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PC Games (Games)

PC Gaming Declared Not Dead Again 70

Posted by Zonk from the still-doesn't-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept.
We've reported once or twice on stories declaring the end of or salvation for PC Gaming. Today, Next Generation weights in on the latter, declaring PC Gaming is Not Dead Yet. From the article: "Relying on NPD's number blinds one to the ongoing evolution of PC game distribution. The key insight, as summarized in a new report from IM Consulting (the market-intelligence unit at Ignited Minds), is that 'the PC game software market is much more robust than a cursory glance at the data suggests...(our analysis) becomes a call to publishers to recognize that the PC market can be a very lucrative and profitable place to publish, if the games are done properly in the right genres.'" Ie: Make the right casual game or a hit MMOG and you can print money.
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PC Gaming Declared Not Dead Again More

PC Gaming Declared Not Dead Again

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  • I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joemawlma ( 897746 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @02:30PM (#14300473)
    I'm really not understanding why anyone has ever thought PC gaming will die. The simple fact remains that with PC gaming you don't usually have to buy a new $500 system to play that new game you so desperately want to play. You can simply turn down your graphic settings and enjoy it like everyone else with lower realism and performance. And only sometimes will you need to buy a new video card or some extra RAM (usually for much cheaper than a whole new gaming system)

    Just because PC gaming isn't quite as mainstream popular as buying that new XBOX360 or PS3, doesn't mean there isn't still a HUGE market for people who enjoy using a keyboard and mouse to steer their car and blow away the enemy.

    And with more and more in-game advertisements on billboards and street corner shops, the industry should continue to have plenty on funding to give us the excellent gameplay and storylines we all enjoy.

    PC gaming isn't going anywhere.
    • I see at least a couple editorials (I wouldn't call them articles) per week declaring PC Gaming dead, or not dead.

      Does this remind anybody of a certain cat [wikipedia.org] in a box with a vial of poison?
    • PC gaming will die when MS decides to kill it. The PC/Windows only became a viable gaming platform when Windows came with DirectX as default. All others prior were either Dos based, Mac or Amiga based. Back then console gaming was far superior to Dos gaming, besides the Adventure type games like Kings Quest. With the entrance of FPSes, and DirectX, it was easier for companies to make 3d on Windows. Thereby, more powerful games came out on Windows rather than the Mac. Remember Bungie was a Mac Gaming company

      • Re:I don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @06:23PM (#14303660)
        The problem with your entire argument is that Microsoft is taking the opposite stance. Bill Gates has said that he has neglected PC gaming and intends to change that. Microsoft's XNA (Microsoft's game development platform used first in the XBOX360) is designed to make it easier to promote cross-platform games that are easy to port to PC or vice versa.

        PC sales aren't slumping either. They're growing. Laptops are starting to take over more and more of the market, and gaming capabilities in laptops are becomming increasingly important.

        In short, I don't think you've thought this through.
        • Bill Gates has said a lot of things. Said a lot of things under oath too doesn't mean I necessarily believe him. It doesn't matter either way. My point wasn't that gaming on Windows is going to die anytime soon. But if it does die, it will be at the hands of MS.
          • Killing off Windows gaming would be quite a blow, but it would hardly kill off PC gaming. It would just change it.

            One possible outcome is that it would drive a good number of gamers over to Linux, which works with their existing hardware. Yes, the Linux gaming landscape isn't as good as Windows, but it IS a viable game platform. Somebody might even produce a gaming-specific Linux distro that comes bundled with Cedega, a huge number of gaming-related drivers, a specialized X interface designed to simply laun
    • Hmm, I would say that perhaps the main life of PC gaming isn't solely focused on the latest FPS which uses that big expensive upgrade. I'm talking all the little games that casual gamers play. Web games, solitaire, etc. Stuff that very likely the majority of the non-gamer population plays, simply because the PC is widespread. Stuff that "the little guy" can still make without a big budget---thus will not cease to die anytime soon.

    • Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by blincoln ( 592401 )
      The simple fact remains that with PC gaming you don't usually have to buy a new $500 system to play that new game you so desperately want to play.

      I've always had to.

      Case in point - right now I have an Athlon 1700+-based system I build a few years ago (my PS2 would have been a year old at the time). I really want to play Oblivion when it comes out, but my GeForce4 burned itself up last year and I've been running an old Voodoo 5000.

      I have to buy a new video card, because the Voodoo is ancient and doesn't supp

      • Re:I don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by gr18563 ( 848290 )
        This is true. I own a PS2, NSDS, and a high end computer. I prefer the fighting, adventure, sports genres on console but you cannot beat pc for FPS. Im just too used to using the mouse/keyboard combo for killn.

        I have to disagree about the patching though. THey still have tech support for console games. Who would you call if your disc was bad? But on the flip side if there was a fundemantal flaw in the code somewhere that made the game crash if you did this, this and this all together then they could r
        • But on the flip side if there was a fundemantal flaw in the code somewhere that made the game crash if you did this, this and this all together then they could release a patch on the pc but they would have to recall and send out all new discs to the console game owners. This is the main reason I prefer PC gaming to console gaming, atleast when it comes to fps, mmos, and rts.

          But on the consoles, they don't ship now and patch later, they can't. So they do serious Quality Control. it has to ship as bug free
          • Yes but I refrain from playing console MMO's. I pretty much refrain from playing them period. There has been some games, all beit very few, that have had flaws large enough to recall. I prefer the PC games because you can also get new content with some updates. Console do not offer that luxury to many of their games.
    • The simple fact remains that with PC gaming you don't usually have to buy a new $500 system to play that new game you so desperately want to play.

      No, just a $400 video card that doesn't have the lifespan of the average console.

      That's why I don't understand why it HASN'T died. People balk at paying $3-400 for a new console, then readily upgrade their video card every 2-4 years for similar price. Then you've got the matters of hardware/driver compatibility issues, planned obsolesence(sp?) making games unplaya
      • I'm by no means an expert when it comes to video cards, but who says you have to buy the latest cards to play the latest video games. Suppose when Doom 3 came out, you had a video card that won't really run it very well. Why not buy the $200.00 video card that has been out for maybe a year or so, but will still run Doom 3. Not at the highest settings of course, but still good enough to play the game reliably.
        • Then repeat next year for Halo 2 PC or whatever...

          Thing is, you just can't spend $300 every four to six years and expect to play whatever comes out.

          With a console, you can.
          • I don't really think this is true. I currently have a Radeon 9800 Pro installed in my computer. Just to give you an idea of about how old it is, I have Rambus RAM installed in my computer. I'm not even sure they make that anymore. It's a 256 card and I don't have much problem playing any of the games I play. I don't remember exactly when I bought the card, but I'm pretty sure it's been at least two or three years.
            • How much did you spend for it when you bought it? Three years ago, a 256 card like that must have run a nice chunk of change.
              • Yeah, it was pretty expensive at the time. I don't remember the exact figure though. I'm thinking $300.00 perhaps.
                • So if it doesn't last three MORE years, it's lifespan/price ratio is below that of the PS2 (disregarding other advancements in PC gaming hardware, HDD upgrades for the increase in size of the average game, etc.)

                  Personally, I prefer RPGs, though I dislike^Whate^Wabhor and detest D&D system type games (The orignial EotB and PS:T are exceptions. NWN is not.) and the only non-port CRPG style game I've seen on the PC since Ultima is an older one called "Septerra Core." Morrowind may have been PC first, but I
      • What games will not run with "acceptable" perfomance using a GForce 6800gt(US $120)?

        What games will fail to run on an fx 5700(US $20)?

  • this article, unfortunately, is. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @02:30PM (#14300477) Homepage
    "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."

    Note: if casual gaming and MMOs are the real breadwinners, than why is the mainstay of PC gaming the multi-million-dollar story-driven FPS game? Why is the industry trapped in an endless cycle of repeating Half-Life?
    • as for MMORPGs, people know why the industry is stuck in another cycle. It's extremely expensive to make an MMORPG. There was a story here on Slashdot in early November, and according to that, Blizzard took a $32 million loss last year from the launch, and has only made $7 million profit on the game this year. Not to mention that WoW's been in development for years. It's hard to make one work (WoW had a strongly established name to pull in users right away. Everquest and Ultima Online had to start from scra
      • Ultima's "name" had been established since the dawn of PC gaming, and was amongst the most popular names in computer RPGs when it first launched. I don't think it gets any more "established" than that.
      • WoW had a strongly established name to pull in users right away. Everquest and Ultima Online had to start from scratch and took longer to grow

        uh...ultima online maybe had the name of eight other games before it? and it used the same world. not to mention a ninth one announced. it had a userbase all ready for it. UO didn't grow more slowly than WoW because of a lack of name recognition, it grew more slowly because it came out in 1997 [majicape.com] and there weren't millions of people with broadband then.

        lest we fo

    • By what metric are FPS's the "main-stay" of PC Gaming? Do you mean those are the games that 'gamers' like to play? The best selling PC games are not FPS's.
      • They're the ones that seem to generate the most hype and flood the shelves of computer stores is all.
        • GP: "The best selling PC games are not FPS's."

          You: "They're the ones that seem to generate the most hype and flood the shelves of computer stores is all."

          1. Hype != Sales
          2. The boxes that have sold are not on the shelf, leaving the remaining boxes to be spread out and fill up the empty space. When you see a title taking up a lot of shelf space that may not be a good omen for the publisher.
          • "The best selling PC games are not FPS's" - that's misleading. FPS games might get the bulk of hte market share (dunno, haven't checked) but are not the best sellers simply because there is too many of them for any one to get market share. If Civ IV outsells FEAR, that does not mean that the 4X market is bigger than the FPS market.

  • Who ARE these people? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WidescreenFreak ( 830043 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @02:34PM (#14300548) Homepage Journal
    My question is: who the hell keeps predicting that PC gaming is going to die anyway? PC gaming rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars (if not billions) per year. Titles like the Splinter Cell and Half-Life series continue to sell bazillions of copies when they come out. Of course, can anyone say World of Warcraft?

    You know, at least OS/2 did finally die, but that's only because of the arrogance and stupidity of IBM. In this case, I have to say that those who continually talk about PC gaming dying (A) are only implementing wishful thinking or (B) totally clueless on the current state of PC gaming.

    Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to look at my Battlefield 2 stats -- another PC game that has just sold ridiculously low amounts of copies. {/sarcasm}
  • Okay then, I officially declare: mankind not dead yet . Can I be hired as a magazine journalist now?
  • Now I can move on with my life (again) not caring about useless, baseless predictions.
    • PC Gaming isn't dead. If it was, companies wouldn't spend millions of dollars on developing PC games. People say shit for the sake of saying shit. They don't bother to understand what they're talking about. Take me, for instance.

      The last part was, of course, a joke. I hope.

  • I think I know why. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @02:45PM (#14300729)
    I think I know why people are claiming that PC Gaming is dying. The old stongholds of PC game sales are constantly reducing shelf space for PC games in order to accomodate console games. Anyone remember back when Software Etc was a computer store with a small console game section (that usually only included fringe software line Lynx and SMS carts)? Now it's a console store with a shelf devoted to PC gaming. PC games are getting less shelf space in environments they used to own. That doesn't mean PC gaming is dying. It just means lots of advertising and massive amounts of shelf space aren't necessary to entice PC gamers. That one shelf of PC games that's left now at EB has about as many games as EB has ever had for the PC, only in a smaller footprint.

    • Re:I think I know why. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Evangelion ( 2145 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @03:21PM (#14301291) Homepage

      The main reason this happens it that

      a) EB & Co. make so much more on preowned sales than new sales, that they do everything they can to give the preowned games shelf space.

      b) You can't sell preowned PC Games with any kind of success.

      c) Every console game they sell is a potential preowned game in the future.

      Therefore, EB & Co. aren't going to be pushing PC games nearly as much as console games (and even those, they give the better shelf space to the preowned section when compared to the new section).
      • That doesn't explain the same situation happening at Best Buy,though. They don't sell preowned console games. Last time I ventured to Best Buy, their three isles of PC games had turned into a single isle.

        • At the Best Buy near me there is a huge section dedicated to consoles - complete with a tent area where you can sit and play. The PC game section, on the other hand, is a row of shelves mixed in with the regular PC software. I'd say 80% of the titles are Quake 4, The Sims or WoW. I tend to buy games on a whim, and that is virtually impossible on the PC.

          I think there will always be a market for PC games. For many of us, spending $400 on a console just doesn't make sense given that we have a perfectly goo
          • I have a 6800NU (128mb), and 512k of ram on a P2.4c and I can play the game on huge settings, with tons of AI. But.. it does get slow. Especially late in the game when there's a bunch of units all moving around (really bad on ocean maps with lots of AI boats roaming around). It'll take up to a minute between turns while the computer 'waits' for the AI to finish all their moves.

            So, it's playable, but definately needs more RAM. I've heard that in most cases, even 1 Gig isn't enough to get the game to run
    • If the PC publishers would stop shipping games in bug huge boxes and move to shipping in, say, DVD or PS2 or XBOX sized plastic cases (which can still hold a couple of CDs and a reasonable manual and would be great for storage too), then they would be able to fit more PC games in the same space (or the same amount of PC games in less space)
      • That's already the case (sorry for the unintentional pun) in the UK where all PC games come in DVD style cases and have done for several years now. Unfortunately the shelf space dedicated to PC games and my beloved gamecube still seem to be dwindling in size compared to the PS2/Xbox/DS/360/PSP shelves.
  • ...so is food, religion, and pornography.
  • Just read the summary so far, but I don't like the comment about having to make a causal or MMORPG game in order to make money. First, I think this is thinking inside the box; second, you have to realize that flooding the market with more and more MMORPGs is going to result in one or two big ones with lots of players, plus a hojillion small ones with not enough players to be fun.

  • Console gaming is dying. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MaWeiTao ( 908546 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @04:33PM (#14302378)
    This is ridiculous. These so-called experts are full of it. If anything, it's console gaming that's starting on it's path to extinction. First of all, those systems are slowly turning into PCs. Secondly, they have this desire to appeal to non-gamers, which is a market for more accessable via PCs. A non-gamer is far more likely to spend $40-$50 on a PC game than they ever would be to spend $200+ and another $50-$60 for the game. Third, computers are far more pervasive than consoles and I don't see that every changing.

    In fact, the main reason consoles have been sustainable thus far is because of all the effort the Japanese gaming industry has put into them. The glory days of consoles are fading. The PC has demonstrated itself a viable platform for gaming long ago. Consoles no longer have any hope of matching a PC's performance, at least not getting dramatically more expensive.

    I predict what we will see at some point is a real computing appliance, something with a simplified interface, but powerful enough that the average user can do everything he or she needs, and without needing to deal with the nuisance of installations and whatnot. They can pretty much drop in whatever media the computer uses and game just as easily as they would browse the internet.

    The only form of console gaming I expect to persist is portable gaming, and we'll see what form that takes as phones, PDAs and laptops slowly evolve. I don't even see how this is something that can be argued; what doubt is there that PC gaming is thriving? Didn't WoW just hit 5 million subscribers worldwide?
    • Consoles no longer have any hope of matching a PC's performance, at least not getting dramatically more expensive. Couple of problems here. I have 19" monitor and 25" tv. I should get a 25" monitor? Not likely. There's also the matter of affording a top end video card which is necessary for some PC games and certainly if you want those impressive graphics. Almost puts you over the top by itself over the price of the new consoles. That doesn't include that new processor you're going to want to make that ma

      • Hogwash. Total and complete trash. To be able to play video games at full render you don't need the latest generation of video cards simply because of the cycle of video game design makes it impossible for them to develop a game based off of future hardware set ups except in the case of consoles, which have garunteed specs.

        However, the OP is correct the console gaming market is drawing to a close I would guess either the next generation or the generation after will just simply be a computer created by mi

        • Yeah and most of what you just said comes from somebody who knows about computers. My point was and is that consoles are better for non-technical people. You buy the game, you put it in and it plays. It not always so simple with a PC, and if you don't know what to do, you'd best be reaching for the Tylenol even while you get on the gamer bulletin boards looking for answers because oftentimes the game companies themselves don't even know why a game is having problems on a particular set of hardware. I suspe
          • That's true, and it's why consoles have thrived in Japan. On the other hand, who doesn't have a computer in this country? And how hard is it to install a game nowadays? It certainly isn't the ordeal it used to be in the early days of PC gaming.

            Put in a CD, wait for the autoplay to bring up the initial interface and click on "install". When it's done, double click on the icon the game puts on your desktop. That's the most work most users have to do.

            Consoles are certainly easier to deal with, but that

          • Can you honestly say that it is any easier to hook up a console than a PC. Now-a-days the only thing it takes to build your own computer and to install the software is the ability to read. Hell I could get my dad to build his own computer it would just take me convincing him that it wasn't scary then again he isn't going to be playing consol video games either. Face it the people who buy and play console games are between the ages of 14-30 for the largest portion of the market. The age limit will steadi

            • I never said anything about INSTALLING computer games. I was talking about the upgrading and patching you will have to do when you get some of the games. Let's face it, most computers you buy have integrated graphics which are not nearly good enough for most of the games out there. That's means buying a video card, and unless you speak technobabble, the only facts about the various cards that are going to be understandable is the price. Again, you guys are unable to look at it from the non-techie viewpoint.

              • Maybe you don't realize this but consoles are already computers. They just haven't been fully pushed into the PC category. the Xbox had hardware that was virtually identical to a computer I had built. The new xbox has the latest ATI card in it that isn't out on PC yet but will mostlikely be out shortly. The point is you are just wrong.

                People have problems buying crappy computers not because they don't understand technobabble. No one understands what a computer salesman is actually saying. The differe

                • Looking up the hardware without knowing what all the specs mean is useless. Going to Tom's Hardware only clarifies things somewhat. You guys must really think the planet is inhabited soley by geeks. No doubt it's easy for you to put together a computer, but could you also rebuild a transmission, whip up a souffle, or grow award winning roses? If you can do all these things, than good for you. If you can't, then you maybe you really do understand the plight of the computer noob. I know emough about computer

                  • I would not pick you as a suitable person to be describing as able to keep a computer running if you don't know the difference between hardware and software. However, I could grow a rose garden, not award winning, but I could grow one. I could do minor repairs on my car and would know where to go to fix it if it was something I couldn't handle. The key being I can find places to get help. The difference between a car and a computer a quite large especially in the number of pieces of hardware that are en

    • Console gaming is perfect for attracting casual gamers. It's simple, there's no worrying about whether their computer has enough "gigahertz of RAM", no patching and no crashes. For a large part of their lifetime, a new console is around $99-$150: about as much as a new DVD player. They are well designed for social games: squeezing four players around a 15" PC monitor in a home office is no fun compared to sitting around the TV - the success of games like Singstar and Buzz shows that.

      Consoles are becoming m
  • It's been reported that there's room for both PC and Console gamers on this planet...

  • Hm (Score:1)

    by MrShaggy ( 683273 )
    "Im not dead yet.... I feel 'appyy.. oh so 'appy!'
  • but it can safely be considered in cryogenic suspension.

    Games like the recent Path of Neo debacle could be considered allegorical for the PC gaming industry having accidentally attempted suicide due to a heroine overdose. ;)

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