you shouldn't look at overall PC demographics as "Bethesda's audience".

75% of my household runs XP.
100% of the potential audience for Skyrim runs Windows 7 64-bit.

75% of my household probably doesn't even have Shader Model 3 support.
100% of the market for Skyrim has DX11 support.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ might be a better guide for what the actual PC gaming market is. (With respect to the fact that there is non-trivial group that wants nothing to do with Steam) Also, you can pretty much discount 6% of the overall market from the XP group, because they can run Oblivion at a crawl. No way in hell they're going to have a decent Skyrim experience.

Xp's now a minority market among people who might actually buy Skyrim PC...

I sort of agree with you with most of you statement, unfortunatly if there were only PC games on the market the developemnt of these games would be nowhere near as high quality as they are at the moment due to the lack of revenue that would be available to fund the size of teams it takes to develop the recent games.

So in a way what is actually happening is that the cold hard cash that console games bring through the books, allows software org's like Bethesda to spend on developing high quality games on all 3 platforms, which means that PC games today would not be anywhere close to the quality if the consoles did not bring in the revenue to fund such games.

Yes you may get 1 game every blue moon that pushes the boundaries for quality, but most would not be.

So what PC gamers should be saying is not ' Consoles are holding PC's back' but ' Thanks to consoles we have alot of high quality games'

Oh and by the way, just to stop any flaming, I game on both a PC and xbox, but TES games are always on the PC

My current one is a #66 , and planning to upgrade to...I don't know, but nothing less than two #5 in SLI (which technically outperforms rank #1), or a rank #0...aka a Radeon HD 7xxx (since no news of any future nVidia generation yet).

Your logic is completely flawed here. Just because someone has a 64 bit system with a DX11 card doesn't mean that it's guaranteed they'll go out and buy Skyrim. It's not going to appeal to 100% of the hard core gamers out there. Not everyone is into a swords and sorcery RPG. And even if they did all go out and buy it, that still only represents 25% of the market, based on your figures, as opposed to 75% for people with lower end systems. Even if not all of that 75% bought the game, it wouldn't take much for them to buy more than your hypothetical 25%.



Again your logic is flawed. Steam is a gaming service, it's going to attract more hard core players than are typical in the general public. And hard core gamers simply aren't the largest segment of the overall market, the casual gamer is. They're not the ones who are going to be going out and buying the latest and greatest gizmos on the market every 18 months, that's pretty much reserved for the small number of hard core players you happen to have extra money to spend. Most people will wait until their existing system starts acting up or breaking down before upgrading.

I really don't get why when building a new renderer they didn't make it native DX10 on PC. There is absolutely no reason on earth to still support DX9 for a PC game. User base has moved far beyond it, its far more constricting from a development stand point and the APi calls on PS3 and 360 have more in common with DX10 than DX9. I can see supporting DX9 if your just modifying and engine but they rewrote so much they should have made it with DX10/11 in mind. Wouldn't have singled out consoles, as we have seen with multiple titles its a great strategy that gives each demographic the best respective experience.

The user base hasn't moved far beyond it. According to this Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems Windows XP systems pretty much still equal Vista and Windows 7 combined, though just barely, and that OS can't support anything more than DX9. It makes perfect sense then to design a PC game with a potential of 50% of the market in mind.

Well my friend, that would mean an average game at most. That approach killed Gothic 4, killed Deus Ex 2, killed Crysis 2, Far Cry 2, Mafia 2 and so on. To be honest, I don't really know how much they can strech TES to fit the mainstream area without sinking it alltogether. Oblivon compared to Morrowind was a HUGE step back.


Wrong. The Witcher was probably the best RPG I've ever played until now and The Witcher 2 launches this month still on PC only (at least for the time being). Judging by the way it presents itself in the movies on the net, it should blow away any competition with ease. The same goes for the creators of Penumbra series who launched afterwards Amnesia. Brilliant games, great gameplay, graphics, story, atmosphere, practically, all the recipe for an awesome game. Oh, I've almost forgot the Stalker series.

Anyway, the should have build an engine capable of scaling up or down depending on the platform it runs (just like Bad Company 2 and future Battlefield 3), not just trying to make a similar game for all.

Compare that with Crytek who've got 4,5 mil sales with Crysis 1 + Warhead and went on with Crysis 2 multiplatform anyway, so we've ended up with a dumb down game, all the freedom gone.

maybe the computer can have better graphics then Xbox but like no one plays computer games. I saw the other post with the poll and a lot of people say there playing on comp but everyone I know has Xbox(or PS3 but it svcks so it doesn't count. lol jk.)

Windows XP will only be a viable OS, at least for gamers and enthusiasts, for another year or two. It is on it's way out simply because there's really no advantage to running XP anymore(In fact, it is at a disadvantage as soon as memory requirements increase). Win7 64-bit has sold like hotcakes among enthusiasts because it has great support and compatibility. The 50% of the market that is still running XP are not gamers. That's the major point that must be made. Sure there are still XP gamers, but I bet the install base of Win 7 compared to XP, among enthusiasts, is closer to 60/40.

Not to mention, PC games are now starting to require more than 2GB of RAM(Windows XP can only allocate 2GB to an application - that's its max) for optimal performance(Especially among MMOs). After the current batch of games(including Skyrim), XP really won't be a viable platform to consider any longer. Of course, we can only speculate, but the trend suggests the above. ;P

Well he got the gist of it. Technology isnt at the point where a new hardware generation is warrented or worth the price of buying or creating. The showcase looks better, but not monumentally better. We arnt jumping from the xbox to xbox 360 simply with direct x11. Its probably alot harder to put those effects into a game and really what Todd said was fairly accurate. Its a modest visual improvement and a new console generation wont be created simply to use those effects

That doesn't follow at all. A good game is determined by the overall design and the storytelling, not by the glitz and glamour that technical whizz bangs can offer. Baldur's Gate 2 is hardly a high end technical achievement, but it's still one of the best cRPGs ever made, and people are still playing it to this day.

I'm not talking about poor graphics, but poor/dumb down gameplay as I've stated above.

Actually, the jump is far greater this time around. That's the point. DX11 doesn't add a LOT of features. However, it adds pretty awesome performance gains, including multi-threading(which prior versions of DX don't have) and tessellation. Again though, it's not all the graphical fidelity as much as it is performance gains, ease of use (DX 11 is an easier development platform), and over all it's not 10 year old technology. A new console generation is coming a LOT sooner than was originally anticipated. We are about 2 years off from the X, a year off from N, and Sony has been quiet mostly (because they haven't profited).

People who argue that it is not warranted make no sense to me. It is highly warranted as most games being made for consoles are becoming very similar in both gameplay and visuals. You are not getting any new experiences, barring a few exceptions. PC gamers HATE the modern generation of consoles because innovation has stagnated in recent years. The buzz of this hatred is starting to take hold even in the social circles of console gamers. The redundancy is obvious!

And your point is? Skyrim will be released this year. That makes the 50% potential market XP users still provide worth considering economically. What happens 2 years from now is irrelevant for this particular title.



But you're missing the point that hard core gamers aren't the largest sector of the overall market. Casual gamers are. And they're the ones that are the most likely to be using equipment that is out-dated according to today's standards.

Well you're in the wrong thread then as this one's all about why DX11 isn't going to be the main focus for the PC. The whole discussion has been about graphics here.

Actually, that is the point entirely. The PC gamer market is the enthusiast side. The 50% running XP will buy the game on a console, not for their PC. If you wonder why PC games sales have stagnated, it's because developers are missing the mark on what the PC gamer demographic consists of. We are not people using old tech, or clinging to our old computers. We are the people who upgrade every 2-3 years, and might even upgrade video cards in-between. If you don't try to allure us, which developers really haven't tried to do for years now, sales will decrease. If you develop with us in mind, sales will increase. However, the social problem is that PC gamers tend to be slightly jaded. We expect modern games to have console interfaces, low res textures, less optimization, and essentially no features that take advantage of our platform.

Again, the PC gamer market is NOT the casual market or the mainstream market. We are the enthusiast market, and there are millions of potential sales. You just have to design your game with us in mind. If you don't? Well, we just won't buy your game. That's how it works.

Man, it's all connected, graphics, gameplay, feeling, all of it. In a way PC is to "next gen" consoles, like they are to Wii.

+1

A thousand times, this. Problem is that it's quicker (and probably cheaper) to do an already dumbed down version to fit in the PS3 and 360, then port it to the PC than to do a quality, artistic-level version which takes profit of all the power PC's can offer, and then port it to lesser systems.

It's the same as always: progress halted by greed. A real pity. I really hope Battlefield 3 kicks them all in the quads

My personal thoughts is that since they've spent the last 5 years working on "perfecting" the old tech, they lack the skill and/or the experience to fully and properly utilize the new tech.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Steam shows that Win7 64bit is the MOST common OS among its users. These are the market share that companies like Bethesda will lose because they will not design with us in mind. Steam has millions of users, is one of THE most profitable companies in the United States, and shows that almost 60% of it's user base has DX 10 capable video cards.

Windows XP is only represents 21% of PC gamers. And this is declining at a rapid pace! (6% decline since december!)

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/directx/

Graphics do not equal inovation. Modest performance gains and visual gains are truely not warrenting of a new console generation. 2 years off is somwhat unrealistic, creating a new console means loosing A TON of money, and from a companies persepective, the very (and I cant stress this enough) modest improvements do not warrent millions upon millions of dollars towards developing a new system. As much as you believe it, a new console generation is not coming so soon. the new Wii is at best equal to the ps3 in terms of graphics, just with built in motion controls.

Your arguement that a new console generation would relieve stagnation in mainstream titles makes no sense to me, or really anyone with critical thinking skills. PC gamers can hate whatever they want, whats important is to take a step back and not be a steriotypical PC gamer or console gamer, get a new social circle if your seriously hating consoles because of the somewhat stagnation that has excisted literally since the start of movies, games, art, and music in the mainstream setting

Xbox 360 and PS3 hardware are essentially the same, minus some key differences here and there. Overall, they balance each other out to be this: not very impressive.

That being said, the PS3 DOES have slightly better hardware than the 360, so what OP was trying to point out is that they seem to be developing for the low end of the spectrum while the high-end is indeed getting the short end of the stick.

It really angers me the people that say those statements when they have actually no idea of the visual/performance gaining obtained at all. Do you know anything about Shader Models/Computing Shaders/GPGPU to confirm that? Do you know the meaning of Tessellation? Geometry Instancing? FP16/32? Do you know ANYTHING about the technical impovements that DX10/11 offers?

You have no idea of what the improvements are, yet you say "modest gains". Kudos to you, man.

P.D: Frostbite 2 engine (BF3) will support quasi-real-time radiosity, which is a form of illumination pretty close to ray-tracing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiosity_Comparison.jpg, and say again "little gain".

It is, EA is already working with the new X hardware. Nintendo is launching their new console within a year, and S will follow up with something very soon. Graphics do not equal innovation, I totally agree. However, you would be amazed by how much money/productivity is spent on getting modern games to perform well on the X and, especially, the P. I would not expect the next consoles to be sold at a major loss like before. Also, there is no reason to do it that way this time around. You will see an X and a P that profit out of the box, or are sold at a very slight loss initially. Unlike before, where they sold at a massive loss in profit for the first three years of their existence. DX 11 will give a performance gain along side the hardware, and open up numerous features that simply were not possible with the current consoles because of performance issues. Sure, most of the features DX 11 brings DX 9 can do. However, DX 9 cannot do them with any efficiency. Thus, you don't see these features because performance takes too much of a hit. DX 11 leaves performance for other aspects of gaming, mainly the gameplay. You don't have to spend most of your resources harnessing visual power. There are numerous PC games that have gameplay features that are beyond what modern consoles are capabale of without graphics. Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, etc.



You are right, we will set aside our passions and hobbies because, when we think critically, these things make no sense! Aha, however, critical thinking and taste might as well be mutually exclusive. I need not justify why I like something, or dislike something, though justification shows a level of sophistication that I personally like and use, which is why I apply critical thought to this subject. My passion for PC gaming is being held back by console hardware. That's why I want new consoles. However, the S, X, and N are well aware that gamers, of all varieties, are ready for something new. That's why there is all the buzz about new consoles all of a sudden. They will be here starting with Nintendo this year or early next year, to be followed by Microsoft late next year or early 2013. If you don't think Sony will participate, you lack the tool of discussion - critical thinking. Anyway, just my opinion. So, we can also agree to disagree. It's ok.

It really angers me when people loose their [censored] for silly reasons. I know what I can see, I know the basics of complex graphics and I know Direct x11 adds in the grand scale of things, MODEST improvements of performance and visuals. They are good, but do NOT warrent a new generation of consoles and they will NOT lead to less stagnation in the mainstream market.

You proved people can be ignorant rabbid fan boys for graphics, a thing I didnt think was possible for human beings with a brain. Kudos to you, man.