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[monocole]

Hey,
I was thinking about the grafhics quality of videogame,

In the '80 arcade games had an higher graphics quality than PC, so it seems to me that the graphics for PC becomes better than the one of the cabinet in the late 1990, as before noone cares about cool graphics in the PC. am I right?

I think it could been for a business solution,
maybe in the past decades arcade games was much more moneymaking than PC.
what do you think?

[Japo]

The graphics during the golden era of the arcades weren't that superior. Specially if you check the resolutions they used, they were appallingly pixelated by today's standards. And the point is, home consoles and PCs weren't that inferior. Arcade games did usually have more colours, though.

For example After Burner was a kickass game released in 1987. But the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis released only a year after supports higher resolutions, although fewer colours. Even the graphic resolution of the Sega Master System is comparable to the contemporary arcade games.

The difference in quality between arcade and home video games was obvious, but it wasn't about the graphics mainly, even though that's the first thing one thinks about. The sound on the other hand was light years away; arcade games had decent, understandable digitized speech many years before home gamers could dream about such thing. And of course processing power, which translated into bigger, faster games, but not because of the graphics.

However late 90's is very late, if you think about it, any game for Windows 95/DirectX could easily surpass any arcade game of the time. The eclipse of the arcades happened before.

But people always cared about cool graphics and such, it's just that they couldn't get all of them in the past--unless they had a Neo Geo. But even very early home consoles were often advertised as "the arcades at home".

Which was the biggest business depends on the market (country or region). I think in Japan both arcades and numerous home consoles and computers were always strong. In the USA people turned completely away from home video games when they got sick of the Atari 2600 games, up until the release of the NES, that enjoyed a huge success; in the meantime people played at the arcades only. In Europe this time was the golden era of the arcades too, but the home market was covered by a strong presence of PCs such as the Commodore, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, etc. But I don't know the exact figures about when was what the bigger money maker.

[DarthHelmet86]

Well I know that now some arcade titles are run off a PS3 (I have seen this for a fact but not a Xbox 360, though they might use these too) which just shows how far consoles have come really.

I think a lot of the problem was to do with Memory, the arcades had more then the home consoles (or their cartridges had) so some things had to be chopped to get them on the console. Arcades are dying out now, most gamers have a console and the money to get games they want....arcades aren't needed as much anymore.

[TotalAnarchy]

If you want to see how arcades are doing graphic-wise compare the screens of Street Fighter IV arcade version with the console ones. Not bad, I say.

[DarthHelmet86]

All the Street Fighter 4 arcades I have seen are running on a PS3.

[TotalAnarchy]

Yeah, but I'm not talking about those, I'm talking about the official Arcade version, which according to wikipedia uses the Taito Type X2 arcade cabinet.

[DarthHelmet86]

I will have to look and see what the offical ones look like.

Though my point still stands, that unlike in the day were home consoles have chopped version now they have just as good versions of the games.

[Japo]

The real point is that whatever game publishers have in mind nowadays, they can make it for the home consoles or PC. Whether they want to release something to the diminished arcade market, or not, it's probably not because of performance.

Of course they could make arcade machines with higher specs than a PC. They could fit graphic CPUs one square meter in size, but how probable is it that the final product will be profitable? Console wars have never been won with specs. The fact is that the arcade market has been eaten by the home market.

There are of course all those arcade games with special input (light guns, dance machines...). But people don't even bother to go to the arcades in the first place, so their market share is much smaller than Donkey Kong's.