MetalSoup
There's a GIF for that
BOSTON, MA—A four-person panel consisting of industry figures Palmer Lucky, founder of Oculus VR; Matt Higby, creative director of PlanetSide 2; Chris Roberts, grandfather of space combat simulations and Star Citizen creator; and Tom Petersen, director of technical marketing for Nvidia, faced down a packed room this afternoon at Boston's PAX East conference to answer questions about the PC as a platform—where it's been, where it's going, and why it's still not just a big deal, but possibly the biggest deal of all.
The panel delved into a number of specific points for the crowded room, but the key idea—and one that they kept reiterating throughout most of the questions asked—is that PC gaming has always been a huge market presence. Even as major computer OEMs produce numbers showing falling sales, the PC as a platform (and especially a gaming platform) actually shows strong aggregate growth.
It's hard to directly measure this kind of thing, but Nvidia's Tom Petersen pointed out that the company's sales of OEM and aftermarket video cards are strong and are getting stronger—especially its enthusiast-targeted GTX cards. The panel moderator (PC Gamer US Editor-in-Chief Evan Lahti) asked if cloud gaming might have something to do with the bolstering PC gaming numbers. Petersen agreed that could be the case (as expected from Nvidia, which has its own burgeoning cloud gaming rendering service). However, Chris Roberts had a different take.
Roberts has been making PC games since the 1980s, and in developing his latest title, Star Citizen, he's exploring all platform options. One thing that he says he's been dissatisfied with is anything involving remote video streaming—he says that latency is still an issue that hasn't been overcome, and he can't see it ever working well enough to be truly playable—not for a long time, anyway.
Roberts also spoke somewhat contentiously about the search for the "perfect platform" for Star Citizen. He said that after a lot of experimentation, the only platform capable of realizing his vision for the game is the PC. He's a full-time 4K video user, and the only thing that can make Star Citizen work with all the bells and whistles at 4K resolution is a high-end gaming PC.
Nvidia's Petersen mentioned that the price point for 4K—both from a perspective of display and rendering hardware, continues to drop. This is obviously a good thing for Nvidia, since it's in the business of selling video cards.
Read the rest of the article here: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/pc-gaming-not-just-still-alive-but-still-dominant-says-pax-east-panel/
The panel delved into a number of specific points for the crowded room, but the key idea—and one that they kept reiterating throughout most of the questions asked—is that PC gaming has always been a huge market presence. Even as major computer OEMs produce numbers showing falling sales, the PC as a platform (and especially a gaming platform) actually shows strong aggregate growth.
It's hard to directly measure this kind of thing, but Nvidia's Tom Petersen pointed out that the company's sales of OEM and aftermarket video cards are strong and are getting stronger—especially its enthusiast-targeted GTX cards. The panel moderator (PC Gamer US Editor-in-Chief Evan Lahti) asked if cloud gaming might have something to do with the bolstering PC gaming numbers. Petersen agreed that could be the case (as expected from Nvidia, which has its own burgeoning cloud gaming rendering service). However, Chris Roberts had a different take.
Roberts has been making PC games since the 1980s, and in developing his latest title, Star Citizen, he's exploring all platform options. One thing that he says he's been dissatisfied with is anything involving remote video streaming—he says that latency is still an issue that hasn't been overcome, and he can't see it ever working well enough to be truly playable—not for a long time, anyway.
Roberts also spoke somewhat contentiously about the search for the "perfect platform" for Star Citizen. He said that after a lot of experimentation, the only platform capable of realizing his vision for the game is the PC. He's a full-time 4K video user, and the only thing that can make Star Citizen work with all the bells and whistles at 4K resolution is a high-end gaming PC.
Nvidia's Petersen mentioned that the price point for 4K—both from a perspective of display and rendering hardware, continues to drop. This is obviously a good thing for Nvidia, since it's in the business of selling video cards.
Read the rest of the article here: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/pc-gaming-not-just-still-alive-but-still-dominant-says-pax-east-panel/