Question Why doesn't everyone in the PC gaming industry get together and define a minimum spec gaming PC standard?

[igor_kavinski]

It just seems like a huge waste of time AND resources that people build all sorts of different PC configurations (mostly really high end ones for future proofing) just to play games. This makes developers lazy. They don't optimize for the slower configurations. They have come to expect that if someone wants acceptable performance in their game, they will just upgrade to a faster configuration. This is why console gaming is so attractive to a lot of gaming. No headache involved in that (well, there is some when they release PRO console models but I digress).

Why don't the game publishers or game developer association or even something like the PC Gamers' Alliance (no clue if that even exists) get together and define a minimum spec PC that all games must strive to run well on for AT LEAST the next 3 years? Is that too much to ask for?

 

[TheELF]

Why don't the game publishers or game developer association or even something like the PC Gamers' Alliance (no clue if that even exists) get together and define a minimum spec PC that all games must strive to run well on for AT LEAST the next 3 years? Is that too much to ask for?

They do that, it's called coding for the consoles and just recompiling it for windows, that's why stuff runs so terribly even on high end systems some times.
The consoles are the minimum spec that devs follow.
They don't care about the PC market too much because the real money is with the consoles where people are forced to buy directly from sony/ms.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Someone like Valve should do something about this madness. They are not married to consoles for their revenue. Games running better on low end hardware would equal more PC gamers and more revenue for them, not to mention the publishers/developers.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I wholeheartedly agree!

There can finally be a official tier for Intel's 2C/4T "gaming" Pentium CPUs to sit on. ("PC Gaming - White"?)

Do it like 80Plus does. (Though, that could confuse people or allow unscrupulous PC builders to stick, for example, an 80Plus Gold PSU in, and advertise it as a "Gold gaming PC".)

Edit: Here's some further thoughts.

PC Gaming White:
Minimum 8GB RAM
Minimum 4 threads or cores CPU, with minimum performance equivalent to i5-2300 Sandy Bridge or better

6-core cpus would fit in somewhere around PC Gaming Silver

 

[DeathReborn]

Someone like Valve should do something about this madness. They are not married to consoles for their revenue. Games running better on low end hardware would equal more PC gamers and more revenue for them, not to mention the publishers/developers.

In a way it already does, Steam Deck Compatible is the minimum spec for PC gaming nowadays.

 

[TheELF]

Games running better on low end hardware would equal more PC gamers and more revenue for them

I very much doubt that, people that can't afford good hardware (like me) are only buying deep sale games, I have humble choice and maybe buy one or two bundles here and there if there is a really good deal.
I have never bought a single game at full price, the most expensive I bought was fallout 4 with all DLC for like 12-13€.
That's not going to change, I'm not suddenly going to have more money available to spend on games, or am going to be more willing to spend more, because AAA games run better.

 

[nakedfrog]

Someone like Valve should do something about this madness. They are not married to consoles for their revenue. Games running better on low end hardware would equal more PC gamers and more revenue for them, not to mention the publishers/developers.

But there's already tons and tons of PC games out there that will run on whatever hardware you have. I see no purpose for this proposal, and like TheELF said, this has already basically been happening with console parity since the Xbox360/PS3 era anyway. It's not lack of game selection that keeps PC gaming from growing.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I feel sorry for the people who are strapped for cash and have to wait a few months or even years to get a better PC to enjoy their favorite game at minimum 30 fps. With a minimum standard in place, at least they could buy the game with confidence.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I am sure every game developer uses steam survey info.

 

[Borealis7]

that makes zero sense. there are indie games that would run smoothly on 10 year old hardware. the term "gaming PC" is subjective to the person playing the games.
also, some people define 30FPS as "playable" and others nothing less than 60 is playable. you, as a games developer, can only say which hardware is required to run your game under certain settings, and let the player ("customer") decide for themselves whether they can run it or not.

 

[Zenoth]

I think that the main final 'gist of the story' is for the developers to just stick with consoles, in the end.

There's no point for the gaming industry at large to go through all the hassle and ordeal of organizing something to establish a 'standard' for PC gaming Minimum Specs, when the Minimum Specs already does exist and it's the consoles themselves. About what, 95% of the industry works on Console dev kits, they create their games from console hardware first, and then they do the PC porting, and that port sometimes (_sometimes_) is then 'optimized' to have multiple in-game settings to try and accommodate as many modern-enough PC setups as fairly possible (and obviously not all devs do that for multiple reasons including lack of manpower and/or budget and development time).

Most PC games nowadays do a decent job with Minimum Specs, they're of course not all identical because no, there's no 'standard' for Minimum Specs. But how would that even work when games run on different engines and not all of them are that scalable? The only plausible scenario I can imagine is an established standard for PC Minimum Specs that are individually-established by specific Engine makers, so that all their games running on that specific engine have that specific Minimum Spec for them. And other games running on other engines have their own standard. So you'd end up with maybe something like an Unreal Engine-Optimized stamp / logo indicating that the buyer can refer to the Minimum Specs and are guaranteed that for THIS engine, ALL the games can run at minimum settings using this specific combination of components.

But I highly doubt that would happen. Again, I think in the end it's much simpler for the industry to just assume that people know already that console hardware IS - essentially - the lowest common denominator from which their games are made. And from there when they care to and when the devs can do it, they add a few extra shenanigans for Very High / Ultra / Extreme in-game settings in the PC version for the enthusiast crowd; and below that they sometimes add Medium / Low settings so that you can run the game on your 10 years-old CPU system with 4GB of RAM at 15 FPS while looking like a Nintendo 64 title (I'm exaggerating but you get the idea).

 

[nakedfrog]

I feel sorry for the people who are strapped for cash and have to wait a few months or even years to get a better PC to enjoy their favorite game at minimum 30 fps. With a minimum standard in place, at least they could buy the game with confidence.

If they're that strapped for cash, buying a used console is probably a better bet...
If they have to wait a few months/years to enjoy their favorite game at minimum 30FPS, how did it become their favorite game?

 

[igor_kavinski]

If they have to wait a few months/years to enjoy their favorite game at minimum 30FPS, how did it become their favorite game?

You haven't been through the ordeal of playing games at sub-15 fps and finishing them, because you can't afford better hardware and you can't stop thinking about the game. So you just put yourself through the pain of it, all the while wondering, "if only the developers had thought about people like me".

 

[nakedfrog]

You haven't been through the ordeal of playing games at sub-15 fps and finishing them, because you can't afford better hardware and you can't stop thinking about the game. So you just put yourself through the pain of it, all the while wondering, "if only the developers had thought about people like me".

LOL
I sure have, buddy, I scraped my money together to buy an S3 Savage4 and played games at an average framerate of 10-20, wishing I had been able to get a TNT2 or Voodoo3 instead. At that time getting a used console instead wasn't really a proposition like it is now. I might even still have that card somewhere...

 

[VirtualLarry]

I played WoW on my Athlon64 and NV '430 chipset iGPU. 13-18 FPS, solo-exploring.