Do you think the dropping share of PCs in the gaming market will kill PC games?

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As the lengthy title goes, do you think the current situation, in which PCs seem to have lost for good the (not so fitting, according to some) position as the dominant market of games, is going to be good or bad for PC games?

While it's true that transition to consoles will mean consoles getting more attention and more and more console-only releases, I remember the times when PC was not yet the dominant platform (and Intel-based x86 architecture wasn't the undisputed owner of the PC title). There were several others. I think that was actually the best time for PC games - the DOS time. It was quite geeky to have a PC and play games on it because it was seen (rightfully so, but not to the point of excluding games, of course) as not a system made for games. It was suggested that whoever treated games "seriously", should get an Amiga, for instance. Even Atari (the old Atari) games tended to beat PC ones to graphics. There was competition. The old computers were far from dying out when consoles first appeared. If I'm correct, the first consoles were based on Voodoo Rush, a 2MB graphics card with a 4MB 3D accelerator onboard. Perhaps that's what killed Amiga, Atari and the surviving Spectrum, Commodore and other veterans. Contrary to those old computers, consoles were only for playing games. For office stuff, you'd get a PC or a Mac. I guess jumping to consoles got its share of killing to do, but it wasn't really killing PCs.

Where I'm driving at is that consoles are not quite destructive to PCs or PC games. These days they are trying to keep things coming out on both systems, or at least PC games tend to get console versions. But what if the two platforms (more, in fact, as there are several types of consoles) went separate ways, what could happen?

More consoles? Sure. Software shops having more games for consoles than for PCs? Sure. Lack of good releases? So long as those developers and publishers who have a lot of established position to capitalise on are willing to throw themselves on the console waters, yes. But aren't we getting crappy sequels these days anyway? Aren't games requiring more and more while offering less and less? PCs won't die. People who know how to make games for PCs, who were around before Amigas and Ataris died (or coin-based machines, for that matter), who witnessed the first occurence of consoles, they won't all feel like transplanting themselves on some not so new ground - after all, consoles have probably been much more similar to each other than any of them is to the PC. There will always be someone staying behind and willing to make PC games.

So what if big cash moves on to the greener pastures of consoles? I'm no wizard to say PC hardware prices will drop together with the typical person's interest or go up the sky as the monetary denominator of the subjective desirability of uncertain to get parts. But it doesn't take a wizard to guess that there won't be that much racing in the hardware tech anymore, after perhaps some brief fight (watch some GeForce 9-10, possibly renamed, some ATI x2000).

So what? Would you cry if there were no five digit GeForce next year? I remember how series 6 was gaining ground last year (okay, okay, it was around the year before as well) and what now? 8800, hello. Series 7 didn't even get the time to bloom. I'm sure they have series 9 on the lab table already. Or how many cores do you need for your home computer? In "my time", servers didn't take that kind of powerhouse.

So, again, what if? What if big cash drifts away and there's no new hardware? How about... the existent hardware finally gets properly supported before it's already dated? Or developers learn to code things rather than lumping together? Okay, I know they can code and a milion times better than I could, but can they really code better than those folks who made games in the DOS time? Would you really cry for more artistic graphics in the place of more and more technical renders? Do you really need a philharmony in your house? Those things are great but they don't make games. It's ideas that make games. Ideas developers have in their minds are what makes games.

Would it really hurt if developers and publishers focused more on what they have on the market instead of raising the requirements and counting on people buying more and more upgrades? I am starting to believe that replacing your old console with something of a newer generation as soon as it comes out is less of an expensive cycle and that even the increased price of console games over PC games pays off for those who play new games. Developers in the DOS time made a very good use of what they had. There was no my-head-is-falling-off 60 fps, but neither was there unplayable lag on lower end systems (if the game ran at all and yes, sometimes it didn't because you had a 286 and it was a 32 bit application for 386+). You needed to play the same game later on a faster system to get the idea that it was slow on your old one. Or not really. I think slow games are a modern concept. Prince of Persia was oh so fast and fluent on my 486 SX 25 MHz and very good on my 16 MHz 286, but it's not like it was laggy on my XT. Actually, you thought it was supposed to be like that. They designed and coded with that speed in mind. They took it in consideration in animations, I guess. On a 486 Prince's moves would be quite frantic and perhaps some quicker finger action was required to make it to the newly faaast gates. There was more difference between some versions of DOS (e.g. DOS 3.0 and DOS 5+) than between some processor lines. You got a faster operating system and your games treated you like you had a whole better rig.

I would like to see some return of imagination instead of immersion. Some creativity in place of perfecting old ideas with new technological wonders that won't work anyway because the existing hardware is too taxed with all the layers of libraries and lower-level code required. Tools required by tools required by tools required by tools, required by tools. To what end? To what level? In my time, you would count programming levels like that. High level would be 3, I guess. That would be something compiled in Basic, for which the compiler was done in C, for which the compiler was done in Assembler. I just wonder how many levels even RPGS have this days for some of the glitz. Probably more than my characters do.

Of course, there is no need to code the wheel all over again. But with all those layers of tools and other applications and whatnot, no wonder hardware power will at some point run out. And what with memory leaks? I guess it makes debugging a whole new meaning of "difficult", as well. I do believe that the constant progression in the hardware area is acting as some sort of credit guarantee here. But what if there is no new processor line in foreseeable future? What if upgrading would mean replacing most of the components? What if what you have is what you will have? Then you start optimising. You stop hoping that some newer hardware will more easily swallow it and stop ignoring the fact that game graphics hasn't developed as much as graphical power of the hardware over the last hmm... 10 years?

Work with what you have. This is an idea I would like to see back in the PC world. Consoles are not an enemy of it, I think.

 

7 million WoW players says no

No honestly, as long as the PC offers something the console cant, i doubt it. what we might see and I truly hope so, is an intergration of PC and Consoles, where the same machine covers both things.

thier is still today some games who dosn't go well on a console and to a lesser degree vice versa. yet both have survived for so long.

I meen when people play an FPS its on thier PC for the majority still, i know Xbox and xbox360 has some great ones, but its still mainly a PC genre. Same goes for RTS and turn based strategy (TBS?).

Also the consolos still suffer from the lack of memory, games like NWN and The elder scrolls just dosn't work well on consoles, since you cant use the toolsets and install or download expansions (allthough again Xbox seems to want to integrate this).

but while we allways talk about console exclusive games, we are wondering why they make them console exclusive, since they can and often gets adapted to PC. While we never wonder or name a game PC exclusive, even though a large part of pc games are.

My conclusion is, as for now, the pc is by no means endangered as a gaming station.

 

The PC is endangered in certain genres of gaming. You just don't buy fighting, platform, racing and platform games for the PC.

However, Equester has it right. MMOs, strategy and FPS games are the bread and butter of PC gaming since a console fails to deliver. However if consoles wished to administer a death-knell for PCs they'd incorporate a mouse + keyboard system into all consoles. Apparently you can buy mice and keyboards for certain consoles but I've actually yet to see one. If you could use either then the console 'could' replace the PC for gaming.

 

I'd complain that there will be a lack of complex games on the market due to dumbing down for console audiences, but that complaint is a bit redundant already.

On the whole I don't really care if mainstream developers shift their focus to consoles, so long as indie studios stick with PC (which as development for PC is free as opposed to consoles, that seems like a pretty fair bet).

 

I'd say no, it's a different gaming "experience" imo.

<edit>

oops! thought I'd double posted back there

 

Kill PC gaming? This topic has been discussed for the last ten years, it was especially hot when PS2 was slashing through the market and according to some predictions, PC gaming should not even exist anymore, but it does. Will it die? No.

Amiga was killed because of the "rampaging piracy" and because of stupid decisions made by Commodore. Like the AGA-chipset upgrade which which was too little and too late (purposefully delayed launch).

 

The PC market share is just slow because all three companies have new consoles out. Once these lose the luster of being new, the PC market share will rebound.

 

I think that one of the consoles must die dreadfull but amusing death. The pc will keep its niche but the number of games will drop to a such a point that even the most hardcore pc games must by one of those.......things just to give in to his/her addiction.

 

Just a thought... PCs are also consolifying to some degree. I mean the workstations with everything integrated into mobo and the whole computer being the size of an external modem. That stuff is enough for office work and library use, but I wish you luck if you try games on it... I think that segment of the PC market will grow. And the game consoles are so grown a share of the general market that they actually compete between one another more than with the PC, I think. So between the polarisation of workstations and game consoles, some middle-of-the-road PCs could actually gain a specific position of their own. More specific than now.

 

The introduction of Vista and DirectX 10 will further "console-ize" PC games, I think. Not sure if this will be a good or bad thing.

I think there will always be a niche out there for us hard-core PC gamers who like the more complex games, be they RPGs or strategy.

I have to say I gave up on PC games about 10 years ago and gamed exclusively on my PlayStation. It was games like Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights that convinced me to get back into PC gaming. Without compelling PC titles getting released, well, ya never know.

 

Consoles aren't going to kill PCs. If anything, PCs will meet their final end at the spearpoint of their own versatility, and an overwhelming flood of piracy will drive them into the ground. However, as I see consoles becoming more and more advanced, at the same time as PCs become more and more "consolified" via Windows Vista, a clearer image begins to emerge. I think that sometime in the near future, Bill Gates will look out his window and wonder why he's making two versions of the same product.

 

PC games deliver things you can't get on a console (like MMORPG's) but I think the reasion they are so popular is you can use the computer for so many other things after you have finished using the game.

But I do agree with what BlckDeth said, they will die by piracy.

 

Nah. In the words of one book publisher (who put his money where his mouth was, and profited from doing so), "most people would rather be honest".

 

True, I am considered stupid for owning legal games and xp by some of my friends. I am not proud that a hacker crackes the blueray and hddvd.

 

It's not all that hard to pirate off of consoles either. a $30 chip and a little bit of soldering and you can copy games straight to your xbox harddrive, or play burnt games for the consoles that save on memory chips.

I know of at least 10 people in a town of 3,000 that have this so i'm sure that its fairly widespread for console gamers.

Also, most PC gamers will NOT switch to Vista. I borrowed a copy from my tech school teacher to try it out on my pc(because it lagged horribly on the schools pc's) and even on my computer which is by no means slow, it still ran very very choppy and took up about half of my ram....and I disabled the majority of extra's for Vista. I Generally get 250+ FPS on Counter Strike: source and on vista I was running at about 70, and NWN 2 I was at 10 or less.

AMD 3700+
2 Gig OCZ RAM
SLI 7800 GT's

As for PC piracy, many people that I know will download the game to try it, and if they like it, go out and buy it. TBH in many cases the protections of computer games is ridiculous. I've found several games that I couldn't play LAN on because the copy protection wouldn't allow it, even for LAN hosted games.

 

My theory: The integration of computers, consoles, and home entertainment systems is inevitable. As consoles become more powerful and expensive, people will want them to function as computers as well. Were already seeing the high end consoles integrate high def dvd. Vanilla business computers will keep a niche market, but the home pc will be a different animal in 10 years. Luckily, enough people enjoy the "pc gaming experience" that gaming companies will still provide this on systems of the future.

However in the short term, expect more compaines to follow the money, create games for the console and later port them over to the pc for a little extra revenue. And expect even good games to be slightly annoying because they were primarily developed for the console: elder scrolls oblivion, anyone?

 

Do your friends also yell at you "You're not ONE OF US!"

I own legit games, in fact all the games I have purchased in the last year or two have been legit, although there was a period when I just downloaded copies...

 

I doubt that piracy will kill PC games, or if it does it will only be for a brief amount of time. That's because if people end up pirating to the point where no one makes PC games anymore they'll have realised that they'll have shot themselves in the foot.

Regardless - (as far as I can tell) people like to support things which they enjoyed a good deal. Sure - that latest awesome graphics FPS you downloaded maybe not so much, but when something is good enough to attract a hardcore fanbase then they'll pay to keep the studio making games.

And as for cracking the hddvd - that's just a way of letting people do what they should be able to do anyway - make backup copies of things they own. Muslix64 = awesome

 

Oh good grief. People were saying that piracy was going to kill PC games back in the 80s. It hasn't happened yet and I doubt it will happen any time soon.

 

while game companies, the music industry, the royal fleet and so on likes to complain about piracy, it really isn't that big a problem and it will not kill any industry, because in the end, the majority dont do it.

I meen sure most people come in contact with piracy and own pirate copied games or music or privateered fleets, but in the end i believe most people will pick up some copies but the majority of thier collections will be legaly bought originals.