PC gaming hardware market breaches $30 billion for the first time

[JamesD]

PC gaming hardware market breaches $30 billion for the first time
http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-gaming-hardware-market-breaches-30-billion-for-the-first-time/

"Analysts and market research firms have said on numerous occasions over the past several years that the PC market is in trouble, that sales and shipments are down as consumers avoid upgrading for one reason or another. But lest anyone think that PCs aren't not long for this world, the PC gaming hardware market is booming.
..."

[Tanooki]

Analysts when it comes to gaming I've learned one thing is a constant. Unless it's so obvious as such statements like 'the sky is blue' or 'you need food to live' they're morons, especially that Pachter tool that media gaming sites like to roll out as he's damn near never right. He's so bad you can almost use him as an opposites day figure head. He says something will choke, it'll thrive.

 

it's not surprising at all gaming on the PC is breaking to new heights. I can think of a solid set of reasons too.

 

- Sony/MS this generation colluded with third parties to design a console so similar they could easily convert (port) games between them.

- Due to this those consoles basically are very PC like, they're basically closed computers, an ultimate form of DRM in a way.

- And since they're so similar the non-exclusive to format(1st/2nd party games) also end up coming to the PC

- The PC if you have a system made in the last couple years can meet or exceed the PS4/One systems as they stand now.

- Then you finally have both GOG and STEAM. They run sales, quarterly/seasonal, manufacturers, themed, or for the hell of it sales that do anything from 25-75%+ off...console guys won't do this, ever on the mid/higher end.

 

Throw that all together, it's like what motivation is there to buy Sony or MS other than their locked down franchises because the PC is there, it does it better, plus all the other PC stuff a console won't. So people will pony up for gaming joysticks, gamepads, mice, keyboards, goggles, and a crap load of downloaded or physical software to get the best experience.

[Keatah]

Analysts don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

[negative1]

already discussed here:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260234-pc-gaming-market-worth-36-billion-in-2016/

 

later

-1

[JamesD]

already discussed here:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260234-pc-gaming-market-worth-36-billion-in-2016/

 

later

-1

 

Thar was software, this is hardware

[zzip]

PC gaming hardware market breaches $30 billion for the first time

http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-gaming-hardware-market-breaches-30-billion-for-the-first-time/

 

"Analysts and market research firms have said on numerous occasions over the past several years that the PC market is in trouble, that sales and shipments are down as consumers avoid upgrading for one reason or another. But lest anyone think that PCs aren't not long for this world, the PC gaming hardware market is booming.

..."

 

Gaming is up, but overall PC sales is declining every year for about the last decade. This will lead to less investment, less innovation and higher prices over the long term. ARM now has the kinds of economies of scale that x86 used to have. So I expect PCs will be replaced by some kind of ARM-based PCs in the future (think Raspberry Pi, but more fleshed out/mature) for desktop use and gaming.

[Keatah]

First they will need to get much improved processing power.

[Tanooki]

Well it'll happen, eventually, just takes time. The PC almost seems stuck with the current run of processors for years now. They get the micronization of the make down further, but the speed of the chips seem to be hitting some heat cap almost so they just spread out more cores. I recall back in the 90s and enough of the 00s you could own a PC for like 2 years, and then the CPU was a flaming POS that wouldn't run crap even with a nice pile of ram and a graphics card. I've now got a computer running in the other room that's a q6600 quad core Dell in the back room my wife uses and it has a healthy video card on it (radeon 6XXX series I believe) with 2GB of ram on it. It runs surprisingly well, damned well better than how it came with that crippled awful 32bit Vista (replaced it with 64bit win8.1.) The system can take up to 8GB of RAM too. I've thrown games at that my i5 HD3000 laptop that's put up around here couldn't handle as well and it's like 5 years newer than the Dell. Stuff seems to have leveled off yet blowing up on the video card and RAM side, but when will those start hitting annoying size/heat walls? Perhaps the ARMs or an ARM architecture sequel will hit the levels of potential that intel and amd have pulled off and they will get shoo'd away.

[zzip]

First they will need to get much improved processing power.

 

I think it will get there eventually. It reminds me how the economies of scale caused the x86 processors to eclipse our 68000s in the 80s and 90s in both price and power. Now Arm-type processors have those same forces behind them.

[spacecadet]

I don't think things have "leveled off". It's just that we've gotten to a point where even doubling computing power is not very noticeable anymore. We're just getting diminishing returns in real-world visuals, *despite* the increased horsepower.

 

Look at it this way. The difference between an SD TV image and even a 720P image is really easy to discern. That's with about twice as much resolution.

 

But the difference between a 1080P picture and a 4K picture is something a lot of people can't even see, except at very large sizes or when very close. And that's with *four times* the resolution.

 

That's because you get to a point where your vision just becomes saturated. And that's true of games as well, so game designers look to doing other things to increase visual realism, like adding more lights and shaders. But that's a subtle change, visually - it's not like going from low res to high res, even though it might require a similar amount of added power.

 

VR is going to demand more computing power, especially to do it right, which means wirelessly. That's probably going to require a chip in the headset, and one powerful enough to render high-res VR and cool enough to not require a fan. So I think in terms of gaming hardware, that's where a lot of the development is heading. MS just signed some kind of deal with a bunch of manufacturers to do $300 headsets that don't require any external sensors, so the industry is working on this.

 

There's always the question of when we will actually get photorealistic graphics, but we're just at that point now where the remaining changes/improvements we'd need for that are a bunch of subtle little things that each take a bunch more power to do. It's like we're 95% there, but every remaining percent would take another tripling in computing power. You just can't notice these incremental upgrades anymore, even though the power is there and being put to use.

 

I do also have a gaming desktop that's a few years old now... I can run pretty much anything in high to ultra detail at 1080p and it looks great. But objectively, my CPU (an AMD FX-8320) is only about 1/3 the speed of the fastest CPU's on the market today judging by various benchmarks. So chips *are* getting faster, and actually my PC is on the low end for Oculus Rift/HTC Vive requirements if I wanted one of them. (In fact, the Vive technically requires an FX-8350 or better, though I might squeak by with my overclocking unless it does a model check.)

 

Anyway, my point is computing power *is* increasing, but sitting in front of a 1080p LCD screen and playing games, you might not really notice. You'd notice if you were doing something like video rendering or using VR, though.

[Keatah]

I'm rather satisfied with the visuals we have today. I'd prefer computing power be directed toward, well, computing! Like improving the flight models in simulations, improving accuracy, things like that. It's interesting to note that each AI plane in X-Plane can have its own CPU core.

 

I also wish emulators would go multi-core more than what they are now. But there are technical reasons for not doing so, like coupling and sequential dependencies - one chip's output affecting the other's input. Ehh.. whatever they say..

 

VR is something that's still a good number of years away, if it ever catches on. I'm not a protagonist of the technology, and it reminds me of 3DTV too much. I do however like augmented reality - there's tons of cool things that can be done right off that bat with that.

[JamesD]

I'm rather satisfied with the visuals we have today. I'd prefer computing power be directed toward, well, computing! Like improving the flight models in simulations, improving accuracy, things like that. It's interesting to note that each AI plane in X-Plane can have its own CPU core.

...

What you want are improved physics

[Keatah]

Yes. Things like a more expansive ground-effect model, more detailed P-factor, higher instrument gauge fidelity, more thorough wheel-ground interaction modeling.

[zzip]

I don't think things have "leveled off". It's just that we've gotten to a point where even doubling computing power is not very noticeable anymore. We're just getting diminishing returns in real-world visuals, *despite* the increased horsepower.

 

Look at it this way. The difference between an SD TV image and even a 720P image is really easy to discern. That's with about twice as much resolution.

 

But the difference between a 1080P picture and a 4K picture is something a lot of people can't even see, except at very large sizes or when very close. And that's with *four times* the resolution.

 

That's because you get to a point where your vision just becomes saturated. And that's true of games as well, so game designers look to doing other things to increase visual realism, like adding more lights and shaders. But that's a subtle change, visually - it's not like going from low res to high res, even though it might require a similar amount of added power.

 

VR is going to demand more computing power, especially to do it right, which means wirelessly. That's probably going to require a chip in the headset, and one powerful enough to render high-res VR and cool enough to not require a fan. So I think in terms of gaming hardware, that's where a lot of the development is heading. MS just signed some kind of deal with a bunch of manufacturers to do $300 headsets that don't require any external sensors, so the industry is working on this.

 

There's always the question of when we will actually get photorealistic graphics, but we're just at that point now where the remaining changes/improvements we'd need for that are a bunch of subtle little things that each take a bunch more power to do. It's like we're 95% there, but every remaining percent would take another tripling in computing power. You just can't notice these incremental upgrades anymore, even though the power is there and being put to use.

 

I do also have a gaming desktop that's a few years old now... I can run pretty much anything in high to ultra detail at 1080p and it looks great. But objectively, my CPU (an AMD FX-8320) is only about 1/3 the speed of the fastest CPU's on the market today judging by various benchmarks. So chips *are* getting faster, and actually my PC is on the low end for Oculus Rift/HTC Vive requirements if I wanted one of them. (In fact, the Vive technically requires an FX-8350 or better, though I might squeak by with my overclocking unless it does a model check.)

 

Anyway, my point is computing power *is* increasing, but sitting in front of a 1080p LCD screen and playing games, you might not really notice. You'd notice if you were doing something like video rendering or using VR, though.

 

I think they have levelled off. There's sort of a ceiling for clock rate around 4Ghz or so. Adding more cores starts to have diminishing returns after 4 cores. The only thing they can do is make the cpus more efficient per clock cycle, but they've picked the low hanging fruit there as well. Power in CPUs is definitely not increasing as fast as it used to.

 

And it worries me that these companies are pushing higher and higher visuals faster than these CPU/GPUs can keep up. Our new game systems and PCs graphics will look prettier under the magnifying glass. But to push those graphics, they'll have the same or less power left for the game as before. PS4 Pro is a good example of this. It wants to be a 4K gaming system, but it only has 2.3x the GPU power of the regular PS4. That means sacrifices will have to be made somewhere.