PC Gaming Market breakdown or something *spawn*

[Cyan]

this thread talking about news from 2009 is also an example of the sentiment at the time when some people thought PC gaming was dying 'cos consoles where more popular than ever then, but actual PC numbers were saying otherwise.

Steam's success in 2009

http://store.steampowered.com/news/3390/ January 29, 2010 — Valve® today announced extraordinary 2009 growth data for Steam, a leading platform for PC games and digital entertainment, with major increases in accounts, concurrent players, unit sales and more. The year also marked tremendous...

forum.beyond3d.com

 

[Cyan]

some interesting takes here:

 

[Nesh]

this thread talking about news from 2009 is also an example of the sentiment at the time when some people thought PC gaming was dying 'cos consoles where more popular than ever then, but actual PC numbers were saying otherwise.

Steam's success in 2009

http://store.steampowered.com/news/3390/ January 29, 2010 — Valve® today announced extraordinary 2009 growth data for Steam, a leading platform for PC games and digital entertainment, with major increases in accounts, concurrent players, unit sales and more. The year also marked tremendous...

forum.beyond3d.com

Up until PS2, PC gaming was not in the best shape. With the next generation of consoles, PC and Console games were existing on both. With consoles becoming more like PCs, platform porting was becoming common practice. Console defining games were seeing their way on PC. PC digital shops like steam created a convenient gaming ecosystem to manage and launch your games from. Since PCs are almost a common household device, it's easy to initiate into gaming from there

 

[swaaye]

I am mostly appreciative of the indie explosion that has happened. That's mostly to Steam's credit I think. There is a vastly larger library there than on the consoles.

The big budget side certainly benefited from platform convergence. That is an arms race though and isn't working out so well.

 

[see colon]

Up until PS2, PC gaming was not in the best shape. With the next generation of consoles, PC and Console games were existing on both. With consoles becoming more like PCs, platform porting was becoming common practice. Console defining games were seeing their way on PC. PC digital shops like steam created a convenient gaming ecosystem to manage and launch your games from. Since PCs are almost a common household device, it's easy to initiate into gaming from there

While there was crossover between PC and console libraries, I would argue that Microsoft's Games For Windows initiative had a lot to do with the PC platform having more adoption of console style games. People always remember GFW as a terrible thing, but it required games to support a standardized controller (the 360 controller) and ship with a preconfigured control scheme. I don't think PC was in such a rough shape before PS2, but the best PC games weren't the best console games. PC was having banger strategy, adventure, CRPGS and simulation games as well as fast paced FPS titles, while the best console titles skewed more towards arcade style racing, platforming, and JRPGs. The libraries were just different.

 

[hughJ]

Yeah: different libraries, studios, publishers, genres. Even the customer demographics are/were somewhat different. Before PS2 I would say PC gaming was probably at its peak. Virtually all the quintessential PC studios, genres, franchises I can think of were born in the 90s. The handful of studios that have remained managed to hunker down around a live service title with pretty siloed communities. And really the only reason those have stuck with PC is probably because they simply couldn't sacrifice mouse/keyboard support.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

The big budget side certainly benefited from platform convergence. That is an arms race though and isn't working out so well.

The "arms race" is mostly illusory, just PR making up for the fact that fundamentally GPUs are more similar than they've ever been, and the world was never going to be any different. Companies in the same industry just copy best practices from each other, that's how it works.

Witness the "arms race" of image reconstruction where you have to pause a video and blow it up 200% just to see a difference, if you think that's really "that important" try imagining explaining this to yourself from a decade ago. Younger you would probably laugh in your face assuming you were joking, no?

Same with "X86 vs ARM" most engineers know there's not actually that much difference today, even the vaunted power efficiency differences are a bit illusory. The fast upcoming Zen 5 laptops are just as efficient as the newly released Oryon Cores from Qualcomm, it's not really a debate that's interesting unless you're an engineer trying to parse the difference in how to best decode macro-ops into various micro-ops/the differences in expected branching instruction between the ISAs/similar minutia.

 

[Davros]

. Virtually all the quintessential PC studios, genres, franchises I can think of were born in the 90s.

That's because your young
PC Studio's
Apogee
Avalon Hill
Digital Image Design
Electronic Arts
Eypx
Microprose
Origin Systems, Inc
Particle Systems
Strategic Simulations Inc
Sublogic
Taito Corporation
U.S. Gold

Franchises
Elite
Flight Simulator
Indiana Jones
Kings Quest
Leisure Suit Larry
Mechwarrior
Might and Magic
StarWars
The Terminator
Wolfenstein
Zork

Genres (really???)
Adventure Games
City Building
Flight sims
Platformers
Racing Games
Role Playing Games
Space Sims
Strategy
War Games

 

[hughJ]

That's because your young

I originally put 80s and 90s, but I figured I'd just be concise and single out the 90s. The PC platform was a bit of a hodgepodge for much of the 1980s, to the extent that you might actually struggle to get a consensus on what should or shouldn't be considered a "PC" during that decade. I had an Apple2 and actually played stuff like Elite, but there's such a giant gap between that and the 486-era and beyond that it's hard to reconcile them as being under the same umbrella. Either way, the gist of my post was to say that the heyday of PC gaming was prior to the PS2.

 

[swaaye]

I think almost all of the genres of old have had a resurgence in the past 10 years or so.

 

[hughJ]

One noticeable difference to me are the North American small and mid-sized studios (lack thereof). It feels like every new hit game on PC comes from anywhere but NA. It's all UK, Scandinavia, eastern EU, NZ, SK, etc. Maybe that's just my bias from the games that tend to catch my eye, but my gut tells me that if you were to look at the big titles of the 90s and contrast that with the 2010s and 2020s there'd be a noticeable difference in where the studios are located.

 

[homerdog]

One noticeable difference to me are the North American small and mid-sized studios (lack thereof). It feels like every new hit game on PC comes from anywhere but NA. It's all UK, Scandinavia, eastern EU, NZ, SK, etc. Maybe that's just my bias from the games that tend to catch my eye, but my gut tells me that if you were to look at the big titles of the 90s and contrast that with the 2010s and 2020s there'd be a noticeable difference in where the studios are located.

NA gaming companies have fallen off a cliff in the last decade. The big ones I can think of are among the most hated companies on Earth. Valve is one of the only exceptions and they don't really make games anymore. It seems like forever ago but people used to really, really like Blizzard.

 

[techuse]

Smaller budget and indy games used to be fun. Now they are almost all just samey pixel art/incredibly basic games requiring little of the player. Vampire survivors is a great example. You can literally beat the game without inputting a single command. How that game won so many accolades boggles my mind.

Equally disappointing is how almost all the mid tier budget games are almost all now just souls clones.

 

[see colon]

Smaller budget and indy games used to be fun. Now they are almost all just samey pixel art/incredibly basic games requiring little of the player.

I don't think I can agree with this. While that's definitely some indie games, but we are now having a renaissance in the indie space of genres that the AAA space is ignoring. There are a bunch of indie adventure games including FMV games, beat 'em ups, and FPS games and more are coming out every day. Not to mention all of the PS1-looking horror games popping up.

 

[Nesh]

While there was crossover between PC and console libraries, I would argue that Microsoft's Games For Windows initiative had a lot to do with the PC platform having more adoption of console style games. People always remember GFW as a terrible thing, but it required games to support a standardized controller (the 360 controller) and ship with a preconfigured control scheme. I don't think PC was in such a rough shape before PS2, but the best PC games weren't the best console games. PC was having banger strategy, adventure, CRPGS and simulation games as well as fast paced FPS titles, while the best console titles skewed more towards arcade style racing, platforming, and JRPGs. The libraries were just different.

Yeah there was a segmentation of what appealed on console vs what appealed on PC. But the appeal of such PC titles were reching stagnancy and many of them were niche.

Meanwhile the console industry was expanding much more, with number of exclusives on consoles reaching new heights. The most popular and successful titles were either also available on console or were console exclusive

Things changed dramatically during the PS360 era.

 

[see colon]

The most popular and successful titles were either also available on console or were console exclusive

World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Everquest might beg to differ.

 

[Nesh]

World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Everquest might beg to differ.

These were exceptions

 

[hughJ]

I think it's more so that you saw the staple PC studios pivoting to console around that time. Activision, Bioware, Id Soft, Epic, DICE, Remedy, Bethesda, arguably DMA/Rockstar, etc, etc. There was a lot of design innovation and franchise cachet that was built up that was then able tap into a new broader audience. Consoles became more PC-like to accommodate an aging demographic and more complex PC-derived game genres.

 

[Remij]

People can be free to disagree with me, but I credit a large amount of PC's popularity and growth over the past decade to Durante (aka Peter Thoman) who's Dark Souls mod "DSfix" brought HUGE attention to how great FROMSOFT's games could be on PC. In turn, tons of people started buying that game, and I honestly credit it for helping convince Japanese studios there was a large market of PC gamers out there and to begin porting their games to PC. Once you started getting Namco, Sega, and Capcom putting more and more effort behind PC games and PC releases (with Capcom even declaring PC their main platform) the popularity continued to surge and surge.. people who normally would have bought a console for specific games now no longer needed to, as the games began releasing day and date with franchises that typically were console first.

Japan's embrace of PC gaming (Steam) really can't be understated in how it's boosted the platform's popularity.

Also just want to note that Peter Thoman formed a porting studio (PH3) which specializes in bringing NISA/XSEED/Marvelous/Falcom Japanese game ports to PC and console. He's extremely PC oriented as a developer and loves to do everything possible to take advantage of the platforms strengths and typically adds tons of quality of life features. They are a studio to be celebrated to be sure.

 

[Davros]

I dont know if it was from software but there was a game released on pc from a console dev that only supported a single resolution and when asked why the reply was "because we didn't know how"