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PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Hardware Manufacturers Making PC Gaming Too Elite? 172

Posted by simoniker from the priced-out-of-market dept.
Thanks to AVault for its editorial discussing whether PC hardware/graphics card manufacturers are fragmenting PC gaming too much with constant hardware upgrades, thereby "making it a sport for only the serious few." The author argues: "With the impending release of Valve's Half-Life 2 and id's Doom 3, we're looking at the first required hardware upgrade in gaming history... the reported minimum requirements for these two heavy hitting titles include fully DirectX9 compatible video cards. This demand excludes all low-end and many medium-level computers out there today." He discusses the "partnership" of "hardware manufacturers turning over reference equipment that won't see the retail market for some time to software developers to use in the creation of their games", and queries the "expensive process of habitual upgrades" by suggesting: "If everybody turns to an Xbox or a PlayStation for entertainment, who's going to need new PC equipment?"
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Hardware Manufacturers Making PC Gaming Too Elite? More

Hardware Manufacturers Making PC Gaming Too Elite?

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  • What? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday April 25, 2004 @07:57PM (#8968439) Journal
    He says that this is the first required hardware upgrade in gaming history (boldfaced lie), then implies that consoles don't have this problem? Excuse me?

    Rob

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:00PM (#8968449) Journal
      BTW, it wouldn't be the hardware manufacturers causing the fragmentation of PC gaming, but the game developers themselves. That should be obvious.

      Rob
      • And it is equally obvious that the chicken came before the egg.

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dirus ( 592987 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:13PM (#8968533)
      He says that this is the first required hardware upgrade in gaming history (boldfaced lie), then implies that consoles don't have this problem? Excuse me?

      Yes this is a lie. I find it rather ironic that Doom 3 is being used as an example. People had to upgrade their hardware (ie purchase a 3d card) to play Quake 3. id has always been ahead of others in the area of requirements, this should be no surprise to PC gamers.

      While other upgrades, such as processor and ram upgrades, are not always required, they are sometimes "required" to play a game at a reasonable level of quality. Afterall, all games have "minimum requirements" (as a side note, these are usually too low).

      Slightly offtopic, but a good example that comes to mind is Diablo 2. I remember when it came out I had to buy more ram because I'd go down the stairs into a dungeon and it would hit the hard drive. The server wouldn't pause for you so before I could even load the dungeon my guy would die. Sure the ram wasn't required to start the game, but as it was a requirement nonetheless, as there was no way to play the game without it.

      • Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb@NoSPaM.gmail.com> on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:31PM (#8968662) Homepage
        Actually, your Diablo 2 example is indicative of a game design/development problem - I don't think it would be out of line to call it a "bug." In an ideal world, sloppy game design shouldn't be driving computer upgrades.
      • " I find it rather ironic that Doom 3 is being used as an example. People had to upgrade their hardware (ie purchase a 3d card) to play Quake 3. id has always been ahead of others in the area of requirements, this should be no surprise to PC gamers."

        What bugs me about the headline (sorry, din't RTFA, flame away) is the assumption that all games are like Doom 3 or other 'break the mold' type games. The general complaint I hear about PC gaming is that the developers tend to aim too low to reach a broader a

      • Re:What? (Score:3, Informative)

        by GoofyBoy ( 44399 )
        >The server wouldn't pause for you so before I could even load the dungeon my guy would die.

        If its the end boss of ActII, then it was a problem with the coding.

        Lots of people had that issue because you meet a boss in a small area. There was a patch that preloaded the small area before you went in which helped alot of people.

        Is it a "bug" or a "performance" issue?

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mausmalone ( 594185 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:52PM (#8968769) Homepage Journal
      It is a tiny bit better on consoles. They have a lifecycle of several years, and games made for them will always work for them. I've had lots of problems with that on the PC (Star Control 2, Need for Speed 3). Right now, to have games run correctly on a PC, it seems that I have to update about $700 worth of hardware every 4 years or so. Even if I buy a new console every 5 years, they're only $300 when they come out.

    • Re:What? -- read the websites! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Hollinger ( 16202 ) <michael@@@hollinger...net> on Sunday April 25, 2004 @09:08PM (#8968841) Homepage Journal
      Uhh... I call Shennanigans? Reading the Half-Life faq [halflife2.net], you will find:
      Q: What are the minimum hardware specifications?

      The bare minimum you will need is a Pentium II 800Mhz processor, 128MB RAM and a DX6 class graphics card.
      • Good point. Half Life 2 has the ability to scale for the hardware, and while a 3GH machine with a DX9-class video card would certainly make the game look better, Valve has said that the game will be absolutely playable with the minimum requirements.

        It's a smart move, too. Half Life's popularity was in part due to the fantastic "after market mods', but even those would have failed had the game not been playable on just about every hardware configuration.

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuperRob ( 31516 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @11:22PM (#8969475) Homepage
      Apparently the poster isn't familiar with Origin's early Ultima and Wing Commander games. It was widely assumed that the $50 games would routinely end up costing between $500-$1000 to play, hardware prices being what they were back then.

  • Requirements and PCs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Txiasaeia ( 581598 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @07:58PM (#8968441)
    Forced upgrades for PC games is not only nothing new, but it's been *REALLY* toned down as compared to 10 or 15 years ago. An upgrade from a 486-SX 25 to a P-1 133MHz cost $2000; an upgrade from a Geforce 2 GTS and an Athlon 1.2GHz to a Radeon 9800 and an Athlon XP 2500+ is what, $600? I'd much rather spend less money than more money, neh?

    • Re:Requirements and PCs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JusTyler ( 707210 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:15PM (#8968542) Homepage
      An upgrade from a 486-SX 25 to a P-1 133MHz cost $2000; an upgrade from a Geforce 2 GTS and an Athlon 1.2GHz to a Radeon 9800 and an Athlon XP 2500+ is what, $600? I'd much rather spend less money than more money, neh?

      I have to disagree with your insight. The components are cheaper these days, but the benefits from upgrading are nearly entirely game focused, whereas the benefits of upgrading in 1994 covered everything you did with the machine.

      Going up to 32 megabytes of RAM from 8 megabytes ten years ago would mean you could play the latest games, but it would have also made your PC feel like a new machine! Upgrading from 512 megabytes of RAM to even two gigabytes of RAM these days wouldn't make Windows feel significantly different at all.

      And in the CPU department, too.. you can run Windows XP and have most general apps feel instantaneous on a mid-range 2.0GHz Pentium 4. Why upgrade to a 3.4GHz machine? There's no point except for gaming, and many new games will make use of that extra CPU power (try busy bot matches).

      I think is going to become a sore point quite quickly. You just don't need expensive 256MB graphics cards, 3.4GHz processors, and a gigabyte of DDR RAM to do 99% of what you want on a PC now.. it's just the games that are demanding it. So.. people will drift to the cheaper options like buying an XBox, getting XBox Live, and knowing their games will work okay.. and have an el cheapo PC for the Internet and word processing.

      Heck, I was a die-hard gamer in the 90's, but all this upgrading is doing my head in, I think I'm going to do the above!
      • Why,

        Our computers are about 2 to 3 years old and we can play amost every game out there. There hasn't been any major *MUST HAVE* upgrades for the last couple of years. At the momment I'm not planning on upgrading our computers for a while. I own a Lan centre and you for $1500 AUS (~1000 US) you can buy a computer that will play EVERYTHING out at the momment. There's one or two games that can't have everything turned all the way up but who cares.

        Were talking about games that have't come out yet. People sho
      • I've seen mid range p4's choke just booting up windowsXP, and people forced to upgrade to run the OS. This was of coarse due to huge levels of spyware/crapware , but still I think that people will always want a faster machine whether it is driven by gaming or not.

    • Re:Requirements and PCs (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "I'd much rather spend less money than more money, neh?"

      All right, you can be Japanese or you can be Canadian, but please don't try to make us think that you are some monstrous amalgam of both.

      Actually, upon further consideration, the sound you made leads me to believe that you are, in fact, a horse.

  • Gee golly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by revmoo ( 652952 ) <slashdot.meep@ws> on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:02PM (#8968466) Homepage Journal
    we're looking at the first required hardware upgrade in gaming history...

    The hell we are, this happens at least once every two years, games are constantly pushing technology, what else would? Who cares about the "little companies"? Millions of people buy(and anticipate) these high-end PC games for a reason.

    • yeah. I remember upgrading the OS and hardware (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @11:04PM (#8969369) Journal
      Just to play F16 falcon. Years ago. Upgraded DOS and my memory. Made a gigantic difference.

      Same with upgrading from an adlib to a soundblaster. Gigantic difference.

      Again when I inserted a 3Dfx card.

      All my upgrades are for games. My work PC is a linux dual P3 that is so ancient the manuals on top have turned to coal.

      Hell Doom3 may in fact not require me to upgrade. I already got the hardware for it. Half-Life 2 is another story. I think this pc will have turned to dust by the time that one is actually released.

    • When I first bought Dark Age of Camelot, it ran fine on my laptop, but it sat back and laughed at my voodoo3-clad desktop PC. I tried playing it, but at a rate of one frame every second or so in some of the more built up areas, it must have been pretty entertaining for other players watching me staggering into walls, and taking several attempts to open a door and walk through it.

      SWG is even more severe. It refuses to run at all on any machine whose graphics card does not support hardware transform and ligh

  • Interesting point. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:05PM (#8968476) Homepage Journal
    queries the "expensive process of habitual upgrades" by suggesting: "If everybody turns to an Xbox or a PlayStation for entertainment, who's going to need new PC equipment?"

    I think that this is going to be more and more relevant as next-gen consoles come into being.

    For me personally its more convenient to buy a ps2 game stick in the machine and play it. I dont have to consider whether or not my PC is up to spec to play it. I also like the way that with a console, all the games are configured for the same controller. Apart from the occaisional game of Vice City , I hardly use my linux box for gaming. The console is also more sociable than the PC which tends to sit in the back room.

    I dont mind the seperation of PC and Gaming console and find that the idea that one is for work/education and the other is purely for fun. I kinda like that distinction.

    nick...

    • PS2 (Score:2)

      by phorm ( 591458 )
      Yes, but if you were one of the people who bought the PS1, then when the PS2 came out and started eating up the gamespace you would need to upgrade.

      Also, if you look at the visual difference between a PS2 and a PS1... noticably better.

      Newer video cards are about the same for me, depending. Many of the new FPS games are beautiful to play, with tree and scenery looking very realistic.

      Personally, as both a gamer and somebody who appreciates the increasing visual depth of games/entertainment, I look forwa

  • So? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maeka ( 518272 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:08PM (#8968499) Journal
    I haven't, and won't spend money on PC hardware just so that I can play a new game. I still play the original Half Life, and haven't upgraded my video hardware past my TNT2.

    The high prices he is complaining about are the price you pay for the biggest and the best. His comparisons to console systems are way off the mark.

    People buy consoles for the steady stream of games w/o hardware upgrades, knowing full well that the state of the art will leave them behind.

    People buy PC gaming hardware so they can keep up with the state of the art, at their own pace. If I want to plunk down $$ for the latest video card to play the new games, I can. But I can also be like a console owner and stand by and watch my equipment slowly become obsolete.

  • Graphics card market fragmentation (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PenguinOpus ( 556138 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:12PM (#8968526)
    The biggest problem right now is that there are new graphics cards coming out every 6 months with architecture changes every 18-24 months. Games have been behind the development curve for a while. Finally the two big game engines come out with new versions, trying to aim at what should be reasonable at the time.

    Unfortunately, the rest of the PC hardware has turned into complete commodity and its unclear whether its worth spending another $500 on the rest of the computer to hold the FX6800 when it comes out (things are relatively quiet in the land of CPU and memory, where spending 3x the money may get you a 20% increase).

    If you're a 3D software developer trying to pick which features to use to get decent market penetration (yet still take advantage of the new programmability), you're pretty-well hosed right now with the various flavors of pixel/vertex shader instructions and program lengths available on the various cards.

    ATI 9600, NV FX5600 - these are the cards/capabilities I would depend on to be widespread in the installed base by Xmas 2005.

  • resentment gone wild and narrowmindeness (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lepruhkawn ( 199083 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:12PM (#8968527) Homepage
    I guess the author doesn't remember when 3D shooters stopped offering software renderers and you were required to own a 3D hw accelerator to play.

    Gamers, as a market group, want progress regardless of whether or not that helps line the industry's pockets. We WANT games that inspire and utilize new hardware.

    If any particular software company leaves too many people behind with a game, then they are taking a risk with their product (by possibly making a poor prediction about how many potential customers will want to upgrade their hardware), not engaging in a conpsiracy to manipulate consumers.

    • Other Historical upgrade points (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @10:16PM (#8969124) Homepage
      CD Rom drives.
      Sound Cards.
      VGA cards (like DOS was using it).
      Color Monitors.
      Joystick ports.

      All of the above upgrades were essentially driven by gaming. What use was a sound card before Roberta Williams started supporting them in King's Quest? What did a CD Rom drive do before Myst? Sure, windows would eventually come to rely upon 2D graphics processing, much like the plan is to integrate 3D processing into Longhorn, but the cart in this case did not lead the horse. All of these were driven by gaming, with the operating system and applications expanding to take advantage of these new additions.

      If anything, this upgrade generation is the first in the past few years that has been driven by gaming because people started jumping on the Internet and buying machines. People had a more compelling reason to upgrade for a while: I.E. was a dog, and you need really fast hardware to run it satisfactorily. Now, I won't say how Firefox or Opera might fit into this equation more cheaply, but this did mean that people were upgrading their hardware and it had little to do with gaming. We are, of course, back on the gaming upgrade cycle.

      It's not a new phenomenon, it just took the back burner for a little while.

      • Sound Cards.

        Too true. Not only that, but I've seen applications fail becaue you do not have a sound card active. (Bad programming, anyone?)

        The requirements for sound cards in games caused certain sites such as Deaf Gamers [deafgamers.com] to appear - I actually agree as there are sometimes critical conversations that are barely audible in some specific situations.

        Joystick ports.

        I'm not sure, but I haven't seen too many games that requrire a joystick to be used. In fact, Keyboarding or Keyboard+Mouse seems to be jus

        • They did though - I remember back in the day, a friend of mine got a laptop for school, and asked me to help her set it up. It came with like 22-24 floppies to install Windows 95, because her laptop didn't have a CD Drive. Took the better part of 2 hours, as I recall.
      • Good job listing the upgrade points. It's worth noting, however, that the article is actually wrong regarding the obligatory nature of upgrades. Neither Half-Life 2, nor Doom 3 (nor Stalker, FarCry Painkiller or any other game due in 2004) would require DX9 capable videocard.

        But in general most upgrades were gradual. CD-Rom drives were an exception, because there is such a huge gap between 1.44 Mb and 600 Mb (though you could play a CD-rip). Soundcards were optional in many games (for a few years PC speake
  • Not only does the constant and incremental card upgrade cycle alienate a ton of potential consumers, increasing power continually drains on developer's resources to provide polys to push.

    I've been thinking for a while now that it isn't hw accelleration efficiency we need to improve on, but rather level designer and modelling techniques. Every iteration means more polygons have to be made up, which generally means more work for the artists-- higher poly models, higher resolution textures, smooth animation o
  • The minimum requirements for Doom 3 are, essentially:

    * 1 GHz CPU
    * 256 MB RAM
    * GeForce 1 or equivalent

    In other words, a medium-range (or even low-range, depending on definition) computer today. Just to set things straight.

  • There are other boundaries to push (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JusTyler ( 707210 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:26PM (#8968626) Homepage
    What saddens me about PC gaming is that the only boundary which is regularly pushed is the graphics. What happens then is that you need to buy a new $300 graphics card every year to be able to play the latest games nicely. My GF4Ti4200 is pretty much useless now, even Far Cry at 1024x768 is basically un-doable.

    Half Life was an amazing game, but it wasn't because of the graphics. It's because it had a good story, it led you through the story well, the graphics weren't awful, and it had good playability. So why didn't we see a lot of games try to be like Half Life? Instead, they all tried to become graphics-fests. If some games with the depth (and graphics) of the original Half Life came out now, but at, say, $20, they'd sell like hot cakes! In a way, I'd say Return to Castle Wolfenstein almost did this. It took the old Quake 3 engine (which was a couple years' old by then), and wrapped a game with improved AI and playability around it. Result.. worked good on old kit, and was a good game.

    Let's see boundaries of AI, playability, story, and concept being pushed, rather than just graphics all the time!

    • Re:There are other boundaries to push (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @11:00PM (#8969350) Homepage Journal
      The go to the Underdogs site, find the great games from the past and enjoy some real gaming.

      I don't even bother with games that are less than about a year old. The market is so ruthless that after that much time, the price is down to $10-$20 and there's a much better chance it will run on my hardware.

      Of course, my system is probably pretty lame compared to the hardcore gamer systems, and up until a year ago, my main machine was a dual Celeron 433 machine. Now I run a 1.58 GHz Athlon with last year's nVidia card.

      Still, I find no lack of good games to enjoy, despite not being on the cutting edge.

      Besides, I went through the whole (games-are-driven-by-graphics-rather-than-gameplay thing
      with my Amiga almost 15 years ago. Once you get past that, you start looking for the right kind of games, regardless of high-tech graphics and other cool stuff. You have more fun and spend less money.

      Doom 3 is a good example. id hasn't had a new gaming idea since the original Doom in the early 90's (and that, it could be argued was just an evolution of Wolf 3D, although multi-player counts as a lot). They are wizards at pushing the state-of-the-art in technology, and have refined the idea extensively, but at the end of the day, you'll be running around brown labyrinths shooting demons. I'm sure it will be cool, but it really doesn't interest me. After watching the evolution of Quake from the early descriptions by id to a sleeker, fancier, yet ultimately similar Doom, I realized these guys are graphics hackers (not that that's a bad thing), but not really game hackers.

      Yes, I know... I've made this comment before and people chime in about lookspring or rocketjump or nosepick or whatever the newest move is being a huge innovation, but in the end, you are still running around brown labyrinths shooting demons.

      • Ok, ID may have not made any "breakthrough" after Wolf3D and Doom, but i wouldn't call them simple Graphics Hackers
        There have been games with cutting edge graphics that simply sucked. But ID games are simply "fun" to play. Isn't that what matters? I can't say i am sure what exactly is that makes them successful, but there IS something.
        I think that a big proof that ID games are more than graphics hacks is the fact that they are very popular even when newer , more graphics intensive games are created.
        I me
        • No doubt, playability is a huge factor in the more recent games, as it was in Doom. For all its incredible breakthrough technology, Doom had playability that has rarely been matched by other companies. I didn't mean to short-change them in that regard.

          As far as my favorite FPS for playability, I prefer the Descent series. I hope we see another one some day.

      • I don't even bother with games that are less than about a year old. The market is so ruthless that after that much time, the price is down to $10-$20 and there's a much better chance it will run on my hardware.
        Pardon my curiousity, but why would a game run worse today on your hardware than it would after a year? Do system requirements drop over time? Do drivers improve SO much in performance? Have you found a way to increase the speed other than to upgrade?

        at the end of the day, you'll be running around
        • Whoa, slow down there, cowboy. I never said there was anything wrong with it. And even if I did, that would hardly be grounds to accuse me of being crazy.

          Simply said, it's a simple, albeit fun, idea. I just got tired of it 10 years ago. That's not a psychological problem.

          Have fun shooting demons. I hope id sells a million copies. But some of us are looking for something a little more original.

          • Sorry, I phrased it badly. If you don't play FPS games because you are honestly no longer interested and want more original and complex games, fine. You are psychologically different then, but I have nothing but respect for that.
            • That's OK. Of course, you do know you're going to Hell for playing those things. ;-)

              Playability is an interesting thing. It is a rare combination of good UI design, responsiveness (this is crucially important in real-time games) as well as an appropriate level of complexity.

              The last is the hardest of all to deal with because I'm convinced that under certain circumstances, the range of complexity where the game feels too simple (like MOO2, which I love, and still play, but I wish it had more depth) and t
              • Heck, I play these things BECAUSE I like going to hell and spending some quality time there! :)

                In regards to the levels of complexity, I think good games have that extra complexity that allows people to master the game at much more advanced levels than the noobs can. There should be some fun for both casual gamer and for a leet pro. The best illustration of that is Quake Done Quick line of recordings.

                But I tend to play turn-based games.
                I loved classic turn-based games (Civ, UFO and X-Com, and some other

    • What happens then is that you need to buy a new $300 graphics card every year to be able to play the latest games nicely. My GF4Ti4200 is pretty much useless now, even Far Cry at 1024x768 is basically un-doable.

      Bollocks. I'm using a GF2MX-200 card and playing some pretty new games, like IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles and Soldier of Fortune II. The card's just fine as long as I turn down the details a bit or stick with 800x600.

      You say that Half-Life was great, but not because of the graphics, so wh

    • Far Cry is a bad example; it doesn't run well on _any_ current machines.
    • I'd say 100-150$ every year is acceptable. I ditched GFTi4200 5 months ago and I run FarCry at 1024x768 just fine on ATi Radeon 9600 Pro (130$ 5 months ago, can buy it today for 100$). And according to tests, it's 50% as capable as the fastest videocard on the market. Yes, I can spend 400$ now, but staying in mid-range gives good quality at relatively low cost.

      Let's see boundaries of AI, playability, story, and concept being pushed, rather than just graphics all the time!
      This is extremely funny. Do you h

  • These are bad? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Bri3D ( 584578 )
    If these system requirements are bad, imagine the ones for Duke Nukem Forever.

  • Why not...Optional? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Prien715 ( 251944 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `epopcitsonga'> on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:33PM (#8968673) Journal
    Let's take Civ3. The AI in that game made using larger maps with slower computers pretty unplayable, but the normal sized maps were very playable. So if you bought a brand new computer today, you'd get extra playability out of this game (which, coincidently will run on a Pentium 133 on smaller maps (Min sys req P3 450)). My point is the game scales.

    So what's different with FPS? Well, for starters, the genre's physics and basic premise hasn't really changed since Quake (where they added rooms on top of rooms, jumping, and free look). While graphics are nice, good graphics are certainly not required to make a great game. (Tetris anyone?)

    Though not meant as a blast to FPS people, the genre doesn't require huge ammounts of processing power except for the friggin' graphics. As an analogue to the Civ scenario, people with worse GFX cards should still be able to play the game with worse graphics. Unless there's some sort of wiz-bang AI or complex physics, I'd hope processor power wouldn't matter too much either.

    People played the original Half-life on P2 300s and they still play it on Athlon64's. All I can say is I hope the new Half-life will try to be as accomedating as the original and provide the same evolutionary gameplay that made it a classic.

    • Re:Why not...Optional? (Score:5, Informative)

      by damiam ( 409504 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @09:38PM (#8968978)
      Well, for starters, the genre's physics and basic premise hasn't really changed since Quake

      Physics haven't changed since Quake? Where've you been? Part of the draw of next-gen games like Doom 3, HL2, and Unreal 2004 is the much improved physics engine. That stuff is pretty CPU-intensive. For that matter, even GPU-accelerated graphics still tax the CPU pretty heavily.

    • Another example of this is Messiah, which if you don't remember was Shiny's (MDK, Sacrifice, Enter the Matrix) 3D "action game" that they said would scale infinitely. That is, the complexity of the scene would dynamically adjust to the computing power (vague I know) available at any given moment. This is better I guess than the frame rate adjusting dynamically. According to them, the game could look better than it did on their own hardware if sufficient computing power was given to it.

      Sadly the game was

  • Software developers want less eye candy. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MiceHead ( 723398 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @08:52PM (#8968773) Homepage
    One might think Valve would aim lower, given the results of its System Survey [steampowered.com]:

    Video Card Description:
    NVidia GeForce4 MX Series -- 15.35 %
    NVidia GeForce4 Series -- 12.47 %
    NVidia GeForce2 MX Series -- 10.86 %
    NVidia GeForce FX 5200 Series -- 7.02 %
    ATI Radeon 9600 Series -- 6.11 %
    ATI Radeon 9800 Series -- 4.93 %
    .
    .
    .

    CPU Speed:
    1.5 Ghz to 1.7 Ghz -- 14.00 %
    1.7 Ghz to 2.0 Ghz -- 18.33 %
    2.0 Ghz to 2.3 Ghz -- 13.82 %
    2.3 Ghz to 2.7 Ghz -- 16.62 %
    .
    .
    .

    As a software developer [dejobaan.com], I actually don't want to have to produce a game with that much eye candy. But I feel compelled to concentrate on that, given that gamers and press go (in part) by screenshots and aesthetics.

    Regardless of what I'd like to concentrate on, I think the hardware vendors, the software developers, the press, and the consumer are all in cahoots together. You, me, everyone -- we all want to see prettier games.
    • NVidia GeForce4 MX Series -- 15.35 %

      Argh...that's me...

      Believe me, it sucks. Up until recently, it was a minor annoyance. I can still run pretty much everything, and have it be quite playable. Far Cry runs without a hitch, so does Painkiller.

      But problems did start a few months ago, when I couldn't play DX2. Minor disappointment, though from what I gather it wasn't worth my grief. Then I couldn't play Prince of Persia. A shame, because I really wanted to, but hey, it's not really my kind of game.

      Then S
    • Valve IS focusing on that. They're making the eye-candy for those with the hardware to use it, but the Source engine dynamically scales down to very reasonable minimum hardware requirements.
    • According to what I remember of the hype that led up to the non-release of HL2, it is supposed to play fine on everything back to a 1 GHz processor with a TNT2 class video card. This [techimo.com] page seems to support what I remember.

      I'm not sure what the AVault author is whining about, except maybe that he has a choice of upgrading his hardware to see the best eye candy.

    • Warning, grumpy old man sounding stuff ahead!

      I felt very depressed when I saw the results of that survey.

      I was very disappointed to see what a huge majority had CPU's under 2.0 Ghz. My last *three* CPU's have all be over 2.0 Ghz! A CPU I bought over a year ago [new, for 60 UKP at the time] was over 2.0 Ghz! These are really tight people we are talking about IMO (I know 'causual' gamers don't want to upgrade so often, that's why there are consoles).

      I have a P4 3.2 Ghz, Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MB, 2 GB DDR400
      • Wow!

        You're a serious graphics fan!?

        I'm probably a grumpier and older man than you, but I play at high resolution for about 30 minutes in any given game -- just when I've bought it.

        Then I see how I can change the configuration so the good graphics isn't in the way of my main purpose of gaming -- murdering my friends!

        I almost never play oneplayer games anymore. Being an asocial nerd, that is my favored social interaction. :-)

        For instance, I think BZFlag is wonderful -- but you shouldn't download it,

        • You're a serious graphics fan!?

          I admit fully to being a Mac OS X using eyecandy addicted shallow SOB (though I'm obsessive about the game play too), I'm not a framerate or stats junkie, I play with vertical sync on (I'm not fussed about framerate, if it's over 70 FPS I can't see it, and if it's above 50 I won't mind, if it's below 30 I will likely get annoyed through the game away in disgust *glares at SWG*).

          I don't actually mind playing with simplified (e.g. 2D graphics) at all, but I feel personally
      • A CPU I bought over a year ago [new, for 60 UKP at the time] was over 2.0 Ghz! These are really tight people we are talking about IMO

        What? Is your post just "I'm so rich and into PCs"? A CPU under 2 ghz will run all modern games without any trouble with a good gfx card. So why are users that don't need to upgrade and aren't "tight"? Perhaps just pragmatic?

        • A CPU under 2 ghz will run all modern games without any trouble with a good gfx card.

          I disagree and cite, PlanetSide, and even the less demanding BF:Vietnam, Halo or FarCry as evidence. Even at 800x600 with the detail cranked down these games will not run what I would consider 'well' on a 32-bit Intel or AMD CPU under 2.0 Ghz (having tried them on a 1.8 Ghz AMD with 1 GB DDR and a Radeon 9700 Pro 128 and a P3 2.4 Ghz with 2 GB DDR and Radeon 9800 Pro 256 - previous systems I have had).

          If you have less th

  • "first required hardware upgrade"? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Um...huh? What about 3DFX-only games? And didn't the latest EQ patch add a DX9 requirement (thus prepping people's PCs for EQ2)?
  • That's a really dumb article. Even if the nvidia does "turn advanced hardware over to game designers," it's still the game designers who set the intensity of the required tech specs, so blame them if anyone.

  • If you don't want it.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IshanCaspian ( 625325 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @09:13PM (#8968865) Homepage
    ...don't buy it. Vote with your dollars. If nobody is willing to upgrade to some next-gen hardware, then it's not going to work. However, if everyone but you is willing to upgrade, this is good news: tha means the prices on the previous generation of cards will plummet, vastly increasing the value of the second-tier hardware for those constrained by budgets.

    People buy games that push the envelope because they want the next big thing. If you want to stay back in the Q2 era, go ahead. There's still plenty of great games from that era that you haven't played yet.

  • zerg (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lord Omlette ( 124579 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @09:41PM (#8968990) Homepage
    Yeah, this isn't about PC games in general, but Penny Arcade definitely addressed this [penny-arcade.com].

  • Um.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GaimeGuy ( 679917 ) on Sunday April 25, 2004 @10:08PM (#8969094) Journal
    "If everybody turns to an Xbox or a PlayStation for entertainment, who's going to need new PC equipment?"

    What about a GameCube? What is it with people excluding GC from the console lists? GC is outselling X-box, yet I see things like this all the time: "Which console do you have? X-box, or Ps2?"

    It gets kind of annoying. :|
    • In this particular context, it's an appropriate exclusion. When discussing playing games on a PC versus playing them on a console, the Gamecube simply doesn't belong because there is little significant crossover of games between PC and GC. Want to play Deus Ex: Invisible War? Not going to happen on Gamecube. GTA:3/Vice City? Ditto. Star Wars: KOTOR? Sorry. Halo? Well, owned by Microsoft so it hardly counts.

      The Gamecube is a console in its own special category - mainly for playing games entirely N

  • The only things that are really pushing the limits are FPS games. Maybe some MMORPG's as well.

    Look at teh sys. requirements on Sims 2. Look at Warcraft III's sys. requirements.

    The only types of games I use my PC are those where the use of a keyboard and mouse is better than a controller (ie. FPS and RTS games).

  • I also believe that it's computer hardware manufacturers taking PC gaming out of the mainstream and making it a sport for only the serious few.

    Sounds like just what these companies want to do-- shrink their target audience to something completely unsustainable.

  • Recommendations vs. Requirements (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dead sun ( 104217 ) <aranach AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday April 25, 2004 @11:29PM (#8969497) Homepage Journal
    I knew somebody my freshman year of college that was on the invite list to the big Quake 3 tournaments, was rated somewhere in the top 100 in the country, and was overall amazing at the game.

    Guess what he played the game on? Some crappy 8 or 16MB video card with all textures, details, resolution, and everything else all the way down. He had sound through what can only be described as a $2 pair of speakers, but they were enough for him to locate people (which was plain scary). The processor in the box wasn't anything spectacular either. He managed somewhere around 50-60 fps on that thing.

    Quake 3 looks terrible at 640x480 with no detail, but it is perfectly playable. Heck, it's even fun multiplayer, because the gameplay is the same, it just isn't so pretty. But it doesn't have to be pretty to be fun. Pac-Man is fun and the graphics on that are terrible. I'm going to guess that Doom 3 will be perfectly playable on minimum specs as well, probably just not as pretty. Also, a $70 GeForce FX 5200 is a DX9 card last I checked. If you want the highest available resolution and textures and want the game for it's glitter then yes, you'll have to shell out cash for it.

    That's the way its always been when you want the best right when it's released. I know people who bought a bunch of RAM to play Wolf 3D or Doom or whichever without windowing to a 3" box. You could, however play it in that 3" box. And those RAM upgrades were spendy. Sure, it helped the rest of the system, but when the box was games primarily and other things secondary it hardly matters. Cutting edge has always been expensive.

    • Re:Recommendations vs. Requirements (Score:4, Interesting)

      by smallstepforman ( 121366 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @02:07AM (#8969995)
      When I upgraded my GeForce3 to an ATI 9800, I went immediately from the middle of the pack player to a top 3 player in UT2004. This is what a great system will do for playability. Bitch all you want about eyecandy, but I'm a better shot at 1280x1024 then at 640x480.
      • Same thing for me, more or less. I think it relies more upon smoothness of the video than anything, though. My experience came from using my own software rendered counterstrike box (400mhz) to using a friend's GeForce2/P3 box a couple years back. I went from dead last (except when we brought in the occasional unsuspecting girlfriend or little brother to play) to upper middle of the pack, and kicking ass at Q3 instagib.
      • Frame rate was always the big thing for me and it definately was for this guy. If the control is at all jerky or laggy then you're going to get your butt handed to you unless you're one of those weird kids that plays via modem only and has thus compensated, and can't play when it's smooth.

        I'd say resolution helps, but I've never seen that to be the case. My friend certainly didn't get any better playing on any of our machines which were quite a bit faster, though it would have been difficult to imagine him

  • Oh no! (Score:2, Redundant)

    by MMaestro ( 585010 )
    This demand excludes all low-end and many medium-level computers out there today.

    Does this mean I won't be able to play Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 at 1600*1200, AA and AS cranked up, while having Winamp play in the background, while burning a DVD, and hosting a Quake 3 Arena server? This is outrageous (sarcasm).

    Considering "low end" PCs at the cost of roughly $500 come standard with 256 megs of RAM and at least 1 ghz of processor speed, plunk down an extra $100~200 (depending on where you look) for a good video

  • We wouldn't be experiencing this if we weren't so "wowed" by graphics, instead of innovative gameplay. I like the original half-life because of the skeletal animation, and marine AI - not the graphics.

    Unfortunately, Doom also hearlded a rush to create the latest and greatest in graphics. Now, with titles like Far-Cry out there. I no longer care to even see, much less play a new game just because it's "pretty".

    I've been working on a 3D engine of my own for awhile. As of now, I'm tearing it down and
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I also enjoy a good blast at Uneal Tournament 2004. Mind you, that game is pretty... but as for gameplay? I've pretty much seen it all before... so in a way I was a bit unimpressed by it.
      One of the main feature of newer FPS games is better protection against cheating.

  • I say good. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by craXORjack ( 726120 )
    "If everybody turns to an Xbox or a PlayStation for entertainment, who's going to need new PC equipment?"

    That does away with the last excuse to keep Windows around since some people say 'there aren't enough games on Linux'. Soon there won't be enough games on Windows either. Good riddance.

  • i was just playing battlefield vietnam, and when a map would load, everyone in first would get to the tanks/planes/helis/apc etc.

    this would end up and leaving nothing for the rest of the people who load the map slower because of older hardware.. thus feeding to the notion that (newer) games do cater to the elite..
  • I was under the impression that the minimum specs for Doom3 were to be 1GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, GF1 or Radeon 7xxx series card [slashdot.org].

    I wasn't sure at the time, but after asking I learned that GF1 means `GeForce 1', the original GeForce card. None of those specifications are particularly hairy (by today's standards.) Or did things just change that much between last July and now?

  • Consoles are taking over gaming in a massive way. This is what let me finally switch to OS X, the complete lack of titles coming out on the PC (I can think of three this year that I might buy, two of which are coming out on consoles anyway, versus about 15-20 console games that I want). A couple of consoles will set you back the cost of a high end graphics card and open up a world of games that put gameplay on the same level of graphics (Quake 3 anyone? Didn't think so!).
  • Jeez, where do they find these guys to write these "insightful" computer articles these days? Wal-Mart? Computer gaming has always been a really expensive endeavor. I upgraded my computer every two years and it was really freakin' expensive to do so. Now, what cost me $3,000 every two years, now costs $1,500. But now, computer power is actually getting upstripped by the 3d cards. The new Nvidia chip has 222 million transitors! Prices have not changed much in the 3d accelerator department over the pas
  • Two years ago (ish) I bough a brand spankin' new athlon XP 1800, 512MB of RAM and a GeForce3 Ti200 video card. It ran every game like a dream, said system still runs the latest and greatest, and the GF3 only shows it's age with the games that really push things around (Far Cry, KoTOR, UT2k4, and the like, easily changed using lower detail levels).
    I basically swapped hardware with a friend of mine a year ago when I was building a fileserver and needed a cord to run that, it was more economical to buy new, fa
  • From the blurb:
    "With the impending release of Valve's Half-Life 2 and id's Doom 3, we're looking at the first required hardware upgrade in gaming history..."

    Uhhhh, no. While I'll buy that this does qualify as a de facto necessary hardware upgrade, the original Doom caused anyone interested to move from whatever they had -- likely a 486 -- to a Pentium chip. That's a whole new machine in case you're a young 'un.

    Wolfenstein caused anyone without a clock doubler to quickly find out what the hell they were.

  • really? (Score:3, Funny)

    by hak1du ( 761835 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @07:15AM (#8971008) Journal
    With the impending release of Valve's Half-Life 2 and id's Doom 3

    I wouldn't hold my breath--it's probably less "impending" than the author thinks.

  • PC vs Console again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blankmange ( 571591 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @08:27AM (#8971268)
    Why would I want to buy/build a PC for gaming if I am going to have to constantly update it? Granted, many geeks love to tinker with their hard/software. But once it is running sweet, why should I have to swap out a video card/get the latest bleeding edge drivers/wait for the multi-MB patch so I can play the latest game on my PC? Then, if you are lucky and the gods are smiling on you, you can play...

    My PS2 has dozens of great titles (including the greatest of all time - GT) and I never have to crack the case of my PS2 to get it to run any of them. I opted out of that race a couple of years ago - too expensive/frustrating/time consuming.

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