Tell Nvidia to take it's high end $600+ card and sell it for $100 and watch how many they sell and how quickly gaming would pick up on pc's
I would argue that If consumers demanded quality in gaming, they would buy into computers, and this would accelerate development in card generations, depreciate yesterdays graphics cards more quickly, and of course produce greater competition for more advance gaming. It would even encourage companies to join the GPU market and break the monopoly between ATI and Nvidia, AMD and Intel. It would encourage alternative controller systems and other peripherals such as wider monitors to create a more immersive experience and on and on it goes.
We may already have had a ‘smell effect’ device readily available on the market; an old idea based on producing odors to reflect an environment: the smell of dungeons, cigarettes, perfumes, the lurking dead etc (insert health concerns and other controversies here).
Lower pricing on video cards would boost the gaming industry for pc's. I will not pay $500+ for a video card! Heck I don't want to pay $200+ Paying more for a video card than a console and games is just crazy in my eyes. Especially if you upgrade that video card every year or two.
I have to agree that computers are really expensive if you want to go the extra mile. The hottest Nvidia graphics card can cost twice that of an Xbox (then you fork out more to exploit 3D and Eyefinity functions). My problem is that the price gap doesn’t really reflect and an enormous difference between console and high end PC graphics (although, I do acknowledge the frame rate and resolution aspect), importantly, I don’t think most people care. If you look at screen shots comparing the two platforms, at first glance, there isn’t a vast difference. There’s “pushing the envelope”, but most people I speak with seem happy to sacrifice HD textures and special effects in order to play the game cheaply, with greater user friendliness, and on demand – as one suggested “most people aren’t paying attention when they’re in the heat of the action, anyway”.
The Current consoles right now are over 7+ years out of date. And if the rumors are true about the 720 then it is not going to all that much better then a low end PC
the folks who built that game had to "Dumb" down Crysis 2 in order for the console to even be able to handle that particular game
Right on - this is my biggest gripe. While gaming companies want to push the envelope in gaming, they also want to reach a wide audience and make profit. Console is obviously where the money is at, but console hardware will always be limited in capacity and behind. Am I right in say that if a developer wants to produce games tailored to both PC and console, they have to downsize, not simply the graphics and the special effects, but the very parameters of the game itself? I don’t know if this would have a knock-on effect on hardware development eg graphics cards, but it at least points out that if you play a game that is disappointingly short – console’s lack of capacity might be to blame.
And the issue of settling for second best creates further concern: the console to me has always been about ‘convenience’ gaming – creating demand for quantity over quality, not just from the consumer, but from Microsoft and Sony of the game developers. We see this typiclaly in FPS games. MW, BF, Crysis -They strive for higher quality graphics and more interactive game play, yet they’re shorter and more linear than ever due to hardware limitations. They become generic as they don’t offer any innovative direction in the environment or the storyline – especially when they’re geared towards multiplayer death matches; higher quality, but smaller maps and limited spontaneity and interaction.
Verdict: Consoles place a ball-and-chain on the progress of the gaming industry?