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State Of PC Gaming In 2003 Probed
An anonymous reader writes "Netjak has just published an overview of the past year in PC gaming. Unlike all the doomsayers, it was very enthusiastic about the console ports that flooded the market, because, for the author, they indicated the beginning of a renaissance in PC gaming. However, there's also some perceived negative developments. They were surprised to see Electronic Arts lose its last spark of innovative spirit, and unhappy to see a growth in false advertising, especially the usage of established franchise names to support the sales of unrelated games." What were your PC highlights and lowlights for the year?
The prediction is that as the PC gaming market gets flooded with increasingly lousy console ports, that there will be a backlash against them, which will lead to a renaissance in PC gaming in a few years.
In other words--like everything else--console-port hell is cyclical.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
An alternative that the author didn't contemplate:
PC gaming is being marginalised by the game production houses. There isn't really a huge growth in new PC game development by the big players. Independants are making a few small games, true, but the majority of the work is being done in the modding community. This will only last as long as new games are released for PC in a moddable format (which means the games are developed for PC, again a diminishing trend). It will also only last for as long as mods aren't available on consoles. The Xbox already has an internet connection and a hard drive. All that needs to happen is that Xbox games get downloadable mods and game fixing patches, just like PC's, and game houses will be able to code exclusively for consoles, seeing no advantage of releasing games for the "uncontrolled" DRM free PC.
Furthermore, as you can see, console ports are continually on the rise and they're continually failing on the PC. Yes, this is because PC gamers bathe, have haircuts, and are generally distinguishing. But the gaming industry will just interpret the low sales as a lack of demand rather than product inferiority, and further reduce efforts to develop for PC.
This is where the so-called rennaissance comes in. Independent houses don't have the resources to produce a game with the same content as the big houses. Games developed in the "first cycle" that the author mentioned could have been achieved (and often were) by a small handful of talented staff. I know iD wasn't huge when they made Wolfenstein! But Wolfenstein won't cut it anymore. An independent rennaissance cannot be.
One factor for contemplation, however, is the PC hardware industry. Despite the lack of growth in the PC gaming sector, the PC hardware sector is skyrocketing. AMD and Intel both need a stong gaming community to push product like the AthlonFX and the Xeon^H^H^H^HPentium EE. ATI doesn't need PC gaming anymore thanks to Xbox2, but nVidia doesn't have a console anymore (not that they made money on Xbox anyway). So nVidia needs PC gaming to stay alive (they also need a competitive graphics architecture, but that's another story). Will these companies have any influence over the console-pushers and big gaming houses? Will they be able to turn the tide away from consoles?
Console gaming killed the arcade machine, because the console game had better graphics, sound, and you could play it at home. But will the console kill the PC? The only advantages that the console has on PC is the low entry cost, and the vast industry backing. Arcades died because that was what customers wanted - but will the PC game die because Namco and Sony and Activision want it to?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.