Next-gen console wars? Eh?

Next-gen console wars? Eh?

OPINION

The next-gen avalanche is about to descend upon us. True, Microsoft has had their offering, the Xbox 360, out since the fall of last year. But when Sony and Nintendo will have their machines on the market later this year, things are sure to heat up. So wh

When Sony entered the market with the original Playstation in 1994, it soon became clear that the days that PC gaming was the uncontested King of Gaming, were over. Up until then Nintendo, Sega, 3DO and a handful of other companies had not posed a real threat to PC gaming. Most consoles, Nintendo's in particular, were considered too kiddy for serious gamers. Many of us wanted to play cool stuff like Doom, Syndicate and Wing Commander while our little kid sisters would fool around with Mario.

Sony, realising that Nintendo owned the market for the youngsters, targeted the young adults and changed the gaming scene forever as a result. Before then, grownup gamers were considered geeks. These days it is pretty hip to be a gamer and the games industry is now officially 'bigger money' than the movie industry. But that could be a whole other editorial. Right now, I want to look at the future of our favourite gaming machine.

There is no one marketing the PC as a gaming platform. Companies like AlienWare (Dell) are trying but in essence, there is no Sony, Nintendo or even Microsoft who are working to create awareness for the PC platform like currently is being done by console makers for their machines. Microsoft has announced plans to do this but until they ramp up, the publishers are pretty much on their own.

The thing the PC has going for it, is its location in the house: On a desk. I'm not kidding. Console gamers are lazy *beep* gamers who like to sit behind the TV on a comfy couch. That comfy couch feeling will simply disappear when you have to put a keyboard in your lap and a mousepad beside you control your game. Console gamers probably don't feel any need for either of those but the result is that Strategy games and First Person Shooters just "don't have it" when played on consoles. Developers have tried to incorporate unnatural features like Auto Aim to deal with the controller's shortcomings which only serves to blunt the gaming experience.

Before a next-gen console becomes available, gamers are dazzled by 'in-game' movies and screenshots that show off the machine's awesome power. Interestingly enough these showings regularly lead to rumours and small scandals (The rumour is almost certainly true. One year later we still haven't seen anything more from the game, not even at the recent E3 2006) as the manufacturers do whatever they can to convince you that their system is best. On occasion, the marketing reps were convincing enough to make me doubt my system and that the consoles could finally beat the PC in power and graphics.

And then something happens to firmly re-establish my faith in the system. This time around, it was Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion that showed that a high end PC is as powerful (if not more) as Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Proof of that was laid down by Gamespot's Oblivion Xbox 360 vs PC article. I think we can all agree that Oblivion is a gorgeous looking game on both platforms but a medium to high end PC will give you the same experience as the Xbox, or better. One, two years from now at the most, the average gaming PC will be as powerful as an Xbox 360 while Xbox 360 users will still be stuck with the same hardware for another 3 years or so.

By then, many PCs will have some form of hardware based physics support. PCs that are equipped with a Physics Processing Unit (PPU) will be able to better calculate rag-doll character motions, real-time changes in the environment and alteration of objects. Whether it be a Ageia PhysX card or a Havok FX one remains to be seen but dedicated physics hardware is unstopable and the earliest that this technology 'realistically' becomes available for the consoles, is 2009. That's a long time from now.

Dual Core CPU's will also be standard by then. The gaming industry is still working out how to best utilize Dual Core setups but as technology matures, we'll see PC power increase exponentially. After taking rag-doll and physics processing out of the hands of the CPU by a PPU, we'll see the second core for instance processing the Artificial Intelligence of computer opponents. The possibilities are endless and we're only just starting to explore them.

It is worth noting that most of this comes at a price. You'll have to shell out $300 for a Ageia PPU if you want to buy one right now and a top-notch video card will cost you $400 or above. The average PC gamer will have to spend some $500 a year to keep his machine reasonably up to date. Not cheap, but definitely worth it for gamers who want to game on the very edge of technology.