Time to evolve? Games to require 64 bit OSes

From a renderer at DICE's tweet:

I think this is great but then again I have a 64 bit OS (but since it took me forever and a day to swap from XP I don't have much pity for anyone still holding out.)

I'm already on Windows 7 64-bit so I'm fine with that, too. And really about damn time -- if you're making a PC game at all you might as well take advantage of the platform.

I don't have any hard evidence to back me up, but I would guess that the majority of the PCs sold to consumers over the past 4 years have been Windows 7 64-bit capable. Dual and Quad core 64-bit processors have been mainstream for some time now. Even the least expensive home PCs from Dell and other manufacturers now ship with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

So with that in mind, it's time for gaming to evolve to the next level. I say this as someone who hung on to Windows XP 32-bit a lot longer than he should have, especially being in IT and all, but I made the move to 64-bit over a year ago and have been loving it ever since. Being able to actually use 8GB or 16GB of memory is a beautiful thing.

Oh, I have great sympathy for people who have to deal with bitwise compatibility problems (particularly in .NET, which can eat my sack), so I understand not having upgraded until now. Doing it with some of my old legacy crap was not fun, and I still have the occasional difficulty at work.

That said, at this point, it basically is time, and I'm not surprised to see this going in. Most prefab models should already be running a 64-bit OS. This might exclude a lot of old XP machines (I think Vista is when I first started noticing everything going deliberately 64), but I should hope that for most consumers it's not that big of an issue.

This is about right, timing wise. But who is Frostbite? What do they make? Don't make me google it. I thought OPs on this board had to have a certain amount of info in order to be considered valid or something.....

Oh, it's a game ENGINE? For FPSs mainly? Cool. I don't play shooters on my PC, so I guess I don't really care.

I just bought a cheap Toshiba laptop ($400 AMD A6-based). It came with 64-bit Win 7. The point is if even a cheap Toshiba laptop comes with x64 Windows, I'm thinking it's time PC gaming moves away from x32.

I thought people posting in this forum had to actually play games.

I don't get it. I do play shooters, just on the console. I don't think I've played any of the Frostbite games on PC. But I suppose Frostbite 2 (which is what will use this) could appear in other types of games.

In any case, I'm all for more games taking advantage of 64 processing.

R♯ is such a diehard CoD player that he completely dismisses Battlefield's existence.

I think they should have clarified that. AFAIK, Windows 8 will still have a 32-bit release.

What? Damn it. 64-bit should be mandatory by now. On the other hand, we still have essential software that is 16-bit. The producers of said software finally realised that this might be a problem, and so wrote up a guide on how to use fucking XP mode if you have a 64-bit windows system. Fuck them.

The telecom I used to work for started deploying new 64-bit Win7 systems and one of their core in-house applications had to be run in XP mode because it's DOS-based.

I also remember the 5 1/4 inch floppy drive persisting a lot longer than seemed necessary and every time I crack open a PC (I assembled a system this weekend) I marvel at how legacy designs can persist for decades, even when obviously superior alternatives seem, well, obvious.

The difference on those is between the business and consumer sectors. I was supporting programs running on DEC Alphas years after they went out of support because it's hard to justify spending money on what is, at its heart, nothing. You're not getting a new process control system - you're just replacing a process control system that already worked perfectly fine because it might eventually break. It's very easy to prioritize that down. That's also why I'm currently on a project to convert an internal program from some weird variety of C on a discontinued Mac platform from the early 90s into literally anything else.

Consumers tend to replace their crap on a much quicker schedule, in part because there are morons out there willing to buy stuff just because it's new, which means that there's purpose in innovating almost anything. If you make a better Paint program, somebody's going to get it. That is not nearly so often the case with businesses, which is why bitwise incompatibility problems has quickly become one of the first things I check for when I encounter unexplained errors with legacy applications.

Given that most workplaces tend to frown on their employees attempting to install World of Warcraft on their business machines, this seems to me like it should be, for the most part, a non-issue.

Frostbite 2 is being used in the new Command and Conquer Generals game.

No one likes dropping support for old stuff, but it has to happen sooner or later for things to move along. 64-bit crap has been a thing for, what, close to a decade? This seems like as reasonable a time as any.

I don't follow you here. Battlefield is on the consoles. I played the Bad Company games and loved them. I just didn't know it was the Frostbite engine. I don't really learn the names of engines.

Just ribbing you for your total nerd failure.

Ah, yes. I am definitely a failure as a nerd...I grant that. I can't keep up with it all. Seems like even in the midst of people complaining that our hobby has become too narrow and focused on space marines and shooting things, there are TONS of options out there. I can't keep up with all the great games that are coming out, much less what engines they use and who is developing them, etc. I used to know all this stuff, but now I know nothing. I just try to find time to play!

Since big OEMs like Dell have been shipping 64-bit as standard for a while I don't think the existence of a 32-bit Windows 8 is going to be particulary relevant to the games market.

Yeah hopefully win8 in 32bit form is something you can only get on one of the special enterprise licences, and it wont be available for OEM or consumer

Oh I'm sure it'll be freely available, I just don't think it's going to be particularly relevant in the consumer space nor see wide-spread adoption there. According to Steam 60% of Windows gamers are running 64-bit, and that's only going to go up.

It's a cost/benefit thing. You definitely lose potential customers by dropping support for 32 bit operating systems - is the end result going to generate enough extra business to justify that loss? I find that doubtful in a world where Windows XP remains the most popular operating system.

I don't think that's a good characterization, for a couple of reasons.

First: Gaming is an enthusiast market, at least at the level that this will affect (i.e., not the Spider Solitaire crowd). I'm sure there's some overlap between the "still running XP" people and the "wants to play Diablo III" people, but I doubt sincerely that it's anything approaching 100%. If you want to play new games, you've probably bought a new computer in the time since 64-bit processors and operating systems became mainstream anyway, and will not be left behind by this change anyway, even without further action on your part.

Second: I think straight apples-to-apples comparisons are wrong-headed. I posit that moving the market's capabilities further ahead is a generally desirable result for both consumers and game companies. Without technological advances the industry will stagnate and eventually decline over time, whereas you can make games with increasing "wow" factor if you keep pushing the envelope. The trick is to pick the right time to minimize alienation of your customers. You can have a reasonable discussion about when that time is -- I think about now is good, and a lot of people in this thread seem to feel the same way -- but I don't think you can have a reasonable discussion about whether there is such a time.

I was using this reference:

OSFebruary 2012 Market ShareMarket Share % Change
Windows XP

45.39%

-1.80

Windows 7

38.12%

+1.70

Windows Vista

8.10%

-0.12

Mac OS X 10.6

3.00%

+0.05

Mac OS X 10.7

2.69%

+0.51

Other

2.70%

-0.36

Enthusiast market yes, but I think you're overestimating the gap between people willing to spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on system upgrades because of the latest and greatest computer technologies and the average gamer. It's interesting you mention Diablo 3 though....looking at their basic system requirements I see this:

• Fully-updated Windows® XP/Vista/7 with DirectX 9.0c
• Intel Pentium® D 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4400+ (or better)
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800 GT or ATI Radeon™ X1950 Pro (or better)
• 1 GB RAM (with Windows XP)or 1.5 GB RAM (with Vista or Windows 7)
• 12 GB available Hard Drive space, DVD-ROM drive (for retail disc versions only)
• Broadband Internet connection
• Video settings reaching a minimum resolution of 1024x768

In other words, it would have run on my 2006 Dell laptop, which I sold last year. It might not have been pretty, but it would have been functional. Blizzard makes money with their games partly because they don't design them for only the last couple of years of system hardware.

I run Windows 7 64 bit myself, but since I'm quite happy with the operating system I don't see the slightest reason to upgrade it. Am I missing some significant advantage for gamers?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but... those are 64-but processors.

Hmm.

Is Xbox 32 bit? If so most games will continue to be made for 32 bit.

I think the Steam hardware survery would be representative of what gamers are running. As far as I can tell it's 35% 32 bit OS (since there's Windows 7 64 bit, and plain old Windows 7 i'm assuming that's 32 bit).

*cough*

Correct me if I am wrong, but x86 vs PowerPC is a command set with MS supporting compilers for both. 32bit vs 64bit is bus/address space limitation.

You could write a code and compile it to run on both, but you still have to design your engine and such with 32 bit or 64 bit in mind.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 360 is doing some weird mixed mode thing where it's using 64-bit registers and operations, but 32-bit pointers for space efficiency since the high dword would always be 0 anyway. It's the pointers that tend to be problematic, so that still avoids a lot of porting issues.