbitrary number of passes is A Good Thing(tm) for PC hardware.