End of "graphics card era"?

[Deleted member 197115]

The day consoles reach high end PC graphics performance, PC days are over.

 

[Miguel Batista]

The day consoles reach high end PC graphics performance, PC days are over.

But the thing is, they already did in the previous generation. The PS3 and XBOX360 were cheaper than an equivalent power PC and were pretty high end. They achieved this feat by basically subsidizing the consoles and they didn't kill PC. Different folks different strokes and all that.

Anyway, there is nothing stopping consoles from reaching PC levels of performance. They just have to pay the price of being a lot more expensive. The XBOX 1X produces outstanding results but you are basically playing games in 1800p with a mix of medium/high settings with some going as far as low (anything that touches the Jaguar CPU). it cost €600 and not a lot of people were willing to spend that money (only 17% of Xbox sold were the1X variety and 25% of ps4 sales wee the pro in 2018). And this cost doesn't consider the 4k panel you will need to buy. PC gaming is still suffering the crypto fallout with memory prices still high. And GPU prices are still inflated too though not as much as last year but in normal conditions for 600 you can get a pc that will work as well as an Xbox 1x.
https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/mpsx3b

The only reason consoles hang on imho is exclusives.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I don't agree that exclusives is the only reason they exist. Having high end PC requires some tech knowledge and serious money, things most casual gamers and kids don't have.
I am considering myself a PC enthusiast and amateur builder but besides performance and sim periphery support for me, I don't really understand how PC gaming is managing staying afloat.
With that said, found quite interesting and surprising stats
https://www.wepc.com/news/video-game-statistics/

 

[Kenny Paton]

With that said, found quite interesting and surprising stats

Great link Andrew makes very interesting reading.

 

[Miguel Batista]

I don't agree that exclusives is the only reason they exist. Having high end PC requires some tech knowledge and serious money, things most casual gamers and kids don't have.
I am considering myself a PC enthusiast and amateur builder but besides performance and sim periphery support for me, I don't really understand how PC gaming is managing staying afloat.
With that said, found quite interesting and surprising stats
https://www.wepc.com/news/video-game-statistics/

Nice stats. And as you see consoles are the hardest hit by the rise in smartphone games. PC has its niches that consoles will never touch unless they become PCs (which they pretty much are). Strategy games, simulators, competitive shooters Are some of the games a PC does better than consoles. As for the technical skill needed to become a PC enthusiast, I don't think you need a lot tbh. I think a lot of people think that but it is inaccurate imho. And with nowadays laptops, you need even less. My laptop cost me less than €800 and came with a 1050ti and an i5 7500HQ. That is super cheap for something that comes with an ips 1080p screen mouse and keyboard. And those are closed systems. And everyone needs a laptop for uni or school or something.

 

[T_rac3]

Well, it is not related to OP, but somehow it is. Today STEAM is down. And we can't start nothing from our Library. This is the weakness of CLOUD anything

 

[Trebormoore84]

End of graphics card era? Maybe but those cards are just being installed somewhere else en mass...

I've had the android based Nvidia Shield TV box with xbox like controllers since 2015 and have to say I am very impressed with it and the service (before i got into simracing anyway). Used it both to stream the PC rig into the living room as well as cloud gaming and its a pretty seamless experience. You can play pretty much any current game at 60fps plus (sometimes even in 4k) with high graphics as long as your connection allows 16ms lag (which is the same lag as a 60hz monitor), on my cable broadband connection anyway in London. It is borderline though, especially on a mid-day Saturday when the whole of London is on Netflix or whatever it is they do on the internet...

The next obvious question is does a wheel plugged into the box work? You can already use it to pass through to your local pc with some fettling but for cloud gaming not right now, I suspect they will work this out in the not too distant future, seen a lot of requests for this on the nvidia forums, I don't see why they can't put the usual Fanatec, Thrustmaster and Logitech consumer wheel drivers on all the servers and allow the usb to pass through. Agree it will be limited like a console though. I.e. consumer level matching wheels and pedals all connected through one USB connection.

You can however plug a USB mouse and keyboard in and play FPS, RPG and strategy games perfectly well btw. The experience is essentially a console for PC software, so i very much doubt OSW, custom USB devices, motion rigs (lol) etc etc are ever going to work on it however.

I can't quite remember but i think you can now play anything you have purchased on steam (or epic etc) from the cloud server without the Nvidia subscription already which is pretty cool.

Totally see how this will become the norm in the future, and not only this but all software as everything is going down the subscription route, this is the next logical step. The amount the corporations are pouring into data centres is beyond staggering and makes total sense that these servers are eventually going to outstrip what the average punter is able to afford for their rig as the cost of upgrading gets more and more ridiculous.

Pretty sure there will be a crossing point where subscription service will be the affordable way to go, maybe in 5 - 10 years time though.

Reflect concerns for simracing as cloud servers will kill modding as an idea and everything will be even more commercial / homogenised. However as this becomes the norm many issues will be worked out as demand increases, people work around the issues etc so best to keep an open mind on it and an eye as well as it develops. I for one will enjoy the day when i don't have to wait for an hour to install a software update or a driver or whatever.

I wouldn't give your money to google though

Nvidia Shield TV costs £180 retail and for what you get not to be sneezed at.

 

[T_rac3]

Nvidia Shield TV costs £180 retail and for what you get not to be sneezed at.

I'm always amazed by the price I have to pay in my country for all things, compared to price everyone in "civilized" country had to pay. And please take in account that our medium wage (500 euro) is 1/4 or 1/3 of their and all prices are 2x or 3x
Take a look:

 

[robt100]

I'm always amazed by the price I have to pay in my country for all things, compared to price everyone in "civilized" country had to pay. And please take in account that our medium wage (500 euro) is 1/4 or 1/3 of their and all prices are 2x or 3x
Take a look:

But then food and drink is much cheaper! 40-60p for a beer, £5 for a massive meal, and the scenery is nicer...dont start gaming enjoy the outside

 

[Trebormoore84]

I'm always amazed by the price I have to pay in my country for all things, compared to price everyone in "civilized" country had to pay. And please take in account that our medium wage (500 euro) is 1/4 or 1/3 of their and all prices are 2x or 3x
Take a look:

Yikes!

However that's the "pro" version with the onboard HDD. You just want the simple one with 16gb and the controller should be a fair bit cheaper.
The HDD is only if you want to hoard lots of videos or music, and considering you can use it to access any networked PC HDD or NAS drive on your wifi or wired network not really worth getting anyway. Being able to play 4k Netflix is probably the best thing though.

I had a play with it again last night and you can't access every steam game you have through the cloud, only the ones Nvidia Now have selected which is limited, but if you have already paid for them on steam can stream from the get go as I thought. Note how you can play ACC on it but not use a wheel...

If you can find this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nvidia-SHI...shield&qid=1555075088&s=computers&sr=1-1&th=1

 

[T_rac3]

dont start gaming enjoy the outside

Yes, this is the standard response I get. Food and drink.
I'm not aloud to access anything else. Just work and food. Thank you !!!

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Some points:

* Game streaming has been tried in the past, hasn't made a noticeable impact. It might take off for the mobile market, altbough mobile devices are pretty powerful these days. If you can easily download something once to play locally, why stream it? at what point is your streaming service subs going to pay for a gpu?
* GPU price gouging is also sadly down to lack of competition, and AMD have conceded the market there until 2021 at least. Nvidia should really take care they don't butcher one of their main markets - AMD won the last round of console hardware orders.
* I play PC games on a RPi occasionally thanks to steamlink, it's not great but it is an alternative solution. One of the main issues is latency & that's over a LAN. I've been dealing with remote usage issues my entire career, I don't want them for my hobbies too...

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Yes, this is the standard response I get. Food and drink.

Hookers must be cheaper too.
Enjoy what you can.

 

[Miguel Batista]

Some points:

* Game streaming has been tried in the past, hasn't made a noticeable impact. It might take off for the mobile market, altbough mobile devices are pretty powerful these days. If you can easily download something once to play locally, why stream it? at what point is your streaming service subs going to pay for a gpu?
* GPU price gouging is also sadly down to lack of competition, and AMD have conceded the market there until 2021 at least. Nvidia should really take care they don't butcher one of their main markets - AMD won the last round of console hardware orders.
* I play PC games on a RPi occasionally thanks to steamlink, it's not great but it is an alternative solution. One of the main issues is latency & that's over a LAN. I've been dealing with remote usage issues my entire career, I don't want them for my hobbies too...

It works for games where latency is not very important.things like witcher 3 or Ass Creed Odyssey. Competitive games and driving games will not be much fun.

 

[Richard Dastardly]

It works for games where latency is not very important.things like witcher 3 or Ass Creed Odyssey. Competitive games and driving games will not be much fun.

It's ok for stuff you can drive with mouse clicks, like non-realtime strategy games. Anything that needs proper realtime interaction is... odd. Your brain compensates for the delay but sluggish controls hurt gameplay for an awful lot of games, not just twitch-reaction genres.

Does anyone have take-up numbers for PS Now ? that's been going 5 years already.

 

[Nick Gregory]

The day consoles reach high end PC graphics performance, PC days are over.

Good luck trying to sell 2080Ti graphics capabilities in a box that costs $350-$400.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

It does not have to be 2080Ti or $400.
Closed systems HW working in tandem with specialized OS can be much more efficient than generic OS and random mix of of the shelf components. Plus console makers sell hardware at loss, getting money out of service subscription, games.
How much would you need to pour into PC to get 4k performance of XBox One X, or even aged PS 4 Pro?

 

[Richard Dastardly]

Consoles killing PC gaming has been threatened for decades. As long as there's popular content exclusively on the PC platform it's not going anywhere, regardless of hardware.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Consoles killing PC gaming has been threatened for decades. As long as there's popular content exclusively on the PC platform it's not going anywhere, regardless of hardware.

And according to the folks at Blizzard, forget PC's and Consoles, mobile phones are where the real action is. Of course judging by their stock prices dropping 42% after saying this maybe they don't understand things as well as they thought they did

 

[Richard Dastardly]

And according to the folks at Blizzard, forget PC's and Consoles, mobile phones are where the real action is. Of course judging by their stock prices dropping 42% after saying this maybe they don't understand things as well as they thought they did

Yeah, that's been predicted for years too. There's a lot of wishful thinking in IT remember the first time cloud computing came round? thin clients? that really took off, didn't it. What seems to happen is we just get additional platforms instead of replacements - dead consoles are a result of bad content, not hardware choices.

Tell you what though, I tried streaming something onto a tablet via Steam which I thought would be mobile friendly - what a horrendous experience. There are some things mobile interfaces are just not right for. I tried a bunch of native games & they're uniformly horrid - I have yet to see any content that'll vault the platform to the top levels...