Unreal creator Tim Sweeney: "PCs are good for anything, just not games”

Feces said:
With the expansion card you can cut away a ton of parts such as network controller, dvd/bluray, hard drive, power supply to reduce the costs. All those services can be provided by the pc side. The pc side video card can do some very nice ssaa on the xbox360 output. Maybe even copy some files for faster loading to the pc huge hard drive.
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Okay, that makes sense. The plugin card would be considerably cheaper than your listed price. If you were using the PC's existing GPU and RAM and drive etc., you'd only need a limited amount of hardware on the console plugin. However, that's not a possible hardware solution. The plugin card would need the CPU, GPU, and RAM of the consoles. You couldn't share PC resources, use an improved graphics card, and get better image quality. Any plugin device would function exactly like the console with the same limits. Because of this the only plugin board advantage would be space conservation, and at the moment that's not possible because the mobo's of these systems are too large to fit a standard slot and case, unless you've got a big case with loads of room. I have GPU, Audio card, USB port extension in the back, and there's no much more room to fit anything else in my mid-sized tower.

I suppose a flip-side solution would be to use the console as a GPU and accelerator. If you could plug in one card that replaced the internal integrated graphics with Xenos or RSX, and also added a float acceleration system when using applications, you could create a PC/console hybrid that might find friends. If it was affordable. Interest would still probably remain very niche though, especially as console prices drop.
 
Feces said:
I would rather have my pc pretend to be an xbox360+

With the expansion card you can cut away a ton of parts such as network controller, dvd/bluray, hard drive, power supply to reduce the costs. All those services can be provided by the pc side. The pc side video card can do some very nice ssaa on the xbox360 output. Maybe even copy some files for faster loading to the pc huge hard drive.

Yes I could just put the xbox360 on my office desk with my computer and when I get the ps3 I could do the same and have a giant stack of hardware on my desk. But if i am going to spend the same amount of money on those parts why not just put it in my pc.
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Someone had that idea 12 years ago. Too bad it was for a failed console.

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Shifty Geezer said:
I suppose a flip-side solution would be to use the console as a GPU and accelerator. If you could plug in one card that replaced the internal integrated graphics with Xenos or RSX, and also added a float acceleration system when using applications, you could create a PC/console hybrid that might find friends. If it was affordable. Interest would still probably remain very niche though, especially as console prices drop.
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Imagine the benchmarking opportunities!! :D
 
Well parts two and three of the tgdaily Sweeney interview are up, lots of optimistic sounding stuff, that DX 10 is the last relevant API, we're all headed for a much better software rendering future, and that UE4 is in development now and targeted at next gen consoles not PC.
 
Feces said:
I will give you an example I have had a gaming pc for at least 5+ years now. Very nice top spec box that has gone through number of upgrades to stay current. November 2006 I got an xbox360 and that pretty much killed my pc gaming habits. I havent bought any pc games sense and instead got maybe 15 console games. In years prior I would get maybe 7-10 pc games a year with that slowly declining as consoles became leads. I prefer the higher quality pc games but there are so few good exclusives now that it hardly worth owning a pc. My friends all have xboxs and nearly all the great games are all on consoles.

I play on my nice 40" tv but I would trade that in for my 24" monitor with high ssaa and high quality textures anyday. At this point I use my pc for work and xbox for gaming. I spend way more time on my pc and I would rather have my pc pretend to be an xbox360+

I have 3 kids and 3 tvs in the house, the main nice tv is taken by kids most of the time so I would really preffer to play on my computer in the office when ever I want instead of fighting for the tv.

With the expansion card you can cut away a ton of parts such as network controller, dvd/bluray, hard drive, power supply to reduce the costs. All those services can be provided by the pc side. The pc side video card can do some very nice ssaa on the xbox360 output. Maybe even copy some files for faster loading to the pc huge hard drive.

Yes I could just put the xbox360 on my office desk with my computer and when I get the ps3 I could do the same and have a giant stack of hardware on my desk. But if i am going to spend the same amount of money on those parts why not just put it in my pc.

In any case no one is saying this something for everyone but at least for me this would be the best solution. I have access to all the console games with slighly better gfx and its part of my work computer.

Sadly though we all know where this world is headed, gaming will be done on consoles/handhelds and work will be done on laptops. Until developers find ways to make cheaper good games consoles will continue to kill gaming on the pc.
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I feel ya, I'm the same way about 360 overtaking PC. I just built a $1400 quad core based PC with 4GB RAM, and I've been having serious internal debates about whether I will get a high end graphics card for it or not. That should tell you how little I game on PC anymore.

And you'll soon probably be able to get that 360 for 269 fully loaded, how can PC's compete?

The issue is that all really big budget game development has simply moved to consoles. So you get many console "blockbusters", much fewer on PC. And many of the games that are coming to PC, are simply console ports now (say, COD4) so you're getting graphics tailored to the consoles anyway, and not taking advantage of the one big advantage the PC has, it's superior power. Sorry but playing Assassins Creed or Gears of War on PC six months later just doesn't excite me. Also, personally, I prefer the simplicity and playing from the couch of console games, though that's a personal preference, some may feel the reverse. But face it, if you want to be the on the serious cusp of the best gaming today, you have to be on the consoles, period. You're not getting your Mass Effects, your GT5's, your Uncharted's, your MLB2k8's, pick your poison, on PC (yes I know there is a ME port coming to PC, it's not out now). And I do not think six months late ports count either, in my opinion a serious gamer doesn't settle for six months later when the opportunity to play a triple A game now exists. Also, although PC's still have better graphics, consolers seem to be doing a better job masking the gap longer than they have in the past. Console games still have some darn spiffy graphics when compared to PC, and 360 came out in 2005.
 
Rangers said:
I feel ya, I'm the same way about 360 overtaking PC. I just built a $1400 quad core based PC with 4GB RAM, and I've been having serious internal debates about whether I will get a high end graphics card for it or not. That should tell you how little I game on PC anymore.

And you'll soon probably be able to get that 360 for 269 fully loaded, how can PC's compete?
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In your particular case the answer seems obvious. You clearly have a high end PC regardless of gaming and thus the cost of a "gaming PC" for you is the cost of a GPU alone. Since a 9600GT is far more powerful and much cheaper that a $269 360, that one seems like a no brainer.

Of course others situations will vary.

Also, personally, I prefer the simplicity and playing from the couch of console games, though that's a personal preference, some may feel the reverse.
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This shouldn;t really come into it as its also possible on the PC. You could make the argument that its not as easy to set up, which is true. However if someone wants to game on the PC and also wants to game from the couch. There is absolutely nothing stopping them doing that, thus it can;t really be held as a disadvantage. If someone were to say "I can't be bothered doing that" then they don't fit the catagory above of wanting to game on a PC, not seriously anyway.

But face it, if you want to be the on the serious cusp of the best gaming today, you have to be on the consoles, period. You're not getting your Mass Effects, your GT5's, your Uncharted's, your MLB2k8's, pick your poison, on PC (yes I know there is a ME port coming to PC, it's not out now). And I do not think six months late ports count either, in my opinion a serious gamer doesn't settle for six months later when the opportunity to play a triple A game now exists.
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But you'll need more than one console to play all those games you mentioned and of course all the other big console exclusives. How many people have more than one console? And whats stopping people getting a PC and a console which would seem to complement each other much better than two consoles?

I have to disgaree over the timing issue as well I don't recall this ever being an issue with PC to console ports (e.g. WIC, Farcry, UT3, maybe Crysis). As far as i'm concerned, a game is good whether you play it when its released or 6-12 months down the line. For example I bought Oblivion about a year ago now when it first released. I still haven't played it but am planning to do so soon. I don't see why i'm going to enjoy it any less that a year ago though. Or Crysis, still haven't picked that up yet although I fully intend to.

Granted, if your left with no good games to play while you wait 6 months for that console port - thats an issue. But the PC is flooded with great games at the moment with no end in site so i'm not seeing a problem.
 
Epic keeps sending mixed messages. CliffyB says PCs suck, consoles rule. Mark Rain says they're still a AAA PC games development Studio. CliffyB clarifies his position by saying PCs with graphics cards don't suck. Tim says mainstream PCs suck anyway.

My guess is that's part of the reason why UT3 sold so poorly on the PC. Not because people couldn't run it but because Epic couldn't decide if it was porting it TO or FROM the PS3.

And Epic is the sole developer (as of yet) that's part of the PC Gaming Alliance. Kind of reminds me of when Microsoft was a member of the OpenGL board.
 
Richard said:
And Epic is the sole developer (as of yet) that's part of the PC Gaming Alliance. Kind of reminds me of when Microsoft was a member of the OpenGL board.
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Lol, yes that one amuses me too. Particularly in light of this most recent interview. Tim seems to be pretty heavily down on PC's. The comments about UE4 are particularly disheartening. It sounds like the PC is now relegated to an afterthought as far as UE goes. I wonder if the games themselves will also lag the console releases.

With Id and now Epic showing clear favouratism towards the consoles I think its pretty clear that the PC has now been relegated to a console port platform. Thats not to say it doesn't still hold advantages, but the days of the PC exclusive are very quickly dwindling. The only thing left now is to see if the PC can stand shoulder to shoulder with the consoles as a primary "multiplatform" system" or whether it will continue to be pushed towards the bottom of the pile in terms of release schedules and optimisation.
 
Poor Mark Rein. Its a full time job clearing up after his colleagues messes.

When Tim says the next engine "will exclusively target the next console generation" what he means is that it won't be an engine suitable for this console generation which comprises Xbox 360, PS3 and the kind of gaminghttp://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19974#PC's people are using today. It does not mean it will be exclusive to consoles or that we’re focusing exclusively on consoles.
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http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19974
 
Feces said:
Software is just way behind hardware today, the only way to reverse this trend is to create software that will make current hardware scream for mercy. There is no way that software will overtake hardware any time soon so we must turn to another solution.

Specifically related to gaming we need to simply bring back console on a pci card back. If I remember correctly there was something like that for the dreamcast? Maybe it never became a real product but today this would make sense.
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The Dreamcast PCI card (using the DC-on-a-chip) never became a product.
 
Just a thought, I consider Carmack a genius based on my terminology -thereby lumping him with the likes of Bell, Newton, Galileo, and Einstein in the gaming world- and he, unlike Sweeney, believes Crossfire and SLI are good for the developers, so Sweeney is probably wrong.

I'm a console gamer and always will be but truth be told, the PC market is still alive, full of decadence and opulent machines but that's a different story.

John Carmack talks ray-tracing, PC gaming

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/03/14/john_carmack_talks_ray-tracing_pc_gaming/1

With news that Tim Sweeney is moving his primary focus to console game engine development, PC gaming doesn't look to be in great state at the moment.

John Carmack, one of the most respected games developers in the industry, has spoken out about the recent debate surrounding PC games development and also talked about the possibility of ray-tracing in games in a recent interview with PC Perspective.

"From a developer stand point the uncomfortable truth is that the console capabilities really dominate the development decisions today. If you look at current titles and how they’ve done on the console, you know, high end action GPU based things, the consoles are so the dominate factor that it’s difficult to set things up so that you can do much to leverage the really extreme high end desktop settings," said Carmack.

He also shared his thoughts on the move to multi-GPU graphics subsystems – and his opinions differed greatly from Tim Sweeney's. "I've always been a big proponent of these high end boutique systems – way back from the early days of 3dfx I always thought it was a real feather in their cap early on that they could pay more money and have a bigger system and have it double up and just go faster," Carmack said.

"I think it’s a really good option and certainly companies like Nvidia and AMD are throwing all the resources they possible can at making the newer, next-generation cards. But to be able to have this ability to just pay more money and get more performance out of a current generation is really useful thing to have," he added.

Carmack also talked about ray-tracing during the interview, offering some interesting insights into what might happen when Intel enters the market with its many-core Larrabee architecture – one thing that Intel has been pushing has been ray-tracing.

"I’m not really bullish on [ray-tracing in a classical sense] taking over for primary rendering tasks which is essentially what Intel is pushing," said Carmack. "There are large advantages to rasterization from a performance standpoint and many of the things that they argue as far as using efficient culling technologies to be able to avoid referencing a lot of geometry, those are really bogus arguments because you could do similar things with occlusion queries and conditional renders with rasterization. Head to head rasterization is just a vastly more efficient use of whatever transistors you have available.

"But, I do think that there is a very strong possibility as we move towards next generation technologies for a ray tracing architecture that uses a specific data structure; rather than just taking triangles like everybody uses and tracing rays against them and being really, really expensive [from a performance perspective]," Carmack continued.

Carmack said he's been pitching his ideas to the industry's key hardware vendors and he believes that Intel's push towards a conventional ray tracer "is unlikely to win out."

Finally, he also talked a bit about Nvidia's acquisition of Ageia. Carmack has been very public on his feelings about hardware-accelerated physics—specifically referring to Ageia—and it seems that his opinion hasn't changed much. "That was one of those things where it was a stupid plan from the start and I really hope Nvidia didn't pay too much because I found the whole thing disingenuous. Many people from the very beginning said their entire business strategy was to be acquired because it should have been obvious to everybody that the market for an add-in physics card was just not there."

In the rest of the interview, there's a lot more insightful commentary on where the games development and hardware industry is going – it really is well worth the read, even if some of it does get quite deep.
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Cyan said:
Just a thought, I consider Carmack a genius based on my terminology -thereby lumping him with the likes of Bell, Newton, Galileo, and Einstein in the gaming world
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Shifty!

Looks like we need another spin-off thread.. ;)

Cyan said:
- and he, unlike Sweeney, believes Crossfire and SLI are good for the developers, so Sweeney is probably wrong.
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Well by that logic then all of the false predictions, bogus theories & inaccurate truths the likes of Bell, Newton & Einstein dreamt up MUST be true also..

Just because the guy's a genius & a bit of a visionary doesn't make everything that comes out of his mouth gospel.. :rolleyes:

Cyan said:
I'm a console gamer and always will be but truth be told, the PC market is still alive, full of decadence and opulent machines but that's a different story.
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Wave a flag why don't you..

& don't forget to burn some incense on that carmack altar while you're at it.. :p
 
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