Crytek: the PC is "a generation ahead," but PS3 and 360 holding it back

[Emil]

Crytek believes that because developers are focusing on the PS3 and the 360, the game quality on the PC is being held back. This is happening despite the company saying that the PC is already "a generation ahead" of Sony's and Microsoft's consoles.

Crytek is currently working on Crysis 2 for all three platforms. The original Crysis was an exclusive for the PC. That being said, Crytek has already stated that Crysis 2 will be graphically superior on the PC.

"As long as the current console generation exists and as long as we keep pushing the PC as well, the more difficult it will be to really get the benefit of both," Cevat Yerli, founder, CEO, and President of Crytek, told the latest issue of Edge, according to CVG. "PC is easily a generation ahead right now. With 360 and PS3, we believe the quality of the games beyond Crysis 2 and other CryEngine developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is. You won't be able to squeeze more juice from these rocks."

Developers have very low sales expectations for the PC, compared to consoles. It's a vicious cycle: the PC market doesn't give the same revenue as the console market, so companies don't spend much on the PC version of a game. This is certainly true for games like Unreal Tournament 3: it would have been much better had it been released as a PC exclusive.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/41323-crytek-the-pc-is-a-generation-ahead-but-ps3-and-360-holding-it-back.html

 

[princeton]

Pfft. More like 3 gens ahead. IMO the 4000,5000 and 6000 series cards are each a new generation of hardware. Where as the xbox runs a slightly modified 7600GT.

 

[Guest]

Personally, I think games today look very good!

They should worry about making them run on 60+ fps on the current generation of PCs instead of making us buy new hardware for each new game.

 

[TomSEA]

What princeton said. 5+ year old technology in those consoles and all they do is continue to repackage them and sell millions more. Plus the fact that these console users think they are getting killer graphics. I go over to my friends' houses, look at their games and just shake my head, "you guys have no clue what good graphics and game mechanics are."

I think Crytek's comments are perfectly accurate. It's depressing being a PC gamer these days.

 

[Guest]

I wouldn't say 'depressing' but it's definitely irritating. Microsoft needs to get their PC butt in gear..discontinue the xbox line.. and push PC gaming.

 

[Clrabbit]

That's why you have settings on computer games....

Your system can't handle you drop the settings down to the crappy console equivalency.

The Power of the PS3 is a bad joke if you compare it to the current high end PC hardware which is what game's should be made to play on, then you just down grade and backport to the older PC and consoles.

What it really boils down to is money, it would take a lot more money to make a truly amazing game that was Optimized to take full advantage of the latests PC hardware not just toss bad poorly made code together that tap out the hardware.

Vs making stuff for consoles well you can ignore the newer coding, you don't have to deal with any real new features most of it's all been made for you by some other company you can just lease the engine from... etc ...etc

It wouldn't surpise me in the least to find a a fully optimized real high quality PC game that would be worth the money the charged us cost more then 10 times what it cost to make a PS3/360 game that was then just ported to the PC.

I mean really why spend 10 x more when you can spend so much less time and money and people are going to be happy with it.

If you ask me game quality per hardware quality today is totally UN-acceptable. There are only maybe 1-2 games a year actually worth their price tags.


I put off buying a X360/PS3 tell their were games that really took advantage of the hardware and I have to say.... it's pretty sad quality compared to what they could have done on a PC the same year.

 

[Vrmithrax]

Well, princeton and Tom are definitely right, it's multiple generations, not just 1. My guess is they Crytek guys were generalizing the concept of the PC being ahead of consoles, and decided not to split hairs. And, as much as I'm a pro-computer and apathetic-towards-consoles gamer, there is one little bright spot in things as they are. As game programmers have to push bigger/better/larger games into the consoles, they are actually re-learning a skill that has long been dormant: optimization. The hardware revolution that has produced orders of magnitude faster processors and exponentially larger storage mediums in recent decades has spoiled programmers, and let them throw lazy code in and let the hardware do the hard work. Bloat is evident in all aspects of computing and gaming - operating systems, productivity software, and gaming have all ballooned in size and sacrificed efficiency for profit and deadlines...

It's kind of funny, actually. I liken the netbook & mobile computing platforms to consoles in this respect. They are forcing the programmers to get better and make due with limits, rather than having overpowered hardware that will be more forgiving on sloppy code and inefficient management of resources. I keep hoping that the lessons they are learning will hold over and keep pushing gaming towards crispness and efficiency, but ironically even Crytek are some of the worst offenders. They tend to create games that current hardware chokes on, and I have to wonder how much of that is lack of optimization

 

[Burty117]

I wouldn't say get rid of the Xbox, But I would definately market the PC as an "Upper Class" gaming experience and the Xbox as a good place to start.

If I was head at Microsoft anyway.

At least some developers notice this though (Valve, Crytek, Blizzard etc...)

And I completely agree with the UT3 statement, Once they put big old patches on there its coming together, but compared to UT2004 its still just a shadow of what it could have been

 

[edison5do]

Guest said:
Personally, I think games today look very good!

They should worry about making them run on 60+ fps on the current generation of PCs instead of making us buy new hardware for each new game.

Remeber taht if you dont want to upgrade, go and buy a console, dont talk about PC´s if you are not into it.

What he is talking about something that we already knew. Every Pc gamer that eventually read something now this. and about the PC games revenue, if they give some time to steam like platforms, the thing eventually could be better, and maybe this will bring to an end the whole PORTING of pc games. I have my hopes on that.

 

[Guest]

You see, the problem with Microsoft is tha they have all the resources in the world - yet the company is far too big to set a focus goal and have teams dedicated to achieving them, in terms of entertainment, Microsoft is all over the place!

They have the most prominant Operating System in the world, yet they do not push the capabilities entertainment wise of what it is capable of! Instead Microsoft pours millions of dollars in to pumping out consoles and console developed games, instead of having any train of thought or consideration towards things like Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, RARE Studios, etc.

All the resources in the world, yet too big to put them to the most efficient and productive use.

 

[Mikymjr]

Is this why AMD had said sometime ago that efficiency of software working with hardware would have to get better? Cause i definitly agree on the topic that most games were made for consols to make easy money. They were never really made for newer generation pc's. For example most software don't use the extra cores on processors. In this case most games don't actually use the extra cores on processors

 

[Kibaruk]

This is probably because ONLY a new generation graphic card is worth WAY more than the game console + the game.

 

[red1776]

Pfft. More like 3 gens ahead. IMO the 4000,5000 and 6000 series cards are each a new generation of hardware. Where as the xbox runs a slightly modified 7600GT.

Were you illustrating a point ? or is that actually the case? (I never owned one)

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Were you illustrating a point ? or is that actually the case? (I never owned one)

It's actually closer to the truth than you can imagine; the PS3's GPU was claimed to have performance double that of a 6800 Ultra, and the RSX chip at the heart of it all is based on GeForce 7-series architecture.

To say that we're way beyond that in terms of PC hardware would be a gross understatement.

 

[Guest]

Those of you claiming it's more than one generation ahead are out of your minds. We're talking console generations here, not graphics card generations. Basically every new console generation has brought massive changes not only in graphical quality but even concerning gameplay as the new hardware brought new possibilities for game designers and have generally been over half a decade apart from each other.

 

[bioflex]

seriously?..u think microsoft would do something like that?...not gonna happen, we can only wish

 

[bioflex]

Guest said:
I wouldn't say 'depressing' but it's definitely irritating. Microsoft needs to get their PC butt in gear..discontinue the xbox line.. and push PC gaming.

seriously?..u think microsoft would do something like that?...not gonna happen, we can only wish

 

[treetops]

I can run a wii simulator on my computer and have like 5 of the newest games loaded at the same time and my computer wont break a sweat, the xbox 360 or ps3 can barely handle 1 game. Computers are constantly getting better but consoles only get better every 5-8 years, so yeah right now they are on the low end.

 

[Guest]

So what else is new???

 

[princeton]

guys. We should threaten MS and say we're gunna drop windows if they don't get their asses in gear. AKA pc releases first with no patches needed for playability. No DRM ect.

Gamers are where Microsoft's main revenue comes from in terms of OS upgrades. Corperations stick with XP and I bet a bunch of people threatening to give up windows would give them a scare.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Those of you claiming it's more than one generation ahead are out of your minds. We're talking console generations here, not graphics card generations. Basically every new console generation has brought massive changes not only in graphical quality but even concerning gameplay as the new hardware brought new possibilities for game designers and have generally been over half a decade apart from each other.

It's all laid out in terms of raw processing power. It doesn't make sense to compare the PC in terms of "console generations" and vice-versa.

Processing power is, after all, one of the major factors that determines how good a game looks and how well it performs, innit?

 

[princeton]

Rage_3K_Moiz said:

Those of you claiming it's more than one generation ahead are out of your minds. We're talking console generations here, not graphics card generations. Basically every new console generation has brought massive changes not only in graphical quality but even concerning gameplay as the new hardware brought new possibilities for game designers and have generally been over half a decade apart from each other.

It's all laid out in terms of raw processing power. It doesn't make sense to compare the PC in terms of "console generations" and vice-versa.

Processing power is, after all, one of the major factors that determines how good a game looks and how well it performs, innit?

It's basically the only factor .

 

[princeton]

There's a reason people post as guest guys. They don't to gain a reputation of being a retard on one account so they stay anonymous.

 

[mccartercar]

In terms of the current console generation; The only thing that is optimized hardware wise is power usage, heat output, and durability. From the first fat ps3 at launch until the newest slim there is not one spec changed that increases or decreases throughput of any data, other than heat transfer. The same goes for the current generation of xbox360.
This means that software developers have to carefully manage memory, gpu ,cpu resources. Its very sad to think of how devs are forced to squeeze allocated resources to the tiny bit of ram in each console. A good example would be John Carmack's interview at Quakecon, talking about RAGE and the obstacles and challenges of managing resources in the tight constraints of console hardware.
One of the few positive sides to having one hardware specification is being able to learn it thoroughly and use new techniques and optimizations in firmware updates that helps free up precious few resources on an aging platform.
I prefer my own dream of console hybrids that are upgradeable al a carte. Radeon 6990 upgrade via Light Peak dongle anyone?.....daydreaming again..8X

 

[Guest]

Consoles have always held PC gaming graphics. The difference before was that consoles generally had a 5 year lifespan, sometimes 6 before being replaced. I used Nintendo as an example:

NES - October 18, 1985
SNES - August 23, 1991 (6 years)
N64 - September 29, 1996 (5 years)
Gamecube - November 18, 2001 (5 years)
Wii - November 19, 2006 (5 years)

Now, Sony and Microsoft want these consoles to last until 2013 or even 2015. This would put the lifespan of the current generation at 7-9 years.

So what Yerli is really saying is that we have to wait another 2-3 years of stagnat PC gaming graphics . Frankly, since Crysis (2007) and Metro 2033, we have had PC gaming graphics stagnation for the last 3 years. So I am not surprised.

Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series both sold 20:1 on consolesC. Therefore, it simply way too expensive to develop the most advanced PC game for a market of consumers that's 20x smaller. Also, PC games tend to fall to $19.99-$29.99 from $49.99 within 6 months of release outside of rare examples like Starcraft 2. On the other hand console games not only cost more to begin with, but they rarely fall to such low levels that quickly. As a result, publishers and developers simply makes more $$ from selling console games. This would explain why hardly any firm is developing PC exclusive games anymore, and esp. not ones with advanced graphics and effects. Nowdays with costs to develop a game probably approaching $60-100+ million, it's just not viable for the majority of developers.