PC gaming is die...... wait what its Growing ?!?!

Sample GAF, it will support your point extremly well.

It's funny to read lines like "It can barely run fluid on my PC at 1920x1080 with 4xMSAA.. I think I'll instead buy the console version.".

Educated people step in and say: "Well console version runs at 1280x720 with no AA so..."

 

Since I have been playing games for a long time, all the way from C64 and 8086 PC to modern PCs, I can share my perspective. Alot of those games from the old days mostly have sentimental value for me. But as soon as I try to replay one, I notice how much of the memory is sentiment, and how little is actually based on gameplay and such. Games nowadays are much more advanced and fun than you give them credit.

 

Could you elaborate somewhat further?

Reading that report I come up with the following net revenue for the 5 mentioned quarters

XBOX360: 1172
PC: 904

Yes, a difference, but not that astronomic.

In 2011 they will launch 30 key titles for the consoles and for PC only 15. If that is comparable to the situation in the 5 quarters mentioned earlier, then PC is starting to look even more attractive.

 

Naw, that was me being quick in posting, I only compared Q3 FY 09 numbers. As you did I should have used at least a full years worth of numbers. So just to be complete if totaling those 5 quarters.

X360 - 1172
Wii - 879
PS3 - 993
PS2 - 299
PC - 904

So when expanding out to at least a full years numbers which helps to negate the potential effects of a blockbuster for one platform launching in a quarter while a blockbuster for another platform launches in another quarter, it falls back to my original statement that 2 out of the 3 (X360, PS3, Wii) will individually outperform the PC for any given AAA publisher (Except Activision Blizzard due to Blizzards focus on PC only and their rabid fanbase).

Something I didn't notice the first time through however, was that out of those 5 platforms all of them saw greater than 20% YoY growth except for PC which saw 1% growth.

Much of the strength for PC games is the mid to low budget games. Looking at Gametrailers just now to see previews of upcoming games is both heartening and depressing.

On on the positive front is that there's a lot of potentially good games coming out. As well as a resurgence of sorts for some of the traditional game types (wargames, turn based, simulation, etc.) as well as the perennial underdogs trying to self fund a quality FPS (Interstellar Marines).

On the not so positive front. With AAA devs moving to console first developement and thus most PC only developement being limited to mid to low budget developers, there is an absolute stagnation and reversion of overall graphics quality. Most (not all, Crysis and DoW2 - Retribution should look nice) of the upcoming PC games that aren't ports of console games often have 2005 or 2000 level 3D graphics.

People can cry all they want about how PC doesn't need AAA devs and how AAA games developement is evil, but without them, there will be no push for graphics. Cutting edge graphics certainly aren't necessary to have a good game, Kings Bounty is a fantastic series with basic graphics, but it would certainly be nice if more games had graphics worth drooling over.

Thankfully there's at least a handful of devs still trying to push the PC or least provide high budget/high quality titles for PC. Blizzard, Creative Assembly, Relic, Firaxis... And at least some console devs that at least push their PC ports. Avalanche, 4A Games, maybe iD...

[edit] Oh and almost forgot to add in Related Designs and Bluebyte for the fantastic looking and playing Anno 1404 (Dawn of Discovery in NA) as well as GSC Game World.

Regards,
SB

 

Yeah, that's my opinion as well, and I especially can't understand how we were able to tolerate loading times of several minutes in some cases. However back in those days even that kind of gameplay was totally cool and fun.

Also, in those days we've seen completely new types of games, significant new features, and a lot of high budget releases very very often, all on the PC, which is definitely gone. It's not like anyone's gonna invent the FPS or the RTS, or open up a completely new realm of possibilities with CD-ROM or 3D acceleration, and major releases are scarce even on the consoles, with far less publishers and dev houses who prefer to concentrate on yearly iterations instead of reinventing the game with every sequel.

 

Aye, but that's all tied into the risk of developing a big budget title now days. If you look at the low budget or even mid budget developement levels, there's a bit of experiementation going on and far more willingness to try something new.

Why do I mention that? Well, if DD can ever completely shed retail product, the risk should be greatly reduced for high budget titles. You need to sell far far fewer copies to recoup the same level of investment. Either that or you lower the price to try to sell far more copies.

I don't know if that'll spur on the level of experiementation and invention within the game genre that we had in the 80's and most especially in the 90's, but it's certainly possible, IMO. The current situation of high budget developement and high risk of not getting a return on investment just isn't condusive to taking a chance on new genres unless you're flush with cash. And even then the high risk involved will give many publishers and developers pause.

Regards,
SB

 

As I am working for EA I am used to read this reports. Numbers inside brackets are negative. Beside of this you should use the non GAAP numbers because GAAP has some strange rules if a game has an online part.

You should although check the numbers of released SKUs. You will notice that there was a significant reduce.

 

Oh is Phenomic with EA now? Or did you move to another company? Hmmm, oh wow, they were aquired by EA in 2006? /bonk self. I didn't even notice.

Dang and JoWood (previous publisher) is in bankruptcy now, dang. That's a shame as they published 2 of my favorite Phenomic games, Spellforce and Spellforce 2.

As to the report. Ah, reading comprehension FTW. I reversed the column headers in my mind when looking at the report. So when looking at the report, I was braindead and thinking Q3 FY09 was Q3 FY10 which is why I didn't catch on. I should have known that they wouldn't have changed how they reported positive and negative numbers just for that one column.

In that case, yeah, for Q3 FY10 PC actually fared relatively well with a lower loss. That made me curious so I went and looked at the just released Q3 FY11. Ooof, not so good. And interesting that PS3 and mobile (guessing this is cell phone games?) were the only ones that showed a positive YoY change. And Wii outside of the holiday months is looking particularly bad.

Regards,
SB

 

EA and Wii is something that has never worked that well. But most 3rd Party developers have problems on the Wii.

For EA mobile includes mobile consoles like the DS and the PSP. Cellphone gaming is listed under the term wireless.

Anyway you need to be careful if you try to project data from one company to the whole market. In the case of EA it is even more complicated as there was a strategy change in the last year. There was a decision to develop less title per year with the clear target to become the leader in these genres. The reason for this is the market changes. At the moment only the genre leader and maybe the number 2 makes money. And this is independent from the platform. The situation looks better if you look away the AAA segment. With the significant lower development costs it’s easier to make money. But as I said before the bar starts to raise in these areas, too.

 

Lets keep it at that what you read in these numbers is depending on what you want to read. I personally see that the PC is quite strong in revenue, a little less than PS3 and XBOX360, but nothing that would ever suggest AAA devs leaving the PC platform. It's just a too big slice to keep uncut.

 

Ow, that makes the situation look grim indeed. So they are basically focusing more resources on finding a big blockbuster while reducing the breadth of titles developed? I seem to remember reading about some other publishers also doing this. Reducing how many projects they fund each year in order to focus developement dollars on fewer titles with that hope that it increases the likeliness of one of them being a blockbuster.

Asking your opinion now. But do you see things potentially changing in that area if future consoles and PC were to move to a Direct Download focused method of distribution with retail being just an ancilliary method of distribution? It just doesn't seem particularly healthy for the industry as a whole if starts to focus more and more on a narrow range of "proven genres."

Regards,
SB

 

This is nothing new and the same reason id has abandoned its relationship with Activision, having no place beside the COD franchise. And it isn't a process started by the publishers, it is the response to customer behaviour.

 

Yes, that’s happen in the Moment. I am not sure if EA was the first with the new strategy but at least it start to show results there. Five Titles with 90+ meta critic ratting in the last 3 months.

I am not very objective here as I am working for the Easy group inside EA (Phenomic is a part of Easy). This group wouldn’t even exist without the push on digital delivery.

I expect that in the AAA segment the focus on proven stuff will go on. But the online revolution allows pushing games with smaller budgets in the market. Smaller Budgets means less lost if it would be a flop. This allows taking higher risks. Before the online push the big publishers were just not able to publish such smaller games in an effective way. Therefore they stayed away from them. Something like Lord of Ultima and similar projects was simply not possible within “old” EA. I see that other big publisher now although starts to invest in these market segments.

So far there are mostly independent developers that try new things and develop new IPs. Unfortunately even if they are successful they don’t have the money, man power and knowledge to grow such IP in the AAA segment. The big publishers have all these and with digital distribution a canal to try new IPs without risk of losing big money.

 

Fewer bigger games leaves more money for advertising with "critic" websites and magazines :/

 

Well, you're right in that just as the development budget of several titles is concentrated on one instead, the same is probably true for the marketing budget as well. There isn't more money spent in total, but it's better focused.

Although I still believe them when they say it's only a response to consumer behavior, so it's less important then we might think. People will buy COD shooters instead of lesser known titles based on word of mouth and experience already, marketing is just one more component to support their preexisting risk reducing approach to buying games.

 

Yeah, that's a bit true also. Gamers in the 80's and 90's were a lot more tolerant of bugs and whatnot as long as they had fun with the game.

It seems now days gamers are too quick to criticize and then tell everyone they know not to buy X game.

As well now days too many people focus on what does X game do better than Y game rather than just looking at it as a fun experience on its own. Or that B game is a derivative of C game and thus unworthy of playing or whatever even if B game is fun on its own.

So, hey if people don't want to buy games unless it features checkbox features and a certain level of developement, then why make it since noone will buy it and most will pan it.

So yeah, I can see how a lot of it can due to consumer behavior dictating where developement dollars are spent.

For example, all the PC user whinging at Crysis when it launched was probably a large factor in convincing Crytek to jump into the console scene.

Regards,
SB

 

I was a lot more tolerant of bugs when I could expect a long support cycle too (of course for a couple of companies you still can, but not all).

PS. if Crytek only noticed the whining about Crysis then they completely lost the plot ... if they think the console crowd will be more welcoming then they have another thing coming.

 

Well, the console crowd isn't going to have a situation where they have a computer only capable of running medium or high settings and then complaining on every forum they can hop onto that they can't run Very High settings at 2560x1600.

IMO, it should also compare quite favorably with other top console games. Now if they start comparing console Crysis 2 to PC Crysis 2, yeah, they'll be in for a shock.

And I'm sure the whinging over Crysis performance and how Crytek were inept programmers wasn't the only reason for Crytek to move to consoles, but I can't help thinking it certainly helped push them in that direction.

Just like I'm sure all the whinging about GTA IV performance and how the developers were incompetant also wasn't the ONLY reason Red Dead Redemption might never make it to PC. But again I have a feeling it put a large push behind whatever latent, "why bother with PC" feelings there were.

Regards,
SB

 

GTA IV was a terrible port.

 

Actually such a situation does exist console side, they are called PS3 owners who still don't understand that a tweaked Nvidia 6 series card has difficulty rendering anything modern looking