End of PC Gaming coming?

Lefazz · 05-24-2005, 08:13 PM

This is something I've been thinking about since the announcement of the new XBox 360 and PS3:

Has PC gaming been dwindling over the past few years? I never really thought about it until the last time I was at Gamestop. I noticed that the PC area was relegated to a mere single wall section. Back in the mid to late 90's when I was manager at Babbage's over half of the entire store was dedicated to PC games. Now it's almost entirely consoles.

The power of consoles, especially with the upcoming XBox 360 and PS3, are hitting a peak in power and a point of diminishing returns. In other words, console power will reach a point where pretty much any graphical detail can be achieved. Increasing the processing power beyond this point will not create any new tangible visual differences.

Consoles now have ethernet and USB ports. They accept keyboards, mice, etc. The XBox has a hard drive for storage. For games, is there any need for a PC anymore? If you are a game developer, wouldn't it make more sense to develope games for a platform which has set hardware? With PCs they have to constantly test for compatibility issues across a wide variety of hardware, operating systems, and drivers.

I think this subject has popped up over the past decade, but usually the consoles start to pale in comparison to PC power within a couple of years. But like I stated, I think they are hitting a plateau that not much more improvement can be done short of a holodeck.

Eomer · 05-24-2005, 08:22 PM

Same thing was said 4 years ago when the Xbox was coming out. I don't think PC gaming is going to die off or disappear, or consoles dominate. I think eventually they'll just become one and the same. You're already seeing that with the huge amount of cross platform games around. Sure a lot of the biggest baddest titles are exclusive, or time exclusive, but there's a shitload of games out there for all 4 platforms.

Also, console and PC gaming are starting to merge in terms of gameplay. Before there was a pretty huge chasm between what you played on a PC and what you played on a console. That's becoming less and less evident with every generation, especially cause of the porting.

McCheese · 05-24-2005, 08:40 PM

I've always just assumed that at some point consoles would basically just turn into extremely user friendly PC's, which it seems is already happening.

Consoles are getting all the PC bells-and-whistles now like you said...usb ports, harddrives, keyboards, mice, etc.

At the same time computers have become more user-friendly at the very least. Compare loading up a game on a computer 10 or 15 years ago to now. So much easier.

Like Eomer said, eventually they'll just merge into each other.

Jait · 05-24-2005, 09:04 PM

End of PC gaming was years ago when the big companies gobbled up all the little ones, and all the computer stores like Egghead disapeared to the Net. In 1990 there were over a thousand companies devoted to Apple/IBM/Amiga/etc.. Today there's less than a hundred, and only 1 platform; IBM, then maybe we will make a MAC version later.

As for the rest, the previous posts nailed it. Entertainment systems are the future. Honestly there's very little difference between an X-box and an old 350mhz laptop. It's the software that's tailored for it.

edit:

On a derailing note, how in the fook does a game with 500 players warrant an expansion?

Sorran · 05-24-2005, 09:18 PM

I agree - the terms "console gaming" and "PC gaming" will essentially be redundant in time, and you'll simply have "electronic gaming" (or whatever) - games that you play on your device of choice, whether it be your desktop PC or your lounge PC (ie. the "console"). The more consoles come to function more and more like PCs (with all the keyboards, mice, hard drives, etc) and the more PCs accept consolo-traditional input like controllers, wheels, guns, etc, the smaller the divide between the two will become. Especially with the platforms like XNA almost not caring at all which type of machine you are developing the game for - such technologies will become the norm I'm sure.

Cheers,

Sorran.

Coladar · 05-24-2005, 09:37 PM

As others have already stated, it's about as accurate to say the end of PC gaming is imminent as it is to say the end of console gaming is at hand.

This next generation of consoles are really merging PCs/Tivos/Consoles/MP3 players etc into one massive entertainment unit. Quite frankly, console gaming has been dying for a while now. There used to be a massive difference between console games in the SNES/Genesis era and PC gaming. That's coming to an end.

That said, niche PC gaming is still very much alive. Strategy gaming is still very much nearly an exclusive genre found on PCs. In all honesty, I'd say PC gaming is going to outlast consoles. There are very strong niche genres and developers that have been thriving for a few years on the PC. In the meantime, consoles are getting gobbled up in an amalgam of PC and Console. Is the XBox 360, in definition, a console? I guess. But let's face it, it's a PC with a fancy case and exclusive software.

Shugarra · 05-24-2005, 09:40 PM

I was doing some reading up on the 'Cell' processor after it was released that it would be in the PS3. From what I understand the programming will done more on the hardware side of things rather than programming for the OS allowing any program made for the Cell to be self contained. If I am not a retard and did in fact read that correctly the Cell processor could be a major leap towards unified programming and games that are indistinguishible between their Desktop and Console counterparts.

Eomer · 05-24-2005, 09:48 PM

Not sure exactly what you tried to say, but if anything the Cell and the programming required for it actually makes it more difficult to do cross platform ports. A lot of developers got pretty freaked out about the massive parallelism in the PS3, and to a lesser extent the 360, because up until very recently they've never had to bother with writing applications that take advantage of parallel computing. That's one of the reasons why developing games for either (and for PC's in the near future with multiple core cpus on the way) is going to continue to get more expensive, that sort of programming is apparently much more difficult and time consuming.

Mkopec1 · 05-24-2005, 10:27 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Eomer
Not sure exactly what you tried to say, but if anything the Cell and the programming required for it actually makes it more difficult to do cross platform ports. A lot of developers got pretty freaked out about the massive parallelism in the PS3, and to a lesser extent the 360, because up until very recently they've never had to bother with writing applications that take advantage of parallel computing. That's one of the reasons why developing games for either (and for PC's in the near future with multiple core cpus on the way) is going to continue to get more expensive, that sort of programming is apparently much more difficult and time consuming.

That article referred to "emulators".

You can emulate your software designed for x86 chip design to run on a cell chip and still get vastly improved performance.

But this is just the beginning.It may take some time, but from what that article said the cell chip is going to turn the whole computing world upside down.

Shugarra · 05-24-2005, 10:30 PM

Quote:

Not sure exactly what you tried to say, but if anything the Cell and the programming required for it actually makes it more difficult to do cross platform ports. A lot of developers got pretty freaked out about the massive parallelism in the PS3, and to a lesser extent the 360, because up until very recently they've never had to bother with writing applications that take advantage of parallel computing. That's one of the reasons why developing games for either (and for PC's in the near future with multiple core cpus on the way) is going to continue to get more expensive, that sort of programming is apparently much more difficult and time consuming.

Sorry, I knew I wouldn't explain it very well. I don't disagree the programming will be harder for multiple cores/cells but that doesn't automatically mean porting is going to be harder. Here is the relevant stuff from the article I posted above:

Quote:

The Cell architecture goes against the grain in many areas but in one area it has gone in the complete opposite direction to the rest of the technology industry. Operating systems started as a rudimentary way for programs to talk to hardware without developers having the to write their own drivers every time. As time went on operating systems have evolved and taking on a wide variety of complex tasks, one way it has done this is by abstracting more and more away from the hardware.

Object oriented programming goes further and abstracts individual parts of programs away from each other. This has evolved into Java like technologies which provide their own environment thus abstracting the application away from the individual operating system. Web technologies do the same thing, the platform which is serving you with this page is completely irrelevant, as is the platform viewing it. When writing this I did not have to make a Windows or Mac specific version of the HTML, the underlying hardware, OSs and web browsers are completely abstracted away.

Even hardware manufacturers have taken to abstraction, the Transmeta line of CPUs are sold as x86 CPUs but in reality they are not. They provide an abstraction in software which hides the inner details of the CPU which is not only not x86 but a completely different architecture. This is not unique to Transmeta or even x86, the internal architecture of most modern CPUs is very different from their programming model.

If there is a law in computing, Abstraction is it, it is an essential piece of today's computing technology, much of what we do would not be possible without it. Cell however, has abandoned it. The programming model for the Cell will be concrete, when you program an APU you will be programming what is in the APU itself, not some abstraction. You will be "hitting the hardware" so to speak.

While this may sound like sacrilege and there are reasons why it is a bad idea in general there is one big advantage: Performance. Every abstraction layer you add adds computaions and not by some small measure, an abstraction can decrease performance by a factor of ten fold. Consider that in any modern system there are multiple abstraction layers on top of one another and you'll begin to see why a 50MHz 486 may of seemed fast years ago but runs like a dog these days, you need a more modern processor to deal with the subsequently added abstractions.

The big disadvantage of removing abstractions is it will significantly add complexity for the developer and it limits how much the hardware designers can change the system. The latter has always been important and is essentially THE reason for abstraction but if you've noticed modern processors haven't really changed much in years. The Cell designers obviously don't expect their architecture to change significantly so have chosen to set it in stone from the beginning. That said there is some flexibility in the system so it can change at least partially.

The Cell approach does give some of the benefits of abstraction though. Java has achieved cross platform compatibility by abstracting the OS and hardware away, it provides a "virtual machine" which is the same across all platforms, the underlying hardware and OS can change but the virtual machine does not.

Cell provides something similar to Java but in a completely different way. Java provides a software based "virtual machine" which is the same on all platforms, Cell provides a machine as well - but they do it in hardware, the equivalent of Java's virtual machine is the Cells physical hardware. If I was to write Cell code on OS X the exact same Cell code would run on Windows, Linux or Zeta because in all cases it is the hardware Cells which execute it.

It should be pointed out that this does not mean you have to program the Cells in assembly, Cells will have compilers just like everything else. Java provides a virtual machine but you don't program it directly either.

Szlia · 05-24-2005, 10:34 PM

2 things.

First, the PC game industry has been stagnant for years now while the console game industry is on a constant raise and has been waaay bigger than the PC for a long while.

Second, in the 16-bit era, the difference between the PC and the console games was not mainly due to the hardware. It was mainly due to the game makers. The huge majority of console games was made by japanese companies, while the japanese PC games were not leaving their country (note that some japanese computer games reached the occident, like the ones running on the MSX family of computers). Today, the occidental game production on console is very strong (for the better - Prince of Persia, etc - and for the worse - 90% of EA games) and I would guess it is bigger than the japanese production reaching us.

frott · 05-24-2005, 11:15 PM

PS3 is no harder to program for (with rudimentary distributed programming skills) than PS2, it just does more.

PS3 looks like it will be the first console to totally obliterate how powerful computers are when it comes out. There will be no reason to game on a PC as far as I can tell.

To this day, a PC version of a console game is better simply due to resolution limitations.

Plus, I loves me a mouse. I can't understand people playing and LIKING halo at all.

Hell, I was close to finally switching to OSX because the one game I'd be playing non-console was WoW. Now I'm not even playing that with any regularity. Shrug.

Sticks · 05-25-2005, 12:55 AM

One big change for console gaming will be the usage of HDTV technology becoming more common. Games are starting to look just as nice on TV sets now. I know I personally enjoy playing some games on my plasma because I can play with a nice big picture that looks very detailed at the same time.

ganthornx · 05-25-2005, 01:21 AM

It's because people don't pay for pc games unless you have to play online lol

Kolle · 05-25-2005, 01:27 AM

I don't care as long as the games I like to play keep getting made. There's a market for them so it seems likely they will. Although I would appreciate having 1 system that will do all that I like to do. Gaming sure, but I want to be able to do things like this board here and other stuff as well.

The thing I like about all my consoles so far is that I spend a lot less. I paid something like $200 for my ps2 and have been able to play plenty of games on it. All of my pcs, however, have set me back thousands since 2000ish with all the upgrades etc...

If they make a console that can do everything I already do on my computer, then it really isn't a console to me anyway.

05-24-2005, 08:13 PM	#1 (permalink)
Lefazz Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 1,108	End of PC Gaming coming? This is something I've been thinking about since the announcement of the new XBox 360 and PS3: Has PC gaming been dwindling over the past few years? I never really thought about it until the last time I was at Gamestop. I noticed that the PC area was relegated to a mere single wall section. Back in the mid to late 90's when I was manager at Babbage's over half of the entire store was dedicated to PC games. Now it's almost entirely consoles. The power of consoles, especially with the upcoming XBox 360 and PS3, are hitting a peak in power and a point of diminishing returns. In other words, console power will reach a point where pretty much any graphical detail can be achieved. Increasing the processing power beyond this point will not create any new tangible visual differences. Consoles now have ethernet and USB ports. They accept keyboards, mice, etc. The XBox has a hard drive for storage. For games, is there any need for a PC anymore? If you are a game developer, wouldn't it make more sense to develope games for a platform which has set hardware? With PCs they have to constantly test for compatibility issues across a wide variety of hardware, operating systems, and drivers. I think this subject has popped up over the past decade, but usually the consoles start to pale in comparison to PC power within a couple of years. But like I stated, I think they are hitting a plateau that not much more improvement can be done short of a holodeck.

05-24-2005, 09:04 PM	#4 (permalink)
Jait Irritable Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: :noitacoL Posts: 3,452	End of PC gaming was years ago when the big companies gobbled up all the little ones, and all the computer stores like Egghead disapeared to the Net. In 1990 there were over a thousand companies devoted to Apple/IBM/Amiga/etc.. Today there's less than a hundred, and only 1 platform; IBM, then maybe we will make a MAC version later. As for the rest, the previous posts nailed it. Entertainment systems are the future. Honestly there's very little difference between an X-box and an old 350mhz laptop. It's the software that's tailored for it. edit: On a derailing note, how in the fook does a game with 500 players warrant an expansion? Last edited by Jait : 05-24-2005 at 09:13 PM.

05-24-2005, 10:34 PM	#11 (permalink)
Szlia Conquest Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Switzerland Posts: 4,610 +5 Internets	2 things. First, the PC game industry has been stagnant for years now while the console game industry is on a constant raise and has been waaay bigger than the PC for a long while. Second, in the 16-bit era, the difference between the PC and the console games was not mainly due to the hardware. It was mainly due to the game makers. The huge majority of console games was made by japanese companies, while the japanese PC games were not leaving their country (note that some japanese computer games reached the occident, like the ones running on the MSX family of computers). Today, the occidental game production on console is very strong (for the better - Prince of Persia, etc - and for the worse - 90% of EA games) and I would guess it is bigger than the japanese production reaching us. __________________ -retrosabotage-

05-25-2005, 01:21 AM	#14 (permalink)
ganthornx Sexy Bish Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 269 -1 Internets	It's because people don't pay for pc games unless you have to play online lol __________________

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05-24-2005, 08:22 PM	#2 (permalink)
Eomer Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 9,517 +25 Internets	Same thing was said 4 years ago when the Xbox was coming out. I don't think PC gaming is going to die off or disappear, or consoles dominate. I think eventually they'll just become one and the same. You're already seeing that with the huge amount of cross platform games around. Sure a lot of the biggest baddest titles are exclusive, or time exclusive, but there's a shitload of games out there for all 4 platforms. Also, console and PC gaming are starting to merge in terms of gameplay. Before there was a pretty huge chasm between what you played on a PC and what you played on a console. That's becoming less and less evident with every generation, especially cause of the porting.

05-24-2005, 08:40 PM	#3 (permalink)
McCheese 3 time Neverending Pasta Bowl Champion Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Maryland Posts: 1,012 +2 Internets	I've always just assumed that at some point consoles would basically just turn into extremely user friendly PC's, which it seems is already happening. Consoles are getting all the PC bells-and-whistles now like you said...usb ports, harddrives, keyboards, mice, etc. At the same time computers have become more user-friendly at the very least. Compare loading up a game on a computer 10 or 15 years ago to now. So much easier. Like Eomer said, eventually they'll just merge into each other.

05-24-2005, 09:18 PM	#5 (permalink)
Sorran Registered User Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 319 -1 Internets	I agree - the terms "console gaming" and "PC gaming" will essentially be redundant in time, and you'll simply have "electronic gaming" (or whatever) - games that you play on your device of choice, whether it be your desktop PC or your lounge PC (ie. the "console"). The more consoles come to function more and more like PCs (with all the keyboards, mice, hard drives, etc) and the more PCs accept consolo-traditional input like controllers, wheels, guns, etc, the smaller the divide between the two will become. Especially with the platforms like XNA almost not caring at all which type of machine you are developing the game for - such technologies will become the norm I'm sure. Cheers, Sorran.

05-24-2005, 09:37 PM	#6 (permalink)
Coladar Registered User Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 37 +0 Internets	As others have already stated, it's about as accurate to say the end of PC gaming is imminent as it is to say the end of console gaming is at hand. This next generation of consoles are really merging PCs/Tivos/Consoles/MP3 players etc into one massive entertainment unit. Quite frankly, console gaming has been dying for a while now. There used to be a massive difference between console games in the SNES/Genesis era and PC gaming. That's coming to an end. That said, niche PC gaming is still very much alive. Strategy gaming is still very much nearly an exclusive genre found on PCs. In all honesty, I'd say PC gaming is going to outlast consoles. There are very strong niche genres and developers that have been thriving for a few years on the PC. In the meantime, consoles are getting gobbled up in an amalgam of PC and Console. Is the XBox 360, in definition, a console? I guess. But let's face it, it's a PC with a fancy case and exclusive software.

05-24-2005, 09:40 PM	#7 (permalink)
Shugarra Registered User Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 59 +0 Internets	I was doing some reading up on the 'Cell' processor after it was released that it would be in the PS3. From what I understand the programming will done more on the hardware side of things rather than programming for the OS allowing any program made for the Cell to be self contained. If I am not a retard and did in fact read that correctly the Cell processor could be a major leap towards unified programming and games that are indistinguishible between their Desktop and Console counterparts.

05-24-2005, 09:48 PM	#8 (permalink)
Eomer Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 9,517 +25 Internets	Not sure exactly what you tried to say, but if anything the Cell and the programming required for it actually makes it more difficult to do cross platform ports. A lot of developers got pretty freaked out about the massive parallelism in the PS3, and to a lesser extent the 360, because up until very recently they've never had to bother with writing applications that take advantage of parallel computing. That's one of the reasons why developing games for either (and for PC's in the near future with multiple core cpus on the way) is going to continue to get more expensive, that sort of programming is apparently much more difficult and time consuming.

05-24-2005, 11:15 PM	#12 (permalink)
frott Banned Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 3,390 +0 Internets	PS3 is no harder to program for (with rudimentary distributed programming skills) than PS2, it just does more. PS3 looks like it will be the first console to totally obliterate how powerful computers are when it comes out. There will be no reason to game on a PC as far as I can tell. To this day, a PC version of a console game is better simply due to resolution limitations. Plus, I loves me a mouse. I can't understand people playing and LIKING halo at all. Hell, I was close to finally switching to OSX because the one game I'd be playing non-console was WoW. Now I'm not even playing that with any regularity. Shrug.

05-25-2005, 12:55 AM	#13 (permalink)
Sticks Registered User Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 73 -1 Internets	One big change for console gaming will be the usage of HDTV technology becoming more common. Games are starting to look just as nice on TV sets now. I know I personally enjoy playing some games on my plasma because I can play with a nice big picture that looks very detailed at the same time.

05-25-2005, 01:27 AM	#15 (permalink)
Kolle Registered User Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 4,879 -26 Internets	I don't care as long as the games I like to play keep getting made. There's a market for them so it seems likely they will. Although I would appreciate having 1 system that will do all that I like to do. Gaming sure, but I want to be able to do things like this board here and other stuff as well. The thing I like about all my consoles so far is that I spend a lot less. I paid something like $200 for my ps2 and have been able to play plenty of games on it. All of my pcs, however, have set me back thousands since 2000ish with all the upgrades etc... If they make a console that can do everything I already do on my computer, then it really isn't a console to me anyway.