Will games branch off?

geeza · 4 Apr 2006 at 11:55

Do you think games will eventually branch off so developers are making games for Nvidia hardware or ATI hardware?

having read the following article I think it may be a possibility quite soon

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/hardware/atiageiaandnvidia-itsphysics.shtml

Specifically statements like this -

The first major and obvious benefit of this is that current owners of X1800 and X1900 boards will only require a driver update to be able to enjoy the benefits. ATIs own low-level physics API will offer developers the opportunity to program for its GPU directly, skipping Direct3D and OpenGL

Psyk · 4 Apr 2006 at 12:05

I think maybe at first physics hardware will be split between different vendors, much like the graphics cards were at first. But I think such physics effects either won't affect gameplay (so it's playable if you don't have the right hardware) or will also work in software on the CPU. After a while a standard will emerge that will be useable by everyone (whether that's something the GPU does or with a seperate PPU).

Matthew-1985 · 4 Apr 2006 at 16:17

No. Cutting out 50% of the market would be a stupid thing to do.

fullfat · 4 Apr 2006 at 16:38

Matthew-1985 said:
No. Cutting out 50% of the market would be a stupid thing to do.

exactly, most games houses have to struggle against the likes of EA so they cant just not make games for as many prospective clients as possible, that would be business suicide to me. and in the same vein, doing 2 seperate releases for each side of hardware would also take more time and money invested.

geeza · 4 Apr 2006 at 16:54

fullfat said:
exactly, most games houses have to struggle against the likes of EA so they cant just not make games for as many prospective clients as possible, that would be business suicide to me. and in the same vein, doing 2 seperate releases for each side of hardware would also take more time and money invested.

however if they spent all their time creating a killer game for ATI X range that is twice as good as any current game I would pay double the price for it. Same if I had an Nvidia card

fullfat · 4 Apr 2006 at 17:02

its still a very niche market though, by that i mean the true enthusiast sector. a lot more people would just buy a console instead of investing a lot of cash or having the know how to use a high end PC.
and this topic isnt applicable with consoles as its all universal.