In the future, will games on PCs be proprietary like consoles?

[Schadenfroh]

I know that their are no company specific optomizations taking place right now on that scale, but if the trend continues, could we possibly see ourselves back in the Glide days, with proprietary games on specific hardware vendors GPUs? I see that PCI express will offer more than one graphics adapter, thus raises to possiblity that game makers could think that the consumer could always add both cards into their system in order to run their proprietary game. The video card makers could pay sums of money to have only on ATI and only on nvidia titles. Is it possible we might come to something like this?

 

[vshah]

i doubt it. i'd say the industry is moving towards open standards and cross-platform programmability, not proprietary APIs.



-Vivan

 

[jagec]

Game developers wouldn't shut out potential sources of revenue if they could help it.

 

[MichaelZ]

"Only on ATI" and "Only on nVidia" games

that's ridiculous. no game maker would do that. with the exception of valve maybe

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: i82lazyboy

"Only on ATI" and "Only on nVidia" games

that's ridiculous. no game maker would do that. with the exception of valve maybe

I would think so too, but look how many are "only on xbox/ps2/gc/etc.."

 

[Maskirovka]

well with microsoft possibly making the xbox2 into a "pc xbox thingy"...who knows.

when i first read that i thought there was going to be some sort of add-on card you could buy that would become your xbox decoder of sorts. it would have a drive bay thing for controller plugs, etc. then you could play xbox2 games on your pc....without installing, etc...it would just have to set part of your HD aside...or create a partition or something.

but no, they decided to add pc functionality to an xbox...which makes a bit less sense, imo...i don't think console gamers are looking to write term-papers on their xboxes...especially when they'd be doing it in their living room or something...wtf.

but if you could get an xbox card or playstation card for your computer...that would be as close to proprietary games that it will get. of course i bet it would be a pain in the ass to get xbox titles to work with all the different GPUs and stuff...but...it's microsoft...they could do it if it was worth it.

 

[A5]

The "XBox card" would pretty much have to perform most of the functions of an Xbox except some of the more basic stuff that a reasonably fast CPU could handle, since MS would never know what kind of GPU the end user would have...and despite the picture we get here, for most people, a 5200 FX would be an upgrade

 

[rbV5]

There are already proprietary games like some versions of bridge builder, but they would be more of a technology showcase nature. Mainstream games will use common API's OpenGL for Open platforms and XNA for Microsoft platforms (including XBox). It makes little economic sense to target specific hardware in a PC platform.

 

[Robor]

IMO, I don't think so. Ask yourself, why would they do that? The people who make games do it to make $$$ just like any other business venture and the best way to do that is by making their product available to as many people as possible. Unless there's a significant (enough to justify it) amount of $$$ paid by one of the video card manf's there's no reason to do it.

This thread brings me back to 3DFX and Glide and look what happened to them as a result.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: i82lazyboy

"Only on ATI" and "Only on nVidia" games

that's ridiculous. no game maker would do that. with the exception of valve maybe

I would think so too, but look how many are "only on xbox/ps2/gc/etc.."

thats what im saying, resident evil was "only on gamecube"

 

[MajorCatastrophe]

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: i82lazyboy

"Only on ATI" and "Only on nVidia" games

that's ridiculous. no game maker would do that. with the exception of valve maybe

I would think so too, but look how many are "only on xbox/ps2/gc/etc.."

XBox is a platform. PS2 is a platform. GC is a platform etc...

PCs are also a platform. nVidia is not a platform, they make some of the bits but that's it.

Hardware specific games would totally defeat the object of having APIs like DirectX and OpenGL/AL. No software house would be daft enough to endorse such an idea. I can't imagine Microsoft having anything to do with this either.

It's a shame people like John Carmack encourage hardware manufacturers by writing specific code paths for specific hardware e.g. Doom 3's nv30 optimisations. If the hardware did a good job of accelerating the API functionality in the first place (e.g. r300 and directx 9), there'd be no need.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: MajorCatastrophe

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: i82lazyboy

"Only on ATI" and "Only on nVidia" games

that's ridiculous. no game maker would do that. with the exception of valve maybe

I would think so too, but look how many are "only on xbox/ps2/gc/etc.."

XBox is a platform. PS2 is a platform. GC is a platform etc...

PCs are also a platform. nVidia is not a platform, they make some of the bits but that's it.

Hardware specific games would totally defeat the object of having APIs like DirectX and OpenGL/AL. No software house would be daft enough to endorse such an idea. I can't imagine Microsoft having anything to do with this either.

It's a shame people like John Carmack encourage hardware manufacturers by writing specific code paths for specific hardware e.g. Doom 3's nv30 optimisations. If the hardware did a good job of accelerating the API functionality in the first place (e.g. r300 and directx 9), there'd be no need.

carmack has a reason to be pissed at ati, they leaked the Doom3 demo. Gabe on the other hand is pure fanboy.

Its also a shame that people like Gabe encourage people by optomizing the Half Life 2 game for ATI.

 

[Childs]

I could see it happening, especially if Nvidia or ATI bought a game company. They produce demos internally now, so whats to say they shouldn't actually buy a game company and bundle their game with their respective cards? If they only way you could play something like Doom3 was with a 6800 series card, I'm sure sales of the 6800 would increase dramatically. Overall sales of the game would be lower or nonexistent, but you'd sell more hardware, which could give you more profit, depending on how much profit they make on their cards. Lots of people ran out and bought 9800/9600s based on the HL 2 voucher. And Call od Duty helped with the 5900XT sales.

 

[ForceCalibur]

How many console games ARE exclusive anyway? You cna probably tick them off on two hands, and half of them are worthless.

That being said, if its not even exclusive on consoles, not gonna happen on PCs. If gamemakers wanted this "proprietary thing" they would make EVERY SINGLE GAME come with INSANE REQUIREMENTS. What happens when you pick up a box and read the system requirements? More often than not they are dirt low, and will run like crap even on the "recommended system settings".

If doom3 was only playable on an Nvidia card, people with ATI cards just won't play it. As far as I'm concerned DOom 3 is pathetic anyway, rehashed storyline and just pretty graphics. The best games in the world don't rely on graphics, period. Lots of people bought the 9800 series because they ARE BETTER THAN THE 5900 Series. The people who bought the 9600 series either don't care about price/performance or just like wasting money. And who the hell buys a 5900 card to play Call of Duty when a Geforce 4 MX420 can play it 60+ Frames at 1024x768?

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: ForceCalibur
How many console games ARE exclusive anyway? You cna probably tick them off on two hands, and half of them are worthless.

That being said, if its not even exclusive on consoles, not gonna happen on PCs. If gamemakers wanted this "proprietary thing" they would make EVERY SINGLE GAME come with INSANE REQUIREMENTS. What happens when you pick up a box and read the system requirements? More often than not they are dirt low, and will run like crap even on the "recommended system settings".

If doom3 was only playable on an Nvidia card, people with ATI cards just won't play it. As far as I'm concerned DOom 3 is pathetic anyway, rehashed storyline and just pretty graphics. The best games in the world don't rely on graphics, period. Lots of people bought the 9800 series because they ARE BETTER THAN THE 5900 Series. The people who bought the 9600 series either don't care about price/performance or just like wasting money. And who the hell buys a 5900 card to play Call of Duty when a Geforce 4 MX420 can play it 60+ Frames at 1024x768?

Doom isnt made for the storyline, its made to scare the hell out of you.

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: ForceCalibur
How many console games ARE exclusive anyway? You cna probably tick them off on two hands, and half of them are worthless.

That being said, if its not even exclusive on consoles, not gonna happen on PCs. If gamemakers wanted this "proprietary thing" they would make EVERY SINGLE GAME come with INSANE REQUIREMENTS. What happens when you pick up a box and read the system requirements? More often than not they are dirt low, and will run like crap even on the "recommended system settings".

If doom3 was only playable on an Nvidia card, people with ATI cards just won't play it. As far as I'm concerned DOom 3 is pathetic anyway, rehashed storyline and just pretty graphics. The best games in the world don't rely on graphics, period. Lots of people bought the 9800 series because they ARE BETTER THAN THE 5900 Series. The people who bought the 9600 series either don't care about price/performance or just like wasting money. And who the hell buys a 5900 card to play Call of Duty when a Geforce 4 MX420 can play it 60+ Frames at 1024x768?

You don't think the HL2 bundle or COD bundle made a difference in people's mind as whether or not to buy now as opposed to buy later? ATI had their Shader Day event, and Valve proclaimed the perfomance would only be good on ATI hardware. Then, guess what? HL2 bundled with ATI's cards. Lots of people justified their 9800 purchase because supposed it would give them the best HL2 performance, and they would also get HL2 free. COD for 5900XT also had an impact, not because it gave the best performace, but it introduced the 5900XT to gamers. Don't want to buy 5950, but want want something better and a 5600/5700, well here's the 5900XT, with this years best seller for free!

You may have something personal against Doom3, but you don't think people upgrade their machines for titles like Doom3 or HL2? People upgrade hardware for the best performance for what they want to do, and if the title you're interested in only runs on a particular vendors hardware, then more than likely you'll buy the hardware.

Now, an independant software company would only be shooting themselves in the foot by supporting only one vendor, but if ATI or Nvidia developed titles to showcase their hardware they'd have no reason to support their competition. They already do it with demos to show off a particular feature, so a natural extension of that philosophy would be a full featured game.

 

[ForceCalibur]

Originally posted by: Childs

Originally posted by: ForceCalibur
How many console games ARE exclusive anyway? You cna probably tick them off on two hands, and half of them are worthless.

That being said, if its not even exclusive on consoles, not gonna happen on PCs. If gamemakers wanted this "proprietary thing" they would make EVERY SINGLE GAME come with INSANE REQUIREMENTS. What happens when you pick up a box and read the system requirements? More often than not they are dirt low, and will run like crap even on the "recommended system settings".

If doom3 was only playable on an Nvidia card, people with ATI cards just won't play it. As far as I'm concerned DOom 3 is pathetic anyway, rehashed storyline and just pretty graphics. The best games in the world don't rely on graphics, period. Lots of people bought the 9800 series because they ARE BETTER THAN THE 5900 Series. The people who bought the 9600 series either don't care about price/performance or just like wasting money. And who the hell buys a 5900 card to play Call of Duty when a Geforce 4 MX420 can play it 60+ Frames at 1024x768?

You don't think the HL2 bundle or COD bundle made a difference in people's mind as whether or not to buy now as opposed to buy later? ATI had their Shader Day event, and Valve proclaimed the perfomance would only be good on ATI hardware. Then, guess what? HL2 bundled with ATI's cards. Lots of people justified their 9800 purchase because supposed it would give them the best HL2 performance, and they would also get HL2 free. COD for 5900XT also had an impact, not because it gave the best performace, but it introduced the 5900XT to gamers. Don't want to buy 5950, but want want something better and a 5600/5700, well here's the 5900XT, with this years best seller for free!

You may have something personal against Doom3, but you don't think people upgrade their machines for titles like Doom3 or HL2? People upgrade hardware for the best performance for what they want to do, and if the title you're interested in only runs on a particular vendors hardware, then more than likely you'll buy the hardware.

Now, an independant software company would only be shooting themselves in the foot by supporting only one vendor, but if ATI or Nvidia developed titles to showcase their hardware they'd have no reason to support their competition. They already do it with demos to show off a particular feature, so a natural extension of that philosophy would be a full featured game.

Sure, HL2 coupon or Call of Duty MAY have helped convince a few people to buy, but for people who wanted to play those games anyway, they would have already bought it.

You can't say if ATI or Nvidia makes "demos" that only work on their card, they will make games that will only run on their card, because ATI and Nvidia are not software companies and the games they churn out will be pretty but BAD games. THere is obviously no way they can convince game makers to make for thei r hardware, so the whole point is moot

 

[reever]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: MajorCatastrophe

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: i82lazyboy

"Only on ATI" and "Only on nVidia" games

that's ridiculous. no game maker would do that. with the exception of valve maybe

I would think so too, but look how many are "only on xbox/ps2/gc/etc.."

XBox is a platform. PS2 is a platform. GC is a platform etc...

PCs are also a platform. nVidia is not a platform, they make some of the bits but that's it.

Hardware specific games would totally defeat the object of having APIs like DirectX and OpenGL/AL. No software house would be daft enough to endorse such an idea. I can't imagine Microsoft having anything to do with this either.

It's a shame people like John Carmack encourage hardware manufacturers by writing specific code paths for specific hardware e.g. Doom 3's nv30 optimisations. If the hardware did a good job of accelerating the API functionality in the first place (e.g. r300 and directx 9), there'd be no need.

carmack has a reason to be pissed at ati, they leaked the Doom3 demo. Gabe on the other hand is pure fanboy.

Its also a shame that people like Gabe encourage people by optomizing the Half Life 2 game for ATI.

I never knew that to optimize a game for another company and to make it look bad all you had to do was just to add any amount of PS2.0 code, which just happened to run slow on one type of card no matter what, boy gabe was really in control of that one with Nvidia holding him back and all.

And I thought people were through with those leaked doom3 comments, how long ago was that? What was the outcome, was it even definitive? Sure sounds like it the way you put it :roll:

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: reever

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: MajorCatastrophe

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: i82lazyboy

"Only on ATI" and "Only on nVidia" games

that's ridiculous. no game maker would do that. with the exception of valve maybe

I would think so too, but look how many are "only on xbox/ps2/gc/etc.."

XBox is a platform. PS2 is a platform. GC is a platform etc...

PCs are also a platform. nVidia is not a platform, they make some of the bits but that's it.

Hardware specific games would totally defeat the object of having APIs like DirectX and OpenGL/AL. No software house would be daft enough to endorse such an idea. I can't imagine Microsoft having anything to do with this either.

It's a shame people like John Carmack encourage hardware manufacturers by writing specific code paths for specific hardware e.g. Doom 3's nv30 optimisations. If the hardware did a good job of accelerating the API functionality in the first place (e.g. r300 and directx 9), there'd be no need.

carmack has a reason to be pissed at ati, they leaked the Doom3 demo. Gabe on the other hand is pure fanboy.

Its also a shame that people like Gabe encourage people by optomizing the Half Life 2 game for ATI.

I never knew that to optimize a game for another company and to make it look bad all you had to do was just to add any amount of PS2.0 code, which just happened to run slow on one type of card no matter what, boy gabe was really in control of that one with Nvidia holding him back and all.

And I thought people were through with those leaked doom3 comments, how long ago was that? What was the outcome, was it even definitive? Sure sounds like it the way you put it :roll:

are you saying ati did not leek doom3?

and how is what carmack does any worse than what gabe does?

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: ForceCalibur

Originally posted by: Childs

Originally posted by: ForceCalibur
How many console games ARE exclusive anyway? You cna probably tick them off on two hands, and half of them are worthless.

That being said, if its not even exclusive on consoles, not gonna happen on PCs. If gamemakers wanted this "proprietary thing" they would make EVERY SINGLE GAME come with INSANE REQUIREMENTS. What happens when you pick up a box and read the system requirements? More often than not they are dirt low, and will run like crap even on the "recommended system settings".

If doom3 was only playable on an Nvidia card, people with ATI cards just won't play it. As far as I'm concerned DOom 3 is pathetic anyway, rehashed storyline and just pretty graphics. The best games in the world don't rely on graphics, period. Lots of people bought the 9800 series because they ARE BETTER THAN THE 5900 Series. The people who bought the 9600 series either don't care about price/performance or just like wasting money. And who the hell buys a 5900 card to play Call of Duty when a Geforce 4 MX420 can play it 60+ Frames at 1024x768?

You don't think the HL2 bundle or COD bundle made a difference in people's mind as whether or not to buy now as opposed to buy later? ATI had their Shader Day event, and Valve proclaimed the perfomance would only be good on ATI hardware. Then, guess what? HL2 bundled with ATI's cards. Lots of people justified their 9800 purchase because supposed it would give them the best HL2 performance, and they would also get HL2 free. COD for 5900XT also had an impact, not because it gave the best performace, but it introduced the 5900XT to gamers. Don't want to buy 5950, but want want something better and a 5600/5700, well here's the 5900XT, with this years best seller for free!

You may have something personal against Doom3, but you don't think people upgrade their machines for titles like Doom3 or HL2? People upgrade hardware for the best performance for what they want to do, and if the title you're interested in only runs on a particular vendors hardware, then more than likely you'll buy the hardware.

Now, an independant software company would only be shooting themselves in the foot by supporting only one vendor, but if ATI or Nvidia developed titles to showcase their hardware they'd have no reason to support their competition. They already do it with demos to show off a particular feature, so a natural extension of that philosophy would be a full featured game.

Sure, HL2 coupon or Call of Duty MAY have helped convince a few people to buy, but for people who wanted to play those games anyway, they would have already bought it.

IMO the Shader Day event and fake ship date got people to buy a lot sooner then they would have. heck, a whole new generation of video cards will be available before HL2 shipped...there wasn't a whole lot of incentive to buy the high end and most expensive video card last year. I probably would have bought one too if I had the money, cause HL2 was one of those titles that I would upgrade for. And its a short list too, but it does give you a reason to upgrade. Now, if HL2 was ATI only (which it seems like), people who want to play HL2 will make sure they can play it. Just like people bought Xboxs for Halo, or GT3 for PS2 or Zelda for Gamecube.

You can't say if ATI or Nvidia makes "demos" that only work on their card, they will make games that will only run on their card, because ATI and Nvidia are not software companies and the games they churn out will be pretty but BAD games. THere is obviously no way they can convince game makers to make for thei r hardware, so the whole point is moot

Thats why I said I could this happening if ATI or Nvidia bought a game company in my first post. Also why I said an independant game company wouldn't do such a thing in my second post. And the quality of games produced in such a situation would obviously be subjective...heck, you bashed Doom 3 and it hasn't even shipped yet! In order for it to work, the game produced by either company would need to compelling, so they would probably need to buy a game company with franchise or something with a lot of hype, ala Microsoft and their purchase of Bungie for Halo.