When will we get a "TRUE" next-gen game on PC? - Page 2

There is nothing latest and greatest about Call of Duty. #4 was the last game in the series to make a decent jump forward, and that came out in 2007. Uncharted 3, it is very impressive visually. Battlefield 3 also looks good for a console release.

That's sure right. The CoD engine has been around since 2005 and even that engine was based off the old Quake 3 engine that's been around since 1999.

I understand how console games can look impressive on a HD tv....but...do I wait for developers to utilize the latest engines for the consoles...or jump to PC graphics where they are substantially better even with older titles such as Star Wars Battlefront (which I find amusing to play)...eventually though...there will come a line...this line will be High-End Hi power Graphics cards with TDP's of under 120W> being the current ones scrape just under 200W (GTX680)...which is promising because eventually you can cram a high end GPU into a small case and power it with an external PSU @ 250-300W> which would then...create a conflict with consoles because they currently require at least 150W for their $50 GPU's and other processors etc...so within 4 years we could be at that level with PC GPU;s...but at that time consoles will still be the same next Gen models with another 5 years left on their life cycle...where as PC GPU's will be half-way to enabling full Unreal engine support...and hopefully developers will have planned for tis type of jump in computing for PC games!

Eventually something might happen in the market at that time, and New console make could emerge (not possible because profits are harder to be made with any console) ...but...if they put together a High end console with one of the lowest TDP GPU that is available...they can then market it strategicly as either another high end table top PC such as (Alien ware latest slim gaming PC)...or they could go further and create on OS for it specifically for gaming and some internet surfing browsing etc...this could be a popular strategy if someone decides to come up with it.

If Sony starts planning Next Gen now using the 680 as a base with a i7 cpu built with the Cell in mind (to allow bc) and 4gb of RAM, they would have a very solid console in 2014/5. Odds are though the system is pretty much finalized and they are just waiting. We should know for sure within the year what their plans are... Hopefully.

Consoles go through several die shrinks over their life reducing power draw and heat output. Hopefully we will get another round of console slimdowns, maybe down to PS2 slim sizes.

Very doubtful the next gen systems will be using Kepler cards. Last I've heard it was something along the lines of an AMD 7750. Either way. PC will still be stronger. BUT! I'll still be buying it. Love the simplistic nature of a console.

NO way we're gonna get a 680-like gpu and no way the console won't be out before 2014. This is the last full year for the current consoles, I think most can agree with that. It's time to upgrade.

I hope gpu chip's shrink to 12nm in the next 4 years> this could clear up alot of issues in regards to console capability> think about it...the GPU will be easily as tiny as the current console onboard gpu. Then trigate transistors will double the performance of the current 2 gate cpu chip sets.

In the next 10 years...we could very well see high performance chips in a very small low TDP form factor! Eventually ATI or Evga won't need to market 2 different GPU chip sets...they'll be small enough to accomodate both Mobile and other small form factor applications> it would be just one chip that does everything. Laptops could run GPU intensive games that will match current GPU capabilties.
Edited by shingdaz - 6/9/12 at 6:56pm

"we could very well see high performance chips in a very small low TDP form factor!"

We already have high performance Avery low TDP. Pushing the three million pixels of an iPad 3 screen is no small feat. Pushing Unreal 3 at 1440x1080 on that same iPad is also not an easy task. It will obviously get faster in the future, as everything will, but what we have now is an absolute monster in a case barely large enough to contain a screen.

To the "no way the next consoles are after 2014" comment earlier: FXAA has done a lot to improve render quality on the consoles in the last year, and frame rates hold a very stable 30fps these days. Take the biggest beast of a PC you can find, render at 1080p 16xAA/16xAF at maximum settings and a perfect 60fps and stick it next to the 720p FXAA 4xAF 30fps of the console output and the vast majority will tell you it looks just about the same. MS and Sony know this. Nintendo just proved that they know this. The 2013 that everyone around here assumes as the launch is by no means a given, and I'd say that 2014 isn't even a certainty.

To throw another concept out there.

Sony's PS3 is currently bottlenecked thanks to the low memory. The Cell is plenty powerful but it can't stretch it's legs 100%.

Enter the PS3 XL

Modern Nvidia GPU (mobile kepler as a base) with 1gb onboard memory (up from the current 256mb)

Possibly overclock the Cell to get more juice out of it.

2gb unified system memory. (up from the other 256mb)

External power supply and better cooling.


Slim down the current PS3 with a external psu and reduce the price and market it as the entry level unit with the XL offering 1080p 60fps versions of all PS3 games to come and give all devs the ability to release a patch for free to update their past games to offer xl support. Get epic to add auto xl support to the unreal engine to allow easy conversions. With no changes to the OS or PSN full compatability would be no real issue and eventually XL only games could be made to edge people into the new system. It would probably only cost about $50 more than the current unit to make if that and could be sold at a premium and would be profitable from day one.


Anyway, that was just another idea I had the other day.

While it could be interesting and the same concept would work perfectly fine for a 360 XL, it won't happen. Sega proved repeatedly that splitting the market is a terrible move. Sony is proving it right now with Move. Looking back through console history, the massive success of Kinect is about the only time that a market split within a generation has worked.

More likely is the Wii U model, at least in the case of the Xbox. The Wii U is hardware compatible with Wii, just faster with modern additions like shaders. Making the Wii U a vastly upgraded Wii still signifies the end of the previous generation though. It isn't a market split and there will be very few cross-generational games after the first year.

Additional note: Cell is not plenty powerful. It's a pretty crap design that should have been scrapped well before it was shipped. That single general purpose core is a large bottleneck in the system overall, and a monstrously enormous bottleneck in the software development cycle. Again looking at console history, the age of specialized processors ended with the PS2 and was already on it's way out with the Dreamcast. Sony brought 1995 ideas to the table when building their 2006 console. We only have one last specialized processor left in the GPU to get rid of before we are back to proper all-software computing on general purpose cores, the way it should be on both PC and console.

That brings us full circle to the title of this thread. You want TRUE next-gen on PC? Get rid of the GPU.

The GPU is really just a collection of ugly resterization hacks that do nothing but hold back any true advancement in rendering. Most would say that games feel a bit stagnant right now and they tend to blame that on consoles holding the PC back. A far more accurate statement would be that the "collection of dirty hacks" that is GPU design is common between console and PC and is the true source of and lack of ingenious advancement. When particular hacks on a GPU run 100x faster than they would on a CPU, you write your engine to take advantage of that speed. In effect, this prevents you from writing your engine to solve any particular design problem instead.

I agree on the destructible environment part but in a game like GTA, what would stop you from breaking the game by blowing up a building meant for the story later on? How would they avoid that situation? Make the building itself indestructible? That just brings me out of the game even more when everything around what you're trying to destroy gets blown up except for what you're aiming at because of the need for it in the story. I don't think there's a realistic way to handle this in games like GTA. Making store fronts fully modeled for searching though? I guess but man in a city like Liberty City that's going to take awhile and I don't think they have the time or patience or budget to make it happen. We're gonna be stuck with what we're stuck with for awhile until someone figures out a way to make a fully modeled city with interiors that can be destroyed and have it not break the budget or the game progess itself. Until then I want them to focus on more realistic physics, better particle and lighting effects, plus higher resolution textures and more realistic animations.

Red Faction Guerilla had everything destructible and it was awesome. The game wasn't that great but it was kind of amazing to play a game where everything could be reduced to rubble.

I don't see how Battlefield 3 isn't a true next-gen game. It looks amazing, tons of effects all over the place, destructible buildings, 64 players. Far more compelling that Star Wars 1313, which looked like a pretty Uncharted clone.

Fully agree with everything you've stated.

I need to play this Red Faction game then. I always ignored the series. Sounds like it could be fun.

RF:G was a lot of fun. The multiplayer, too, was really well done. It deserved more sales and recognition.

Loved covering a big truck or tanker with remote mines and crashing it into a large building, running out and then detonating.

Damn....now I have to reinstall it.