My 3080ti significantly out performs an Xbox. While you can game on a console you can game better on a PC with a dGPU. An iGPU will get the job done, but a dGPU today continues to outperform it and give you a better experience. I can play across 3 2k displays at 165Hz, or step up to native 4k, I can smooth framerates with raytracing on at a non upscaled resolution.
Cool? That level of performance is incredibly niche and not required to play any game. Maximal theoretical performance is one way to play, but not even a majority of PC gamers have that kind of hardware and no one needs it (for gaming at least). The only area where you need power to participate is VR, but stand alone sets run on phone hardware.
The performance differences between an Xbox, a laptop with a good igpu, and a $3k gaming rig doesn’t matter if your top priority is having fun playing a game and not tinkering with specs and hardware.
Here’s a list of the GPUs recorded in the Steam hardware survey. These are what gamers are actually using. Less than 10% of them are using iGPUs.
I never said there were more than that. I said most gamers can’t afford $3,500 computer setups which is well supported by that data. Just because you can doesn’t mean that performance is required or even needed. What’s the difference between smooth 60fps at 1080 on max settings and 165fps at 4k on ultra? Not much in terms of gameplay, beyond the perceived “better” experience.
Nope - eben Steam is only a small subset of all gamers. Most gamers are on smartphones. Others are on consoles and many others are playing outside of steam. And you have to count the steam survey correctly and count the “Laptop GPU” as integrated.
But IMHO the problem is another: There is currently no sweet spot for a cheap and capable GPU like the 1050Ti was back in the day. Some people will spend thousands of dollar for a GPU, but GPUs have been really expensive for a long time due to bitcoin, Covid and AI. You can see that in the steam survey - some of the most popular cards like the 1050TI or 1060 are ancient.
That puts game companies in a really bad position: They could release games with fancy graphics, but only a small subset of games can run them on their rig. And producing a multimillion dollar game for 2000€+ devices is not a good business proposal.