PC Gaming is not dead...yet! I hope the PC is getting more important again in the future!

Well done. You pointed out everything I'd say. Consoles came out and companies started to build games with them as a base. What happened? "OH NOES PC GAMING DIES!!!!11!!one!!!" When it's not. That example shows the direct opposite of what so many people here said. PC gaming isn't dying, and won't die in the nex couple of years. I's just a fear of people who can't either use a console, have one, or who didn't even saw one. Great games like Mass Effect wouldn't have been developed. Halo would've been developed FOR MAC ONLY. Amazing game series wouldn't be developed like the Zelda or Final Fantasy series. I've been growing up with these, and they are a big part of my childhood. Without them, my live would've been very different.

I got a Super Nintendo,N64 and a Gamecube.
Nintendo was so damn awesome back then now they throw this piece of **** named wii at me. No thanks.
And that u have to upgrade your pc every year isnt true. You can use a Pc like 5 years then u need to upgrade it.
It's like this, the first 2 years u can play everything on very high then the next 2 years on high and the last on medium
But for example Crysis 2 will look better on medium then any of the consoles versions....

I wonder why we have to pay so much more for our pc hardware if we want to play games in the same quality that console users have when they play on their 5 year old machine.
I mean there are so many games that I couldn't run in the highest quality even when I had a better GPU than PS3 or xbox have.
I think that game developers know that we usually have GPUs that are quite new and so they don't take too much time to optimize games for older hardware. Just think of the old PS2. It had a CPU that was in my computer 15 years ago, but you could play games in quite a good manner and some games are still pretty.
Why do I need cutting edge technology when I don't even see most of it while playing? Games with the newest technologies are not always prettier than other games.
I read somewhere that the Cry Engine is superb because plants and trees shake when you walk through them ... I remember one game from 2003 that was available for the first xbox where gras on the ground was shaking too.
I'd be happy if some games would be more linear/smaller but allow for more mild hardware requirements.

I wonder why we have to pay so much more for our pc hardware if we want to play games in the same quality that console users have when they play on their 5 year old machine.
I mean there are so many games that I couldn't run in the highest quality even when I had a better GPU than PS3 or xbox have.
I think that game developers know that we usually have GPUs that are quite new and so they don't take too much time to optimize games for older hardware. Just think of the old PS2. It had a CPU that was in my computer 15 years ago, but you could play games in quite a good manner and some games are still pretty.
Why do I need cutting edge technology when I don't even see most of it while playing? Games with the newest technologies are not always prettier than other games.
I read somewhere that the Cry Engine is superb because plants and trees shake when you walk through them ... I remember one game from 2003 that was available for the first xbox where gras on the ground was shaking too.
I'd be happy if some games would be more linear/smaller but allow for more mild hardware requirements.


You can't run a 5 year old PC and expect to max out the graphics, thats why. A PC from 2006 can run games in a bit higher quality than a console, expecting to be able to max your games out is absurd unless you have a very young PC like less than one year old.

Just because it is a PC and the graphics slider can hit Maximum, doesnt mean that your 5 year old computer can handle it, but you can still put it on medium or something and get better graphics than a console.

This is why I wish every one had better understanding about computers. General person will not understand in terms of what hes computer is capable and often get misconception that console hardware thats 5 years old is equal to new computer tech. The old Ps2 was running all the games If you were to imagine with me equal to low Graphic settings on the pc. In those 5 years Pc's games come out with better Visually stunning games while consoles visuals remain the same. So no console hardware is not some advance super alien hardware that can keep with new computers in the future.

In those 5 years Pc's games come out with better Visually stunning games while consoles visuals remain the same. That's not true.

Look at comparison pics between Forza2 and Forza3 on the Xbox360; you'd swear they were on different generation consoles. Consider now that Forza4 is coming out on the 360 as well and looks better again.

There is one very important and lucrative aspect of consoles, from a developers perspective, that a lot of people completely ignore - they're static. First thing that comes to peoples minds when i say that is "that's the problem, they're old hardware" and whilst sure, that is a fact, it doesn't have to be a problem.

Consider custom graphics configs for Crysis for example. There's hundreds of them available to download, all offering different settings, all created by different people, all optimised for the system configuration that the creator of the config was using. That last part is the important part. People create these configs and they tweak and skew the settings that give them the best visuals for the best performance - this is called optimisation.

Let's now imagine that every PC gamer has a top of the line gaming rig, all the same configurations (eg; i7 + GTX580, 4GB RAM). Now, the first config is created for Crysis and it looks pretty great and it runs ok. Now, two months after Crysis is released, someone has spent this time tweaking a config to give better visuals but to optimise the settings for better performance. Visuals are a tiny bit better and you get an extra 5fps - Great! Fast forward 2 years and there has been hundreds of configs created, tweaked and mastered; Now Crysis looks far better than it did and runs at almost twice the speed.

Why, you ask? Because people have gotten used to their i7 + GTX580 + 4GB RAM setup. They know it's limitations, they know it's strong points. They know they can have up to 500 trees on screen without much of an issue because the GPU has the processing power. They know they can only have 20 particle effects on screen because otherwise the CPU starts to suffer. They know they can have 2048x2048 textures because the vRAM is sufficient and they know they can stream up to 3GB of texture data because the RAM is sufficient. They know the setup, and the more time they spend on this setup the better they can make it. They know where it can be pushed harder and they know where they need to take it easy.



^ The above is the result.

This is why I wish every one had better understanding about computers. General person will not understand in terms of what hes computer is capable and often get misconception that console hardware thats 5 years old is equal to new computer tech. The old Ps2 was running all the games If you were to imagine with me equal to low Graphic settings on the pc. In those 5 years Pc's games come out with better Visually stunning games while consoles visuals remain the same. So no console hardware is not some advance super alien hardware that can keep with new computers in the future.
You didn't understand what I meant. I know that games that come out only on computer look often better. But most games are coming out on Xbox/PS3 and PC. They often look equal. Sometimes there are minor differences that are very subtle (higher resolution for example). But there are games on PS3 that I find spectacular in a way because they look better than some PC games. You shouldn't forget that you don't need a much higher resolution on a console because the TV monitor is farer ahead than your computer monitor so it looks as if it had a higher resolution.
You know Gran Turismo 4? It was for PS2 and it still looked freaky good on that old thing. A similar game wouldn't have run on a comparable computer. So just tell me why Crysis 2 will be available for console when my new computer still can't handle Crysis in highest settings? My new computer is so many times faster than the Geforce 7 a PS3 has inside...
As long as hardware developers bring out new GPUs/CPUs every year game developers won't fully exploit older components.

Edit: I totally agree with Cry_Adam. I often compare this to racing. It's not always the fastest car that wins. You have to learn how your car works, how it reacts and then you can often outpace rivals that have better cars in terms of pure performance but who don't know exactly how to make it work the best way. "Old" hardware is something a developer knows by heart. Everytime you get something new you have to learn how it works.

In those 5 years Pc's games come out with better Visually stunning games while consoles visuals remain the same. That's not true.

Look at comparison pics between Forza2 and Forza3 on the Xbox360; you'd swear they were on different generation consoles. Consider now that Forza4 is coming out on the 360 as well and looks better again.

There is one very important and lucrative aspect of consoles, from a developers perspective, that a lot of people completely ignore - they're static. First thing that comes to peoples minds when i say that is "that's the problem, they're old hardware" and whilst sure, that is a fact, it doesn't have to be a problem.

Consider custom graphics configs for Crysis for example. There's hundreds of them available to download, all offering different settings, all created by different people, all optimised for the system configuration that the creator of the config was using. That last part is the important part. People create these configs and they tweak and skew the settings that give them the best visuals for the best performance - this is called optimisation.

Let's now imagine that every PC gamer has a top of the line gaming rig, all the same configurations (eg; i7 + GTX580, 4GB RAM). Now, the first config is created for Crysis and it looks pretty great and it runs ok. Now, two months after Crysis is released, someone has spent this time tweaking a config to give better visuals but to optimise the settings for better performance. Visuals are a tiny bit better and you get an extra 5fps - Great! Fast forward 2 years and there has been hundreds of configs created, tweaked and mastered; Now Crysis looks far better than it did and runs at almost twice the speed.

Why, you ask? Because people have gotten used to their i7 + GTX580 + 4GB RAM setup. They know it's limitations, they know it's strong points. They know they can have up to 500 trees on screen without much of an issue because the GPU has the processing power. They know they can only have 20 particle effects on screen because otherwise the CPU starts to suffer. They know they can have 2048x2048 textures because the vRAM is sufficient and they know they can stream up to 3GB of texture data because the RAM is sufficient. They know the setup, and the more time they spend on this setup the better they can make it. They know where it can be pushed harder and they know where they need to take it easy.



^ The above is the result.

Thats a very good point.

The Ps3 will remain ever mighty

Dont start the flame train mate.

But multiplatform will slowly kill the high end hardware PC gaming industry for sure.
Why shoul i buy an GTX 970 or whatever if it "only" brings me a higher res with some AA but not a completely better game than the consoleversion? Nvidia and AMD just cant exist by selling to a few Framehunters and overclocking enthusiasts. These cards need games that use their full potential... Crysis 1 was such a game.. and now.. there will be no Pc exclusive anymore from Crytek. If this progress will continue then even the consoles will suffer from the degenarating hardware researches and only because of a missing high end pc market.

@ Cryadam

Its nice to see what old hardware can do... but its not very inventive or usefull to max out stuff that is already 4 years old. A progress can only be achieved with good tools. Or would u want to optimise an old engine if u could have one from ferrari?
You could optimize the **** out of your old engine.. it could never be as strong as the ferrari one.

Or would u want to optimise an old engine if u could have one from ferrari?
Because if you created a new engine for every Ferrari then you'd have expensive, gas guzzling engines that have inherent faults because time was never taken to fix the faults or optimise the performance.

You could optimize the **** out of your old engine.. it could never be as strong as the ferrari one
Quite the opposite, as above.

FYI: Professionally rebuilt engines are quite often stronger than engines off the production lines. They're rebuilt with that in mind, using components that are known to be stronger.

@ Cry-Adam

He he you spin my metaphor around...

I was talkin about the comparison between a modified ottoengine and a ferrari formula one engine.

For me its a fact that the strong commercialism of the gameindustry ( and their focus on consoles ) is sand for the engines of the overall progress of the grfx. We could already use stuff like tessalation, point cloud pixel data, raytracing or the mixed stuff from Cinema 2.0 by AMD. All these technologies exist and could be used on high end hardware. The results would put any game on the market to shame.. and yes even all Cryengines together couldnt beat the reults which could be achieved with these technologies. But the main focus being on the consoles, the gaming industry still uses the common technologies which are not state of the art of tech anymore.

I think deep in his heart Cevat is sad the he and his company cant be the pioneers of grfx evolution (overall) anymore. But i understand that Crytek couldnt exist only by selling to enthusiast Pc gamers and this console focus is surely not their fault. So Adam you dont have to be the defender of the consoles
Its just time that some companies remember that the PC is the strongest platform and it could also be a prfitable one if they would use the right copy protection and that would be a real good multiplayer mode like in Bad Company 2.

Still, the PC is the worst relieable plattform, when it comes to the overall crowd. Single persons may have I7, GTX570 a.s.o. but people like me don't have as many money as them, so Crytek still has to think of then. Also, piracy shows, that there are way more hackers and pirates than consoles. Crysis 1 suffered from a very low number of sells and it wasn't that popular among the overall gamer-crowd. I got it in late 2009, because I didn't heard of it before. Nowhere. If they'd make another Crysis as a PC exclusive, Crytek won't be making another Crysis, because they would just be loosing money. Consoles have qualities, it's not like they're just crap like most of PC-Gamers think. But the graphics aren't the most important thing of a game.

Of course there are more people playing on consoles than on high end pcs.
Of course there are more poeple driving normal cars instead of ferraris and porsches.
Look: Its like you own a porsche .. but the overall speed limit is reduced to 50 mph overall.
The last no limit racingtrack for our sportscars was the Crysis - track

Actually I've never owned a high-end computer so far ... I just bought what I needed to play games in highest settings. A middle-class GPU and CPU have always been just doing well.
Okay, I still own a 19 inch display 5:4 ratio, but why should I need a new one? Mine is very fast and I see enough of the games while playing.

Publishers are killing PC, but PC will never die. I looking in the future with smile on my face.

Qdash, we're looking at the new Duke Nukem on an Xbox. PC's are dying.

...since 25 years.

Baderporm, +1 hahahaha

PC is dying well, because 2011 is only about Crysis 2, TES5, The Witcher 2(best fantasy RPG), Deus Ex, Mass Effect 3 and Diablo III. Who the f*** will play in all these games?! ))))))))))))))))))

It's all about where you are. In Germany and most of Europe there are more computers than consoles I think. North America is different. There are more console owners.
In China and India the computer is the main gaming platform.

(I'm just talking about computers as gaming platforms ... there are everywhere more computers than consoles of course.)

Baderporm, +1 hahahaha

PC is dying well, because 2011 is only about Crysis 2, TES5, The Witcher 2(best fantasy RPG), Deus Ex, Mass Effect 3 and Diablo III. Who the f*** will play in all these games?! ))))))))))))))))))
Me...

I wouldn't say consoles are killing PC's. We need PC's to develop games, so it will have to function on the PC, in order to play or make on the console.

Besides, the ones who are killing PC's are the publishers, even though they don't really know how to do it.

Steam showed that Pc gamers are there and PC will never die.

Pc gaming is actually helping promote the future of digital distrubtion and cloud gaming.

Pc gaming is probably up ahead every medium of gaming because of those.

@ 70U1S

Duke Nukem has been in development for over 12 years now.. the most time of this development the xbox 360 and its predecessor didnt even exist. So the consoleversions of DNF only will be ports of an Pc version that took over 13 years to make