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greenmedic88 on 27 November 2010
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HappySqurriel said:
greenmedic88 said:
shio said:
greenmedic88 said:

And again we go back to the single exclusive game on PC that demonstrates the (multi) generation gap between a console and a PC.

It's seriously getting old. Especially considering that only a tiny percentage of gaming PCs in circulation allow Crysis to look its best (the version that the PC pundit invariably references) at decent frame rates and resolution.

Considering there really hasn't been anything major since 2007 on PC, the gap isn't so extreme.

Maybe PC developers should be working on squeezing more performance out of current hardware (current average hardware) rather than simply relying upon future hardware to take up the slack. But of course, that's not the nature of the PC game.

There are loads of examples, but Crysis isa very fitting example.

Then list them. 

PC exclusive games that required hardware upgrades in the same vein as Crysis in 2007.

Just on your original comment that "only a tiny percentage of gaming PCs in circulation allow Crysis to look its best", a PC with a Radeon HD 4770 (a low end graphics card released in 2008) can run Crysis at high detail, above 720p, at over 30fps ...

The real reason why we haven't seen the benefits of more powerful PC hardware is not because technology is not dramatically more advanced than the HD consoles; after all, new graphics cards have theoritical processing peformance of 2 Teraflops which is around 10 times the theoritical performance of the XBox 360 or PS3's GPU. What is holding them back is that most third party publishers need to sell games for the XBox 360, PS3 and PC in order to come close to breaking even on the cost of development of HD games. While there are some benefits for PC gamers from this (generally, higher detailed models, textures, better draw distances, higher resolutions and better framerates) developers can't really take full advantage of modern PC hardware without making it difficult/impossible to release games for the HD consoles.

That's what I'm talking about. 1280x720 on 16:9 or 1280x768 on 16:10 at 30 plus FPS on "high" (not highest or ultra) is not Crysis at its best. It's definitely not what you'll find when looking for the best examples of Crysis frame grabs which are invariably the ones used in graphics comparisons. 

Your second point reiterates what a lot of people have already said. Any game that pushed hardware to the point where a VGA card upgrade was in order for decent performance (which is at minimum what people will want if they're buying a game for the advanced visuals) is going to have to sell a significant number of copies assuming the R&D that went into the engine as well as all the highly detailed game resources drove the budget well into 8 figures. Millions of units sold, not hundreds of thousands. 

Crysis was essentially the last such PC exclusive title to do so. 

Without the hardware busting exclusives that come around every generation or so, the main reasons for trying to build an optimal gaming PC is as you said: higher detailed textures, better draw distances, higher res and frame rates. These don't really represent huge "generational" gaps as suggested by the OP. 

Personally, sure: give me the PC version of a multiplatform game 90 plus % of the time. It will play better on my PC and it typically costs me less as a bonus. But in the end, they're STILL the same games I'd be playing on a console and sometimes do when a PC port has serious issues. 

When I asked for a list of PC exclusives that are "hardware busters" (requiring a VGA upgrade for good performance) that was a legit question as the last such PC exclusive I've bought was Crysis Warhead back in 2008. I buy more games on PC than any other platform, so it's not like I don't follow what's been released.