Remember when PC gaming was dying? Don"t tell that to NVIDIA. The graphics chip maker reported its third quarter financial results on Thursday and said it saw growth in its PC desktop GPU sales. Gamasutra reports that during the company"s conference call with analysts, Nvidia"s Rob Csongor said that Electronic Arts" Battlefield 3, with its higher-than-normal PC hardware requirements, was cited as one of the reasons for the GPU growth sales.
The just released Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 was also named as a game that would help NVIDIA"s GeForce desktop GPU sales along with the upcoming MMO Star Wars The Old Republic. Csongor said, "We believe this surge of PC gaming demand will drive increased demand for NVIDIA"s GeForce products despite the soft consumer PC market." He added a bit of a slam against the current generation of game consoles, saying, "We expect a multiyear PC gaming cycle, as the PC becomes increasingly more powerful than 5 to 6-year-old gaming consoles."
NVIDIA has also been pushing its 3D Vision technology for PC game developers to use and now hundreds of PC game titles can be viewed with 3D glasses and supported monitors.
It"s very true that PC gaming rigs, even inexpensive ones, have lots more under the hood than the current crop of game consoles. However, with only a few exceptions, most multi-platform games are designed to run on consoles first and PCs second. Hopefully we will start to see PC game developers offer up titles that actually start to use all of that hardware that is mostly underused in most PC gaming set-ups.