Panajev2001a said:
I felt this required to be quoted again
!
I agree this is very important. PCs have gone multi-core, but most PC games haven't been very efficient in getting the most out of the platform.
IMO reasons for this:
- Single CPU PC have been dominant for a very long time, the 1995 BeBox already took the multi-processor approach, but the first dual core x86 PCs arrived no earlier than a decade later and thus PC sofware was still single threaded and so there was little to no advantage for consumers to go multi-core for quite a long period.
- Also Windows and DirectX are very inefficiently designed, sucking up huge amounts of memory and about half the available CPU cycles on a single core machine. For many years the general approach was to let consumers just buy a higher clocked CPU and more memory instead of optiming the software, this counts for Windows (and still does) as well as for games developers and worked well for a decade.
But now we are at a point where cheap PCs are able to fullfill what most people expect from them and people are now wary of everlasting upgrades just to play the latest and 'greatest' games. Vista is even more of a resource hog and thus most consumers prefer to stick with XP if provided a choice (Microsoft doesn't for new PCs and laptops).
The best selling PC games are the least demanding ones. This is one of the reasons why I think PC games developers should heavily investigate on improving their game code. In the past you could expect PC gamers to blindly upgrade their PCs while thinking they are getting the most out of their system. Now consoles are able to play online and play in high resolutions on a much larger TV display, even able to connect mouse and keyboard if so desired. This all far more effortlessly, more comfortable playing with a wireless controller sitting on a couch in the living room. There's nothing gaming wise a console cannot provide what a gaming PC can provide and many may actually prefer the overall experience.
Making games which make better use the PC's available hardware resources will significantly widen the potential PC gamer audience who are able to play your games. In the past devs may look at this as being too costly investments compared to the potential gains, I hope more devs will see the potential of such investments as a method of boosting their sales.
Sadly though the average consumer isn't very well informed, making a far more efficient game which runs well on lowend hardware may make some hardcore PC fans believe it's unimpressive compared to a very inefficiently developed game which only runs well enough on high end machines.
