How PC Gaming Should Procede
03.20.08 - 09:51pm
After writing my last article on gaming which discussed what is killing the PC gaming industry, I had a moment of clarity. What if, wait for it, computers and consoles became one? In this beautiful mating of simplicity and complexity, perhaps a compromise could be reached in which consumers of all levels of technology literacy could have their cake and eat it too.
When I heard Microsoft was launching a console way back in the day, I was shocked and confused. Microsoft, software giant, blundering into the hardware and entertainment industry? Years later and Microsoft has become a force to be reckoned, someone to respect and cooperate with. Microsoft now tightly controls the PC gaming industry via Windows/DirectX and a large chunk of the console gaming industry with it’s Xbox and Xbox360 consoles. Because it is involved in both industries and has newfound hardware experience with the Xbox and Zune, Microsoft is the ideal company for what I’m proposing.
Blurring The Lines
From what I can tell Microsoft is trying hard to keep the Xbox360 from being “just another computer”. I believe this is a huge mistake given Microsoft’s heritage. When you breakdown the Xbox360 and a similarly priced computer after , they aren’t all that different. Both have hard-drives, a powersupply, a graphics chip, memory, and a processor. Both typically run on proprietary operating systems, both run 3rd party applications. In the end, they only differ in the manner in which they run the 3rd party applications and how the user interfaces with the hardware.
The Personal Consol-puter
If you take the concept of the PC with it’s expandability and combine it with a consoles simplicity, you’d have a beautiful thing. Consoles excel due to a relatively simple formula. Standardized hardware makes coding more streamlined and easy use makes it possible for the computer illiterate to use the product. With the second statement, two steps would greatly simplify user adoption. Most people have no clue what is inside of their computer, it isn’t their job or in their realm of things to memorize. Sure, I know everything about the stack of components on my testbed, but I am an exception and chances are if you are reading this, you are too. To ease the burden of matching up hardware requirements with hardware that’s available in the market, Microsoft needs to release a simple hardware benchmark with current and upcoming operating systems. Basically take the Windows Experience Index and flesh it out a bit. Rather than ranking from 1 to 5.9, rank from 1 to 100 and make hardware with current specs max around 20 points to give room for improvement.
So now with this new hardware index, consumers could grab a video game box, match up the CPU, Memory, and GPU numbers, and determine if they can play the game at an acceptable resolution. Rather than stating a single number, offer a low, medium, and high quality index for each title. For example, Crysis Low could be 10 CPU 15 MEM 15 GPU, Crysis Medium could be 15 CPU 15 MEM 25 GPU, and Crysis High could be 20 CPU 15 MEM 35 GPU. So if a consumer walks up with a 12 CPU 17 MEM and 27 GPU configuration, they’ll know that they land somewhere between low and medium in overall requirements. The problem with a single composite score is that a weak CPU with a strong GPU could score the same as a strong CPU and a weak GPU, so with three separate scores the user has a little more information on their system without knowing useless product model numbers. To add to this, CPUs and GPUs could be ranked with their respective numbers which would make hardware purchases much simpler.
No Installation Necessary
So with hardware compatibility simplified for the average consumer, software installation is the next road-block. With consoles there is no installation step, simply pop the disk into the box and it runs after a short load-screen. The same experience should occur on the PC, to an extent. Imagine I came home with my brand new copy of Age of Conan and I want to fire it up to play with my friends. In this ideal world, I would simply pop the disk into my PC and it would load the basic software into the memory and start playing. In the background the game could load data into a local cache on the hard-drive to speed up future load/seek times. The longer you play a game, the more data is stored locally to reduce loading from the slower optical disk. Now you have no installation time, very little complication, and everything is kept out of the users sight and mind. I’d suggest keeping the option to transfer all the files to the hard-drive with a “custom” installation, but this shouldn’t and wouldn’t be the norm.
In addition to this form of playback, an application like Steam should be integrated into Windows. Imagine something like iTunes where the user could browse through available titles and if a title interests them, simply click a button and it’ll begin downloading crucial files to get the game loaded. While the player is playing the game the application would download future required files in the background. For example, if the player loads up an RPG and creates a new character, it would load all the files immediately for character creation, then expedite files for the locale for initial characters, and then spread out from there. The same could be applied for FPS titles, load the game engine and executable then start loading maps, textures and sounds with priority given to maps the user requests.
What To Do With Consoles
So where does this leave future iterations of the Xbox? I’d like to see the Xbox and the PC share an identical gaming platform. Why? Get rid of those pathetic porting processes. Either base the Xbox on an x86 processor or change the PC industry to a different architecture. Consoles would still exist as they’d offer standardized components and a guaranteed play level. I wouldn’t expect Sony and Nintendo to follow this model, but Microsoft with the Xbox and Games for Windows platforms could easily accomplish this. I doubt I’ll ever see something like this realized but I believe this route could save PC gaming and also bring console and PC gamers together with better launch titles and fewer budget cuts due to only developing for one platform.
Well, this is a good article. However gaming consoles are more like computers than they used to be. Honestly, in my opinion they are computers - they have a processor, ram, hard drive, graphics card, sound cards, etc. Everything that a computer has. Sony went as far as to call the PS2 - Playstation 2 Computer Entertainment. The XBox 360 and the PS3 are far more computer-like than PS2 or Xbox ever were.
Some view gaming consoles not as computer. But I believe that they are just specialized computers, just to do one thing.
I love the article, and agree with it. I would love to somply pop in a disc, and be able to play my game right off the bat. Correct me if i’m wrong, but didn’t Halo 2 do this or something similar on PC? Also, I like the game index, it would be very useful, the only problem being is that not all gamers use Windows. I really wish they could intergrate it into Windows 7.
There is a very obvious catch to this. The one thing that keeps PC’s and Consoles very separate.
It’s hard to actually play strategy games (whether real time or turn based) via gamepad.
I mean, I can agree to the first person and third person environments, so RPG’s that follow this format can work (like Elder Scrolls), but if say you have an environment like Fallout? What then?
It’s nice and all to have an easier way to solve the constantly increasing game requirements, but the gaming environments on both consoles and PC are still too different to begin with. I’ve never liked playing with a dedicated gaming console and instead always prefer the multitasking capabilities of my PC.
That though is a matter of personal choice, but the point about environments still makes a valid point I would think.
Edrei,
What I wouldn’t give for a keyboard and mouse on the Xbox360. I desperately want to play Halo Wars but it being relegated to only the Xbox360 and no supported keyboard/mouse combo causes a problem. I only owned a Playstation 1 which I bought for Final Fantasty VII and played through all the PS1 FF titles. Otherwise it’s strictly keyboard/mouse for my gaming needs.
Kurtis,
Maybe I should send an email to Microsoft, it would greatly simplify usability and open up larger markets of PC gamers. Windows 7 already sounds great, a built-in Steam-esque application would rock so hard along with installation free games.
scottfrye,
The fact you can run Linux on the PS3 and I believe the Xbox 360 just screams “PC” at me. Now if only developers would bridge the final gap and give us a keyboard and mouse and really turn them into HTPCs. As far as I know, the PS3 has support for this, but the Microsoft seems to be lagging in making the jump. Maybe the Xbox 720 or whatever the next iteration is named will support this.
There is one element in here that I very much agree with. The 360 should have been based on x86, making the job of porting (to/from) a scalable PC a trivial/easy job. I can’r understand why Ms didn’t go that way. A core 2 duo would have been the perfect heart for the 360.
I have to say that in my opinion the defining feature of a console versus a PC is the lack of scalability. As soon as users have to start wondering how well the game will run on “their” machine (even with the system you have described above) you are appealing to a different market. Mom and Dad buying a game for their kids to play are not going to want to invest either the time or effort to understand such a concept. Likewise, when you are playing online, it is nice to know no one else is playing the game with superiour hardware. It’s a much more level playing field.
I just can’t see consoles giving this defining feature up. In fact what you described is not a new console format, but a new (more gamer friendly) PC format.