DirectX Architect — Consoles as We Know Them Are Gone 434
ThinSkin writes "DirectX architect Alex St. John swims against the current and predicts the demise not of PC gaming, but of game consoles, in an exclusive two-part interview at ExtremeTech. In part one, Alex blasts Intel for pushing its inferior onboard graphics technology to OEMs, insists that fighting piracy is the main reason for the existence of gaming consoles, and explains how the convergence of the GPU and the CPU is the next big thing in gaming. Alex continues in part two with more thoughts on retail and 3D games, and discusses in detail why he feels 'Vista blows' and what's to become of DirectX 10."
Re:If He Thinks "Vista Blows"... (Score:3, Interesting)
That, I suspect, will change as online gaming becomes ever more popular. Furthermore, if the "convergence" that Microsoft is always harping on comes about (with consoles being used for more and more computer-like functions) you'll see consoles becoming targets as well. Hell, even the handhelds have resident Web browsers and WiFi capability, and probably a metric fuckton of security holes just waiting for the right blackhat to take advantage of them. Gaming systems are sophisticated network-aware computers in their own right, are regularly being plugged into home networks which also contain PCs and other IP-based devices. That's a potential risk in and of itself, and I'm sure it will eventually be exploited.
Piracy? (Score:1, Interesting)
For games.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why should they? What I'm saying is PCs for work and consoles for games. I think it's good that there's a specialty computer for games. That'll relieve some of the pressure on PC makers from having to make these boxes "for everybody". I don't know about you, but most of the graphics capability for my PCs goes unused. And the only reason I can think of is that Intel or whomever designs them that way so that these things "fits all". I'd like an even cheaper mother board for just business type of applications - I don't need the sound cards, super duper video, etc... for email, web browsing, word, exel, or any of the server apps when I'm running Linux on the board.
Re:Why consoles will win (Score:2, Interesting)
You just can't expect computers to die as a gaming platform, because no matter how nice it is to have a non-changing console development platform that you don't have to update drivers for, and with which you can just have fun developing games, without worrying about drivers and funky crashes, version conflicts etc, it is still not an option to expect the gaming hardware market (which as most historians of the field know kick started and fueled 3d mathematics and algorithms, plus GPU design since abouit 1995 with the advent of 3dfx Voodoo, Riva and Rage chips) to freeze every 5 years, so that little kids can play their shiny little white PSx that site under their TV.
It is simply two parallel markets, and the only thing they share is the game industry.
Re:fighting piracy is the main reason (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, some facts now... (Score:5, Interesting)
2) His current software and games are very much NOT 3D, so he is commenting on the 3D market why again?
3) His argument about PCs not being good gaming platforms is that they don't contain enough DRM? Truly, go back and read this again. What the hell does he want, a gun pointing a peoples faces if their mouse gets near the rip or copy button?
4) Throughout the article they keep talking about WildTangent Orb, which is a program that competes DIRECTLY with Windows Vista & Windows Marketplace & Games for Windows, in Rating games based on system performance, and providing a consistent expectation for the gamer.
5) WildTangent huh... Ok, anyone that installed this software or has removed it from a friends computer would shudder to think that this guy has any insight when it comes to programming at all, let alone 3D gaming. (WildTangent is borderline Spyware, and the games are kludges, slow, etc.)
6) He thinks DirectX is bad and Vista is bad, but argue that they the best that can be done with 3D gaming. Hmm..
7) He talks about the DirectX hardware abstraction levels and implies DirectX 10 is further from the hardware than previous versions. This is really really inaccurate, as DirectX even opens a new diret pipeline for shoving calculations and physics to the GPU. The only place DirectX 10 is 'further' from hardware is the removal of DirectSound, but this has been replaced in 10.1 with a new hardware layer that is compatible with the new Vista sound subsystem. This stuff makes me think the guy is insane, has a chip or both.
8) His argues about current 3D technology is tricks, but raytracing is real 3D? Um, raytracing is also freaking tricks, especially if you work to get any performance out of it. (And this is just in studio level rendering we are talking about, let alone gaming). Moving raytracing to games or adding it to current 3D technologies would be great, but it is going to take more 'tricks' for good performance and STILL WILL NOT BE REAL 3D, any more than current gaming technologies. He is an expert and yet doesn't understand this? Holy cow...
9) The only thing I can agree with in the article is the portion about onboard Video being a bane to the gaming industry, and Intel being a horrible proponent of bad entry level 3D chipsets that can't even run Flight Sim 98, let alone a current game with more than 15fps.
And here's why we need raytracing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Getting great graphics from the next generation of raster engines is going to cost even more. Sure, you can sit there and micromanage every goddamn thing on the screen and get graphics that look good enough that you can't tell them from optically correct rendering at a glance. But that costs you five times as much as building a model and telling the graphics engine to render it, and letting the software figure out where you need shadows and hilights and bloom.
The other side of this is the Myst problem. Remember Myst? Remember how you could only go where they're rendered the scenes? Now in many modern games, guess what, you can only go where they've prepared the scenes. You can't even walk across a flowerbed and around the back of the tavern, because they haven't prepared the back of the tavern. you get puzzles that involve figuring out what rope to grab to climb up a 45 degree slope, and if they haven't decided that you're going to be able to climb that slope you can't... even if you've got elf boots and a magic rope.
Why? Because it's so damned expensive to get them looking good.
Let the computer do the stuff that we know how to make a computer do... simulation... and let the humans worry about making the simulation fun.
input devices or online community (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Microstudios (Score:2, Interesting)
Great explanation! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, on the mailing list for this driver, I immediately got access to the lead developers. OK, they knew I was Bruce, but it looked like they were treating all callers the same way. They connected me with Intel BIOS programmers, etc.
Now, imaging having this problem in the Windows world. You would be routed to a call-center employee in India who would go through a script with you.
I am using the same driver with i915 in an old Sony laptop and i965 in a new duo motherboard. Both seem to work fine. I don't know how much lower-level DirectX is than GL.
Bruce
Re:Why Microsoft Dislikes Intel Graphics (Score:3, Interesting)
My 8-year-old son and I play Flightgear. We have two 1280x1024 monitors, both displaying different rectangles of the same graphics plane, and we sometimes pull the window wide so that it displays across both screens at around 2500x1000. The driver still delivers full accelleration when we do that. It gets about 14 frames per second in 2500x1000 mode. We have the CH yoke, pedals, and quadrant. We've played some of the other Open GL games that come with Debian.
Bruce
Re:"Vista Blows" (Score:4, Interesting)
Now even microsoft encourages game developers to use the system libraries, for playing those standard formats(like they did on XP). Except now they make some games all but unplayable.
I'd say that's an example of vista sucks, and it's pretty closely tied to DirectSound, not DirectX.
Re:Sigh... (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft didn't come up with the conclusion, Alex St. John did.
I'm not sure how the world's most expensive DVDplayer enters into your argument.
Re:The new gaming consoles are basically PCs (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the one thing that surprised me about computers and televisions.
Way back in the early 80s, most of us hooked up computers to TV sets. Then we went to monitors.
Now we can hook up our PCs to our HTDV television sets since TVs and monitors have almost merged themselves to one. No more fighting with a screwdriver in back to hook up that RF switch(and reaching back to move that slider switch). We plug in the HDMI connector, select the right channel, and we get a nice, crisp, high res display.
Re:Go figure... (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, Alex St John was hardly a primary DirectX Architect. He was, however, the first official DirectX Evangelist. That's like comparing Spock to Uhura.
Second, ASJ's current software company, WildTangent, is predominantly mentioned as some of the cruftware most of you guys were screaming to have removed in the Sony article earlier today.
Third, DirectX is doing as much for consoles by making the XBOX easy to program as it is for PC's. Why do you think the original XBOX console came out of nowhere and did so well? It took the best of DirectX ease of programming and subtracted a big chunk of the cruft and compatibility pains of Windows PC's and put them to work in a common target.
The one thing I agree with ASJ is that Intel is own worst enemy when it comes to PC games. Intel wants the PC game market to thrive which will help sell their $$$ high-end processors but there is nothing out there recently that has held back the PC game market more than the crappy performance of Intel's IGP's which are in about 70-80% of consumer PCs.
Re:That's great, but this isn't a hardware problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The other advantage to game consoles is that they hold up better than most regular PCs. That may change with hard drives and other parts to fail. I have a NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii, Genesis, 32x, Sega CD, Dreamcast, and GBA all working. i can play the same games on them now I could play in the past. With Windows, games that ran on Windows 98 no longer run. Many games don't even make it to the next windows release. For instance, LucasArts games have terrible compatibility issues. Some of the win98 era games didn't even make it past a DirectX update! Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic has terrible memory leaks and graphics card bugs. (its' great otherwise) I've got a pile of games I can't play anymore that also won't run in emulators yet due to 3d or opengl requirements. I don't have a PC that will run Windows 98 handy anymore either.
It is very rare that I get rid of a game console, but PCs come and go. (and windows versions) In fact, the only console I've sold in the last 12 years was my xbox.
PC gaming has a place, and some companies like id and blizzard know how to make games run on several os versions (or patch them). I couldn't imagine WoW on a console or QuakeWars. I hate FPS on consoles. They look bad and the controls suck. SImulations tend to be better on PCs and Macs too.
I think there is a market for both. If you look at articles, it seems like cell phone gaming is the hot ticket right now anyway.
Re:That's great, but this isn't a hardware problem (Score:2, Interesting)
For an analogy to explain better what I mean -- if you have a toaster and a waffle iron, and compare the two, the toaster can only make toast, and the waffle iron may be of a kind that can both make waffles *and* sandwich toast. Let's say that the waffle iron sometimes has a problem in that it burn the waffles a bit. However, this is of course still no disadvantage if comparing just making toast (= playing games). It's a problem in a different area of use that the toaster doesn't even support. So personally, this is slightly in the apples and oranges territory for me. I can much easier swallow the "disadvantage" in risking viruses on a PC, since that is in an area of use that we aren't even talking about on the PlayStation. It's very rarely about catching viruses from having purchased a game in a retail store, or having viruses sneak onto your computer from an open World of Warcraft game port in your router. I would agree that would be more in conflict and a direct disadvantage of a PC as a gaming system.
I'm not sure why people think good antivirus tools have to cost money. I guess I blame aggressive marketing from Symantec etc...
Re:Go figure... (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you ever noticed that PCs are so inefficient compared to gaming consoles? Gaming consoles are good for gaming and computing, not to mention compiling.
I hope that one day, everyone will have a gaming console (and that they follow a structured set of guidelines) and that we will mobile devices to interact with our network. Our mobile device will be our cell phone, our, music player, our web browser, our email client, and general purpose gadget. Things like this already exist, but they do not follow a structured set of guidlines that let each device perform in a similar manner with communication protocls and etc. that allow companies to pursue improvement and innovation rather than cheap business practices and vendor-locked, proprietary devices/protocols.
I wonder if any of this made coherent sense, or whether this sentence. Ignore me if you will, but one day I may be right.
Re:Just bought a console (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing with a console is that you are in exactly the same situation as a PC. Instead of upgrading your video card every two years, you're going to be upgrading your console every three or four, and that console upgrade will have the performance of an average PC at that time. Many games are specific to one console, and if it doesn't happen to be yours then just like on a PC you don't meet "system requirements" and you are SOL.
A PC you can choose to upgrade if you want. A console you never can.
Re:That's great, but this isn't a hardware problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The games on NES scrolled better and more smoothly than Commander Keen. Gran Turismo or Ridge Racer IV felt faster and smoother than Grand Prix Legends or CART Racing from Microsoft. I loved GPL and CART Racing, but there ya go.
I respect Alex St. John, but as Apple and MS proved, the most technically superior solution doesn't always win. For me, the choices are down more to comfort and ease than technology: TVs and couches are more comfortable environments than monitors and desk chairs. Disc --> console --> playing is easier and faster than PC startup --> install --> driver download --> install --> restart --> startup --> run --> crash --> patch --> STEAM ID check --> etc.
Old Concepts are gone because the wii has arrived. (Score:2, Interesting)
On an Atari 2600, Then a Colecovision. I admit, I never owned an intellivision, but I did get intellivision thumb.
I eventually became a PC gamer because that's where the action was with the C64 and Amiga (or my friend's mac) before I bought my first ludicrously expensive PC when I started working for a living, primarily to play games and get on the BBS scene. Fast forward a decade or two and I left a veritable scapheap of PC parts behind, mostly spent to waste time on games, since my masters provided my programming needs with 24x7 internet connected computers with dev tools.
From this, I can presume that I'm at this point a wizened geezer-gamer.
The universe has changed. PC games only get 3 things these days:
- Sports
- FPS
- RTS
All of the inventive games happen either on the web as flash games, or on consoles.
I don't play FPS or RTS games any more. When my kid was 2 and he stumbled in on me playing counterstrike, I realized how....wrong....it all seemed in a broader sense. That gaming PC was the last I ever bought. Almost 7 years later, it's useless for 'gamerz', but it's still good enough for my kid to use for what little he uses a computer for.
I bought a Wii when they first came out.
It's fun.
I play with my kid, and I kick his ass, unless I want to make him feel good .
I now use a Macbook, because I pretty much just browse, email, etc...on my computer. And I like the feel of the hardware better than the Windows systems, and the OS better than Windows or Linux.
PC my ass.
Re:Why consoles will win (Score:3, Interesting)
I would like to see the joysticks on Sony's controller just a little longer next time round, or maybe a rev of the current generation. I would certainly repurchase to get a controller I can operate with higher precision.
I just want to say, I have been wooed away from the traditional mouse+keyboard PC control system for first person games. I like playing with a console controller equally well now, and basically it comes down to, I can play the console sitting on the sofa but I need to sit at a desk to play a PC game. Both fun, but really, sitting at the desk reminds me of work. Give me my potato time please, and give it to me with a console controller.
Comparing apples to oranges in a taste test... (Score:2, Interesting)
PC vs Console (Score:2, Interesting)
Plus for PC, you can run your game faster if you pay more
Minus for PC, compared to a console you may have to pay much more than you'd like for acceptable performance (would you want to do serious gaming on an eMachine? All 360s are even...)
What's on a console can be better optimized (you KNOW what they're running), what's on a PC? Do theey have feature X? How fast does it run? Uh-oh, the feature is only emulated by DirectX on this PC...
"It just works" (tm)
Plus for Console, usually, if it's FOR that console, it works seemlessly with it, always, forever, if not replace or fix the console
PC, is the game bad, is something in your system bad? Will upgrading the OS break it? Upgrading to a different model video care? Do you have enough RAM? (Although there are exceptions, the N64 had an add-on memory card)
Worse, old action games with no good timer that you can't seem to adjust for the proper speed. I've seen it mentioned at one point that Linux played some old PC games better than some version of Windows because with either you needed to emulate these days and the better emulator writers (that this guy knew of) were on Linux. I can't vouce for the accuracy, but not all games were written to scale gracefully on different machines. Neither are NES games, but the NES is a discrete target, the PC is a set of general blurs. You can expect a Win95 game to have capabilities between W and Y, a 98 between X and Z etc...
Will the PC randomly slow from spyware? Will a popup from an anti-virus program or IM kill your game?
How long will the PC take to boot? Consoles don't take nearly as long. (Although with what we've seen on the net with ROM based loading, either Windows or Linux booting can be VERY sped up, I'm sure many people would pay a lot for a USB based Windows install that "just worked" within seconds when you booted from it. We'll probably see something like this coming up.
If something breaks, will your main PC be broken? (Bad memories of DX 3 and 4)
Of course, what if someone was to make... "Game OS". Forget just a virtual machine, a plug-in USB based OS (maybe based on a stripped down version of Linux, Puppy or DSL, perhaps a smaller OS with a published spec that peripheral makers could write to or not, no different than writing / building for DirectX) Guarenteed better speed and reliability from not running ANYTHING extra in the background if the OS can get unloaded from memory by whatever game you choose to run. There's the nasty problem of who will / won't release new hardware / drivers for this OS. (A single driver that all devices could be made to fit would be beautiful, but good luck)
How many PCs do you want?
If you game on your PC, you may or may not be able to use it for other things at the same time. How seemlessly can you swap between your gaming, IM etc? With a PC and console, one right next to the other, best of both worlds. Dedicated machine that no amount of playing on your PC will slow down.
Cheating
There's always been cheating and always will. From Game Genie for infinite lives to patches for PC games for see-through walls in FPSs. If you want a fair online game, the best system is a console front-end (technically hackable, but difficult that not nearly so many will bother as will on PCs where it's much easier) with as much as possible handled on a central server.
In this, the whole virtual machine idea becomes more practical. If we get a fast enough, reliable enough net connection, we can theoretically treat EITHER a console OR a pc as just a tv and controller, a dumb terminal that advertises its capabilities, sends keyboard, mouse, controller info and returns a video feed from the server.
Screen
Computers tend to have monitors instead of TVs
Monitors look better but are usually smaller. HDs look nice. The Dreamcast has a VGA adaptor. Many HD TVs take PC input. This is becoming moot. In the future you'll get a monitor,
Not necessarly (Score:2, Interesting)
Consoles aren't as sturdy as the old NES days. Hell, I have a C64 that still works till this day. I don't think we are ever going to see that kind of reliability again.
DRM is still there (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Go figure... (Score:3, Interesting)
A proper API would be one where the application does not need to even be concerned about what the capabilities of the hardware are in order to work, but in order to optimize performance it needs to check what the hardware can do. With a fast enough CPU, and my adjusting graphics options, a DirectX 9 game SHOULD work on a DirectX 7 video card, where the API handles what the hardware can't do, but still lets the video card accelerate what it can can accelerate. In a way, this is what EA was calling for several months ago when they were saying a unified platform is needed that would work on consoles and on PCs. It is really a full API, not one that just drops what the video card can't handle.
Now, there were a number of things wrong with what the guy was saying in the interview. First, the reason the market has not grown is because when the tech crash happened in mid 2001(a year and a half after the
Think of it like some of the movie studios which used to crank out a LOT of bad movies, so now only release a few movies every year, most of which are a bit better. The low-budget movies got scaled back a LOT by the increases in costs, so low-budget really doesn't mean low-cost anymore. A flop isn't something that doesn't make a lot of money, it is something that loses a lot of money. The game industry has run into the same problem, and people are feeling it.
Have you noticed how few true RPGs there are that are not a linear console-type game with no way to choose what order you even do the main quest elements in? Games like Jade Empire may be fun, and have some RPG elements in them, but they are also a linear game, with the only choices being how you respond to the NPCs you encounter. The old adventure game genre is also pretty much gone, where the player needs to figure out what to do, not just trying to kill things. Older gamers(relative term here, we are talking those 35 years old and older) sometimes want a mental challenge, not just "how do we kill this whatever". The PC has advantages in the control system for games that give you lots of options on what to do, and when developers focus on either console games with a PC port, or making sure the consoles can handle the exact same content as the PC, it weakens the games a LOT.
This trend can be seen in the Tomb Raider Anniversary game compared to the original game. While many elements of the original TR are there, the feel has gone more "console". Instead of looking around trying to figure out where to go, looking for ledges that can be jumped up to, etc, much of the new version goes back to the action element, rather than the exploration element. It doesn't capture that sense of, "wow" when you enter a large area.
When games actually provide choices, that is when people really stand up and take notice. Bioshock had more of that feeling, which added to it's popularity. It wasn't overly simple, even if it was not overly complex. People want more complexity in gameplay.
Re:Why consoles will win (Score:2, Interesting)