Every article held for PC vs console always brings forth discussions of consoles vs high-end PC's.
Will PS4 be as powerful, will they be equal or will it even surpass?
Let's not kick the dead horse in this blog, I would rather introduce a more concerning topic: consoles vs low-end PC's.
Could these lesser spec'd PC's potentially hold back multiplatform games? Or will they fall in line with consoles to meet the new minimum requirements forcing PC gamers to upgrade their old rigs?
What do we know about the PS4?
Memory is easily translatable (8GB GDDR5), the CPU currently remains shrouded in mystery however thanks to NVIDIA the power of the GPU is shown for all to see.
http://www.gamechup.com/wp-...
PC has had a number of big games come out recently so looking at the low-end specs of each we should be able to somewhat compare with what the PS4 is offering.
First up Bioshock Infinite - http://irrationalgames.com/...
Memory: 2 GB
GPU: NVIDIA 8800 GT
Memory is obviously far better in the PS4 and if you take another look at NVIDIA's graph posted above you can see the 8800 GPU sits just above the PS3.
Next up Tomb Raider - http://au.gamespot.com/news...
Memory: 1GB
GPU: nVidia 8600
The specs of Tomb Raider are lower than that of Bioshock, so let's not take too much time glazing over this one.
Lastly the behemoth that is Crysis 3 - http://www.game-debate.com/...
Memory: 2GB
GPU: GeForce GT 520
Crysis 3 has higher requirements than that of the previous two games however the GPU is not listed on NVIDIA's graph but if we go to Wiki we can see the GPU flops only rate at 155.5 far under the 1200-1300 of the PS4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
So what does this mean for multiplatform games? Will they still continue to target 2GB ram machines with lousy GPU's or will PC owners be forced to upgrade their machines and keep up with the rest of us?
We were expecting problems with mod support, but there are a lot of other issues.
Not accidental, they want modders to stop modding their older games to force them to mod Shitfield.
Over 14 GBs and doesn't change much at all? What? Taking up that much drive space for a pathetic 'remastering' is shameful.
Par for Bethesda.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
A voice actor from The Coalition's third-person shooter series, Gears of War, has hinted at a new game announcement coming in June.
When it comes to the GPU, the game has in-game settings to enable/disable the eyecandy and physics.
It's up to the developer how far they allow the user to modify settings, but those low end users don't usually hold back the game.
You only need to look at TombRaider, it has TressFX, yet the minimum requirement is an 8600.
Another example is Stalker. I can run it on my old laptop that has an integrated GPU, or I can run it on my desktop and it'll still give the GPU a workout with its lighting effects.
The CPU is a bigger concern, since you can't always ease it's strain that easily.
As for ram, I believe most PCs that are used for gaming have over 4 Gb. No current games come close to eating up that much ram (afaik), and it's likely going to take some time before developers really start using all of the ram the PS4 has to offer.
... that's a good thing. Because it means the PS4 will have longer legs, and the currently lower-end PCs won't be holding back next-gen games.
The ps4 might be the low end that holds back games. Nothing has been announced when it comes to MS's offering. Won't that be funny if the ps4 isn't as powerful? I'd laugh until my skull came out.
Also, pc's haven't been used to to their max with most games because we are still living in the ps3/360 age. Next gen will finally enable most decent devs to make use of that power. Laziness on the devs part, the better machine was there but they didn't take advantage of it.
EDIT:Also, when you see how many pc's there are in the world, you need a perspective. It's easy to say 'most pc's are not gaming pc's!' - but a little of a lot, is still a lot -
http://www.worldometers.inf...
"Will they still continue to target 2GB ram machines with lousy GPU's or will PC owners be forced to upgrade their machines and keep up with the rest of us?"
In which world do developers target low end systems?
They just simply say, here are the bare minimal specs you need to run this game on low settings, if you don't have at least this... It won't run so don't bother buying it.
I hate all of the X holding back Y crap. And I hear it especially often with consoles holding back PC gaming.
Somewhere in the vicinity of 1/3 of Steam users play with crappy built in video chips or rather low end GPUs, according to their own data which they have compiled and made public.
The delusion that PC gaming is being "held back" by consoles, a healthy middle-ground of price and power, and is some massive burden, is absolutely ridiculous. Did this generation drag on too long? Yes. But the consoles still manage to achieve just fine for most of their lives.
I know this will burn the eyes of the elitist scrooge-ites reading this statement, but most PC gamers don't have very powerful hardware and accessibility is important to developers and publishers.
If consoles disappear tomorrow, most gamers will buy "low end" PC hardware and no meaningful difference will be created as to what power players' hardware is.
.........that said, PC holding back consoles because of RAM is also ridiculous. Games don't typically use up too much RAM. Ps4's high amount of RAM is for other features, not because games are suddenly in need of an entire flippin' 8GBs of RAM!
TL;DR? "Holding back" rhetoric is a steaming poo. People buy what they can afford (on average, usually lower end) and developers have to make games so that lots of people can play them. Don't like it? Fly to Bizzaro-world where every video game is crafted for you and you alone.
Isn't the PS3 GPU is close to an NVIDIA 8800? Min requirements will increase, and eventually the PC version on low settings will look better than the PS4 version.