Is PC gaming dying?

The Real B-man

Cunny-Funt wrote: »

I know its huge on the DS and it was big back in the ps1 days too (a ps1 could be "chipped", then just slap in a copied game)

Its not as easy as it is on PC Games i mean you dont even have to burnthe files on to a CD/DVD just run them with special software its alot easier than chipping a console and burning CD/DVDS etc.

Praetorian

This topic has come up on numerous occasions for at least the last 10 years. Sure, PC gaming has a few new powerful adversaries now, but it will prevail in my opinion and PC's inherent flexibility will prevail when the new digital distribution age becomes even more widespread!

Cunny-Funt

The Real B-man wrote: »

Its not as easy as it is on PC Games i mean you dont even have to burnthe files on to a CD/DVD just run them with special software its alot easier than chipping a console and burning CD/DVDS etc.

I know this, what's your point? I wasn't saying it's easier on the consoles or a bigger problem, just saying its there.

Praetorian wrote: »

This topic has come up on numerous occasions for at least the last 10 years. Sure, PC gaming has a few new powerful adversaries now, but it will prevail in my opinion and PC's inherent flexibility will prevail when the new digital distribution age becomes even more widespread!

Agree.

CyberGhost

Here's an interesting article...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080513-dell-xps-phase-out-symptomatic-of-declining-pc-gaming-sector.html

PC gaming has fallen by a lot as the graph indicates.

If with the next generation of consoles has the features that I want, I might go "console" too.

RabidDog

Using a keyboard/mouse setup on the console sounds great, but it's not realistic.

It would be fine for singleplayer, but in multiplayer the mouse would either have to be limited (as in the mouse speed made really slow) or servers would have to be split between those using a controller and those using a mouse.

It's the same reason there is extremely limited cross-platform play between PCs and consoles.

tHE vAGGABOND

Your all PC gamers and really want to believe things are great. [Just like I play rugby, and want to believe that more than 10 countries play the game to any level at all!] Read that article lads

Even if Steam, and other services like it, accounted for a massive 50 percent of "hidden" PC game revenue, total PC game software sales would only have reached $1.37 billion in 2007, down 24.9 percent from 1998. There's absolutely no sign that download services actually account for anywhere near this kind of volume, and subscription MMO sales, while important towards total PC gaming revenue, only reflect the conditions of one segment of the gaming market. Furthermore, a significant chunk of the growth in subscription MMO sales over the past few years is going to be flowing into the pockets of one particular titan. World of Warcraft may be a license to print money, but that's no help to the developers of, say, Call of Duty 4, to say nothing of any other games.

Cuddlesworth

CyberGhost wrote: »

Here's an interesting article...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080513-dell-xps-phase-out-symptomatic-of-declining-pc-gaming-sector.html

PC gaming has fallen by a lot as the graph indicates.

If with the next generation of consoles has the features that I want, I might go "console" too.

Yeah, Dell are losing Market share and sales everywhere. Which kinda makes that entire article a piece of biased ****. Also Xps are extremely overpriced machines, so for 2000+ purchases in a target age group of 34 its not surprising that people are voting with their wallets.

Hardware manufacturers are still going strong, Nvidia + Ati/Amd are still seeing market gains. This means we are still spending money on machines, just not from Dell.

tHE vAGGABOND wrote: »

Your all PC gamers and really want to believe things are great. [Just like I play rugby, and want to believe that more than 10 countries play the game to any level at all!] Read that article lads

Link please including where the above figures were produced from. Because I can make up things too,

"The widespread popularity of the Sims has led to a massive 50% decline in the number of young people taking regular toilet breaks and this in turn as led to a 90% increase in constipation"

yoyo

CyberGhost wrote: »

Here's an interesting article...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080513-dell-xps-phase-out-symptomatic-of-declining-pc-gaming-sector.html

PC gaming has fallen by a lot as the graph indicates.

If with the next generation of consoles has the features that I want, I might go "console" too.

Most pc gamers build their own pcs for gaming, hence why Dell mightn't be selling as many overpriced pcs, you can build simular specced pcs for a fraction of the price...

Nick

Dcully

Your all PC gamers and really want to believe things are great. [Just like I play rugby, and want to believe that more than 10 countries play the game to any level at all!] Read that article lads

I dont see any article,i only see a snippet of text.
Can you provide us with a link please.

tHE vAGGABOND

Lets ignore the whole dell aspect [Dell want to prop up Alienware and are suffering as folks buy less PC's worldwide etc], its the dollor sales numbers and projections Im personally intertested in [that said, the fact its the high end rigs they are stopping is interesting, as I would *assume* they made a packet in profit on them].

Can you provide us with a link please.

Its the link from a couple of posts above mine..

Link please including where the above figures were produced from. Because I can make up things too

If you look at the article, the graph is credited as being taken from a report from the NPD group. They are a gigantic market research company who track sales of things and do fancy reports on them [Sorta like ChartTrack with games/music/film in the UK]. They make their money selling said reports to companys. I remember the news articles from said report a while ago, talking about the games industry being worth hundreds of billions worldwide.

I cant be arsed to google it, but Im quite sure you can find the whole report online with a simple google search.

I have been reading ArasTechnia for years and trust it - but maybe were wrong - and the report says the PC game industry is fine and dandy?

MooseJam

this is all very depressing, well I'm going to vote with my feet - I'm going out to buy a pc game today ! if it's going to die it won't die with me standing idly by

Cuddlesworth

tHE vAGGABOND wrote: »

Lets ignore the whole dell aspect [Dell want to prop up Alienware and are suffering as folks buy less PC's worldwide etc], its the dollor sales numbers and projections Im personally intertested in [that said, the fact its the high end rigs they are stopping is interesting, as I would *assume* they made a packet in profit on them].

Its the link from a couple of posts above mine..

They had turned XPS into a premium desktop brand just after buying alienware. I'm sure they were making good money on them, but were just not selling enough to make a dent compared to corporate/server sales. xps support line was a good earner though. Till they move it to India(Glasgow now).

tHE vAGGABOND wrote: »

If you look at the article, the graph is credited as being taken from a report from the NPD group. They are a gigantic market research company who track sales of things and do fancy reports on them [Sorta like ChartTrack with games/music/film in the UK]. They make their money selling said reports to companys. I remember the news articles from said report a while ago, talking about the games industry being worth hundreds of billions worldwide.

I cant be arsed to google it, but Im quite sure you can find the whole report online with a simple google search.

I have been reading ArasTechnia for years and trust it - but maybe were wrong - and the report says the PC game industry is fine and dandy?

All I can find are reports from 2004 backwards, http://retailindustry.about.com/od/seg_toys/a/bl_npd012703.htm. And nothing that drastic crops up there.

Can I just point out that these company's can really only speculate on how much digital distribution is really used. And that consoles are made and manufactured at a loss(except Wii). If pc gaming really hits the dire straights that everybody seems to think, is it not possible that the large company's will simply prop up the industry in the same way Microsoft and Sony are by taking a large segment hit for overall profits?

yoyo

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Can I just point out that these company's can really only speculate on how much digital distribution is really used. And that consoles are made and manufactured at a loss(except Wii). If pc gaming really hits the dire straights that everybody seems to think, is it not possible that the large company's will simply prop up the industry in the same way Microsoft and Sony are by taking a large segment hit for overall profits?

If pc gaming was dying like that I doubt EA would be bothering to release Burnout Paradise (First time ever a burnout on pc) and Mass Effect on it.... Its all digital distrib now, and crysis is a stupid game to compare sales to as most people wont a have a pc good enough to run it except on low where it will look mediocyre, Crytek should have known this before it was launched and just accept it...

Nick

lmimmfn

CyberGhost wrote: »

Here's an interesting article...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080513-dell-xps-phase-out-symptomatic-of-declining-pc-gaming-sector.html

PC gaming has fallen by a lot as the graph indicates.

If with the next generation of consoles has the features that I want, I might go "console" too.

Ok a few things( cos im fed up with the argument ):
1. That article on Dell phasing out XPS systems is incorrect - http://yourblog.direct2dell.com/
2. Those figures are for NDP are pointless, because they dont include digital downloads, are only for US and are total revenue and PC games are 30-40% cheaper than console games thus more PC units have to shift to have the equivalent total sales value. On top of that heres an actual breakdown per console - http://www.shacknews.com/screenshots.x?gallery=9069&id=112381
and heres the PC - $948 million. If you look at those console figures they total $4 billion in total for the Wii,360 and PS3 because the rest of the NDP console total is made up from handheld figures which equate to another $4+ billion
Therefore PC NDP figures are only slightly below each main system and if you included digital downloads it would be on a par or above

As for PC gaming dying, well consider these points:
- 2 of the 3 main consoles use Nvidia and ATI gpu's, if there is no PC gaming then a huge percentage of NVidia and ATI's total yearly revenue and profit no longer exist, this would reduce expenditure on gaming card R&D( especially considering new console releases are 5-8 years between revisions and nvidia spend over 1billion on the 8800GTX R&D ). This would require that the console manufacturers pay huge amounts to the gpu manufacturers to perform this R&D required for the consoles gpus

In turn this would increase the cost of the hardware console which would have to either be absorbed my M$ or $ony or recuperated over a consoles life cycle via increases in the cost of games to consumers due to increases in royalty charges by the console manufacturers

The result of the graphics performance increases between console cycles would be far less due to the fact that there would no longer be any continuous development, which would obviously affect gamers and in turn affect the revenues of the games developers and publishers

- The PC platform is used as a test bed for new technologies, especially online gaming/digital download and deployment systems. This evolves gaming technologies between console cycles, especially near the end of a consoles cycle and before a new one is released, the hardware limit will have been reached

-Publishers have a very easy path to directly port 360 titles to PC in a short few months due to M$'s XNA, the death of PC gaming would reduce this inexpensive lucrative revenue avenue( even with pirating )

-Gamers buy a lot of systems which include XP/Vista on them, M$ would lose a lot of revenue if everyone jumped to console( especially non M$ consoles ).

With all of the above theres not a chance that PC gaming will die any time soon, the business models may change but give it a few years when devs have maxed out current consoles abilities and the PC's capabilities will be light years ahead at that stage and for the Devs to prepare for the next gen cycle they'll all come running back to the PC with their tails between their legs. Not to mention that hardcore gamers will switch from console back to PC gaming again because of the differences in capabilities, increasing the user base making it more lucrative again for publishers

*EDIT* Oh and theres a reason why:
1. Kaz Yamauchi is considering bringing Gran Turismo 5 to the PC - http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/04/15/gran_turismo_to_hit_the_pc_/1
2. Tecmo is bringing Dead Or Alive to PC - http://www.gamespot.com/news/6173450.html
3. EA/Dice are looking at free to download games( Battlefield Heros ) with ad revenue and mini transactions to pay for dev costs and obviously to bring profit
-->that reason is China. millions of PC's, consoles are illegal there( although available in the black market ) - http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/chinese-games-market-report-console-sales-up-by-75--in-2007


Thats my view anyway

MooseJam

very good post lmimmfn

CyberGhost

Don't get excited about GT5,

They were saying the same crap about GT4.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=31602

lmimmfn

Cheers MooseJam

CyberGhost wrote: »

Don't get excited about GT5,

They were saying the same crap about GT4.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=31602

probably, im only posting what they said themselves, personally it wouldnt bother me in the least if GT came or didnt come to PC

CyberGhost

lmimmfn wrote: »

Cheers MooseJam


probably, im only posting what they said themselves, personally it wouldnt bother me in the least if GT came or didnt come to PC

I'd love to see it on PC though and even more I'd love to see Forza2.

thelordofcheese

Your entire post is rendered moot and useless because of this

lmimmfn wrote: »

M$ .... $ony

And i've decided i want PC gaming to die, just so this thread can never crop up ever again.

but just one thing

lmimmfn wrote: »

-Gamers buy a lot of systems which include XP/Vista on them, M$ would lose a lot of revenue if everyone jumped to console( especially non M$ consoles ).

I'd imagine the corporate and just generic home uses are worth a hell of alot more to Microsoft that PC gamers. You are not as important as you think you are.
Besides if PC gaming vanished tomorrow you'd still have your PC for all the other stuff it does, Internet, Pr0n, Word processing all of which would probably run a flavour of Windows.

Dcully

Cyberghost there are far better racers on pc than forza and GT.
They tend to be racing simulations as opposed to arcade style racers on consoles.

lmimmfn

thelordofcheese wrote: »

Your entire post is rendered moot and useless because of this

lmao, seriously your post screams fanboyism

thelordofcheese wrote: »

And i've decided i want PC gaming to die, just so this thread can never crop up ever again.

Why do you post in this thread then?, yes the whole argument has been done to death i agree, but i see no wrong in discussing it

thelordofcheese wrote: »

but just one thing

I'd imagine the corporate and just generic home uses are worth a hell of alot more to Microsoft that PC gamers. You are not as important as you think you are.

Of course they do, i never said they didnt, if fact i explicitly mentioned PC gamer only revenue, what i said was that gamers still buy a lot of OS's and PC's with OEM OS versions, no matter how you look at it if there were no PC gamers its still a lot of lost revenue for M$.
If M$ didnt care about the PC gaming market and considered the overall revenue garnered from PC gamers irrelevant in the scheme of things, they wouldnt have invested so much money in gaming features for Vista - DirectX 10/10.1, their Games for Windows brand and also bringing( or trying to bring ) Live! to PC

thelordofcheese wrote: »

Besides if PC gaming vanished tomorrow you'd still have your PC for all the other stuff it does, Internet, Pr0n, Word processing all of which would probably run a flavour of Windows.

Yeah, im happy if i can do all that stuff as i game on my PC only 20% of my total PC use and game on my console the rest of my gaming time time.
Im required to have a PC( whether its a Mac or regular PC running XP/Vista/Linux whatever ) to do all that stuff you mention, may as well thow a 150euro gfx card in the PC and use it for gaming also, 150 euro is cheaper than a console and after buying ~7 PC games i would have recouperated the cost of the gfx card over the cost of buying the more expensive console versions of the games, i.e. CoD4 for PC is 40euro, 360 and PS3 is around 60euro

Ive always owned PC's and consoles ever since i owned my Amstrad CPC464 and NES( actually my first 'console' was a Binatone system in 1982 ), each has its pros and cons, however the tread is about "Is PC gaming dying" so thats what my post is concerned about

CyberGhost wrote: »

I'd love to see it on PC though and even more I'd love to see Forza2.

Well it would be interesting to see what they would do to it, if it ever happened im sure it would be a direct port and not take advantage of more gfx power or whatever on the PC

thelordofcheese

lmimmfn wrote: »

lmao, seriously your post screams fanboyism

Says the person who can't type Microsoft without using a dollar sign.

lmimmfn wrote: »

Of course they do, i never said they didnt, if fact i explicitly mentioned PC gamer only revenue, what i said was that gamers still buy a lot of OS's and PC's with OEM OS versions, no matter how you look at it if there were no PC gamers its still a lot of lost revenue for M$.

you assume that these people would never buy a PC if there was no PC gaming. Which is silly.

lmimmfn wrote: »

If M$ didnt care about the PC gaming market and considered the overall revenue garnered from PC gamers irrelevant in the scheme of things, they wouldnt have invested so much money in gaming features for Vista - DirectX 10/10.1, their Games for Windows brand and also bringing( or trying to bring ) Live! to PC

I never said Microsoft (not M$) didn't care about gaming, there are people stupid enough to upgrade to vista for DX10 only, and Microsoft (not M$) have spent time and energy exploiting that. My point was that is that to Microsoft (not M$) gaming isn't as massive a market as people like to pretend it is, and alot of that gaming market overlaps with generic pc users. Microsoft (not M$) would still make their obscene amounts of money anyway as most of those people would buy PC's anyway. If you buy a massive E-Peen machine or just a general purpose workhorse Microsoft (not M$) get their cut either way.

kaimera

cheese, I lost track of whether you agree or disagree with the notion pc gaming is dying round about the time you nitpicked over Mdollarsign.

projectmayhem

lmimmfn wrote: »

Well it would be interesting to see what they would do to it, if it ever happened im sure it would be a direct port and not take advantage of more gfx power or whatever on the PC

this is the problem with PC gaming. you can't put a game out and assume everyone has great machines to run it. plenty of people don't have good machines. in fact, MOST people don't. this is why crysis didn't do the numbers EA would have expected... and why there really hasn't been any "major" releases on PC since then.

the only company that recognises people with not-so-great systems seems to be valve... and the reward they're reaping is massive.

if you can get everyone to have uniform systems a-la consoles, then PC gaming would be great. this is why i'm baffled as to why companies aren't taking advantage of Mac's. my macbook pro has an 8400GT GPU... and so far only EA are releasing anything to use that (battlefield).

thelordofcheese

kaimera wrote: »

cheese, I lost track of whether you agree or disagree with the notion pc gaming is dying round about the time you nitpicked over Mdollarsign.

Ahh it's just a bug bear of mine. It's the same as people who sling the word "liberal" or "conservative" around like an insult.

projectmayhem wrote:

this is why i'm baffled as to why companies aren't taking advantage of Mac's.

Very low market share in comparison to PC's?

Though you're right about PC FPS games being nothing more than glorified tech demos, if more companies took the blizzard/valve approach and made a game for a wider range of machines, they'd probably be better off.

Mantel

projectmayhem wrote: »

if you can get everyone to have uniform systems a-la consoles, then PC gaming would be great. this is why i'm baffled as to why companies aren't taking advantage of Mac's. my macbook pro has an 8400GT GPU... and so far only EA are releasing anything to use that (battlefield).

Mac use is still pretty low compared to PC use. There's a mac client for eve-online so that's three games? WoW, Eve and battlefield, oh and Quake Wars. It seems to be getting better for the Mac since they started using intel chips. Only time will tell really, if PC gaming is dying what chance does the Mac have and after all PC gaming has been dying for a quiet awhile.

projectmayhem

thelordofcheese wrote: »

Very low market share in comparison to PC's?

it's a rising market share and i'd say the mac market share is higher then that of high-end PCs in the market...

Hitman Actual

thelordofcheese wrote: »

Though you're right about PC FPS games being nothing more than glorified tech demos, if more companies took the blizzard/valve approach and made a game for a wider range of machines, they'd probably be better off.

You can't take one game (Crysis, I assume) and make an all-encompassing statement like that. Name one other PC game that was a "glorified tech demo".

Maximilian

I really don't understand all these Crysis comments.

People bought the game, installed it on their slightly out-of-date machines, turned the detail way up to radioactive and then promptly complained about how sh!t it was.

Turn the detail down - it still looks great & plays fine.

Blown out of all proportion I think.

lmimmfn

thelordofcheese wrote: »

Says the person who can't type Microsoft without using a dollar sign.

You make absolutely no sense, how does me typing M$ have absolutely anything whatsoever to do with fanboyism? other than your particular pet peeve, which tbh i couldnt give a toss about

thelordofcheese wrote: »

you assume that these people would never buy a PC if there was no PC gaming. Which is silly.

ok, so by your assumption and logic you are assuming that if there was no PC gaming, those who( now game on PC ) would game on console and would all have PCs. Which is silly.

thelordofcheese wrote: »

I never said Microsoft (not M$) didn't care about gaming, there are people stupid enough to upgrade to vista for DX10 only, and Microsoft (not M$) have spent time and energy exploiting that. My point was that is that to Microsoft (not M$) gaming isn't as massive a market as people like to pretend it is, and alot of that gaming market overlaps with generic pc users. Microsoft (not M$) would still make their obscene amounts of money anyway as most of those people would buy PC's anyway. If you buy a massive E-Peen machine or just a general purpose workhorse Microsoft (not M$) get their cut either way.

I never purported that the market share of OS's to gamers was massive for M$( not Microsoft ) in the first place. In fact i never once used the 'massive' word. If you read my post again you will see that i said M$( not Microsoft ) would lose a lot of revenue from those gamers who buy OS's especially is jey jumped ship to say a PS3 or whatever.
Your point on if PC gaming died and those guys moved to console but they'd still buy a PC is honestly stupid. Theyre mutually exclusive, if the gamer was going to have a PC in the first place regardless then there would be a market for PC gaming and thus it wouldnt die!!!!