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PC Games (Games)

State of PC Gaming in 2004 Probed 35

Posted by Zonk from the retro-is-the-best-kind-of-spective dept.
NetDanzr writes "Netjak.com has published another of its annual articles probing the state of PC gaming last year. The author complains about the demise of strategy and role-playing gaming, at the expense of action titles. Even though he praises Valve's Half-Life 2, he is skeptical about the Steam copy restrictions, and predicts that Valve would face legal challenges because of it in 2005. Slashdot reported on the previous article in the series last year."
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State of PC Gaming in 2004 Probed More

State of PC Gaming in 2004 Probed

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  • No [slashdot.org] kidding? [slashdot.org]

  • XBoX (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @02:21PM (#11410394) Homepage Journal
    The XBoX killed PC gaming. It was the dumbest thing Microsoft ever did. Two years ago I was a windows users because I had to play all my games. But now, PC gaming is dead, except for Steam. All the games that used to be on PC are now on XBoX. So now I run Linux. PC gaming has gone down the crapper.

    • Re:XBoX (Score:2, Informative)

      by l1nuxpunk ( 738263 )
      Wait? Dead?

      Hmm... let's go through a very short list. Half-Life 2, City Of Heroes and World Of Warcraft.

      Doesn't seem dead to me.
    • Vive Linux!

      One of the reasons I stuck with a Windows PC as long as I did was because I used it for gaming. However, as you have said, PC gaming is for all intents and purposes dead.

      Netcraft confirms it.

      So now I've moved onto Linux full-time, and one interesting aspect of the remnents of the PC gaming market is starting to show through to me:

      The best games for PC are now either written to run natively in Linux, or are slowly but ssurely being ported over. Fore example, I play America's Army, Enemy Te

    • Re:XBoX (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Beatbyte ( 163694 )
      tell that to nVidia and ATI.. they seem to keep making these massively fast video cards that sell like hotcakes. i

      but i'm sure it's just because they do great 2d rendering.
    • "It was the dumbest thing Microsoft ever did"

      How is this dumb? Let's see:

      Without Xbox, they sell someone one single OS for a computer that plays games and does Office/etc

      With Xbox, they still sell the OS installation for Office. However, they are now selling another OS...hell, they are even selling the other BOX too just for the games.


      • You're forgetting the license fee they get for each game sold for the XBox also.

        Ultimately, XBox gaming (if they make a profitable console next time around) will be much better for Microsoft than PC Gaming ever was.

        • Licensing? Very important. I see that you are not the only one who does not think it is dumb of Microsoft to carefully move to a position of dominance in the videogame world. They aren't there yet, but they are working toward it.
        • Ultimately, XBox gaming (if they make a profitable console next time around) will be much better for Microsoft than PC Gaming ever was.

          I think the original poster's point was that PC gaming is a large reason why people felt tied to the Windows OS in the past. Now that it is shifting to XBox (a conclusion that I don't even agree with, by the way -- PC gaming is not "dead", nor will it die) he feels that he is free to switch OS's.
      • Because they are selling the XboX at a loss first of all. Second of all, without the games there is now very little keeping people on Windows. In fact, Steam is the only reason I still have a windows partition at all. How many nerds do you know who wont switch to Linux because of games? IF the Xbox kills PC gaming entirely all of them will fold.

        Create an unprofitable product that reduces market share of profitable product making it less profitable. So not only do they lose money on Xbox, but they make less

    • Re:XBoX (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zoobaby ( 583075 )
      XBox did not kill PC Gaming and it will not. It has cut into with people 'switching.' However, there will also be those people that want the most powerful machines for their games. A PC is ideal for this.

    • Re:XBoX (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Darth_Burrito ( 227272 )
      Assuming that xbox sales really do hurt microsoft's os and applications market, then we might be talking about a disruptive technology. In that case, Microsoft has a couple of choices. They can try to bring it to market and potentially canibalize their own business or they can wait until someone else brings it to market.

      If they bring it to market themselves, they may be cannibalizing their own OS/applications business but the money still goes into their pockets. On the other hand, very few big busines

    • Re:XBoX (Score:3, Insightful)

      by snuf23 ( 182335 )
      I have an Xbox. I have a PC. Let's look at the games I've played over 2004:

      Rise of Nations
      City of Heroes
      Rome: Total War
      Half Life 2
      Doom 3
      Pirates!
      Battlefield Vietnam
      Battle for Middle Earth

      Hmmm. These seem to be PC games. And what have I been playing on the Xox?

      Robotron. Original. Emulated. Can't beat having two joysticks to play it the way it was meant to play!
      • I paid twelve bucks for a dual analog gamepad for my PC. No need to pay for an XBox just to get dual analog sticks.

    • Re:XBoX (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fistfullast33l ( 819270 )
      The XBox did not necessarily kill PC Gaming. Instead, the Xbox pulled together two markets. First, it grabbed all of the normal console people who can't even spell PC let alone try and run a game on one. Second, it grabbed all those PC fanboys who thought it was cool that the XBox was basically a PC with a special BIOS/OS.

      What I see Microsoft doing instead is combining the two platforms. I remember reading in PC Gamer not too long ago that Microsoft was attempting to develop a platform on the PC that o
  • Well, there's a good deal to comment on there. Perhaps another way to put the article is "I'm getting to old for this crap."
    But I will comment on this forecast:

    As usual, movie-based games will do poorly. In fact, after the last couple of years, I expect there to be fewer of such games, as some of the brighter managers realize that the niche has such a bad reputation that there's little chance for a blockbuster title.

    No offense, but movie-based games have always been crappy, and done poorly: just look ba

    • Of course I think the old saying hold true about everything, 99% of [blank] is crap. That is definitely true about movie based games. However, there have been some great games based on movie properties.

      Tie-fighter battles are always cool; just don't give me a light saber.

      Your own statement right there provides you with a hint. X-Wing/Tie Fighter series were movie based games and they were amazing games. But even beyond the Star Wars Franchise.

      EA's Lord of the Ring games (notably the Two Towers and
    • Of course, then there are the exceptions that all others can aspire to, such as the two recent Spiderman games (why yes, I do know Spiderman was a comic book first, thanks for pointing it out), and from what I have heard the Chronicles of Riddick prequel game turned out to be a decent work as well.

      What I hope is learned is that movie based games that are quickly hacked together in an attempt to make a quick buck don't sell well, whereas a movie based game made by developers who actually want to make a qal

    • I'm referencing this CNN/Money article:

      Rupert Murdoch's new game [cnn.com]

      Look, the fact that the video games industry makes more money gross per year than Music and Movies is starting to turn a lot of heads. Even better, if you combine everyone's favorite concept of off-shoring and out-sourcing, it may be cheaper to eventually make a game than a movie or a CD. And the price is still almost 5 times that of either a movie ticket or a CD. Don't underestimate the money and influence these guys have at their dis

  • ...and Football Manager 2005. The latter was somewhat of a surprise, as it was an independent release by the maker of the Championship Manager series, sparking rumors that its relationship with Eidos may have come to an end.

    I somehow don't think this guy has been following (association) football management games, seeing as he kinda missed the bit where Sports Interactive (makers of Champ. 1-4) split with Eidos. No rumours, just facts. Championship Manager 5 is made by a different company, as Eidos own th

  • No decent RPGs? What about Vampire tM: Bloodlines? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Attitude Adjuster ( 683211 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @03:52PM (#11411652)
    Role-playing games hit rock bottom. Blades of Avernum was just a marginal improvement for Spiderweb Software, and Beyond Divinity was an inferior sequel to Divine Divinity. The only mildly pleasantly surprising release was Kult: Heretic Kingdoms...

    While on the whole I agree with his review I'm surprised there is no mention of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines as a decent RPG. Sure, it suffered from those nasty Source-based texture and sound cache thrashing problems that Half-Life 2 also exhibited, but it was fun, well balanced, decent in terms of length and plot, and has more replay capability than most games thanks to the multiple distinct clans.

    IMHO its the best RPG since the original KotoR, and it certainly (a) sold well, and (b) it got quite a few highly favorable reviews (along with some negative ones like Gamespot's one). That should at least have earned it a mention in the article, I think...

  • "All in all, last year was nothing to boast about. It was marked by an overabundance of first-person shooters, at the expense of other genres. Game design suffered once again, with bland, repetitive and uninspired gameplay"

    Reading this, you would think the year sucked. Granted the better games came late in the year, but is was fun all around. Tons of new FPS's, a few RTS games that were pretty damn cool. Very cool new engines setting up for some cool mods in '05 and '06.

    It also seems like he wrote more
  • In 2004 we 'only' had Rome: Total War, W40K: Dawn of War and LOTR: BFME. Worst year for RTS games ever!
    • Yeah, a genre is really going down the drain when there are 'only' three good games in the genre. But yet when we get an avalanche of games (and good ones at that) in the FPS genre, that's also bad? I don't get it.
  • The guy was a bit of a tool. For instance, flight sims - he completely missed the Forgotten Battles game that was released. Based on the IL2 engine, this flight sim according to all the flight sim addicts I know is the best commercial combat flight sim - ever.

    When mentioning that this year we've seen Far Cry, DooM3 *and* HL2 all in the same year, he says this year was a disappointment? Hardly! Those were all fantastic games. Far Cry and DooM3 will have the largest outstanding influence, because the Cr
  • Any year where I got Halflife 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, and Pirates! and have blown far too much time on all three... and that's a bad year? Gods, I can't WAIT for the good- and we started it out so well, with Hearts of Iron 2. Basically, this is another Sky Is Falling article that gets printed every year when columnists run out of ideas.
  • What is this? A post to some guy's game-related blog? Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I have no clue who the author of the posted article is, nor any indication why I should care.

    Why is his opinion even important, or relevent? Is /. this strapped for gaming stories? Thumbs down.

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