Graphics chip maker NVIDIA is the closest thing the PC games market has to a platform holder. It may have its dalliances with consoles - it makes the RSX, the chip which powers the PS3's graphics, for example - but the beating heart of the company is the GeForce series of PC graphics cards, which have been the most popular cards among PC gamers for several years.
Never a company to shy away from controversy, in recent years NVIDIA has been outspoken on everything from PC game piracy to what it sees as the damaging behaviour of PC sellers who use integrated graphics chipsets in their machines. Recently, the firm's favourite target has been Intel - whose chips, it claims, aren't as important as graphics cards in terms of system performance.
Eurogamer caught up with Roy Taylor - the firm's VP of Content Business Development, which basically means he's "head of videogames" - to find out what's in the future for NVIDIA, for the PC market in general, and why we should be holding off on that Quad-Core CPU purchase.
"The Barcelona-based (Spain) indie games publisher JanduSoft and indie games developer Juan-Mod, are today very glad and proud to announce that their 3D arcade action-platformer "Teared", is now available for PC (via Steam) and consoles (PS5, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch) via digital stores." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
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Wow, what a great interview. I wish more interviews can be like this, smart and challenging. Same goes for the dev too, he spoke his mind with very little BS and boasting.
Hopefully they don't skimp on pc versions just to make them run on the consoles.
I'm sure would disagree.
Roy Taylor: A very successful PC game sells 2 to 3 million - well, we have more than enough GeForce users for that too. Crysis has sold over a million copies on PC, despite everything. BioShock sold over a million on PC. Pick any successful PC title you can think of - selling over a million is being done, and will continue to happen. So I wouldn't say that we're leaving people behind. We've sold enough GeForce GPUs to more than justify the return on investment.
Wow, Bioshock? 1 million on pc? that's way more than half what it sold on 360 and it's requirements were pretty high, that's really impressive and they probably didn't count Steam sales since Steam refuses to release data, chip in the fact that Bioshock is one of the best selling games on Steam right now with it's attractive $30 price tag, You'll see that the pc market is just as profitable and sells just as well contrary to popular belief
It is foolish for SOME developers to stay exclusive this gen, you limit your profit margins by being exclusive, that is unless you are under oath or loyalty with financial benefits or raking in serious cash like Blizzard, that's why even console exclusive developers and games like Street Fighter, Burnout, Saint's Row, Devil May Cry are all coming to pc or Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, Red Alert 3 are coming to consoles, it's all about making more money in the long run, with the consoles, you get quick cash and high sale volumes with the downside of steep royalties and development costs whiles with pc you get slower constant sales with upside of cheaper development costs and stronger longterms sales over the years, It's a no brainer
Roy Taylor: My argument, and I've been slightly controversial on this, is that you don't need to go for a super high-end one. You can go out today and buy a GBP 700 or GBP 1000 PC, and that PC will play anything you can throw at it - it doesn't have to have a high-end, quad-core CPU in it. It needs to have a CPU, don't get me wrong, but by putting a more powerful GPU in it and spending a little less money on the CPU, you're going to get what we call a balanced or optimised PC. It doesn't have to be a GBP 3000 PC to play games. Just spend a little but more money on the GPU.