Unreal Creator Proclaims PCs are Not For Gaming 705
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... (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:I'm not worried, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm not worried, because... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm not worried, because... (Score:5, Informative)
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Multiplayer, an autolock is akin to cheating, even if it's game supplied, so sorta screwed there.
Re:I'm not worried, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:4, Informative)
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... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Compare that to a PS3 for $600 bucks, considering how much more you can do with the pc laptop than you can with the PS3, and, well, you see where I'm going, right?
And thanks for pointing out what an utterly appalling POS console controllers are. Who in the name of all that is holy thought that those goddamn useless twin-stick controllers was a good id
Re:I'm not worried, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I'm sure that's part of it, PC developers don't have to pay licensing fees since the platforms they developing for are open, Xbox 360 and PS3 games pay out nearly $7 per disc back to MS/Sony for licensing. Not to mention they have to foot the bill for s
Re:I'm not worried, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:I'm not worried, because... (Score:4, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
and linux. and bsd. and mac os.
Re:I'm not worried, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Informative)
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The entire thing is abstracted away from the architecture, the code really doesn't give a damn if it's running on PowerPC in a 360 or an x86 in a PC. The changes needing to be made are usually very small relative to the entire project (UI tweaks, save games etc).
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I've been coding for years. My primary development platform is Linux, which as you know supports dozens of CPU architectures. How many changes do I have to make in order to compile on a differing architecture? Chances are, not a single one. If there is a change that needs to be made it's with the build scripts most of the time, only very rarely does the code itself need to be touched. I can take this same code and compile it on Mac OS X, crea
Re:I'm not worried, because... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I'm not worried, because... (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's Tim's fault, isn't it?
Re:Unreal Tourniment is a game? (Score:4, Informative)
Sooo... in the grand scheme of things, Sweeney has found himself a free pass out of the creative side of game development.
Judging from the recent Unreal sales numbers (Score:2)
Re:Judging from the recent Unreal sales numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
you cant sell a crapload of games that runs on hardware that most people dont have.
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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.
Price that one out and see why you can't get stuff to run on a $400 Dell :)
Re:Judging from the recent Unreal sales numbers (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
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There is nowhere that this is more apparent than The Sims franchise where people who are not gamers suddenly want to play a game and find they can't or that the performance sucks.
The problem lies with the fact that PCs are not consoles and people have choice. If every PC was sold as something capable of handling games, the price would
Re:Judging from the recent Unreal sales numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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No Linux or Mac ports
No initial Linux server
Severely downgraded server app (No webadmin, no ability to ban by CD key, limited functionality mapvote, repeated server crashes, bugs in the beta which were reported, but not fixed on release, etc.)
While we've been playing UT for 8 years or so, this is by far the WORST release we've ever seen. With
Printer Friendly Version (Score:3, Informative)
TFA Clarification (Score:5, Informative)
Re:TFA Clarification (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:TFA Clarification (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
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So do I. The fault lies at the game designers' feet. If you look at the top ten selling games of all time, you'll find that none of them are graphics quality powerhouses - the sims, diablo, roller coaster tycoon, grand theft auto. Yes, making a game visually crispy will get a lot of dollars, but it doesn't win the top of the tree, and the last time it did (quake 1) was largely coincidental. What makes epic dollars is gameplay. Always has been, always
Re:TFA Clarification (Score:4, Interesting)
He also doesn't consider reality:
He also makes this odd statement regarding Intel's integrated graphics:
By the way, gamers:
Laptops can be underpowered like the DS and PSP (Score:2)
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?
I think he sees laptops as analogous to handheld game systems. Nintendo's GameCube (previous generation console) is much more powerful than Nintendo DS (current generation handheld). Likewise with Sony's PlayStation 2 and PSP, and Microsoft's Xbox and Pocket PC.[1] Laptops are supposed to run games designed for weaker graphics hardware; that's part of the tradeoff for mobility.
It really tells you where the sweet spot is for gaming - might as well use the gear that the developers do.
Which would be consistent with the rest of the article: With the consoles, end users are guaranteed to use "the gear that the de
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I think he sees laptops as analogous to handheld game systems.
It is, and that is an excellent point. What I don't understand is why he is willing to see portability as an acceptable reason to trade off performance, but cost is not... All he has to do is design a low-end version of his game - no different then making one for the DS or one of the consoles. If he doesn't do it and there really is the market he seems to think there is, one of his competitors will be happy to eat his lunch.
Which would be consistent with the rest of the article: With the consoles, end users are guaranteed to use "the gear that the developers do".
Then his developers need to go out and buy some low-end Dell machines. They'll nev
You're way off the mark (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:You're way off the mark (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
They are better (Score:3, Insightful)
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Terrible at polygon shading, maybe, but that doesn't matter for 95% of what the PCs that have them are used for.
Re:You're way off the mark (Score:4, Insightful)
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€€€
Just my 0.02 €...
np: Kings Of Convenience - Sorry Or Please (Riot On An Empty Street)
Re:TFA Clarification (Score:4, Insightful)
He's not even saying that (Score:2)
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They ask what sort of games are played and tell them what they won't and will be able to play, and recommend a non-integrated graphics card when applicable.
Also, I get to see the new *beastly* machines before they come out
RTS (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Why not touch screen RTS? (Score:2)
I really believe the last bastion of PC gaming lies in real time strategy games, a genre that essentially requires at least a mouse.
Do real-time war sims require a mouse, or do they work well with a DS touch screen, a Pocket PC touch screen, a GP2X F-200 touch screen, or a Wii Remote?
I'm not really sure if PC games losing to consoles is entirely a bad thing
It is. Independent developers have less access to the consoles by far than they do to the Windows platform due to the lockout chip business model adopted by all three major console manufacturers.
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Do real-time war sims require a mouse, or do they work well with a DS touch screen
if you have a DS and an M3DS simply or R4DS card, you should look up "a touch of war" a simple homebrew touch-screen controlled RTS.
its a little buggy and limited to only 4 units, but it works quite well. with a more powerful system, a touch screen RTS would be an enjoyable experience.
I might have to go out and buy a tablet PC now and crank out some old command and conquer disks and see how it goes.
hopefully i have better luck than i did trying to run WoW on a Wacom tablet.
Lockout chip business model (Score:3, Insightful)
Do real-time war sims require a mouse, or do they work well with a DS touch screen
if you have a DS and an M3DS simply or R4DS card, you should look up "a touch of war" a simple homebrew touch-screen controlled RTS.
Which brings me to the next point. The console makers have preferred to lock out smaller developers rather than embrace them. Once every generation, at least one console maker sues retailers that carry some product that allows homebrew, and at least one console maker continuously updates newly manufactured consoles with code that blocks the exploits that homebrew uses to boot without the console maker's digital signature. With PCs and PDAs, independent developers and players of their games don't run nearly
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The (sorta) myth of upgradeability (Score:4, Insightful)
That's sorta true. . . but not so much. . .
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.
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2) More and more people are hooking up a mouse and keyboard to their consoles anyway. All the current-gen consoles have USB ports and support keyboards. I've got a Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse attached to
Many good points, but I don't quite agree (Score:5, Insightful)
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i915 (Score:4, Insightful)
for those 1337 3D games (Score:2)
Re:for those 1337 3D games (Score:5, Insightful)
Drink your coffee before you post!
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Not only will it be coming to the console, it will contain 50% more stuff.
http://kotaku.com/gaming/cry-on/crytek-says-crysis-for-consoles-possible-284534.php [kotaku.com]
http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/03/03/rumor-crysis-for-ps3-looking-probable-will-be-an-almost-50-n/ [ps3fanboy.com]
If PCs aren't for gaming, then what about indies? (Score:2)
If PCs aren't for gaming, then how can smaller game developers get their foot in the door with the console makers?
(after reading the article) False alarm. There is still a market for PC games with low-end graphics. From the article:
Re:If PCs aren't for gaming, then what about indie (Score:2, Redundant)
I bought a Nintendo wii, just for wii sports, but will always be a PC gamer. the idea that the games available to me have to be pre-approved by men in suits from sony, Nintendo or Microsoft is just stupid. In the immediate future we have Spore and The Sims 3 coming up, and I certainly haven't finished with COD 4 or Sins of a solar Empire yet either.
The PC will alway
Creativity (Score:3, Insightful)
If the consolers will get off their high horses... (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Hmm?
Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3 can be played with mouse and keyboard just fine.
Re:If the consolers will get off their high horses (Score:2, Redundant)
Unreal Tournament 3 on the PS3 supports a Keyboard and Mouse.
Re:If the consolers will get off their high horses (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If the consolers will get off their high horses (Score:2)
Keyboard and Mouse (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess I got bored by sitting in front of the PC all day and night, and just unwinding in my recliner while playing games on the projector-setup is awesome. Also, Xbox Live is great, I've met a lot of people who I regularly play with, as we seem to buy the same titles. Great fun!
Re:Keyboard and Mouse (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Define games (Score:3, Insightful)
In the last six months I've logged more hours playing Mahjong on my N810 than I have playing UT3, EVE Online and Half Life 2 mods combined.
So from a wider perspective he's not only wrong, but lost sight of what is important in a game. Not that I don't personally think that UT3 is fun as hell, I actually bought that one. But some perspective on his part would be beneficial to him and his customers.
Before the mouse vs. joystick wars begin..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Uhm? (Score:2)
He's especially unhappy with Intel, which he says has integrated graphics chipsets that 'just don't work'.
Which is why you get what you pay for. Such chipsets are not targeted for gamers, but energy efficient laptops and general surf machines / business application computers. Otherwise he could rant about how much the Wii graphics suck when compared to the PS3, but ultimately, it is the developers who push the graphics to an insane level of realism.
There are many examples of games with "dated" graphics that sell in high volumes.
Re: (Score:2)
So the rest of the machine will be screaming... People then have expectations on their games going on from there. Its silly, I know...but those chipsets are used -everywhere-, not just in low end computers or work lap-tops, and customers arent properly w
Weird 64 bit comments (Score:2, Insightful)
I like Tim, I especially liked his presentation on programming languages in games, but his comments about 64-bit Vista seem rather out of touch.
Yeah? It'd also have cleaned up all the "legacy"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It would've broken all the old drivers, yes, but they did that anyways. Regular applications would be unaff
I agree with Tim, perfect chance for 64bit break. (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's fault is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
He is absolutely right (Score:3, Funny)
And those jaw bones should have been left the hell alone [wikipedia.org], too. You can barely recognize them, either, and in their current form, they are NO GOOD FOR CHEWING!
Why can't people leave well enough alone?
Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
Humorously ambiguous sentence
Windows is a terrible gaming platform (Score:5, Insightful)
* 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 (Score:4, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
PC as the future's TV (Score:3, Interesting)
What do you need to use a console? Televisions.
When everybody has a computer at home, wouldn't it be natural for consoles to connect to the computer and use it's display? Wouldn't it also follow that, having connected to the computer you could also use it's peripherals?
At the same time, aren't graphic cards concentrating more and more of the power needed to run a modern game?
So, on one side we'll have consoles that lack display (as now) but also controls and sound, and graphic cards concentrating almost all the power to run a cutting edge game.
What differentiates those two pieces of hardware?
Proof that (Score:3, Informative)
How the hell is it Intel and the PC's manufacturer's fault for integrated graphics, when most PC's are for business use, where they, at best, play card games on. People won't pay for power they don't need.
The market for insanely fast, high-end games seems to have shrunk in favour of casual games, MMOs, and "gameplay" games. Instead of working on graphics engines, the hotspot for innovation seems to be game play and game experience. Examples abound: Wii Sports, Bio Shock, Mass Effect, World in Conflict, the endless stream of "war games" like Gears of War and Call of Duty, etc.
None of these games can be played with Integrated graphics; WoW will run max ~10-15 fps on X3100 Integrated graphics, and will probably degrade without aftermarket cooling. Almost all sales people at Best Buy or even at the Apple Store are very clear about what models are meant for games, and which ones aren't. Yet Tim claims that poor, blind, customers are being sold PC's that won't play games. I guess he's never heard of a "2 week return policy"?
I think Doom 3 killed the market -- after that experience, people don't want to buy the same old 10 year old game with new graphics and some minor gameplay improvements.
For example, if you improve the graphics (a bit) AND the gameplay AND change the setting or genre, you may have a winner... The current graphics champ, Crysis, has done fairly well [1up.com], selling 1 million [kotaku.com] through the end of January, despite early reports that it was flunking as bad as UT3. Gears of War 2 is hotly anticipated and I bet will slam UT3's sales despite being on the same engine. I haven't heard what UT3's sales are, last I saw it was 1.2 million [gamespy.com] for PS3 + PC combined, which seems to indicate PC sales sucked.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But they are perfectly fine for WoW, Counterstrike, Warcraft 3, Starcraft, The Sims, Bejewelled, Freecell and many other games that millions around the world are playing _NOW_.
I've been playing Guild Wars on my years old Athlon XP system, and what bothers me more is network latency than system "grunt" - high ping makes playing hard.
If the latest UT didn't sell well or doesn't work on computers that 90% of the _ta
An opposing viewpoint... (Score:4, Interesting)
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
How often does a game console crash? PC?
This has always been touted as some sort of advantage of the console over the PC; however, I think the X-Box360 failures have sort of highlighted this as not being as lopsided as the console makers would have you believe. In the end, system stability is largely a variable based on the user system and setup. My PC has been known to run for weeks on end without the need for a reboot and without a crashing issue.
For me being able to care for my own system is important also. If it breaks I like being able to choose if I upgrade or replace. Being in control is important that's why I like Gentoo.
I think this is something that is lost on some people. Not only do you often have the ability
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, he implies that you should be buying a console, instead (probably a PS3, because the X360 has numerous serious problems, yet), because a PC is basically a CPU shoving some data to a GPU doing the real job. Considering that the costs for one of those High-End beasts rival those of an Xbox 360 or a PS3, why should I even bother buying such a thing, in the first place?
Yes, consoles do have lockouts all over the place, but you know what: PC games have tho