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mcvnow.com
X-Box Frenzy Could Bode Poorly for PC Gaming Market
SAN JOSE ? In one moment, everything changed: from what was expected to be the end of Wintel as an empire to what is the symbolic end of Microsoft as a first-party supporter of PC-based gaming.
When Microsoft and its PR machine were briefing the mass media yesterday, AMD was cited, in no uncertain terms, as the maker of the X-Box CPU. Until Bill Gates? speech and his slide that read ?Intel Pentium III? as the hardware?s processor, few knew. Even AMD was surprised, although according to company insiders, its chips were in the X-Box demo unit Microsoft used on-stage.
A small green pamphlet available at Microsoft?s booth at the Game Developers Conference lists AMD as a partner, not Intel, giving credence to industry sources? claims, and those of the AMD staffer, that Microsoft?s vendor switch to Intel was an 11th-hour decision.
The End of PC as Gaming Platform?
The PC is a dying platform for gaming, opined one senior executive at a first-tier American game publisher who attended the X-Box presentation.
While real-time strategy games are ideal for PCs, not consoles, ?part of my team is moving to X-Box,? said Ed Fries, general manager of Microsoft?s games group. However, he noted, ?our flight-sim [business] is not going to move to X-Box.? Historically, flight sims have not fared well on any console.
Because Microsoft?s DirectX sits as a ?thin? layer above the software, X-Box is a move from a ?programmer-driven console to an artist-driven console,? said Seamus Blackley, head of Microsoft?s advance technology group. Anyone who has been a player in PC game publishing can immediately become the same with X-Box, he added.
X-Box will cause people to buy more console games, Gates said, because people will use the system?s 10/100 Ethernet connection to download a trial version of a game to X-Box?s 8GB hard drive before buying it. However, that concept is similar to today?s game-rental procedure, which tends to help good games sell better while causing poor-quality games to sell worse.
Nvidia, until today, had not been engaged away from the PC platform. The Silicon Valley chipmaker, which makes GeForce-branded graphics accelerators, has been working with Microsoft for one year, Nvidia President/CEO Jen-Hsun Huang tells MCV. When asked about the prospect of entering the console space, Huang says, ?We?re a 3D company. We want to be in every device that [consumers] own.? |
