PC Gaming Market breakdown or something *spawn*

the several form factor of PCs also add many possibilities to PC gaming, like the new Miniproca, which is a Mini PC with an inbuilt 4K 120Hz display.

https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/miniproca-mini-pc/

mini-PC-with-display.webp
 
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.
I dont think it had anything to do with an "aging demographic" and "complex PC-Derived" game genres on consoles. The consoles expanded the gaming market to a far greater audience that covered far bigger age groups that PCs wouldnt even dream of. Consoles were setting new standards for games.
It was the PC audience that was aging and focusing too much on its specific genres, until the vastness of gaming choices started seeing their way on PCs from Consoles.
Games were becoming more and complex by nature as people were demaning more and more from games, more realism, more immersion. Consoles becoming more like PCs was the result of just a few companies becoming the rulers of GPU production and setting standards for matured pipeline production and graphical featuresets on PC space, with MS betting on these as an advantage. That left no space anymore for experimental, exotic, high risk, difficult to program for architectures. Games were becoming more difficult, more costly to produce. Developers wanted less headaches.
 
After decades of PC development it's insane how stuff like this and inability to read the HW info from windows supported resolutions and refresh rates and just release it with fixed values pisses me off, as someone still using an old 75hz panel and the amount of games that have fixed resolutions and refresh rates are ridiculous nowadays.

*edit was replying to Davros previous post, hit quote instead of reply, too lazy to add the quote now
 
that covered far bigger age groups that PCs wouldnt even dream of.
I dont understand that. The pc has had games that cover the most simplistic things aimed at pre schoolers right up to incredibly complex games that accurately simulate a Russian SA-75M Dvina surface to air radar and missile system and has done so for decades. What age group do you think the pc does not cover ?
This a a screen from Putt-Putt: Pep's Birthday Surprise aimed at pre school / toddlers
1721433204585.png
or Goofy's Railway Express aimed at 2 to 5 years
1721433409259.png
 
Last edited:
I've been mentioning this repeatedly but the whole PC gaming was dying argument stems from and only applies to certain demographics, and those demographics have a specific criteria of what they consider PC gaming.

Steam's current most 2 popular franchise, Counter-Strike and DOTA, grew in the era that PC gaming was supposedly dying. The Sims grew when PC gaming was dying. China with a negligible market presence (and other regions as well such as Korea) started to see economic growth and gaming growth during the era PC gaming was supposedly dying. Esports as new growth vector was emerging when PC gaming was dying.

Just because SP focused FP/TP action games moved to towards being multiplatform and a console focus never meant PC gaming as a whole was dying. Just a change in the positioning of certain genres.

But I'm sure some people consider Crysis to be "real PC gaming" which I guess did "die", even though way more people at that time knew of games like the Sims (which of course real PC gamers would never play).
 
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"
I think that was From Software's first PC release. The original Dark Souls IIRC. And yes the reason they gave was that they didn't know how to let the user adjust the resolution. :???: I got the impression they didn't even know that was a thing that people did.

 
I dont understand that. The pc has had games that cover the most simplistic things aimed at pre schoolers right up to incredibly complex games that accurately simulate a Russian SA-75M Dvina surface to air radar and missile system and has done so for decades. What age group do you think the pc does not cover ?
This a a screen from Putt-Putt: Pep's Birthday Surprise aimed at pre school / toddlers
View attachment 11665
or Goofy's Railway Express aimed at 2 to 5 years
View attachment 11666
These are exactly the examples that illustrate my point. PCs were very stuck in niche games and educational software.

It reflects the difference between console and PCs and why it was consoles that grew the videogame market and not PCs for two generations consequently with a huge game library that more people wanted to play of all ages.
 
PCs were very stuck in niche games and educational software.
niche games like doom, quake, command and conquer, grand theft auto, need for speed ?
These are exactly the examples that illustrate my point.
your point was that console somehow catered to more age groups than p.c
again what age group do you think the pc didnt cater for and you are aware there were pc games that were non educational aimed at kids
consequently with a huge game library
that is absolutely dwarfed by the pc's game library (roughly 74,000), console grew the game market because they were cheap and easy to use and worked off a tv
edit: that figures wrong because i just went on steam database and it says 177,651 games on steam granted a lot of them are crap shovelware
 
Last edited:
niche games like doom, quake, command and conquer, grand theft auto, need for speed ?

your point was that console somehow catered to more age groups than p.c
again what age group do you think the pc didnt cater for and you are aware there were pc games that were non educational aimed at kids

that is absolutely dwarfed by the pc's game library (roughly 74,000), console grew the game market because they were cheap and easy to use and worked off a tv
edit: that figures wrong because i just went on steam database and it says 177,651 games on steam granted a lot of them are crap shovelware
Surely there are exceptions you can find but it still shows how limited the scope was in PC gaming. First person, simulators and strategy games is where the PC was most popular for with an additional exception here and there. You could also inflate the PC library by adding old games in. But it was the 32 bit and 128 but era that exploded gaming to all ages and larger groups thanks to consoles.

I have no idea why you are talking about steam when I am not referring to the current situation but about the 90's and 00's
 
You could also inflate the PC library by adding old games in.
they're still part of the library, I bet if I limited it to only games released during the lifetime of a console it would still be a bigger number. I added steam just to demonstrate the massive size of the pc gaming library not just bigger than any console but bigger than all consoles combined
First person, simulators and strategy games is where the PC was popular
and rpg's and adventure games, I could say fighting games and platformers are where the console were popular why are the genre's popular on the pc somehow less worthy than the genre's popular on the console? I can name genre's the pc has that were not available on console can you name genres available on console not available on pc?
 
Last edited:
These are exactly the examples that illustrate my point. PCs were very stuck in niche games and educational software.
Putt Putt isn't exactly an educational game. Yes, it's marketed towards kids, and yes, they might learn something, but the thing they are going to learn is how to play an adventure game. 1993's Putt Putt Goes to the Moon is going to teach you just about as much about space as 1993's Leisure Suit Larry Shape Up or Slip Out is going to teach you about going to a Spa. The games Humongous made aren't like Reader Rabbit or Jump Start, they are just point and click adventure games with kid themed characters and puzzles.
 
These are exactly the examples that illustrate my point. PCs were very stuck in niche games and educational software.

It reflects the difference between console and PCs and why it was consoles that grew the videogame market and not PCs for two generations consequently with a huge game library that more people wanted to play of all ages.
Most of us were meant to be console gamers, The PC was meant for productivity at the time. I got my first PC in late 1995, but tbh I'm very surprised at how popular PCs were, even for niche games, 'cos computers were soooo prohibitively expensive.

Back then, my PC with a Pentium 100MHz, 32MB of RAM and a horrible Trident 2MB GPU cost 3000€. I was too poor and too young to have that money, so if I wanted to play even a console could be "expensive" but more down to earth. I got hit in an accident -not my fault-, lost the spleen and I purchased a PC with the compensation for the accident.
 
Most of us were meant to be console gamers, The PC was meant for productivity at the time. I got my first PC in late 1995, but tbh I'm very surprised at how popular PCs were, even for niche games, 'cos computers were soooo prohibitively expensive.

Back then, my PC with a Pentium 100MHz, 32MB of RAM and a horrible Trident 2MB GPU cost 3000€. I was too poor and too young to have that money, so if I wanted to play even a console could be "expensive" but more down to earth. I got hit in an accident -not my fault-, lost the spleen and I purchased a PC with the compensation for the accident.

My first PC was an 8Mhz 8086 with EGA graphics 🤣

I went from that to a Pentium 90 with Voodoo Banshee!
 
Back then, my PC with a Pentium 100MHz, 32MB of RAM and a horrible Trident 2MB GPU cost 3000€. I was too poor and too young to have that money, so if I wanted to play even a console could be "expensive" but more down to earth. I got hit in an accident -not my fault-, lost the spleen and I purchased a PC with the compensation for the accident.
3000€ is 1 spleen, but not an arm and a leg.
 
thinking about getting a new mini PC next year, for productivity and games. I am still considering the idea but most likely that's going to be my next PC.

I have a desktop PC, a laptop, and I had a mini PC and I loved it although it wasn't good for gaming. A handheld is interesting but it's not something I am thinking of getting in a year or two....
 
Conflicted between buying just the 5090 or building a new PC and letting the wife get the "old" PC.
Not because the wife is a gamer, but she studies and found that a super fast PC can have 4 windows open, playing videos and encoding fast with missing a beat , so sometimes we have "conflicting" interest in using the PC at the same time for different purposes :ROFLMAO:
 
Conflicted between buying just the 5090 or building a new PC and letting the wife get the "old" PC.
Not because the wife is a gamer, but she studies and found that a super fast PC can have 4 windows open, playing videos and encoding fast with missing a beat , so sometimes we have "conflicting" interest in using the PC at the same time for different purposes :ROFLMAO:
heheheh women can enter missus mode, dangerous and intractable. :D Any gaming PC is one heck of a computer for productivity stuff.
 
Back
Top