cleanbluesky said:
Excellent post Needles, I agree completely.
The new playstation will outperform PCs for gaming and in a single unit will cost less than a high-end graphics card and physx card, not to mention the latest Fatal1ty mousemat, CPU fan, mouse, soundcard on top of that.
What we need now is an all inclusive unit - like a 'gaming' card that does everything - and not stupid tiny little increases in power between each next 'top line' card...
Performance unthusiasts might screw their faces up in disgust BUT look at what has happened with console gaming - a guaruntee of compatible and non-rapidly changing hardware has meant that they have managed to squeeze far more out of their hardware than equivalent developers on PC.
If all gaming components were uniqied into one card, and less high-end cards brought out then likely coding would be much better and we wouldn't miss a thing. It would just like avoid PC gaming losing support due to the comparative inexpense of consoles...
I don't see the point of that. The card you're talking about is essentially a games console fitted inside a PC - why not just buy a games console?
There's very little chance of such a card being made, anyway. The card would be huge and the expense farcical, as you'd need to have several processors on the card, plus the memory. Either that or place several specialised processors on one chip, which would require a huge chip and that's very expensive indeed. This is assuming you could use a PCI-E 16x slot for one. If not, it's new motherboard time.
If it happened, many of the companies making PC hardware would go out of business. We would definitely be left with just one graphics company and probably just one major company, the one that makes this card that does every gaming function and which is identical in each PC, plus some business hardware companies. The lack of change in hardware would probably bring down many of those companies, too.
Innovation would slow right down, with a new release every two or three years (which is the whole point of your idea) and no competition.
All this to make a PC an uncompetitive games console. Uncompetitive because games consoles are sold at a loss, which is hardly attractive to PC hardware manufacturers. Uncompetitive because you'd still have more complex hardware issues than with a games console, because this "games console card" will be in a PC, and that will make development more complex.
The "new" Playstation doesn't exist yet and will no doubt be outperformed by PC hardware when it does. If not immediately, then within weeks after it's launched. If it ever is launched.
PCs are not games consoles. I don't see any point in trying to make it so.