I'm waiting for this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlIWJlz6-Eg
Finally a game designed for PCs with no worry about how crappy console hardware is going to run it.

Hadn't realised before, but from the video title it looks like they're using the Crysis 3 engine too.

Some games like Counterstrike Global Offensive are designed around M&K, but it gets released on PS3 with no support for these controls, UT3 had M&K on PS3 and people still play it I think, so I really don't see the point in nannying around.

Some of the emulated controllers are poor but not all, I'm a gamepad player myself, I don't find M&K comefortable, but it's silly limiting the functionality of a system.

Gee that sure was a nice trailer... full of mostly pre-rendered shit.

Pretty sure that would run fine on a console.

totally agree with the op, getting sick of looking for increase requirments

I also think the originals still look really nice. Nicer than the remakes in some areas, actually.

I have a 3 yr old PC with an $80 graphics card. Haven't had to upgrade once and I can still play modern titles at better res than any console. So I'm not really buying the frequent upgrade argument.

$80 graphics card?

What card?

The objective of graphics advancement isn't to create better, more realistic video games.

Why on earth would you want an ultra-realistic video game in the first place? ......games are an escape after all.

It is I suppose to create a working version of the matrix.

Or to get crysis running on a cheap tablet....

I remember playing Warcraft II and wondering if better graphics could ever be done. I could not picture in my mind at the time what better graphics would look like. It seems funny now.

It wasn't any different before 1998 though. I mean things like Wing Commander I, for example, were only playable at the most modern hardware available at the time. Or Quake. You needed to buy a CD-ROM eventually to keep up to date [Rebel Assault and onward], switch from EGA to VGA, from on board 8-bit sound to sound cards, etc. etc.

Exception were only, really the not as easily upgradeable systems - Commodore / Amiga / Atari and all the consoles before that; the PC always was an update race.

I really do think there is a point where they look too real. The "uncanny valley" as some people say.

Yes, and the industry also used to care about optimization. I think that a lot of the games out there today, just ask for those requirements so they don't have to spend time optimizing things. Some cases are more egregious than others, but I'm reminded of that game, where they rendered water over the entire map with no regard for whether or not it was visible, which just killed performance. That would never have happened during the '90s because they had to care about performance.

True, and one does have to wonder why requirements have gone up so considerably when the games are all designed to run on the same hardware they did 7 years ago.

That said, a lot of ports look amazingly better than their console equivalents now-a-days. They certainly started throwing in the eye candy for PC users once PC ports became more profitable, optimized or not.

I agree.
I mean I've bought Far Cry 3 just know and it basically runs fine, if my PC doesn't crash. ^^ By the way it's pretty great even though I'm just starting.
It might be for me the game that replaces 3D shooter saying.. "I wish this was Crysis 1" (it even runs better than Crysis)

Man that Far Cry 3.. It's.. So green after that second one that I played, which was, so brown. "why are you burning everything it just makes everything browner"

What's the point with graphics? Wouldn't it just be easier to make a good story than some horrendous monster game engine which looks neat but it still isn't any fun to play.

I mean, who the fuck enjoys Graphics if the other aspects of the game is shit.

Since budget has been mentioned by the original poster and others...

I've wondered if a shift in the industry towards releasing resources such as models and textures to the public domain after some time could help to moderate game budgets. As it stands, each developer must "reinvent the wheel" for each game, spending large amounts of money to develop graphical assets from scratch, right? And assets simply "go to waste" after use in a single game (or sometimes series) and are not used again? Having a large pool of existing assets might cut development time and budget while shifting the focus to creating a unique visual style, further refining of the models and textures (eventually enriching the community pool), creating additional clothing/armor/whatever, etc.

The concept is similar to resource sharing in some mod communities. Modders who aren't obsessed with "permissions" sometimes release their work as "modding resources". For example, a dress model resource can be retextured by other modders to produce dresses in a variety of different colors and patterns, or the base model can tweaked by other modders to produce similar dresses with different sleeves or other parts. An object like a stove released as a resource can enrich the atmosphere of a plethora of mods.

Perhaps other game assets such as rulesets could be released in this fashion as well, in a manner similar to the Open Game License. Perhaps even certain code; think Linux and open source.

I'm not sure how this would interact with copyright and intellectual property. Perhaps mundane objects such as dresses, stoves, etc could be shared while objects like unique armors or monsters or other IP-specific items could be withheld from public release, but then what is the criteria that determines what is specific to an IP (as opposed to "just another dress" or "just another dragon")? It would have to be self-determined, I suppose; after all, such a system would be a voluntary sharing of resources in the first place.

Anyway, I haven't given it much thought beyond that, but I find the concept interesting, so I thought I'd share it. Feel free to ignore these ramblings, build on them, or tell me how the idea is utterly impossible/impractical/insane. ;-)