It's a Great Time for PC Gaming Over the years, I have attended the E3 Expo many times, and this year's festivities were easily the most exciting for me -- especially in light of all the developments in PC gaming. Granted, Nintendo stole the show this time around with the Wii and they proved that gaming doesn't need to be limited to couch potatoes. Nintendo aside, there were a ton of things happening on the PC side that were not ignored. There were some great new games being showcased including Prey, Quake, Scarface, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, and of course the latest expansion pack for World Of Warcraft, just to name a few.
PC gaming is growing, competitive gaming is becoming a spectator sport, and large companies are starting to recognize this phenomenon. I'm not just talking about the hardware companies; I'm also talking about large companies in general, like Redbull, Coca Cola, Burger King, etc. In-game product placement is touted to be the fastest growing industry in advertising. Competitive gaming is here to stay, no doubt, and PC gaming is leading the way.
Microsoft will launch Vista sometime in 2007, an operating system that will seed the ultimate entertainment experience platform. With Microsoft Vista, the entertainment experience will be elevated to a completely different level. At the same time with the right hardware, you can enjoy the most detailed, most intense gaming experience on a PC with many new games. Games are getting more detailed and with Ageia powered Physics, I see the future of PC gaming becoming more realistic and more interactive.
Nvidia and ATi have both released solutions for large format WQXGA displays -- in other words, you can play a game at 2560x1600 and to be perfectly honest, there is nothing like it -- no console on earth can touch it (although you have to spend around $2000 just on the display alone). I'm certainly not dissing consoles; after all, I've owned almost every console since the Atari 2600 all the way to the Xbox 360, and I plan to buy a Nintendo Wii -- but there's something about PC gaming that cannot be matched by a console. The experience on a high-end PC is unmatched.
Believe it or not, PC gaming tends to influence the entire hardware industry, from the semi-conductors all the way to game developers. It is for this reason among others that Dell decided to jump into PC gaming a few years ago. Dell spent a great deal of time and resources to build a portfolio on high-end PCs which created more mainstream awareness around PC gaming in general. Dell and Toshiba were also seen around E3 showcasing their new gaming systems -- although Toshiba still doesn't seem to get it quite yet. Dell is definitely getting it.
It was interesting to see their new XPS desktop line, almost like they've been listening closely to some of the leading gaming PC manufacturers. In somewhat of a surprising move, Dell recently acquired Alienware. Yes, Dell certainly did their research before pulling the trigger, and depending on how they leverage the Alienware brand it could ultimately be a good move for them.
The biggest question I get asked about the Alienware acquisition is what it means to Voodoo, Falcon, and everyone else in our space. Until now, I have reserved judgment about this acquisition because there were, and still are, a ton of things happening behind the scenes that I cannot really talk about. I can say that I am absolutely excited by the prospect of more mainstream consumers jumping on the PC gaming bandwagon because of this acquisition... it only creates more awareness around the key brands and pushes both software and hardware developers to innovate.
This year will be an excellent year for gaming in general. Keep an eye out for more consolidation on the semi-conductor side -- and also watch as professional gaming gains acceptance into the mainstream arena. PC gaming is anything but dead.
This article was written for Game Daily, the link to the original article is here.
I also wrote an article a few months ago on PC Gaming which can be found here.
10 blogger comments:
Rahoul,
Interesting article but there is something I must point out. You mention gaming as a spectator sport, well I just happen to be a reff/writer for one of the larger leagues in the world.
What irks me is when you mention the experience of gaming at such a high resoultion. While it's true only a PC can do so, it's also true that "hardcore" gamers, especially competive ones won't touch a resolution over 800x600 and run everything at bare minimum details regardless of the hardware they are on. It's not just for frame rates either it's that all that detail just flat out gets in the way and ruins the true e-sport experience.
If you care watch any current Quake4 professional match and see how stripped down they play it, the configurations don't look more advanced then Quake2 did, and all the characters are coated in neon paint.
Now don't get me wrong I own a first rate PC (or was first rate when the 6800 series was king)... however I still run quake1/2/3/4 640x480 all details low, and use console commands to strip even more detail out.
Your thoughts?
My take on the Dell+Alienware:
Dell has deep problems. Deeper than they care (or admit?) to recognize. So whats Dell's probmlem? Quality and Attitude.
Quality - Dell's brand has taken a severe beating in their rush for short term profit. Their products are cheap and shoddy.A lot of customers have been turned off from Dell.
Attitude - I think their no R&D, wintel only (minus servers) grocery store business model is going to fail as PCs go from being workstations to becoming consumer electronics.
Even if they slowly incorporate AMD processors into their home desktops they will need to innovate a lot more in elegant hardware design. People dont like ugly or cheap furniture, appliances, cars etc. and I am sure they will not want an ugly cheap badly designed Dell.
About Dell+Alienware:
I'm sure Alienware's founders were laughing all the way to the bank.
I see nothing that would indicate that Dell would successfully leverage the Alienware brand. I would expect Dell to severly run down the brand over the next few years.
I'm not a great fan of Voodoo, but I see a great opportunity here for companies with really innovative products to fill the void Dellienware will leave behind.
Weren't you dissing Ageia physics cards in your april 03 2006 blog? and how games don;t want a $300 add in board to take up a pci slot we don't have? In fact from reveuiws there is little or no differnce witht he physics cards and nvidia and ATI can make phsics processing through the GPU and it would not hurt performance at all and would only add to the game. I have read reviews that say the Physix card hurts performance and that the cell factor dmo can be played without the card with all the particles and features and with no performance penalty. I hope Ageia's card dies and voth ATI and nvida both adopt Havok's software.
HP Compaq has tried to do gaming PCes, but they later exited the business. What they did was not fun at all, very cheap graphics card. I think they might be looking for some Alienware type deal out there to battle DELL.
I wonder if Intel's Conroe hype is affecting the gaming PC business.
Aside from the new XPS laptops they had on display at E3 I think they are still struggling with design. The current XPS laptops and desktops and even the forthcoming models are just horrible imo.
Quality and service is also lacking definetly. I say this as a longtime dell customer (still am currently but looking to switch to something else) the support is horrible. That's where companies like voodoo and falcon do well you get what you pay for-lots of style and quality service.
I have to confess, I recently made the jump to the dell 30" monitor. It just blows my mind away when I launched up EQ2 with full details on my 7900 gtx sli setup. Sure, it ran at 20-30 fps tops but it was beautiful. And also the first time I've ever had to move my *head* to see the full view of the display. I can't wait to see what Oblivion looks like on it.
redpriest
Heh the first comments kinda remind me of when I started net gaming alot. I played an activision game called Heavy Gear, even though the game supported Voodoo graphics cards I set it to render through my Matrox Millenium 2, played the game in Wireframe Mode, and turned the sound off... all the extras were extremely distracting.
I played Quake and Quake 2 in the same manor, low detail, but high resolution.
DirecTV says it's revolutionizing video game competitions by being the first to connect events together as a tour, and maintain points like NASCAR. It also claims to have "mew" technology to put cameras inside video games, something that's been done since Quake 1.
MLG says it's revolutionizing video games by holding the first tour of connected events, and awarding points to players and teams. The league also represents some players, while making rules and decisions that affect other players.
WSVG says it's revolutionizing video games by holding the first tour of connected events, and awarding points to players and teams.
WCG claims it is unique in connecting together events rather than holding unrelated tournaments.
CPL continues to claim to be unique in holding a tour of tournaments, connected together by points and similar rules.
Notice a pattern? Nothing has changed in professional video gaming for 10 years.
I agree with East Coast Combos. MANY competitive gamers play with stripped down versions of popular games.
I personally will not crank up any game higher than 1024x768 and I have a "respectable" machine for a person that is limited to upgrading every three years or so...
Here's an idea to branch off in: how about a Linux Gaming OS? Any takers? I disagree with Sood that Vista is going to be the "next big thing". What Vista just now brings to the table, Linux has been doing forever. The issue is that games are NOT being ported often enough to this OS. If this were to happen, I believe that Linux would become much more mainstream and gaming as a whole would improve dramatically.
This is the beauty of PC gaming: its multi-dimensional while consoles are: take it out of the box, hook it up to the TV and play.
I imagine you've been aware of AMD's 4x4 for some time.
Quick, like a bunny, license the quaddamage.wav from Quake III, for marketing your machine.
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