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State of PC Gaming in 2004 Probed

Posted by Zonk on from the retro-is-the-best-kind-of-spective dept.

NetDanzr writes "Netjak.com has published another of its annual articles probing the state of PC gaming last year. The author complains about the demise of strategy and role-playing gaming, at the expense of action titles. Even though he praises Valve's Half-Life 2, he is skeptical about the Steam copy restrictions, and predicts that Valve would face legal challenges because of it in 2005. Slashdot reported on the previous article in the series last year."

2 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. XBoX by Apreche · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The XBoX killed PC gaming. It was the dumbest thing Microsoft ever did. Two years ago I was a windows users because I had to play all my games. But now, PC gaming is dead, except for Steam. All the games that used to be on PC are now on XBoX. So now I run Linux. PC gaming has gone down the crapper.

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    1. Re:XBoX by Darth_Burrito · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Assuming that xbox sales really do hurt microsoft's os and applications market, then we might be talking about a disruptive technology. In that case, Microsoft has a couple of choices. They can try to bring it to market and potentially canibalize their own business or they can wait until someone else brings it to market.

      If they bring it to market themselves, they may be cannibalizing their own OS/applications business but the money still goes into their pockets. On the other hand, very few big businesses are successful at bringing products to market that are disruptive with respect to their existing products. If it truly was disruptive to their OS/apps market, it would be a marvel of business ingenuity for them to have successfully brought the xbox to market.

      As things are, I really don't think the xbox puts a dent, ding, scuff, or scratch in os/app sales. For starters, most of the cash probably comes from businesses. Second, the percentage of people who are sticking with Windows solely for games has got to be extraordinarily small.

      When I look at the xbox, all I see is expansion into additional markets and, longer term, creation of entirely new markets for their existing os/app products. I mean, the thing runs a stripped down version of windows. They may be losing money now, but that won't last forever.