Second Take: The PC Gaming Slump - Page 4

Yeah, I read that crysis in ultra mode even runs only around 30fps at 1920x1200 on a tripple sli 8800 ultra setup with a high end quad core. I run it in xp on my overclocked pentium D 805 @ 3.5ghz, and only a single 8800gtx and I run at 1600x1200 all settings high and it runs smooth. So, yeah, u don't need to spend 6 grand on a pc too play the best games. Last year I spent around 2000 to build my rig. But, since prices fell like crazy, u can build mine for about 1000 now. And, for the same price, u can't even buy a mild gaming machine in stores. So, basically, u can build a great gaming rig on the cheap, but u can't buy one. Another reason for pc sales.

Oh, i agree about the consoles for just relaxing on the couch. But, I can do that now with my pc since i bought the wireless 360 controller. Works great.

Anyone play FRONTLINES FUEL OF WAR demo yet? It's bad ass!! I just got the beta.

1. well, it really depends on how many games u buy, and how much u upgrade, and when. Cuz, U can upgrade ur computer faster then the consoles, but, if u wait for the proper time to buy, u can do it cheaper. Plus, games almost always cost more on the consoles. So, it also depends on how many games u are planning on buying. U buy a lot of games, then u are probably gone reach a point where ur games alone cost more for the same games and the cost of the hardware to run them for a pc. EX. I bought transformers for the pc and it was only 20 bucks. But on the console, it was $49. U buy ten games like that, it's 300 bucks u spent that could have went to a decent graphics card. Buy 45 games, and u could have urself an 8800gtx on the pc. The more games u buy, the more u save on the pc. So, in the end. If u r a serious gamer, the pc is the way too go. (yes- most games are cheaper on the PC)

2. This is the year 2008. If u don't know how ur way around a pc a lil bit by now, Im sure u know someone who does. If u don't, U should.

No I was calling EB an abomination.

Hey going back to the demise of unspecialized cross platform developers - The Witcher, an amazing PC only RPG has been selling amazingly well around the world.

Basically, the only argument supporting the death of pc gaming, is that some **** cross platform games didn't sell well on PC - UT3 and CoD4.

So while it sure managed to get an emotional response out of people, theres no way PC gaming is hurting.

the main reason for the ps gaming problems is because when nvidia releases a new videocard, the game makers instantly assume we all have that card

they need to know graphics is not everything. if i want good graphics and crappy gameplay, i would go outside

and games are also made less efficient

if you run crysis on the lowest, and run far cry on the highest, far cry will look better and will also perform twice as fast

anyway game makers just need to focus on gameplay first before going to graphics

the 360 has been out for a while and the games graphics are basically unchanged over time but it still does good because theres good gameplay

but when game makers move to pc they instantly assume that since many gaming pcs sold by this company has so much more processing power compared to a xbox 360, they want to make the game so high demanding that only 10% of their target consumers can run the game

and they need to learn that not all of us are willing to spend $800 a year on videocards in order to run their games that are mostly visuals and crap gameplay

From EA/Infinity Ward's perspective, it's only one disc. From my perspective, I may have to swap out anywhere between 4-5 discs over the course of a single week, possibly 2-3 times each. Yes, over time that is a HUGE hassle compared to the exceptional ease of downloading a pirated version of each of those games that allows me to swap from one game to another without worrying about changing media. In fact, its one of the few reasons I still prefer PC over console.

And of course I may have my CDs ripped to mp3 somewhere on some external drive, or I may have forgotten to archive a drive before wiping it and lose them, or maybe the CD was right there on my desk where I can grab it and pop it in the tray without having to tab out of my game.

The point is, the PC experience is supposed to be a fluid organic experience, and when publishers try to tell you how to use THEIR software with YOUR hardware, and you're in the room and they aren't... guess who's gonna win that argument?

Now realize how easy it is to take that next step and just pirate without purchasing if its generally accepted to be "a bad game" instead a high-quality production like COD4 and the end-user could care less about supporting the development studio. The pirates infrastructure is so stream-lined, and has so much red-tape cut out of it, that its the obvious choice if you just want to play the game and don't want to worry about calling tech support to figure out why their encryption won't let you play their game in your disc tray.

But of course, that goes into the argument about the absurdity of copyright in the 21st century, and the fact that publishers losing the distribution battle to hackers because they started caring more about controls and reports and accounting and the hackers just cared about... distribution. We'll save that for another argument.

Official NPD's are in for the PC for year 2007, it's a slight dip in US Brick and Mortal retail, but still doesn't include Digital Distro or MMO fees, and is US only. I would love to get Europe and Asia's numbers as well. I don't see this as a PC Gaming slump, just a few underperformers like Crysis and UT3. CoD4 seems to have sold almost 400,000 copies plus whatever was sold on STEAM + Europe.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php? [...] 6&Itemid=2

WOOT!! WOOT!! NICE FIND!! 1 PC GAMERS vs. 0 CONSOLE GAMERS = WE WIN!! CONSOLES SUCK!!

Great artlcle/video and thread. Growing up I was a console gamer. For the past 10 years I have been a pc gamer. I have no plans yet on going back to the console as I love the upgradeability of pc's. Vista is not the problem.. You can play both dx9 and dx10 games on Vista. Hardly any games are Vista exclusive yet

In a nutshell, my thoughts to the pc gaming slump are below:

1) Addictive multiplayer online games.
a) MMO's (subscription based bullcrap). WOW is the main culprit as of today. Tomorrow it will be another MMO. While I would love to play a game like WOW, I refuse...REFUSE....REFUSE to pay a subscription service for a game. All of the 8+ million WOW players probably rarely, if ever, buy another pc game for several years.
b) Clans. I am in a BF2 clan so I am guilty of this. Since I like to play online with friends and we all play the same game, we stick with that game as long as possible. You risk fragmenting the clan once the members start playing different games so we tend to stick with a game as long as possible.n That being said, I still buy other games since I enjoy a good single player experience as well.
c) Persistent Stats. For example games like BF2 that track your stats so you can earn medals and gain ranks. In order to get the goods, you got to spend a lot of time playing the same game. I am guilty here. When is BF3 coming out (hehe)?

3) Piracy. No need to go into detail here. It is stealing. For the people that think otherwise and rationalize it, get a clue. I hope you get fined or thrown in jail if you are one of these people. You are ruining it for the rest us.

4) Death of AGP. Probably 50+ percent of pc owners still have agp motherboards but now must buy an entirely new pc for a decent graphics card to play the latest games. Once more and more of them buy new pc's, pc game sales will increase.

5) Cost. Much more attractive to pay three or four times less for hardware to play the same game. Usually consoles fall way behind the performance curvey fairly quickly but this generation of consoles are more powerful relative to pc's than ever before.

So, how does the industry and/or gamers fight this?

1) STOP PAYING FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS! ACK! YOU ARE FEEDING THE FIRE! IF GAMERS AS A WHOLE WOULD STOP, THEN A GAME LIKE WOW WOULD NOT BE SUBSCRIPTION BASED BUT WOULD BE EXPANSION BASED AND END UP BEING A LOT CHEAPER.....HELLO PEOPLE!

2) AS MUCH AS I HATE THIS, FORCE PC GAMES TO BE VERIFIED ONLINE BEFORE EVEN A SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCE CAN BE PLAYED. PEOPLE WONT STOP PIRATING OR CHEATING SO TO SURVIVE, WE NEED BLOATWARE. ISP GOES DOWN, SORRY CAN'T GAME. THAT IS LIFE AND THE PRICE WE MUST PAY. BRING ON STEAM FOR OUR OWN GOOD.

3) STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT COMPANIES PUSHING THE GRAPHICS ENVELOPE AND GO OUT THERE AND USE GOOD JUDGEMENT TO BUY NEW HARDWARE FOR YOUR PC. CRYTEK SHOULD BE PRAISED NOT CURSED FOR PUSHING THE ENVELOPE. LETS ALL GO BACK TO PAC MAN EH? THEN YOU COULD PLAY ON YOUR OLD COMMODORE 64. THIS IS THE MAIN WAY PC'S ELEVATE FROM CONSOLES....PUSH THE ENVELOPE SO CONSOLES GRAPHICS PALE IN COMPARISSON. PUSH ON I SAY!

4) MAKE IT A PRIORITY TO BUY AT LEAST FOUR PC GAMES A YEAR NO MATTER HOW ADDICTED YOU ARE TO ANY ONE ONLINE GAME. EVERYONE NEEDS A BREAK. DONT LET STATS AND EXPERIENCE POINTS TOTALLY TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR GAMING LIFE.

In the end, I think the pc will continue to survive and grow. As to the long distance future, I can only guess. I just can't wait for the next breakthrough in technology to push the envelope. Chances are, you will see it available on the pc long before the console.

I don%u2019t like to knock people but after this fiasco Ben and Rob journalistic credibility is all but gone. The comments made in the video was not backed up by any credible analytical data all they had was a couple of press releases and a blog entry, I can%u2019t believe how unprofessional they were.

Excellent post, Good point, I completely forgot about that. I think that is why a lot of people are holding off on the new PC's. I just switched from agp to PCIe and I had to wait until tax time to afford it. Obviously just built a whole new system. I am sure many people are going through the same dilemma. Probably just waiting till they can afford it.

ROB WRIGHT

Seriously, I like most of ur video reviews. But, I think u need to take in all the factors. And instead of doing a video on blaming pc gamers for pirating, and not buying games, u should do a video on how the pc gets put in the shadows, and
how the consoles get all the publicity and get put in the lime light all the time. Maybe instead of focusing on the bad retail sales, do something to help get the manufacturers, devs, and retailers to actually push the PC, like they do the consoles. Read my post below.

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post, sorry for using such strong and forceful tone I just feel you have got this all wrong.

Firstly I think your under estimating the impact of digital distribution, channels such as Steam have been operating in the industry now for over 3 years and are now firmly established in the market place (i.e. there well known to gamers and users) as a credible means of delivering content straight to your computer. To see the impact its having on the industry as whole you only have read to your front page,

Stalker: Clear Sky To Be Released Exclusively On Steam
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/0 [...] _on_steam/

Perhaps they fill this a way of combating pricy but for a games developer to relay exclusively on digital downloads says a lot for impact of digital distribution. It will be interesting to see if any other developers follow suit. Personally I was expecting to see a larger drop in the retail market numbers from NPD this year, giving the rise of the popularity of digital distribution.

The one point you made in video that I did agree is the impact of MMORPG’s namely World of Warcraft which currently has over 10 million subscribers.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/conte [...] ?aid=32339

And as a whole the MMORPG’s has around a 15 million user subscriber base.



Source: http://www.mmogchart.com/

Now I’m glad you like maths because I’m a big fan of mathematics as well. 15 million MMORPG’s subscribers who pay on average $9 a month works out at about $135 million a month in revenue, over a course of 12 months that’s worth over $1.6 billion in subscription money alone. Also bear in mind the above data is 6 months out of date so the numbers are probably even higher. This doesn’t include offline revenue made on selling virtual properties and characters either, MMORPG’s have spawn there own economic industry but that’s beside the point. Now whilst I can’t stand MMORPG’s having 15 million potential customers tired up playing subscription based games makes it a lot harder to sell games like UT3 and Crysis.

$1.6 billion from subscriptions
$0.9 billion from retail
$2.5 billion total

On top of this you can add in revenue from other sources such as digital distribution, sponsorships and tournaments, I would say conservative number would be $200 million that comes to a combined total of $2.7 billion.

Now according to those NPD numbers the consoles combined grossed $6.6 billion which means the PC market is worth just under a third of that of the console market. I don’t see a slump, all I see is an evolving model of how games are brought and sold and what types of games people like to play. I see the PC as still the gaming platform of choice for many people with the consoles helping to bring gaming to the masses.

Alternatively I could just have my head in the sand.

No worries, JeanLuc. I appreciate your counter-argument.

True, the PC gaming model is evolving. I personally invested much more dollars via digital distribution in 2007 than the previous year, as I'm sure many PC gamers did. Steam is most certainly growing, and I'm sure that for games like BioShock and CoD4, not to mention the Orange Box, are much higher than what NPD is reporting.

But the thing that shocks me is this -- back on page 3 of this thread, RTA submitted a NY Times article that cited NPD data showing that PC games sales for January/February of '07 increased 48 percent from the same period in 2006 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/ [...] aming.html). This was largely due to WoW and Burning Crusade. So 2007 got off to a fantastic start, and by all accounts should have continued through the rest of the year with title like Quake Wars, Crysis, UT3 and more.

It didn't. In fact, sales fell woefully short of what they were projected to hit earlier in the year. No doubt, digital distribution sales took a big slice of the pie from the retail numbers. How big? That's hard to tell. But games like Crysis, UT3, Quake Wars weren't on Steam or other big download services, and the numbers were disappointing. So something happened between March and December of 2007 that kept PC game sales in the U.S. from breaking the $1 billion mark or even matching what the market earned in 2006.

I'm sure digital distribution affected the trend. But I'm also sure that piracy affected the trend as well. What had the bigger affect? That's a huge question, and I'd only be guessing. Perhaps the percentages of legal downloads and illgeal downloads are about the same, in which case they would offset one another. Perhaps not. But I'll bring up this point and then leave it to the forum to discuss. Currently, we have Steam, GameTap, GamersGate and a few other popular digital distribution sites. But do those legit sites have as big a presence as the boatloads of torrent sites out there? Hmmmmm....

Jesus, you're like a broken record. Again, you're not looking at this from an international standpoint. For a game like WoW, 5.5 million of it's subscribers are in Asia, 80-90% of them likely bought that expansion like in the US. PC gaming has always been small in the US. Look at Germany for example, if I remember correctly, wasn't Crysis the best selling game during the holiday season with the collector's edition at about 5? Call of Duty for is another example. It sold over 7 million worldwide according to Activision, only 3 of those being on the 360. Conservatively, it's safe to assume it sold 2 million on the PC and another 2 on the PS3. These gaps that you are talking about as pretty small worldwide. Not to mention new great development teams are coming to fruitition in the wake of many formerly PC centric companies making more dumbed down console centric games (bioshock comes to mind). Look at companies like GSC Game World, who had a large success with Stalker (1.4 million wasn't exactly the 10 million copies that the cossacks series has done, but it's still a large success).

Free2Game, I'm sorry I sound like a broken record to you, but I'm not making safe assumptions here. I'm giving you numbers from NPD. You say that CoD4 only sold 3 million Xbox 360 copies out of its total sales of 7 million copies. Well, that's not exactly true -- it sold 3 million 360 copies in North America alone, while PC sales for the game only hit 383,000 (again, retail sales don't include downloads). I'm not sure what the 360 worldwide sales are, and apparently, neither are you.

Like I said, I'm glad games like The Witcher and Stalker are doing well. I don't want PC gaming to decline or dwindle. However, it's pretty hard to ignore the numbers here in the U.S., and that's a sizeable chunk of the gaming market.

Have not read most of the long winded posts, so no offense to developpers but 2007 was a disappointing year mostly for me, I bought about 8 games last year, only 2 that I found worth it, c&c3 and crysis, but i'm not even playing either right now.

UT3, Quake Wars are flops, ut3 being a rehashed UT2k4/Ut99 with better graphics, I just feel they took too much from the original games because they listened to those 20 hardcore ppl in their forums too much. Quake Wars just gets too repetitive, the maps are awesome, but there's just no oppenness like BF2 or Crysis' power struggle mode that I like more.

This year though I believe will have some great games, SC2, Fallout 3, those are some blockbusters that are gonna hit it big on the PC I believe. I made a post a few weeks ago showing a list of PC exclusive games (which I think was from gamespot..) and it was a huge list of games that looked pretty good, just no one's heard about em yet.. before SC2, i'm getting Sins of a Solar Empire, which is being developped by ex-cavedog guys (HW:Cataclysm) the game looks pretty good, in beta now, suppost to be out next week.

Greetings!

That is impossible, Free2game.
Worldwide sales of CoD4, till 29/12/2007, were 3.893.700 for X360 and 1.792.009 for PS3 (source: VG Chartz).
According to the link you provided, Activision claimed CoD4 sold 7 million copies in 2007, which leaves about ~1.300.000 units for the worldwide PC market.

Greetings!

According to VG Chartz, PS3 users were 8.842.596, at the end of 2007, almost 1 in 5 of those users managed to acquire legitimately CoD4 (1:4,93).
According to VG Chartz, X360 users were 16.148.759, at the end of 2007, 1 in 4,15 of those users managed to acquire legitimately CoD4.

Applying a generous ratio of 1:6, PC supporters dont even reach the 8 million mark. There are a lot of freeloaders though...

It seems the article didn't hotlink correctly
" When the industry stat-trackers at NPD Group released their December sales figures last week, Microsoft's Xbox 360 exclusive Halo 3 was proclaimed the software sales king for 2007 in the US with 4.82 million units sold. That tally edged out Wii-exclusive Wii Play's 4.12 million units and the Xbox 360 version of Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which sold 3.04 million copies.

However, while Halo 3 may have won the fight in the US, it did not win the war for 2007. Activision today claims Call of Duty 4 has ended its 2007 tour of duty with 7 million confirmed units sold worldwide, making it the top-selling title across all platforms for the year. Activision said it had pulled its data from NPD Group, Chart Track, and GfK Group.

Developed by Infinity Ward, Call of Duty 4 was released November 5 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and Nintendo DS.

[UPDATE] As impressive as Call of Duty 4's 7 million units sold figure is, it is still short of the 8.1 million units of Halo 3 Microsoft announced had been sold in 2007. While the discrepancy wasn't explained in Activision's announcement today, it is likely the publisher's figure pertains to units that have actually made it into gamers' hands, whereas Microsoft's tally amounts to total units sold to retailers. Activision had not responded to requests for clarification as of press time. "

If you really think this is what pc gaming needs, please die. If the ISP goes down and I have no internet access, my computer is pretty much good for two things, entertainment-wise. Watching movies and playing games. I will never buy a game that forces me to be online just to let me play single. Go ahead, "activate" all you want at the beginning, but don't assume that everyone always has internet access everywhere. It's not true. One great thing about pc games is that I can load one on my laptop, preferrably with a nocd crack, and take it with me when I'm facing a long train journey or the like. Without any reasonable internet connectivity.

Also, such "protection" will make zero difference to pirates. If you run it, it can be hacked. Only this time, the pirated game will not only be slightly more convenient in some areas (as it happens now with nocd cracks) -- it will be clearly the better product.

Honestly man, i still believe that a system similar to steam is going to be the only viable way to kill pirating in PC gaming. I was on the bandwagon with everyone else hating the **** out of steam when it first came out. But you know what, i like it now. I realize that it works and works well. Persistent internet connections are far FAR too commonplace now for people to complain about having to utilize the internet to verify a game copy before each gaming session. You cite an example of playing a game during a long train ride. Lets be honest, how often does this happen on the grand scale of gaming. Obviously i can't quote statistics, but this is likely a small % of gamers. PC Gaming is generally one of those things you either do while LANing or sitting in your room/office. All places that are going to have internet connections.

Moving along, many people have complained about subscription based games somehow being the ruin of PC gaming. I call BS. I say subscription based games are going to be what keeps PC gaming alive in the future. I mean seriously, who are you to say that the inherent "progress quest" 'ness of MMOs is bad. Enjoyment is enjoyment. Personally i would much rather pay $15 a month for a game that i can get 100+ hours of solid entertainment out of in a month than pay $50 for a game that i might get 20 hours of gameplay out of. Then have to buy yet another game at $50 a pop. I'll cite Crysis and COD4 as examples. Both are excellent games, both are games that i played in between Vanguard:SOH gametime, and i enjoyed them. But guess what i am back to playing. Also, you are all forgetting the single biggest part of what makes MMOs popular. They are very SOCIAL games. People play games like CS:S online all the time, and its fun, a lot of fun, but you generally don't have discussions with the people you play with. Maybe after a few weeks of consistently gaming on the same server you might notice that certain people tend to log in more often than others, and you may shoot a "hey, hows it going SlayerX19", etc etc. But it rarely gets further than that. I love the fact that i can get on a game like WOW or VG and have a good time crackin jokes, talkin about life, etc etc, while i'm slaying monsters in a dungeon.

On a complete side note, just because i like hating on console gamers. I am at work reading a Dec 2k7 copy of EGM a coworker left on my desk, and i go read a review on Orange Box. You'll love this text:

"The PC control's don't always translate well either, as the shooting feels strangely insubstantial, and changing weapons is awkward at best."

Awkward at best? I guess rolling a mouse scroll wheel is pretty damn difficult... Seriously, i gripe about console controllers because they are, by design, worse than a mouse and keyboard. Now i will agree that the learning curve for a controller is VASTLY easier than a mouse/keyboard, anyone who argues that a controller is better has lost their damn minds. Actually i will say on racing games, a controller is better, thats about it.

Greetings!

The article you linked to refers only to north-american figures.
Lets see how the numbers compare:

Game -> Plataform -> Press Release -> VG Chartz
Halo 3 -> X360 -> 4.820K -> 4.989K
Wii Play -> Wii -> 4.120K -> 4.309K
CoD4 -> X360 -> 3.040K -> 2.770K

Do they match perfectly? No.
Do you have other source of information regarding game sales?

this goes back a little bit, but i was just looking at the "crysis system requirements" bit on the toms video section. which isn't out of date yet. There is a high requirement for the game, but i was looking at it overall, and hearing people gripe on the tg forums, and realized... "woah, this is mostly a load of crap" after waiting for a bit, and looking at all the gripes... this is why:

1: remember quake 2? remember how many people could max it out at release? ALMOST NOBODY! at least without a SERIOUS upgrade.
2: so you bought the video card to trump all video cards... wait a week or a month or whatever short period of time it is... something will do better. THIS ISN'T THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY!!!! you can't buy a 1970's model and be proud of it for 40 years... okay? you buy a card... wait a bit, something beats the hell out of it in a month... buy a toyota supra, you're good for at least 10 years. :-p so SELL your video card for a slight loss, and buy the new one... stop whining... there ARE avid gamers that CAN'T afford to play games you know. it's how things work.

3: no game is perfect off the line... especially not one that is pushed right at the end due to what most corps look at as "wasted revenue time" (ea loves to do this) so give it a bit of time for some patches... i remember that diablo 2 sucked off the line.. it was good... but not great.... but after a few months and a few patches, it was the best (but then they patched the hell out of it and it sucked unless you were the sorceress <----gay)


4: and the biggest issue... Look at the graphics cards... really... how much business has crysis pushed? a hell of a lot if you ask me or any industry professional on the hardware side. I'm pushing 60 bucks past what i'd normally spend on a graphics card for a) crysis and b)nwn2 and c) future games that i want to play. so it's good for the economy overall.... I know those of us who are blowing 200+ bones on a video card don't have dates... so don't complain about buying a new one every 3-6 months. most people in "our age group" 10-30 mostly) would be blowing money on women... not games... so be happy to support your lifestyle because very few of us can afford both. :-p (awkward)

basically what it breaks down to is this...

I have a pc, i want to play an awesome looking game and a bunch of other games... i could either a) dump money into a console and then do it again in a year (consoles have a 4-6 year cycle) and have a totally USELESS piece of hardware (like my atari, nes, dreamcast, n64, etc etc.) i've done that from atari till xbox, i'm done... or i could pop for a new video card, and sell it in a year and buy a new one (consoles are MUCH harder to sell when they are 'obsolete' because they're mainstream. not to mention xfx, and a few others offer transferable warranties!) to prove my point. just look at the console release date markup on e-bay compared to video card markup on e-bay compared to "obsolete" date prices. video cards hold their value more and more, and console prices die more and more... :-p P.I.C., I couldn't sell an xbox or a ps2 for anything to save my life right now, but i could sell an nvidia 7 series card, or an ati 1x series card for a respectable price. if you really want to go 'back in time' nvidia 6 series cards are still selling for around 100 bucks retail, i dunno about e-baying something that old though.

point being at the end of the day, we are pc gamers because pc gamers are always the A list customer for hardware and cutting/bleeding edge tech... and you can be part of it for much less money and see improvements much sooner than any other gaming format.

k, i'm done... if i said something that is not completely true, don't pm me or reply griping about it for I will just post another OVERLY LONG and DRUNKEN message. haha. Have a nice day, and if you hate my post, go play an fps game and pretend you're shooting me... if you REALLY want to shoot me in a game. pm me with game title/version and i will post back to you if/when i get that game and then you can pwn me in said game because i havn't been in the top 10 on any leader boards since 2 weeks to 3 months after quake 3 released...

you didnt understand what i was saying

i am not saying make games look crappy i am saying make them more efficient. crysis doesnt even use full cpu usage and on the lowest setting it will look worst than far cry and it will also run slower than far cry

i am not saying use the same game engine, i am saying that many developers don't work hard on optimizing their code because they feel that new hardware will make up for the inefficiency

on many programming challenges you will see users develop a program that does 1 thing, some users will do it in 100 lines of code and other users will do it in 500 lines and some users will get more performance out of their program as compared to others


what many game developers are going for now is making their games to run on hardware that doesnt yet exist