The Consolization of PCs

Hi fellas,

There's one thing I have just been wondering for a long time and never thought about posting it before now. Why don't PC games play like console games. Hear me out. While consoles are now going towards the "install game to HDD" method, I've always been wondering why PC games don't play off the disc directly, like consoles.

I only have a handful of games for PC installed at a time. These 5-6 games take up about 50gb of HDD space. Sure 50gb seems like nothing nowadays, but games will get bigger and bigger in size eventually. Wouldn't it be great to just pop in a PC game disc in the drive and play right away, as opposed to installing the whole 6gb of game data to the HDD, still requiring the disc to be in the drive while playing (unless you crack it, but only bad people do that, eh? ;-)).

Most games in the past used to give you a choice between Minimal install and Full install, but you still had to install them. I'd like to just insert the disc, have a window pop up saying "Play Game Now" and just get into it. All the settings, saves and patches could be stored on the HDD just like current consoles. Sure, they may still give you the option to do a Full install, for people who want faster load times.

I'd like to know your thoughts on this. Why hasn't this been done before? Is it because too many people have too different hardware and the disc speeds would vary too much? I dont see how that's different from people having weaker graphic cards than others.

Discuss!

"I've always been wondering why PC games don't play off the disc directly, like consoles."

err you really want to have the console load time? For example 1-2min when you load star wars tfu on the x360.

I don't mind slower load times, if it can save me the gigs and gigs of space on my HDD. Consoles aren't doing that bad in load times.

i made a similar topic a few months ago but the idea was very much dismissed.

i wouldnt mind it though..id like to have the option. obhiously something like fallout 3, oblivion or NWN2....i wouldnt dream of running off a disc (though again the option would be nice). but somethign like colin Mcrae rally 2005...i really dont see why i need to install that. my disc drive is much faster than any disc drive in a previous gen console and would make absolute mincemeat of that game in terms of loading.

PC is about choice...so why dont devs give us the option of playing from disc? since multiplat is the future (for better or worse) devs have to optimize their game for loading off the disc anyway. i cant think of anything fundimentally wrong with the PC that would stop a dev from using the disc to load game data on a PC.

still with DD taking over...its probably going to be a moot issue anyway.

Most people want to use up the HDD space... faster load times, performance is everything.

Hard drives are SO cheap these days. You can get terabyte drives cheap as chips

am I honestly the only one here who doesn't care about installations? i can live with any load time as long as it's under 5 minutes or something. in fact, i find installations a little troublesome. when there's too much space being taken up, some games gotta go and my hard drives (both PC and console ones) are being used for more than just gaming.

Its not just about load times, but slowdowns/glitches during gameplay. I don't think it would be a bad thing to have the option of a a more limited install, if someone wanted to sacriface load time for disk space, while still being able to load data off the HD during gameplay, but the savings probably won't be very big.

if i wanted to wait for my games to load i'd buy a console. :roll:

optical drives are much slower compared to hardrives and also the data on a game disc is usually compressed. Also, switching discs (for some large games) is also not my style.

why limit yourself when a decent harddrive costs so little.

You all make good points, but these are things I knew ever since games were installed from floppies...

I guess playing on the fly would only work on older games the PC could handle easier. When I look at my collection of PC games, and I feel like playing one I havent played in a while, I always tell myself "Bah, I'd have to install it and everything... too much trouble."

You all make good points, but these are things I knew ever since games were installed from floppies...

I guess playing on the fly would only work on older games the PC could handle easier. When I look at my collection of PC games, and I feel like playing one I havent played in a while, I always tell myself "Bah, I'd have to install it and everything... too much trouble."

SIN55

Playing from a floppy would be just as big a pain... unless its ancient and on one floppy. And assuming the floppy works which tended to go bad just looking at them wrong...

I far prefer spending 20 minutes installing a game and getting substantially reduced loading times for the many hours I play a game. As others have mentioned, HDD's are very cheap these days. A Western Digital 640GB drive retails for $75 on Newegg.

I think they tried that with Halo 2 on PC...biggest_loser

Ummm ya what everyone else said.

Having the game installed on a hard drive is way faster, and its even MORE faster when you have more Memory AKA RAM because there is LESS fetching from the hard drive to the memory.

Here is a summary Memory is the fastest, hard drives in second place and dvd players ect are slow.

I've played the xbox and there is a ridiculous amount of fetching, microsoft AND sony both cheaped out on memory LOL

Sounds like you're just lazy...ElectricNZ

I think that's irrelevant, as playing games generally IS being lazy.

Well, I'm man enough to admit that my idea has been succesfully shot down. In theory it would be neat, but in reality it would be too crippling on performance.

[QUOTE="ElectricNZ"]Sounds like you're just lazy...SIN55

I think that's irrelevant, as playing games generally IS being lazy.

Well, I'm man enough to admit that my idea has been succesfully shot down. In theory it would be neat, but in reality it would be too crippling on performance.

Games are for fun and to realx, :| not all people play games because they are lazy, in fact almost none, when you are lazy, playing games is not fun, it's boring and lame, so as you said, it's irrelevant.

You are lazy, if you say that you want to play some games, but when you think that you have to install them you just find something else to do.

[QUOTE="SIN55"]

[QUOTE="ElectricNZ"]Sounds like you're just lazy...DanielDust

I think that's irrelevant, as playing games generally IS being lazy.

Well, I'm man enough to admit that my idea has been succesfully shot down. In theory it would be neat, but in reality it would be too crippling on performance.

Games are for fun and to realx, :| not all people play games because they are lazy, in fact almost none, when you are lazy, playing games is not fun, it's boring and lame, so as you said, it's irrelevant.

You are lazy, if you say that you want to play some games, but when you think that you have to install them you just find something else to do.

Big HDD's are really inexpensive in this day in age. You can get a 500GB HDD for dirt cheap. If you use up all that space, then you got a problem. I have a 150GB raptor X and I'm still good on space. Besides, if you have a gaming PC, what's the price tag of a cheap HDD going to do to ya? The games cost nearly as much. Elann2008

I am running out of space on my 500GB, but I own over 200 games and like to have them all installed at the same time when I can. I have a terabyte hard drive on order right now.

It's much slower to play it directly from the disc.chrisrooR

Yeah the only advantage to play directly to disk is that your console can save space on it's hard drive if it has one. I don't understand how so many users get so angry over having to install something once if it will give them faster load times eery single time they play it. If console manufacturers would man up and give larger hard drives with their systems this wouldn't be as big of an issue. As for PCs, I never, ever want to see a game run from the disc and not my drive. I will tolerate having to have the disc in the drive as a security measure but that is it. I don't shell out the amount of money I do on my PC for slow load times.

I don't mind slower load times, if it can save me the gigs and gigs of space on my HDD. Consoles aren't doing that bad in load times.

SIN55

When you can buy a TB hard drive for $100, you tend not to care about saving gigs and gigs of space. But when a 120 GB hard drive costs $140, you care a bit more. Plus, I can install like 6 or more hard drives, if I really wanted to, but you're very much limited on the 360 as to how much space is available to you.

I like your avatar, btw. Spaceballs, ftw!!!

The idea is good, if we had the proper material to make it perform just like it is today's standards on a normal installed game.

I think somewhere, at some given time, someone or a group of people working in the PC gaming industry come up with that idea, but they managed to see it wouldn't work, at least for now

The idea of having this option, for those who want it, just like someone else here said, its even better .After all, one more option to how you can play your game isn't that bad

Personally, I would never do it

As long as games come on disks, it's not really worthwhile going to a 'tray and play' model, due to the performance issues highlighted.

If, however, games moved over to another medium, like a flash stick, then with the new performance increases in data throughput with the incoming standards (like USB 3.0), it might be more viable. But of course that would increase the production cost of the game which would pass onto the end gamer.

Besides, the gaming industry is largely shifting to an online model at the moment, and I'm sure that as broadband speeds increase they will try to start 'streaming' games over the net without installing a great deal on your PC. Eventually you'll probably just log in to a remote server to play all your games, and the developer won't have to distribute all of the game code on a disk, which will help to reduce piracy.

Consoles too are heading in that direction requiring broadband connections and offering DLC.