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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Are Pc-Gamers graphics complainments against consoles justified?

czecherychestnut said:
If consoles didn't exist many PC gamers would just complain about the legion of HP Pavilion and Dell Inspiron users rocking 4 yr old integrated graphics and dual core Celeron's holding back PC gaming.

True, I wrote something similar some posts above you.

czecherychestnut said:
Just look at the latest Steam hardware survey (which is skewed towards higher end PC's anyway due to its gaming nature). Most common GPU? Intel HD 4000 series. Most common CPU? Dual core between 2.3 and 2.9 GHz.

Well, the Steam stats offer a little more information than the most popular GPU and CPU. The share of the Intel HD 4000 series has stagnated in the last months while the GTX 970 had an impressive growth and is now the second most popular GPU.

If we assume that the average monthly growth of Steam accounts since February has been ~4 million, the number of Steam users with Maxwell GPUs (750/ti+960+970+980) has improved from 6.3 million to 9.7 million within the last quarter, a gain of 3.4 million:

If the average monthly growth of Steam accounts since February has been ~5 million, the number of Steam users with Maxwell GPUs would have improved from 6.3 million to 9.9 million within the last quarter, a gain of 3.6 million:

So 3.4 - 3.6 million Maxwell GPUs ( + Radeon sales + late Kepler sales) = over 4 million new GPUs, which can keep up with the PS4 or at least XBO, were sold to Steam-gamers within the last quarter.

In the same time frame 1.4 million Xbox consoles (360 + XBO) were shipped and in a few days we know the Sony and Nintendo numbers. Besides the strong holiday quarter the growth rate of capable GPUs seems to keep up quite well compared to the 8th gen consoles.



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czecherychestnut said:
If consoles didn't exist many PC gamers would just complain about the legion of HP Pavilion and Dell Inspiron users rocking 4 yr old integrated graphics and dual core Celeron's holding back PC gaming.

Sure, you can build PC's that would smoke the average console these days, but the average PC is far weaker than current consoles. Just look at the latest Steam hardware survey (which is skewed towards higher end PC's anyway due to its gaming nature). Most common GPU? Intel HD 4000 series. Most common CPU? Dual core between 2.3 and 2.9 GHz.

Its not consoles holding PC gaming back like some people claim, its PC users themselves because for every i7, GTX980Ti toting gamer complaining about cr*ppy consoles holding back his eye candy, there is 4-5 PC gamers rocking their parents HD4000 Dual core Celeron with 2 GB of RAM PC. Developers want to maximise their audience, and game engines can only be made scalable up til a point, so it makes little sense for a developer to make a game so graphically challenging that the bulk of PC gamers can't play it.

Not true. Loads of Office PCs (most of them at homes, but I found Steam installed on many PCs at workplaces) and Ultrabooks have Steam installed for some older or casual games. Especially the latter generally still come with a dualcore and only HD Graphics. My dad, for instance, has steam installed on his notebook soely for some old pinball games and match 3 variants. My mother hasn't even used Steam once, but it came preinstalled on her convertible notebook.

I have Steam installed on 2 PCs, a modern one and a retro one. The latter naturally is very unimpressive (Core 2 Duo E4300 and GeForce 7800GT and no, there's no zero too much, it's that old!) but enough for some retro and indie games I got there. But these also contribute to the list.



Bofferbrauer said:
czecherychestnut said:
If consoles didn't exist many PC gamers would just complain about the legion of HP Pavilion and Dell Inspiron users rocking 4 yr old integrated graphics and dual core Celeron's holding back PC gaming.

Sure, you can build PC's that would smoke the average console these days, but the average PC is far weaker than current consoles. Just look at the latest Steam hardware survey (which is skewed towards higher end PC's anyway due to its gaming nature). Most common GPU? Intel HD 4000 series. Most common CPU? Dual core between 2.3 and 2.9 GHz.

Its not consoles holding PC gaming back like some people claim, its PC users themselves because for every i7, GTX980Ti toting gamer complaining about cr*ppy consoles holding back his eye candy, there is 4-5 PC gamers rocking their parents HD4000 Dual core Celeron with 2 GB of RAM PC. Developers want to maximise their audience, and game engines can only be made scalable up til a point, so it makes little sense for a developer to make a game so graphically challenging that the bulk of PC gamers can't play it.

Not true. Loads of Office PCs (most of them at homes, but I found Steam installed on many PCs at workplaces) and Ultrabooks have Steam installed for some older or casual games. Especially the latter generally still come with a dualcore and only HD Graphics. My dad, for instance, has steam installed on his notebook soely for some old pinball games and match 3 variants. My mother hasn't even used Steam once, but it came preinstalled on her convertible notebook.

I have Steam installed on 2 PCs, a modern one and a retro one. The latter naturally is very unimpressive (Core 2 Duo E4300 and GeForce 7800GT and no, there's no zero too much, it's that old!) but enough for some retro and indie games I got there. But these also contribute to the list.

But how many PC gamers would not have Steam installed? I'd say very few, so the market for PC games must be a subset of the 125 million Steam users, and given 20% of that 125 million are using integrated Intel graphics, and from rough calc's less than 15% of people are using a GPU more modern than a GTX 670 / Radeon HD 7700 series, the actual size of the PC market that overlaps with current consoles is ~ 18 milllion PC's, which is half the number of XB1's/PS4's on the market. 

All I'm trying to say is that this myth that underpowered consoles are holding back PC games is just that, a myth. If you actually break down the number of PC gamers that have the hardware to take on console games (and hence have the possibility of being 'held back' by consoles) the size of the PC market is much smaller than current gen consoles, and in fact it is the legion of underpowered PC's that are holding back PC games.  And that has always been the case since day dot of PC gaming.

Yes, eventually over the course of a console generation the average PC will gradually increase in power up to the point consoles are holding back what game developers will do in games, but we're still talking years away from now. 



czecherychestnut said:

But how many PC gamers would not have Steam installed? I'd say very few...

I totally agree, the Steam-haters on PC are a vocal minority. Even if they prefer DRM-free alternatives for most of their purchases (GOG, Humble store, retail), there will be a few games with no Steam-alternative where most of them will make an exception.

czecherychestnut said:

... so the market for PC games must be a subset of the 125 million Steam users, and given 20% of that 125 million are using integrated Intel graphics, and from rough calc's less than 15% of people are using a GPU more modern than a GTX 670 / Radeon HD 7700 series, the actual size of the PC market that overlaps with current consoles is ~ 18 milllion PC's, which is half the number of XB1's/PS4's on the market. 

If my interpretation of the Steam stats is remotely correct, in January there were ~18 million Steam-PCs with a GTX 670 or HD 7800 series (I'm leaving the 7700 series out, too many with only 1 GB RAM) or better. But with an assumed growth of 5 million Steam accounts each month since February, this number should have grown by now to 25 million Steam-PCs with a GTX 670 or HD 7800 series or better:

And I also agree that it is bad business / too risky to make AAA-games only for that audience instead of including PS4 + XBO.

Multiplatform (PS4, PC, XBO) is the way to go if no one is paying for exclusivity. And on PC, no one is paying developers/publishers to keep games away from other platforms.

That doesn't mean that there are no exclusives or timed exclusives on PC... there are a lot! But they are exclusives (or released first on PC) for other reasons than "moneyhatting":

  • developers who have decided that their games don't work well enough with gamepads (Total War series, Civilization series, Cities: Skylines, most RTS, most point & click adventures) or won't make hardware compromises (only Chris Roberts with Star Citizen)
  • small developers who can't afford a multiplatform development, especially crowdfunded games... most of these games get a headstart on PC first and if they are successful console ports (and/or mobile ports, depends on the game) follow later: Divinity Original Sin, Ether One, Minecraft, Outlast, Project CARS, Shadowrun Returns / Dragonfall, The Talos Principle, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Wasteland 2,... Pillars of Eternity?


Bofferbrauer said:

Right now, this is true. Like I said however, games on PC keep on selling while console game sales are extremly frontloaded. Thus over time, PC reverses this trend

Might be true. But it really doesnt matter alot if a pc gamer do buy a game for 3$ in Steam sale or not. Developer need money to finance their games, not sell as many units as possible. So 20 pc games sold in steamsales might bring as many money as a console game at full priece. Thats the problem.

Ever asked yourself why they get that much per person? There are 3 reasons to it: First, it is a genre where publishers arbitrairly decided it would not sell, so fans of the genre where waiting for some ime for such a game. Second, the game shows what a PC is capable of, something you can't really get from multiplats. And third, because it is a PC exclusive, meaning they don't need to take console hardware limitations into consideration. Especially points 2&3 are things PC gamers where yearning for years now.

Right but this dont/wont work for every game. The game "promises" to be what pc-hardcore gamers waited scince years (pushed graphics to the maximum, pushes gameplay to the maximum and co). If every Multiplat would be like star citizen (thats what many pc players want) they wouldnt spend that many money on all those games. It wouldnt be special anymore. 

The game is not finished yet, not even marketed as such in any way. It's only natural it's still buggy as it is only in beta. The Order 1886 wasn't a beta, it was released and marketed as a finished game.

Right. But we have to see if Star Citizen will really be possible (at a budget of ~100mio). Keep in mind GTA V had a 250mio budget (included marketing) and way worse graphics and didnt features completly new game mechanics.

Witcher 3 got released a few weeks ago. Prices drop faster on PC, but eventually those on consoles do catch up. Thus this game is a rather bad example right now. The only games I buy at release are Nintendo games since they don't drop, ever. For the rest I wait a couple of years, at which point the prices are basically the same during sales between PC and consoles. Just need a bit of patience, that's all.

Console games dont drop to steam sale prices, but doesnt matter. IF everybody would do what you are doing, modern games wouldnt be possible at all^^. Also Console player do buy games alot more directly at release, because they just dont have alot alternatives. On pc there are 1000´s of great games for <5$. So just wait is alot easier as on consoles.

I know Assassin's Creed was buggy on all platforms, but the problems where even much worse on PCs than on consoles. The reason why many PC gamers complain about bad graphics is that PCs are capable of better things if anyone only really tries to tap it's potential. Hence why I mentioned Star Citizen so often, it's the first game in a long while to actually do so.

Like I said. Way better graphics as consoles = way more expensive. Better graphics are always more expensive. I heard Nintendo said developing a HD wii u games is 3x as expensive as developing a wii game. 

 PS2 was an exaggeration to drive my point home. Also, you're comparing only Graphics chips, but the PS3' Cell did much of these calculations too. Both a PC and a console are more than just the sum of their parts, but even in that case, you'd have to add the CPUs, which would narrow the gap quite a bit between 7th and 8th gen, especially for the Playstation. Gigaflops are a bad comparision anyway, since then AMD would wipe the floor both with NVidia (especially in double precision) and even Intel (since most of it comes from the integrated graphics Chip, where AMD is stronger than Intel), but that just couldn't be further from the truth.

The PS4's processor is it's weak point. Relatively low IPC, very low clock; games which can't get multithreaded easely will loose power here. Even then, the GPU has to help them out part of the time. Thus also limiting the power left for graphical scenes. It's basically a reversal of the previous console, where the CPU had to help out the GPU.

The comparison in terms of power was accurate. No pc game (not even star citizen) does look as much better as a ps4 game compared to a ps2 or ps3 game. I doubt Mass Effect 4 will look alot worse on ps4 as Star Citizen on pc Ultra (both have a very similar look). It might not look as good, yes, but not like its already nextgen.

 

 

 







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The reality is that the vast majority of PCs being used for gaming are not current gaming PCs.

I think anyone who games seriously on a PC (i.e. system builders) knows the difference between a PC that can be used to play games (any games) often squeaking by at sub-minimum recommendations for current games and a PC that was specifically and recently built for playing current games.

Not only are most PCs being used for gaming not current gaming PCs, but they don't even rate comparable performance with a $400 console and as it's already been pointed out, this is really what limits PC game developers.

Developers want their games to be playable on as many systems as possible, barring the select titles at the top used to push the limits of game engines and spur the development and sales of new GPUs.

Hint: if the game is being bundled with the purchase of a new video card (Arkham Knight, MGS V) it falls squarely into the category of "games that will make you want to buy a new video card."



I am primarily a PC gamer, and I would say that for the most part people complaining about the PS4's graphics haven't actually seen them, and know little about the horsepower it has.

However I do think the Xbox One is holding back the graphics of everyone else already - and I won't apologize for that viewpoint.



Prediction for console Lifetime sales:

Wii:100-120 million, PS3:80-110 million, 360:70-100 million

[Prediction Made 11/5/2009]

3DS: 65m, PSV: 22m, Wii U: 18-22m, PS4: 80-120m, X1: 35-55m

I gauruntee the PS5 comes out after only 5-6 years after the launch of the PS4.

[Prediction Made 6/18/2014]





DerNebel said:
About the whole consoles holding back PC gaming thing. Think about most PC exclusives, do they look better than console games or multiplats? 95% don't. Look at the most popular games on PC, are they the really graphics heavy games that need extremely powerful rigs? Nope, 95% of the most popular games could easily work without any downgrade on any current gen console.

Excuse my saying it like this, but anyone that thinks that erasing consoles would mean developers would suddenly start optimizing their games for the top 5% uber powerful rigs is a moron.

More or less. "Consoles holding PC games back" always sounded funny when the vast majority of the PC market uses hardware weaker than said consoles.