Mark Rein says consoles limit gaming technology on PCs

Ouch. Biggest news in the techies’ Utopia is Epic Games‘ Mark Rein expounding his predictions that technology on PCs would be throttled, after a showcase of Unreal Engine 3 titles on consoles haven’t even come close to pushing the DirectX 10 envelope.

After PC gaming (at least in the North American side) had drifted off to a steady decline, game companies have steered their focus into development for the next-generation platforms, such as the Xenon-powered Xbox 360 and the CELL-powered PlayStation 3. But with their physical limitations, consoles can only power so much in a game before plateauing at a certain performance level.

Epic Games’ vice president Mark Rein told CVG that the game industry has to “dumb the games down for the consoles,” so it’s highly unlikely that gamers on PC will see anything pushing the graphical or technological envelope in the near future. In fact, Rein thinks that it most likely that no game would even tap DirectX 10 until the next iteration of consoles.

While Banzai Runners the world over could be “facepalming” in unison, this doesn’t present more of a threat to “geeked up” gamers than to, say FutureMark or NVIDIA, whose businesses has been at the brunt of graphical technology advancement since the late 1990s. Sneaking around the Web’s most reputable tech forums, we’ve found that majority of the reactions aren’t even concerned with Rein’s statements.

It is true that the opinion is worrisome to an extent (essentially, while unproven, it is potentially viable), but it appears that more concern has been emphasized toward creativity, variety and (gasp!) quality games for the PC, rather than always push the frontlines of graphics with first-person shooters, dungeon crawlers or real-time strategy games. Is a revolution at hand? If so, this blogger wants X-COM back (please?).

And as for PC gaming technology being throttled, however, some people believe that Germany, banded together with computer companies worldwide, may have something different to say altogether.

Via CVG

Ouch. Biggest news in the techies’ Utopia is Epic Games‘ Mark Rein expounding his predictions that technology on PCs would be throttled, after a showcase of Unreal Engine 3 titles on consoles haven’t even come close to pushing the DirectX 10 envelope.

After PC gaming (at least in the North American side) had drifted off to a steady decline, game companies have steered their focus into development for the next-generation platforms, such as the Xenon-powered Xbox 360 and the CELL-powered PlayStation 3. But with their physical limitations, consoles can only power so much in a game before plateauing at a certain performance level.

Epic Games’ vice president Mark Rein told CVG that the game industry has to “dumb the games down for the consoles,” so it’s highly unlikely that gamers on PC will see anything pushing the graphical or technological envelope in the near future. In fact, Rein thinks that it most likely that no game would even tap DirectX 10 until the next iteration of consoles.

While Banzai Runners the world over could be “facepalming” in unison, this doesn’t present more of a threat to “geeked up” gamers than to, say FutureMark or NVIDIA, whose businesses has been at the brunt of graphical technology advancement since the late 1990s. Sneaking around the Web’s most reputable tech forums, we’ve found that majority of the reactions aren’t even concerned with Rein’s statements.

It is true that the opinion is worrisome to an extent (essentially, while unproven, it is potentially viable), but it appears that more concern has been emphasized toward creativity, variety and (gasp!) quality games for the PC, rather than always push the frontlines of graphics with first-person shooters, dungeon crawlers or real-time strategy games. Is a revolution at hand? If so, this blogger wants X-COM back (please?).

And as for PC gaming technology being throttled, however, some people believe that Germany, banded together with computer companies worldwide, may have something different to say altogether.

Via CVG