How [Not] To Fix PC Gaming
by Paul Ellis
ExtremeTech has an article out today on “How To Fix PC Gaming Once and for All” that caught my eye. I may not exactly be a fan of PC gaming as it stands now, and although the author makes a lot of valid points (fix piracy problem, more PC gaming companies should vocally advocate the platform, and stop being fanboys), one of his suggestions is simple ridiculous: “OEMs: Stop Using Intel Onboard Graphics.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard PC gaming advocates denounce Intel’s graphics chipsets. Truth be told, they are probably just about the worst chips for 3D games out there. But does that really mean there is no place in the PC market place for adequate 2D graphics chips?
This is asinine on so many levels that I don’t even know where to start, but I will anyway. First, it is ridiculous to think that even 10% of all PCs would get used for somewhat demanding 3D games if they had capable hardware. According to Gartner, by the end of this year the worldwide install base for PCs will 1.1 billion units. That would mean that at least one billion discreet graphics cards would have been sold to people/companies/organizations that they would never use.
If you account for the fact that a decent gaming graphics card costs at least $150 (probably $200 or more really) then that would be $150,000,000,000 (or more) that would have been wasted. To put that in perspective, that is $25 billion more than Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo, nVidia, Intel, AMD, and Comcast combined made in the last six years! Or said another way, we could fuel 61 million cars in the U.S. for an entire year. Saying every computer should have a capable 3D gaming video card in it is as ridiculous as saying every TV needs to have an Xbox 360/PS3/Wii built-in; it is just rhetoric.
Here is the other major problem, a $150 video card won’t be able to play any current games in three years. How many people keep their computers for three years or longer (outside of our techie circle obviously)? My parents have had the same computer for four years, and they have no plans on getting a new one any time soon. My not-even-three-years-old computer and GPU are much nicer than anything my parents, or my brother, or any of my in-laws, etc, would ever buy and even my machine chokes on any game released in the last year.
What about the power consumption on discreet graphics chips? With laptops outselling desktops, and everyone becoming so concerned with being “green” these days, does it make sense to put a power hog GPU in every computer? I like having as much battery life as possible. I also like having a quiet computer (I bought a special passively cooled graphics card in fact). Having a dedicated GPU works against both of these factors.
If you really want to fix PC gaming it needs to become more approachable. Here are my tips.
- PC gaming needs a unified platform; think Games for Windows Live and Steam together on steroids, in an “open” and extensible way. It should manage patches for every game you have installed, know what the recommended drivers are, and even update all of them for you. It should have a unified messaging/communication system. It should have all of the copy-protection mechanisms built into it.Basically it should be kind of like what Xbox Live is for the Xbox plus additional hardware management functions. It should make the PC less of a moving target platform-wise.
- Developers should put more time into optimizing the performance of their games. It is ridiculous how developers constantly put the onus on the player to upgrade (to hardware that doesn’t even exist yet, yes I’m looking at you Crytek).Think of how much more raw power you need in a gaming PC versus an Xbox 360 to get comparable performance. On consoles the developers are forced to do more with less. They can do better on PCs than they have been doing.
- There needs to be more games to fill the gap between 3D games like Crysis/CoD4/UT3 and Freecell or flash games. Current Intel 3D hardware could probably keep pace this segment of games. The XNA Game Creators Club may be able to do the trick. After playing the demo of The Dishwasher: Dead Samuri, I’d bet a lot of “casual” gamers would be enticed to buy it for $10-$15; I’d probably pay $30 or more even. It is that fun/cool/fresh.
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Get OEMs to position PC gaming machines in a much less hardcore way. Right now you have XPS, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, etc, all trying to position themselves as the fastest things out there, like a Ferrari maybe. How many Ferrari’s do you see around town? Yeah, not many.
If people could get a $500 computer that couldn’t play games, or you could get it slightly upgraded in a simple easy-to-understand gaming package for $150-$200 more, I think you’d see more people upgrade. Every “gaming” PC package should include an Xbox/Games for Windows controller as well. Outside of first-person-shooters, most people like a dedicated gaming controller more; especially in the less hardcore segments.
6 Comments 
April 24th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Some good thoughts! First off, I agree that forcing everyone to have better video cards (ala OEMs ditching Intel Onboard)is not the solution.
I already love PC gaming but would love it even more if your suggestions were adopted. One minor quibble I’d have is that of including a controller in PC gaming packages. I’m not sure that “most people” prefer this (and even then, it shouldn’t be included if most means 51% :-)).
And one thing you didn’t mention which is a MUST: unified/better online gaming support. If I want to join a public game, it needs to be easy. If I want to host a private game, same thing. Social gaming is all the rage these days, and requiring consumers to open ports on routers is the quickest way to frustrate non-hardcore gamers (and even hardcore gamers!).
April 24th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I guess I should have clarified what I meant by “most”. If PC gaming is going to expand beyond it’s core of FPS, RTS, and MMO (really only WoW is doing very well though) it is better with a controller. A Wii or Xbox 360 controller is infinitely more approachable than memorizing specific keyboard layouts for every game.
The controller is all about expanding the PC gaming market, not satisfying the current one, IMO. It would be a clear differentiating point between the “standard” PC and the gaming one, and it would probably only cost OEMs $25.
I caught this post on Slashdot after I wrote this post, but it supports my theory. You can lounge with controllers and you can easily use more than one on a single computer.
April 24th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
The point about developers constantly requiring you to upgrade your computer is a little bogus. Developers DO spend a LOT of time and effort optimizing their code to run as fast as possible, and on as many different systems as possible. Crysis was designed to take graphics to a new level, is at the most extreme example you could have used, and it STILL runs great on medium settings on a year old $1000 computer. Yes, if you want to run all the new games with maxed out settings, you will have to upgrade your computer. However you can get a solid 2 years of High settings out of a standard, out of the box, one thousand dollar computer before even considering adding another stick of ram, or a new graphics card. granted, you’re not going to get the 5 or 6 year life cycle you get from a console, but then again, how many games are going to be worth playing in those last 2 years?
There are TONS of great games that lie in between Tripple-A titles like COD4 and Halo and timewasters like snood and Solitare. Indie games, a lot like indie films, make up for their lack in budget with innovation and spirit. Just look at the IGF finalists, or any of the indie game blogs. The games exist, its just that not enough people know about them, or where they can get them.
These seems like good ways to improve PC Gaming as a whole, but nothing here is so broken that it needs to be “fixed.” But hey, what’s an article without a snappy title, right?
April 25th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Andy-
Some interesting thoughts, thanks for stopping by. One thing I’d point out is that console gamers don’t have to worry about tweaking settings. But if a PC gamer has to go with “medium” or “low” settings on game just to get a decent frame rate… Well, it’s not a good starting point for an enjoyable experience. By seeing that sort of information, you feel like part of your gaming experience is being taken away (maybe it’s just me).
It would be nice if PC games could like as nice as console games on $1000 computers, but I’m not sure we’re there yet.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Andy, obviously this post is just my opinion. That said though, I would consider myself as a person who would use my PC to game if the scenario was right, and right now it isn’t. I bought my current video card for just over $200 at about the same time as my Xbox 360. Guess which one the games look better on? Yup, the Xbox 360; and it’s not like it is even close either.
Replacing a video card is not an acceptable “solution” for a large majority of people who buy consoles too. Have you seen Halo 2? The Xbox only has a GeForce 3 GPU. Halo 2 came out in November 2004, which is about 6 months after the GeForce 6 series came out. PC developers don’t ever try to make a game perform on that low of hardware (GF3) because they always assume that everyone is running the latest chips, or will be soon.
Sure you can turn the settings down, but it looks terrible; worse than a console version. Most games have at least a dozen graphics options that less hardcore users won’t even understand. What are specular effects? Or volumetric shadows?
Many games do have a button for automatic graphics settings, but in my experience the results they end up with are far from optimal.
It would probably help if the game frame buffer didn’t have to be the same as the output resolution too. I played CoD4 on my Xbox 360 on a 1080p projector recently and it looked amazing, even though the frame buffer on the game is 720p (about 55% less pixels). If I try to play CoD4 on my PC (my LCD native resolution is 1280×1024) at 1024×768 (only 40% less pixels) for a better frame rate it looks terrible. The scaling is terrible. These were $400 monitors when I bought my video card too.
I guess my point (exactly details aside) is, unless PC developers can stretch out the life-cycle of hardware on a PC it is going to be relegated to a niche. One of the reasons WoW is so popular is that you don’t need the latest and greatest hardware for it. I even see people using ho-hum Dell laptops (with Intel GPUS) to play the game. What other “real” game can do that?
April 25th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
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