New and Unneeded Graphics Arms Race

If you are reading this right now, there is a very safe bet that there is a Nintendo Switch of some type in your home. It may even be in your room, right now, with you. It is, as I type this, one of the most successfully sold video game consoles ever. It is only outdone by the Nintendo DS (of which I have a dying one rather close to me) and the PlayStation 2, which I have two of. In there times, the Switch, PS2, and DS were not the most powerful consoles when they were released. In the case of the Switch, it was so criminally underpowered that its marquee game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, struggled to run on the thing. That did not stop the game from selling more copies than there are consoles to play it on.

Here is an rather old video game media adage that has stood the test of time with every release of a new console generation: the most powerful hardware never sells the most units. Consumers, in a grand scale, simply do not care about power. They care about a lot of things, but power is not one of them. Based purely on specifications, the Xbox Series X/S (awful, dreadful name) is the most powerful console you can purchase. It is probably more powerful than the vast majority of your everyday person's home computer.

Specs for Xbox Series X and PS5

With that in mind, the PlayStation 5 has sold over double the amount of units than it (29 million units compared to 66 million units) and neither of them come close to the amount of Switch units out there (146 million). Now, it's not especially big news to see why the Switch has been meteoric in its success. There are a lot of rather incredible first party supported games on the little handheld/console hybrid, and it being a hybrid console in general is extremely attractive. So much is Nintendo moving units so rapidly, that Sony and Microsoft likely do not consider them a true competitor. Reverting back to Microsoft, what is keeping the three trillion dollar tech giant from moving gaming hardware units?

Xbox Game Pass. Simple as that.

Xbox Games Pass

Why would anyone with a decent gaming PC buy an Xbox Series X/S when you can very likely get the game on Xbox Games Pass for $12 a month? Maybe because you are a fan of "THE BRAND" or something like that, but the hard numbers indicate you simply wouldn't. What the Switch offers is a lower entry point ($300 per unit versus $500 for the Series X version) and the opportunity to play Mario Wonder or Animal Crossing in an airport. That is way more attractive to the average person that simply wants to play a video game. Conversely, paying and easily cancelable $12 a month for access to the same games (temporarily, I grant you) as can be gotten on an Xbox Series X/S is not only more attractive, it's simply what people are doing.

Now, everything I typed may have seemed, and sort of is, pedestrian to the average games consumer. Most know this. Power =/= Good Games. It can enhance an experience, but the vast majority of people agree that it is not "the experience". Fine, well, and good.

SO WHAT'S THE POINT?

Why is Machine Games saying I cannot play their newest game, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle unless I have a video card capable of running Ray-tracing? Ray-tracing is just going to make the lighting, shadows, and some model texturing pop out.

Cyberpunk 2077 with ray-tracing on and off

Does it make the game play better? I am going to guess: no. Is it even necessary for the game? I do not even have to do a side-by-side to say: no. Seems like a weird tech-scam.

Completely Unprofessional Tin-foil hat Time: I think this is being to simply sell more NVIDIA GPUs. What is it the developer plan to accomplish by making so few of the available playerbase? One of the most common NVIDIA cards on the market is an RTX 1650, so the potential for lost players is there. What might have happened is NVIDIA likely paid MachineGames a large amount of money to compensate for the loss of sales.

Minimum specs for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Will this keep me from buying the game? Well on PC, yeah absolutely. I do not have the CPU requirements. Now, I do have an Intel i7-9700k 3.60Ghz, which should be as powerful as any Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 (which the game will be available for, one now, one later respectively).

Is this a new shot across the bow for a needless "graphics card war"? The developers are obviously willing to work some, I guess, arcane magic to get the same game running on consoles, so why not apply that same magic to the PC version?

What I think we are seeing here, is perhaps a naked and almost brazen attempt to increase NVIDIA GPU sales. I am not a fan of it.