Games in their current form are console and PC based, but later this year both of these platforms may be ‘redefined’ as the next generation of consoles become even more PC like. After all, as Valve founder Gabe Newell stated in his D.I.C.E. Summit keynote presentation in Vegas recently, gaming is just a “distributed application, nothing special.” Valve - market leaders in digital distribution of games (est. 50-70% share), are hardware independent but firmly believe in pushing intelligence, “to the end of the network - it makes total sense,” said Newell, adding “even if you wanted a thin client, video is the wrong model.” Which means game engines on some sort of processor be it PC or console - in your personal space.
The market is split with regard to innovation for graphics performance between:
revs in the base hardware - (the next generation of consoles have seemed long in coming)
games: Crysis 3 looks remarkable but the engine and console are the same as earlier games
and finally engine innovation itself
It is of no surprise that gaming companies are regularly being forced to adapt their gaming engines to an increasingly demanding and tech savy audience. Epic’s Unreal Engine is one such gaming company that has risen to the challenge, with its new engine, ‘Unreal 4’, expecting to stun gamers and developers alike with its remarkable capability as a tool to convey unprecedented lifelike graphics, while still maintaining flexibility for PC’s with less modern specs.