The Death of PC gaming? I don't think so.

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ToadofSteel made a thread about the death of PC gaming, he's worried that consoles are ruling over PC games industry.


http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt64139.html

I understand his concerns , the consoles ruled during the first months of their releases, in fact that what happened during the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation for short time but after a while the PC games ruled again and that's what happening today ....the PC gaming is ruling again.

There's a huge list of good upcoming PC titles will be released till 2009:

-Mass Effect 2 :woot:
-Dragon Age (Bioware! need to say more?)
-Red Alert 3 --> HOOT
-Fallout 3 (ok oblivion mod....but still fallout world!)
-Space Siege (a sci-fi dungeon siege!)
-Demigod
-Spore
-Diablo 3 ---> YOOOOHHHOooooooo
-Tomb Raider underworld
-Wolfenstein
-Far Cry 2
-the rise of Argonauts
-Prince of persia (the new one)
-Assassin' creed 2
-Mafia 2 (TBA)
-Doom 4 (TBA)
-Bionic Commando



And most "exclusive" consoles games are being ported to PC like: Mass effect (and so Mass effect 2) ,GTA4,Gears of war (and so the GOW 2 for sure)....damn there are even rumors that FF13 might be ported to PC too.

Let's face it, PC kicks ass, no lame console would beat it for too long.

Unfortuantely (fortunately indeed) it seems like reality doesn't agree.

Several people working for major software houses have recently (E3) said that PC gaming future doesn't look good at all, the higher rate of piracy makes developing games for PC less and less rewarding, if the trend doesn't change it is very likely that more and more software houses will just stop investing in PC games.

As for me, I'm a HUGE fan of console gaming, I don't like PC gaming at all, so the death of PC gaming wouldn't sound bad to me.

BTW, piracy SUCKS.

Piracy has been and always will be a problem for PC games and even with console games. I'm not a big video gamer (I'd rather play a game of Killer Rabbits) but from what I have seen, console and PC dominance switches every couple of years or less. Hardware wise, you are stuck with the console's hardware until you buy another one while with a PC you can upgrade the system. Also, my PC that I built 8 years ago still works while my XBOX and Playstation 2 are doorstops. It would be a shame for companies to stop producing PC games because then why would someone fork out money to Microsoft or Apple then? Don't think that they will let that happen but I've been known to be wrong in the past so we shall see.

id are one of the most important PC developers and they recently confirmed that the lead platform for their new game "Rage" will be the 360. Microsoft have changed the industry by bringing a lot of previously PC only titles to the Xbox and the 360. FPS and RTS used to be PC only and now most, if not all, of these games are coming to the 360. There is less and less reason to fork out a fortune for a gaming PC when you can buy a 360 and be guaranteed that a game will work the first time you put the DVD in the drive.

Cons against PC Gaming:

-hardware is very expensive compared to the consoles
-software often won't work right out of the box
-keyboard and mouse is an awkward control system
-piracy means sales and profits of PC only titles are way down
-lots of console games are timed exclusives, Mass Effect, Halo 3, Fable 2, GTA4, Mass Effect 2, Gears of War 2, Assassin's Creed
-lots of console games will never come to the PC, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, Halo Wars, Too Human, Ace Combat 6, Amped 3, Beautiful Katamari, Viking: Battle for Asgard, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Crackdown, Dark Sector, Darksiders: Wrath of War, Ninja Gaiden 2, Eternal Sonata, Forza Motorsport 2 and 3, Project Gotham Racing 3 and 4, Fracture, The Force Unleashed, Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean 4, Lips, Rockstar Presents Table Tennis, Skate 1 and 2, Soul Calibur 4, Tales of Vesperia, Virtua Fighter 5 Online, Viva Pinata 2.

That's a lot of games that you won't be playing on your PC.

... you can pirate console games just as easily as you can pirate PC games... so piracy and the death of pc games are almost unrelated

OH, and PC gaming will ALWAYS have The Sims, which has to be one of the biggest games out there. theyve been put on consoles, but not been nearly as successfull as the PC versions of them (possibly because lack of expansion pack capabilities for consoles, or maybe because the controlls are a bit wonky. i also noticed that the sims for gamecube didnt let you kill off an entire family, it would say game over and not save when the last member died. im sure this was a blow for the sickos out there that like to kill their sims)

as well as The Sims, there are also other this-that-and-the-other-thing Simulator, such as Roller Coast Tycoon (and all those other -tycoon games) SimCoaster (i loved that game before i lost the disc for it) and just, in general, those games that let you controll everything. makes you feel like god almost. and theyre just not as entertaining on consoles, in my opinion, and in the opinion of my fellow -simulator game fan friends.

Yes, maybe you can pirate console games just as easily as PC games but fact is that piracy is way more common in the PC world. Console games produce way more money than PC games, you do the math and if things don't change say goodbye to PC games.
Furthermore, considering the 360, you should note that as soon as you use a pirate copy of a game you lose access to Xbox Live, and, given the fact that most people own a 360 just to play online, using pirate copies is not a good deal.

most people i know use emulators on their PCs to play their pirated games, so im not sure how youd get banned from Xbox Live. how would they find out? granted, i dont own a 360 so im not completely sure how Xbox Live works entirely *i lack sufficient funds on my own part for a 360, and the parental unit wont purchase one because of reading on their failure rates*

and as for the 'death of pc games' PC games still have their MMOs. almost all MMOs are on PC and only some of the biggest ones get put on consoles (ive only heard of FFXI being put on a console, but im not gonna say its the only one because i havent researched whether others have been put on consoles or not) i mean, i havent exactly seen WoW, Vanguard, Fiesta, Requiem, EQ or EQII put on consoles, and some of those are incredibly huge names in gaming.

-The computer as gaming platform isn't expensive when you consider most people already have very capable PCs that are just short a graphics card of a decent gaming machine.
-Software often does work out of the box, I don't know what you mean by this. Unless you are referring to installation, which is something that console games often do nowadays anyway. I know that every PS3 game I have ever owned has had to be installed prior to playing, even PSN downloads. Metal Gear Solid 4, despite being a fantastic game, has the worst and most irritating installation process in a game I've ever seen. You can't just install it and be done... you have to keep installing it every time you move to a new level!
-Keyboard and mouse control is superior for certain types of games, such as RTS, FPS, god-games like anything made by Sid Meier, complex RPGs and MMOs such as the upcoming Dragon Age & WoW, just as dual sticks are best suited for action, adventure, platforming games.
-Lots of games that are on both PC and consoles are superior on the PC. Gears of War, Mass Effect, the Halo games, the Half Life 2 games, Viva Pinata, Supreme Commander, Baldur's Gate, The Sims.
-Many things that PC gamers get for free console gamers have to pay for. Downloadable content, multiplayer gaming, etc.
-Mods are something that console gamers rarely get. Oblivion is one of the worst big budget games I've played recently, but with mods, which are available for the PC version, it... gets slightly better.
-Not so much for 2D games, but 3D games on PC will look better when you get around to upgrading. Consoles can also make older games look better, but compared to PCs it's extremely limited.
-New computers can play new games and old games, and really old games without a problem, for the most part. Consoles have to have backwards compatibility specifically designed into the architecture and console makers don't and aren't in the future ever going to treat this as a priority, because they have a vested interest in selling the newer games.

Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are really just glorified, underpowered PC's with limited usage outside of gaming. That said I'm still a big Xbox gamer in addition to loving PC games, in particular RTS and MMO games. Also, don't forget that you can continually upgrade your PC; you can't very well do this with a console, you're pretty much stuck with the hardware, which in cases like the 360, is kind of bs. The HD drive is now useless since High Def DVD is obsolete; now I have to go out and buy the Blue-Ray thing when it comes out. And the Xbox 360 and PS3 Hard drives are ridiculously expensive. Consoles have alot of great games, don't get me wrong, but if you plugged a PS3 controller into a PC with an emulator (can't you do this?) you'd basically have the same experience. IMO, the separation between console and PC gaming is pointless, I'm looking forward to the day when its all integrated into one unit, and theres no more 'console wars', which are merely another easy way for companies to make quick cash.

i was going to say something about someone saying that computer hardware upgrades being expensive in an earlier post, but i forgot about it during talk of The Sims and MMOs.

what i was going to say is that, much like Enigmatic_Oddity said, most computers, even cookie-cutter Dell computers, are already decent, or at least competant, gaming machines, just lacking ab etter graphics card. if you actually know where to look and know what you're doing when putting the computer together or switching out parts (and even if you dont, you can hire someone from like, geek squad to do it for you or something) you can easily find a fairly cheap, good graphics card and switch it out of your cookie-cutter machine. the graphics card i use for one of my PCs runs Requiem Bloodymare NO PROBLEM and its going on 6 years old and ran for a little under $30 at the time. i have no idea what its pricing is now, but im sure you could find something even better than it for around the same price on sites like newegg.com. the graphics card in question is a GEforce 8900 series, though thats kind of vague and i may be getting it confused with the graphics card in the other computer, as neither computer has had any hardware change in 6 years other than the addition of more harddrives.

in short, a computer built 6 years ago can run a game made less than one year ago, with top-end graphics, no sweat, and rather cheaply.

edit : also, i find PC games to have better graphics than most console games anyways. some of the new stuff ive seen for 360 and ps3 just seem so... unlifelike now. sure its realistic, but do the people look like they have life? though i have seen some good graphics on the 360 that look lifelike, but those were only on games from companies that are specifically known to make good graphics in their games.

Even though I see the logic in this statement, I'm gonna go out and call this crap. Half the time you don't know if your computer can run a decent graphics card. When I decided to buy a graphics card for my PC it turned out my power supply is teh suxorz so I'm stuck with the "not game worthy" 8600GT.

Anyway, the larger market share speaks pretty clearly: people would rather just buy a console than deal with the hassle involved in knowing the ins and outs of a pc. And when you factor in the fact that PC games have other issues (compatibility is huge; I can't get bioshock's sound working on mine, Quake 4 won't run _at all_; the fact that PC games need to be compatible with a variety of systems means that the optimization for running it on sub optimal rig like mine has to be done manually unless you want the game to look like s**t, but even still it does look like s**t or the framerate drops to its knees at odd times because the setting doesn't take into account how taxing one setting will be in a variety of situations).

I mean, many people tout how PCs have potential money saving and decent rigs can be built on a budget, but when I buy a console I'm paying for the fact that I don't have to put up with that crap. Convenience and accessibility are already factored in, and people value that high enough that consoles present a good deal.

The PC game market is small, and I don't think many people see signs of that changing in the future. Oh


I need an emulator to play any DOS game (and DOSbox gets errors that sometimes render games *unplayable*), and getting old windows games to run right is likewise a pain in the ass. Not to mention the fact that being able to play old games isn't a huge deal anyway...

theres a very simple solution for that.... know what your computers capabilities are before you buy. usually when you buy a piece of hardware from a website itll tell you what the requirements to run it are (or at least the sites i buy from).

Which brings me back to elegance: *maybe* just maybe people don't want to have to be completely tech savvy just to play video games. It's a waste of time and effort.

*shrugs* i suppose. but i never considered myself very tech savvy, as i usually dont notice when theres something wrong with my computers till its too late. and i always figured people who were technology-challenged didnt do much with PC games, though that seems a bit of a silly thought when i think of it really.

and its not a total waste of time and effort in alot of cases, alot of the PC games that are out there are sometimes worth the headache (depending on how bad the headache is).