That is this, the 6th time we talk about PC games dying..?    Isn't it enough now??  *SIGH*

I believe that people choose consoles since it's easier. PCgaming have become easier with every single Windows release (almost) but that's just not enough it seems....

I also believe that the lazy & dumb choose consoles over PC. One of my childhoodfriends (who is sligthly retarded) gave me the dumbest excuse for not getting a PC two years ago.

Campaigner

Campaigners retardfriend

The obvious answer I thought up was: "And what the **** is stopping you from playing less on one console a day and playing on the PC instead???    Who the #%&! says you have to play more the more gaming systems you got??!

I never answered though since if that's the best argument he can come up with then it's no use to discuss further. And if I stress a subject then I just get the "But excuse MEEEE!" or "YEAH YEAH!"

Nowadays though I will never concede a topic.

Here is what is happening:  The little bookstores are all closed and it's all Barnes and Noble.  And Amazon.   The little hi-fi stores are all closed and it's all BEST BUY and COSTCO. 

Littles games are gone and it's all 'World of Warcraft', 'Civilization' and 'Battlefield'.   And Steam - the online equivalent of 'Amazon'. 

The big stuff gets bigger and the little stuff is gone.  It's sad and I don't like it, but that's the future.  People like Brad and Stardock are fighting the trend with quality and being good to their customers.  I hope it works for them.

And console games?  Run, jump, shoot, drive.  I have ZERO interest in consoles.   It's 2010 and if you look at a list of '20 best PS3 games' 19 of them will be shooters and drivers and sports games.   The console industry has done pretty much ZIP to entice real PC gamers over to their hardware.   Well, screw them.   I'll play Civ and Elemental and Falcon 4.0 and X-Com and Ascendancy until I croak.

That anology dons't work because those are providing the SAME product. The super market offers it for cheaper AND you can get other products there also.

Indie games are DIFFERENT from mass market offerings. Not better or worse. Different. Different audience. Different market and thus they don't really compete. In fact indie is growing to take the place of the mass market on PC as the publishers transition to a higher profit margin operrating procedure.

As you said you don't like the mass market console games so you don't buy them on PC so the publishers can't make zillions of bucks and so they say "Screw you PC guys! The console boys lap up this shaihat so were gonna serve that market exclusivly." Its actually more about the % console can bring in vs the % form PC. Its profit but the publishers don't care about a couple of hundred thousand here and there they care about the millions from the console. They just can't be bothered to spend that much effort for so little return. Quick console port for a little extra - no problem. Full dvelopment of a seperate interface and settings and other things? Not likely!

*note: I use indie and "small" interchangeably these days. You can still be a publisher and be a 'inide' level entity.

And the reason you're seeing fewer PC games on shelves is the explosion in digital distribution.  As bandwidth becomes cheaper and physical distribution becomes more expensive, digital distribution makes more and more economic sense.

That is another thing, compared to the united states, here in canada all user's internet bandwith is limited. Apparently in the US, everybody got access to unlimited bandwith. So it makes it harder for example to download games on demand on the Xbox.

I have nothing against electronic distribution, and probably I could save some bandwith during a month to download elemental. But having a market only made of download hinder us. I currently have a 30 gig limit per month so it is not so bad. But if I had a lower internet package, my limit would have been around 3 gig.

As has already been said, it's an issue of supply and demand.  As long as there are people who have PC and have money to spend on games, there will be PC games available.  My concern is similar to Is35a's: that is, PC gaming will be dominated by a few large companies (i.e., EA, Blizzard, Valve/Steam, etc.) who will drive smaller, independent developers out of the market and increasingly restrict access to games through draconian DRM systems.  I believe that quality and hard work tend to pay off, so there will always be smaller companies with good products around.  However, the ever-escalating cost of making, advertising, and supporting PC games will probably minimize the number of small developers in the market.

I also think that PC gaming is a niche market, unlike consoles, and thus will always have limited appeal to the broad spectrum of gamers.  It takes a dedicated person to maintain a gaming rig.  Regularly upgrading RAM, graphics cards, CPU, operating sytem, etc. requires a certain kind of mentality and commitment (and finances!), unlikely simply owning a console that requires no such upkeep. And this is aside from all of the other stuff that PC gamers have to deal with as "normal" occurrences, such as crashes, freezes, incompatibility issues, multiplayer lag, and the occasional virus or malware. 

I personally consider myself primarily a PC gamer.  I like tweaking my machine and the ability to mod games.  Also, I play a lot of RTS games, which are just better on PC.  However, PC gaming is definitely not for everybody, and the console market--which has probably been bigger than the PC game market since the time of the Atari 2600--addresses a very reasonable desire of people to just play video games without worrying about all the stuff that can go wrong with PC hardware and software. 

On the contrary. To get a gaming-capable PC all you need is a decent (~$80) GPU, anything else you likely already have on your 'regular' computer, there's no continuous upgrade necessary, at least not any faster than you need to upgrade consoles themselves, and at a lower cost (an ATI 5670 is far cheaper than a PS3).

Crashes, freezes and multiplayer lag are all a part of console gaming as well, viruses and malware aren't a problem for even semi-knowledgeable users (and if you aren't, you're dealing with them on your 'regular' computer regardless) so the only advantage is that you theoretically have no incompatibility issues to worry about. Theoretically, because my PS2's memory card somehow fails to be recognized by a couple games I own for some unknown reason, though generally speaking you're correct.

And indies are thriving now more than they've ever had since the days of shareware, just look at Torchlight for God's sake, all thanks to the enormous success of download services. Sure, most indies don't get much (if any) coverage on 'mainstream' gaming websites, but we all know how much *those* are worth (ie, zero). So no worries on that front either.

Please don't say piracy favors consoles; 360 piracy is rampant.  PS3 piracy is interestingly almost nonexistent but that may just be because all the pirates just have 360s.

Oh, and considering how many more titles 360 games sell compared to PS3 games, that would be a point against the "piracy costs us sales!" camp.

Ain't no such thing as an console market. Everything is PC gaming. An xbox or PS3 is just an lavendered up desktop. I could convert one to run windows XP if I wanted to. Hell right now I am turning an old PIII dell and minimizing it so it can fit and boot inside an pelican case at the moment so it can control and operate an Underwater ROV. 

The only difference is the input controls and techinally, even then, there is little difference. I can hook up a joystick or game controller to my desktop, woo LA I now has a "xbox". Hell the smartest thing a person could do is convert the xbox code into PC code so you can run your "console" (quotes cause i dispise the word console) games on your PC. But either way, PC Gaming ain't dying, just moving to an different form of input control is all.

And when the pirates move to XBOX 360, guess where the DRM sharks will go. A sticker for whoever guesses right. no replacing RTS's/MMORPG's though. That will remain.

could be done though. Other crazy fans have.

*shrugs* But yeah.

Shhh. It's a secret remember. Can't pull away the biggest "fact" in argument against PC in favor of consoles now can we? Oh, the DS has a huge pirate following too.

pc gaming died?HEH not in my country at least

I have to disagree with the statement some people have made that consoles are free from bugs, compatibility issues, etc. and these issues seem to be getting more common as the technology gets more complex. From what I can tell consoles are getting more and more complicated. Gone are the days when you could just put a cartridge in and play. Now there are multiple product SKUs, patches to games, hard drive installs, firmware updates, lockout bugs like the recent leap year issue with the PS3, and the seemingly inevitable hardware failures on the XBox 360. The usability gulf between PC and console seems to be shrinking if anything.