In an interview, Nvidia executive Tony Tamasi made the bold claim that gaming consoles can no longer match the graphics capabilities of PCs.
He elaborates that PC did not have the graphics to match what the Playstation was capable of in its time. 3D was there in the era of the Playstation 2, but Silicon Graphics and other 3D workstations were out of the range of most consumers. Furthermore, the console manufacturers of that era (Sony, Sega, and Nintendo) could bring 3D graphics to consumers.
Finally, he claims that PC caught up with consoles at the time of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. In fact, graphics cards manufacturers were now powering consoles since they were at the forefront of innovation in that field.
His conclusion is that at this point, Sony and Microsoft can’t afford to invest in top of the line graphics chips the way they are.
While their rivals at AMD accused Nvidia of sourgraping, a quick cursory look at the history of graphics cards shows that there is a kernel of truth to their statements. Consumer level 3D graphics cards did not start with Nvidia, but 3dfx with the Voodoo1 in 1996, two years after the release of the first Playstation.
Nvidia themselves did not have a great start in the same year with the NV1, but managed to start getting ahead in this field after they added a small upgrade to their GeForce 256 cards, which were released a year before the Playstation 2. The apparent contemporaries from Nintendo and Sega in this time, the Gamecube and the Dreamcast, were definitely not slouches in this department either.
In 2006, when the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 were at the forefront of gaming graphics, Nvidia had the GeForce 8800 GTX, a power hog of a graphics card that really did match and exceed what the consoles were capable of.
If you care about graphics, console loyalty and competition aside, Nvidia’s statements ring true, and if we were honest, AMD wants consumers to know this too. The history clearly shows graphics chips have been improving through the years, as Nvidia continued to iterate on performance and affordability. I am not as convinced that innovation in mobile will draw gamers away from PCs and consoles, but consoles will definitely have to compete with PCs with other unique selling points.
Image is of the Nvidia Titan.
