News Blizzard: PC gaming is not dying

Good god, really, really. You do know it does not take DD into account.

Its the number one seller on Steam and Direct2Drive.

Most gamers don't buy physical copies anymore. Everyone i know buys the digital copies.


15,784 (online now) 38,145 (peak today) Fallout New Vegas

Thats the stats off the Steam page right now.

Now show me how many concurrent players on the 360 and PS3. I bet the PC has more players than the PS3 but maybe less than the 360

 

So when are we going to get all the digital download stuff added straight to our graphs and watch console gamers go "oh right.... so they aren't dead".

While many people I know have consoles, they play PC games just as much.

How can anyone say "PC gaming is dead because the games are bad..." Sorry? The console generation have annihilated games by making Call of Duty 9001... Halo: Combat Amobea and other games that are so generic, fast-paced, point and 'tap' games that most developers now aim for this as the accepted thing.

Give me STALKER on the PC (Bugs included), Fallout 3, A mod of CoD4 that gives us Zombies any day over the crap that is forever spouted onto the consoles of this planet.

Rant over, PC forever! Like Duke forever... we'll never go down!

 

I think PC game sales have changed dramatically, what with Steam sales and the like. We know that we don't have to pay £30-40 for a new game if we're willing to wait. While traditionally the vast majority of a game's sales would be within the first week or first month, I think this is less true for PC games now, while still expected for consoles.

As for Fallout: New Vegas, I reckon most people are waiting for the inevitable Steam sales (not long till Xmas and New Year's) and/or mods to improve and fix the game. I know I am.

 

An interesting side note for you here, I got my copy from Game (for a fiver less than steam) using the free shipping and it arrived the day before release and when I put the disk in it triggered a steam install. It's a good thing Gabe Newell is into games not world domination!

When ever people say PC gaming is dying I look at all the multiplay events and the sponsorship they attract, I look at all the great games currently in development and the big names like Blizzard, EA, Valve, Bethesda and Microsoft all publishing exclusive and cross platform titles for the PC and doing well. An industry that is still generating millions of sales during a recession is doing fine.

Sure there are a lot of junk games these days, it's the same with consoles, just don't buy the crap ones!

PS Go buy New Vegas, it's far better than Fallout 3 and don't forget hardcore mode!

 

I blame Microsoft and OEM's for not marketing the PC as a powerful and a more superior gaming-platform.

It's much cheaper, more efficient more powerfull than consoles and has always been a all-in-one media system.

 

Out of interest why was it not working from the get-go for boxed copies? They're tied to Steam anyway so got patched immediately.

 

Ive lost count of the number of times ive read pc gaming is dead and here i am still playing games on the pc, after 10 years or so of the old pc game dead rubbisb its quite boring now. ( the pc is dead long live the pc )

 

PC Gaming certainly isn't dying for Blizzard, being in possession of some of the most lucrative IP in the gaming industry.

 

PC gaming isn't dying, it's just stuck.


P.S Dunc, you suck <3

 

PC gaming is the single most popular gaming platform in the world. More popular than the DS and PS2 was. So how could it be dead!?

 

The only people who say PC gaming is dying are ex-PC gamers who want it to die becuase they decided to go console, their fail and devs like EPIC (Cliffy B) who are just dicks. EPIC loves to put out negative press releases concerning PC gaming.

PC gamers know better. If your the type of gamer who looks beyond hyped AA titles there are dozens of worthwhile games released every year for PC. There was a downturn when the 360 released but over the past 2 years the PC has been back on the rise to popularity. As soon as it clears the shadow of consoles and some devs realize PC is where it's at again we should see more exclusives for PC...at least developed first with PC in mind then downgraded for console. In the meantime I there are still

The biggest issue facing PC games is the removal of classic PC gaming features like LAN play, dedicated server and draconian DRM. It's up to us to write and complain to these devs/publishers stating our concerns.

 

This along with DLC. I think the last game i bought on release was Mass Effect 2. I know that if I wait a few months to a year i get it far cheaper, the bugs are fixed, there will be well developed mods of it and possibly the edition I buy will include all the DLC

 

Can you cite any figures for the percentage of PC gamers that have a 1TB or greater hard drive? I know I don't, and neither do any of my friends, if I recall. Furthermore, how many average PC gamers use up that much space with game files? When you're talking about console gaming, the hard drive is typically filled with game files, and perhaps a some media files as well. Your average PS3 is not filled with 2TB of video and music files.

Although you first mentioned the XBOX, you went on to state that the cost of hard drives for consoles was ridiculous. The XBOX and PS3 use standard hard drives, and while the XBOX does require a hack to upgrade the drive yourself, anyone can upgrade the PS3 hard drive using a standard 2.5" notebook drive. Again, how much space does the average gamer use to store game information on the console, compared to all the other files that comprise the contents of the average computer hard drive?

But that's all beside the point, really. "PC gaming is dying," "Console gaming is dying," and "PC gaming is so much better because of ________" are all such blanket statements that fail to take into account any number of factors. Are the graphics in PC games necessarily better than console games? Perhaps. In some cases they may be, provided your PC is powerful enough to max out all the details. But that ignores one the basic aspects of a good - and top selling - game: the game play itself. A lot of people love to deride the Wii as a childish toy with stupid games with poor graphics. But for the millions of people who bought one, making it a best-selling console, it provided good bang for the buck. The Wii was so ineffective with it's party game culture and motion-translating controllers that Sony later produced the Playstation Move and Microsoft is now pushing the Kinect.

In my opinion, the whole PC vs Console debate is about as useful as the PC vs Mac debate. I happily play games on the PC, PS3, and Wii. I think all 3 have their strong points.

 

Nope no figures to quote but at the rate of hard drive development is 1tb hard drive far off from being pretty standard? doesn't seem long ago that 30gb hard drives were pretty good.

I didn't realise ps3's used standard 2.5" hard drives so my point about cost is only valid for the xbox360 then.
Basically my point was aimed at standard users, you go into a shop and compare a xbox 360 120gb drive to a pc 120gb drive, the price difference is shocking.

Also im not on about average users, im on about gamers, both pc and console gamers.
An average user will have his hard drive filled up music/documents/videos etc not needing much space but you take a peek into a pc gamers hard drive and i bet a lot of it is games/game related.

 

PC gamers pay a lot of money for their rigs. Most of our graphics cards cost as much as a console so for any developer to snub the pc market then I say they are fools. Yes sir, fools. The problem pc gamers are having is that there is so much piracy, some developers are getting so fed up with being stolen from that theyre taking extreme measures. Ubisoft for example are pretty much digging their own pc grave in my opinion. Anybody in this industry knows that pc gaming will never die out, they just need to figure out how to get more money from us without pissing us all off as were fussy *******s when it comes to good quality.
I dont see the problem with online activation or a telephone call to activate a game so why are some companies wasting milions in creating crappy new drm tools only to have them hacked on the day of release. Steam is the way forward imho.

 

There are so many games that suck hard - that's why it seems like it's dying. But if you're Blizzard, able to make games that are actually worth playing - then you're fine.

 

Look at the latest Steam Survey and you'll see that being a "gamer", even on PC, quite frequently has nothing to do with being a PC enthusiast or having the latest hardware. There's a fair chance that this elite breed of gamer will still have some terrible Dell with a 250GB hard drive, and that it will still be cluttered with music/documents/videos.

Or you'll be cool like me and get an SSD and have to cram only your favorite games onto it

 

Before the playstation consoles came out consoles died after sega....consoles will eventually die again, there is one thing for sure is the PC remains steady through and through..

 

PC Gamer until we have Holodecks, consoles are for Beer and Pretzel gamers who will never compete with PC Gamers.

CCP has the right idea, make consolers the biatches of the Pc Gamers, ala Dust, lol.

Yours in Superior PC Gaming Plasma,
Star*Dagger

 

Yes, it is fun trying to move games around to and from a backup HDD onto an SSD based Steam folder to play - i need a second SSD just for steam...

Steam forums do make interesting reading whenever a new game comes out - it isn't long before someone asks why the game won't run smoothly on their laptop with integrated graphics.