Gaming:Is the PC Dead ?

[Cymric]

There was a recent article about this on Tom's Hardware a few weeks ago. The answer: no, the PC is not dead, because by its modular nature it inherently offers the state-of-the-art in games, plus that it can cope with games of much higher complexity than a game console. I really cannot imagine playing RTS games on those.

[Cymric]

I very much doubt even games on consoles bang the hardware as much as you think they do. The reason: games have grown far beyond the capabilities of hardcore assembly hackers; in other words, ease of programming is a major factor in deciding how to tackle a certain problem. In addition, there is almost no need to spend months upon months trying to optimise routines: any half-decent optimising C/C++ compiler produces code of sufficient quality. There will of course be shortcuts, but from the programmer's point of view, these can just be hidden behind an API. They program the API---supplied by the manufacturer of the console---and the API itself handles the rest. That things are operating much faster than on a PC is of course obvious: the API doesn't need to handle the intricacies of a full multi-tasking environment.