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Now that both companies are into the console market, is it in thier best interests to produce superior PC video cards? They seem to stand to make much more money by making sure consoles have the superior graphics, and giving PC gamers a card that is comparable but not better.
Or does the natural progress of technology make this point moot? To keep up with the Joneses (or maintain marketshare), will they continue to roll out better cards every year?
The profit margins on those high-end cards are so good, they might be irresistable to ATI and Nvidia. After all, how much more in parts does a $500 card cost over a $150 card? Maybe $10, $15? I dont think ATI or Nvidia have to sell too many of those to make it worth it. But at the same time I doubt they enjoy dropping so much cash in R&D to keep up with each other.
The Xbox360 and PS3 take advantage of HDTV, that will be huge for tech-geeks who previously scoffed at consoles (because, after all, HDTV is a lot cooler than a monitor). Especially now that the most advanced engine, UE3, is not just on PS3/360 its designed for those.
Nvidia has already said that they will have a chipset better than the one in the PS3 on the market by the time the PS3 is out. The ATI chipset is a little more experimental, and their next generation PC chipset will be different and probably better in some ways and worse in others.
It's a moot point in reality.
Technology is going to advance no matter what (look at the latest PC advancement -- PCI Express -- cards are nowhere near using this technology to their potential yet), so it's in their best interests to keep on developing new PC hardware. It's a nice cycle in regard to personal computers:
technology advances -> nvidia/ati churn out new hardware to take advantage -> more sales -> profit to invest into more R&D -> churn out new, better hardware -> more sales -> repeat
Let's also not forget about other computer applications that are graphics-intensive like CG rendering for movies, CAD/3D modelling, video editting, etc...
Thanks for the info. I really haven't even been following nextgen stuff until now and didn't realize that these companies cut deals back late last year.
Maybe, I'm a little more sinister than others. But, if I was Nvidia or ATI, I would charge Sony or MS for exclusivity for a year, on top of the licensing fee and costs of production. But, like cka said, there is a bigger market than just PC gamers.
flash back about 5 years, when the PS2 was announced.
"The PS2 is so powerfull PC gaming is doomed"
"The PS2 has so much processing power, we might even seen ps2 based systems replace the PC"
Now here in 2005, 3dfx is gone, but PC gaming is still alive and kicking, people still drop hundreds of dollars and the latest-greatest video card out there.
Same thing will happen this gen. The PS3 will launch, and the PC gamer segment will play catch-up for about a month, then take the lead, yet again.
Nvidia and ATi have no leverage at all to charge more to console makers. They bid fiercely for the contracts to make the chips for the consoles and margins are very small. They'd never give up thier PC card business because it will always be thier primary market, and they're in charge of it. They don't have to answer to a MS/Sony/Nintendo squeezing thier profits, ATi/Nvidia determine what they put out and how much they charge.Quote:
Originally Posted by toxic
The bigger question is, will PC gaming (continue to) decline as the Xbox 360 and PS3 take hold? The 360 and PS3 both have standardized input jacks and will support, I assume, mouse and keyboard (keyboards are a definite, what with FF11 and what not). So that means that you are gonna have the most advanced engine (UE3) running natively on these consoles with mouse and keyboard support and (at least with XBL2) the most advanced and full-featured online gaming support out there. All being run off your huge HDTV and overpriced sound system.
I dont have any desire to play Civ 4 or RON2 on my TV, even with mouse keyboard, strategy games have a permanent home on the PC. But really, when it comes to FPSes and action games, isnt it a no-brainer?
The arcade market tripped and fell as soon as consoles were able to roughly replicate the console game experience. Arcade developers tried to make super advanced graphic boards (model 3) and gimmicky game setups but people didnt buy it. Is the same thing happening to the PC now?
As long as PC gaming can keep going ahead of console gaming in terms of graphics ... you won't see that day until consoles turn into cheap PC clones.
That was alledgedly supposed to happen with the 360. But I don't see that as the case. (I think it was that fool Jarrod who said the Xenon would render PC gaming obsolete this generation.) Judging from the E3 presentations ... and the fact that killer games like Gears of War will be on both machines ... I don't think so.
That's kind of why I posed this question. If ATI and Nvidia decide to make console machines thier priority (saving thier superior technology for every generation) that could really destroy PC gaming instead.
Well, a couple things to counter this.Quote:
As long as PC gaming can keep going ahead of console gaming in terms of graphics ... you won't see that day until consoles turn into cheap PC clones.
For one thing, how many people are willing to spend $300-$500 on a new graphics card that can get them maybe 10% or 15% worth of performance increases over a console that costs $300 by itself? Assuming that the nvidia and ATI chips in the 360/PS3 are the most advanced out there in mid-2006, all games that are in development from now until 2006 are going to be optimized for those chips... that takes us into mid-2008/early-2009 releases.
The games taking advantage of the more-advanced cards arent gonna be out until 2010/2011. The most advanced engines now - Source and Doom 3 - were coded for ATI 9800s, not the new shit thats here now.
I jumped off the PC hardware bandwagon when I spent $300 on a state of the art GeForce 1 in 1999. It was able to kill all the games I had, of course. But by the time games were coming out that used the card's extra features, the card didnt have the raw power and fillrate necessary to power those games. It was a waste of money, really.
So, more and more people are possibly coming to this realization. Theres always gonna be a select few that will buy the newest shit to stay ahead of the game. But those people, especially with the 360 and PS3 coming out, might be a shrinking minority, to the point where developers wont care about the market anymore.
We're even seeing that more now, the PC is kinda becoming a "port if you got the time" platform instead of the primary one, which it absolutely was 5 or 6 years ago. Console versions of PC games, inferior though they might be, are routinely outselling the PC versions by a huge margin. Sometimes companies dont even bother to put a former-PC title on the PC anymore (Ghost Recon 2). Im just saying thats its possible that this phenomenon might become more pronounced over the next two years and continue to wither away at the PC's userbase (because, after all, nobody will make PC games if they cant sell PC games).
edit: wow, sorry for the long post. Just had a detailed argument to make =X