How eSports are saving the PC industry • Hacker News Board

Re: How eSports are saving the PC industry

#71

Post by Zikes » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 6:16 PM UTC

tychuz wrote: post #48

Zikes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given their work with the Steam Link and Steam Controller, I think you have a valid point. Steam Link supports DualShock and XBox controllers, and can stream via network from a PC located elsewhere in the house, making PC a viable competitor in the "couch gaming" space that consoles have thus far dominated.

Erm. When you play Call of Duty on PS/xBox, you're playing with controller against other people with same controllers. When you'll join a PC server with your steam controller, you will have 0 kills and 20 deaths, because everyone is playing with a mouse. That is not fun. Steam controller helps with, I don't know, 10% of the gaming - the single player. And if you're casual and single player is 100% of your games - hel…

There are plenty of games besides Calladoody that are playable on both PC and console, many of them even non-competitive. I'll be especially happy to be playing Fallout 4 at 60+FPS on my PC instead of 30FPS on my PS4, and now I don't have to choose between playing it at my desk or on my couch.

That is very fun.

As for local co-op on PC, it could use some improvement, but there are already more local co-op PC games on Steam than Wii U.

http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Local%20Co-Op/#p=0&tab=...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wii_U_software

Re: How eSports are saving the PC industry

#72

Post by BMFX » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 6:55 PM UTC

duiker101 wrote: post #11

I think that the base concepts of this article are wrong. eSports is not saving PC gaming because the games require the best hardware. In fact competitve games have some of the lowest requirements possible. Riot(League of Legends) goes out of their way all the time to make sure that their game will work even on the most outdated computers and really none of the competitive games have the most astonishing graphic. For…

Not so much, while you are right that the requirements of the games has more than been met in most competitive games. Go try and stream that game in HD using twitch - and now you will see why its saving the PC gaming market. To stream a mid-level detailed game in HD takes a ton of performance, more than you'd think.

Re: How eSports are saving the PC industry

#73

Post by taurath » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

kibwen wrote: post #49

> Defense of the Ancients 2 (1,262,612 daily players) Curiously, "Dota 2" is not actually an abbreviation for "Defense of the Ancients 2", the full name of the game is just "Dota 2". Valve did this because they weren't capable of trademarking the term "Defense of the Ancients", whereas they were eventually able to procure the commercial trademark for "Dota" (which caused a stir in the greater community at the time, w…

I still don't see exactly how they were able to "own" the trademark. They didn't create the mod or the game, they just hired the 3rd developer who was mostly doing balance improvements during his tenure. There was a whole community around DotA that suddenly had to migrate to "official" channels.

Re: How eSports are saving the PC industry

#74

Post by taurath » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 7:19 PM UTC

moistgorilla wrote: post #63

ascagnel_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Halo is a game designed around a ten-foot controller experience. There's a decent amount of sticky aim and banana bullets to compensate for the relative lack of accuracy in thumbsticks, and the aim reticle is 1/3 of the way up the screen, instead of the dead center like you'd expect in a PC FPS.

> Not really. Halo is a game designed around a ten-foot controller experience. There's a decent amount of sticky aim and banana bullets to compensate for the relative lack of accuracy in thumbsticks Most of your arguments here are based on the fact that halo is only released on console. It's obvious then that it would have these console shooter features. If it were released on PC it obviously would not have aim assis…

> Most of your arguments here are based on the fact that halo is only released on console. It's obvious then that it would have these console shooter features. If it were released on PC it obviously would not have aim assist.

Its a much much bigger deal than you think. Not only is player camera movement effected but the entire flow of the game - all the weapons, the chokepoints, areas to balance all become REALLY different when you change the targeted control scheme. Go into games like Titanfall and CoD on a console and then try them on PC - PC players are MUCH more aggressive and use the map and weapons quite differently because their control scheme allows it, while on console people are much more likely to be slower and methodical in their play.

Re: How eSports are saving the PC industry

#75

Post by Tiquor » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

PC doesn't need saving. ESports has the penetration it does because of a saturation of hardware in the market and slower upgrade cycles. ESports is benefiting more from the PC market than vice versa.

Re: How eSports are saving the PC industry

#76

Post by Zikes » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 8:19 PM UTC

jstelly wrote: post #70

tychuz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm. When you play Call of Duty on PS/xBox, you're playing with controller against other people with same controllers. When you'll join a PC server with your steam controller, you will have 0 kills and 20 deaths, because everyone is playing with a mouse. That is not fun. Steam controller helps with, I don't know, 10% of the gaming - the single player. And if you're casual and single player is 100% of your games - hel…

There is a lot of user customization possible with the steam controller though. e.g. This guy is trying out layering inertial control on top of the touchpad for aiming. Generally I do prefer using a mouse to aim instead of a controller for first person games, but I will try this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKuO9M0WuMg&feature=youtu.be (disclaimer - I work at Valve but not on the steam controller so this tech…

For all the innovations in the hardware, it was the software that really blew me away. The amount of customization available is staggering, along with the ability to share profiles online and see which ones are the most popular for a given game.

If any of the popular game consoles were to implement something similar for their own controllers, it would be considered a "killer feature".

Re: How eSports are saving the PC industry

#77

Post by huac » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 10:57 PM UTC

rasz_pl wrote: post #66

huac wrote: post #8

"H&F: Do you see the PC gaming market being eclipsed by mobile or console any time soon? JG: I think mobile has it since the install base is massive and people have a lot of spare time sitting around where they have their phone right with them. Mobile has a fantastic growth opportunity."

You missed the part about keyboard and mouse being essential for any kind of precise control

That hasn't stopped console games in the past, why should it matter for mobile?

(all console games rely heavily on 'aim-assist')

Re: How eSports are saving the PC industry

#78

Post by Joof » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 11:23 PM UTC

duiker101 wrote: post #11

I think that the base concepts of this article are wrong. eSports is not saving PC gaming because the games require the best hardware. In fact competitve games have some of the lowest requirements possible. Riot(League of Legends) goes out of their way all the time to make sure that their game will work even on the most outdated computers and really none of the competitive games have the most astonishing graphic. For…

I disagree. eSports provides a low price entry point into the platform and greatly expands the PC base.

The hardware sales come with the culture of PC gaming along with what you said, but the people become PC gamers first and hardware buyers second.

Re: How eSports are saving the PC industry

#79

Post by tsotha » Mon, Oct 26, 2015, 11:25 PM UTC

comrh wrote: post #53

yongelee wrote: post #5

should be titled: how STEAM is saving the PC industry.

Steam and the indie game community. No longer do players have to pay $50 to MAYBE get a playable game, they can pay $10 and get just as much game play from an indie dev.

I agree with this. Steam has hundreds of titles that are worth the $5 or $7 they charge. You could never bring a title like that to a console without jacking up the price.

Lately people in my social circle have been getting together on a weekend afternoon and playing a cheap game. Usually they don't have much depth, but if I get four or five hours of play out of a game that cost $4 I'm happy.

Re: How eSports are saving the PC industry

#80

Post by Majestic121 » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 8:25 AM UTC

moistgorilla wrote: post #58

Majestic121 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not be so sure about that. Sure, there is a real comfort to work when you have big screens and a mouse/keyboard, but you don't actually need a PC for that, a tablet is enough. Right now, PC are still way cheaper and the difference in power is still sensible, but I think this will change very quickly. Of course, this is true for basic office work : if you need power, as a dev/graphist/whatever, a PC will still…

> Sure, there is a real comfort to work when you have big screens and a mouse/keyboard, but you don't actually need a PC for that, a tablet is enough. I can hardly get work done on my laptop let alone a tablet.

I think I was unclear about what I meant.

I meant you don't really need the power of a PC to work with a big screen : a tablet has/will have enough power to handle it, all you need is a dock for your tablet and and a cable between the big screen and the tablet. Same goes with keyboard.

The upside of a tablet is that while you can dock it and have basically the same comfort you have with a regular PC (minus raw power), you can also unplug it and use it pretty much anywhere.