In the near future, the game industry has the potential to enter a time of turmoil or to embark on a creative evolution that will greatly empower games, education and industry for generations to come.  The question is whether we’ve learned from our past. Will the hardware and software companies work together to develop a powerful development environment or will chaos become the rule?

 

We stand on the precipice. We must create hardware and software that seamlessly work together, empowering studios of all sizes to harness this technology for its intended purpose – to facilitate creative expression and further the development of amazing games.

 

Intel’s CPU/GPU many-core chip announcement, Larrabee, was responded to quickly by AMD. Combined with the success of the GPU (led by NVIDIA), this firmly establishes that complex multi-threaded computing will be fundamental to the future of complex computing tasks. Since the videogame industry is on the forefront of visual computing, driving the sales of personal computers and consoles, it is safe to say that games will lead the next generation by exploiting many-core technologies.



We are now presented with a choice: either evolve consciously and design our future rationally or get bloodied in a battle without winners. 

 

The opportunities for our industry are tremendous.  We can bring a level of visual realism beyond anything available today.  Combining real story-driven games using visual realism, sophisticated physics and behavioral simulation will make the worlds we create truly breathtaking.

 

However, as exciting as the implications of this increase in processing power are to our industry, the risks are also massive.  It’s simple.  True multi-threaded game development is really hard. In spite of the promises to the contrary, we can safely assume that the additional complexity imposed on developers will be significant and costly. We must level the playing field.

 

The risks of not adequately preparing for the next generation of chips were illustrated by the near disastrous launch of Sony’s PlayStation 3.  This extraordinary piece of technology nearly failed due to the increased requirements forced on developers.