E3 discussion

[Panos]

look at all these cool games i could have if i wasn't poor

[Kafein]

I think it's a fairly common procedure. You develop a game on PC after all and you need a strong PC. Later comes optimization for less capable hardware. Games they have shown are 6 months far away from being finished.

Of course, they won't talk about it in public because average gamer is a dumbass and it's hard to explain anything to him.

Even though that's bad practice when developping general purpose applications, one would think they optimize by design by now.

Anyway, the PS3 and X360 were already PCs to a large extent, and for Microsoft even the first Xbox was pretty much an old PC. This generation continues the trend.

[Molly]

Lol so seriously you can just sit back and watch it? 

That said it is a nice looking game.

Since we're all more or less playing one of the most ugly games alive... we all know by now gameplay > graphics any day.

That's Crytek for those who didn't know: graphics > gameplay. They just wanna sell their engine. Not play games anymore...

[Nehvar]

I think it's a fairly common procedure. You develop a game on PC after all and you need a strong PC. Later comes optimization for less capable hardware. Games they have shown are 6 months far away from being finished.

Of course, they won't talk about it in public because average gamer is a dumbass and it's hard to explain anything to him.

Yes but usually they try to demo the games on a PC with a similar spec to what the console will be capable of.  At least that's what I'm told by the devs who frequent overclock.net.  These guys at E3 were talking up the graphical power of the xbone while running it on a 780...which is considerably more powerful than what the xbone will be capable of.  Struck me as shady. 

Not that I ever had any intention of buying a xbone anyway.  The PS4, however, is sparking my interest.  The way AMD designed the core will allow it to do things that current PC's can't.  At least for the next few years.  You probably won't see it fully utilized with launch titles but after six months or so, when game developers have a handle on the architecture, the games should be interesting.  But I won't be buying that at launch either; they don't have any must-play titles yet.  Wii-U may be the first "next"-gen console I buy if Nintendo can get their shit together and provide me with my Zelda and/or Metroid Prime fix.

[Leshma]

AMD will probably find a way to sell that tech on PC market. Sony is weak financially, doubt they could ask for hardware to be exclusive for their machine.

Reason why they didn't go with nVidia is because nV doesn't let console makers manufacture their GPUs, they sell them as finished product which means they control the price all the time. AMD gives console makers anything they need to produce hardware themselves but I doubt they can't make it on their own and sell as PC component.

[cmp]

The way AMD designed the core will allow it to do things that current PC's can't.

Not really, that's just marketing talk. They said the exact same things about the PS3's extremely advanced Cell CPU, and as expected it was far from true.
Especially when that "super CPU" is paired with a GPU that's already junk compared to current high-end models.

[Nehvar]

I guess it's speculation for now but this is what I based my above statement on. (The source is Timothy Lotte's blog.)

The real reason to get excited about a PS4 is what Sony as a company does with the OS and system libraries as a platform, and what this enables 1st party studios to do, when they make PS4-only games. If PS4 has a real-time OS, with a libGCM style low level access to the GPU, then the PS4 1st party games will be years ahead of the PC simply because it opens up what is possible on the GPU. Note this won't happen right away on launch, but once developers tool up for the platform, this will be the case. As a PC guy who knows hardware to the metal, I spend most of my days in frustration knowing damn well what I could do with the hardware, but what I cannot do because Microsoft and IHVs wont provide low-level GPU access in PC APIs. One simple example, drawcalls on PC have easily 10x to 100x the overhead of a console with a libGCM style API....

 I could continue here, but I'm not, by now you get the picture, launch titles will likely be DX11 ports, so perhaps not much better than what could be done on PC. However if Sony provides the real-time OS with libGCM v2 for GCN, one or two years out, 1st party devs and Sony's internal teams like the ICE team, will have had long enough to build up tech to really leverage the platform.

 I'm excited for what this platform will provide for PS4-only 1st party titles and developers who still have the balls to do a non-portable game this next round....

My memory of the article was hazy so I made it sound like a sure thing when it isn't.  The potential is certainly there though.  It all comes down to whether or not Sony fully utilizes what AMD has created for them.

[Banok]

so your saying the reason we won't see this on PC's is because of the OS? i mean if it works that well it would be adapted to pc otherwise.

but yeah i've always felt like we could do with an OS that is specifically for gaming, but that also doesnt suck.

[cmp]

Ok, now it sounds like an overenthusiastic fanboy. PS3 developers have access to the same kind of low-level OS/library he's talking about; did somebody see a PS3 game that was "years ahead of the PC"?

[Nehvar]

Nah, I don't think he's a fanboy.  He's the creator of FXAA and that's from his blog post talking about the upcoming console tech.  He's more of a PC guy.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

Until gaikai like services become the dominant player PC's will continue to be the power house.

The only reason PC games get held back at all is because they don't get built for the 1%ers. But with games like SC coming out that are built to push your machine to breaking point we will once again be reminded of why the PC is the thing to beat.

Simply put the PC will always have more capacity than consoles because everything that goes into the consoles is available in some form for PC, often far more powerful variants. 

But once shit goes server side... everything will go right out the fucking window.

[zagibu]

Since we're all more or less playing one of the most ugly games alive...

Bullshit.

[zagibu]

so your saying the reason we won't see this on PC's is because of the OS? i mean if it works that well it would be adapted to pc otherwise.

but yeah i've always felt like we could do with an OS that is specifically for gaming, but that also doesnt suck.

Games don't pass most calls through the OS layer (hence the "direct" in DirectX).

[[ptx]]

[Teeth]

I always knew Crytek was only about graphics and never about gameplay

I think this is a hugely unfair statement. Have you even played Crysis? People always seem to assume it is just a pretty picture, but I found the gameplay very enjoyable as well, and I don't easily appreciate singleplayer shooters. Varied, well paced and a good mix between freedom and linearity.