Future of PC games ?

Those numbers are of the 2006, not is right for compare Wii and PS3 .

http://ir.take2games.com/annual.cfm#

Take 2 2006









Very interesting some evolutions, as Max Payne sales , Mafia, GTA in PC ...

 

PC gaming dying? Look at that increase!!

 

pjbliverpool , are the cycles of GTA series ; )

 

Wii is runaway success. it is really new and no expected to be making games for it; that all changing now.

Sony finally had sense and used a much cheaper PS3 to win the far more important Hi-Def war. PS3 was a technological marvel but Sony expected it to "sell itself" for $650 to their PS2 fans. Without good PR or marketing, it didn't. It took a serious price cut to match Xbox360 - and a few free BluRay disks - to get sales moving. In the meantime however, Sony lost momentum and they are only now getting a few really good "exclusive" titles.

 

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/n...foolish-to-say-pc-gaming-is-in-decline/?biz=1

 

PC gaming really isn't in the decline like so many love to believe it is. I do think it's beginning to slow down a bit, as since WoW the PC platform hasn't really had a killer app, but plenty of great titles. The issue is all those titles have gone multi-platform with the exception of a few like Crysis. If retailers, and hardware developers are going gain back or take some competition away from the consoles, they have to learn to get with the idea that PC gaming doesn't need to be hell on the wallet. You don't win customers by scaring them. Add to that the normal consumer doesn't know jack about their computer enough to know if it'll run a game in the first place.

I think one smart move is AMD's 780 chipset. Not only is a great choice for media systems because of it's power efficiency and built in HD capabilities without a graphics card, it'll arm normal consumer machines with a real GPU, so out of the box, YES you can run alot of older games and even newer ones with low settings. Even if it's not all the eye candy, at least it's a start, then of course you can add in a card if you want, of which the hybrid crossfire is an interesting feature. AMDs only problem now is just getting their processors up to par with Intel's, because Intel is becoming a scourge on the industry as far as I'm concerned.

So the hardware industry needs to innovate and the software/game companies need to quit aiming for extremely high end systems. Crysis is both a culprit and martyr, problem is most people have no clue it can run on a GeForce 6800/ATi X800 and Crytek did state that. People however believe they need a boutique level system just to play it. Speaking of which, boutique companies should really just go to hell. The other hardware issue is of course (and I can't stress this enough) is laptops. Pretty much every lappy sold these days has a sufficient CPU and RAM to run games, the problem being the GPU. Who can we blame? Intel, those bastards for allowing expensive and good computers to have shitty graphics. Just like with the 780 chipset, AMD is trickling down this "to become standard" technology to notebooks for debut I believe later this year, along with the new versions of the Turion processors. If AMD can get up the efficiency on fully featured GPUs for notebooks, Intels current/near future products can effectively be kicked to the curb. But the laptop market is a huge on to tap into with notebooks outselling desktops. That's alot of potential that two smart software companies have taken advantage of: Blizzard and EA because the Sims and World of Warcraft run on low end computers as well as high end. The Sims even says on the box it supports Intel Graphics Media Accelerators, as low as that unbridled piece of shit GMA845. I used to have a computer with it, my foul mouth knows no bounds to describe it.

 

I have to disagree with that. Its PC games not aiming at the high end (higher than consoles) which is turning it into a platform full of unoptimised console ports.

Where are the Doom 3's, HL2's and Farcry's of last gen? Yes we have Crysis but thats it. Whats the point in having high end PC hardware if the software isn't going to use it? And if that trend continues then no-one will buy high end hardware at all and that end of the market will fold. Thus the platform will forever become at best able to handle console ports and at worst, good for nothing but low end online gaming.

Crysis should be an example to all developers to push high end hardware and keep driving the PC forward. I guarantee that if more games made it worthwhile owning a high end PC and showed true graphical superiority over the consoles, then the high end PC gaming market would be much bigger - which would in turn drive more devs to turn to it.

Asking devs to stop aiming at the high end to "improve" the state of PC gaming will only encourage the decline of high end PC gaming.

The real problem is education, there needs to be a better way of informing the public that said game can run on lower end hardware. It shouldn't matter that it can scale all the way up to the top end if you have that hardware as long as it can be played and deliver a good experience on a much lower machine.

 

This is getting tiring, The future of computer games? Well it is the ONLY future. After human society is nearly wiped out, 400 years in the future the descendants of humans will somehow many to piece together working P.C's from the scrap heaps. On the hard drives of these computers will be many games with NoCd cracks and literature speaking of the death of pc gaming. They will then conclude in their innocence that the evil Xbox, Playstation and Wii are the evil that needs to be feared. They will then mod Diablo 2/3 to properly reflect History. They will also study Fallout 3 as a bright fairytale account on the destruction of the world. Many will find it heretical as it doesn't mention the BIG 3. In addition to this, all evil things that befell PC gaming are just actions of the 3 devil consoles. God to them is Microsoft, Intel and Nvidia. With lesser Angels being AMD and the other computer brands.

See? P.C gaming is forever!!!!

On a serious note: I think NPD is starting to track PC games sales online. Watch this space for some numbers?

 

Actually that is what *already* happened .. the last time around .. only we have the "holy books" left to remind us

i think the consoles are in far more danger of dying than PC gaming is

 

PC Gameing aint dying, it already did when the last real PCs died in the early 90`s. What remains nowadays is an undeath rotten zombi, which did feed on the remains of the glorious Homecomputers and tried to gain their pwnage that way. Even though it can change it innards every 6 months, it still is a smelly rotten corpse with inferiority complexes for all eternity, craving to feed on the living and thus mortal consoles.

And no, this kind of Zombis aint cool

 

Every new generation of console brings "the death of PC gaming". Yet every time, that console generation dies before PC gaming does. That's a historical fact.

 

Haha, QFT AMEN!

 

I find the inability to appreciate both camps the most interesting aspect of this stupid argument. You can go on Google Groups and read the rants of idiots who ripped on 486s because their SNES was the future. I don't know about those folks, but I have equally fond memories of both NES and my Tandy 1000, along with everything in between.

The most concerning aspect of the gaming industry to me is that all games are becoming very commercialized. That's platform independent. Games cost so much to make these days that it is inevitable, but that doesn't mean it's good. It means that the industry will become more and more money driven and risk averse. Games get shorter because of the investment to make the assets, lower complexity to please the perceived mass market, and take fewer risks on new ideas. It's critical to reach as large of an audience as possible when your game costs $20mil to make. This is what is causing dumbed-down so-called "consolitis", IMO.

With regards to the cross-platform insanity that we see now, well it's not really all that new. It certainly is happening on a bigger scale than ever before though. It's just the companies trying to reach more audience. Did you know the C&C series has been on almost every console since its inception? I play N64 C&C occasionally. It's a pretty sweet version made by Looking Glass!

 

<shrug> I don't see anyone claiming that the PC is going to cause the death of the console or that console games are dying in favour of the PC. This subject always rears it's ugly head when someone claims piracy for why their (console port) game did badly. I'm looking at you Epic.

Personally I think consoles have their place, audience and special games, but then I think so does a PC, and it seems the sales figures quoted upstream bear that out. Make good games and the business and audience is there, whether it's for the XBox 360, PS3, Wii, DS, or PC.

That's what happens when you model yourself on the music and movie cartels - you follow them down the creatively bankrupt route of being more interested in "shifting units" and "making product" than making good games. Sure, you've got to make money to stay in business, but when that becomes the be-all and end-all, your business rightfully suffers when you fail to offer what the customer wants. Still looking at you Epic.

 

Yeah I'm not sure what to think about Epic anymore. They aren't the company they were in the late '90s. They aren't even sure where they stand themselves lol. I know that I'm not interested in the GoW Epic, however.

 

Since UT2K4, they've spread themselves far too thinly and taken shortcuts while putting the PC market at the bottom of their priorities. They thought they could sail through on their reputation, customer loyalty, and all the marketing/bullshitting they've been doing. Their core PC audience punished them badly for taking such liberties, and now they've been telling everyone it's all because the PC is dying and the consoles are where it's at rather than because of their own shortcomings. Big fat hairy yawn.

It's a shame to lose them from the PC market, but as you say, they are not what they once were. If Epic are no longer willing to produce quality games and just fob us off with console ports that don't address the PC market (despite all the continued PR spew from Mark Rein in Liar-King/damage control mode), or even offer the quality and functionality of their older games, then what use are they to us? We're not going to just give them our money if they no longer sell what we want to buy.

It's quite interesting to look at the different directions that Epic and Valve have taken over the last few years. Valve has innovated and done some interesting things while staying true to their PC roots, while Epic seems to have pretty much moved their focus to the console market. It doesn't stop Valve from having products in the console market, but their emphasis, focus and direction has been markedly different. I certainly think that Valve have made more suitable, and thus more successful products for the PC-space, mainly by not taking that market for granted and making games for it that are more than just back-ports from the console.

 

Yes, software should push hardware, it makes sense considering gaming is probably the real drive for faster more powerful computer components to be put on the market. Now, to make a state of the art game, it's not all about graphics. At some point graphics will continue to give out only diminishing returns until we really up the anty on resolution, or they reach such a photorealistic state, it doesn't matter anymore. And that's just it, graphics are reaching this threshold, however interactivity with the virtual environment is only in it's infancy with CPU and RAM increases in capability improving along side graphics.

Now why I said that such high end shouldn't be targeted so much was a combination of "yes let's outdo the consoles handily, but lets keep all users in mind" sorta the Crysis philosophy if you will, and part of that ideology for me is so lower end computers as well as laptops are capable of running a great game, and player still getting the most of it, just not that super eye candy because laptops are the main future of computers. Sure desktops and workstations will always need to exist, but more people will switch to notebooks. I do eventually hope that being able to custom build a notebook with standardized parts becomes a reality, I mean real building, go to a store, buy my screen/chasis, by my motherboard, CPU to go with it, RAM, Optical drive, HDD and of course my AXIOM or MXM based graphics card

 

Sure this was said many times already,but i just feel like i must say it...

America DOESN'T = The world,Retail sales DOESN'T = ALL sales.

By posting a american-only retail chart,you have less creditibility than ZERO,that kind of agrument reminds me of the rabid consolites in System Wars.

 

AMEN! I think he just summed the thread up in one line.

 

I don't think laptops are the future of the PC. They are a transitionary device between the time when PC's are independant devices and when they are part of our homes.

Soon. In say 10-15 years every home will be built with a mainframe built in. At that point every "interface" whether portable or stuck to a wall in big monitor/tv form will effectively be a "desktop".

At that point (probably before), consoles will become obsolete. I've always said consoles are a stop gap until we have "all in one" home computers that do pretty much everything. I.e. communications, TV, internet, radio, gaming etc....

Hell, a decent PC can do all that already... how much longer until its mainstream?