PCGA Predicts Official Console Emulation on PCs; Piracy 'Ridiculous' Reason to Axe PC Support

It could happen http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/print/2295

It's kinda fun to watch the console fanboys get riled up over these remarks. "Oh noes, I won't be able to buy an Xbox 1180 or a PS17??" It's just a prediction folks, though probably a pretty accurate one based on everything we've seen so far in gaming hardware history.

No really he is crazy. Closed platforms are why console experiences are so good. The price of a PC that would be able to run current gen titles is much more expensive than a console (even the PS3). Emulation of consoles, even really old ones is hit and miss. No I think I like my PC gaming on the PC and my console gaming on the console (and a big HDTV).

hahahah he said close d titles are what made consoles so good
did u just skip ten years on not notice closed titles dont exist really, evene the friken applemacs use pc cpus and can run vista, we are long past cartridge days m8, compnays want al the money they can get, they tried being half assed pcs to lure the 100's of millions of pcs gamers , now they see it wont work , so why nt use the same things they make the games on to get sum extra money

there is no loyalty to customers anymore, corporate world, money talks

but keep telling yurself itll never happen itll make u feel good while u wait the extra 2-3 years extra for this console cycle

corprations dont work for the little people who buy the games unless their starting up, once they got a good run they forget us and think of mass profit, ehnce rehashed games, and fook me beat em ups are stil the exact same formula, anything new on consoles since tetris?

even sonys new game the one where u use physics etc make a wee line of conections, ummm garys mod made comercial.

no wonder most peoples consoles aprt from dedicated ppl tend to be left switched of most of time

oh wait consoles can emulate other older consoles
oops been done

ahh but consoles can use motion controll oops stolen off a guy 11 years ago who came ot intendo with a game idea

blu ray on ps3, not important and jsut a format war thing for sony and who wants ot pay 25 quid to see wrinkles u idiots sony.

plz note how pc users dont run out and buy blu ray, motion controllers(apart from that golf game with projector-actally lets face it pcs can do aything possible in computing we just lack a pr company to point out everything else sucks


this could og on and on ive enjoyed thes console vs pc argfuments over the years but now im 30 isee no point in arguing about it pcs wila lways be there. apart from games they run our lifes in the background , fairly sure the internet isnt made up of cells or applemacs last time i checked

this man has lost his god damned mind

Unless the PCGA can get together with Intel, Nvidia, AMD and the big PC manufacturers and fix their issues with gaming PCs, this will NEVER happen. They need a PC standard for gaming hardware, simplify upgrade tracks for the average consumer, and actually make dedicated gaming PCs available and easy to maintain.

An average consumer cannot go to Best Buy today, buy a PC for $1000, buy a copy of FarCry 2 and hope to play it "the way it's meant to be played" to take a line from Nvidia. It's not going to happen. It's been this way since 3d accelerators came out and it's only gotten worse.

So until he, the hardware manufacturers, and the PC manufacturers can get together to fix these issues, he's talking out of his ass.

Sounds somewhat like a lot of bluster. It also sounds like he's throwing up his hands about developers who consider the PC a secondary platform (at best) on which to release ported version of their console titles 6 months to a year after the console release -- "There are 6 more new success stories coming in to replace you."

I think there are too many advantages to the fixed hardware platform that consoles represent. It makes bug testing a lot easier for developers, and makes keeping the system updated painless for the user. Better control over piracy issues is an added benefit as well. Also, Nintendo has shown that it's possible to be successful with a console which is profitable directly with the purchase of the console hardware itself.

Personally, I'm more concerned that Nintendo's success with the Wii will prompt MS and Sony to emulate Nintendo's cheapo hardware and emphasis on casual gaming in the next console generation.

As a hardcore gamer I will be watching the next-gen console (720, PS4) hardware specs, launch titles, and business plans of MS and Sony carefully, and my money will go to the console maker that is clear and earnest in their support of hardcore gamers with quality, high-performance hardware and launch titles that demonstrate a commitment to hardcore gamers. Nintendo abandoned hardcore gamers this round, so my money will stay in my pocket until I am convinced of excellent hardcore gamer support next time around.

It's easy to see, consoles become more PC like every gen.

Hey Bleem 2.0!

Did anyone buy that when I was in stores for approximately 4 seconds?

Console Vs. PC - Round 496120596340163485

FIGHT!

Pretty much, consoles are just retarded PCs. Eventually PCs will be small and portable and "consoles" as we know them now will die out.

We'll still have them, but they'll just be "gaming machine" branded computers.

Did this guy miss the Wii?

So many things wrong with what this guy said...

One of the strengths of the consoles IS the unified hardware & game controllers &"drivers" (or rather lack of them). That makes it easier to develop games on consoles then on PC. You don't need to worry about what directx version they have, or whether or not antivirus or firewalls are blocking stuff.

Plus, when these next gen consoles come out, they are essentially not emulatable on the pc platform because it would be too slow.

As far as coding wise, I hear the PS3 is hard to code for but the 360 and Wii are pretty easy to code for.

I've been a PC gamer since the release of Doom and I think the last console I owned was a Sega Saturn (don't laugh at me). Once I tried games on the PC, I was hooked. I was there when FPS multiplayer shot into the stratosphere with Quake (and Doom 2 to a lesser extent). I dipped my toes into the ocean of MMOs when UO and EQ were released. I got to enjoy titles such as Tie Fighter, X-Com and Descent (to name only a few classic titles). We have seen the birth of the wildly popular FPS and MMO genres on the PC and consoles have enjoyed the success of the FPS. Good MMOs on a console are only a matter of time and are indeed inevitable. Although I fully believe that the PC platform has provided far more innovation for game play, I think consoles are here to stay.

Console developers are beginning to produce games that are more and more like PC games. The days of yore when I was enjoying FPS games on my PC and console gamers were stuck playing platformers are gone. Now when I play Call of Duty 5 on my PC, so it is that console gamers are playing it on their consoles. There are still divides, such as with strategy titles and MMOs, but those divides are beginning to come down. The genres that were exclusive to the PC are now prospering on consoles.

Consoles are much simpler than PCs. All you have to do is purchase the console system and you’re set for a number of years. The same is not true for PCs. Since the release of the XBox 360, I’ve had to upgrade various components of my PC a couple of times, yet even now titles that are released for PCs are being released for the 360 (e.g., Fallout 3). PCs may have the controller interface advantage with the mouse/keyboard, but when will that divide come down as well? Will I be able to hook up the XBox 720 to my computer monitor, mouse and keyboard as well as to my television and a gamepad? Who knows?

The lines are beginning to blur between the PC and console medium and consoles are more user friendly on many fronts. Consoles are here to stay.

Why is it the console fanboys think he has lost his mind? He is 100% right about the gameplay part as well.

its called an HTPC. It outputs video to your tv. Its a computer so you can take console accessories and use them on the computer. Hardware is already in place, just need the software.

I agree with this article completely. If a company leaves the PC arena...I don't give a rats ass about that companies products anymore, but there are still new contenders in the PC arena bringing in great new games. Innovative games have always hit the PC first, consoles later. Piracy is a BS remark from developers switching, because there are more people who pirate console games than pc games. It's simply that there are now so many people who have both a console and a pc, and because so many pc gamers are stuck to world of whorecraft that the pc gaming market is a little slow. If blizzard and a few other mmorpg's somehow disappeared, you'd see a huge flood of pc gamers buying games more regularly instead of playing the same old gay game day in and day out. Get rid of Eve Online, and you'd have an enormous amount of people demanding a new space simulator game. Take out WoW and you'll have a lot of people demanding more rpg's, or rpg hybrids. I do feel that mmorpg's are currently locking up a decent portion of the market, as they keep playing the same game, and need to justify paying that $15 a month, so they play nonstop to make that $15 worth their while.

ugh...never could get into mmorpg's, which is why I buy between 4 and 6 games a year. I need a well rounded diet of rpg's, fps and rts and space simulators (currently X3: Terran Conflict).

Yeah, don't see it. This guy is all sorts of wrong. It's no surprise that Intel wants more processing intensive tasks for us to want to buy upgrades.

Sony hardware = higher cost with Blu-ray. If they went with standard DVD, they'd be making money on their hardware or at least breaking even. However, the payoff is/will be potentially huge as Blu-ray beat HD-DVD.

Peripherals are crazy expensive on consoles and licensing ensures that no Taiwanese manufacturer comes in at a $20 price point instead of the $50 price point everyone else is at. This could be the same for PC emulators I suppose, so maybe this is a wash.

While our PCs are powerful enough to emulate consoles, the average PC probably isn't and the price and hassle of an upgrade usually isn't worth it over just buying the console.

Devs wouldn't like this model unless the emulators are run with an iron fist by Sony/MS/Nin (forcing the emulator to stay software throttled at a given set of specs), because the fixed hardware target of consoles allows their programming devs costs to come down over time. Compare to the PC sector where there is a constant arms race for bigger/better engines as the hardware evolves. All it will take is one dev releasing a game that takes advantage of "extra processing power" and we are back in the race. And just like now, there would be pressure from gamers demanding games that take advantage of their $1000 SLI setup.

Location, location, location. Consoles are still the realm of big screen tvs, couches, and in-person social gaming. Tekken or Mario party night isn't the same unless it's in your living room, so we'd need a second computer or move one around.

And let's not forget our good friends Intel, Nvidia, and AMD/Ati. Games are one of the largest, if not the largest driving factor for upgrades among home users (and of high-margin products). If all we needed was hardware capable of emulating PS4/X720 for the 4-5 years of a console's lifespan, we wouldn't be upgrading as much. IOW, we we have enough computer to emulate, we wouldn't need more.

Jeez. I suggested this very thing over on Kotaku about a month ago and was lambasted by readers. Everyone claimed that there was no way a PC could do the work that a 360 or PS3 can do. I tried to tell them all that a high end gaming PC is more powerful but that the types of CPUs and instructions run on thos CPU's were the primary differences but that they should be able to be overcome fairly easily.

With the virtualization technologies available in modern CPU's it sure looks like to me that an emulator / Virtual Machine could be created that would "level" the playing field so everyone experienced that same performance that having a dedicated console platform currently offers.

Riiiiiiiight.
Does this guy have any idea how ridiculously hard PS3 emulation would be? Emulating the PPC side of the core wouldn't be unheard of, but emulating the SPE's? Whoooooo, good luck with that. Maybe 10 years out when there is enough processing power floating around to do it inefficiently.....

A developer obviously would not have to actually make games for the PC market in order to benefit from any innovation, either design-wise or technically, that is generated on the part of the industry through PC games. That quote reads like pure bitterness, and is hardly a becoming image for this organization.

While I don't 100% agree with everything Stude said, I do think its valid to point out the economic opportunity the PC platform poses to console makers who are looking for a way to expand their customer base. There's no technological reason, in the right environment, XBox 360 media couldn't be played on a PC. The problems are more licensing, piracy concerns, and perceived strategic need to "own" the platform. Don't see it soon, but some entrepreneurial console 3rd runner just might decide to create a steam-like environment for playing their discs on PC.

Still waiting on my PS9.

I don't think this guy knows what the hell he's talking about. The hardware in a gaming console is DEDICATED TO ITS FUNCTION and the games are written to operate on that specific configuration. Nintendo/MS/Sony would have to write extremely efficient emulators to make CURRENT console hardware emulation run at a reasonable speed on CURRENT PC hardware.

Sure, those console games look like they should run just fine on any current PC and they do if they're PORTED to run on PC but then they become PC GAMES. I don't think the console makers are going to stop producing consoles to make PC GAMES because piracy really isn't a ridiculous excuse because it's super easy. It would also be stupid for them to make an emulator JUST to run games on the PC when it would be more efficient to just make a PC game.

I don't see this happening.

A few decent points there. But there's many more reasons why this would never happen:

a) What operating system does he propose this run on? Why would... say... M$ allow Sony games to be run on the system

b) The big three may not be making any money on hardware, but they make TONS on licensing fees on the software. They make money on EVERY SINGLE DISC made to run on their systems. Publishers and developers have to make the games, market them, manufacture them, distribute them, etc. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony don't have to do any of that for any of the games, but they get a cut on every copy.

c) Hardware... well... there's tons of reasons, but I think "b" is the biggest.

All this guy is doing is hurting the already pained PC gaming community.

This reminds me of that "Phantom" console that had everyone riled up a few years back. One console to play them all!

lol, i love news cycles. first computers are terrible for gaming, piracy is too prevalent and recommended systems are far to incompatible and now this...

the singularity of gaming... what would the big 3 sell? proprietary controllers?

PS GOD BLESS SPELL CHECK!

I don't know how right on this Strude guy is or isn't, but I really like what this guy is saying.

This is pretty out there and I always champion PC gaming.

I remember that they tried this already with the 3DO.

Bleem 2!