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cambeiu t1_j90ie0t wrote

I think we will see the triple A gaming industry eventually adjust system requirements/performance to conform with he new realities of the market. No point making games for the 4060 as the recommended GPU when most of the market cannot afford that. Also, AI based upscaling might help alleviate things on the hardware requirement front.

In many ways I see parallels between the current component price crisis and the 1970s fuel crisis. As a result of the oil shock back then, big muscle cars gave way to smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles. The focus moved from raw power to efficiency and cost. We saw the rise of the compact and sub-compact cars, which did not exist in the US back in the 50s and 60s.

I think the computer market will go thru the same process now. IGPUs/APUs could become the baseline for gaming moving forward.

I for one refuse to pay $500+ for a discrete GPU and I don't think I am in the minority.

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myne t1_j90tg16 wrote

I'm fairly sure they look at the steam stats when they make a game and make sure it'll run ok on at least the top 70% of the in-use market.

Sure, you have to turn stuff off/down, but it still should play ok.

It's a volume business. They need sales. They need to target the audience that exists.

I'll note the 1060 is finally the #2 card on steam.

A 6 year old mid range card is still way up there in the market. It'll be hard for game designers to not target it.

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stu54 t1_j911jcu wrote

Games sell hardware. A Nvidia partnership game is made to make the most common hardware obsolete, so new hardware can be sold.

The games industry has split into three, AAA games, free to play microtransaction games, and indie games. The industry wants to kill indie games because they don't generate any shareholder returns. They will obliterate Steam with frivolous lawsuits and givaways, and then the creativity that big corporations can't compete with will go away.

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RecipeNo101 t1_j91xnyn wrote

They're already struggling to move hardware. CPU and GPU sales have plummeted. Steam seems far too entrenched to be ousted when people are tired of multiple launchers and all the others are dogshit. I collect every free Epic game, I have hundreds, and I've never given them a cent.

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kenriko t1_j9214pl wrote

I remember when people bitched an moaned about Steam when HL2 was released. It was evil DRM back then. Ha!

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RecipeNo101 t1_j923nfd wrote

Yup, I remember being so annoyed with Counter-Strike 1.6 on Steam. Waiting to download HL2. The platform was a laggy mess. To their credit, they've come a long way since then, and it seems clear enough to me that other launchers don't have the desire or ability to match even a fraction of Steam's features.

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stu54 t1_j91ze3s wrote

Epic games freebies will win in the end. Distributing digital content isn't very expensive, and it undercuts Steam. New indie developers cannot compete with free games. Your time and hard drive space belongs to Epic.

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charlsey2309 t1_j925q2a wrote

Eh I have epic on my PC to collect the free games……..but I buy games on steam

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amoralhedgehog t1_j926zam wrote

I'm not at all confident in that prediction. Steam's current projections suggest Epic's impact on sales units stabilised last year, with sales expected to recover and surpass pre-Epic figures over the next 5 years. The platform has significant stickiness for millenial gamers, who now have dominating consumer power alongside decade-old Steam libraries.

Regarding indie games, the number of indie titles released roughly doubles every 5 years, meanwhile AAA titles have declined over the long term with the exception of a post-covid release backlog. As for "indie devs can't compete with free games"... at least 20% of the most popular indie games on Steam are freemiums...

Suffice to say, there are many features of the market that point toward the resilience of Steam against loss-leading AAA competitors.

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gamaknightgaming t1_j95mqj8 wrote

There are other things to consider. for example, i got cities skylines free on epic, but the bulk of the mods for it are on the steam workshop. Sure it’s possible to get steam mods to work on epic but it’s a pain in the ass and I’m probably just going to buy the game when it’s on sale on steam

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beef-o-lipso t1_j91n3qb wrote

Agreed. I finally upgraded because a few games I wanted to play wouldn't run on mubGTX970. But I note sims like X-Plane 12 and I think MSFS have the 970 as recommended. So it varies.

I have yet to see a game requiring rtx30+.

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Opposite_of_a_Cynic t1_j91xjsf wrote

KSP 2 has a 2060 as minimum and a 3080 as recommended.

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Head-Ad4770 t1_j9256o4 wrote

What the hell??? Why??? I understand the original KSP is now over 10 years old and not being updated anymore, but why such demanding system requirements for the sequel?

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Head-Ad4770 t1_j925kxx wrote

Is it just a crappy excuse to force us to upgrade our hardware, considering A LOT has changed over 10+ years? Corporate greed? Both at the same time?

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GarbageTheClown t1_j932zlp wrote

Yeah, because we all know that the KSP developers also design and sell high end computer hardware.

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Nevermorre t1_j919k61 wrote

Last week I finally chose to upgrade my AMD RX 580 to a RX 6750 XT. I often consider my computer to be somewhat on the good side of mid-tier, and I think that's hard to judge, but its the baseline I go for.

When looking into a new GPU, my main goal was to find a card that is probably going to run better than what my current CPU and RAM may allow, so my GPU will be bottlenecked by my other hardware, however, I didn't feel the need to get top of the line, nor could I afford it, so I set a budget for around $700.

Decided to not use Amazon for my seller and went to Newegg. I narrowed down to my 6750 XT 12GB for $470 - with a $70 off coupon code at checkout to make it $400 - or, 6800 16GB for $600.

I was really stuck between the two because after a lot of comparing and benchmark videos, of course the 6800 was the better performer, but not by a large margin. it was really the debate between the 12 and 16 Gigs of VRAM that I questioned. I did glace through Nivida cards, and saw even the high end GPUs were 12Gigs so I was confused, because 16GB should be a no brainer. I posted on r/PcBuild for advice, which I appreciate the helpful responses, and was starting to lean towards the 6750 when I found a JayzTwoCentz video, specifically about GPU VRAM. It was very insightful and I'm glad I went with the cheaper option.

I'm proud to say I've built this PC and did my best to chose the best parts for my budget, but damn are specs complicated and not overly intuitive for me. Choosing an affordable GPU for what you really need without overspending is probably the most challenging with 5 slightly different models for the same gen card and...ugh, it still makes my head hurt. Luckily my next upgrade will just to get a couple more RAM cards for 32Gigs. When I ran an ingame stress test of Hogwarts Legacy by flying around the map and through the Forbidden Forest, the new GPU handled fairly well and the VRAM was sitting between 7-10gigs while my actual RAM was maxing around 15 of my 16gigs consistantly. I'm not even sure what that fully tells me, but I know games are starting to become more demanding anyway, and RAM for the most part is cheap, so I am fine upgrading to 32, even if I really do not need it.

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sudoku7 t1_j91mvuo wrote

Ya, I think we are likely to see AAA PC Gaming give more way to consoles in that light. The consoles themselves are cheaper and easier to optimize for.

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yhtomitn64 t1_j921d9m wrote

I maxed out at paying 200 bucks for a used 1070! I did also spend 3k on a fatbike and new frame/fork for my other mtb so I guess shifting priorities. Zwift looks sweet on 1070 though!

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pain_in_the_dupa t1_j92kr7i wrote

Oh hell. I hope you’re wrong, because I don’t want to be playing the game equivalent of a K-car with an 85mph mandatory max speedometer.

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slowslownotbad t1_j917woz wrote

If Apple can’t turn this plus VR into a successful foray into gaming, then they really don’t want it.

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Overall-Business-624 t1_j90teo7 wrote

I think they will just push everyone to game streaming from the cloud. maybe when valve gets bored with the steam deck.

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GarbageTheClown t1_j933dik wrote

It doesn't work, there are too many requirements for it to work better than just downloading the games.

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cambeiu t1_j90ug38 wrote

Eventually, but we are still many years away from that. Maybe once 5G becomes ubiquitous globally and the datacenters more geographically distributed this will be the case. But until then, most games will need to be run locally.

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kslusherplantman t1_j923l8p wrote

And yet the compact VW Beetle did exist… are you saying the US didn’t make compact cars? They def were being made at the time and were being sold in the US

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ketaminekid t1_j95qsxj wrote

It’s generally accepted that the Japanese makers made the concept popular in the US

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