Crytek: PCs Are a Generation Ahead of Consoles

[phoenix352]

there's a grad student in my lab who runs every game at maxed out graphics settings, 60 FPS minimum, with an insane resolution. I'm forgot exactly what it was, but it was higher than 1920x1200. The individual components combine for a cost of about $2400, according to him.

was that including the monitor,mouse, keyboard,ect ?

Nope. Just the tower. He also uses only one brand of wireless mouse the keyboard. The keyboard that he uses isn't even in production anymore, but apparently it's the only wireless keyboard that lets him hold down more than 3 buttons at once. His entire rig is totally decked out. If I counted everything including the tower, I would say it's around $5000. But that's kind of unfair, because he's got an epic array of 10 GPUs (pretty sure they're all the best of the Radeon HD 6800 series), and only uses two for gaming and the rest for his project.

soo that friend of yours .... does he like work for the military and shoot missiles at enemy targets with his orbital Ion laser satellite? i dont see any other reason to have a super computer .....

 

[Pingieking]

there's a grad student in my lab who runs every game at maxed out graphics settings, 60 FPS minimum, with an insane resolution. I'm forgot exactly what it was, but it was higher than 1920x1200. The individual components combine for a cost of about $2400, according to him.

was that including the monitor,mouse, keyboard,ect ?

Nope. Just the tower. He also uses only one brand of wireless mouse the keyboard. The keyboard that he uses isn't even in production anymore, but apparently it's the only wireless keyboard that lets him hold down more than 3 buttons at once. His entire rig is totally decked out. If I counted everything including the tower, I would say it's around $5000. But that's kind of unfair, because he's got an epic array of 10 GPUs (pretty sure they're all the best of the Radeon HD 6800 series), and only uses two for gaming and the rest for his project.

soo that friend of yours .... does he like work for the military and shoot missiles at enemy targets with his orbital Ion laser satellite? i dont see any other reason to have a super computer .....

Quantum computation simulations. Not sure about the details of his project, but apparently the calculations are fairly simple stuff involving huge ass matrices. So having a lot of really good GPUs (which they use to run lots of parallel calculations) is much more efficient than trying to get supercomputer time.
One of the little "side" projects he has is finding ways to factor numbers by setting parameters and minimizing the Hamiltonian. Never realized factoring was so difficult.

 

[Delusibeta]

Try £500 to £800 for a good gaming rig. though if you a laptop boy more in the region of a £1000 to £1300.

I say you can get a good laptop for gaming for about £700 these days. Sure, you won't be maxing out Crysis, but you can get a solid performance at Medium.

It's interesting how many people who say "graphics aren't everything" towards PCs sneer at the Wii's lack of graphical abilities.

 

[Pingieking]

The thing is, not that many people have super-powered latest tech PCs. You could make a game for such crazy-ass PCs but it wouldn't sell too well.

Current standard powered PCs built for gaming is still at least equal, if not more powerful, than the consoles. And it can easily be done for less than $1000.
If you do want to shell out the big bucks; there's a grad student in my lab who runs every game at maxed out graphics settings, 60 FPS minimum, with an insane resolution. I'm forgot exactly what it was, but it was higher than 1920x1200. The individual components combine for a cost of about $2400, according to him.

Your point being?
Just because it's not vastly more expensive than consoles doesn't necessarily mean more people have them. Consoles are simpler to run, and most people who buy a pc don't get one designed for gaming. For example, a family household isn't going to buy a gaming pc for their teenage son, but they might buy a console. My mum has bugger all interest in playing Crysis.

My point being that PCs are technologically superior to consoles.
That is the topic at hand, is it not?

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

The thing is, not that many people have super-powered latest tech PCs. You could make a game for such crazy-ass PCs but it wouldn't sell too well.

Current standard powered PCs built for gaming is still at least equal, if not more powerful, than the consoles. And it can easily be done for less than $1000.
If you do want to shell out the big bucks; there's a grad student in my lab who runs every game at maxed out graphics settings, 60 FPS minimum, with an insane resolution. I'm forgot exactly what it was, but it was higher than 1920x1200. The individual components combine for a cost of about $2400, according to him.

Your point being?
Just because it's not vastly more expensive than consoles doesn't necessarily mean more people have them. Consoles are simpler to run, and most people who buy a pc don't get one designed for gaming. For example, a family household isn't going to buy a gaming pc for their teenage son, but they might buy a console. My mum has bugger all interest in playing Crysis.

My point being that PCs are technologically superior to consoles.
That is the topic at hand, is it not?

Then I'm slightly bemused as to why you quoted me. I'm saying that although superior pcs are avaliable not many people actually have them or want them.

 

[dghjdgdjf]

Blizzard seem like they are doing fine in spite of this.

well that is because wow is not on a cosnole, so wow is not constrained in any way by a console version of wow. : p

Well... not really. It's kinda what Crytek is arguing about. If your point was in fact true, Crytek wouldn't have anything to complain about. They'd just release the game as a PC exclusive. I'd say the reason why Xbox 360 and PS3 is so much more succesful in sales is because they are a cheaper and more casual alternative to gaming, thus attracting a bigger crowd. If you release your game as a PC exclusive, you'll be missing out on the opportunity to sell your game to this crowd. But if you make it a multiplatform game, the quality of the game won't be as good. Atleast not on PC.

Wow, I dunno if I made any sense there. but whatever. /rant

 

[Kouen]

News just in!: Crytek tells the masses what all PC Gamers have known for quite some time!

In all seriousness though ya I can agree with whats been said, although to some degree its a "No Shit" sorta thing.

One day PC will get the love it deserves again

 

[BloodSquirrel]

For under $500, I'm building:
Athlon II X4, 1 GB DDR5 video card, 4 Gig DDR RAM, 1 TB hard drive, Bluray player/DVD burner with 7.1 fiber optic out surround sound. A PS3, which I love, can't touch this for gaming. More important to me: I can play movies, music, store photos, stream HBO and Netflix, etc. or just surf the web. (OK, I can also get computer viruses and have bloatware snuck onto my PC).

The market has spoken: Most people would rather just drop a few hundred dollars on a console and game on that. Meanwhile, PC developers are jumping ship to consoles left and right. There's a very, very clear trend here and it isn't toward PC gaming.

Consoles aren't going anywhere, and MS and Sony aren't going to "converge" unless the market shrinks to the point where they can no longer compete and be profitable. Which it isn't.

 

[Delusibeta]

For under $500, I'm building:
Athlon II X4, 1 GB DDR5 video card, 4 Gig DDR RAM, 1 TB hard drive, Bluray player/DVD burner with 7.1 fiber optic out surround sound. A PS3, which I love, can't touch this for gaming. More important to me: I can play movies, music, store photos, stream HBO and Netflix, etc. or just surf the web. (OK, I can also get computer viruses and have bloatware snuck onto my PC).

The market has spoken: Most people would rather just drop a few hundred dollars on a console and game on that. Meanwhile, PC developers are jumping ship to consoles left and right. There's a very, very clear trend here and it isn't toward PC gaming.

Consoles aren't going anywhere, and MS and Sony aren't going to "converge" unless the market shrinks to the point where they can no longer compete and be profitable. Which it isn't.

The market has spoken, and there's a very clear trend here and it ain't towards traditional controllers either. People are going to jump ship over that, most likely. Just wait and see.

 

[Hoplon]

Try £500 to £800 for a good gaming rig. though if you a laptop boy more in the region of a £1000 to £1300.

Nonsense.

I payed £300 in toital for mine. just build it yourself.

I do self build, would that price include monitor, keyboard etc as well? from the post he would be starting from scratch so it's important to consider everything and a decent monitor will be around £100 on it's own.

 

[The Rockerfly]

Never quite got all this "COMPUTERS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE OMG!!!111!1111!11" stereotyping running around, I built mine two years ago for a around £500 and it's still running every modern game I can through at it fine with decent settings, in fact that's one of the benfits OF PC games, if you can't run a game with the maximum settings available then you can just TURN THEM DOWN, it actually gives you a choice and it lets the game developers push technical limitations as much as they want since people with lower end hardware can just turn down the settings.

That was the longest sentence ever. It's still £500 for a computer though, I paid £150 for my xbox and got 3 games with it and while my xbox will still run games until the end of this generation, there is a very good chance yours won't be able to run a lot of games by the end of this generation
With a console you don't need a choice, it will run.

Plus factor in the fact that most PCs games retail for cheaper than their console equivalents, the fact that PC games tend to have a longer "shelf-life" (look at CS:S or BF2), and the fact that you don't need to pay for online play (not counting the PS3's free online play obviously) and you can use your computer for other things both work and leisure related as well, really I'm convinced it's a lot cheaper in the long run to be a PC gamer.

Shelf life does not equal to cheaper games. COD4 is still on sale for about £19-£29, it's all about supply and demand with games. Granted there are a lot of older games you can play too and they are cheaper, I have had some problems with older games (e.g. Diablo not running on Vista)

Don't get me wrong I can see the advantages to PC gaming with graphics and mods but the unreliability on hardware, software and overall general convenience is too annoying for me to consider at the moment

 

[BloodSquirrel]

The market has spoken, and there's a very clear trend here and it ain't towards traditional controllers either. People are going to jump ship over that, most likely. Just wait and see.

That's just flat-out wrong. The traditional console market is doing great, even with the recession.

 

[Pingieking]

*snip*

Bad quote on my part. My apologies. I was only responding to the first sentence.

 

[fulano]

It's bullcrap. Designwise, nobody is making use of anything. We're still playing the same kinds of games we were playing 10 years ago both in consoles and PCs. The only places PCs have consoles beat are in games involving simulations of some sort.

Besides, isn't it stupid to mention this? I mean, it isn't like Crysis run on an everyday PC that fullfilled the minimal specs back when it was first released. Hell, it still doesn't in most. What good is a bunch of available memory and processor speed that you won't use for things other than shiny stuff?

 

[Delusibeta]

The market has spoken, and there's a very clear trend here and it ain't towards traditional controllers either. People are going to jump ship over that, most likely. Just wait and see.

That's just flat-out wrong. The traditional console market is doing great, even with the recession.

I doubt it. I'm going to predict that the next generation of consoles will have motion controls at it's centre, and a general trend away from traditional controllers. The market has spoken: the Wii is a mad success, and Move and Kinect has started out pretty well.

 

[Irridium]

The thing is, not that many people have super-powered latest tech PCs. You could make a game for such crazy-ass PCs but it wouldn't sell too well.

That's the only type of game Crytek has ever made, and they seem to be doing pretty well.

Crysis failed Sales wise.

It sold well over a million copies. Which for a PC game, and EA PC game, thats damn impressive.

OT: I wonder how much the budget goes to graphics.

 

[dochmbi]

I'm really happy about the consoles holding back the development of PC graphics, because this means that I'll be able to use the same PC for as long as the console generation lasts and always play my games on the highest settings, I built this PC in 2008 and I'll be able to use it until 2016 and won't need any upgrades.
This is unprecedented in PC gaming history and will end up saving me a lot of money.

 

[RatRace123]

Well, nice to see even developers like to spark the fire of flame wars every now and then.

Eventually consoles are going to be as powerful and have graphics that are as good as PC. And even if the power part doesn't ring true, there's only so much more that modern graphics can be improved on. I'd wager that probably in 2 generations, we'll have reached photo realism.

I mainly stick with consoles because my PCs have always been unreliable and have always had early deaths. I know that for the most part (excluding 1 RROD I got) consoles are more stable.