magerette
Hedgewitch
- Joined
- October 18, 2006
- Messages
- 7,834
Rob Enderle at tech site DigitalTrends.com takes a look at recent sales drops and aging issues among consoles and predicts that the PC may be making a comeback as a gaming platform:
The article goes on to look at the problem facing aging consoles:With rumors that a new Xbox is in the works, likely slated for next year, and sales dropping like a rock for every game system (ironically the Xbox appears to be holding on the best at the moment), I wonder if we are about to see a PC game resurgence. Windows 7 and DirectX 11 are coming, along with an expectation that Snow Leopard will actually embrace games for once. So are we months off from a smack down by PCs on game consoles, once again?
Next up is a look at expected advances in Windows 7 and Direct X11:When game consoles first come out, they typically have performance in line with some of the highest performance PCs. By the end of year one, they are in line with medium performance PCs, and by the end of year, two PC games are starting to look better in general. From here, it only gets competitively worse...
Conclusion:...Windows 7 is the maintenance release of Windows Vista, suggesting a much better experience with most things, including gaming. DirectX 11 represents a major jump, allowing for the graphics processor to do an increasing amount of work like game physics, artificial intelligence, and utilities (like transcoding).
The end result: You'll get a much better gaming experience, much more than the normal improvement you typically just get with a new card. For instance, with multi-threading under DirectX10, one thread would be prioritized and the rest would get whatever performance was left. With DirectX11, performance is balanced between the threads for less bottlenecking. There is also a new instruction set, better HD compression and decompression to preserve bandwidth, and a more aggressive use of tessellation, which allows you to seamlessly zoom...DX11 games promise to be richer, more engaging, and more realistic than their DX10 predecessors, and against their console equivalents, much more current.
More information....I wonder if consoles will survive the onset of their twilight years, when their performance drops off and PCs start kicking their butts all over the map. Granted, some of the consoles can do other things, like play music and movies, but I doubt they can survive on these secondary activities. I do think there is a reasonable chance we are on the forefront of the decline cycle for console games, and that PC gaming, and services like OnLive are on the rise.
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2006
- Messages
- 7,834