PC graphics quickly catching up with consoles, says Nvidia
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Los Angeles (CA) - Ostensibly, the purpose of a major trade show like last week's E3 Expo is to demonstrate the upper crust of consumer technology, to expand the limits in the customer's mind of what's possible. But historically, what's possible for the consumer has also meant what's affordable; and this year, we're not only seeing the price of enthusiast tier PCs rising to unexplored levels with the inclusion of technologies like Nvidia's quad-SLI, but the price of top-tier gaming console prices rising as well - and Nvidia isn't absent from that market, either.
Nvidia's Derek Perez diagrams the evolution of comparable gaming platforms.
So as we spoke last Friday with Nvidia's public relations director, Derek Perez, what was mainly on our minds was, how long can we expect to see the price of enthusiast-level graphics hardware rising at a greater rate than that of general inflation? As this year's enthusiast-tier product line evolves into next year's mainstream product line, the pattern for the price decline can go either two ways: It can decline at the same rate next year as it does this year, meaning mainstream consumers will pay more; or it can fall at a more precipitous rate than before, meaning Nvidia has to sell more to recoup its investments. Either pattern is possible, but which one can we expect? We spoke to Perez Friday morning at the Nvidia booth at E3. We began our chat with the general rumor that's been going around, that PC gaming is dying.
Derek Perez: ...In reality, PC gaming is stronger than it's ever been. PC sales are up, notebook sales are up, and both of those are in direct relationship to gaming...You've got things like HD DVD playback on a notebook, Blu-ray playback on a notebook, so these are the things that are driving the PC industry.
TG Daily: But Nvidia has an interest in consoles as well. So isn't this a win/win situation for you?
DP: It certainly is, but Sony's going to be very successful with PlayStation 3, with or without us. Its platform will last from four to six years. The PC gives us a unique advantage. Open platform, opportunity to upgrade every six months...Certainly we benefit from both, and not to take away from what the consoles do, but the PC is the more prolific platform.
TG Daily: Typically, the market has delineated between what is considered the high-end gaming PC, and the low-end game console, the low-end being the inexpensive alternative to the people who just want to play a couple of casual games; the high-end PC being the more involving platform. But here, this year, I'm seeing a bit of a "fuzzification." I think Sony is partly responsible for that, because we're looking at $500-600 now for the game console, plus if you're really going to get the whole experience, you need to spend the $1200-1600 on the HDTV display, and the $600 on the sound system. So, aren't you starting to see some economic equalization?
DP: You have to look at it not so much short-term but long-term. With [PS3] being a fixed platform, you've got to look at it over a five-year lifespan. Over the life of the product, the price will come down. What people don't really realize is, the number of HDTVs that are sold are astronomical. People already have them.
TG Daily: They have them, but they have 720s. They don't have 1080s.
DP: 720s, 1080s, either one is good enough for a lot of people. If you're fortunate enough to have a 1080, then that's great. But I have 720 at home. That's just fine for me too. So the opportunity over the lifespan of the product [is] that the price will go down, and the console will still be what it is today. Over that lifespan, we'll upgrade hardware, and the PC will continue to evolve every six months. While you may think that this is a leading-edge, high-end game console system today, in six months, we'll be equal to it; and six months afterward, we'll be a step beyond that.
TG Daily: Is that good or bad news for your core customer?
DP: It's been like that for eight years...The selling seasons [affect the PC evolution cycle] - back-to-school, Christmas, and grads-and-Dads. Three distinct lines. For consoles, those are entirely different.
TG Daily: So you're saying Sony only has a six-month window here to call its PS3 a performance system.
DP: In terms of game consoles, it'll be a performance system for five years. In terms of PCs, [not as long].
TG Daily: So they're not competing.
DP: If you ask a lot of people, they have both. They'll play certain games on a PC, certain games on a console.
TG Daily: Well, if you ask Microsoft, the future is in cross-platform gaming, and ubiquity across consoles and PCs. If that's the case, why would I want both? Why wouldn't I want a high-end enthusiast PC?
DP: Well, Microsoft believes that. Let's just look at the facts, right? There are consoles being sold at a record pace, and PCs being sold at a record pace. Games for both are being sold at a record pace. A lot of people go back and forth, but the opportunity that a PC gives you on a game development platform [is to upgrade with the times] because the PC doesn't have that limitation. If you look at an Xbox or PlayStation: blocked CPU, blocked memory. The hard drive's interchangeable, okay. But for graphics, everything's blocked. Microsoft's grand vision is, "I've got a PC division and an OS, and a games division with Xbox," of course, they want it to all come together. It's in their best interests. But do gamers want it? No.
TG Daily: So the executive summary would be, "Two ecosystems, one market."
DP: One giant market, two ecosystems. Yes. It's no different than movies and DVDs. Ecosystem #1 is the theater experience; ecosystem #2 is the home experience. There are some movies you have to go see in a theater no matter what. Anything Star Wars; anything sci-fi. Everything else? Two different experiences depending on what the content is, and what it is you want to see and like. Same with the PC.
TG Daily: Graphic chips are released in 6-month intervals. PC game manufacturers and developers I've talked to here say a good project, that's graphically replete, that takes real time and effort, takes a minimum of three years - often five years. How does Nvidia help them develop for up there, knowing that there's going to be 12 stairstep revisions?
DP: Quad-SLI.
TG Daily: You've got quad-SLI today; you're going to have "octo-SLI" by then, right?
DP: But you see, Quad-SLI will give the game developer a preview of what single GPU components will be like in three years. That's the way to think about it. They think in terms of the minimum, not the maximum. The minimum gives them the largest number of installed base to sell to. So you can prepare for that minimum spec today with things like quad-SLI, so when you get to that graphical minimum in three years, you're prepared for it.
TG Daily: Do you ever have a developer come to you and say, "We have a concept which we believe will require this much graphical throughput..."
DP: John Carmack from id [Software] does it all the time.
TG Daily: And you give him an idea of when that future window is going to be?
DP: We have a technical board - John Carmack's on it, the guys from Epic are on it, and a couple of guys from EA. They tell us what they're shooting for. That snapshot gives you a piece of the market. Based on that, we can help them, and they help us.
