People are interesting sometimes

[Jonbo298]

Taken from another board

Will poor hardware support and the NextGen console Warz Kill PC Gaming?
I have been at this PC moding and gaming stuff for a long time and I now truly believe that the next round of consoles (i.e. PS3) will dominate the gaming landscape. In the past the appeal of consoles was unified hardware and software, but they were usually less powerful than their PC counterparts. Well not any more! The Sum of the parts of a rig like the PS3 constitutes a super gaming computer in anyone’s book. A moder would probably pay close to $20,000.00 if parts were available and they tried to build a PC with those specs. Worst yet (or better depending on what side you’re on) the price point of the PS3 is rumored to be coming in at around $450 to $500 bucks! That’s CRAZY! I can’t even buy the latest high end video card for that amount let alone a pair for SLI.

The message here for all PC Game Devs is this; keep dicking around with crap hardware support and watch you business disappear in the next 2 years. Want to survive the NextGen console Warz? Well you could either beat them by WORK HARDER AND SMARTER TO MAKE YOUR SOFTWARE MORE COMPATIBLE! A user should not have to jump through hoops to play a game especially if the hardware in use is standard fare (AMD/INTEL, NVIDIA/ATI)! Or you could join them by making your next title for a nextgen console. The choice is yours. For now, I just want to PAY, login and PLAY!

Exactly my point. There has been a major shift here and I don’t think everyone recognizes it. Lets look at this from a hardware development cycle perspective. Constantly upgrading Video cards on existing PC platforms is Fool’s Gold even if the card is under $300. Imagine purchasing an AGP card at this point simply because you want to use your existing motherboard/hardware? Worse, all of those that jumped into 64Bit early and are now stuck with stuff that six month later can’t even keep up with the latest releases (i.e. BF2).

Example - “Yea I bought that AMD 64bit FX and now it’s all about dual core”. Just getting the latest video card and sticking it in your system doesn’t work any more. To keep up you have to also upgrade to the latest motherboard, need SLI or Xfire, need DDR3 sticks, need latest dual core CPU, oh and don’t forget the latest SAT drives with 16mb cache.

See where I am going with this? The PS3 will be around $450 and by the time PC hardware catches up to its stated MONSTER capabilities it will be PS4 time. Again, it’s no longer as simple as “just sticking in a new video card” in your system. Full system changes and hundreds of dollars are needed to keep up.

On the console side competition will minimize the development cycle. Add-ons will be introduced (i.e. HD-DVD/Blue Ray for X360). Upgrades will be introduced. And guess what else? I DON’T HAVE TO DICK AROUND WITH CRAP HARDWARE SUPPORT. We are too trained to believe that it is ok to accept buggy software releases in PC games and what makes it worse? We sit back and let them dip into our wallets MONTHLY! We are waaaay to conditioned to TAKE THAT!

Don’t miss understand me here. THIS IS IN NO WAY A CRITISISM OF ****. I enjoy this game. I am simply comparing the Console vs PC gaming experience. In the past we simply said - Meh, consoles are sooo much weaker than PCs, they are not networked, not upgradeable and their input devices sucks compared to PCs. All of this is changing fast.

The bottom line? Next Gen consoles have taken a giant leap forward. they (i.e. PS3) are $450 super gaming computers and by the time PC hardware catches up (new cell multicore MBs, Cell memory v1, 2, 3, SAT Turbo, solid state hard drives, dual layer blue ray drives, Bluetooth 3.0 etc.) it will be time for PS4. We are stuck between a war of titans in MS vs Sony and they are compete hard with no bones about encroaching on what we once thought was a distinct sanctuary called PC Gaming!!

DELL?! Who said that? How dare you! ;-p
I am a master PC Moder my friend.
Have been at it now for over 14 years.
Here is some wall paper for you of my latest works.
All are hand built liquid cooling rigs going back to 2000!
Ask me nice and I will send you the full wall paper of which ever system you like .
http://www.eternal-champions.com/images/ldm_master_builder!.jpg
You can see more pictures at http://www.liquidninjas.com/

You should see the newest 06 rig (not pictured). Its a hand built clear case HTC connected to a 72in 1080p DLP. The wall unit also has 4 19in LCD monitors each with VGA & S-video inputs and a secondary 4 head video card feeding them. Just finished setting it all up and was thinking of adding Hamster to the super bowl party invite. What say you Hamster?

Back to the subject. All I am saying here is consoles (especially since M$ is now in the game) will be the default gaming device/home entertainment box. Productivity work will be relegated to laptops/tablets PCs etc or could be secondary functions on these next generation boxes. Linux (or even MS) and a keyboard will not be that far fetch if you need to “work”. Matter of fact there have been flashes of that in the past. In my opinion consoles will surpass PCs as the default gaming rig...

[KillerGremlin]

I don't know if I agree with that. The pricing on videocards always has been a crapshoot. Sure, you can tell me dual 7800s are going to still cost me a wallet-full by the release of the PS4, but at the rate people are pushing the envelope, I bet you'll be able to snag two 7800GTs for like 170 bucks a pop, in maybe a year.

Right now, the PS3 and the Xbox360 are powerful systems, but the PC market isn't lagging far behind. And, frankly, developers are interested in pushing the envelope. CoughIDcough. So I dunno. I get a free laptop for college, you betcah I'm gonna be getting a nice laptop...you know...one that can do a lot of cool stuff. Once I'm out of college, I'm going to throw a few thousand dollars at a sweet computer.