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Why Consoles Overwhelm PC Games At Retail
An anonymous reader writes "With the GameCube at $99 and PlayStation 2 sales still huge, people are
starting to really notice the shrinkage of PC games at retail. Why? What does
the future hold? An article at JoeUser.com asks that question and looks at what is likely to
happen to PC games as consoles slowly take over most of the retail space for
games." This piece, written by Brad Wardell, creator of Galactic Civilizations, argues: "The issue isn't whether the PC game market will die. It won't. The issue is whether PC games will be able to keep up with console games from a production values point of view."
Look, while most homes have PCs, most of those PCs aren't able to play games very well, and so the situation that many people who are just either jumping into games for the first time or casual gamers have, is the decision to buy a $1000+ PC that can play PC games well for a while(until it is obsoleted), or a $200 console that will always be able to play games well that are designed for it(which should be for at least 4-5 more years into the future).
Thus, you see the more economical, frugal players going with consoles, and the much higher-end players going with PCs.
Not that consoles aren't made for "serious gamers", however they hit the mass market, every kind of gamer, much better than a PC, which plays high-end games for players who are more serious at gaming.
A while back I had to help a friend choose between a $600 PC and a $200 PS2 and he chose the PS2, and although skeptical of its capabilities/staying power at first, he is very happy with it today, over a year later, and he says he will continue to use it instead of upgrading his old PC for games for quite some time.
I wonder what makes you think that. It takes some incredible effort to create a modern video game, and you think the developers will do it for free?
One of the things I have always liked about PC games is their ability for players to expand the game. Take a look at Counter-Strike. Noone would have been able to do that with a Console based game. Enjoy D&D, play one of many player made modules that are available online, SP or MP. There are tons of games like that. I think many game makers do themselves a diservice when they don't allow players to create their own missions, or characters, anything to make the game different or fun. If NWN were to just sell improvements to the game engine and keep it compatible with current modules I would pay for it.
You cannot do the same thing with a console, you play through the adventure and that is it. You spent your 50 bucks and got 20 hours of game play, your done. Maybe you can play the whole thing over with *SHOCK* another character! How is that for flexibility from a console!
Consoles are easy to setup and get going, but they lack that ability for people to truly attach themselves to it and expand upon it.
What it all comes down to is the lack of innovation in pc game genres. Some genres of game do well for the pc. Usually things like rts, fps, simulation. Anything with a complex interface. Anything that absolutely requires a mouse and keyboard. Anything that requires networking. These are the games that are good on the pc. The rest of the games are good on the console. Platformers. Fighting games. Space Shooters. Some genres do well on both, puzzle games like Tetris for example.
The major pc game genres have had a serious lack of innovation as of late. The RTS and the FPS have both been stagnant. Look at the newest fps. Tell me what new major fundamental innovation in gameplay has changed since Half-Life? Why is Counter-Strike still #1? Because no new game has done anything new and amazing to beat it out gameplay wise. Before pc games will become popular again the genres which sell big on the pc must have major gameplay innovations.
Look at the console. Games like metroid prime, gta, etc. etc. All of these games represent huge fundamental advances in gameplay within the genre. People aren't going to buy the same game 10 different times just because you upped the graphics or changed the theme. Once you've played one stock space shooter you've played them all. Unless someone releases something like Ikaruga with it's color changing awesomeness that makes the genre fun again.
If you want people to buy your game you must innovate. There has to be a gameplay element that is new and awesome that the genre needs. I think there is much hope in Doom3 and Half-Life2 to breathe new life into the fps. Natural Selection has done it and it's popularity is soaring.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I mainly buy console games because, as opposed to pc games, I know they'll always work... and I know that I'll be getting the same experience (except for differing TV/sound quality) that everyone else is getting.
- colin
hed.
http://goldysmom.blogspot.com
Hey, things change all the time. I've got a Playstation and an XBox, and I love both of them. I'm having an absolutely kick-ass time playing FPS games on both consoles, and I finished Aliens Vs. Predator Extinction on the XBox a while ago. More FPS and RTS games are coming out all the time.
Another issue: buy a console and you don't have to upgrade for years. Possibly a lot of years. Offloading the most strenuous software you'll ever use from your PC to a console means your PC might NEVER need to be upgraded. It saves money over time, more than you might think.
Here's one for the Linux crowd: buy a console and it won't matter that you can't find many games for Linux. You'll be free to choose the O/S of your choice for your PC, freeing you to really leverage the machine's power, because you'll still be able to game to your heart's content. No dual-booting necessary.
Anyway, you see where I'm coming from. I love PC games, don't get me wrong, but I think consoles are winning because they're more convenient, cheaper long-term, and of high enough quality that the switch is painless.
Just a few thoughts...
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I bought a laptop off ebay with a PII 300Mhz and 256 Mb of RAM. I was bored and tried to find anything at Microcenter that would run on it. I gave up after only finding 4 year old lame knockoffs ("Classic Arcade") that my system would meet. My Dell 1.3 GHz that's only about 2 years old is borderline in terms of playing any RPG nowadays. This may be a dumb analogy, but could you imagine if your 3 year old car couldn't find gas anymore that allowed it to run above 55mpg.
Consoles turned me off for similar reasons. I might have had unrealistic expectations, but I expected games to be similar to DVDs. Expensive at release and then decline to a reasonable ~$30 level (like PC games were). No, instead even games for obsolete boxes are still >$50 often times. Although I played my freinds' Segas, Ataris, Com64, etc, my first console I plumped down hard cash on was the Super NES. Not even a year or so later its EOL. Pissed is an understatement.
I know this post sounds like a rant, but these are the reasons I stay away from both. I would like to get back into an RPG, but I don't want to spend $100-300 for a box that will EOL within 2 years or be forced to constantly upgrade.
John
good example.
KotoR on the PC recommends half a gig of ram and a 128meg video card. This doesn't seem like much, but the xbox only has 64 megs of ram total (that's shared between vram and system ram), and yet kotor somehow runs just dandy on it.
Plus the PC version isn't as stable as the xbox version.. it's like they didn't do as much testing.
Which are the two main problems of the PC. Expandability, and patchability.
They won't spend as much time optimizing a PC game, since they can just demand that you get more ram/faster cpu/better video card. Whereas there's no alternative to optimizing a console game.. it's required or the game won't run.
They can get away with not testing games as much, since they can just release a patch the day after the game ships.. and more patches down the road. With a console they have to get it right, or the game will forever be flawed.
As someone who has worked doing technical support for PC games (and still does), I can state that in my experience, the vast majority of problems that the "average" user experiences are things that are insanely annoying. I'd say a great percentage of problems are: 1. A person's video card drivers are hopelessly out of date and the old ones don't work with the game. It doesn't help that new drivers come out every few weeks - the average user NEVER thinks that they would need to go search for drivers all the time. After all, things like DirectX always come with their game CDs, so they don't have to "Go to some site" to get it. But drivers never are included on anything. 2. Newer games are actually being much more restrictive on what they support. Despite the existence of DirectX which was supposed to make it so you could have "almost any card", a lot of recent games support ATI, NVIDIA, and little else. I don't know how often I've seen someone say "I bought this computer a week ago and it won't run this game, and I have to buy a new piece of hardware?" Add to these things the fact that a lot of games nowadays just don't work out of the box and need to be patched ad infinitum, CD keys which may be necessary but cause more trouble for average players than most people think, the dearth of true innovation lately, etc. No wonder consoles continue to lead! Buy game, place game in console, turn on. No directories, configuration, anything.
The writer of this article doesn't appreciate that Warcraft III's strength is not in its graphics. I'd be surprised if his hypothetical team of 5 programmers could match its carefully balanced and varied gameplay or even its AI.
Sure, cool graphics rocks... but I wish more game producers would realise that good games are more than just cool graphics.