Game hardware requirements in a scarce hardware environment…

Far as long as I’ve been gaming (decades), the brand new games pushed PCs to their limits… fairly comfortable in the knowledge that advancement in hardware would pretty quickly catch up to the game’s requirements.

But the situation has changed. The cost for cutting edge hardware is rapidly approaching ludicrous. And it appears it will be this way for the foreseeable future.

So a game that’s targeting a release in the next year or two, are these developers anticipating hardware that’s on a curve that most people won’t reach? Or are they dialing things back?

Anyone with first hand knowledge?

We'll see I'm sure when new AAA games flop and the WSJ writes "Gen Z is killing videogames."

Has this really been the case for a while now? Since the PS3/360 era I thought AAA devs tended to develop games to run on that generation of console rather than cutting edge PC components.

Some games certainly used to have SETTINGS that were meant to push future PC's but were still playable on low end hardware. Before Ray tracing there was PhysX as well.

Today it is very similar where there is basically always a preset that works on entry level 8gb GPU's and can hit 60fps at lower resolutions. But with the increasing power of PC's in general we now have access to thousands of 3D games even on entry level systems like a 3050 or 5050. Most Esports titles and popular free to play games typically target lower end hardware where you can get very high fps even with the cheapest of new hardware.

Now for future games. For the most part, the games that target something like a 5090 are Nvidia sponsored games with path tracing toggles. Now DLSS5. But these are always able to toggle off. Even the games that have forced raytracing are very playable on something like a 3050 6gb though, assuming low resolutions and low settings. I would consider the 3050 6gb very low end by todays standards. DLSS is also great for gaining FPS at the cost of some visual fidelity.

Yeah consoles pretty much dictate how pc requirements look like in AAA games. Of course on pc side higher end features exist like path tracing that require more from the hardware.

Crysis was the last game to really push hardware in a meaningful way, and they bet on CPUs getting faster, not more cores and more powerful GPUs.

Consoles have been holding the PC back ever since. It's not that devs couldn't make games that would push the limits of current hardware, it's that the guaranteed money is in the console market, so they tend to release there first.

Were talking literally 20 years since a game came out as preposterously ahead of its time as Crysis. So for hardware, if you have a recent gen higher tier card, you'll be good for a while.

I'm sitting on a 4080 super and I'm confident I'll be able to play the latest and greatest for the next few years.

It's true, the crossover between console and PC specs can be pretty frustrating, especially when trying to keep up with the latest games. Those high-end features really push the limits on what hardware you need.

What some people are saying about games being designed for consoles limiting pc requirements is partially true, but omits a important consideration: Optimizing for PC's is significantly harder than for consoles, so in recent years many/most AAA games have just stopped doing it, relying on far more powerful PC hardware to make up for garbage optimization. DLSS and similar technologies only made that more prevalent. Why spend development dollars on optimizing when you can just count on $2000 PC's and framegen/upscaling tech instead? Except now that $2000 PC costs $5000, and the best framegen/upscaling performance also relies on components that have doubled or tripled in cost.

In the next 1-5 years for AAA games we're going to see a combination of devs abandoning PC because it costs too much to optimize, releasing unoptimized garbage that won't run well on any <$2000-3000 PC and will deservedly get terrible player reviews (making them less likely to release on PC in the future), or a very small number going back to optimizing rather than relying on the crutches of the past 5-10 years.

Yup, but it should run on a PC with comparable specs, you just might not be able to run it on highest settings. Ofc, with bad ports you never know tho.

I'm pretty sure the baseline has always been consoles. If your PC is currently a lot weaker than consoles you might struggle with games that aren't cross-gen.

Either way I wouldn't worry too much. Currently you can play on a 10 year old PC in brand new games and have a fairly playable experience. Upscalers have added some insane longevity to hardware.

Sure, but future of next gen consoles look grim or at least their sales. PS6 would cost $1200 minimum with planed spec, so sales would be terrible and thus devs would need to keep making also for current gen for years to come to have game sales.

That's a lot of dooming and exaggerating 😂

If they have any sense, developers will implement their games so that they will take advantage of high end hardware if present, but will run well and consistent with the designer's artistic vision on hardware that people actually own today.