I think 2005. was the year when it all went downhill for pc centric game development. We have better resolutions and frame rate, but true big pc titles like Half-life once was (for example) are not happening anymore.
We used to get Doom 3, Far Cry and Half-life 2 in the same year. We used to have AAA RTS titles like C&C and Warcraft (ok, that's another story).
I know what happened with bugdets and team sizes skyrocketing, but is there anything that can be done? Should Intel, Nvidia and AMD start financing or forming game development studios directly? Would it push their business forward by making exclusive games that would be plain impossible elsewhere? Does that even make sense (to me it does)? Nvidia being that huge, buying ARM for billions, what would forming a few teams be for them?
I know there are a lot of people who think that the answer is in the indie space, but I don't think that is true at all. Back in the day we had small teams, but those were industry's best teams with biggest budgets possible working full steam on PC platform. Indie teams of today can't replicate that, they are too small, too financially and manpower limited. We have indies trying to replicate something that small teams did decades ago. So, for me - indies are not the answer.
Game design would change naturally with pc focused titles, of course. Shooters made around m/k insted of a controller would make sense again. I can't ask for that now when everything has to work on a gamepad too. Is there even enough audience who think this is a problem in the first place?
Is there an answer and what could accelerate pc centric development again? Could ANYTHING like that work in today's industry at all?
We used to get Doom 3, Far Cry and Half-life 2 in the same year. We used to have AAA RTS titles like C&C and Warcraft (ok, that's another story).
I know what happened with bugdets and team sizes skyrocketing, but is there anything that can be done? Should Intel, Nvidia and AMD start financing or forming game development studios directly? Would it push their business forward by making exclusive games that would be plain impossible elsewhere? Does that even make sense (to me it does)? Nvidia being that huge, buying ARM for billions, what would forming a few teams be for them?
I know there are a lot of people who think that the answer is in the indie space, but I don't think that is true at all. Back in the day we had small teams, but those were industry's best teams with biggest budgets possible working full steam on PC platform. Indie teams of today can't replicate that, they are too small, too financially and manpower limited. We have indies trying to replicate something that small teams did decades ago. So, for me - indies are not the answer.
Game design would change naturally with pc focused titles, of course. Shooters made around m/k insted of a controller would make sense again. I can't ask for that now when everything has to work on a gamepad too. Is there even enough audience who think this is a problem in the first place?
Is there an answer and what could accelerate pc centric development again? Could ANYTHING like that work in today's industry at all?
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