"Current Gen" Consoles Aren't "Current Gen"

[alexjlopez]

Kinda funny how people are reacting to DICE's statement following the Jimmy Fallon appearance where they showed off Battlefield 3. People are having a tough time understanding that the PS3 version doesn't look anywhere near as good as the PC version hehehe...

Battlefield 3 won't look as good on PS3, DICE says 'duh' (http://www.destructoid.com/battlefield-3-won-t-look-as-good-on-ps3-dice-says-duh--203987.phtml)

PS3's hardware that is currently considered "current gen" in console circles is five generations behind as far as PC video card GPU standards go. It's funny, I think some people think that the PS3 was advanced alien tech handed to Kaz Hirai by little green men in 2006 and that humanity is still working to catch up hehe--considering how hard Sony has worked to create this perception and how willing some people are to believe it.

But at the same time, the revelation that WiiU's GPU is based on ATI's R770 chipset led to the usual game sites claiming that Nintendo was using "last generation" tech in WiiU. And the bow they tie around it is that they keep saying Wii U will be "only slightly more powerful" than PS3/360 despite that when you sift through all the BS and use the same metric, PS3/360 use GPU tech that is four generations behind WiiU.

Some things never change hehehe...

[Shane R. Monroe]

You had people like Nuki coming in here talking about how the PS3 was God's Own Powerhouse and how in 10 years it will actually be MORE powerful than it was when it debuted and other such nonsense.

[Chris]

It's like I said on the other forums, Nintendo haters are going to hate. Give Nintendo criticism where Nintendo deserves criticism, lord knows there's enough legit criticism to go around.

[WorknMan]

It seems like it has taken longer this generation for consoles to show their age vs PCs than it has in generations past, though I suppose this could also be caused if developers are intentionally crippling the PC versions of games to some degree where there are also console versions, to make the porting process easier.

[alexjlopez]

It seems like it has taken longer this generation for consoles to show their age vs PCs than it has in generations past, though I suppose this could also be caused if developers are intentionally crippling the PC versions of games to some degree where there are also console versions, to make the porting process easier.

From what I gather, DirectX11 is a bigger leap for PC games that 10 was going from 9. Games developed from the ground up for 360 use DirectX9.

That being said, even the original Bioshock has some insane lighting and environmental effects on PC that make the console version look artificial and bland in comparison. It only got worse with Bioshock 2.

[NE146]

I never understood the pc vs consoles debate... when most people arguing against pc's are probably typing their thoughts ON A PC.

Kind of like I remember people dissing Xbox Mame and trying to tell me all about how good Mame is on the PC.. strangely oblivious to the fact that I obviously must have Mame configured on every single one of my PC's already. :rolleyes:

[Shane R. Monroe]

PC gaming has oodles of issues - that's why people diss on it. You'll notice all that MW3 footage you're seeing is all PC at some INSANE resolution. The consoles will never look that good.

[TripHamer]

Consoles are always behind PC, as PC are constantly evolving and Consoles are Static for many years and must be designed with sale price in mind. If they are too expensive, no one will buy them. PC's on the other hand, you can make it as powerful as you want.

However, the gaming market is mostly with the consoles.


And Nintendo would be wise to make the U the most powerful console out there. Cause, in a few years, when the U is coming into it's prime, the PS3 and the 720 will be out and we can assume will dwarf the U in terns of Specs once again.

It's just the nature of things.

But unless there is some new breakthru in Graphics and such, it probably won't matter all that much. Depends on how things go and what's popular and such.

[alexjlopez]

Well, 360 was released a full year prior to PS3 and the extra year of planning didn't help Sony dwarf what Microsoft put out. And as it turns out, the head start allowed Microsoft to build a userbase that Sony still hasn't been able to catch up with. They also established themselves as the platform developers felt most comfortable coding in, and we saw practically all cross-platform releases built from the ground up for 360 and simply ported over to PS3.

Nintendo could claim that advantage next time around. I have no doubt Sony will claim 10, 100, maybe 1000 times more power with PS4, but I'd bet money we'll see the same result as when they claimed PS3 games would leave 360 games in the dust.

[WorknMan]

PC gaming has oodles of issues - that's why people diss on it.

I might be interested in some PC games, but when I hear about some of the DRM that is employed, it makes PC gaming null and void as far as I'm concerned. I would go back to playing an Atari 2600 before I EVER installed any of that shit on my PC. If they can't make PC games without me worrying about what sort of goodies they're going to install alongside the game, they should stop making PC games. Period.

[Shane R. Monroe]

Well, that's part of it. The other part of course is disparate system specs, needing at least a BASELINE set (usually need far greater than the baseline), inconsistent experiences, blah blah blah.

[Nectar]

PC games looking better than their console counterparts has been common knowledge for millions of years. I'm surprised this is a controversial issue.

[ChairoNoMe]

I'm pretty much done with PC gaming. What drove me away was the constant hardware arms race. It's never good enough. You spend $300 on a dual-SLI video card setup and then the next day some new Physx-enabled super card comes out and you are screwed. Yes, your games will run, but they will always look better with the newest hardware.

This wasn't the case when I originally got into computer gaming, in the early 90s. It used to be not so bad, you could select between EGA/VGA and later SVGA. Or Soundblaster 16, AWE32, Roland, or Gravis Ultrasound. And it was never about which one sounded better or looked better, the choices you made just were meant to just make the game work with your hardware. Plenty of peripherals to choose from: joysticks, flight yokes, steering wheels, gamepads, and if you were really adventurous, Logitech Warrior or the SpaceOrb 360, which apparently was the best way to play Descent.

Then came 3DFX, Nvidia, and PhysX to ruin PC gaming forever. Not only did you make sure your card was supported but you had to make sure that you went into the settings and had to choose which effects you wanted enabled and you needed a quick reference card to figure out what the settings meant: trilinear, bilinear, anisotropic filtering, particle effects, bloom, HDR, PhysX, complexity, draw distance, and volumetric fog (tm) just to name a few. After a while, it just became obnoxious. I do not want to sit there and decide which effects I want to see. I just want to play the damn game and let it look decent and play smoothly.

Oh, and then somehow the mouse/keyboard setup became the new "standard" and no games were seriously designed around using fun peripherals like on consoles. Apparently, the zenith of controls for every single game in the universe is mouse/keyboard, no need to actually come up with new input methods and create new genres of games to play on them. We are happy playing FPS and World of Warcraft forever.

And then the DRM. Apparently on PC you have two choices: you could either buy a boxed copy of a game that is loaded with so much copy protection that renders your PC ridiculously bloated, or buy a copy on Steam and forego the concept of ownership altogether. So much for "collectors" value. It's not like they put anything into the box anymore, like feelies or 100 page lavish manuals and other fun stuff. In the case of Half-Life 2, it was literally just a box with discs and a instruction card. And you still needed to use Steam to play it.

To just talk about something recently I saw, I remember watching a video of the PC version of Mirror's Edge, a game I enjoyed on console. This new version of the game was patched with PhysX support. They were showing how cloth tears when you shoot holes in it, and the new glass effects. I looked closely at the levels that I had played dozens of times as if something was wrong, then I figured it out. The developers literally put in all these new hanging pieces of cloth and random panes of glass just so they could show off the PhysX effects. They literally served NO OTHER PURPOSE. There was no reason, aesthetically or otherwise, to add all these new pieces of cloth and glass to the game other than have an excuse to sell PhysX enabled cards. If that doesn't tell you what's wrong with PC gaming I don't know what to tell you.

[TechMaster]

As I've said before, I was always a hard core PC Gamer. The Hardware upgrade race was actually fun. Much like a car fanatic you were always tuning, tinkering, replacing stuff. I enjoyed it even if some of you didn't. :cool:

DRM was the doom of PC gaming, but more specifically, Half Life 2's DRM put the nail in the coffin. They were the first one to force you to install mandatory internet install of Steam when you bought a BOXED copy of the game. Up until then, DRM was a hassle but usually if the game was good, you could find a simple crack that disabled it and it never hampered you with mandatory Internet connections. With Steam the hackers had to manufacture a Steam simulation to enable you to play the game and even then it had issues. After that it was all down hill and all other game companies followed suit and forced internet connections and limited installations etc.

I specifically blame Valve and Half Life 2 for the death of PC gaming and have yet to ever play that game or any other games they have made on any platform since. When I hold a grudge its forever. :mad:
Funny thing is, I don't even mind the Steam concept. If the developers had implemented it properly to start with (ie not forcing it on everyone in a boxed game bought at the store) I would probably use it like many of you have.

The only positive thing that came out of that horrible time was I finally bought my first console in decades and was pleasantly surprised by the great stuff like Pacman CE, Geometry Wars, etc. :)
Unfortunately I inherited that dam Pokemon Gene and now I have all the .not. current gen consoles as well as many of the classics. Even if some of them collect dust most of the time (cough...PS3). At least I have a backup Blu-Ray Player if my primary craps out. :o

[Shane R. Monroe]

The arms races was even MORE complicated than that - not only did you have various chipset CARDS (nVidia, etc) but you had to worry about the goddamn motherboard slots too. PCI, AGP, PCI-E, and you could pretty much guarantee that when you wanted to upgrade your card to the hottest one, you were replacing your mobo, which then required you to buy new memory, blah blah blah.

Fuck that.

[TripHamer]

A new motherboard upgrade (along with memory, CPU/fan/heatsink and new OS) is/are all that are standing in the way of me upgrading my video card. And it's a Nvidia 8800 gts with 320 megs on it. :)

[Shane R. Monroe]

I'm actually in a GOOD position to do an upgrade - I COULD throw a nice PCI-E card on here. I have quad Intel CPU 2.33Ghz and 4GB of RAM. Not bad - could use another 4GB of memory, but I have the slots to do the video upgrade without taking it up the tailpipe.

[entexman]

PC gaming died for me when I got into the DS and the modern consoles (Wii/360). I have not purchased a commercial PC game since Civ4 (2005). Nowadays the PC for me is strictly a work/media/internet device. I have no desire to play games on the PC other than a quick game of Freecell and even there I find myself doing that less and less since I can get that kind of gaming on my phone now.

I have never really been one to get the latest and greatest hardware just to play the latest hi tech games so my PC's have always been the middle of the road hardware spec wise. I really don't care if the games I play on the latest consoles are lower res than the PC version. True the hardware on PC's outclasses all of the modern consoles and my feeling on that is "So what?" I can play plenty of fun games with the current consoles. PC gaming has never been the driving market for gaming and it never will be. Consoles are the market drivers for gaming and will be so for the near future.