Frankly, if they're still coming out and are getting cheaper, who's to complain? xD I still refuse to pick up MW2 for PC though, even at £15. Lack of Dedicated servers still killing it in the deep end for me.
The prices at Amazon.co.uk for PC games are very tempting. I'm still not completely sold on Steam for everything, discs are nice. I usually go with Play, Gameplay or ShopTo for retail copies. Here's a quick comparison with Steam via the Amazon best sellers list. Dragon Age: Origins is only £12.91 (£19.99 at Steam) Mass Effect 2 for £17.98 (£29.99 at Steam) Fallout 3 GOTY for £9.21 (£29.99 at Steam) http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/videogames/676427011/ I'd buy Battlefield: Bad Company 2 if I didn't already have it.
sadly i bit the bug of getting collectors editions.. so the wait and let the price drop tactic doesn't really work for me.. on the plus side.. when the prices do drop.. i can say what i have is unique! haha..
I just bought BC2 because it was so cheap. And I got Dirt 2 a month after it came out for just over a tenner. I really really hate to say it but with places like Game (where I got Dirt) I reckon Warrior might just be right. It certainly feels like that in some of the Games round me, the PC section has shrunk beyond belief in the last few years, and games drop to half price really quickly now. Steam and etailers mean there's very little reason to go to a shop for PC games now. Console games on the other hand are the same ridiculously high price whereever you buy them so it's down to shop-exclusive content to tempt people in the door. Personally, (and I'm really talking to you now Warrior) I think if being the "master race" of gaming means your games cost ~£40 everywhere for ages after they come out, I'm quite happy to be part of the cheap-ass minority.
Generally the price is offset by hardware costs and we can as PC owners usually rest easily in the fact that games will generally just look nicer on a pc. I do however have both a PS3 and a Wii but i play games on my PC way more than either. I have them because the Wii has some pretty unique games and game play mechanics and the certain console exclusives that don't get released on the PC usually fighting games and shoot em ups.. i think the installed base of computers is also large enough to risk lover prices and get the cash via overall units sold. its the same with console games if you shop around though you can find some great bargains online with these too. the max i have paid for a game alone is under 30 for either console.
Whilst GPU's have moved on, aside from higher resolutions, the PC-only titles like those coming from Russia/Ukraine are using new features that are subtle at best. How would Sony or MS market a console that is only offering slightly better graphics than what people already have now? I don't think we'll see a new console for a while, at least not until the benefits are obvious, such as the ability to raytrace at a playable frame rate. People are happy to keep playing the games we're getting now on current hardware, so that is what developers will continue to aim at. The big developers will keep focussing on where the money is at the expense of the PC. While piracy continues, regardless of the fact it is just as prevalent on the 360, it'll always be used as an excuse to not develop for the PC irrespective of what the reality may be. I think we'll see the number of PC developers fall away gradually as corporate greed overtakes the desire to push a genre forward in a period of economic uncertainty.
Completely Agree! Only reason I pick games on PC over consoles is due to a higher frame rate and resolution.The textures and effects looks all to similar and aren't a HUGE difference,but they are noticeable. Its amazing what developers can do with the very limited GPU capabilities of consoles.Just look at Uncharted 2 and Forza 3.When I bought Forza 3 I was blown away at how well it ran and how good it looked,shame it will never come out on PC and never see high native 1080P resolution.I am sick of console people thinking they are getting a "1080p" game when its more like a 720p frame which is scaled to 1080p,there IS a big difference.Just compare a DVD up scaled to 1080p and a Blu Ray at native 1080p.You'll See! Saying this,I sure as hope that the optimisations they have made for crysis 2 to be able to run on consoles rubs off on PC and allows us all to play on Enthusiast / Extreme at playable frame rates,im hoping for an average of 60+ FPS,maybe a bit too optimistic! lol
I don't think I've bought a single PC game at full RRP since Mechwarrior 2! It's part of the reason why console game prices still startle me every time I see them. No matter how old the game, most console titles still seem to be at least 75% of the original RRP where the PC version is down to half price or less. Add on top of that the fact that the initial release price always seems to be £10 or more higher then it just adds to my somewhat puzzled frown. In some ways though it has to be seen as a good thing - I have only bought about 3 PC games total pre owned so the developer still gets their cut, no matter how reduced. Console games? 95% second hand on the PS2 and Xbox360.
I thought the pc market was doing ok at least steam seems to be doing well, it is impressive what developers get out of the consoles, but I cant see them getting any more out of this generation in terms of graphics
I don't know. Compare something like Uncharted 2 or MGS4 to a cross-platform title and you'll see a drop in quality. Trouble is, it's the cross-platform titles that ruin it for everyone. Cross platform games on the PC are invariably dumbed down to console level. Cross platform console games are invariably below what a PS3 or 360 can do on their own because they are both very different plaforms but treated almost like one. Unfortunately, the business world doesn't care about the user experience, it almost doesn't matter what the product is - it could be Wellington boots for all they care, as long as the money comes in, the marketing department have done their job.
Piracy is a major issue, but there is also an ever increasing shift towards console gaming. So the demand for PC games will obviously suffer, and therefore the price will reflect that. A big problem is that a lot of people are lazy slackers today. In my day (wow did I just say that?), as kids we used to tinker around with our PC's to make them work how we wanted them. We used MSDOS and had to manage the computers memory with boot disks and stuff. And even in the more modern Windows era, up to today, you still have to look after a PC properly. You have to avoid or deal with viruses and spyware, you have to defrag often enough, you have to maintain your drives so that there's always enough space for the virtual memory and preferably a lot more so they run fast enough. You have to keep everything up to date, direct x, video, sound, network drivers, etc.. For want of a better term... 'Noobs' who have all kinds of crap running in their backgrounds, and toolbars all over the place, will only struggle to play PC games, so they just go from trauma to trauma. The fact is, some people don't mind doing this kind of stuff, but an increasing number of people either refuse to jump through these old fashioned hoops, or are too dumb to learn how to do this stuff themselves. The former being something I can't really argue against. So yeah... Consoles win on convenience by a long shot, and that is a major issue affecting PC gaming. Besides that, all the rampant piracy on PC's is just icing on the cake of doom.
Don't think anyone could say that better. The amount of people not willing to learn these days is crazy. I've even been trying to teach my dad how to clean out the inside of his computer cause whenever I visit him the fan sounds like its working overtime 24/7 but he never opens it up. Tried to show him how easy it is but he likes to think it will be fine forever I actually like the fact the games are going down in price obviously, I just don't like it as a sign. If they can go that cheap that fast then it shows how much more console games are picked over PC games.
Its in transition (again) from console to PC. The 70/80s it was consoles, the 90s PC gaming became popular due to devs wanting to push the boundaries of gameplay (ID, EPIC, Blizzard, etc) and consoles couldn't handle it. 2000s and HD consoles/tvs caused it to shift back to consoles. Well I follow the gaming communities closely and over the past year or so I'm seeing the beginnings of it shifting back to PC. I read in many PC gaming hardware forums where a poster states they are coming back to PC gaming after # years. Plus if you haven't noticed games are starting to become all the same due to console hardware limitations. The best way to fix this is for developers willing to design exclusives for the more powerful gaming PCs such as ID did in the 90s. Better games will bring gamers. I bought a $1400 PC in the 90s just to play Warcraft 2. Nuff said PC gaming hardware is cheaper than ever, the games are cheaper, the controls are better for FPS, RTS, etc and they have more power. Why wouldn't you want to be a PC gamer in 2010+ when current console hardware is approximately 5 years old? As for PC game prices they have always decreased in price fairly quickly. The difference now is they have online venues to compete with. Steam, Impulse, Direct to drive, etc. I think console gamers are nuts to want to console game exclusively. My assumption that PC gaming is on the rise. is just my opinion and you may think I'm crazy. However I do have 30+ years of gaming observation to reference.
