... And laptops.
Doesn't change the fact that add in boards (AIBs) was down 7% in Q2 year-on-year (units, not dollars).
Cheers
What’s the price of switching from console to PC?
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
... And laptops.
Doesn't change the fact that add in boards (AIBs) was down 7% in Q2 year-on-year (units, not dollars).
Cheers
DuckThor Evil
Legend
But Q2 was especially problematic in terms of supply for nVidia and due to the rising power of integrated graphics and APUs the discrete cards start at a higher price point.
I'm not arguing that revenue is down, - unit count is. The relative number of PCs with discrete AIBs is falling.
PC gaming might actually benefit from the increased market share of integrated graphics since it reduces the number of hardware configurations that needs to be targeted.
Cheers
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I was just pointing out that more expensive product = less sales, the power increase in the integrated graphics has pushed AIBs to start at a higher end in the spectrum than previously and that translates to lower demand for them. The fact that AIBs are falling is not the same as gaming enabled PCs are falling, I assumed that was your angle when you mentioned that 7% drop.
I'm not disagreeing with your point, Evil.
I have issue with the statements here that PC is a superior gaming platform on average. The reality is that state-of-the-art hardware is a small fraction of gaming PCs (as per Steam's surveys) and "gaming" PCs is just a fraction of all PCs.
Yes, a few enjoy superior performance (myself included), but that's not where the mass market is.
Cheers
Yes, developers who design games for mouse and keyboard are "dumb" and "lame". Thank you for educating us.
Billy Idol
Legend
My pleasure, my young padawan!
But, you unfortunately did not understand what I said and let your personal feelings mislead your perception: I said, designing games not for gamepads is dumb and lame. I never said designing games for k&m is d&l.
Designing games for keyboard and mouse is of course fine and definitively a must for PC gaming, as most PC gamers want this...but there is a measurable fraction of PC gamers who prefer gamepads. Both controller schemes should be included to maximize audience and consequently maximize profit, imo.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Boils down to exactly the same thing though.
Anyway, I don't agree with you. Especially RTS and RPG games would need a complete UI and possibly gameplay overhaul to make them work just as good with a controller as with a mouse and keyboard. RTS, FPS and RTS games are unlikely to be played with a controller on a pc so why bother? Most other games (racing, platform, action etc) usually already have controller support.
As for local co-op: depends on the game. some console games are killing local as well(I recall a small controversy happened with one game, but blast it all if I can remember the damned name of it. I think it was XBLA). Not enough PC games nowadays have local co-op, yes, but a lot of older stuff does, and there are still games coming out with local co-op, just not as many. Hell, sometimes PC games add co-op or multi in general in the form of mods. See Just Cause 2 online, which is currently in beta.
As for control methods: I personally have found after switching from console to PC as my primary gaming platform that keyboard and mouse is better whenever you need to aim at people/robots/monsters/dildo machines from the planet xynon five thousand/etc. I use my controller(One of these: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/gaming/controllers/gamepad-f310 Has a switch on the back which supports Xinput and Dinput for older games/games that just never supported Xinput. Comes in wired, wireless, vibration and vibrationless models with slightly different names. This is the cheapest model to be exact, no vibration and wired) on games that focus on melee or driving or etc. I'd never use a keyboard/mouse set up for, say, Psychonauts.
As an aside to my parenthesized paragraph over there, comparing it to the X360 controller, it's almost entirely superior. I wish it was a bit thinner, and the back triggers had less resistance to them, but I have lower finger strength than normal. Might not be a problem for most folks.
As for control methods: I personally have found after switching from console to PC as my primary gaming platform that keyboard and mouse is better whenever you need to aim at people/robots/monsters/dildo machines from the planet xynon five thousand/etc. I use my controller(One of these: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/gaming/controllers/gamepad-f310 Has a switch on the back which supports Xinput and Dinput for older games/games that just never supported Xinput. Comes in wired, wireless, vibration and vibrationless models with slightly different names. This is the cheapest model to be exact, no vibration and wired) on games that focus on melee or driving or etc. I'd never use a keyboard/mouse set up for, say, Psychonauts.
As an aside to my parenthesized paragraph over there, comparing it to the X360 controller, it's almost entirely superior. I wish it was a bit thinner, and the back triggers had less resistance to them, but I have lower finger strength than normal. Might not be a problem for most folks.
Billy Idol
Legend
I agree that RTS is a special case and rather difficult to adopt to controller, although possible as demonstrated by games on PS360. Maybe you are right in this case, as the typical audience seems to be indeed K&M players.
RPG? Why not?
FPS: if I play them online MP, I sure use K&M. But SP, I always use Xbox pad. Why? Just way more comfortable hanging out on the couch than sitting at the desk.
I just put 70h in Borderlands 2 on PC with gamepad...which is kind of FPS RPG.
Also, if Xcom has gamepad support on PC, I am interested.
Torchlight 2, Diablo 3...I am highly interested, but without gamepad...no chance. And those type of games are perfectly suited for gamepads.
Billy Idol
Legend
Is it offtopic talking about controller support on PC, when comparing them as gaming platforms? If so, I am sorry.
I just thought that this might be an important aspect for console to PC switchers.
Sorry if OT.
I just thought that this might be an important aspect for console to PC switchers.
Sorry if OT.
Its the price of losing controller support. Not all costs are fiscal. And I think the money aspect has been well covered now unless someone has something new to add.
It's an aspect I'm interested in myself because I really don't like KB+M except for RTS. I tried the Torchlight demo and hated it, and would only play that and Diablo 3 on controller in the same style as Dark Alliance. I appreciate some people like the the mouse interface for such games, so keep it in, but adding support in PC games for controllers is important for console gamers to be able to switch, and when the cross-platform game already supports controller input, it seems odd to leave it out of the PC.
They'd need to be tuned very differently for ranged combat though. I've been playing a few hours of Torchlight 3, and ranged combat is quite different from how I'd play that with controller on console versions of this game. Ideally, I'd combine the best of both worlds and play with a Move controller, by the way. If Torchlight 2 team was smart, they'd team up with Sony to make couch-co-op possible in it, and release it on PSN or even BluRay. They did a similar thing on the 360 with the original Torchlight, and that was quite successful I believe.
If that doesn't happen, I sure hope that Warrior's Lair game delivers.
I tried to read all the replies before posting but I couldn't do it. Three pages in I was so nutso about one constantly repeated theme.
My struggle with this concept at b3d specifically, is that most ppl here don't see any purpose to PCs which cost less than $700,which I think is crazy. When it comes to gaming, and to console transitioners in particular, $400 will get you plenty of PC. Especially now at the total ass end of this generation, a $400 PC will destroy a PS3 while simultaneously chatting with friends, watching youtube, and balancing your checkbook. And probably folding. I play borderlands with a project open in photoshop. It's only BL1, but it is a pretty large hi-res image with many layers. I'm too lazy to close it and my wife and I are playing co-op so I leave it open, also the web browser with ~100 tabs open and chat windows etc. BL1 is light by today's standards but it's a console port so it's a pretty obvious example. That PC is five years old, with a two-year-old mid-low graphics card, hd hell if i even remember, hd 5770 or something..? Anyway. Total cost, including mATX case with rolled edges and fans (I live in Hong KOng so the brand is FRESH NEW or something Chinesey), $450, including DVD. Replacethe HDD with an SSD and you're at $500. Total console killer, probably faster than a WiiU, although due to optimization, WiiU titles may be slightly more efficient on similar hardware.
I generally don't think tiny, silent, or laptop gaming are worth the money unless you have a real need. If it's a must, then go for it, it can be done, but you are usually spending 2X as much and about 2X as prone to premature part failure. Of course there will be exceptions. Nobody bring up monitors or I will bite them and remind them that you don't factor in the price of a TV when you talk about console prices. Besides, do people still buy TVs? Why? ...I have a small apartment.
It's Asia.
There is a sweet spot for a few months when a state of the art console represents a real cost savings over a PC. The hardware is fairly modern and well-streamlined these days, the case is irreplaceable, and the controllers haven't yet been hacked to work on Windows. Unfortunately for consolers, during that first few months, there will almost never be any games worth playing for your console. Conversely, even as the price of consoles gets less and less "worth it", there will be more and more games which are console exclusive which are must-play games. So ultimately, the whole debate has almost nothing to do with hardware... at all.
My struggle with this concept at b3d specifically, is that most ppl here don't see any purpose to PCs which cost less than $700,which I think is crazy. When it comes to gaming, and to console transitioners in particular, $400 will get you plenty of PC. Especially now at the total ass end of this generation, a $400 PC will destroy a PS3 while simultaneously chatting with friends, watching youtube, and balancing your checkbook. And probably folding. I play borderlands with a project open in photoshop. It's only BL1, but it is a pretty large hi-res image with many layers. I'm too lazy to close it and my wife and I are playing co-op so I leave it open, also the web browser with ~100 tabs open and chat windows etc. BL1 is light by today's standards but it's a console port so it's a pretty obvious example. That PC is five years old, with a two-year-old mid-low graphics card, hd hell if i even remember, hd 5770 or something..? Anyway. Total cost, including mATX case with rolled edges and fans (I live in Hong KOng so the brand is FRESH NEW or something Chinesey), $450, including DVD. Replacethe HDD with an SSD and you're at $500. Total console killer, probably faster than a WiiU, although due to optimization, WiiU titles may be slightly more efficient on similar hardware.
I generally don't think tiny, silent, or laptop gaming are worth the money unless you have a real need. If it's a must, then go for it, it can be done, but you are usually spending 2X as much and about 2X as prone to premature part failure. Of course there will be exceptions. Nobody bring up monitors or I will bite them and remind them that you don't factor in the price of a TV when you talk about console prices. Besides, do people still buy TVs? Why? ...I have a small apartment.
It's Asia.There is a sweet spot for a few months when a state of the art console represents a real cost savings over a PC. The hardware is fairly modern and well-streamlined these days, the case is irreplaceable, and the controllers haven't yet been hacked to work on Windows. Unfortunately for consolers, during that first few months, there will almost never be any games worth playing for your console. Conversely, even as the price of consoles gets less and less "worth it", there will be more and more games which are console exclusive which are must-play games. So ultimately, the whole debate has almost nothing to do with hardware... at all.
Well maybe you should, because some of your complaints don't stand to scrutiny.
$400 may get you plenty of PC, but in the UK at least it doesn't get as much. And even then, that's late in the console generation when the value has shifted back to the PC. Sure, if I hadn't spent £300 on a PS3 some years ago then I could spend that money now on a PC and game the same quality plus having extra functionality. However, I already have a PC, can play on the console while Photoshop is open on an image, and there are plenty of other factors to boot. It's quite apparent that currently, PC and console offer different experiences and the PC isn't a direct replacement for consoles. At the beginning of the gen, consoles offer more hardware for your money. At the end, consoles seem to offer a lower minimum entry price (maybe not in the US or HK). In the middle, you've got a variety of values based on individual users. Depending on where one places priority on control scheme, local multiplayer, case size and personal budget, the balance can be tipped either way.
That's not the same. Moving a mouse cursor with a thumbpad is pretty poor control. Proper controller support means changing the indirect instruction giving of mouse with direct control of the avatar. In the case of Torchlight, it's the difference between clicking where you want the character to walk or which creature to attack, and moving and attacking with the character directly. You can't map that with a workaround - it needs implementation at the game level. Well, I suppose you could take joystick input and convert that to mouse clicks in that direction right next to the avatar, and then attacks also in that direction, but that'd be prone to issues.
