Gaming Is PC gaming dying?

particularly with the price of MW2 and people talking in the media about £70 videogames and the like. if the rise of digital distribution and cheap broadband is anything to go by PC games could be getting cheaper in comparison to console games by the year.

 

I know this is a tad bit off topic but I see no problem with the price of MW2. I expect to pay maximum £40 and play have got it for £35. I paid £40 for GTA:VC back in 2003 so maybe it's just me but I see no problem with the pricing of PC games.
Infact Ignore that. I would delete it but it'd make more sense if I kept it. I've just rephrased that sentence in my head and came out with :- I don't mind paying £40 for games but, only if I know they're gonna be good. Recently I have seen myself not buying many PC games due to this. So Yeah I agree with you crompers but I'll still pay for MW2.

 

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/07/17/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2-to-cost-55/1

 

consoles will never really become like PCs becasue of the reduced functionality. you just cant make something as functional at that price

 

2 cents

Everyone here in asia has a computer and no console (excluding japan) an arcade xbox360 costs 1966 rmb = 290$ in china

any country in asia can show that pc gaming isn't dead

any person can show you that pc gaming isn't dead because they own a computer. however the crysis market will always be niche' don't you think?

 

Piracy is a problem, no doubt about it. Arguments as to why it happens don't stack up against the figures. But equally the figures widely reported are wrong. There is no good data on piracy rates for most games they are often just guesses.

I think the PC game sellers are doing themselves no favours spending 3 times as much money on marketing than development. That might work on the console but on the PC (are far older and mature market) games need to be original first, as we have seen it all before. The Xbox 360 is making money out of old games ported to it on a fairly regular basis, trying to rehash old games on the PC with slightly spiffy graphics doesn't work at all well.

The Xbox/PS3 likely have younger gamers than the PC and its this difference that means the games are more novel there. PC gamers expect more from their releases now, since they have played that genre over and over. The resurgence of the indie studio is all about re-injecting the trial of new ideas for games and has a good chance of making those studios a big success. Introversion recently has completely lost its way, trying to sell Multivinia into as many markets as it can. That game sucked so why are they doing it?!

Equally selling movie tie ins on the PC is always going to fail because the audience knows they are rubbish and has seen it all many times. They vote with their feet. The teenagers however tend to want these games, despite how bad the mechanics of the game actually is.

So really my point more than anything is that games that are good sell well, and bad games don't. If you want success on a PC the game has to be novel, whereas the consoles can make money selling old popular PC games as its not on that platform already.

 

as far as i've seen my cousin, china's gaming market largely consist of crappy machines running what i regard as mini-games, mostly downloaded through QQ.

and that, i don't think can be called proper PC gaming. gaming with proper hardware such as Crysis is where PC gaming should be at, offering better experience than consoles.

the good-enough-tech may very well be the down-fall of PC gaming. halo wars works good enough for a dumbed down RTS on console.

but as you concluded, these things goes up and down with console generations. im pretty sure at the end of current gen console life cycle, CryEngine 4 will be released for PC and, again, push the boundary of PC hardware.

 

You can't beat a mouse for controlling some types of games. If console games actually let me use a real controller like a mouse then I might buy a console. Consoles and computers are merging closer because only PC based hardware can provide that type of performance. Development of games goes better on a PC as well. What we could see is software frameworks that enable more console games on PC's in the future.

What is Sony going to use in the PS4, probably an Intel chip because others are too expensive (Sony learned a lesson about overpricing) and another Nvidia graphics chip. The Xbox4, probably another Intel chip and another ATI graphics chip.

Who knows, maybe we will start to see PCIe cards that enable a PC to run as a Xbox4/PS4? Maybe that's how future Radeon and Geforce graphics cards will be distinguished? The way virtualization is becoming commonly hardware accelerated in all PC CPU's makes it even easier to see this. The console OS could easily run aside the PC OS and be fully hardware accelerated.

 

I found a funny video on youtube about pc gaming dying lol, I find it funny pc gaming is 60 billion dallor Industry and every chances console gamers get they keep saying it's dying.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsTwgUo9Blw&feature=related



when pc gaming clearly has the must games made for every year.



http://kotaku.com/5037023/more-developers-working-on-pc-xbox-360-titles



http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10291692-1.html



http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/games-of-2009/



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7960498.stm



http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/why-the-future-looks-bright-for-pc-gaming-589422


If kind funny game devs like to trash pc gaming but yet they are going bankuprt because of consoles



http://www.edge-online.com/news/playlogic-reports-loss-of-33-million

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3174841

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/video-game-makers-seeing-red/



http://www.businesswire.com/portal/...d=news_view&newsId=20090506005551&newsLang=en

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/483/the-developer-graveyard

here is the state of them consoles

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/05/e3-predictions/

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article6628517.ece

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/06/pachter/

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/consoles-could-soon-become-niche-products-playfish

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/video-game-makers-seeing-red/

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/3277020



here is a list of some games on the pc by notice how much more games there is on the pc than consoles


http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/games-of-2009/

http://pc.ign.com/index/release.html

 

here is alist of games for the pc by the way

http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/games-of-2009/

http://pc.ign.com/index/release.html

If kind funny game devs like to trash pc gaming but yet they are going bankuprt because of consoles



http://www.edge-online.com/news/playlogic-reports-loss-of-33-million

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3174841

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/video-game-makers-seeing-red/



http://www.businesswire.com/portal/...d=news_view&newsId=20090506005551&newsLang=en

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/483/the-developer-graveyard

 

PC gaming dying - i would say gaming been quite dead for some time, not enough strong releases with a proper gameplay exceeding 15hrs, originality, story and so on. what we've seen recently is just nicely packaged rubbish.

As PC and console gaming goes, I own both but must admit that I play on Xbox360 only titles for two players like fifa, nhl, ufc... and on PC I play racing, fps and strategy games.

What i'm waiting for is a silent game console and then bye bye PC would get a laptop and sell my box with all gear for it (screens, controllers...)

 

It's not dying in this house.

About 10% of gaming is on consoles, 90%+ on PC.

I tend to hang back on new titles and pick them up for bargain prices later on.

 

Ah right. Still, Play have got it listed for £35 and i'm sure if I was to pre-order now, there's no way they can go back on that quote.

 

Oh by the way here is a list of pc games


http://pc.ign.com/index/release.html

http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/games-of-2009/

 

/you seem to have missed the evolution of PC games. The entire gaming market is becoming more and more niche based, each console is going to start to pander to specific audiences where they have strengths. The PC will evolve to become a platform for new niches - most likely subscription games and free to play games and casual/flash based games.

It's dying in the sense that core games are being dumbed down for the console gen - sadly that's true - but there are other forms of gaming around. From what I hear, Asian countries have a much bigger PC market than console market. If western markets can learn to adapt and evolve then PC gaming will become it's own niche.

 

You can call consoles inferior, until you realize that the Xbox 360 came out in 2005 and the PS3/Wii in 2006. Obviously the newest and best PC gaming technology is better than the 2005/2006 variety. Do you think all of the console makers are just sitting around, counting their money? What electronics company has a product out for 4 years and hasn't begun designing a newer and better version.

Comparing the Xbox 360 to the HD 4870 is comparing apples to oranges. I can buy a brand new Xbox for $200. Or I can buy a HD 4870 for $400. Which will result in more gaming fun? Obviously the Xbox, since the only thing fun to do with the HD 4870 is to put plastic army men on it and stage a mock battle as the soldiers from Capacitor Forest wage war to Heatsink City.
To even get that investment usable, you probably need another $800 in PC components. So a top-of-the-line gaming PC is a full order of magnitude more expensive than the consoles, which is a big issue.

Yes, there's the argument "well everyone already has a PC" but most people don't already have a gaming PC. Browsing bit-tech, playing music, streaming the occasional youtube video, we could easily do that with a computer that's 4-5 years old. It's far more expensive to always have technology made in the last year or two, to be able to play the newest games at their best.

 

hence why the asian game market got it right. they make games for the lowest common denominator (probably a Pentium 2 MMX 440 with 64 mb ram lol) and that means everyone can play them, the games are more focused on good gameplay and they work and sell amazingly.

 

oh, and good article, even if it does feel a bit like flogging a dead horse!

 

I didn't read all the comments, but I figured I would chip in.

While I can appreciate that the whole "PC is dying" argument comes and goes, I think the really worrying thing here is that casual gaming has never been so big and easy to make money off. I don't ever see PC gaming dying (like the article said, there are way too many big players involved to see that happen), but what I do see is more and more dumbing down of PC games so that they can also come out on consoles, and I can see games like Crysis popping up with a lot less regularity.

Unfortunately, the article is right with the notion that it is all about the money. I hope I am wrong, and many studios rally forth and create truly amazing graphical advances, innovative ideas and the kind of gameplay that makes you want to shout about the game to the nearest person, but I don't really see that happening when you can make a game like Wii Sports and sell billions of copies.

I can only sympathise with developers who slog their guts out, make a good but not amazing game, and then see it get beaten ten fold by a collection of minigames. Even amazing games just don't sell well on PC (usually).

 

Rubbish, my 4-5 year old PC (a64) can cope with all of games i've played on it and with the 3 year old 8800gt it can display them better than a x360.

What i tend to avoid is badly ported resource hogs like GTA4.