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A paradox for game developers, miners/crypto and graphics cards

subbytna

subbytna

subbytna

Soldato
Joined
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I listened to a tech podcast whilst I was working and he mentioned a plausible outcome for mining and game developers. Here is the scenario...

People have a 960 card...just using a 960 for example, it's a lower mid range card. They are happy with it but modern games are starting to tax it a lot more. They want to play GAME X which has just came out and even the min specs for GAME X has a GTX970 as the lowest card you can use for acceptable gaming. So you want to go upgrade that 960 card but find, due to miners and crypto, that you can't afford to upgrade as the price of cards has gone up too much. You therefore don't buy GAME X and just make do with what you have.

Now the developers have lost out on a sale and this scenario then becomes more and more frequent with people not able to afford to upgrade. Will the developers then look to put pressure on manufacturers to do something? It's something that I can foresee as being very plausible in future.

Gamers can't afford to upgrade cards so do developers stagnate games and don't push graphics boundaries and stay the same levels of eye candy? Or do developers keep going with high spec games and lose out on loads of sales due to people not having the hardware to play the games, possibly struggling then to be a viable business if they can't get the sales?

Thoughts?
 
970's are cheap and plentiful
So are 980ti's for that matter, so really the only people being affected by the current prices are people who will only buy new no matter what and feel they need 1080ti level performance
 
I suspect in that scenario they just wouldn't make games for the PC which is a shame because it started to see a decent resurgence and people were just starting to migrate from consoles to PC gaming as well but I suspect prices of late will stall that.
 
Surely they'd just have to focus on gameplay or storyline reducing graphics. It's not as though they'd forgo money to make a point.

Most of the best games don't have amazing graphics as their selling point.
 
andybird123 said:
970's are cheap and plentiful
So are 980ti's for that matter, so really the only people being affected by the current prices are people who will only buy new no matter what and feel they need 1080ti level performance
Click to expand...

It's a theoretical scenario. GPU you have now falls below min spec, you go to PC WORLD and see the GPU prices and think **** that, you can't afford higher spec GPU, so you just leave it. Do developers stall game progression, or fall by the wayside?

Gamers like us are around 5% of the entire gaming market so we live and view computing through a bubble. 95% of gamers don't have the knowledge we do. Those people probably wouldn't buy second hand and would only buy new, given how often they would be upgrading their GPU.
 
Most games now are compiled for PS4 and Xbox as well as pc. Only real gaming issues are 60+ FPS at 1440p and 4k.

If you really want to play the game, you can run at 1080p and let the monitor upscale. I can't think of any games not playable @ 1080p even with older hardware. We're a long way from having this problem.

Some may moan or protest if the image isn't pixel perfect and totally fluid, but for anyone who's played older games, image perfection does not make or break a game.
 
Rroff said:
I suspect in that scenario they just wouldn't make games for the PC which is a shame because it started to see a decent resurgence and people were just starting to migrate from consoles to PC gaming as well but I suspect prices of late will stall that.
Click to expand...


This, they either wont release PC games or will look at way of making the game run at lower requirements.

Nothing developers can do to stop miners!
 
Something somewhere is going to give that much is sure, the costs ATM are a complete farce. Think about what else you could buy for £900!
 
Before starting out the developers will analyse what kind of GPUs are currently in people's systems in order to maximise potential sales. It's useless making a game if your metrics show that only 25% of the market can potentially buy your game in the first place (unless that percentage would generate suitable revenue for your needs, or you're Crytek and decide to make a game no one can run anyway only to later cry (pun intended) about poor sales down the line).

Since lots of games are cross platform I guess they'd factor in all console owners via an "equivalent PC gpu power" metric. Since console gaming seems to outstrip PC gaming I'd imagine that once the average GPU power in a PC falls too far below average console power developers will make a decision on whether they want to target the PC gaming part of the market.

Until consoles are vastly more powerful than the "average" gamer's GPU power I don't think this'll be a problem.
 
x-st said:
What sort of prices do you regard as cheap for those cards? 980ti's go for around (and above) £350 on ebay...which seem expensive for a used card of their pedigree?
Click to expand...

Cards frequently go for well below what some people have set as their "buy it now", i got a pair of 980ti's for £550 when all the buy it nows were at £350 each.
 
andybird123 said:
Cards frequently go for well below what some people have set as their "buy it now", i got a pair of 980ti's for £550 when all the buy it nows were at £350 each.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't be happy paying £275 for a 2nd hand GPU. That's pretty much my budget (£300-£350) for a new GPU. And the unknown nature of 2nd hand GPUs makes the risks a lot... riskier :p

However right now the cards you can get for £450 atm aren't even an upgrade (!!). Because before mining they were <£200 cards, and that was more appropriate for the class of performance they offer.

I think that spells out how bizarro this current situation is, that a 580 can be sold for £450.
 
But thats your choice right now for 1070 level performance, buy a new card for (cherry picked most expensive price like yours) £600, or 2nd hand with 180 days warranty for £275ish... or buy a console and whinge about it incessantly for days on end.
 
I picked the 580 as it's the most expensive card that still isn't an upgrade for a 290/390 owner. Someone who could have bought his current card when new for <£250, and now finds that a new £450 card isn't an upgrade...

e: I think I understand what you're getting at with that cherry picking comment.

You'll find that the only 580 in stock are the £450 ones. At least when I checked.

e: They've got some £380 ones in now. They didn't yesterday. I don't check daily :p
 
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