PC gaming is dying (albeit slowly) because PCs are to complicated for, well, many people. I find it a bit sad that the majority of casual gamers can't comprehend much more than placing a diskette into a PlayStation 3, sitting on the couch, and begin playing.

And kids think: computers? don't you have to buy them?  

Only the entertainment industry could ever consider needing to make a 500% profit margin for something to be a good idea... You guys do realize that most people make cents on the dollar for their investments, and not dollars on the cents? 10% is good, 15% is great. The returns from games like Halo 3 are better than the oil companies are getting from crude oil sales right now. If the anti-capitalist assholes were paying any attention at all, they'd be going into convulsions.

The 8800 gt is only $139, the 9600 gt is definately cheaper than $150.



That's how low all my friends are, they are all console junkies. The only PC game they love is WoW (Well that's like half of my good friends playing it). Yes, while WoW is a major addiction its turned around a couple of my friends to respect PC gaming. One has upgraded his computer with a better GPU. He doesn't even touch his PS3 anymore because he know PC gaming is better in every way. Another has bought better computer but WoW is the only pc game he plays, other than that his a console nub.

Yes kids, (and teens, well I'm still a little kid at heart even though I'm 16) need a computer. This is what my parent have thought, why buy both a mediocre computer and a mediocre console when you can invest that money into an amazing computer and play Crysis decently on high and go slug it out on 10 player, 150 planet Sins maps.

I know the person that started getting people into WoW, it may be annoying when he bother's me to join WoW when I don't want to pay for monthly subscriptions but I have to praise him for being the biggest person at school to get people to play games on a PC. While it may only be one game it could not have been a better game as its the most addicting game around and this will hoepfully lead them to play more games on a PC.

I've been a PC gamer since a was 6 or 7, playing Ages of Empire on a Windows 95. PC gaming is the best way to play and it will survive the fight against greedy corporate CEO's that seek to destroy the ensence of true gaming.

Long Live Stardock, Long Live PC gaming, Viva la PC game developers.

article from the pc gaming alliance.

http://www.developmag.com/news/29331/The-PC-market-is-not-dying-says-newly-formed-PC-Gaming-Alliance

another interesting quote



The pc gaming alliance seems really interesting especially the firms backing it Activision, Epic and Microsoft, AMD, Nvidia, Intel, OEM firms Dell, Acer, Alienware and Gateway.

They said they want to provide a voice to the PC gaming market



anyway guess that shows pc gaming isn't dying and still at the forefront for hard core gaming. Either way I own a 360 and quad core PC beast. I hope each sector continues to advance and compete with each other can only mean good things for us gamers.

cant wait till futuremarks start making games http://www.futuremark.com/games/ especially if its like the other stuff they have done...

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Exactly. This is the way forward. If the PC segment manages to do the exact opposite of what Big Media has done with music and movie downloads. Rather than trying to fight it in vain, you make it your business model. Altough mid-session games (the game is free but you pay for gear) has been extremely big in Asia for quite some time, we have not seen too much of it here. But it'll come.

Best part is we'll probably see a lot of interesting new game ideas in the process. Hopefully more studios will shy away from making games that are almost like console titles, but bound to be shadowing them, and do the stuff you can only really do on a PC.

Interestingly, the major selling franchise on the PC, The Sims, could hardly ever have been a console game. Not so much because of tech reasons, but rather demographics. With exponentially growing development budgets it's imperative for the PC scene to solve it's profitability issues-whether real or imagined. Otherwise the guys in suits won't hand out the good stuff from their coffers.

You're basically making the point that I have tried to put across. Which is that PC games can be very successful when they are specific to the platform (e.g. WOW or The Sims). When they try to mimic console games they can not match the bigger audience that consoles have.

As for cherry picking data, all I tried to point out was that Gabe Newell is talking silly talk when he tries to claim that it's a myth that console sales are way bigger than PC sales. With the exception of the giant sales of The Sims, which is not a good example as it caters to a whole different demographic, and WoW, being subscription based, very few PC titles ever come close to the sales figures that a good console title can generate.

This discussion started with the idea that the PC is dying as a gaming platform. I don't really believe that. I think it has some major problems that needs to be resolved, and those are in many ways being addressed--primarily through the pursuit of alternative revenue streams and distribution methods. Valve is on the forefront of that and I applaud it. But apples are still apples.

I don't subscribe to that particular dichotomy of "PC or console". I enjoy both and they have their different strengths and weaknesses, but it is important to remember that consoles do have a very large audience, and to many studios it makes more financial sense to produce console titles rather than PC games as it stands today.

Semantics. What I meant is when they are sufficiently different in design as to not be viable on a console. Why are so many PC gamers so stingy about this subject?

You list a handful of titles, with the highest seller going back a couple decades, and use Half-life 2 as your example for the PC. A game that sold half as well as it's predecessor, is rumored to be improperly tracked, and isn't anywhere near the top of the chart.

Either you're attempting to mislead people on purpose, or you don't double check your sources and are mislead yourself.

Reality is the exact opposite of the claim, the console industry is dwarfed by the PC industry. The NPD only measures retail sales, and doesn't even track the other models at all. The PC is a rapidly expanding market with oodles of cash to be made, and versatility far beyond the narrow niche of retail box sales that the industry is tracking and pointing to as their doom.

One thing we should all consider is that a console is just a PC with a dumbed down interface (read Gamepad rather than keyboard), and that the capabilities of each new generation of console make them more and more PC-like, thus blurring the lines between PCs and Consoles.

Aren't making any money and aren't making any money developing six million dollar graphics engines for doom rehashes aren't the same thing. Look at the returns. When a game costs a million bucks to produce and sells a million copies, they've made an obscene amount of money off it. They've made enough money that if they were an oil company, people would be rioting in the street and calling for their heads. EA sold 50 million copies of The Sims. Do you have any idea how big the margins on that project were?

Capcom spent 40 million bucks making and marketing Lost Planet:Extreme Condition. It's a 40 million dollar paper weight that looks nice. The game is a piece of shit by pretty much all accounts. It looks nice, and plays like a dog. Stupidity is what loses them money, not the PC platform.

World of Warcraft (PC): 10M subscribers
The Sims (PC): 100M copies sold by April 2008
Solitare, Minesweeper, or FreeCell: I don't know, but it's gotta be huge . . .



-Look at how different strategy games play on the console vs the PC. In order to make them playable on the console, they have to invent a whole new system of control in order to make the concept work at all without a mouse.

-A flight simulator style game also would be difficult to port to the console due to the extremely complex controls. Granted, that style of game is largely dying even on the PC, but it's one of the few styles of games that it is doubtful will ever be seen on a console other than in a very arcade style.

-MMORPGs are still largely PC territory.

-Basically, consoles are best suited for games with simple controls. For more complex games, the PC will be the best choice for years to some. Anything with a complex control system will need to be simplified to play on the console. Keep in mind the average keyboard has well over 100 buttons - and some games use them.

-The PC is constantly evolving, while consoles are static. You can already build a PC that will outperform the Xbox 360 no matter what way you measure it. In fact, you can build one that outperforms it and is quieter as well if you pay careful attention to your cooling system. So if you're the kind of person who counts triangles, takes a close look at the resolution of textures, and counts the number of shaders being used, then you'll want a PC.

-If you want to mod a game, PC is the only choice. Consoles are generally harshly locked down, preventing games from being modded.

Of course that does lead to some shallow games built just to show off the graphics (Crysis). However, there are still some good innovators in the market. Take a look at Portal or the upcoming Spore. There are also a lot of great games made by smaller companies such as Audiosurf and Sins of a Solar Empire. With procedural generation getting a lot of attention, I expect to see a lot more large games created by small developers in the near future.

And if you want to talk about rehashes of old games - the console is every bit as guilty as the PC. Mario? Halo? Metroid? Sonic? Soul Caliber? Final Fantasy! Every console is pretty much guaranteed many of its games, especially its "core" games, are going to get a new release when a new console comes out.

Rehashing games is part of the business, frankly. Doesn't matter if its console or PC, there's a big demand for keeping old franchises. I'd say all platforms are guilty as charged.

This is always the way things go.

Casualties:
Westwood
Black Isle
Sierra (Exists in name only)
Bullfrog
CaveDog
Accolade
Team Ninja (just to show consoles are not immune)
many many more...

The benefit?
These developers get to join companies with huge budgets and get to make one lack luster game clone after another. They learn the ins and outs of creating the impressive game engines and then they break off to form new development groups as t they tire of all the oversight.

The new companies make or break all based on one title and its awesome. They lose all rights to there previous creations forcing them to go out into new directions. This is never new and will never end.

The difference now is that most peoples computers can't even run the latest OS, much less the latest games. So Consoles will beat out PC's in the long run as a dedicated gaming platform. The only thing that has kept this from happening is Microsoft and Sony. They are so worried about losing the proprietary rights that they snuff many games being developed or allowing them the freedom that PC's enjoy. Forcing crappy UI's to support controllers that haven't changed in over a decade.

The first company that opens their console up to the same freedom as a PC will probably end the PC as a gaming platform. Thankfully the monopolistic tenancies of large corps will keep this from becoming a problem any time soon. If IBM could go back and do to the PC what MS and Sony have done with the consoles we would never have made as much progress as we have. Capitalism will always dominate Socialism and Monopolies are by definition socialist.