Nightly Open Thread
Eight myths about video games…debunked here.
And are consoles limiting the potential and future sales performance of high-end PC graphics cards?
Discuss…or discuss something else.
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Mark Lemmert says: -
Mark Lemmert says:
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“Ultima 7 Revisited”: Spot the New 3D Objects – The Ultima Codex says:
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Happy Anniversary to Ultima IX – Forgotten World says:
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Anthony Salter says:
And are consoles limiting the potential and future sales performance of high-end PC graphics cards?
Of course they are. And not just graphics card performance, but PC performance in general.
I assembled my PC in 2008, and even the newest games run fast, because the machine is as powerful as the PS3 or Xbox 360 which also need to be able to run those games.
I consider this state of affairs to be a net positive.
Ah, silly me. It said sales performance, not performance performance. 🙂
Well, I suppose that’s quite true.
Infinitron: it is mostly to do with sales performance, yeah. There are high-powered graphics cards being made…but is having the latest beast from Nvidia necessary anymore to play a mainline game at full detail?
Not really. And that’s thanks to consoles.
Not that people — hardcore enthusiasts — won’t still buy beefy graphics hardware…but probably not as many folks as once might have. It’s kind of a moot point anyway, since more games now are being shipped with capped framerates.
Nvidia is able to market their high-end cards to other markets (e.g. science and security applications), but not enough to make up the difference.
It was inevitable as the corporations realized it was cheaper to force nearly the same code across all platforms than to:
1) Individually tailor games to run at their best on individual platforms based on their inherent strengths and weaknesses.
2) Release platform-exclusive games.
What I wonder now is will the situation be exacerbated by the onslaught of new tablets, phones and mobile consoles? I also wonder, what with the huge variety of platforms out there, why developers continue to choose DirectX over OpenGL? Crazy…
IN OTHER NEWS, good riddance to that asshole Mubarak. Hopefully, in the end, the world’s net population of enslaved and generally abused people will be slightly reduced.
It will hopefully be a net positive for Egypt that Mubarak is gone, though it remains to be seen what manner of government fills the void now that he has stepped down.
The Who’s line is always worth considering: “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.”