Game Maker Slams Intel on Low-End Video

Intel is ruining the PC gaming industry, according to Mark Rein, vice president of game designer Epic, makers of Unreal Tournament. Reiner's remark came during his keynote address at a game developers conference in Brighton, England.

According to Rein, Intel's integrated graphics chips have caused hordes of PC gamers to abandon their keyboards in favor of console-based gaming, like Microsoft's

Xbox 360 and the

PlayStation 2. Although integrated chip technology is incapable of providing the computational power needed for many PC games, the consoles' graphics cards are often superior to what is preinstalled in low-end PCs.

"I'm concerned about the level of growth in the PC games business," Rein told conference attendees. "A $900 PC is nowhere near as capable as a $299 Xbox 360 console. We're losing PC gamers in record numbers. Integrated graphics cards [like those produced by Intel for low-end PCs] cannot compete with the console gaming experience."

Graphically Challenged

According to Rein, some 80 percent of new laptops and 55 percent of new desktops contain integrated graphics cards. Calling Intel's integrated cards “the lowest common denominator,” that cannot run state-of-the-art PC games, Rein said that he knew of at least two major game developers that were thinking of getting out of the PC side and developing games exclusively for consoles.

"If Intel exited the gaming market we would all be better off. The high end is getting higher and the low end is getting lower," Rein noted. But even if somebody spends $1000 on a graphics card, we're still only making $25 from them."

Graphically Speaking

Though some industry watchers concede that the Intel integrated chips are far less powerful for PC gaming than dedicated video cards from Nvidia and ATI , Van Baker, an analyst at Gartner, said that Rein is looking for a scapegoat. Gamers, he said, are accustomed to installing high-end cards from Nvidia and ATI to achieve the best gaming performance. Someone who is buying a PC for business productivity, he added, should not have to pay for a high-end graphics subsystem.

"The PC gaming problems extend well beyond the integrated graphics engine," Baker explained. Games need to be compelling and fairly easy to configure and install, but most of the investment in gaming favors the console side of the business and PC gaming falls behind, Baker said. The result is that PC games are cumbersome and difficult to set-up and configure. While Microsoft has made some progress, he noted, they still have a long way to go.