Author Topic: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant  (Read 34679 times)

Offline MysterD

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #160 on: Thursday, February 28, 2008, 04:29:37 PM »
Come on.  I'm not some spin meister here, trying to undermine PC gaming.  But why do I have to defend or justify something we all know already?  You pop open a console's tray, slide the disc in, close it, and it works.

It works every time, as long as the hardware works, and the disc is readable.
In most cases, yes.
That didn't happen for many w/ Assassin's Creed on the PS3.

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With a PC, you're lucky if installation is the end of the chores.  I'm not going to fucking argue anymore.  I thought we all stood on the same ground here, shared common experiences, and had come to like conclusions.  Guess I was wrong.
In my lifetime, for the many issues I've had w/ PC games -- usually were luckily from the game itself, not b/c of some nasty copy protection. Consider me lucky, I guess. Usually, it was say I hit a bug or something -- quest cannot be finished b/c of something not on my end (b/c they forgot to program something in for such an instance), game causes a CTD for some sort of odd issue, etc etc. I've hit technical issues from the game that just cause the framerate to basically die -- usually b/c too much is happening on-screen for the game to handle itself well.

I did have trouble for example w/ booting XIII and Uru for the longest time, b/c it just wouldn't start b/c of its copy protection (Securom) didn't like my REAL COPY for some reason. XIII fixed that issues w/ a patch and it ran fine. Uru fixed it w/ a patch that removed the CP (Securom).

I been lucky, when it comes to StarForce. Sure, boot times w/ a SF game might sometimes be long or not happen, but usually, it'll boot next time around for me.

I did have the occasional issue w/ SoundBlaster Drivers, where they got just corrupt and the sound died. Then, I'd have to re-install them.

Oh, I recall having to drop down to (not-too-much) older NVidia drivers on my older PC b/c the drivers wouldn't work w/ certain games for some reason.




Offline scottws

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #161 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 06:52:51 AM »
Cobra, I didn't mean to antagonize you.  It just seemed to me that you were overemphasizing the problems of specific experiences.  A vast majority of the PC game experiences I have are 1) Open Box, 2) Insert Disc 3) Install Game 4) Play.

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #162 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 08:37:07 AM »
I second what Scott says here.  It seems to me there is much overemphasis happening here.  Sure, we've all had problems with PC games now and again, but it's what, maybe 1 in 10 games that actually has any hiccups, let alone huge ones?  I own hundreds of PC games and I've had few enough problems with them that I could most likely specifically remember every major bug that ever happened if I went back through my collection trying to recall them.  And frankly, these days I've run into a lot more console game bugs than I ever used to.  People are getting lazy and shit is getting shipped too early.  I agree console games should be more bug-free than PC games just because of the hardware non-issue, but that's not always happening.  Both the DS and PSP ports of Puzzle Quest were completely broken, and this was never fixed.  No money refunded, no patches (you could patch a PSP game in theory), no new fixed copies of the game, nothing.  That game was a waste of my money.  That's only one small recent example, and it's definitely the worst I can think of, but there have been other issues here and there.  There were a couple recent 360 games, The Darkness being the one I'm specifically thinking of, which had glitches that pissed off some people.  Most weren't game breaking, but they were still glitches (quests uncompletable, achievements not being given, etc.).

Anyway, I think Scott hit the nail on the head.  You guys are entirely overemphasizing specific experiences.  Either that, or you've had infinitely less luck with PC gaming than I've had in my lifetime.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline K-man

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #163 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 10:44:26 AM »
A strike against PC gaming for me is my constant desire to play old titles.  i realize not everyone is like me, but I have every system I've ever owned dating back to the NES in my apartment.  If I want to play RC Pro Am, I put the cart in and play it (yes, i can do that because my NES doesn't blink).

Now, getting Shadow Warrior to work correctly in XP?  Hell, I could sooner turn water into wine.

Now, this isn't a huge deal for a lot of people.  But it is for me.  And I don't have the room/desire to keep an older PC around to run this shit.  And I realize this is mostly microsoft's fault by not allowing for compatibility.  But it's a huge issue for me, and one that I don't have on the console side of things.

In fact this problem really pisses me off.  i have a perfectly great copy of return to zork that I can't get to run correctly in XP.  I haven't played the game in years and I want to.  Same with my copy of Civ 2. 

Offline idolminds

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #164 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 11:08:06 AM »
Actually if you want to get technical about it it happens on the console side. You don't want to keep an old PC around but you keep your old NES around to play those games. How is that really all that different? Though I do agree that the legacy support in the new OSs sucks, and we gotta use stuff like DOSBox to play old games.

Anyway, I just wanted to post this: CliffyB can't make up his mind.
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Multiplayer: “Cliff, you buy it? PC gaming is back?”

Bleszinski: “Abso-frigging-lutely. The thing is, I think everybody coming together in that kind of way will essentially kind of help re-glue things back together and kind of help fix the market. I have a big PC gaming heritage and I love playing games with a keyboard and a mouse, as well as a console, and I’d just love to see it.”

Offline Pugnate

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #165 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 11:10:13 AM »
*reads CliffyB comments*

We all should do more for awareness of schizophrenia.

Offline K-man

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #166 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 11:21:51 AM »
Actually if you want to get technical about it it happens on the console side. You don't want to keep an old PC around but you keep your old NES around to play those games. How is that really all that different? Though I do agree that the legacy support in the new OSs sucks, and we gotta use stuff like DOSBox to play old games.

Anyway, I just wanted to post this: CliffyB can't make up his mind.

It's a personal choice, I admit.  however, preserving and playing old console games is much easier due to the advent of roms and good emulators.  Not that it's a replacement for playing it on the actual system (because for me, it isn't).  But keeping old consoles around to me is much cooler than keeping a junk PC in the corner to play old titles.  Not to mention that with PC's it really shouldn't be an issue to begin with.  I mean honestly how difficult would it be to allow for older games to run in windows?


Offline idolminds

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #167 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 11:49:20 AM »
I agree with you there. We can thank out great overlords at MS for that bunch of bullshit.

Offline gpw11

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #168 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 05:36:00 PM »
Ok, everyone has one post left on this subject.  Please fill this in:


Quote
I like ______ more than _____.  I can either be reasonable and just admit that I like ______ over ______ because ______ and be happy to go about my buisness enjoying ______ or I can be a total fucking douche and try to convince others that they are wrong if they feel otherwise.  No one wants to be to a douche, so I'm going to shut up now and spend my valuable internet arguing time discussing equally inane topics like cars vs. trucks.

Offline MysterD

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #169 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 06:01:38 PM »
A strike against PC gaming for me is my constant desire to play old titles.  i realize not everyone is like me, but I have every system I've ever owned dating back to the NES in my apartment.  If I want to play RC Pro Am, I put the cart in and play it (yes, i can do that because my NES doesn't blink).

Now, getting Shadow Warrior to work correctly in XP?  Hell, I could sooner turn water into wine.

Now, this isn't a huge deal for a lot of people.  But it is for me.  And I don't have the room/desire to keep an older PC around to run this shit.  And I realize this is mostly microsoft's fault by not allowing for compatibility.  But it's a huge issue for me, and one that I don't have on the console side of things.

In fact this problem really pisses me off.  i have a perfectly great copy of return to zork that I can't get to run correctly in XP.  I haven't played the game in years and I want to.  Same with my copy of Civ 2. 

Return to Zork and Shadow Warrior are BOTH supported by DOSBOX.


Offline K-man

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #170 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 06:17:39 PM »
Well bud, I sure invite you to get either working properly in dosbox on my setup.  Because after hours upon hours of trying I couldn't.

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #171 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 06:55:32 PM »
Frankly, DOSbox sucks.  VDMSound was vastly superior, but I don't think it's being developed anymore.  Still, could be worth a try even though it's a bit older now.

It's funny, because you and I are a lot alike K, I love to play old games all across the board.  And I don't think anybody will disagree that the lack of support for older stuff on PCs is lame.  Still, you can get *almost* anything to run now if you know what you're doing.  Unfortunately, it does take the know-how with some of that stuff (especially since most programs like DOSbox suck in terms of user friendliness).  I guess the only people to blame for that are Microsoft.  That's a cliche, but... who else is to blame in this case?

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline scottws

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #172 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 07:28:31 PM »
DOSBox is great, but it takes some figuring out.  User-friendliness is definately an issue.

Offline MysterD

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #173 on: Friday, February 29, 2008, 09:51:31 PM »
Frankly, DOSbox sucks.  VDMSound was vastly superior, but I don't think it's being developed anymore.  Still, could be worth a try even though it's a bit older now.

It's funny, because you and I are a lot alike K, I love to play old games all across the board.  And I don't think anybody will disagree that the lack of support for older stuff on PCs is lame.  Still, you can get *almost* anything to run now if you know what you're doing.  Unfortunately, it does take the know-how with some of that stuff (especially since most programs like DOSbox suck in terms of user friendliness). I guess the only people to blame for that are Microsoft.  That's a cliche, but... who else is to blame in this case?

Blame Apple.

Offline Cobra951

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #174 on: Saturday, March 01, 2008, 04:08:56 PM »
Ok, everyone has one post left on this subject.  Please fill this in:



Quote from: Eddie Langston (fictional character)
If everything seems credible then nothing seems credible. You know, TV puts everybody in those boxes, side-by-side. On one side, there's this certifiable lunatic who says the Holocaust never happened. And next to him is this noted, honored historian who knows all about the Holocaust. And now, there they sit, side-by-side, they look like equals! Everything they say seems to be credible. And so, as it goes on, nothing seems credible anymore! We just stopped listening!

We can start our own gaming news service!  We already knew enough about past, current and future games.  Now we also have the sensationalist controversy, where no one can agree on what really is and really isn't.  Not only that, we can't even agree whether we're sincere or partisan.  We're there, guys.  We're there.  Bring on the anchors.


Offline Xessive

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #176 on: Thursday, March 06, 2008, 10:19:13 PM »
I used to have D-Fend as user-friendly front-end to DOSbox but it just couldn't cut it fully and it's been discontinued.

By the way DOSbox has implemented all the sound code from VDMSound since it was discontinued.

PC's are great for classic gaming but consoles are digging up that market as well; leading with the Wii.

Lombardi's argument makes a lot of sense. I'm starting to respect Valve for their views and their effort to revitalize PC gaming.

In the end PC is more than a gaming system to me.

Offline MysterD

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #177 on: Monday, March 10, 2008, 08:19:37 PM »
Tim Sweeney of Epic Games expresses his displeasure w/ some things -- from Best Buy selling PC's lacking good video cards to Intel's integrated chips.

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TG Daily: But we mostly talk about conventional retail sales. Do you see an increasing divide between the Pc and consoles?

Sweeney: Retail stores like Best Buy are selling PC games and PCs with integrated graphics at the same time and they are not talking about the difference [to more capable gaming PCs]. Those machines are good for e-mail, web browsing, watching video. But as far as games go, those machines are just not adequate. It is no surprise that retail PC sales suffer from that. Online is different, because people who go and buy games online already have PCs that can play games. The biggest problem in this space right now is that you cannot go and design a game for a high end PC and downscale it to mainstream PCs. The performance difference between high-end and low-end PC is something like 100x.
I'm glad someone touched on this; I been saying this for a while, that it's not good for Best Cuy, CC, and other stores to sell PC's w/out even half-way decent graphics cards, since pretty much a very high precentage of the modern PC game's require them.

And many new games right now seem to want a GeForce 6600+.

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TG Daily: Let’s go back to the gaming PC. What would you think if everyone would pursue a sort of an ease-of-use approach? For instance, in last two years, there were efforts to bring external graphics to life. It was supposed to be a compact box that would have a powerful discrete card inside. But in the end, it turned out that Vista's driver mode (LDDM) was incompatible with that.

Sweeney: External graphics?

TG Daily: A year ago, the PCI-SIG certified the PCI External standard, which enabled the conventional PCI slot to extend through several different cables. There were several Taiwanese companies such as Asus and MSI that demonstrated products based on different cards. In the end, you simply needed to plug the external box into a notebook or a desktop. Prototypes were using the ExpressCard interface.

Sweeney: Oh... that's cool. Actually, this would be a really good idea. We always joked that there will come a day when you won't be plugging a graphics card into a computer, but you would connect the computer into an Nvidia box, because they were quite loud and using a lot of power. But this idea would be really good. I didn't know there was actually a development in that area.
External video card...oooh, I like the sound of that. It'd make it REAL easy and painless to basically swap a video card out, w/out having to open the computer and all.

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Sweeney: Sadly, this would not solve a problem that we have today, and that is the fact that every PC should have a decent graphics card. A PC should be an out-of-the-box workable gaming platform.
I agree w/ the bold statement for sure -- I mean, look at consoles, now they pretty much come equipped w/ a graphics card. Really hurts for ALL PC's to NOT come equipped w/ one.

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TG Daily: What about notebooks?

Sweeney: For notebooks this could be a really good solution. There is no room to put a fast GPU into that compact form.
External graphics board for a notebook...I could see that being a good idea; since most PC games utilize namely the desktop video cards.

And especially since some PC games, flatout on the box say -- "laptop video cards not supported."

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TG Daily: What are your thoughts on the future of the PC as a gaming platform? Is scalability the future – we hear AMD talking about Spider and Nvidia is selling Triple SLI that will keep us upgrading over the next several years. Or did the industry lose its focus?

Sweeney: PC gaming is in a weird position right now. Now, 60% of PCs on the market don't have a workable graphics processor at all. All the Intel integrated graphics are still incapable of running any modern games. So you really have to buy a PC knowing that you're going to play games in order to avoid being stuck with integrated graphics. This is unfortunate, and this is one of main reasons behind the decline of the PC as a gaming platform. That really has endangered high-end PC game sales. In the past, if you bought a game, it would at least work. It might not have been a great experience, but it would always work. 

TG Daily: Can that scenario change?

Sweeney: Yes, actually it might. If you look into the past, CPU makers are learning more and more how to take advantage of GPU-like architectures. Internally, they accept larger data and they have wider vector units: CPUs went from a single-threaded product to multiple cores. And who knows, we might find the way to get the software rendering back into fashion.

Then, every PC, even the lowest performing ones will have excellent CPUs. If we could get software rendering going again, that might be just the solution we all need. Intel’s integrated graphics just don't work. I don't think they will ever work.

TG Daily: These are harsh words. It looks like Intel has a lot of things coming down the pipe.

Sweeney: They always say ‘Oh, we know it has never worked before, but the next generation ...” It has always been the next generation. They go from one generation to the next one and to the next one. They're not faster now than they have been at any time in the past.


Offline Cobra951

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #178 on: Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 12:24:56 AM »
The kind of video card that validates that 100X-performance statement of his is a powerful, dedicated computer in its own right, crammed inside the case with the mainstream computer.  It's unreasonable to expect such a beast to be included in every budget PC at Best Buy.  In fact, it's rather silly.  I don't buy the argument that Intel could magically change a few details on its silicon and come up with a competent integrated graphics solution.  If that's the case, then why does it take a leaf blower, an electrician, and a price tag that rivals a whole budget PC to play Crysis?  Is Nvidia incompetent?

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #179 on: Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 01:22:37 AM »
No, the people who made Crysis are.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline Pugnate

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #180 on: Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 03:42:07 AM »
Mark Rein has been saying the same things, and I agree with some of what these guys say. I don't see anything unreasonable about having on board video be at a level that allows you to play modern games at minimum levels. They talked about this on GFW radio, and Intel basically needs to charge $3-$4 extra per mobo to make it happen.

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The kind of video card that validates that 100X-performance statement of his is a powerful, dedicated computer in its own right, crammed inside the case with the mainstream computer

I think the 100X thing gave you the wrong idea Cobra. I think he is talking about how they are unable to make engines that are flexible to a degree where they can scale to a level playable on the onboard video. It won't take a 100X improvement to be able to play Unreal Tournament III or COD4 with integrated video.

If he is saying that onboard video should allow games to be played at maximum specs, then that is indeed stupid. But I doubt that's what he is actually saying.

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No, the people who made Crysis are.

Actually Que, Crysis is more optimized than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Oblivion.

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Yes, that is huge difference. If we go back 10 years ago, the difference between the high end and the lowest end may have been a factor of 10. We could have scaled games between those two. For example, with the first version of Unreal, a resolution of 320x200 was good for software rendering and we were able to scale that up to 1024x768, if you had the GPU power. There is no way we can scale down a game down by a factor of 100, we would just have to design two completely different games. One for low-end and one for high-end.
That is actually happening on PCs: You have really low-end games with little hardware requirements, like Maple Story. That is a $100 million-a-year business. Kids are addicted to those games, they pay real money to buy [virtual] items within the game and the game.

Yea, see, that's pretty reasonable. He wants integrated video to at least allow games to run at min. spec. That's a fair request.


Offline Xessive

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #181 on: Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 04:40:48 AM »
I kinda miss Ragnarok Online.

The latest patch definitely streamlined Crysis a bit more too.

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #182 on: Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 08:12:55 AM »
Sure Pug, but holding up STALKER or Oblivion in comparison is pointless.  Those games were horrendously optimized and I'd call the developers out on those for their poor work in that area, even though I love both games.  To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, poorly optimized is poorly optimized is poorly optimized.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline Pugnate

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #183 on: Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 08:41:32 AM »
Yup you are correct. The Crysis performance does leave much to be desired. I am just wondering if that's how well games with such open environments run. I am thinking to other games with similar environments like Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon, Morrowind, Tribes... and I remember they all didn't run as well as they should have. Even Far Cry had tons of performance issues.

As for this Tim Sweeny thing, he isn't the first Epic employee to say this. And considering that Epic and Intel are both part of the "gaming alliance', I wonder if Intel will pay heed.

I seriously doubt it though.

Offline scottws

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #184 on: Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 09:10:17 AM »
FarCry had performance issues?  I thought it ran like a dream.  I've said before that I feel like FarCry and Crysis are opposites.  With FarCry I was impressed with how it ran despite some pretty amazing visual feats.  With Crysis, I'm surprised it runs as poorly as it does, especially on medium.

Offline Pugnate

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #185 on: Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 09:50:25 AM »
Well it did till the game was patched, but honestly, FarCry did scale beautifully.


Offline Cobra951

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #187 on: Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 10:17:11 PM »
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Over time, I think that the whole graphics API will become less relevant, just like any other Microsoft API. There are hundreds of them in Windows, file handling, user interface and things like that. It is just a layer for people who don't want direct access to hardware.

That is such a narrow view.  What a standard API does is make your code independent of whatever follows it.  On a console, that doesn't matter, because what follows it is always the same thing (on any one console model).  On PCs, you can have several competing technologies to make that 100X leap in performance over the software pipeline.  Right now, I guess Nvidia is king of the roost again.  That doesn't have to be the case always in the future, and Nvidia itself may want to radically alter their graphics-rendering hardware.  Anything which programs the graphics hardware without a standard API would be completely incompatible with future video cards.  He's right about it being the most optimal way to do it, on a single immutable hardware setup.

Offline scottws

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #188 on: Thursday, March 13, 2008, 03:57:33 AM »
Yeah that's stupid. Lots of devs use DirectX over opengl because the DirectX API is supposedly a lot easier to work with. Yet Sweeney is saying things are moving more towards talking to the hardware directly?

« Last Edit: Thursday, March 13, 2008, 06:51:41 AM by scottws »

Offline Xessive

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #189 on: Thursday, March 13, 2008, 04:05:56 AM »
Cobra's argument makes a lot of sense. Direct communication with the hardware is relevant only when the hardware is all the same as in consoles, or even Macs.

Offline MysterD

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #190 on: Friday, March 21, 2008, 06:17:28 PM »
Alex St. John of WildTangent expresses his feelings on PC gaming -- he basically blames Microsoft for a bloated OS (Vista) and Intel for destroying the gaming market w/ their cheap integrated graphics boards.

Here's some stuff from Part One.
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Alex St. John:  I've known Tim Sweeney a long time, and he makes a very important point. To be clear, PCs are fantastic gaming platforms, in spite of Intel and Microsoft. And they should absolutely be pinioned for the stupid stuff they've done to make the PC not as good a gaming platform as it would inherently be without their help screwing it up.
Ouch.

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ASJ: And so the shame of it is, the PC's a fantastic gaming platform, superior to anything anybody's every imagined, superior to every console, and Microsoft and Intel put crap in the PC that make it not so good. And so if you see a PC that is not denuded by things interfering with it by Microsoft and Intel, in many cases like an Intel crappy graphics chip, or a bloated Vista operating system, it's a fantastic gaming platform. And the shame is, if the low end of the PC market, the mass market PCs that everybody buys did not come with these crappy graphics chips on them and was not burdened with a fat OS, that the PC would be a larger contiguous gaming platform than all the next-generation consoles combined, probably would be clearly superior; the PC is the home of the most profitable game in history generating more revenue than the top 10 console games combined—that's World of Warcraft generating a 1.2 billion dollars a year in revenue, that's a pure PC game.

So it is clear that PC gaming absolutely killed [the market] in terms of revenue, killed it in terms of consumer usage—the average console gamer, according to Powers Associates, spends more time playing PC games than console games.

ET: Really?

ASJ: Yep, they do. They spend more money on the console, but again that's Microsoft's and Intel's fault.

ET: How is this Microsoft and Intel's fault?

ASJ: Two problems. Two really simple ones. The first one is that, from many points of view, Microsoft and Intel come from an enterprise background. They're enterprise-centric. So in many respects the consumer market, from their point of view, is an after market for stuff really designed for the enterprise. And the consequence of that is in many cases subtle but important. Because what it means is that game and media support and keeping the operating system out of the way is secondary to, in many cases, silly security infrastructure and a lot of useless OS junk that impedes the real-time performance of games unnecessarily.

The second thing, in Intel's case is, they ship the cheapest, crappiest graphics chip they can as the commodity component—they push the OEMs to do that, because really what they want to do is sell that big Intel chip, the processor, if they can, because that's really where their core expertise is; from an enterprise perspective, GPU is kind of an afterthought.


ASJ talks on WoW.
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ASJ:  ... Why is World of Warcraft the most profitable game on the PC?

ET: Community.

ASJ: Yeah, but what makes it so profitable? There are a lot of community games out there. What is it about a massive multiplayer game that makes it make so much revenue? Is it just community?

ET: Why don't you tell me?

ASJ: There's one very important feature: DRM. You can't f---ing steal the thing.

ET: Ah. Gotcha.

ASJ: You can't pirate a community. So an MMO has two properties that make it hugely valuable. One is community; frankly, that's almost secondary. The truth is, you can't steal a community-based game. And because you can't steal it, you get all the revenue from it. All a console is is a giant DRM device. A console's job is not to enable you to play games, but to stop you from playing games you didn't pay for. If a console goes online, and plays community based games, its primary value, the reason Microsoft and Sony make the console and get a third of all the revenue, because they control the DRM and security. It's irrelevant if the games are community based games. The developers don't need their DRM and community; therefore, what idiot would share revenue with them?

You just make PC community games you're gonna reach everybody, because the average console gamer plays more PC games than console games—they have a PC—so again, you're out of business.

A real migration from CD games to online games would break the console business model, so you either have to make up an entirely new one, or believe that consoles as we know them are gone.

Part Two of the interview.

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ASJ: The PC box business in 1998-ish was 2.2 billion dollars. Today, it's about one billion dollars, plus 1.2 billion in World of Warcraft subscriptions. Frankly, there's another billion dollars in advertising around Flash games that people often don't count in that, so the market actually grew, but the point is, if you ask where did all the PC box shelf space go to, it's not like the PC game business collapsed. The money just moved to entirely different business models and the market actually grew in those business models. So that what you see is that selling a box for fifty bucks is kind of a legacy business model, and I think that's the major transition that's taking place; that's if you want to make money selling games for the PC, it's gonna be in a different business model than demanding fifty bucks for a cardboard box and a piece of plastic.
This is why I think the NDR needs to report the sales of online games -- b/c I think w/ things like STEAM, Direct2Drive, Metaboli, and the upstart of more and more other places to purchase-to-download-games over the years, this is why retail sales are down in the stores; b/c those online services are getting their huge share of money now, too.

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ET: So on current PCs, where the market is fragmented, how does something like the Orb guarantee a dependable playing experience?

ASJ: We do a couple things that are very clever. First off, we detect the system configuration requirements for all the games in the catalog, so you only see the games on your machine that are going to work on [your system]. And you can also ask, hey, what do I need to have in order for this game to work?
That's a pretty good model -- let the program detect what games you CAN play.

And then, there's your list of things you can't play that you can look at; and you can let that detect what you part(s) you will NEED to run the game.

That's great for casual PC gamers who know nothing about video cards and other hardware; they could find out the part that need and just go to the store and not try to decide b/t 30 different video cards that could run their game. Quick fix.

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ASJ: Ninety percent of consumers are not that technically sophisticated. So when they walk to the store to pick up a game they want to buy, reading the edge of the box to figure out if the system requirements match their machine—they can't do it. They have no idea. They don't know what their machine is. And so that is meaningless information. So they either buy the box and take it home and the game doesn't work then they're pissed off that they have to return it, or they say, "Ah, this probably won't work, and I've had a bad experience before, so I'm gonna buy a console game."

In the online distribution model for the Orb, one, the console will detect what games will work and won't in your machine. Second, it doesn't cost anything to try the games on your machine for free. So there is no disappointment factor that you slapped down some money on a game that's not gonna work.

So the Orb, and the online business model, solves that problem in two ways. First, it doesn't make it a high tax if the game doesn't work, and second we detect what games are gonna work on your machine, so the consumer has a good indication….
Idea: a game's official website could do that, too -- if you want to see if you can actually run the game, select an option to let the website scan your PC to see if you meet the listed requirements. That'd be good for casual gamers. Actually -- do any actual official website for a game actually have such an option yet??

Now, I'm curious, since I don't really mess much w/ STEAM, since STEAM's a very popular online-game distribution service -- I really use it just to play my games, basically.

When you go to STEAM and look at a game to buy-to-download, can you have The STEAM Program scan your PC to make sure you meet the requirements for the PC game you're looking at to buy-to-download from STEAM?



Offline Xessive

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #191 on: Friday, March 21, 2008, 10:25:19 PM »
Um, doesn't System Requirement Lab's "Can You RUN it?" do that?

In any case isn't that one of the many purposes of demos? A demo is supposed to give you a taste of the product and a relatively accurate idea of how it would run on your system. In most cases I've noticed that the demo performs amazingly well compared to the final product.

Offline MysterD

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #192 on: Saturday, March 22, 2008, 04:56:24 AM »
Um, doesn't System Requirement Lab's "Can You RUN it?" do that?
Yes, it does.

But, you don't usually see that site supported on one game's official website, normally. IT would be nice if say casual gamer jumped onto callofduty.com and there was a link to that site in there to let the casual PC gamer check to see is CoD4 would run on their PC.

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In any case isn't that one of the many purposes of demos? A demo is supposed to give you a taste of the product and a relatively accurate idea of how it would run on your system. In most cases I've noticed that the demo performs amazingly well compared to the final product.
Yes, but not every game gets a demo before a game's release.

But see, some games get demos after its full version release (Witcher, Sins of a Solar Empire). Some games NEVER get a demo period (Oblivion).

Offline Xessive

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #193 on: Saturday, March 22, 2008, 06:08:29 AM »
Publishers need to take advantage of this service.

True enough about demos.

Offline Pugnate

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #194 on: Thursday, March 27, 2008, 06:16:20 AM »

Offline gpw11

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #195 on: Thursday, March 27, 2008, 05:11:02 PM »
Um, why doesn't the Wild Tanget guy just get to the point and start talking about how all his spyware will rape my machine?

Offline MysterD

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Re: Chris Taylor and Peter Molyneux join the death of PC gaming chant
« Reply #196 on: Thursday, March 27, 2008, 05:23:45 PM »
Um, why doesn't the Wild Tanget guy just get to the point and start talking about how all his spyware will rape my machine?

B/c he's trying to sell you his spyware? :P