Slashdot Mirror
Will Next-Gen Consoles Kill Off PC Gaming?
An anonymous reader writes "CNET is predicting that next-generation consoles will drive the final nails into the already half-closed coffin of mainstream PC gaming. The root of their argument isn't one of power, but of price: 'The bottom line is that console manufacturers often heavily subsidize their new machines, swallowing huge losses up front in hopes that they'll make it all back selling games... Other things being equal, the DIY-heavy PC gaming industry can't hope to compete in that kind of market.' Which is to say that once the 18-34 demographic starts buying $400 PS3s instead of $400 video cards, developers may have no choice but to follow suit." Will there still be a market for PC games, or are the graphics of the next generation of consoles going to make PC games unnecessary?
...Why video cards cost 400 dollars when you can get a WHOLE CONSOLE with DVD drive and custom hardware for the same price?
No.
Not Likely.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
slashdot was slashdotted?
Or maybe no.
Lets put it this way:
Consoles will take over PC gaming when they get the advantages of PC Gaming like bigger harddrives, better memory, better quality graphics...
And to get that, what do they have to be? Modern day PCs with rigid hardware. Basically a laptop.
I'm guessing within the next 5 generations, the console and PC market will converge...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I'd just like to mod this article -1 Flamebait.
Thank you,
Slashdot Reader
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Will there still be a market for PC games, or are the graphics of the next generation of consoles going to make PC games unnecessary?
Ummm, yes?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Just like the last generation did.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
No.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
IMHO, the problem has never been about price, performance or convience (well, maybe a little). Its been mainly about titles. What games are actually available and if those games are solely for a specific platform. In the early 80s, Ataris were nice, but lost their luster with the availability of the C64. In the late 80s, most of the best games available where for the console systems, in the early 90s we started to see a switch back to computers and when Doom came out, it seemed like everyone was picking up a PC. Then Quake came out and with the Internet boom everyone bought new computers. Now people are going back to consoles because there are so many good games there that aren't available for computers. If someone made a game for Linux that really kicked ass, I imagine that suddenly a lot of people would be running Linux. Take for instance, Frozen Bubble. Great game play and highly addictive, got a lot of people to use Linux who didn't before.
This can be especially said of the 18-34 demographic which surprisingly always seems to have the money to get something that they really want. Like a new $400 video card to play Half-Life 2.
Someone needs to write a unique and really great game that is only available for Linux.
oh bullshit. we've heard this argument time and again. the last two generations of consoles were supposed kill off pc gaming. I have both, and enjoy both. FPSs I play on pc, everything else I play on console.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hope it causes a shift of games from the PC over to the Mac due to the similar architecture.
Well,
There are games that make sense on a console (driving sims, fighting games, etc.) and games that work better on a PC (first person shooters (arguable), MMORPGs, RTS, etc.). I know that personally, I will want to have both for the forseeable future. I love driving on my high def TV, but I despise playing first person shooters on the console, due to the lack of control.
People are always trying to be the first to drive a nail in some coffin. In this case, it is highly premature, IMO.
Willie
But they'll drive another nail in the coffin...it's cheaper for developers to put out games for one or two hardware configurations rather than trying to optimize for for hundreds of potential configurations. Further, they can easily set a higher price point...most new PC games I get are around 29.99 or 39.99 USD, as opposed to 49.99 for most console games I purchase...
The big hope for PC gaming is open source games and modding...but even that is, as yet, still pretty unproven - outside of CounterStrike, of course.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
Will there still be a market for PC games
Yes.
or are the graphics of the next generation of consoles going to make PC games unnecessary?
No.
Everybody has a PC. Not everybody has a console. The console will never win online RPGs.
when somebody builds a user-upgradeable console.
I don't want a console or appliance or what is really a second, specialized PC. I also would like to be able to play my old DOS-based games (Red Baron, various Star Treks, Dawn Patrol and the like) on my exising PC without having to jump through a thousand hoops to do it.
Widespread adoption has never happened before at that price. What's different now? Older gamers want to pay more ? Well, maybe. Try $199.
PC games are about a lot more than just the graphics. And there are still going to be a lot of people who own a PC- to do PC things, who wont own a console. PC games may not be the top money maker but they will still be around for a long time.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
This is a dupe of a story that was published before the PS2 came out.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
How could $400 next-gen consoles kill of PC gaming, when $300 consoles failed to do so?
;-) but even still, there will always be folks for whom the latest video card is a requirement, who want to play games that really aren't served on the console - like, oh, say...World of Warcraft?
I mean, this is coming from a console gamer and a Mac user, so the idea of using a computer for gaming is completely alien to me.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Until you don't play consoles with a nasty controller with a joystick to aim and drive or whatever I will not bother buying one for myself. I can't leave my mouse behind (for FPS's, at least, and that's all I care about)
Maybe I'm just addicted to my desktop, but I think that it's easier and more cost effective as a gamer to have my computer to play my games on, rather than having to buy a Playstation, X-Box, Nintendo, or whatever else comes out next. Almost all of my favorite PC games are dual released for the console and the PC. Plus, since I use my PC for web and graphic design, it's going to need upgrades anyhow - better to spend my money on a sweet system then to keep tossing it away on consoles that get replaced every two years anyhow.
Serious gamers use serious hardware and have the serious dollars to get the best. While gamers have cash, developers will be there to look after their needs.
__free funny videos
... a new batch of consoles are announced, but no.
Personally, I like the depth, complexity, and expandability PC games have, that consoles (so far) have lacked. Perhaps online access and hard disks for consoles will change that, but I doubt it.
PC gaming is bigger than ever; Counter strike and the massive hit World of Warcraft show no signs of slowing down.
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
Consoles will have kill PC gaming not because of what they can do, but because of what they lack: A mouse. Microsoft has said it has no intension of making one and I think I heard Sony say the same. If you are a gamer you know that first person shooters are pretty much unplayable on consoles. The only way I'm buying UT 2007 on an xbox is if they have a mouse with it. How the hell am I supposed to aim across the map with a fking analog stick?
I had an Intellivision and then an Atari 2600. After that, I felt that if it deserved to be a computer game, it deserved to be on a computer. Then, over the past few years, it became a headache. My wife would buy some new game and I knew that I would have to spend a few hours downloading updates and configuring it to work properly. I just got sick of it and bought a PS2. Now, you just pop in the disk and play - no driver updates and no configuration. I think that the ease-of-use will be a major factor in getting people to move from PC to console.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
Pc Games have there place , and until I can play games at 1200x1600 32bit with 8x AA on a console. I will forever be a pc gamer at heart. Plus , who really LIKES playing FPS with-out a mouse and keyboard ..........
Consoles have always been cheaper than PCs, yet PCs still have done fairly well because of the additional power and flexibility they offer over consoles. The bulk of the game market today is still in consoles, so no, most people don't spend $400 on a video card. That's a small number of PC owners.
They're different markets. And yeah, I've seen the very impressive Powerpoints and pre-rendered FMV "proving" the PS3 will be faster than a PC, but I hope you'll forgive me if I take that with a grain of salt, considering that Sony claimed the exact same thing with the PS2 and it's "emotion engine"... that in the end, turned out to be barely faster than the Dreamcast.
Will the next-gen consoles outsell and outmarket PC gaming? Absolutely. There's no doubt in my mind. They always have, and they do today. But that's hardly the death of PC gaming. It's apples and oranges.
The following consoles were sold at a loss of more than a few dollars:
Sega Saturn
Sega Dreamcast
Microsoft Xbox
it's in my head
I own a computer system for more reasons than gaming - development, office tools, internet connectivity, graphic editing, etc. This means, in short, I can game on it as well. I admittedly rarely do because I AM using all of the above, but still.
A computer is owned for a variety of reasons - a console largely for only one (though they are expanding). However the "footprint" of computers is rather large, so there's a reason to serve the market.
In addition, a computer is multifunctional. Any number of my friends and co-workers will game, code, chat, surf, and do gods knows what else online at the same time. A console itself, as of this time, is limited to one thing at one time.
The real question I'd say is how are things going to change in the future as distribution and price changes. The idea of some wholesale die-off seems rather extreme, and ignores the various possible outcomes.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
console
No sir this is just hype
what people might finally do is just buy a console to sit along with their puters
and probably buy those mods that let you make them load something like linux and get a super powerful desktop for a fraction of cost
The one key point missing is that computer games have a lot more potential for interaction within the game. With a full keyboard and mouse to use, your gaming experience is significantly different than if you are simply using a game controller.
Convenience is also an issue. I use my computer for many things, and when I'm not working I like to take a little break by playing games. I don't want to have to stop everything I'm doing and go somewhere else to play games. Not only that, but consoles are definitely not allowed in most offices, while you can sometimes get away with games.
Hundreds of garage-style game studios that can't afford to buy console dev-kits will always produce games for PCs, and even Macs and Linux. So, yes there will be a market for PC games and $500 video cards for a long time to come.
MMOs are still a PC market game. Probably 10 years out from getting a majority of MMO players on a console (I mean, geeze, it's hard to cheat on a console-based MMO!).
And improved graphics have very little to do with it.
More important is increased network support on next-gen consoles.
Even more important, though, is the reason that the console game market is already much, much larger than the PC one: developers only have to test on one (or 3, if you're going cross-platform) hardware configuration, not dozens.
not only PC-Gaming, the whole home-PC industry is in danger.
just add a browser, an email app and a picturre/movie/music/tv player to that game-console and over 90% of the people dont need the home PC anymore
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Home computers still only need 640kb and no one will ever need color graphics in the home.
--Captain obvious posts
Lets see if they still talk about this in two weeks (after Battlefield 2 has been released.)
Ok.. so when will we see the OfficePro 9500 console? Filled to the brim with office apps and productivity software... VOIP, and lan built in.. shell out $100/user and off you go.
don't worry about worms or OS issues, since it boots fresh every time.
meh
People will always have desktop computers and they will always want to grab a round of UT2004 during their coffee break.
The PC market is quite safe.
--
Random Signature #3
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey
RTFA again for the best results.
Uhh... of course not.
How else can I kill time at work? My boss seems reluctant to buy me a Playstation 3.
I think this argument has been on for quite some time now.
There has always been two parallel gaming world. Those with PCs, and those with console. I don't think that with the new generation it will change. In fact, other console were less expensive in the previous generations compared to computers, but the computer gaming world didn't die, did it?
I think the fact that more and more people are getting a computer at home (for internet, word processing and other things) and that they get sold some high line PC, they are potential game customers (or their kids), and that reduces the potential to buy a console.
And its not as if the price was the only restriction in the gaming world
I wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
I don't think most pc gamers are running $400 video cards, I bet 80 - 90% of pc games are sold to people who don't even know what kind of video card they have. This seems to use generalsations to there point.
I never plan on buying another console. Why buy a console for $400 when a new graphics card costs $100 (by new, I mean able to play new games). The other intensive things I do assure that I have enough RAM and to the least extent CPU power.
I simply don't see a reason to own a console until I have no choice (bundling it with home media system).
Then with all the corporations not making PC games anymore, maybe we'd get independant startup companies like Orgin and Sierra again.
Back in the day when anyone with a compiler and free time could make a game.
One can only dream though... Since this is an unrealstic expectation since modern games need teams of artists and coders.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I would switch if there was a console that had REAL keyboard and mouse input. There's a hack for xbox, but it's only a hack. I can't live without my mouse and keyboard!
This will truly be the first generation of consoles that are more powerful than their PC counterparts.
Even by December, when the XBOX360 comes out, the CPU power of the desktops won't come close to XBOX's 3 3.2Ghz G5 chips, or Sony's similar Cell architecture.
There will always be those $700 video cards that are better than the cards on the consoles. But now consoles are almost indistiguishable from PCs functionality wise (at least the xbox has online, usb peripherals, chat, etc..., sony promises the same), there's just not enough of a reson to spend as much.
This comes up every time there is a next gen. -sigh- PC gaming will always be around because people want to have the choice of dynamic titles and until every console has a mouse and keyboard, PC gamers will keep to the PC.
The thing that makes me cringe is giving up the keyboard and mouse. I'm not only talking about only FPS, I'm talking any game. There are simply more buttons on a keyboard/mouse combination. That means you're not learning a bunch of seemingly random controller moves to do what you have to do.
I'm not criticizing people who use controllers. I've tried to use them several times in my 40 years, but I just cannot get use to them as I'm just too god-darned old.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
... on a few things. Although Xbox Live is a step in the right direction online gaming is still superior for PC gamers. I can't imagine pulling off something like WoW on a console and it being successful perhaps sometime in the future but not right now or with the next generation of games.
Another issue is the input interface. If you take the example of FPS games... a mice is still superior to any dual-analog console controller in terms of quickness and accuracy.
To truly pull away hardcore PC gamers to the consoles the console developers need to consider these issues. There are probably more I'm missing and it's probably from all that damn Jaegermeister I drank last night.
PC is the easiest game platform to develop for, so game companies can just do a port... there are enough PC owners that there will always be some market. Also, Microsoft has made it so xbox games can use the exact same libraries as PC games, so making PC versions of xbox games can nearly be as simple as compiling the same code for the PC platform.
You mean this isn't a Dvorak article? I'm stunned.
Why am I on Slashdot? I'm bored. Why am I bored? I'm on Slashdot.
PC gaming will certainly never die it may just evolve away from the types of games that play best in a console environment. But I don't think I'm alone in believing that for a game like DOOM or Half-life there is no better controller than a keyboard and mouse and I guarantee these games look better at 1024x768 than they do on the 800x600 most televisons are limited to. Don't get me wrong I love my gamecube and PS2 but I still boot my PC to windows to play KOTOR, CIV, and HL2.
Don't we hear this argument every time a new generation of consoles comes out?
Besides, until console gaming develops active mod communities (don't hold your breath), text chat (which would basically re-create the PC experience) and mouse support (ditto)... the console will always be an inferior platform.
Thumbstick control will *never* have the accuracy of mouse control. VOIP support results in chaos when used in a MMO environment. And modding is limited since a PC is usually required to create the mod.
The answer is no. Consoles will not be killing pc games any time soon.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The simple fact is that there are two distinct segments. Ones that want to leverage the power of a PC and use the superior controls of an optical mouse and keyboard; then there are those that want the rumbling of a control pad. PC gaming took over for awhile when console was a bit behind. With the evolution of PCI Express, the "hype" of superior computing power will return in the near future. Clevernickname sucks balls.
Until I can download and save all the mods, patches, utilities, and skins available for a PC game onto my console, I don't think I'll stop gaming with it.
Most new consoles are sold at a loss. They lose money selling them, in the hope that they can recoup the money from game royalties.
How do they manage to subsidize the consoles? Simple: you pay over the odds for the games. On the PC games may cost as much at launch, but they go down much faster, and these days you can get some fairly decent games for free and a whole host at a fiver each. For someone who games a lot, the PC is far cheaper in the long run.
I am trolling
No, X will not 'kill off' Y. As long as X and Y are two different products with different strengths; No X has ever outright killed off Y, nor will it ever. Y's userbase may however, given time, dwindle away to nothing as they gradually move on to better alternatives. However, a lot may happen before then. I get enough sensationalism elsewhere. Please don't add to it here too.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
if you randomly pick a Mac in the wild it's going to need a new graphics card to run games - and that's ignoring the iMac/iMini owners who can't upgrade (and for that matter the laptop owners - although to be fair most windows laptops are non-gaming machines).
The biggest strength of PC games, in my opinion, is that it's fairly easy for 3rd parties to extend games. More and more games like UT24K, Half-Life 2, and Neverwinter Nights get their longevity through the community mods that spring up around them, rather than the game itself.
I'm a long-time NWN mod person. It's amazing how many cool things have appeared for the game, keeping a thriving community going for years after release. I don't think you'll ever see that sort of thing happen to consoles.
Consoles are great for focused, vendor-supplied gameplay. PCs excel in flexibility at the expense of complexity.
Console games would be fine if the controlls didn't suck! Give me a mouse-and-keyboard controll for FPS cames rather than some thumbpad crap.
Plus, in their current forms, you really can't massively network like PCs can. Yes, that can change with more memory and more hard drive and better networking, but I still think we're at least 2 generations from seeing that.
That a PC can do that a console can't. But what really, consoles just keep getting closer and closer to just being PCs. I mean with everything I have heard about the new Xbox it is just a dumbed down PC. It really does seem like a convergence of such and maybe this type of convergence will make it easier for developers to create for PC and console.
Now that's a death ray!
In order to get the full value of the graphics from these consoles, one will require a hi def TV, and those ain't cheap!
This happens every four or five years. New consoles come out, they shine for a while. PC games begin to rise again the next year. The year after that, the big-ticket console titles have finally had enough time to bake and it's a console year. Next year dwindles, and PC games "fight back" with more big sequels and releases. About a year later new consoles come out and the cycle continues.
Although it stands to reason that if Microsoft has its way, within a few cycles consoles and PCs will both be replaced by Microsoft Home Entertainment products.
Glog!
Right... maybe when my TV has more than 25% of the pixels of my 17in.
And no I'm not going to drop a grand to buy a new HDTV.
Sort of like golf, ski or cycling. Being able to pay so much for equipment adds a bit to the aura of the hobby. Anyone can buy a $200-300 console, sssh! It takes a real gamer to drop a month rent on a graphics card! (Oh wait, manic gamers don't pay rent, do they? :P)
PC gaming will always be around. EQII WoW Etc are just too complex to be played on a console with the limited number of buttons on the controller. Unless you want to memorize 40 different button combinations on your console controller. And without PC gaming there will be no Uber Micro and we all know we can not live without uber micro.
"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
I was considering buying a console because I'm switching to Mac for my production work. But I'm an FPS player and I like having access to a keyboard and mouse. Plus, the resolution of a TV is a paltry 3 or 400 pixels, unless you've got HD. Which I don't. Last time I looked at consoles, mice, keyboards, and hi res weren't options. Has this changed?
If consoles *do* start wooing PC gamers away, it might eat significantly at a demographic that would make the mac switch (or go to pure linux) but for their games.
This question comes about with every new generation of consoles, and the answer is always no, for a few reasons:
.. and, well, there's more, but this has been gone over a million times already. Console gaming is not going to kill off PC gaming. Likewise, PC gaming will not kill off console gaming.
1) Most fundamentally, many PC gamers don't like a lot of console-style games, and vice-versa. If you've seen an argument between PC-RPG and Console-RPG people, you'd know this.
2) There will always be a segment of people who say "Well, I already have a computer, so why pay more money for a console?". Likewise, there will always be people who will say "Well, I can get a console for $300, but a gaming computer's video card costs that much...". This may eventually be blurred when game consoles get PC functions, but until people can browse the internet, write and print papers, use photo editing software, etc on their consoles, there's always going to be something separating the two.
3) Many PC games require a keyboard/mouse to control well (the RTS genre in particular is a lot more difficult without a mouse), and although you MAY be able to get a KB/Mouse for your console, most people won't.
4) PC technology progresses while consoles are stuck in "generations". Sure, these new consoles might be on par with today's top-end consumer gaming machines, but what about 3 years down the line?
5) Modding. PC games are (in general) far more moddable than console games.
The PC section was relegated to a tiny hallway in the basement. PC gaming, such as it is, will be gone in two years time. Consoles have the power now. PCs no longer to be any faster than a 450Mhz box to surf the net and run mail. It's finished. My two and a half year old P4 3.2 is still considered a high end machine. Back in the day, you could squeeze 2 years out of a box, max. Sure, the ati 9800 pro could use an upgrade, but I can still get almost $120 for it on ebay.
The next gen consoles have just as much power, now the only real difference is the interface. I prefer keyboard/mouse over the controller for first person shooters, but that's about it. If I can have fun with Halo, I can have fun in Half Life 2. It isn't financially feasible to code for so many platforms, one of them has to give. Aloha, pc gaming. It was nice to know you. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Consoles are fine for FPS, RPGs etc, where you take on a persona and everything happens in close to the first person. However, the interface is simply not designed for complex strategy and simulation games. Can you imagine trying to control and coordinate groups of troops in Starcraft or Shogun using that little game controller? How about things like Railroad Tycoon - you'd need a virtual pointer written into the game to be able to perform all the different possible actions.
Nothing beats a mouse and keyboard in terms of flexibility and control. A pointer is analagous to a hand, allowing you to select, grab etc... far more effectively than a joystick or dpad would. And in terms of quick response, nothing beats key shortcuts. Try to coordinate an attack with a hundred hydralisks with that playstation controller - by the time you've given the last group their orders the fight will be long past.
You can have my gaming computer when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Jw
But if they stop making games for the PC, then what will Windows fanatics use as an excuse to not buy a Mac? ;)
(putting on my asbestos suit...)
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
... consoles will always be an *additional* gaming platform. People use 'puters on the job, so when they buy something for home, they get the thing they know for email, web, Quicken, etc. The installed base for PCs is far larger than necessary to support a gaming industry, and that installed base will continue because of inertia in other areas.
The ridiculously low price for consoles helps make them a secondary gaming box, or perhaps primary for certain members of the family like kids, but houses will always have PCs, and so the PC game market will continue, if only as a secondary market for console games ported to what's essentially the same hardware.
Breathless articles like this always fail to mention one thing: Who wants to check their email in the living room in front of the whole family? Or surf for pr0n? Or shop online while the kids are whining to play FF?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Sure, your hardcore Halo fan may leave the PC but I would think that a lot of gamers game because they have a PC. I'm not going to buy a console, point blank. If I didn't have a PC I wouldn't game.
I probably only buy 5-6 titles a year but I'm also a 5 year subscriber to EQ and EQ2. So maybe I'm not a large factor in the gaming industries eyes but I'm sure there are plenty of people just like me. And not being hardcore gamers we're a lot less likely to do survays for some gaming magazine and less likely to fill out registration cards. I'm sure we're a demographic that is often overlooked.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
You don't need a $400 video card. Even a $200 video card released a year after the console looks better.
Then again, for certain types of games, a good gamepad really is better than the standard mouse-and-keyboard. Fighting games, sports games, and platformers all do better with a gamepad than mouse/keyboard.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
One of the things mainstream consoles lack is a 'boss key', that instantly turns everything into a spreadsheet/C IDE (Alt-[0-9] in WindowMaker). And come to think of it, even if they did that, the concave X-shape of the device would probably give me away... Unless I disguised that too... (((hm))
Yeah, really. I seem to remember reading tripe like this about the time the original X-Box was released...
--------
This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Given the size of the existing potential customer base and the current (very real---relative size to console gaming notwithstanding) revenues of the PC games market, I don't think you'll see PC game development drop off any time soon.
Put it another way: do we still have a division in the market between PC gamers and console gamers? (C'mon, you know which camp you're in without even thinking about it**).
Yes?
Ok then, don't worry. PC gaming isn't going anywhere.
** Those who play on both probably have very good pros/cons for both platform types. My point still holds: there a market for PC games because they fill a consumer need that cannot be met elsewhere.
50fps (at 1024x768) in Half Life 2 according to Tom's Hardware, and $64 (including shipping) according to Pricewatch. There are probably better values out there, this is just the first model I thought to check.
Yeah, I know, if you want 1600x1200 + 8xAA + 8xAF you'll have to pay through the nose for it, but if you just want the image quality that a console gives you, you can get it on the PC cheaply.
It is the very flexibility of pc gaming that keeps it active. Sure, you can do racing games and fps on a console easily enough, but you'll never see something like the popularity of warcraft 3 or command and conquer on a console.
(Yeah, I kow that versions warcrat 2 and tiberian sun exist on PSX, etc. but have you ever tried to play those? The interface blows.)
Both the strength and the curse of console gaming is that there are no patches, and always standard hardware to run on.
Have you ever wondered How to Take Over
i searched /. to make sure it wasn't a repost but to my surprise this topic had been beaten to death when the xbox came out. but since u bring it up again, stuff dies cause no one cares about it. i still care about pc gaming (esp for rts type games where u need a mouse), thus pc gaming is not dead...
It seems to me that the industry is heading the way Bill Gates wrote about in his book, "The Road Ahead"."
No matter what console I choose,prolly the PS3, I'd to be able to use it to use internet applications and media streaming, the same thing I use my computer for now. It would just be better to do it on my HD without having a PC, Console, DVD player, and whatever else needs to be hooked up. Since I'm going to play games anyway I'd like it to be one unit.
All that to say this... NO. Computer gaming will still be around for many reasons.
1. The wife won't let me play in the livingroom all the time.
2. Different controls. I like to play some games with a mouse and others with a controller.
3. Many PC gamers are PC gamers only. I only recently bought a playstation 2 because I was one of those guys.
Not this generation of consoles. Maybe in a few more years when we can't distinguish a computer from a set top box to a toaster.
011110010110111101110101 011000010111001001100101 01100100011101010110110101100010
PC gaming won't die... but face the facts, most games are made for consoles before PC versions come out. Few and far between MMO's and FPS make it worth it to have expensive computer gaming rigs, but when it comes down to it, I don't want to spend $2G on a new computer just to play a $30 game. The end.
Peace out, homies.
Where do people come up with these BS theories! This idea forgets that no one needs a console, but everyone needs a computer. If you've already spent the money on a computer then you probably already have a decent enough machine. If you can't afford a decent computer then it's not likely that you're going to spend $400 on a console ($99 back in the day was one thing, but 4x that now is a much heavier investment).
Console gaming is for those who just want a plug-and-play gaming experience at a reasonable cost.
PC gaming is never going to go away. Simply put, there is an installed base of several hundred million users. Is any rational CEO of a software company (gaming or otherwise) simply going to pack up and leave all that money on the table? Absolutely not.
Every time a new console comes out, someone has to scream "Oh noes! Console gaming is going to kill PC gaming!" and it never actually happens.
Sure you might not have the same sales as a console game, but who gives a flying fuck? If the mainstream publishers leave the scene the indy game studios will take over and it will be like the 80's/early 90's again... and that was a good time for PC games.
On a related note, some people suggest that if you give a console a mouse/keyboard and the ability to make/download mods, then that console will kill PC gaming... But I'd say it IS a PC at that point, just one you can't get in and tweak the hardware. (But how is that any different than your average name brand computer system?)
...and is telling me "The rumor of my death has been greatly exaggerated"...if this was going to happen, would not it happen back when the original NES came out?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
are absolutely terrible with a controller instead of a KB and mouse. I myself will allways prefer PC games over consoles.
-AC
no.
Next question?
Sensationalism 101: if you ever read a headline which poses a statement as a question, it means the writer lacks sufficient evidence to state it as a claim. Examples:
Will Microsoft destroy Linux? (No.)
Do videogames make our children kill? (No.)
What is your risk of being a terrorist victim? (Practically nil.)
Don't know about other folks, but I dislike console gaming because of the gamepad. It is awkward and lacks the power of a keyboard and mouse for the games I like to play including FPS.
Other problems as well like vendor lock in, but that is my biggest gripe.
Don't forget that one also has to buy a very expensive (hdtv) screen to get equal visual quality from the latest consoles, and those don't come cheap.
(Unless they planned to use their computer screen for that purpose...)
Dependency hell? =>
This is the same question about medium convergence that is asked everytime a new app hits a cell phone or a pda. if the market did exist, it will exist until it is rendered completly usless. Im sure there is enough of an audience for pc gaming to exist just on the people who do not want to have a console hooked up to their tv.
A controller is not a keyboard.
A joystick is not a mouse.
A USB port does not equal expandability.
Forcefeedback doesn't mean miniature dildos inside your controller.
A (non-HD) TV is not good resolution.
A closed/proprietary executable format does not utilise the innovation of the entire human race.
Licensing deals do not a good game make.
Neither do FLOPS.
(However, Shigeru Miyamoto does.)
And I'm not even a nintendo fanboy. I've just never seen another developer whose every game I have consumed voraciously. But other than that and an occasional foray into PS2 console land (GTA/NFSU2/Square RPGs), I'm a PC gamer and the advantages of PC gaming have a lot more to do with freedom of creative expression than raw framerates.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
You can have my pc (and its games) when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Oh no! Not the console will kill PC gaming discussion again! I used to think that console gaming would kill off PC gaming, and I diligently planned ahead for it. I bought a Sega Genesis, played games on it, but still a few PC titles snuck in and at some point I upgraded my PC, for professional reasons. Time moved on, I got a Sega Saturn and a Sony Playstation and played a lot of games on them both. PC gaming was dead this time for sure, right? Uh, not quite.
Well you know how this goes by now... I moved on to Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, and Xbox. I play games on them, even online! But the PC is still kicking and being upgraded (almost always for professional reasons). So what am I saying? It seems pretty clear that PC gaming is here to stay, the only real question is what shape PC games will take. I see web based (via Flash or other) games continuing to grow. And who knows, there may be some PC/Console/Cell Phone hybrids in the future too.
Console games are going to continue to outsell PC games. But I don't see the PC disappearing anytime soon as far as games are concerned.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Consoles wont take over the market. There are far too many games that just dont play well on TV. Plus consoles are just limited in a lot of ways. The consoles always have an edge on graphics when release, but PC games catch up a year or so down the line.. then the consoles start to look dated again.. then screenshots for the 6th(7th?) gen consoles will come out and people will be saying, "WOAH! loook at dem purdy pictures! This spells the end for the PC gaming market. With the power of these consoles I could, dare I say it, Rule the WORLD!" or something along those lines. This has all happened before and will happen again. PC gaming isnt going anywhere, nor is console gaming.
How long before consoles are general-purpose enough, and Linux desktops easy enough to use/install, that people commonly use them instead of a "PC"? With every other multimedia communications device converging, why shouldn't the PC and console do the same? That would increase the market for games, without the fragmentation making it more costly. So console makers could continue to subsidize the consoles. The only remaining problem would be opening the console platforms, but the Linux layer makes that less important (like AMD vs Intel running RedHat, or x86 vs PPC - literally). If package distribution/upgrade and cross-platform targeted compiling tools are made trivial (or disappear into automated preferences), people will be able to use the same pool of Linux apps on any console, getting one or the other solely for specific optimizations, like the "look" of a rendering engine, or preferred controllers. The way we buy different cars, with 99% standard dashboards, to each ride the same roads, or burn the same gas, to suit our usage.
--
make install -not war
I swear this is new news every time there is a new generation of consoles on the horizon. Heard it when the PS2/Xbox/GC came out. Heard it when the DC/PS1 came out. Heard it when the Genesis/Jaguar/came out. In fact I think i remember hearing that the Colecovision and Atari were going to be the end of the short lived PC games of the day
09-f9-11-02-9* (G^GCA_++{>. RV>>>>+++ NO CARRIER
Which is to say that once the 18-34 demographic starts buying $400 PS3s instead of $400 video cards, developers may have no choice but to follow suit."
so you're saying the developers will have to stop buying $400 video cards and instead by $400 PS3s? THE HORROR!
twitter.com/gravitronic
Other things being equal, the DIY-heavy PC gaming industry can't hope to compete in that kind of market.
I don't think you can really say all other things are equal. I mostly prefer gaming on a PC to a console because I prefer games that are complex and require a significant set of controls. I don't see consoles shipping with keyboards by default anytime soon so console games will still be written with the assumption that a player does not have access to them. This really limits any gameplay that requires player interaction via typing. Also, many PC games allow some serious customization via editing tools etc., which frankly would really suck to try to use without a keyboard and mouse and without access to other software (graphic and sound editors especially).
Console gaming often seems like a "dumbed down" version of PC gaming with fewer options and fewer controls. Additionally, with console prices going up, more and more people who already own a computer are happier to shell out $50 for a game they can play on their existing machine rather than $350 for a console and another $50 for the game. I know I am.
Since console makers really do subsidize consoles to some degree what I'd really like to see is a good, official, console emulator for Mac, PC, and Linux for each of the main consoles. They could even make money on it while expanding their market to include PC owners who don't want to buy another box. They won't do it, of course, because they are all playing to "win" and don't want you to be able to play their competitor's offerings, so they try to lock you into either their games or their competitor's. Maybe if Nintendo really starts to fall behind they will wise up.
The bottom line is that console manufacturers often heavily subsidize their new machines,
Microsoft does / did that with the Xbox, but is it true for other manufacturers ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
... since my in-depth reasoned analysis was downmodded "redundant":
If console gaming isn't killed off within 3 years, could all you pundits kindly shut the god damn hell up forever this time with respect to this prediction?
Thank you in advance.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
Fact of the matter is, PC gaming isn't dying. PC gaming is losing the big budget focus that consoles are going to receive. However, this will have a double result: Yes, PC gaming will decline. Will it be the end of PC gaming? Absolutely not. Next gen console games are going to take absurd budgets to create. This amount limits creativity, and in fact, will cause the game industry to largely regress in to well known "safe" games.
However, the PC as a platform will remain inexpensive to develop on, and easily accessible to developers wishing to make original games. And in not too long of time, a standard budget videocard will be able to do most of the cool effects that devs want to be able to use, so price isn't going to be a gigantic deal.
Nevertheless, there will be backwards movement on the tech scale. PC games won't be as pretty, but in the end, the PC will be the last bastion of true innovation. It will allow developers (especially indie developers and small developers) to play freely. A new market will spring up to embrace innovation.
So ultimately, this isn't a death, but a rebirth. It may take a few years, but it's coming.
I remember this crap all the way back to the original Playstation. "Oh how are PCs going to compete with these cheap new consoles?" It is not going to happen, as long as more and more horsepower can be found in PCs, long before it makes its way to consoles. Because I dont have to wait for Sony or Microsoft to decide to give me more power, and I can just zip on down to Fry's (or go to NewEgg) when I want more juice, Consoles will always be a step child.
I am a long time fan of PC gaming, but now my XBox and my PS2 sit right next to my computer system in my office, all hooked to my HDTV.
To run my PC games I have to install... and patch... and usually upgrade the MOB drivers... and the video card drivers...
My console game? Slam the disc in and go. Hook a keyboard and a mouse to my consoles and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between my PC and the console games.
In the past, the graphics and gameplay on the OC were far superior to my consoles. Now, I have online play, expanded storage via hard drives, and pretty much every other PC game feature on my consoles. Essentially the consoles became PC's.
The graphics on the PC are still better (I have one of those $400 video cards), but not THAT MUCH better. The disparity isn't what it used to be, and the console graphics are good enough that I will take the convenience of the console over the marginally better graphics of the PC. Plus I am getting sick of having to buy $400 video cards every other year.
The only real advantage the PC's have is the mod community, but I imagine it won't be long before games are released on consoles that allow you to create content on your PC using vendor provided tools and the load the content on memory cards or the consoles HD.
The PC game market is needed to drive the innovation of both the software (games) and hardware ( PC graphics,etc and consoles ).
Consoles like the X-box are just PC derivatives with some DRM and not upgradeable without voiding the manufacturers warranty.
People who already have a computer capable to play games for non-gaming reason may not want to purchase a console and games. They can update their graphics card or other components to be compatible with the latest games at a fraction of the cost of a console. Regardless of the sucess of next generation consoles, this market will still exist to be served.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Us white folk can afford good computers.
A high-end computer can do calculations, render video, run programs, multi-task, etc. You can develop full games for the PC (as shown by a previous article article about an open-source game)
if consoles start doing this, they are just going to become computers. so no difference realy, just different manufacturers...
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
Gamers are chief among the reasons why Intel, AMD, ATI and nVidia keep putting out better and better chips. If people realize that they don't need a Pentium 8 10.0GHz system with 256MB Video RAM to browse the web, read email and create documents, who's going to buy new hardware?
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Is there a difference between consoles and PCs anyhow? The PC is just like another console, but more 'open source.'
PCs have the edge in terms of screen resolution, input/output devices, storage, upgradability, and location (desk vs. TV). If consoles catch up in all those areas with desktop PCs, the consoles simply cease to be consoles.
I've had five operations on my right thumb. I call console games "thumb twitchers" and for the most part, I cannot play them. First, I'm left handed due to the operations. Second, my thumb does not have a full range of motion and can't handle the repetetive motions of most games.
I've found I can play Everquest on Xbox(?), that's about it. I loved the Godzilla game, especially in co-op mode, but that was a bit too much.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
I don't know about that one. I have both a 6800 Ultra and an XBox. Right now, I spend a lot more time playing games on the PC because the sort of thing that comes out on the PC has a quite different feel to it.
Console => Twiddly controls and stupid load times. Future consoles will fix the load times - sure - but they still appear to be going for twiddly controllers and games pitched at slow 3 year olds.
For me I really couldn't give a rat's butt about the combo for the 43 step super ninja uppercut.
PC = cheaper games (and at £10 cheaper per game - one game per month - that's another £120 a year to put towards a really good graphics card)
and bottom line - most people these days want a PC ANYWAY... Why?
Because you'd look like a right tit downloading music or pr0n onto your XXX-Box.
If people are smart they'll 1) Buy a PC. 2) Buy a subsidised console.
Get games for the console only if they really really want them.
But then people aren't smart are they...
Yeah, the latest and greatest game machine might have better graphics, and might even be upgradable to maintain the graphics edge (although that's not the current business model among gaming machines). But it's not just about graphics.
As players get more sophisticated they aren't only going to be looking for whiz-bang graphics. They'll be looking for playability. They'll be looking for emotional attachment. They'll be looking for convenience. And if the machine that conveys those is a general machine that can also keep your checkbook balanced, let you type your letters, store your data, and communicate your friends, then graphics will remain a secondary concern for many. That is why we're more likely to see the PC and the game machines merge than see game machines dominate PCs.
If consoles were going to kill PC gaming it would have happened already. Sure, it can be expensive, but people seem to keep spending money on the expensive graphics cards and upgrades. I like how his opinion comes at a time when only prerecorded video has been shown along with system spces. No one has publicly played any games on these systems yet. The games would have to make people's heads implode and be the best thing ever since breathing to really kill the PC gaming industry, and I have a feeling that's not going to happen.
I find pc gamming more enjoyable due to the interface (ease of reading text) and the peripherals (consoles don't really utilize keyboards and mice very often).
I need peripherals for certain types of games, and the relation of the peripherals to the viewing device (tv or monitor) also plays a huge impact. The only way consoles could stomp out pcs is to become more like a pc in the end
I can see that happening someday, but by then we won't really own a computer anyways, we'll all be leasing computational power from a collective source (free or at a financial expense).
For right now though, I see consoles great for games that play like movies, and pcs for games that require more interaction. I can't fathom trying to play something like counter-strike or ghost recon on a console, and likewise I can't imagine trying to play kingdom hearts or final fantasy on a pc.
There are addictive games for consoles, and there are addictive games for PC. While it's true you can use the internet on a console nowdays, it's not the same thing. You have much more liberty while using the net on a pc, and more programs you can use (ie voice programs, chatting with friends). Plus, more and more people enjoy a good multiplayer game these days, and the PC will always win on that field. IMO, there is a market for both console and pc games; Personally, I play games on consoles that, because of the way they're played, require a joystick. Some games just can't be enjoyed as well as a console game by playing with the keyboard/mouse (true you also have joysticks for PC, but it's not the same..). Also, it's a lot of fun to play some fighting game against local friends, and PC games also can't beat that. But where consoles are strong, they are also weak. The joystick limits you a lot on a lot of games. Try to play a first person shooter aiming with a PS2 joystick, and you'll know what I'm talking about. Try a good RPG with a joystick, and you'll notice how better a keyboard/mouse combo is. For these reasons, I don't think the console market will kill the PC games, or vice versa. There are users and demands for each of these markets. I play PC games a lot more than console, and I'd say PC are superior gaming machines (specs, internet, keyboard/mouse). But I must admit it's a lot of fun to do some Dragon Ball Budokai 3 fighting with friends every couple of weeks :)
Why is it that a new generation of consoles come out to the market that death of the PC game is being proclaim?
The real problem is that game publishers -- not developers -- are chasing after console games because they make more money per-unit because the console base is significantly larger, and developing PC games that can capture similar sales requires more investment and risk since you can't shovel crap to the PC with the expectation that it will stick. After the game publishers stampede to death the new consoles, expect an awesome PC game to come out of nowhere and the game publishers will stampede themselves to put out PC games while someone proclaims the death of the consoles.
Let's put it this way; are great graphics the reason for the popularity of most PC games ? Despite the hype machine around high-end gaming rigs, the answer is not really.
Game publishers are going to create games which make them money. This means they're going to provide games to platforms people own. What's in more homes, a PC or a PS2 or an XBox or a Mac ? What platform sees the most game titles released for it ? See a pattern?
PC games are going to be just fine. Maybe there'll be fewer really, really high-end PC games if _everyone_ buys PS3s and XBox360s. But I doubt it highly.
I feel dirty having wasted my time reading this article, it's nothing more than some guy trolling for web page hits with a sensational title on an opinion piece. Except that he happens to work for CNET.
As I long time PC gamer, I play Half-life 2, Civilization, Rise of Nations. As long as these genres exist PC gaming won't die. Find me a console where I can have a similar experience.
To delete any headline that contains that word.
Other things being equal, the DIY-heavy PC gaming industry can't hope to compete in that kind of market. Which is to say that once the 18-34 demographic starts buying $400 PS3s instead of $400 video cards, developers may have no choice but to follow suit.
A $400 video card is a red herring. They are only for early adopters who want to win pissing contests. The latest games are written to run well on far more modest cards. A DIY'er could buy a $150 video card when building the system and then upgrade to a different $150 card 18-24 months later and not miss out on any games. Been there, done that. In comparison my console is stuck in time for 5 years.
Also some games just seem to work much better on PCs, RTS for example. Even with games that do work well on consoles, FPS for example, my personal feeling is that FPSs designed to work on both PCs and consoles seemed "dumbed down" compared to FPSs that were designed to work only on PCs.
I'm sure others will mention the more obvious reasons why PC gaming will not die so I'll only mention an offbeat on. It is a much easier market to enter. A startup can develop a game and market it themselves. No need to get blessings from some arbitrary authority.
PC gaming will only go away when PCs themselves go away.
Everyone notice that? Are the /. overlords trying to feed us controversial material to keep us arguing like Jerry Springer?
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
I can answer that. -11 years. I still play Dune on my Sega Genesis all the time. The first time I saw a friend of mine playing starcraft I said, 'Hey Dude! You're playing Dune!' He didn't get it, but I thought it was pretty hilarious.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Which is to say that once the 18-34 demographic...
/. stereotype - technical, intelligent, and alone), age 41, who uses the PC for Tribes, Quake, etc., but he is pretty much it for anyone I can find using the PC for games. And he spends less than $100 a year for games for the PC platform.
I realize that a significant portion of the gaming community is 18-34, but the core of the market is age 12-24 and they have already voted with their wallets.
My two sons, ages 9 and 13 each have a brand-new, nicely equipped PC, but their gaming time is 90% Game Cube, 9% Game Boy Advanced, and 1% Nintendo 64. (64? Yeah. I know. It just won't die.) PC=Internet surfing and Open Office for homework.
They save their money and it is a rare month that neither buys a new game for the game players. However, neither has EVER spent a dollar on PC gaming.
I've got one nephew (age 17) who takes his X-box to friends' houses where they network the devices. Yes, all also have PCs for schoolwork.
Casual conversations with friends show that their kids focus on game systems as well.
I do have one dear friend (think
If someone is going to code new games, the PC market doesn't seem to have a prayer.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Hard core gamers will never give up the keyboard and mouse for a limited function controler. The playability of the games is much better on a PC, because you can customize the controls to a much higher degree. Having a high level a precision moving a mouse quickly across the screen will never be replaced with any type of console controler. Yes, I'm aware that adapters exists from some consoles to allow a keyboard and mouse to be used instead of the standard game controler, but it's still not the same. Go into Half-Life2 options and see all the functions that you can bind to keys. A console version of the game will be severly stripped down.
There's more freedom to playing games on the net from a computer. You can use 3rd party software (GameSpy) to find servers instead of using what the game has built in. You can run 3rd party chat software, so you don't have to worry about muting out out the annoying kids who won't shut up and are only using voice because it has been made idiot proof in the game.
As far as the price goes, Gamers tend to build their own PCs anyway. You can keep your hard drive, OS in tact and double the speed of your computer by replacing your motherboard and processor for $300 (or less depending if your memory is compatable between boards) every other year. I buy a new video card every 3 years for less than $200. You don't need the latest and greatest card to get equivalent or better graphics than the consoles.
Long live PC games!!!!
what will happen to windows when people don't need it to play games. i know several people who hate windows, but use it strictly to game. is MS shooting themselves in the foot. is it worth it for them, damaging windows, to sell x-box?
Ok, this has probably been said a dozen times already, but I really hope that this will not be the case. :-)
I don't particularly like most console games and I really prefer PC games: FPS (still IMO a total PC genre), Real Time Strategy, Roleplaying games are my favorites and they are only on PC, and i hope it stays that way
~Squisher
Look folks, consoles aren't going to 'kill' the PC game. Both have a place in the world because each lends itself to different sorts of games.
Console:
Big splashy 100 million dollar hollywierd epics with commercial tieins to the NFL, NASCAR, latest hollywierd blockbuster, sequel #7, etc.
Mostly limited to games that appeal to the younger set with the reflexes for twitch games.
PC:
Many of the same splashy epic games as on the console, after all once you sink 50+ million into graphics, cutscenes and voice talent the porting cost isn't a problem.
Games that need a keyboard, high resolution graphics, large storage or any other PC only feature. For all the talk of HD-TV, for the next decade any console game must run and be fully playable at the effective 320x480i resolution of the typical 19" WalMart special NTSC television sitting in the typical teenager's bedroom. That makes a lot of PC strategy games hard to deal with on a console.
Small games. Paying ~10/disc to Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft to help subsidize the initial console purchase ensures that small games will never find a niche on the console, which is one reason for the heavy saturation of franchise epics there.
New games. PCs get new technology first so the latest shiny thing will always be there. And remember that John Carmack is likely to write first for the PC and outsource the console ports
Internet addicts will stay on the PC and game companies won't pass over their coin. Ok, the new generation of consoles have basic online play but how many are going to let you have ICQ running along side it on the second monitor?
Democrat delenda est
I avoid consoles because their games cost typically $20 more than their identical PC ports. A low priced console will have to compete with the alternative of free (already have a PC) with cheaper games.
I'm sure things are different in the real world, were there are kids who don't use computers much (new computers at least), and just want to play games in front of the tv.
It's about minimizing them in your start bar and pressing alt-tab when the boss it not looking.
Someone makes this prediction every time the new generation of consoles come out. The truth is, as long as software piracy is fairly easy, PC gaming will always be in vogue.
Even if this did kill the PC gaming industry, we'll only see huge game houses like EA abandoning PCs in favor of greener pastures and independent gaming houses taking their place. This is a good thing for innovation (Remember Commander Keen?)
PC's are way better to cheat on (and mod for).
PC's are fundementally better suited for AI.
PC's (graphic cards) ALSO get sponsored by games.
Ok, I would rather pay £500 for a decent enough computer that can be used for anything, and pay £25 per top tier game title, than pay £300 for a box that plays dvds and games on my crappy 21" tv, and pay upwards of £40 per top tier title. It quickly makes sence that the cheaper option is actually the computer. For multi player action, on the same box (2 player games etc - not online gaming) a console wins hands down, however.
that we like to hark back to are when people had PCs primarily for work-from-home business reasons. But with a couple of grand's worth of hardware in the room, why not use it for something else? Infocom, Sierra, SSI etc. found people were quite keen on using them for something else.
I don't see anything has changed now, except a vast amount of people now have PCs at home for work and internet use and for a range of other hobbyist persuits of which gaming might be only one of many (e.g., digital art, digital audio, programming). And actually for many of those persuits you can't get by with a 286 running Slackware, one needs a modern spec machine. MS OSs only make this tendency more pronounced; the spec of a PC happy with Longhorn running its best UI scheme (Aero-something) will be high end. Kids and students might blink at the price, but really in the grand scheme of things people will just upgrade to meet the current standard.
Sure, if you are only buying a PC for gaming then you have some difficult decisions re: consoles, but OTOH I'm not aware titles like Civ, Hearts of Iron 2 and Total War are particularly suited to consoles. Its notable that the growing demographic in gaming isn't the kids, its far older people, the early retirement people and the stressed execs. They wouldn't be seen dead in front of a console and consoles can't offer the types of experience they want (immersive strategy games/simulations or simple card games using the same UI they know from using MS Office). But in reality who doesn't use their PC for a range of additional purposes? Its a false question really.
To put it another way, imagine an alternative reality where Atari never dropped the ball and their had been complete continuity from when the 2600 came out until the PSX3 arrives and the great console 'death' of the mid 80s never occured. Games for PCs never really happened. What do you think the industry would be panting in excitement about? The prospect that people might buy games to play on the near ubiquitous PC hardware they now have in their homes almost as a matter of course.
I think whats missing from the article is any consideration of the market penetration of PCs. Sure, an Xbox is "only" 400 dollars, but my PC as of the day I bought it 0 dollars, I've already got it for office stuff.
Three reasons why PC gaming will never die:
1. Ubiquity of hardware in the home.
2. Ease of piracy (sorry but its true).
3. The nature of PC games played by the demographic whose time is worth more than money to them.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
having a PC goes out of fashion. As long as people have computers in their homes, as long as that is something that still sells, PC games will sell.
"into the already half-closed coffin of mainstream PC gaming."
Whre does the author get this tidbit from? The toilet is my guess, as the PC game industry as a whole seems to be projecting continued growth on top of the astound growth they have already experienced up until now. So far there has been no indication of the PC industry slowing, so I don't see where the conjecture of existing decline is. The current projections seem to be between 20% and 45% over the next two years. That's growth not decline. Just because a ferari is a better car, doesn't mean that all toyotas are going to disappear. That is simply stupid to even assume.
I like PC gaming because you have a keyboard, which is basically the same as a console controller, paired with a mouse, which has no mainstream console equivalent. When (if) mice become standard console equipment, most of the hardcore PC guys will have a good reason to switch.
There is a segment of the market that wants their games to look as visually stunning as possible. A subset of this segment also makes a nice disposable income. I happen to fall into this segment and am more than willing to spend a couple thousand bucks for the best possible gaming experience. Did I buy a $400 graphics card? No, but I did spend money to hook up a P4 3.2, 2GB DDR2 RAM, WD Raptor HD, 6600GT Video, and Dell 20.1 LCD so my gaming experience would be about the best you can have. I love gaming, I've built my own MAME machine, I spend hundreds of dollars a year in the market, and the last console I owned was a Nintendo 64. When do I plan to get back in the console market? When the experience matches that which can be had on a PC.
Wow, this is such a new and interesting argument. I've never heard anyone try to make this point before. Ever.
You probably shouldn't click this.
Thus, PCs are here to stay. No console is easier to set up for development than a PC. For a PC, I just need a development environment. For a console, I need additional hardware, expensive stuff that I only get as a registered developer. But how to BECOME a registered developer, if one has no chance of starting to code games?
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
The day that consoles have *perfect* support for my MX 500 mouse and a decent responsive quick keyboard I will never look back.
cos that'll remove one of the perpetual whines about there being no cutting edge games for Linux... and therefore, there's no requirement for kick-ass hardware for that Linux box either... there's plenty of life in all those old 1GHz boxes being flogged off by companies upgrading to run XP.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Yes, do eradicate all those "oooh pretty" games from the PCs, move these gameplayless brainless games to consoles altogether along with their respective gamers and bring back fucking interresting games, such as good civ sims, RTS (how can the gaming industry need OSS to create a Total Annihilation sequel?), adventure games, RPGs (real RPGs, not that dumbed down console RPG shit you find in FF lookalikes, i'm talking about RPGs with stories and where you actually have some impact on things, Fallout or Arcanum types RPGs, "if you do that it's going to bite you back later" RPGs, not "here is the whole game's script, not like you need it since you can't even fucking stray from The Plan we laid down"), Myst-type puzzle games, those games full of easter eggs and obscure references and jokes to whatever the devs liked, full of everything stupid the devs can think of (Dammit give me back Carmageddon). In a nutshell, games that are fun to play, games that i'll WANT to play
Games that can be flawlessly run on crappy machines, because they don't have all the latest shaders v4846, don't want to run in 167845*12354, don't try to load 3Gb worth of textures.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
The two basic arguements against consoles -
I've yet to see a good stragety game on any of the console and it still sucks play a FPS with a controller.
HDTVs are still not that common in an American house hold and I don't see all that amazing graphics power of the PS3 or Xbox360 looking that good on a standard TV.
So when that changes (Mind you, I know it will) ask this question again.
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
What I want is a way for my PS* to become a standalone or back-end rendering engine to my PC. Then I could do all kinds of interesting things at a very budget price.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"hahahahahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"
- S. Korea
Last time I checked, the 1200 horizontal lines of my 1600x1200 PC video display is a bit higher than the regular 480 lines of TV that almost all of the console games are hooked up to currently. Even the 720 lines of hi-def that is coming can't touch the PC resolution. Is there a higher-def coming? No wonder the video cards in consoles "seem" so much better, they are only rendering a fraction of the lines that most people on PCs are rendering.
Until they sell a mouse, no FPS on a console will be superior to that on the PC, the control is just more adaptable and precise w/ keyboard and mouse, its what i live for! muwuahhaha
Most families with serious gamers will have seriously pimped-out PCs with multiple consoles as well. That will be true in the next generation of consoles as well.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
Community created content.
Example 1: I've been playing Neverwinter Nights at least once a week ever since the game debuted. I went through the original campaign once. After that, NWVault.com has tons and tons of modules to try.
Example 2: You want to play Half Life in coop mode? You can't. It's not supported in the game. Not unless you download the Sven Coop mod. Can't do that with a console.
Example 3: The Unreal Tournament series is your typical twitch FPS. How many player-made maps, TC's, mods, mutators, skins, etc are available? The short answer is "lots" unless you have a console in which case the short answer is "none".
PC gaming isn't going away because no game plays exactly the way every player wants it. Given the right software tools nearly any part of any game can be modified for different and new gameplay.
no mouse
no keyboard
no high res monitor
slow upgrade cycle
No way you can play a FPS on console. I laugh at you Halo weenies. The mouse is NEEDED.
And there is no way the dozen buttons on a console controller are going to be enough for all my weapons, macros, dodge moves, hud toggles, navigation and TEXT CHAT needs.
Even HD looks like crap compared to the monitors real gamers buy. I can buy an amazing monitor for $600, but I can't buy a TV with similar performance without spending several thousand dollars.
So, the PS3 is coming out in a few months. It will have a GPU thats already been designed and probably is in production now. In two years, that GPU will still be the one the PS3 offers. In 4 years, it will still be the one people are usuing.
I buy a new video card every year. Depending on release cycles, I'll be 4-6 generations ahead of the PS3 in 4 years.
I play PC games because I love games. I love the bleeding edge. I want to see the new technology and play the most expansive, immersive and incredible games I can find.
When I want a button masher bring fighting game I'll go buy a console.
The only thing I've found that my PS2 is good for is serving as a DVD player.
Mod parent up !
Yay me! ^^
At least in my house PC gaming wil last. Here's why: 1) I already have a PC for other reasons than gaming and I don't want to buy a console too. 2) Console games seem ludicrously expensive compared to PC games. 3) For anyone over 30, owning a console makes you look like an underdeveloped nerd.
I haven't used a console gamepad that beats the keyboard/mouse combo used in pc fps. The console makers have to make their games noticeably easier due to the lack of control. I tried one of the MoH titles on the xbox and was stunned to see how slowly the enemy responded to compensate for the crappy control interface.
:)
Now I have seen threads before where console users bitch about the modders that have hooked up a kbd/mouse to there Xbox and smoke everyone at halo. Well guess what? A game that has a superior control system and is more challenging is more fun to play. I have gamed through all the major consoles since the 2600 and nothing beats the pc for overall game satisfaction.
How about modding in general? I map and model using the source engine. How will that work on the consoles? Photoshop runs like crap on the ps2
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot
It's reasonable for software companies to push for console-only releases - think of how much money they would save by closing off the open arena of PC hardware troubleshooting, and you get the idea. I might add that this action would choke off the DIY game-making crowd pretty well, and places like Garage Games would then expand to become a mindsharing portal for people to figure out how to port games to consoles on the cheap.
No proper strategy-games (think War in Russia, Flashpoint Germany etc.), no simulators (Il2-Sturmovik etc.), FPS-games are still better on the PC...
I think I'll stay with the PC. COnsoles might be great for some games, but they suck for other games. And the games consoles suck at, are the games I like to play.
The prediction of PC gaming death is an eternally recurring one. Yes, more PC developers are always becoming console developers (even exclusive ones).
But what people often overlook is that there's a life-cycle to game development studios. You start out small making PC games because it's an open platform and fairly cheap to develop for. You move on to console development someday when you have the cash for console licensing, development, and want to gamble for access to the larger customer base.
This cycle will continue to happen as long as anyone thinks they can break into the business as a startup. To analysts it's like looking at a river and saying "this river must run dry because all the water is moving in one direction".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Console gaming is for those who just want a plug-and-play gaming experience at a reasonable cost.
PC gaming is never going to go away. Simply put, there is an installed base of several hundred million users. Is any rational CEO of a software company (gaming or otherwise) simply going to pack up and leave all that money on the table? Absolutely not.
And it is less costly and complicated to devellop for PC than for console, you don't have the console approval process to get through, which means less hassle, and less last minutte polishing: Patch it later.
You can do whatever you want on PC, but with console makers, you always have the stress that they might be hard on you this time, force you to change trivial details before resubmitting, making you miss your printing window, etc.
You can't take the sky from me...
Yes, I sure did enjoy HalfLife2 on the Xbox and PS2 (sarcasm)... Let's see how many copies of GTA: San Andreas that Rock Star happens to sell next week for the PC. Hmmm?? Let's say that number may likely be more than 10. I was willing to wait for it on the PC platform, so I could play it with superior graphics, and also not have to try and aim a damned sniper rifle with a joystick. I don't like the idea of only being able to upgrade my performance/sound/graphics only when Sony or Microsoft say its time to! What a fluff piece...
Current consoles could never replace PC's. They just were not full-featured enough or really had the abilities PC's do.
But both the PS3 and Xbox 360 will have HD's, wireless network cards, and all sorts of standard ports (for keyboards and mice). Combine this with much higher standard resoltion output and you have something that COULD replace a PC. I am pretty sure this is both Microsoft and SOnys intention this time around, it remains to be seen if this bogeyman of integration treats them well. I mean the PS3 is a computer that you can hook a keyboard two and hook into TWO 1080p displays! Only higher end computer users are running with comparible resolutions today, and it can make whatever "desktop" they have you use look pretty sharp.
The really interesting thing is that if people are playing all thier games on PC's, then the "PC" in your message above can REALLY be a PC - as in personal computer, not a Windows box. It makes it FAR easier for people to buy and use Macs or Linux desktops, and even really more likley since they will not face the problems Windows users have. Moving games onto dedicated hardware for the masses could really lead to a huge platform shift.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
slightly longer answer.
No, it won't and I'm sick of hearing this every time a new generation of consoles come around! Computers can be upgraded, there is a lot more room for ingame customization, higher resolutions, network gaming is a lot more mature... oh.. and yeah- the only way to play a first person shooter is with a mouse and keyboard!
Just like it did for the past 4 generations of consoles.
There are 2 key reasons PC gaming still won't die:
1) controllers on the platforms are inferior. And they'll stay inferior for a large class of games until consoles ship with a keyboard and mouse.
2) consoles have static graphics technology for ~3-4 years at a time. PC graphics technology takes a jump ahead approximately every 6 months. Graphics on the PC will already be superior to the consoles the day the consoles finally ship.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Consoles need the ability for you to add a keyboard/mouse and be able to use it in game, programming the buttons as you like. No more of this "Here's the button configuration, live with it" crap.
PC's need the ability to handle controllers better in games.
As for resoltutions? 1080i, the second highest resouliton out there (highest is 1080p) has 1036800 pixels (1080p has 2073600). A 1280x1024 monitor has more pixels, but isn't wide screen. However, Samsung has this nice widescreen LCD monitor that gives you 1920x1200. Higher than any HD resolution. Since LCDs are only getting bigger (and CRTs are above that) resolution is not the reason to go with consoles. Not having to upgrade the hardware, plug n' play compatability, knowing it will just work and the controllers (with some exceptions) is.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
There was a market for PC games back when the PC wasn't even considered a gaming machine. The games were, in my opinion, more creative and fun to play.
Now that the mainstream masses(sheep) are moving to consoles I think what will happen is the PC market will shrink back to the core of players that enjoy the extra flexibilty of playing games on the PC. There will always be at least a handful of companies willing to cater to this group, at least I hope.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
A high-end Athlon 64 and a 19" gaming LCD is totally worth the $1700 to me. Plus, you get a few thousand free games and the rest of the single player games are easily piratable. Also, I can alt-tab between games and real work far easier.
Many of the games that are being made for multi platforms are dumming down games, for the consoles. A great example of this is DesEx 2. Most console games dont have the depth of a good PC game, most likely thats what will keep the market alive. And dont forget about RTS the console cant do them right (but would like to see a verion of AOE for DS, and Simcity)
Everyone's already said anything useful. But yeah, pretty much any type of strategy game (real-time especially, but turn-based also... I'd hate to try to play Civ on a console) is only playable on a PC. Yeah, the 13-year-olds who think Halo was "innovative" and "not a piece of shit" don't care, but whatever. Despite what you might think from seeing certain marketing campaigns, the core gaming market is in their 20's and 30's. And the 13-year-olds aside, FPSs are also basically only playable on a PC also. Real RPGs, too. (And on the other end, there are some games that are better on consoles.)
Both will continue to exist alongside each other, these articles will continue to be written, and the same things will be said every time.
Article: -1, Flamebait.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
There's a number of reasons for this:
1. Piracy - it's more difficult/impossible to copy console games than it is on the PC. Whatever the *real* losses to the gaming industry is, the perception of the games industry is that piracy is losing them money so they'd rather develop for consoles.
2. Windows Limitations - long term, Windows is a poor choice as a gaming platform if you're the type of person into playing lots of games and constantly installing and uninstalling them. The registry bloats, it slows down and eventually needs to be rebuilt.
3. Simplicity - Joe Public wants "easy" meaning he'd rather stick a disk in a drive and play rather than go through the tedious installation process. PCs are fine for long-session FPS or strategy games but for the gamer who just wants to blast round a race track for 20 minutes, consoles are better.
However, I can't say (for me) it's of particular concern - a PC for me is a "Swiss Army Knife" that I use for games, Internet, as a server, etc. And there's more than enough PC games out there to last a lifetime anyway.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
this article is stupid for many reasons, not least of which is user-interface preferences.
sold many xbox-mechassault-uberconsoles lately? think microsoft flight-simulator will work on a controller S?
it's tough to keep my criticism to one issue, but i've got work to do...
So you only have to buy one piece of hardware to do everything from games, to burning CD/DVDs, to getting that crap done you had to bring home from the office, to having complete control over your box to connect at LAN parties without having to connect through some pay-to-play network.
Sure this only applies to some people, but having the flexibility to swap in upgrades doesn't exist with XBox or PS2/3/P. You just keep buying a new box every 2 years like some kinda cross between a sheep and a lemming.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It seems every 6 months like clockwork someone has to write about the demise of PC gaming. Almost as if they write about it enough times it will come true...but I'll save the tin foil hat stuff for 6 months from now.
First of all as has been noted there are games that don't adapt well at all to console gaming: RTS, MMO, any game that requires a keyboard. Heck even true "gamers", IE FPS players, look down their nose when console players talk about how great Halo is. (Nor do I really blame them.)
Second, I'm a pretty big gamer imo who's main computer spends more time crunching numbers for polygons than it does for spreadsheets but guess what? The video card that's in it cost me $150...nearly 3 years ago! Yeah it's getting dated and I want a new one but there is no way I'm spending $400 for a new one. I'll most likely try to pick one up for $100-$150 and it will work just fine for my purposes.
It seems these journalists, and I use that term loosely these days, are stuck on the idea that if it's not bleeding edge it's not there. They only focus on the idea that the highest priced best rated video card/console/whatever is the only option that people are going to buy when reality is far different from that.
Now I suppose when your "in the industry" such as they are and your checks are being paid by people who are pushing said bleeding edge gear it can be somewhat understandable. However only the gullible and ignorant will ever fall for these advertisements posing as journalism.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Have you ever looked at a Zboard? http://www.zboard.com/
Now, I don't have one, most likely won't get one, but there's something interesting.
On the Zboard for Battlefield 2 on the main panel, there are 25 buttons. If you assume your mouse is a Dpad with 2 buttons. That comes to 31 buttons to control a shooter like BF2.
If you look at the PS2 controller giving each Dpad or thumbstick 4 buttons), there are 22 buttons total.
So, 22 (using everything including start and select) vs 31 (and that's not including the 'extra' buttons on the other panel, let alone they keyboard for typing...etc
Unless the consoles go to a keyboard type controller, they simply don't have enough buttons to accomplish the job. And this is for a SHOOTER. For a more complex simulation type game, you'd be truly hosed.
If all you care about is Graphics, then the consoles look might attractive, (but they don't age well). However, if you look at 'depth of play' the consoles are inherantly crippled.
If the PC stops being a viable gaming platform. I stop being a viable gamer.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
My thoughts on the topic.
I play games like Halo 2 and SOCOM 2 with a gamepad, but some people have to have the mouse and keyboard, and yeah, it does work well. Probably more important than mouse-and-keyboard in shooters is mouse-and-keyboard in online RPGs. Consoles will eventually chase the space held by World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and Everquest. The PS2 Everquest and FFXI are first steps, but eventually, it's going to take the mouse and keyboard control.
There's no way to have gone to E3 this year and have concluded otherwise. Every PC game maker who did an FPS was showing it on Xbox. All the other PC game makers were making some kind of massive multiplayer online game. If you subtract that stuff, there is only a tiny amount of PC game development still going on. This is going to suck for originality, since dev kits for consoles cost a fortune. So small houses can't buy dev kits without publisher backing, and publishers won't greenlight original (risky) games. But that's the way it is going. I have a feeling Nintendo is going to jump on this and try to make their console the home to small-time developers with original games. They've said as much, but I think they'll back it up with a cheap development system too. Remember back when E3 had one hall with a portion of console games? Then remember when it had the PC room and the console room? Now it's all the console room. Even Blizzard was concentrating on consoles (except for one MMO game).
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Consoles will take over PC gaming when they get the advantages of PC Gaming like bigger harddrives, better memory, better quality graphics...
Why do you need a bigger HD for gaming? You do not, as long as game loading times are not noticable it does not matter. The HD can act as a local cache and if you can store 30 games+ worth of save data what more do you need?
As for the other things - look at the specs. The consoles have super-fast RAM, and don't need as much because there's no OS to support. 512MB console ram is like 720MB (or more) PC RAM, and like I said is WAY faster as well. As for quality graphics, the PS3 graphics chip (according to nVidia) is like two top of the line GeForce Ultras! The XBox 360 is not that much different either. And the PS3 will support two 1080p displays, roughly equivilent to what top-end gamers today run at - never mind that the majority of the population is proboably running games at 1024x768.
The next round of consoles is where they finally take a leap over PC capabilites and offer significant ease of use benefits.
It's not going to take five generations, try a year.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Likewise, it's certainly easier for game developers to know the exact specs of the machine the game is running on.
Ultimately, this goes back to the question whether an integrated tool (swiss army knife) or dedicated tool is better. And of course the dedicated tool is always better, but the quality comes at a price. With hardware prices dropping, I can see why users (like me) prefer the console. It's not that much more expensive, but it does a better job than the PC.
There will always be a market for swiss army knifes, and there will always be games for PCs, but I expect that the more interesting games will appear on concoles, not PCs.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
As long as there are still independent developers, there will continue to be PC games. The PC is simply the easiest platform to develop for. Not only is it simpler, it is also cheaper. You can download just about all the tools you need for free.
Other things to consider is the control. Certain games are simply played better on the computer. Ever try playing Starcraft on an N64 controller? How'd that work out for you?
From TFA:
What I am willing to predict, however, even at this early stage, is that the real loser in all of this will be PC gaming.
No, David, the real loser in all of this is You.
Please go do some research - dumbasses like you have been predicting the death of PC gaming for a very long time, starting with the launch of PS1.
Take a look at these PC multiplayer FPS stats: http://archive.gamespy.com/stats/
Keep in mind those stats don't include MMORPG's.
Wanna compare that to Xbox Live stats?
Didn't think so.
I see this as likely as Microsoft making Longhorn Open Source.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
As long as parents continue setting up their old computers for their pre-teen kids to play games on (and hopefully type papers and do homework research), there will be a market for game software developed for those computers.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
PC gaming isn't going to go away. And the biggest advantage it has over console gaming is upgrading one component at a time.
e.g.
5 years ago I bought an 1Ghz Athlon with 1GB of PC133 SDRAM along with a GF2MX 32MB vid card. It played every game I card to play back then.
Today the GF2MX is no longer sufficient so I bought a second hand 9800pro and overclocked my Athlon to 1.33Ghz. Even with the outdated SDRAM, I can play EVERY game out there now with decent frame rates (~25-30fps) at a decent resolution (1024x768). And how much did I pay for this card? $115.
So over, the course of 5 years, I only had to pay $115 to keep current and be able to play every game to date. Sounds like a hell of a better deal than shelling out $400+ for a console every few yeras.
Both the PS2 and XBox (current0 already support mice. Both the PS3 and XBox 360 have standard USB ports, with which you can hook up keyboards.
The input point is moot, and really favors the consoles when they have the primary input device games care for - the controller. Mice and keyboards can be supported for the things that need them like FPS's.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
word by word, was told years ago with the arival of ps2 and than x-box:
"Who would want a 400$ GeForce 3 if you can get an xbox for the same price".
I think the result this time will be the same than last time.
For some stuff, consoles are better, for some, PCs.
But killed off will be neither.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I can't see how prices would suddenly make PC gaming unable to compete with consoles, because: 1) PC's are cheaper and more ubiquitous than ever. 2) Earlier consoles have cost less than the claimed $400 of PS3
The bottom line is that console manufacturers often heavily subsidize their new machines, swallowing huge losses up front in hopes that they'll make it all back selling games...
Sony didn't and doesn't sell PS2 at a loss, nor does Nintendo and their game cube. The only console maker selling at a loss is MSFT and their XBox. I saw another article somewhere that proved it in Sony's case by looking at Sony's financial statements, but I can't seem to find it right now...
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
PC gaming's problems are rooted in quality control. How many times have you bought a game that practically REQUIRED you to go download a huge patch file just to play through it all. You can't do that with console games, so when you buy a PS2 or XBOx game, you at least know the damn thing is going to work.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
Right now the only succesful games on the PC are the hardcore fpses (HL2), the MMOs and the tiny games like Snood for people to play at work. The XBoX killed off everything else.
Look at every genre of game which was succesful on the PC, the XBox basically took over. Microsoft kind of shot themselves in the foot on this one too. Sure, everyone gets an XBox. But now there are so few new awesome games on the PC that needing to run Windows for games is less and less of an issue. If Steam didn't exist or it ran on Linux, Windows would be absolutely useless. Thanks to the XBoX.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I've had at least one console from every generation of consoles since the Atari-2600. Most of the time I've had two. I found with this past go-round that I play very few console games anymore on my x-box or PS2. I spend much more time with PC games (WoW, CS, UT). This is going to be the first generation of consoles where I do not buy one.
I have never really owned a console in my entire life. I just play PC games.
:)
One of the main problems I have with console games is that I can't really control my player easily on the console with those controllers. I prefer my "W A S D" config with my mouse that I can program to do different things. Plus yeah, why should I buy an entirely new machine just to play games I can do pretty much the same thing on my computer.
If I wanna add extra stuff to my computer, I can find great prices easily. With consoles, everyone is trying to make a buck in royalties.. and u pay quite a bit in royalties.
Plus, I mostly play stragety games. And I usually game when I wanna just chill, do you think I wanna take the time and trouble of hooking up a bunch of cables and stuff when all I gotta do is just pop in a CD.
Consoles appeal to certain ppl, but not me. I'll be sticking with my PC for a really long time.
I'm not really a gamer (no time), but I'd buy a PS3 if they added an HDTV tuner (or 2) and the necessary software to make it a PVR, a media player/streamer, and a VNC client so that I could control my office PC from my living room.
Really, given the power of these new consoles, they could become THE living room device, replacing other devices (Tivo, etc).
I've been playing games on a computer since the late 1970s and have seen things shift in the game market since then.
You had your text adventures for the computers, with some graphics, but for "arcade" type games, the early computers were no match. Adventure and puzzle type games DID do well on the home computers though.
As time went on, the graphics ability of home computers started to go up, and eventually met the quality of what was available in the dedicated arcade games, and then went beyond. Along the way, consoles came out. They were cheap, and compared to what was being done with PCs, they were UGLY. Does anyone remember the original Nintendo console?
As time went on, the TYPE of games started to change though. First person shooters began to dominate, and adventure games started to fade from the scene. Sierra dropped their adventure games, and we see fewer and fewer big release games that fit into a few categories.
First person shooters, Real Time Strategy, and Sports are the big types out there at this point. You see The Sims as one of the different games out there, but there arn't many.
In time, I see action games going to the consoles, including first person shooters. PC games will be the really complex games when it comes to controls and game play. PC gaming won't die, but it will change to become the platform for games that appeal to people who prefer to THINK their way through a game rather than shoot their way through. The PC is also going to be where cutting edge stuff comes from because the hardware will continue to evolve more quickly on a PC.
Why video cards cost 400 dollars when you can get a WHOLE CONSOLE with DVD drive and custom hardware for the same price?
For one thing, console makers subsidise these boxes heavily so the PS3 and XBox 360 may well sell at $100-$200 losses to start with.
The other reason is this - when nVidia makes a new card for the PC market, do they know how many they will sell? No. So they have to price the card high to make it worthwhile to pay for initial manufacturing and R&D costs.
With GFX chips for something like the PS3 and XBox 360 they know the chips they will make will go into the millions in production! And for the PS3 Sony seemed to help them with manufacturing setup at they are using the "Sony 90nm process".
Lastly there is complexity. With a PC video card the card itself must hadle all of the supporting circutry to work in a PC, as well as cooling. For consoles all of that is baked into the console design so the GFX chip is really just a chip, and thus cheaper as there is no card to design around the whole thing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...let's see how many copies of GTA: San Andreas get sold next week (release date pending) for the PC. I bet that number will be somewhat > 10. I was *happy* to wait for this title's release on the PC platform. Besides superior (graphics/sounds/performance/control/take your pick), I'll be able to actually AIM a sighted weapon as an added bonus!! p.s. - I really enjoyed HalfLife2 on the PS2 and XBox... how could THAT be better on a PC? (sarcasm)
There are just so many things wrong with this article.
First off, you can build (or even buy with rebates) a perfectly good gaming rig that will run all the current games, and a lot of games into the forseeable future - and you can buy it for the same price as the next gen consoles (around $400).
But that aside, the fact is, it doesn't matter how fast or powerful your next gen console is, the graphics still suck. Can they do good graphics? Yeah, I'm sure they can... but they are still displaying it ON A TV. Got a HD TV? Ok, so you're in the minority, and guess what? The HD resolution STILL sucks compared to a $50 monitor from the local computer store.
Sure, the picture is bigger, but even at 1080i, the picture doesn't look that great. Yes, I have two HD TV's in my house, one a 65" Toshiba rear projection, and a high end front projection system in my home theater room. So yes, I know what I'm talking about.
If I want good graphics, I go to my PC, I don't go to my XBox. The next gen consoles are never going to be able to match what PC monitor can do, unless perhaps they are hooked up to the self same monitor.
Now, I'll grant that a lot of people just don't care and are happy with crappy resolutions. Next you have the problem of online play... want to play online? WHooopie, I can play with a whopping 16 other people... or if I'm lucky and the title supports it, I can play up to 64 other people. That's about the same as a lot of games on the PC, but gee, I'm locked into one service for the most part, unless I install a mod chip that lets me use other online serves. And I have to pay for this service. Now, to add insult to that injury, the fact that the console is so "cheap" (supposedly), means that every anonymous obnoxious kiddie out there is going to have the same setup and will be online causing grief. Yay, just what I want. Again, if I want online play, I head back to my PC, where I can pick what network(s) I connect to to play my games.
Is all that *possible* on the next gen consoles? Yeah, I'm sure it's *possible*, but not unless you do some hardware hacking. The next gen consoles are going to be locked down tighter than a drum so they can generate perpetual revenue. Why would they let people play on open/free/alternate networks? They won't.
Consoles are great, they have their place... but to say they are going to replace PC gaming is ludicrous. They are two entirely different spheres of gaming, and while one may have some effect on the other, the fact is, each type of system caters to a particular type of game and person... one isn't going to kill off the other, at least not with this upcoming generation of consoles.
Yeah, PC gaming will die real soon.
Cuz people love playing games like StarCraft on some bizarre controller with 3 analog sticks and a builtin vibrator. There's just some games that work better on a PC.
And for that matter, I've yet to see any companies say that you'll be able to have network play between consoles. That's a big deal. All my friends own PC's, but not all my friends own consoles. And most of my friends don't own the same consoles.
And LAN parties. Would you rather play with each person on their own screen? or on a 4-way split TV?
And to the "PC games are too hard to set up" crowd... what the hell is your system? I haven't had any problems since I tried installing Thief 2, 8 years ago. Every game since then has simply just installed, and worked with no tweaking required.
Bill
As a Mac evangelist, let me say: I hope so. If consoles get priority treatment, and PCs are relegated to getting late leftovers, it'll be one less reason to purchase a PC over a Mac--both will be equally neglected.
That said, until consoles get a better controller, I don't see how they can replace the flexibility of the keyboard+mouse. Maybe you bundle a Bluetooth (or USB with long cable) keyboard with built-n trackball? Then your console can be a lightweight PC too, as so many people think is the Xbox strategy? Perhaps.
But until it comes bundled, then game developers won't develop games for it; and I still can't see how you can point weapons in FPS with any accuracy or speed, or discontiguous select with a console controller.
Think you could edit Unreal maps with just an analog stick? If that's being done now, I would sure like to see a demonstration.
--
$tar -xvf
Me: Hi, I'd like to buy a word processor for my PS3, but I'm having a hard time finding it on the shelves. Where do you keep those? ...
... I could have one machine that lets me do all sorts of stuff I need to do, and ALSO play games, or I can have a machine that lets me play games, but which isn't useful for anything else, meaning I still have to buy a computer for getting actual work done.
Clerk: Uhh, nobody writes office software for the PS3. It's a gaming console.
Me: But I want to write papers on it!
Clerk: Dude, it doesn't have a keyboard.
Me: But how am I going to write my papers if I can't get a word processor for it?
Clerk: Use your computer.
Me: I don't have one, they said that the PS3 would kill it, so I bought the PS3 instead.
Clerk: I'm sorry, but you just can't do that unless you want to do something drastic to the PS3 like install a new operating system on it.
Me: Could I still play all the games I bought if I did that?
Clerk: No.
Me: This sucks!
Clerk: If you'd like, I can show you a selection of reasonably priced computers
My point? Desktop computers have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. We use them for a TON of different stuff -- writing stuff, crunching numbers through spreadsheets, browsing the web, watching DVDs (and TV signals, if you invest in an inexpensive tuner card!), keeping track of finances. And on top of that, we can use them to play games. A gaming console lets you play games. And nothing else, unless you want to void your warranty and basically turn it into another PC by installing Linux or something, which incidentally removes its gaming capabilities. So
I'll opt for the more expensive all-in-one box, thanks.
RTS
Well, lets make them 3 words... have you ever [tried to] played Command & Conquer in a console, IT SUCKS... i can play a FPS or another kind of games in consoles but Realtime strategy games or sim games (sim city, the sims etc) are a no no for consoles... until they make a trackball like controls.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I can't find it, but a Penny Arcade news post had an interesting persepctive on the whole console taking over PC gaming thing.
They felt that for online gaming consoles might well bring in a resurgance of people because it would simply be much more fair. Right now if I'm playing an FPS at 1024x768 with an average mouse against someone at 1600x1200 at 100FPS uisng a hi-res mouse, I'm probably going to loose out even if I'm somewhat better than they are. Consoles even the score, at least in terms of graphics abilities - though they did mention there could well be a divide forming between those that have real HDTV res support and those that do not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Consoles have been in recent years trying to mimic what PCs can already do, with the invention of "online" games, hard disks, etc. PCs will only get better at what PCs do, and consoles will get better at what consoles do. That doesn't mean one will ever replace the other. Look at the quality of RPGs (okay, old RPGs) on the PC, and then look at the console systems. Final Fantasy? That type of game will never replace a real PC RPG. The money-maker of current years in PC gaming: MMORPG? I think I'd be forced to commit seppuku (sp?) if I had to do that with a controller in my hands. Consoles are great for console-type games. You'll never have a good fighting game on the PC, and you'll never have a good RTS on a console. If you want pretty, jumping, shooting in 3rd person, racing, block-flipping über-puzzle, or fight games, then a console is for you. If you want in-depth, micromanaging, detailed, expandable, configurable/controllable games, load one up on the PC you already have. Drop $200 on a new video card, $100 on RAM, and $100 on a new hard drive, and you're good to go for the same amount of time as a console's "life span." The only way a console will replace PCs for gaming is if that console becomes nothing more than a graphics/performance based PC itself. But then it's not really a console anymore, it's Sony's Workstation Extreme (WSX for short).
if they make games specifically for their consoles then you would think that naturally the piracy rate would go down, so wouldn't that also be a motivation to "migrate" gaming more toward the console than the PC? I would think it makes sense. At the very least it would raise the bar significantly (technologically) for the average game pirate. More hoops to jump through to pirate a title means more and more pirates just giving up on pirating and either buying the games (and consoles) or, to a lesser extent, just not buying at all. Ultimately its a smart business move to lock people into the proprietary hardware for gaming.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
Asuming everyone has a computer, playing a $50 game on a $300 console = $350. Playing a $50 game on a computer costs $50. The day where a faimily has one computer is rapidly coming to an end. The prices are down, networking is getting easy and dad doesn't want to put up with Jr's games and music clogging his harddrive. As long as you already have the computer, the cost is only the game. As computers plummet in price and the console increases, the console looks much less attractive.
Besides, now that us Nintendo kids have kids of our own, the console market is dead.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
As long as you have to buy wonky third-party hardware to play console FPS games with a keyboard and mouse (Read: The proper interface), uhm no. But then, I'm kinda spoiled when it comes to console game control interfaces, I own Tekki. http://media.giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com/images /blog/2005-06/controller.png Between that and my DLP (circa a year after that was taken) the heavens have actively started trying to smite me for idolatry. ;P
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
I don't care how great of graphics the console can kick out. If I've got to buy a $1000+ TV to take advantage of it, it ain't happening.
The Xbox and all the next-gen consoles have a 15-pin video connector compatible with even the cheapest of PC monitors. If you're happy with a 17" monitor instead of a 40" monitor, such as if you live in a dorm room, then plug in your $200 VGA monitor and enjoy the 720p.
Slow Down Cowboy! Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment. It's been 13 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
There goes the usual /. response again: "You know, you can buy video cards that are well under $100 that have enough power to play any PC game out there. Only a fool spends $400 on a video card for their home gaming rig."
Know what? I bought the BFG 6800 Ultra when it first came out and Half-Life 2 running in 1600x1200 on my LCD display looks friggin awesome with all of the eye candy turned on. In fact, all games look awesome compared to when I used to play them with my old $100 card. Don't knock it just because you can't afford it.
A couple of things worth noting: 1) How many times does CNET produce bogus BS reports? and how many times are you going to listen? 2) Just look at David Carnoy... do you really think someone like that can possibly have a valid gaming opinion? My conclusion: Consoles are great but PC gaming will never die.
something should be here besides this dumb message
That comment deserves a 5. Plain and simple.
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
Sure current deivces do not work very well, which is why they really didn't gain much purchase. But even so some games like Unreal Tournemnet support them.
But with the next round of consoles having standard ports all the way around, and more online abilities I think more games will take advanatage of optional keyboard and mice arrangements.
And I think on top of that SOny and Microsoft will both be pushing the more PC like aspect of consoles and so will build in easier standard support for keyboards and mice in libraries, which will really be key to console makers adding support.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'd just like to mod this article -1 Flamebait.
No kidding. Or better yet
-2 Extreme Dipshit: Obviously and Repeatedly WRONG throughout history, but still doesn't learn.
We see this idiotic story every couple of years (usually linked to by slashdot), and before the web in PC periodicals every so often.
PC gaming is its own niche. Not everyone wants to sit at a desk and game, not everyone wants to sit on the couch with their laptop and game, and not everyone wants to crowch on the floor in front of their television and game. Some people like using joysticks, others mice, others keyboards, and others game controllers of various types. As long as their are people who think differently from one another and have different tastes, there will be demand for games on different platforms.
In two years, when the PS4 and latest nintendo come out, and Microsoft is still subsidizing xbox sales, there will still be PC (and mac) gamers . . . probably in the same relative numbers as today.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
There are several reasons why PC gaming will remain a major force:
(1) Many people don't game enough to justify buying additional hardware, and an HDTV if they want the resolutions you get with even an older computer, such as 1280x1024.
(2) Some games don't lend themselves well to the console environment, but are easier to successfully implement when a keyboard and mouse can be assumed. Can you imagine Baldur's Gate being as fun if you had to use a pad to play it?
(3) Freeware and the fruits of independent and free-software development -- a clear PC advantage.
Or, we'll just get more FPS clones, the occasional RTS and RPG, and more MMORPG shit.
I'm not saying PC gaming is going to die. I predict it staying pretty much the same as it is now. Having higher budgeted console titles does not mean that PC gaming will get more innovative. There is little to no corelation between those two ideas.
No matter how powerful consoles get, I can't use them in my cube to avoid working...
Simulation, strategy, and other types of games just need a lot of friggin' buttons. To play games like that, you need to sit down with a keyboard and mouse.
Besides the fact that input devices on consoles have just never kept up with the standard keyboard that comes with every PC, there's also the simple fact that the arrangement I described above doesn't work on the couch in front of the TV.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
My choices are:
1) Buy a $2500 PC that's got all the latest-greatest-buggiest video and audio drivers so that I can play games on it or...
2) Buy a $500 PC and a $300 game console.
Gosh, you're right. I should buy the more expensive PC because.... uh... nevermind.
Clear, Dark Skies
Yes, they were also preaching this "Death of PC gaming" crap when the PS2 and the XBox came out, too. When those consoles were released, they WERE just about as powerful as PC with a good processor and video card. That only lasted about six months, though, and then a new generation of video cards and processors came out and put the PC on top again.
Now, both the PS2 and the XBox versions of games look lame compared to the PC versions. In three years or so, you can practically guarantee that it will be exactly the same with the PS3 and the 360.
There was a point not long ago when retailers were seriously talking about taking PC games off store shelves because they weren't making enough money for the space they took up. Selling console games is a much more lucrative business. The IEMA came up with the smaller box size that publishers adopted, and basically saved PC games' retail existence.
The situation hasn't changed terribly--console games still outsell PC software easily. I don't think we will see the disappearance of a PC market anytime soon, but don't be surprised if PC games leave major retail shelves. PC games were already too close to getting the "gong".
If PC games get dropped from the Walmarts and Electronic Boutiques of the world, they are still going to be sold online and at PC-specific stores, but that's the beginning of a vicious cycle:
1. Less revenue for PC games, which leads to...
2. Smaller budgets for PC games (particularly for developing games that are published solely for PCs and not ports from console) Which leads to...
3. Less-compelling PC games, and most of them you could just get on a console anyhow. Which leads to...
1. Less revenue for PC games and etcetera...
Another factor is that a year down the line, the hardware is much cheaper. A PS2 costs practically nothing to produce these days.
This is a great problem for the Xbox, as intel chips don't tend to drop in price a great deal, they just get faster and faster for the same price.
See Morrowind.
Yeah, it was released on console too, but on PC, the players have the ability to fix things they don't like, and rewrite the entire game from scratch if they want to. And some have.
PC hardware and software evolve much faster than console, because of the diverse field of competition.
By the end of 2006, a game played on a $400 PC will provide a sizable improvement to the experience on a console, and will not be limited to titles from a single group or country.
No, I believe that the consoles will eventually lose the DRM, open the hardware archetectures, and evolve into PC's, not the other way around.
The meaning of your Life is up to you. Mean well. -- Me, 9/11/2001
I believe the hardware data indicates that PS3 and XBox 360 games can outperform PC games in every way, turning the tables on the high-end PC video card market. When and if that becomes the case, I will happily purchase a dedicated gaming console, and then downgrade my HTPC video card to something fanless. Of course, I'm assuming the new consoles will be fanless as well. I need HTPC functionality and gaming, but I hate the sound of whirring fans in my living room.
I'm aware of the XBox HTPC project, but it just didn't cut it for my needs (DVD duplication, auto-commercial advance, etc.) Perhaps someone will figure out a way to bring all the HTPC goodness to the PS3 or XBox 360, then I will have only one silent machine to do everything. :)
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
News stories like this are laughable and completely implausible. The two can co-exist. Just because a bunch of college students that've never seen a computer or a console in their lives are picking up an xbox, a ps2, or a gamecube to play the latest games in the lull between classess doesn't mean that PC gaming is dying.
Subsequently, just because top-quality graphics on a PC can blow anything in the console arena out of the water, and games have so much more interactivity and ability than consoles doesn't mean that console gaming is dying.
Personally, I think consoles are going to eventually get to a point where they're not going to be consoles anymore. In order to out-do each other with features, Microsoft and Sony are pushing the console industry more towards being mini-computers without the functionality that a full desktop system has. But that's just my opinion.
1) BSD
2) Apple
3) Microsoft
4) PC Gaming?
...it already has. I upgraded to a gf4 ti4600 a while back. That was my last upgrade for the PC. I will miss some RTS games... FPS games I don't play so no big deal there. I much rather play games sitting on the couch with my feet up. I use my PC for linux development exclusively - windows xp has been retired. Between my PSP and PS2, i have all the gaming I can handle. The next generation consoles will be just as good if not better than the PC (for a while)... and much cheaper too.
Gotta love slashdot:
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 6 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
(I have not posted today at all, and besides, I think 6 > 2? Slashdot probably runs perl, oh yes, I see that it does...)
Role Playing Games. I've said it before and I'll say it again, and again, and again - the PC market is still the most suitable market for role playing games. Even with newer consoles getting hard drives, the PC is still the best tool for the job. Multiple input (keyboard + mouse), massive hard drives, low to no "load time" between scenes/epics/quests/etc, and a host of other reasons. The PC is still the best tool for those games with hundreds of hours of gameplay (story driven, RPG style) or those RPGs which have the "open-ended" stories like Morrowind. Yes, I know FF is on the console but, in general, everyone here understands what I'm talking about.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Let's see.
$400 for a PS3
$15000 for a HDTV with enough umph.
$50-60 per game.
Or.
$400 for a video card
$600 bucks for a computer and decent monitor
$40-50 per game.
Well... there goes my budget planning. TVs still suck, and even those that claim they are HDTV ready really aren't. They too require kick butt video cards, and they only deliver a fraction of the cards capabilities. There is NO way a console can have better graphics than a computer going through the average American TV. Anti-Aliasing, this that and the other... doesn't matter becuase the image is a postage stamp blown up to the size of two pillows (it's always going to look like shit)
Wasn't it just a few years ago that 'experts' predicted that console games, not PC games, would disappear?
I don't play console games simply because of the controllers. If the PS2 or X-Box had the option of using a keyboard and mouse, and games allowed key bindings, I'd be all over consoles.
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
Except that if you want to play PC games you have to upgrade your video card every 18 months, slap in more memory, yada, yada, yada.
Meanwhile, I moved my kids to console gaming years ago, after I got tired of spending my evenings trying to debug why my son's copy of Quake Raider IV-b wouldn't boot. Upshot - I haven't had to upgrade PC hardware in 5 or 6 years.
Clear, Dark Skies
NO
/.
Just like in the article that was covered one or two weeks ago here on
Is it that hard to understand. PC's have many advantages over consoles - and sometimes the advantage is even price (considering some of these consoles will cost around $500, and the games about 50$).
All a console really is a simple to use, rarely crashing, fully DRM'd, limited use computer.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
That's the trend. It's slow, but it has been happening for a while.
There will always be PC games, but as time goes on, there will be fewer & fewer people buying the latest & greatest PC hardware just to play games. Although there will always be a few people who do that.
The biggest problem is that the consoles makers need to realize that they need a greater variety of games. It is having a gazillion games that each sell a realitively low number of units--along with the fewer games that sell in a large number of units--that will really shift things more away from PCs to consoles.
There are other things that have to happen too: More common code that all games leverage for common tasks. (Saving a game should work the same on all games.) Enabling developers to easily implement on-the-fly saving. Figuring out the right alternate controllers for games for which the standard controller doesn't work well. et alia ad nauseum. Continuing to increase the variety of games & gameplay available, though, is the key.
While we don't have enough specifics on the next-gen consoles to make an informed statement, I'd wager that cheating/hacks will be much more difficult to implement on the console as opposed to the aimbots/wall hacks/etc plaguing Counterstrike and its amalgams in the PC space. (Starcraft Map hack anyone?)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
but no one cared.
Clear, Dark Skies
This type of article seems like a monthly thing on Slashdot, no? Console buyers seem to like simplicity, and owning a console eliminates all the maintenance and upgrade headaches that come with a PC. However, the advantage of the PC is that it can be made to do complex things, and has a much wider range of input devices to use.
:p
Frankly, I wouldn't want to play something like Battlefield: 2 on a console, because any attempt to match the input of a 104-key keyboard, 5-button wheel mouse, 8-button 2-axis stick, a throttle and a pair of pedals is likely going to be tedious.
Also: Like I mentioned in my last reply to an article like this, I traded up from TV-resolution twenty years ago, and I like game modding. So there.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
The same type of articles surfaced during the debuts of Genesis and SNES, as well as Saturn and Playstation.
Then there was Playstation 2 and Xbox. Oh no! PS2 has shiny helmet graphics and Xbox can go online! PC gaming is doomed!
As we can all see now, these early predictions mean nothing. These writers just say it every time so that, in the extremely unlikely event that their predictions are true, they can flaunt it.
The fact of the matter is a lot of the demos shown at E3 were on dev-kit hardware, lots of promises are made that aren't kept, and while the consoles' debut titles will like trump PC games, at least in the bells and whistles (read: shallow graphics) department, PC gaming isn't going anywhere. A game like World of Warcraft, Gamespot's Game of the Year, will not likely surface in anyone's living rooms any time soon. That's not to say that I'm not interested in the hardware - some very special advancements have been made, especially with multi-core processing, that should drive costs down across the board, in gaming consoles and PCs, and should produce some really cool results.
Those $400 video cards subsidize the low cost, low power graphic chipsets that wind up in the consoles.
Once the market for the high end video cards goes away, graphic chipset manufacturers (read ATI and NVIDIA) are going to have to charge more for the chips that end up in consoles.
Consoles would become a victim of their own success.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Yeah, right another "X is doomed" story. Take a number.
Computers have a mouse and a keyboard. Consoles have crappy little controllers. Console manufacturers strongly discourage support for keyboards and mice because it allows people to hack the console. But the fact is, controllers are really only good for a small subset of games. They suck for shooters, and they are absolutely useless for RTSs, simulation, and building games. I like games with a lot of depth and complexity. Consoles just can't do these because of the controller. And forget about MMOGs, probably the only game business model that makes money these days. For these, even keyboards don't have enough buttons.
I'm not likely to stop playing on my computer for the forseeable future because of this. Give me a console that acts like a computer, and I will consider it. But as long as consoles behave like toys and only play toy games, I'm not interested.
Another edge that the console used to have over PCs was that consoles were standardized, but PCs weren't. In fact, abstraction layers and base functionality has settled to the point that unless you are obsessing over cutting edge graphics rather than gameplay, it is actually easier to create a PC game now than a console. In fact, cutting edge graphics on a console may be harder than on a PC, primarily because console manufacturers demand so much work to make their machines look good. They also take a slice of your profits and have veto rights over the game. The economics no longer favour consoles over PCs. So if anything, the moribund PC game world may soon rebound.
By the way, you should know that the next gen consoles will actually be worse for gameplay and AI then the current gen. The games will get stupider and simpler, despite all the high end graphics, because the cell technology is terrible at random memory access (graphics are mainly big chunks of sequential memory.) So if you like very pretty Mario games, great. If you don't, you better start shopping for a game PC.
damn, you really had him...
;P
right up to the point where you said lcd
sum.zero
The original PlayStation supported a mouse, in fact.
The only game I know of that used it was X-Com.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Sophisticated games won't be found on consoles. Consider this game. The vendor is oblivious to consoles because their customers aren't interested in accepting the necessary compromises. It requires more capacity, performance and flexibility (running multiple clients and third party software (teamspeak, web browsers) distributing software updates, etc.) than a console will provide. The game will always utilize whatever capacity a high-end PC can provide (a moving target,) which will always place it beyond the means of consoles.
Will consoles continue to displace high-end PCs for less sophisticated games? Yep. Will this eliminate non-console gaming? Nope. Developers, naturally, will gravitate toward platforms that offer the largest audience. This is driving unification between the platforms. This is why contemporary consoles all use essentially the same graphics hardware as found in PCs.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
We hear this every time the new batch of consoles comes out. It never happesn, and never will. Most of the other myths were shot down in other posts. Like offering depth of gameplay, control, upgradeability for games AND hardware, multiple uses for PC's not just players, etc. But I didn't see this one: $400 for a console vs Heaps of cash for PC. Take a trip over to Dell, or Gateway, or what not. I'll wait. Did you see what I see? I'm seeing PC's, complete PC's, at $448 with a Monitor. I don't remember Sony giving away TV's with their PS2s. Why do they think PC's cost so much money? Because most enthusiasts buy top end, build your own, uber machines. Why? Because it's fun. I don't need a $100,000 sports car to drive, I won't use it's top end often. But when I do.... oh man.... anyway... Just my 2 cents.
Consoles are only good for certain types of games. FPS games flat out simply SUCK on console. SUCK SUCK SUCK. Specially if you go multiplayer. movements are too slow, and can't be adjusted fast enough.
Secondly, MS has too many problems with their "flagship" OS to consider them for a gaming console. So Playstation is my console of choice. People who have plopped down all that money for Xbox just so they could play Halo 2 years early because MS wanted to hold the ONLY appealing title they had for Xbox at the time...well, I hope it was money well spent. The PC version got seriously ganked because of the online multiplayer ability in the console version. ie mouse can't be turned up fast enough because MS didn't want to give PC gamers an unfair movement advantage over console players. There are many other things that MS screwed the PC gamer on with that game and as a long time Bungie fan....well, I'm not anymore.
Until the day when you can customize a console game like you can with a PC game, I'll NEVER drop my PC as the primary gaming rig. And even then, it would be reluctant. PC gaming will NEVER go away for so many reasons. Too many users, users get more control over game play, and most gamers are infront of their PC already just to name a few.
I get tired of "the media" spinning things because they've been paid to, or someone wrote a press release that just sounded so cool that maybe there's some truth to it so they run with it.
Software is going to become a server side thing - which will make open source really interesting then.
No, it'll make open source impossible without modding the machine, which is a crime in many countries. The unmodded Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP (US version) can already run only digitally signed binaries.
That's why consoles will never destroy the PC gaming arena. My computer may cost more, but I can use it for whatever I want AFTER I'm through playing. I can't check my email with a console, nor can I surf the latest chatter slashdot.
If a console is an electric drill, then a PC is the entire tool chest. I'll take the tool chest, thank you.
On the other hand, PC only games offer an entirely different type of gameplay that is not going to go away. MMORG's, first person shooters and basically any type of online game is always going to be better on a PC than on a console. Part of the reason why I like games such as World of Warcraft is because you can interact with other people. And I don't just mean you can go up against them and fight with them, I mean you can talk with them, joke around with them, become friends with them (if you already aren't) or get annoyed with them (although getting rid of all the annoying 5 year olds screaming "you hacker" in CS would be nice).
Granted, the console games could add a keyboard and allow this, but now you're merging PC games into a console game. This hasn't really been done before. Currently the only merge is from console games to PC games and I can't see the reverse actually happening.
There's a lot more to consider than just price, or performance. Internet connectiosn for example must be taken into account Some of the most popular games are online games (Warcraft, Counter Strike, etc). People with dialup or a slower broadband connection are able to turn down the performance settings on their PC games so that they will be able to play online games without lagging. I don't see console games allowing their users to turn down performance settings.
All in all, PC games aren't going anywhere.
I always think that such statements are flawed because you cannot drive innovation on a controlled environment as much as on an open environment. The console, a closed platform, does not let developers think outside of the box. On the other hand, a pc has an open architecture allowing external innovation to merge into itself. This gives a richer, freer development environment to the game developer. That's why all major innovation in computer gaming has appeared on the pc first. This will not change until the pc becomes the console. The media center is a good attempt at this.
This argument that because consoles are better now no one will buy PC games anymore is ridiculous. As long as people have PCs they will want to play games on them. There are a lot of people that want to play games, but they are limited to either a PC or a console but not both. People that need to use a computer for work or school will not be buying consoles. That doesn't mean they won't play games just because consoles are better for that.
All that hardware and software technology that goes into new consoles ether is pc tech or largly based on pc tech. We all know the xbox is modified pc using mostly off the shelf hardware. Same goes for the graphics API's if i'm not mistaked; DirectX, OpenGL. I also don't think ATI and nVidia could offer products for consoles at such a low price if they we're making money on their higher margin pc offerings.
If you're broke and can't spend the money, then don't. But don't call me a fool because I want everything I run to be very nice and fluid.
Especially because my LCD native is 1920x1200, I want a high end card. I won't pay $1000 on one, but I did pay close to $400 for my BFG 6800GT card when they first came out.
Now, I can skip at least one new major GPU release from both ATI and nVidia, and still have plenty of power to play the games, if I wanted to. Sure, I could buy a $200 card now, and then another $200 in another year.. Might as well pay $400 now and have cutting edge for awhile, right?
Every time a new game console hits the market, there's another story about how it will kill PC gaming. It's not going to happen. It never has, and it never will.
When the first Xbox and the PS2 hit the shelves, they were touted as "PC Game killers" just the same. The hardware was strong and easily could compete with what PC's had going at the time. Then, six months passed, and PC games easily out-gunned consoles in terms of sound, graphics, and speed.
Will anything be different this time around? I don't think so. The XBox 360 has three PowerPC chips in it, or a multi-core CPU, or whatever. It's got a (currently) top of the line ATI chip in it for video. This machine will be very cool, but multi-core CPU's and SLI technologies are already making strong headway on PC's now.
Do you really think the Xbox 360 will be more powerful then a high end PC a year later? I don't.
Don't get me wrong, I like game consoles. I've owned the Xbox for a long time, and I still use it (although this could be because it's modded and a modded xbox is the shit) and there's some games that are only fun if you play them on a gamepad in front of the TV with some friends.
PC Gaming will be around for as long as people keep buying PC's for gaming. Visit any of the big PC gaming forums and you'll find the most active (albiet annoying) forums on the Internet.
No, the PC games will keep coming.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
It's not a apples to apples comparison to say that there are more PCs than consoles as most of those PCs are not used for gaming. The console games sales has surpassed pc games sales a long time ago.
Alright, I'll admit ahead of time that I haven't RTA or any of the other replies to this thread, and excuse the language ahead of time, but...
No one fucking knows if and when this will ever happen.
Christ, I wish this topic could be made illegal. It just ends up into flamewars between the console and PC fanboys, leaving the rest of the real gamers to have to put up with the crap being flung around.
This topic is repeated every single time any news about a new console comes up. Sure, one of these times someone may guess right. But hey, if I guessed that the world will end every year for the next gazillion (TM) years I might end up right then too.
There will always be a market for both. I have an Xbox, PS2, 2 PC's and 2 Macs.
My kids (2 boys 10 and 13) play console games like pop songs. I.E. They get a new game, play it to death, then about the only time it ever comes out again is when someone visits, or when you have a sick day or really bad weather and no cable.
PC Games on the other hand get played long term.
Look at the other advantages. Simple game mods, support apps like Team Speak, the ability to run other programs like spreadsheets and the like.
Personally, I hate the controllers for the console games myself, but even if I liked them I could get equivalent controllers for my PC, but I have seen very few keyboard/mice/nostromo combos for consoles.
Consoles will improve. The Hard drive in the Xbox was a great addition, as is ethernet capabilities, but in the end you have a pretty static box. To make them as reliable as they are you strip things down or write an OS from scratch. These make them Gaming Appliances, and while thats all well and good, there is still a great need for more generic computing platforms.
So long as those ever so useful generic computing platforms are out there and can also run Games, the game makers will continue to develop for them.
Long term, I'd expect there to be more and more releases of games on all the major platforms all at once. We are already seeing releases for PC, PS2, and Xbox all at once.
Eschew Obfuscation
How do you go about modding a console game, exactly? There's a good chance that Sony and Nintendo won't include hard drives in the next go-round, and if they do, there's no guarantee that they can't pull a Microsoft and ban systems from online play if the system has been physically changed or if the files on its hard drive have been modified.
Online play is an issue too. Sega doesn't run Dreamcast servers anymore, and the only ones that I'm aware of are independent and have required Game Sharks to manually change the IP the game is looking for. That may have changed, but there's no guarantee that that would work on the newer consoles.
Starcraft. Counter-Strike. Everquest. There are a lot of older games that are still played online, and frequently at that.
With the console lifecycle the way it is - four or five years, and then off into the sunset forever - I'm not sure if they could replace the PCs. Or if we'd want them to.
Goo goo g'joob.
I don't need a console in my normal daily life.
I do need a PC (pretty important for my work, for one thing).
Upgrading my PC will make my overall experience better; I'll be able to do the "render a movie while burning a cd while compiling the kernel" crap, and still surf. And with that powerhouse, I'll be able to play any sort of game.
A $400 video card, btw, has better graphics than a $400 ps3. A $400 video card is also mostly useless, as games don't use its real power yet, and by the time they do it will be a $200 (or lower) card.
How many times are we going to be told that consoles are going to kill PC gaming? PS1, PS2, xbox...now xbox 360 and ps3....not gonna happen, folks. Many of us don't want to dedicate the floorspace to two seperate gaming environments.
Is there some reason that people always have to treat this as an either/or issue? In case you hadn't heard, you can actually keep your PC even if you buy a console! I've done it :-)
However, I have gotten sick of spending ridiculous amounts of money to keep my PC spec's up to be able to play the latest and greatest PC games without problems. And even then, I have to deal with install issues, driver issues, etc. With my consoles, I can stick the game in and play. And I have a great time too. Now I don't feel the need to keep "up" on my PC because I do most of my gaming on my consoles.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
They're intentionally neglecting a significant portion of the cost of a console.
If you want your XBox360 to be as rad as rad can be, you're going to need to buy a $2000-$5000 HDTV.
I don't own a television. I realize I'm in the minority, but that is a significant barrier to entry for me in the console arena. I'm not going to buy some shitty 20" television and let it take up space in my apartment just so I can enjoy a low res version of an XBox360 game.
Instead, I'll take that $2000-$5000, get a computer that can display HDTV, and get an HDTV-res display. And then I'll buy an XBox360.
But you know what that didn't do? It didn't stop me from getting a fucking awesome PC. Because televisions are fucking expensive. Leave in the whole story, and consoles don't kill PCs.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
do you expect to build their own machines?
Clear, Dark Skies
Four things consoles don't give me: 1. Mods. 2. Mice and Keyboards. Do you know how much it sucks not having my sniper rifle and flak cannon bound to keys? Even when consoles DO have mice and keyboards, they're not usefully situated. I stick my consoles by the TV, not by a table I can put a keyboard and mouse on. 3. Mp3s. When I'm playing Civilization, the in-game music gets tired after a while, and I want there to be my music. I have my mp3s on my computer, not on my console, and it will always be a hassle to move them. 4. Alt-Tabbing away from my game. I can never, EVER, look like I was doing something that wasn't a game (or very closely game-related) when I am playing a console. Finally: 5. Space. I'll always need a computer, so consoles will always take up more space. So there's reasons people will want to buy computer games instead of console games. Which means there's probably a market. So no.
Erik
YOU ARE SAYING IMPUDENCE TO ME! THAT IS IMPUDENCE!
6 years ago, PC gamers were shaking in fear. "If $300 will buy you an 800mhz Pentium 3 with a geforce 3+ equivalent GPU, who will ever play PC games again?!?" Then the consoles were actually released, and geforce 3s had already dropped down to the $200 range. The games out on the consoles at launch were sparse, and didn't take full advantage of the hardware. Developers wouldn't understand how to efficiently code for these next-gen consoles until about 2002. The PC game market dried up badly while everyone shifted to working on console games for these two years.
Fast forward to 2003-4. PCs have Radeon 9800s and Geforce 5600s. They commonly have 128MB vid ram and 512 MB ram. They laugh at the 6MB hard drive of the XBox. HL2, Doom3, Call of Duty, Far Cry, Dungeon Siege, KotOR, etc. come out and put console games to shame.
2005 rolls around and PC gamers are in fear again. "I'll have to buy a dual core CPU and two radeon X850s to be on par with a $300 console?!?"
Maybe not in time for Xbox360, but certainly by the time PS3 comes out I plan to buy a dual core PC anyway. I'll probably only get a 'lower end' X800 to go with it, and it'll probably only cost about $150-200. That should only put me just behind the current consoles. By 2008-9, I expect my computer to again be trouncing the hell out of the current consoles with my 4GB ram, 1TB hard drive('please insert DVD 3 to continue installing...'), quad 3.5 GHZ Athlon, and 8 core radeon 11 series. Perhaps most games will finally take advantage of my dual monitors that I'll have had for nearly a decade (dual or triple widescreen FPS anyone?).
Until new consoles come out every 3 years instead of 5-6, PCs will continue to be a staple of video gaming. PS2 and Xbox have been horribly obsolete for the past year at least. The only other option until the end of 2005 (at least) is my PC.
A few side notes:
Nobody ever factors in the extra money paid for addons like extra controllers (that you have to rebuy because they make the plugs incompatible).
I've still never seen an Xbox or PS2 actually do something that looks even close to what they did in their pre-release tech demos.
Nintendo would be geniuses if they secretly developed a superior console and released it in 2008.
I have not yet seen any open source games available for consoles. A console is a black box of hardware that will be obsolete in half a year with no upgrade path.
Unless consoles start shipping by default with high-quality mice and keyboards for FPS games, strategy games, and text chat during a game, I don't see them ever killing off PC gaming.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Anyone get the sinking feeling that Microsoft could eventually gimp Window's gaming capabilities to drive the console market? Microsoft hates competition... and I doubt they'll continue to compete with themselves...
cheaper or not you pay for the hardware one way or the other. and no matter how casual most people will need at least email, web and wordprocessor anyway ...
why then would i want get locked into a platform where a single vendor controlls every little aspect.
Console gaming is a mass market. It will maybe get the gain develloppers attention but mostly the crapy big ones. EA will continue making titles like "Gran thef auto 59324 with vengence" and "NHL 2067" playing it safe, while the little creative studios may make a comeback for PC and finaly bring some innovation to games. I'm tired of all those clones of the same game because it safer to release soemthing that sells. Great games have nothing to do with graphics but with gameplay. There will be a new PC gaming era when the games will be written by real gamers again, and not selected by some corporate bozo who never played pacman in his life.
One of the factors that is going to hurt PC gaming is copy protection. How many games silently install device drivers of unknown function/quality? How many games must run as Administrator? Some games now check for a laundry list of "hacker tools" before they will run. With security becoming increasingly important, some people are going to be unwilling to risk the integrity of their system just to install and run a game.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I can sneak a quick PC game at work here and there, that can't be said about console games, I don't have a TV, and an XBOX would look a bit out of place in my office.
I haven't gotten my super-duper PC game out yet! PC gaming can't die!
Really, developing for consoles seems to be a rather specialized endeavor best suited to established game companies. What of the little guy? Carmack wouldn't have written Doom for a console.
On the other hand, people will develop for what they have. I'd happily develop for a Cell processor if I had a cheap (Free/free preferrably) development environment for it.
Start Running Better Polls
I hate controllers. Period. Give me a keyboard and a mouse any day of the week. Make that PS3 or XBOX360 support keyboard/mouse configuration in games and I'm all about moving to a console.
...that my college (which shall remain nameless) requires the Internet for registration, homework and other things. Sans a PC, I'd just be another high school grad.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Seeing how PC games are one of the major reasons I still use MS Windows, if they eliminate the PC as a platform for gaming, I'll have almost no need for day-to-day use of MS Windows.
Therefore, I predict MS will always prop-up the PC platform for gaming. They'll keep the Ensemble style games around for that purpose alone. Those games don't translate well to console controllers anyway.
Until the consoles provide a better interface than the mouse for first-person shooters, it just ain't gonna happen.
======
Belief is beyond reason. I believe because it is absurd.
This story really should have been a poll though.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
It would be bad for Bill Gate$' money if he let PC gaming die. From what it looks like, gamers out there put up to Windows for as long as they could because most games are made to run -on- Windows. Kill the PC games industry, gamers would defintely switch to Linux and consoles in no time.
Console games have always sold FAR more units than PC games. There's never been a point in recent history when PC games have sold better. In fact, the trend over the last two years has been decreasing sales for PC games and increasing sales for console games.
Consoles are more affordable than gaming PCs, so there's a bigger target market and a lot more profit for companies to develop for them.
That's not to say the PC market isn't worth doing -- it is -- but it's relatively small compared to the console market.
Don't be a tard. Nobody has to spend $4000 to get a really high end PC.
Even $2000 can get you a wicked rig. And you can get a 23" wide screen LCD for $750, or a 20" 4:3 for less then $500 (for good screens.)
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
(No, this is not a troll.)
If all (or even most) gaming moves to consoles, then that's one less thing that Windows has that Linux doesn't. This makes Linux even more attractive as a desktop operating system. From my point of view, it's best to use a computer for computing tasks and a game system for gaming anyway. I truly hope gaming moves almost exclusively to dedicated gaming consoles.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
When I buy a PC for 1500, and include the latest graphics card and high end processor, I always do it for reasons in my head which say "Just think of how much work you'll be able to get done with this". Visual Studio will compile 4 times faster! I'll be a productivity... machine! Then I run out and buy 3 pc games that I think will use the system capabilities the most.
I could never justify buying a console for more than 150. Theres not even a remote possibility that I'll ever use it to get any work done!
Is there a way to 'sticky' comments to subjects?
/. needs a "-1 redundant" category.
I.e. can we please perma-comment every new release of a console system with a news article "New Console (X): The Death of PC Gaming?"?
-Styopa
... when they have proper input devices such as a mouse, and a high resolution screen.
Oh wait, thats the only differences left between a PC and a console.
Microsoft can't enter the PC H/W buisness w/ the whole Monopoly thing going for/against them. Hmm, but they have a game console. Put a DVI connector for High Def TV's. Hey, I can now attach a LCD monitor to it. Get a USB mouse and keyboard, I now have a WinPPC computer.
Put a little more S/W, make the CPU a little more general purpose, and Microsoft controls the the whole thing. Doesn't have an x86 in there, so it's not a PC, it's a "game console". A lot cheaper than a PC too since it's subsidized by "game" sales.. Maybe all software written for the "game console" would have to pay Microsoft for each unit sold?
Crazy, maybe? It is Microsoft though....
MRJ
So considering I'd need a PC to do work anyway the only thing the console is going to save me is buying a nice video card, which more realistically comes in around $200-$400. And of course I can still do a lot of other things at my PC (and sometimes work).
I don't see any nails in the coffin.
Quack, quack.
Pop in a disc and begin playing a game on an XBox (or soon a PS3) on a 56" 1280x720 DLP with a Dolby 5.1 surround system and awesome speakers.
OR
Deal with installing windows, updating drivers, dealing with buggy PC games, figuring out hardware incompatibilities, etc., to play the game on a 20" 1600x1200 TFT with Dolby 5.1 on a much weaker sound system.
If you go the console route, you can keep a moderate PC for computer activity, and spend all the money you save on an HT system (which goes obsolete much slower) for watching movies and playing games.
The current generation of consoles added online play; the next generation will have wireless networking built in. The next generation will also have enough processing power, peripheral capability, and the HD monitor support needed to play games at near Toy Story quality, with advanced AI and better controller options.
People who own PCs aren't going to stop playign games just because the big publishers run to the consoles.
Many small book publishers who succeed by finding specific niches and (in some cases) alternative distribution channels. It seems to me that games provide a similar opportunity -- which is why we're working on one here at Coyote Gulch. Nice little RPG/Strategy title, somewhat original premise and game mechanics, designed with casual gamers in mind, using OpenGL and Cairo. With any luck, it may find a following.
All about me
I hope that this is the case. Then maybe people will stop viewing computers as toys and there will be more industry research into decent things rather than pretty graphics.
Also the average price of a computer might start going down even more if the OEMs are no longer expected to be able to play the latest games.
Sure there will always be games, sol.exe isn't going away any time soon and neither is HL2, people will be playing games forever, however the epic monsters like HL2 will eventualy run on the most basic computer.
I generaly don't like games
When consoles are good enough to run nethack, THEN PC gaming will be dead. They put all the technology into 3D acceleration, but what they need is text mode acceleration and more buttons on their ontrollers. Never gonna happen.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
For PC gaming I use a mouse and keyboard for FPSes and RTSes, I use a joystic (not a joypad, but a true joystick) for flight-sim type games, and I have a gamepad lying around somewhere too. But there are times when a console's gamepad is better than what I have for the PC. For example, trying to fly planes/helicopters in BF 1942 or BF Vietnam is really tough because they're just not well suited to keyboard/mouse control.
Console controllers don't have the precision you want for FPSes or the ease of selecting that you want for RTSes, but there's nothing saying the next-gen consoles won't have good controls. The PS3 is supposed to have bluetooth controllers. There are already bluetooth mice and keyboards. All that's really needed is that the people writing the games support more than just the gamepad.
If they can get the controllers right, there really isn't much that makes a PC better than a console, and if they're smart they could fix the console to add those mixing things.
Controllers are the hard part. It's not just that a PC has a keyboard and mouse, it's also that a PC also typically sits on a desk that provides a place to put them. A coffee-table isn't nearly as ergonomic as a PC for keyboard and mouse use. So the challenge for controllers isn't just getting something that gives you the control of a keyboard and mouse, but also designing something that can be used while sitting on a couch.
PCs also used to have the advantage of having network access, making online gaming possible, and downloading new content possible. That's made it's way to consoles, with the unfortunate "patch it later" mentality beginning to creep in too. The biggest drawback I see here is that the consoles the networks for consoles seem to often be really closed-down rather than something ad-hoc like you can get with Diablo etc.
The one really difficult missing bit is "modding" console games. While some games let you customize them to some extent, it's hard to imagine someone doing a "Halo 2 Total Conversion" for a console. Maybe they can fix that though, by offering free PC downloads of tools and stuff, you'd have to edit and mod on the PC then transfer to the console, but maybe it could work.
Overall though, I think console gaming taking over is a really good thing. Knowing that designers optimized the game for *exactly your hardware*, and that nobody else has an advantage or disadvantage based on their hardware is great. It makes any multiplayer game much more fair, and makes it so that you never have to buy a game and wonder how well it will play on your PC.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
ROAFL
Consoles have to be one of the stupidest ideas ever.
On one side you have a single purpose device that costs $400, only allows you to play games designed for a specific platform, and is (except by a small minority of tinkerers) completely unupgradeable.
However, on my PC, I can configure almost every component of the hardware, software, and the OS. I can emulate some consoles, and can even run emulations of old arcade machines. In addition, PC games are generally cheaper, and I can, of course, use the PC for ten-million other tasks. I also have better support for peripherals (gaming related and general). There are also a wide variety of free games I can play on my PC, including open-source, freeware, and free trials.
In addition, graphics on most entry-level computers is better than some consoles, and I play them on a high-resolution monitor and not a crappy resolution TV screen.
PC gaming will be around as long as there are PCs, while consoles have an ever shrinking benefit, especially when you factor in the widespread penetration of PCs in game-playing households.
"Will Next-Gen Consoles Kill Off PC Gaming?"
No!
Well that was easy, wasn't it?
My lame blog.
at the moment, if pro gaming is on the PC for the most part, then people can have an advantage on eachother just by having a better system or knowing about all the graphic/networking tweaks whereas on a console, there is a level playing field for everyone.
read slashdot?
I disagree with the proposition that next-generation consoles will "kill" PC gaming. I think the playing field between the two platforms is leveling out now that Microsoft has really introduced console gamers to online play (and now that online console gaming will be standard in the next generation), but to say that consoles will swallow the PC gaming market, simply because the consoles will offer better graphics than PC games, is naive, and it lacks an understanding of the nuances and subtle differences between the PC and console gaming markets. I don't think games like The Sims, or RTSs, or other management-based games have done very well on consoles. That's just one example.
I believe the PC platform is too flexible to say that no one will want to develop for it because there will be more powerful hardware out there. Microsoft is even putting work into Longhorn that lets it mimic the playing style of a console (no game "installations," for example -- they want to eliminate the need for PC games to be installed like regular applications).
You are only as much as what you do with what you know.
Seriously?
If this kills off PCs for gaming and lets me buy a commodity PC that sells for a reasonable $200 cost, $300 with flatscreen monitor - or a $300 laptop - then good riddance is what I say!
I've got a hacker's Apple II+ (172K RAM, dual floppy), a hacker's Mac SE (external 40GB external SCSI2 HD, dual floppy) and a bunch of other disused computers and I'm sick and tired of spending $2000 when the rest of the world spends less than $300.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
PC gaming is dead.
I used to be a die hard PC gamer. I loved the greater depth and the willingness to experiment that PC games had over console games. Sim City, Civilazation, Falcon 3.0, Starflight, The Sims... these were amazing games.
But that era of PC gaming is dead. The games now all require the newest hardware in order to play the game and have it look anything whatsoever like the screenshots on the box. In order to keep up with the cutting edge in PC gaming, I would have to spend $400 on a new graphics card every month.
It is not only the 3D shooters that are like this. I can't even play a strategy game like "Imperial Glory" on my one year old laptop.
And even if you do having the newest graphic hardware, the games are now released full of bugs and problems that need patching for the next 6th months, and I need to fiddle with my graphics card drivers and a whole bunch of other crap to get it all working properly.
To the PC game industry: I am sick of it. I am not going to spend 5 Gs a year in order to play your crappy games. Yes, I could spent twice as much to buy a gamer laptop so I can play a strategy game like "Imperial Glory" on my laptop... but really, I have a 3GHz processor, several gigs of ram, a 1000M network card with a 100M internet connection, and I don't have the technology to play a damn strategy game on my laptop? Telling me how silly I am because I don't spend enough money, or because the keyboard and mouse is such a wonderful control system isn't enough to get me to give you another cent.
To the PC gaming industry, hopefully there are enough uber-geeks who will pay $400 every 6 months for a new graphics card, and occasionally will actually buy a game instead of download it off a warez site, to keep your industry together, because the casual gamers are no longer having it.
I can buy a cutting edge console for $300, and know it will play all the coolest games for the next 5 years. And not only that, I can play the games on my sofa, with a big-ass screen and surround sound cranked up, which more than makes up for the marginaly better graphics on high end PCs. And I don't have to worry about installing new drivers for every game I want to play, I can actually play the games when they are released instead of having bugs patched for the next 6 months.
So long PC gaming. Your industry might be dying, but there is nothing left there to mourn.
If game consoles replace PC gaming, then developement of PC graphics cards may stop.
At least it seems that games are the driving force behind the development of better and better PC graphics cards.
And that's without any overclocking. (my tests indicate it's rock stable up to 100mhz over stock speed, errors begin to occur about 25mhz or so beyond that)
A $400 card may buy you a slightly longer life span, but it's hardly required for playing modern games.To answer your question directly, because there are people who will pay that much for one.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
For years I've heard "Users won't switch to Linux because it just doen't support gaming as well as Windows." If all the PC games die then there won't be any reason not to switch, and we can make it about usability, performance, stability and security instead of "Does it support UltraMegaWars III? 'cuz I can't LIVE without UltraMegaWars III!"
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
This is exactly the problem that the original article missed. It costs thousands of dollars to become a registered developer for a game console.. and guess what? You need to pay more to get the title published.
/. oughta know that..
Ever wonder why you don't see mom-and-pop console games? It's basically impossible for an independent developer to get into the market. It's a closed, locked, proprietary platform meant to generate revenue for the console maker and those elite enough to be able to play.
Innovation doesn't happen with focus groups, or $20 million dollar projects. Hell, everyone here on
Token Analogy: Hollywood. Big-budget blockbusters written by committees tend to suck. That's where gaming is headed right now with consoles. BIGGER EXPLOSIONS! BIGGER BUDGETS! BIGGER ACTORS! MORE PROFIT! Uh.. quality? Innovation? Originality?
Puh-leese give it up on this Consoles will beat out PC's... it is such a tired and off base argument. It is said each time new consoles come out. Why buy a $200 video card when you can buy a PS2? Why buy a $400 videocard when you can buy a PS3? Because a lot of us LIKE our PC's, they serve more than one purpose for that $400, I can model graphics, or design a house on my PC then switch over and kick ass on Guild Wars. On my PS2 I can turn it on, insert a game, wait for it to load, play it, rinse repeat. gee, wonder why I just don't switch to a PS2?
What will actually happen, is that this will be the last round of consoles and the line between PC and console will blur to the point that one device will handle both applications. I predict that this round of consoles will basically flop overall and that either consoles will standardize and become included in TV's/disc players (such as a cheaper Nintendo design) or PC and console will mesh and we will have one system for everything.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
And the answer is, as usual, ... NO! This story is as bad as those "Is this year the year of the linux desktop?" stories.
No mainstream == No mainstream Games.
The remaining group of gamers on the PC-platform
will demand more "cyberpunky" games.
Like in the Glory Days of PC-Gaming
between 1990 and 1997.
And much better: No more ugly console-ports
with horrific handling...
Way to miss the entire point of consoles. The fixed platform is what makes consoles as powerful as they are. Every developer knows that every copy of their product will run on the platform because every unit is the same. There is no need to program in fallback code to make the product run on video cards that don't support all of the whiz-bang grapics, or to deal with systems at the bottom edge of working.
Look at the GRand Theft Auto games. Look at what kind of PC you need to get those to run and then look at the PS2. In PC standards the PS2 is a laughable pile of crap. But it runs games that need significantly more power tio run on the PC. Why? Because the hardware is fixed and programmers can write to the metal.
If you want an upgradable console buy a PC.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I used to be a die hard PC gamer. I loved the greater depth and the willingness to experiment that PC games had over console games. Sim City, Civilazation, Falcon 3.0, Starflight, The Sims... these were amazing games.
But that era of PC gaming is dead. The games now all require the newest hardware in order to play the game and have it look anything whatsoever like the screenshots on the box. In order to keep up with the cutting edge in PC gaming, I would have to spend $400 on a new graphics card every month.
Have to agree with you there. The last PC game I bought was Black and White, the last Mac game was an expansion for Diablo II, and since then I just buy console games. I'm sick and tired of paying for stuff I really don't need.
It's not important to me how realistic the rain splatter is, if the game has no storyline. A higher res Sim is less interesting than a cool Sims: The Urbz game with cool stories and soundtracks.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What people need to realize is that the biggest allure of gaming consoles vs. pc's is that all you have to do is put in the disc (or cartridge, or whatever) and plug it in to the tv, flip the power switch, and the game is running. There's no installing, no dependencies, it always works, and very few game systems crash very rarely. That's why one company needs to get some initiative and build an open source minimum live-cd OS that all (or most) future computer games can be built for -- just restart your computer with the disk in and it'll boot up into the game instead of having the whole OS hassle with installing things and running it inside the window manager and what not. Consoles are becoming more and more like little computers -- they have hard drives and everything. The main differences are a) they plug into your tv and b) they don't have complicated operating systems that need to be dealt with in order to make games work. A) can be solved with either bigger, cheaper monitors or a simple cable for your computer to your tv. That's not the main problem. B) is more difficult -- in order to solve that, someone needs to build a livecd OS base that future games can be built to run on so that you can play games (and even install/save things on your hard drive) without dealing with your big, memory-using OS. --Nick Gottlieb
--Nick
The console market will probably make a small slump in the PC market for the first year after the new consoles are out, then things will probably level off as usual. As probably already stated, there are always people who find controllers "awkward" and prefer keyboard and mouse. MMORPG's will never be the same on Consoles. You can't defeat the ease of development on Windows/Linux vs trying to develop and publish on consoles. Lastly, other innovations that will be developed after the consoles are released will always drive the market to innovative and new aspects to games. E.g., physics hardware cards will probably hit PC's within a year, allowing games physics to surpass that of consoles. As a last note...I retain my opinion that whoever comes up with games that are actually fun to play will make the $$$. Eventually, the market will get sick of sequels, sports games, and weak FPS games. If no one comes up with some games that are just plain fun to play, despite how pretty it is, I see a slump for the entire market, PC and Console coming.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
There seems to be an implicit assumption in this article that PC gaming is all about first person shooters and other graphics intensive games. This is a questionable assumption, at best. While the core-gamer market that enjoys these games is a strong and vocal component of the market, it is a very small part of the total PC game playing market.
Games that are much less sexy and don't require uber-hardware upgrades, are far more common with 'regular' people. The web based and tiny downloadable puzzle games available on sites like MSN, Yahoo! and such are not going to be threatened by the Next Gen consoles. While they may also find a place there, no one is going to run out and buy a new console to play Bejeweled, anymore than they would run out to buy a PC to play Solitaire.
Most regular people (otherwise known as the Mass Market) don't consider themselves gamers, yet an ever growing number of them is playing games on their PCs, without really thinking about it. Next-gen consoles are hardly on their radar and wont kill anything for them.
Will the next-gen consoles kill the hard-core PC game market? No, clearly the people that are willing to buy a $400 graphics card to play Half-Life 2 on their customized Alienware-like powerhouse with lighted USB cables are still going to create a demand for a PC SKU of the latest FPS games -- as they will help spread buzz and drive demand of the cash cows on the consoles.
What we can expect to see die off the PC market are the middle-ground games that are somewhere between the big budget FPS titles and the tiny viral puzzle games. Games that fall somewhere in between are going to find an easier home on the consoles, where platform testing is reduced to its simpliest form and where the semi-casual gamers will invest in their best hardware and peripherals. Not everyone that does consider themselves a gamer can afford to upgrade to a new $5000 PC every year -- in fact, most people will have to choose between which $400 next-gen console to bring into their home. A box which will completely overshadow their hand-me-down Pentium III computer they currently play Unreal Tournament on. It is for this segment of the gaming population, the gamer equivalent of the upper-middle-class, that the next-gen consoles will have the biggest impact on PC gaming.
The console makers, are clearly hoping it is this segment that will grow -- while it is clear that it is the Mass Market segment that still has a largest growth potential and will remain the hardest to reach with custom gaming hardware.
As a gamer for 20 years, the main factor keeping me putting money into pc parts have been the fact that PC games have had better content,
more complex stories, better graphics, in short, a discernably better gaming experience than console games. A 5.1 speaker setup around my PC playing whatever always had a richer sound, and better graphic presentation than any console.
Now, however, the costs to maintain my expensive rig are getting larger each upgrade. Or alternatively, the time required to achieve
sufficient 'behind the curveness' for affordability is increasing to an unprecedented level.
Once the console gets the technology to make it roughly comparible to the PC, HD, networking, etc., it makes sense from an economic
perspective for developers to target as many systems as possible with their games. Boom. There goes the better content, more complex
stories, and the discernably better gaming experience. I think a number of recent games have illustrated this uniformity of experience.
In the past, I would never spend time in front a tv, playing a graphically inferior, gameplay limited game. Now, booting quickly into
a HDTV experience with surround sound in my living room for a few minutes of play with a very similar experience to what I'd get from my
pc? Hmmm. I think pc gaming has a lotta 'splainen to do.
What does it matter if a game is played on a PC or a console, as long as it is good? The biggest limitation of a console right now IMHO is the low-res---something that the next-gens are fixing. They can always add a mouse to better support FPS and RTS games.
There is always going to be *someone* around making PC games. But even now the number of high-profile blockbuster games is very low, as are the PC game sections of gaming stores.
Brian
Brian
I can play computer games at work. I can't easily lug in my console and TV and expect to play at my desk. Don't tell my bosses though.
You also will not see consoles beat out PC's until they add in ways to communicate with other people online that are simple and easy. We are close to that now, but not quite there yet.
Also also, you will not see consoles replace PC's in gaming for reasons of AI. Consoles are not designed to be able to handle code for AI. They are streamlined for handling FP operations and matrix operations, but can not run code which has code substitution, something that is required for AI to work (i.e. the code needs to make changes to its actions as it learns while playing against the player, and needs to substitute out its current "actions" (a function) for a different set of "actions" (a completely different function). In otherwords, it needs to be able to change its own code on the fly, which is NOT supported by current generation consoles or even the next generation consoles, but your PC could do this 15 years ago.
Each and every generation of consoles this same topic comes up by someone, and each time the articles are completely disproven. And why is that? Well here is the last reason that you didn't think about. This reason has to do with "BIG MONEY". Technology is always improving (at least at this moment in time). As such, as new things are coming out, those new things make it into PC's. Why, because PC's are upgradable. Here is where the "big money" gets into play. People are always upgrading and buying new hardware and they want something to show off that new hardware that they just spent money on. Games are the easy way to do that. There will always be a demand for games on the PC as long as there is demand for new hardware in the PC market, plain and simple. Developers will also migrate towards the latest technology as well. This is something that does not occur in the console market as all the systems are on about the same release schedule which is about every 4-5 years. That release schedule is REQUIRED. Console makers can not come out with new systems before that time is up, otherwise they can not recoup the costs for the console. Most sell their consoles at cost for producing the console (i.e. hardware and manufacturing costs), but not DESIGN costs. They plan on using the licensing fees they gain from games to recoup the design costs and then actually make a profit. It takes about 3-4 years for that to actually happen. This is the only reason why consoles themselves are cheap. If new consoles were comming out every 6-10 months, then the prices would be higher then PC hardware.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
But ultimately this isn't about graphics, it's about the type of games you play and where you play them. I am a big fan of strategy and FPS games. The best device for playing FPS games is a mouse with keyboard. Even if I can connect a keyboard to an X-box, I'd have nowhere to sit comfortable to play it.
If I'm going to play an RPG, sports game, fighting game, etc, then sure, a console makes perfect sense. If I'm going to play GTA, of course i'm going to play it on a console. But a number of games simply do not play well on consoles.
Of the people I know who are the core gaming crowd, they all have consoles and they all have PC's, and frankly, most of them play PC games more than console games.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
..."we actually adjusted our pricing structure on Unreal Engine 3 basically to say "you're paying for all three [PC, PS3, and XBOX2] whether you're using it or not, so you may as well do PC!" - Mark Rein, Epic Games
disable javascript before reading article or it will make you register
Seriously though....
I don't ever see development for kick-ass games that take advantage of superior technology ever leaving the PC platform for good.
You can't hack a console THAT much. You CAN re-configure a pc to be almost anything.
RTS games and shortcut keys:
..similar to looking around corners ..yea some console games do this but using a mouse and a keyboard beats a stupid controller anyday) being fully implemented into console games. Think about the shortcut keys on RTS games, key 1 controls your army of orcs, 2 controls your catapults, 3 controls your wizards, 4 controls your flying monsters etc, etc (warcraft 3). I've never played MMORPG's but I couldn't imagine doing it on a stupid video game controller. And what about those space fighting and regular down to earth flight simulators with all those controls in the cockpit (this is why games like ace combat 5 could be so much more, but they have to dumb it down because of the stupid controller).
..but will games support them? maybe and maybe not.
What would kill the PC gaming market is being able to fully use a regular $10-15 PS2 (not playstation 2, the connector specification) keyboard and a mouse type device (some people prefer mouse rolling balls) on a console like xbox/ps2/ps3/xbox 360, and have that keyboard fully recognized by games.
Only then can we see MMORPG's, RTS, and the advanced functions of FPS games (readily crouching, side dodging
Honestly have the console manufacturers never thought about this? They must be completely retarded. If I had any say in it I would have thrown in the keyboard/mouse along with the PS1.
I think the PS3 has usb ports so you could use a wireless keyboard mouse combo
My guess is that the PC gaming market will eventually become more and more of a niche market, until it's at the point where Mac gaming is today; we get some of the bigger-name games, usually a little late, often with a price premium.
Others have pointed out that some game types (notably strategy, MMORPGs and arguably FPS games) play better on a PC. This is true, although with the higher-res afforded by HD video reading text-based readouts is much easier. And it's not hard to add a mouse and keyboard (or other input device) to a console, so that edge may disappear.
No, PC gaming will never disappear entirely, but console games already outsell PC games by a factor of ten or so. As console games move online even more, and the market expands, PC games will become a niche market. Mac games might dwindle away entirely (sigh).
The main advantage (IMHO) of console games, aside from the cheap hardware, is that of consistency. I can buy any XBox game, and know that it will run on an XBox. For PC games, I'd have to make sure my system software, graphics card, hard drive and RAM etc were all enough. Console gaming removes that guesswork and gives a consistent experience.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
I would see PC gaming to have a nice market until everyone has a decent tv monitor. Cause even though some of the graphic engines in most modern games are very powerful, alas the rendering is still pasted into a generally low resolution screen. So despite the population fortunate to have a nice HDTV or equivlent high resolution television. I would imagine like all software development one must succumb to the lowest common denominator with certain aspects of the design?
Now i do know that the xbox does support the i1080 thing, however few games as i understand it actually take advantage of it.
The only way console kill computer gaming (and I mean take it to under 10% of the market) is that the console must replace the computer. As we've seen, this gen of consoles will not do that.
. that's basically all you really need. And swap out whatever Sony is using and partner with AOL to integrate AIM, and you're good to go. Blu-Ray Burning...
Gen 1 NES
Gen 2 Better Graphics, More Periphials
Gen 3 PSOne - Better Graphics, CD Player, Memory Sticks
Gen 4 PS2 - Better Graphics, DVD Player, Video Camera, Online Play (early HD Support)
Gen 5 PS3 - Better Graphics, Blu-Ray DVD, Wireless Integration, Better online environment (especially for the Xbox360), Fully Integrated HD, Dual Monitor Support.
What's on top for next-gen (6 years from now) tech:
HD TiVo-Capabilities
Wireless Video Capabilities (can use it to watch video anywhere in the house)
Basic Computer Functions (maybe not Photoshop, but things like a PDA... Excel/PPT/Word/Outlook/iTunes/iPhoto/iMovie/iDVD.
Because after this gen, most people won't be able to tell the difference in graphics power just by eyeballing it. So what will sell consoles is:
Games
Reputation
Other Features
and Games
Heck, while I'm going crazy, why doesn't Sony acquire Apple or whatever is left of BeOS and put that into its next-gen (2011). Should be easier to do it with an OS that already runs on IBM processors, although I don't know the difference between CPU processors and what's in the XBox/PS3. Sony better start moving quick, because you know MSFT won't lose any time on development for the next Xbox.
That's something I'd like to see, a shift towards Mac gaming. I just recently bought my second Mac, a dual 2.7ghz G5 with a stock Radeon 9650 256mb card. Before getting it I gave up a Dell SC420 with a PCI-E 8x ATI Radeon something 128mb that cost $150. The new rig cost $3500, the old rig cost $1000. It's RIDICULOUS how slow Doom 3 runs on my shiny new Mac. I mean, the first thing I thought as my 23fps headache was subsiding was "Damn. Mac gaming really does suck." I used to get over 60fps on a Windows box which was less than 1/3 the price of my Mac... I read some articles about why on earth this would happen and it ended up being mainly due to a lack of developer time spent on the Mac side of Doom3. I went back and compared Quake 3 and saw that yeah, gaming on the Mac can be as good as (or better than?) on Windows, but it takes time and effort on the part of the developers... So, yeah, I hope this PPC console gaming market helps out the Mac side of gaming.
Well, this doesn't seem to me to be a great justification. You've been able to use a wide variety of peripherals with your consoles for years now. Even the gamecube supported mice and keyboards.
Heck, the PS2 has successfully carried FFXI for quite awhile now, and PS2 users are in no way the minority on that system.
Now that modern consoles are just specialty PCs and have USB connectiors and enough RAM such that games can use USB HID drivers without sacrificing graphics, there isn't much argument.
I don't think PC gaming will ever dissapear, of course. But certainly, between the PSP and the next gen consoles, it's increasingly difficult to justify selling games on a PC. Especially once the XBox developers no longer get a sweet and short ride porting between Xbox and PC, you're going to see a precipitous drop in PC games.
And why would anyone buy $1k-$2k gaming machine when their speciality $400 system can push more polys and has nearly the same rendering abilities, uses any peripheral you want, makes online gaming a breeze, isn't going to get you an email virus, and has a wider selection of games?
What economic sense does that make?
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
"the claim that the PS3 will offer the equivalent graphics performance of two GeForce 6800 Ultra cards working in tandem came from Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia. Current cost of those cards: about $500 each"
So a machine that will be released in about 1 to 1 1/2 years will perform as well as a current top end machine.
I'm not seeing that as being the "PC Killer" the article makes it out to be. A year and a half ago the top graphcis cards were the NVidia FX 5950 and ATI 9800 XT, which at the time were both pushing the $400+ price range. Those same cards are now considered a serious step down from the NVidia 6800GT and the ATI 850 XT, which are currently pushing the $400+ price range. The cost of the Nvidia 5950 and ATI 9800 are now about $100-$200 range. So comparing a top end video game station that won't be out for a year and a half to a current top end $5000 PC is kinda retarded.
That, and depending on how the Cell processor turns out, we may all be itching to switch PCs in another year anyways.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Definitely. Half-life 2 ran just fine on my box with what is now a $50 video card. Didn't look great compared to on a better card, bot on the other hand, it looked better than Half-Life 1, so who cares?
The cake is a pie
Another thing that goes a long way for me, and my friends as well is a keyboard and mouse. Even with a hacked up controller with a keyboard, and an addon mouse, Doom 3 will never be the same as it would at a desk in front of a monitor.
I read a rumor in a mag that said that WoW might be coming to PS3 and XBox 360. With the amount of UI customizations that are required to play that game, I don't see how anybody could consider playing it without UI customizations, especially end game content that requires 40 man raids. Its honestly not doable, and without a connection to voice software like TS, forget about it.
You're also forgetting about graphics. As nice as the PS3 and Xbox360 look, they always look better on a compuer monitor. WoW looks like ass when playing at 640x480, but is GORGEOUS when playing at 1600x1200, which offers picture quality which TVs can never offer, even HD.
Also, for me personally, I could never play a game where I would not be able to take screenshots. The customization just isn't there, and without it, PC games will never go away.
What do you mean massivily network? 64 players? Its getting close to that on _this_ generation (Black Hawk Down) The only thing missing is dedicated servers, and there's a crop of new games that will have them. Player counts will be the same on PC & Next Gen consoles for those games that take the time & money to do dedicated servers.
Yes, PS3/X-Box 360 have massively more powerful graphics hardware than current PCs. Yay, go them.
Except, this stuff is, *gasp*, next gen PC graphics chips. That means, 6 or so months from now, I'll be able to buy these chips on an AGP/PCI-E card.
Ah, I hear you say, but it's much more expensive. Well, yes, you're right. So lets fast forward to 2007, when the next, next gen of graphics chips come out. Now my card, while more expensive, is twice as fast as your PS3/X-Box 360. Repeat again for 2008, 2009, and 2010. In particular, by then we can expect PCs have have 2+GB of RAM as recommended spec, and game maps to be getting bigger, with everyone complaining how little memory the PS3/X-Box 360 will have.
But don't panic, we'll have the PS 4 and X-Box 4096, which will be REALLY REALLY POWERFUL, and will DEFINITELY kill PC gaming this time. 'cos, y'know, it's like Apple and *BSD, everyone knows they're already dead, and just haven't noticed yet.
Okay, and breathe.
Next thing to remember; the next gen consoles are using PC graphics hardware, not to mention the same APIs used on PCs (OpenGL for the PS3, and next-gen DirectX for the X-Box 360). While we might see more PC games which are ports of existing console games, this should reinforce the PC gaming market, not kill it off.
First of all, ignore Yahoo! games etc., because that's a different market, and no one buys a PC specifically for Yahoo! Games (I hope).
1. You need A-list titles like Half-Life to sell PC gaming rigs, garner interest, make big money.
2. The last half-life took YEARS to develop, and there's nothing wrong with the development team.
3. Game graphics will flat-line to the point you can't tell real TV from videogame TV.
4. The new consoles are on High-Def- often higher Def than computers.
5. More people are buying laptops.
6. Game and computer companies are getting serious about IP, and the computer is their weak point. You can't copy anything on a console. How many original copies of Starcraft are left? When it's so much easier to pirate computer games and get the same experience, it really diminishes profits and enthusiasm. Even Blizzard is moving to consoles. That's also why online games are popular with publishers- besides the subscription prices, you can't play without paying.
I think real PC gaming is done. My friends still play Starcraft, all own PS2s, don't want to learn the difference between NVidia and ATI, AMD FX and Intel EE, or spend hours setting up LANs, toting computers around, troubleshooting technical problems. Once the A-list titles disappear, the investment goes elsewhere, and this is already happening.
You're not a fool, but you're on the wrong side.
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha kill.....ha ha ha ha ..pc...gaming ha ha ha..
Let's see them beat raid 0 scsi drive at 15k rpm with 3 gig of ddr 2 with a P4 3,7 gig and a geforce 6800 ultra pci express.
42 inch lcd screen at 2048x1536 with half-life or doom runnig full screen 8x anti-aliasing.
sure it's a 6000 $ system but it cant be beaten by a mere shadow of a console!
I swear we see this article get recycled on ZDNet, Wired, and the like every time the next big thing in gaming consoles comes out. Remember how the X-Box was going to put Sony and PC games out of business?
I think until we see massive changes in interface devices, the game market will still tend to be stratified by genre.
I am an owner of both game consoles and a PC. Certain games I prefer on the console, such as sports games, driving games, action games, etc. However, I prefer playing FPS games on my PC, probably since that's where I cut my teeth. To this day I still can't get used to Halo on the X-Box, but I play fairly well on the PC version. Additionally, I can't imagine strategy and role-playing games on anything but a PC. Navigating the menus is so klugey on a console, and keyboard shortcuts can be paramount.
And that doesn't even broach the issue of expansion packs, patches, etc. All of which are much more convenient with PC games.
That said, while the PC game market will probably take a bit of a downturn with the release of the next gen of gaming consoles, don't expect it to stay down for very long. The end is hardly nigh.
Why should I buy a console to play games on when I have this PC here on my desk that, while I do work on it, also happens to play any game I care to throw at it ?
If the only reason is that companies are going to stop making games for me then it's a pretty poor one.
Thank you. PC gaming is just too complicated and problematic. It's supposed to be fun, not in-home tech support training.
It doesn't matter whether or not the consoles or their games support keyboards, mice, and the like. What matters to the game developers is the lowest common denominator of user input.
As long as you can't guarantee that every user has a mouse, then you can't use mouse-style input to control your interface. That shoots down traditional RTS interaction, for example. So if an RTS gets released for console, it will be "crippled" in functionality because the design will be focused around the segment of the market that doesn't have mice or keyboards plugged in to their consoles. Developers won't force the hardware to be used because that limits sales.
The PC game industry will always stay around, because it supports a much more customized experience. The basic argument of TFA has been made time and time again, every time a new console is announced or comes out. But while the PC market has shrank, it certainly hasn't gone away. And it won't.
It seems to me that it is not a matter of the console replacing the pc but that the console becomes the pc. With added network support, keyboards, mice, what is really the difference besides the OS?
That's what it's all about for me. Immersion. I had a similar setup with a 1680x1050 resolution and it was *amazing* playing HL2 with full-world reflections, even on a $200 geforce 6600. Console games will not have a competitive graphics resolution until everybody has an HDTV, and we all know that's not happening any time soon. It's no contest that you are going to be more immersed playing a game on a computer instead of on a conosle on a TV which has a display area of 19% of what's possible on a computer (in my setup) and a max frame-rate of 1/2 the absolute lowest possible refresh rate of any VGA CRT. When resolution is factored in and when HDTV's are factored in, computer gaming is still cheaper as well as higher quality.
I know you will get modded down, but just let me say I TOTALLY AGREE!!!! PC's will always rule for the REAL gamers. Consoles are good for arcade style games, that's about it... and those kind of games get boring really quick.
Meh.
And it is less costly and complicated to devellop for PC than for console
Is that really true? On a PC you have to support a huge range of hardware and software, while on a console you are dealing with a fixed system.
Well, you don't have to support a huge range. You try, but no one besides your own investors is forcing you to, so you end up with "recommended configurations" and you rely on the "get the latest drivers" mantra, wait for people to complain, and patch later. Basically, you use your first custommers as tester that pay you (cue soviet russia jokes).
There are configuration testing done, but they are less costly, mostly because you can, as I said, patch it later. So long as it works fine on the combinations of the most common hardware you won't get any major backlash. You have fewer man hours spent on regression of known bugs, etc.
You can't take the sky from me...
Not only that, but a lot of game developers want to keep the PC going strong, believe it or not. For example, here's an interview with Mark Rein of Epic Games talking about licensing of the Unreal Engine 3. The interesting part here is:
Consider also the huge cash cow that Grand Theft Auto has been for Rockstar Games. They release the game on Playstation2, and intentionally delay the release for PC. Why? Because it's the superior platform and they know that they can release improved graphics for it (actually not; they're actually basically down-sampling their textures and polygons for the PS2 release and releasing the "actual" stuff for PC with San Andreas). They do this because they know there are some hardcore fanboys who will pay for the same game multiple times. If PC falls behind briefly, it'll catch up again and the situation won't have changed at all. Hardcore fans will go back to buying games like GTA twice.So no, PC gaming is not going to die. At least, that's my opinion.
Honestly, the Dreamcast was the end of big-title PC Gaming for me. After that point, game makers decided that they would focus on graphics above gameplay. Apart from Gish, there haven't been any "must-have" PC titles in many years.
If there are one or two games that you absolutely must have, spend as much money as you think is appropriate to get whatever hardware they need to run on. If there was a PC game I thought I just had to have, I probably would have ante'd up for the hardware necessary to run it. If you're like me, and you just want the opportunity to (casually) play an amusing or entertaining game when you feel like it, ANY system -- PC, XBox, PS2, Gameboy, PSP, or any of the next-gen consoles -- will have a selection that's more than large enough to find lots of good games, and the overall price of the solution and the hassle of maintaining it will decide.
Unless the author of the article knows for a fact which platform is going to have the most engaging and amusing games, and which ones are going to be duds, any speculation at this point is worthless. People don't buy game systems as much as they buy the ability to play games. Which platforms will have popular games? That's anybody's guess.
Jasin NataelTrue science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
Another related article worth reading is about the price war between the concoles and if they can bring the death to PC gaming.
Funny, I went looking in the comments specifically FOR this point. And you're absolutely right. And who better to note this than you? I'm one of probably thousands of people who found NWN's original campaign and thought your Dreamcatcher mods basically "redeemed" the game.
That said, there is another possibility. Remember that the next-gen consoles will have network connectivity. There's no reason you can't have a toolset like the NWN toolset running on a PC, and when it saves the mod, you 'push' it over to your console and can then make it available via a download directly to that.
I don't see hardcore PC gamers satisfied with a 4+ year long upgrade cycle either, so I don't see them making a full switch.
I have a PC. Owning (or not owning) the latest console will not change the fact that I have a PC, the PC will be used heavily, and some of that use will be heavily-taxing, so the PC will be constantly upgraded. I can't tell you what all my future work will be, but I'm confident that the hardware and software I require will be created for it.
It may get to a point where the consoles are easily upgraded, rather than replaced, have a slew of non-gaming software, and become an environment all their own. Even forsaking their PC, people will realize that the console has effectively become an iteration of their former PC. Eventually, threats of more powerful, specialized hardware that's intended only for the most intense gamer will threaten this general-purpose console.
Then, we'll see this argument all over, again... and again... and again...
The GeForce 6800 Ultra I've been sporting since last year has served me QUITE well... I've been "ooohing" and "ahhhing" at all the eye-candy. However, it has it's limits.
/ 25/2222212&threshold=-1&tid=152&tid=137
With this much computing power, the limits of visual stimuli can only go as far as what the developers put into their games. I can run at 200 fps, but if the graphics engine sucks, I'll only have a nicely rendered game of Pong.
But if you're into OC'ing, use RivaTuner as mentioned here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Many arguments here are compelling to stick with PCs: Open hardware, hardware mod flexibility, superior screen, blah, blah, blah...but, for me, it's the mouse. I play FPS games only...and they ALL suck on consoles. For decent game play, you need a mouse for free look, a keyboard, and a desk. When consoles work that out, I may try again. BTW, don't underestimate the value of a PC's flexibility for hardcore gamers. I play CoD on the PC and it has no headset support. No problem, I just run TeamSpeak or Vent in the background and I am set. Try doing that with a console. If a console game doesn't have headset support then you are done. That's it. End of story.
Consoles have long since surpassed PC gaming, if you look at sales figures. However, as long as people own PCs, there will be PC gaming. I mean, why just use a PC to check email and surf the web, when it can also play games? In other words, PC gaming will die when the PC dies.
Games will continue to exist for the PC as long as the following equation holds:
Cost of porting from console to PC < Increase in Net Income from Porting to PC
All the discussions about videocards on slashdot will never change the fact that the companies want to make money, and will do whatever they have to.
I was a PC-only gamer since my parents bought an IBM-PC in 1981. Over the past couple of years, though, I've found that I just don't have the time to keep up with game patches, driver updates, etc. With a full time job and 2 small kids, I feel lucky if I get 1/2 an hour of free time, let alone gaming time.
The last straw came a couple years ago when I had to update a video card driver to make some game work properly, but doing that made my TV tuner card behave strangely, so off to the manufacturer's site for another driver update, which broke some other functionality in the TV recording software.
I haven't played any new games on the PC since then and I haven't missed it.
"Can I finish? Can I finish?
Because no one ever plays Counterstrike or Guildwars, ever.
Seriously, though, there's still a lot of people who play Starcraft and Diablo II online. PC games aren't going to just crawl off and die.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
Yes, you have a point. For those that can afford it, doing both is certainly an option.
The last video card upgrade I did was a TI-4200. I haven't played halflife or doom, so maybe it's not as good as I think it is, but I've been quite pleased with Lineage2, WoW, and Farcry. The only issue I see is the initial lag that occurs when there's a lot of action going on - I think that's more related to the available RAM though.
I can't check my email with a console, nor can I surf the latest chatter slashdot.
What's this I hear about the PSP having a web browser?
Your point is taken, but you picked 2 bad examples.
Lets see...
The new XBox 360/P3 will have online capabilities, support USB peripherals such as webcams, keyboards, etc. You'll be able to browse the internet, chat online with friends, store music and maybe video content on it's "removable/upgradable" harddrive. Transport data using memory cards. It will support ethernet connections or wifi, outputs HD and 5.1 surround sound.
That sounds pretty much like a pc to me. Heck, I'm sure someone will break it open and load linux onto it. Then you'll be able to run all your office applications on it as well.
I guess I can see the point of the article though. Consoles have consistent hardware so they will be easier to develop and test for. But then again, developers have to develop for consoles with different architecture, I'm thinking throwing PCs in there won't skyrocket there budget too much.
That PC Gamer (may they rest in peace) ran this same story.
Is that to play all pc games you'd need the $400 videocard. But to play all console games you'd need all three $400 consoles. Oops.
A general-purpose PC is pretty much a necessity for modern life. It excels at games, and much more. Why then do people buy consoles in addition to PCs? Now you own two CPUs whose cycles go 99.9% unused, instead of just one. Now you own two graphics cards, when you can only use one at a time. Now you own another hard drive, which is needlessly dedicated exclusively to games. Now you own a third device capable of playing DVDs.
I'd like to see this trend reversed -- people buying fewer consoles and starting to realize more of the potential of their general-purpose PCs. Wasn't "convergence" supposed to be a buzzword? Moving away from general-purpose computers toward specialized devices is "anti-convergence."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Unless you work for a game company, I don't think you'll be able to pass off a game console as a work machine. As long as people use PCs at work, there will be a place for PC games (and big red boss buttons).
WTF is wrong with CNet? What an idiot. He points out in the first paragraph that neither console has the actual hardware ready yet, and 6 months/1 year before release he's claiming TODAY'S graphics cards are not as powerful as the as-yet-unreleased and untested video cards in the consoles will beat PCs. Duh. Guess what? The next-gen unreleased GPUs for PCs will also overpower today's GPUs. Within the first year of release, both ATI and Nvidia will be selling GPUs that you can plug into the computer THAT YOU ALREADY OWN that will beat the console power. It's a non-issue for PC Gaming.
And who NEEDS a console? Plenty of people need PCs for email, photo processing, printing, document editing and creation, web development, programming, and you-name-it. So they have one already. They are going to pay $1500 for a computer anyway. As long as they need a computer, they'll be willing to shell out for a graphics card so they can turn their PC that they also use for work and everything else into an entertainment center of it's own. Plus, you can buy a graphics card based on your needs, rather than the $400 console just to play Tiger Woods (like my dad). Dad's going to keep buying video card upgrades to meet his needs for the few games he plays. He'll NEVER buy a console. He'll ALWAYS want to play a game now and then on his PC, and he's definitely willing to drop $100 on it every other year to get a better graphics card if necessary.
Dumb article. Grats on the publicity stunt. Executive Editor? Yeesh. I'm surprised this article wasn't about CNET going belly-up because they were made obsolete by WIRED.com. What a twit.
Holy crap, the new xbox, and ps3, are computers with out windows lol. YOu can play mp3, chat during games. Console makers are just copying what computer gamers have been doing for years, playing games and listening to music and haveing trillian open at the same time! so no computer games will never die, 2 reasons. 1. first person shooters, hard as hell to play on consoles. 2. graphics, consoles are outdated as soon as you plug it in, computers are upgradeable. Console will never die either, sports and race car games are great on them. But consoles can't out do pc's.
Quite when did the PC gain this massive lead that the loss of which fortells nothing but doom?
Does anyone else get the feeling these doom articles get written by people who weren't actually there (or at least paying attention) for the majority of the lifecycle they're making broad statements about?
Atari vs. PC
Hmm... Hercules monochrome, text screens, the vivid delights of CGA. Anyone in their right mind still had an Atari for gaming rather than one of those international BUSINESS machines.
NES vs. PC
What was the figure? 50m Nintendo Entertainment Systems sold. Bill Gates hadn't even written about his dream of a PC in every home yet.
SNES vs. PC
I seem to remember every other teenager having Super Street Fighter II and Super Mario World while, if I was really lucky, I could enjoy the vivid delights of Commander Keen.
Granted, it was during this generation that we finally started getting visually impressive games for the PC. Doom, Ultima Underworld, Wing Commander, Mech Warrior II (with its Glide support) all started to show up. This was the first time we really had anything that we could point to and say, "Your console just can't do that." They got ports of games like Doom (which just didn't compare) but this was the first time the PC actually had any reason for gamers to migrate.
PlayStation vs. PC
Just as we got going with the PC, the PlayStation turns up. It competes with all of our 3D that the SNES never could, it has great games that we'll never get and it's politely in one box that always works, never needs upgrading and has absolutely no jumpers to futz with.
Again, the PC started to extend its lead towards the end of the generation, just as it had the generation before. What a surprise, it's almost as if the constantly developing PC loses slightly immediately after an increment but then catches up and ends up leading by a mile before the next increment. It happened with the SNES, the PS1 and it was about to happen with the PS2.
PS2/X-Box vs. PC
We had great graphics for enthusiasts. The new generation of consoles gave them to everyone who owned a console.
Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto, Halo... They blew away everything except the very, very best PC systems and those cost more for the graphics card that could compete than the console did. And, once again, the console took no configuring, had no hardware conflicts, it just worked right out of the box.
Since that release, as always, the constantly evolving PC has clawed its way back against the static releases of consoles. It's not got "back on top" but then, for those who were actually there, was it ever on top? Can anyone point to a generation where there were more PC gamers than console gamers [that played the latest titles - sure, the PC has an insane install base but minesweeper doesn't count]?
Input Options and Specific Genres
The PC with its more varied input options has always been the choice for certain genres: I'm yet to see a good PlayStation flight yoke. I'm yet to see an X-Box RPG that doesn't suffer from bastardized input (although I've seen a fair few PC RPGs die the death of a thousand cuts as they're developed for both platforms - yes, you Deus Ex 2). I'm yet to see an MMO that really works (yes Everquest Online Adventures allowed a USB keyboard but swapping from DualShock to keyboard and back again is way more painful than just using a keyboard and mouse).
That gap is closing though. Take a look at driving games which, by all rights, should be totally the domain of the PC, just as flight sims are. After all, imagine the great PC title we should have that allows the same addition of user created content from the net as MS Flight Sim does. We should be looking at a game with all the default courses and cars of Gran Turismo 4 and then triple that in user created options, played beautifully across three monitors - and yet, due to some abberation, it's console only and t
innovation does not happen on consoles! Every innovation in gameing happens on the pc. nuff said
I gotta say... having Valve's SDK for free to create my own maps and content is part of the reason I dig PC games so much.
I'd like to see consoles offer the same kind of creative environment to the gaming community, but it isn't happening with this next generation of consoles.
What this means for me is that pretty soon Quicken will be the only reason for me to use Windows if the games are gone. Then at the rate that Intuit sunsets Quicken versions, my use for Windows will go away completely when I switch to Moneydance on Linux.
Thank you, Xbox & company!
A DIY'er could buy a $150 video card when building the system and then upgrade to a different $150 card 18-24 months later and not miss out on any games. Been there, done that.
That also works perfectly well using a $100 card and upgrading every 30-36 months if you don't care about playing the later games on 1024x768 with 18 FPS. Been there, done that.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Besides, as long as there is no nethack or T.O.M.E port to a console, I won't take these puny little gadgets serious.
This comment does not exist.
personally, i think that the mouse + keyboard is what defines PC gaming by at least 40%, and functionality by 50% (rest is slack space for continuous improvement, as the PC market always has)
FALSE PREMISE: The better the hardware available to good developers, the better the game will be.
The simpler fact of the matter is, eyecandy is secondary to game play in every way. Is it possible to create fun and enjoyable games that run on 5th generation hardware? Of course it is, people did it all the time four generations ago.
I grant, those genres that are based on eye candy (FPS, for example, in large measure) are going to move to the consoles. But games focused more on the gameplay and less on the eye candy can afford to remain in the PC markets, and will do well there.
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
... what I've been saying for years, everytime a new generation of consoles come out.
No. When they hit the market they'll be slightly superior to or on par with the current extremely high end pc. After a year they'll be about equal to a midrange pc. Long before the next generation comes out they will be totally obsolete comparative to current pc technology.
Until they put consoles in a 2-3 year upgrade cycle (which will really piss people off) the console will never be able to keep up with or kill off pc gaming.
Shadus
The PC game market won't die for a reason I have yet to see mentioned: Innovation. Not just in hardware, but software. The ever increasing power of PC components only pushes this. Think about it... 1/2 life 2 & Doom 3, both are considered to be 'pushing the envelope' of gaming technology via their rendering engines, are released for the PC first. Then they basically went back to 'dumb it down' for the consoles. Frankly, when you make your hardware static, you make your software the same. Kind of dull don't you think?
Linux sucks. And you're fat. Take a shower hippy.
Underlying the article is how much money is to be made from console versus PC games. Console games are easier to build for because of consistant hardware and it is easier to implement effective copy protection. Effective in this case is subjective. Meaning it is more effective that PC copy protection. This won't always be the case. In some cases it is just as easy to break copy protection for consoles.
But the article is good for bantering around at the BG table.
When my friends gather round to play games,and attempt to use PCs, it usually needs to be crossplatform, and not only that everyone has about 209329834 configurations they have to make, aside from that they may have to download updates to make sure we are all on the same version of the software.
Whereas on the gamecube, if we want to play some Smash Bros, we just plug in 4 controllers and fire up the game. Easy peasy, and monkey ball is only 1 little GCD away, instead of having to reconfigure things to use another game.
Aside from that, it's $50 for a gamecube game, and that handles all 4 of us. It's $50 a person on the pc.
Questions like these are ridiculous. There is no "door" to a PC games market. You can't close it. The question should be whether or not the next gen consoles will have an impact (negative). To a question like that, we CAN predict that YES it make further SHRINK the market. But there will ALWAYS be people making PC games and ALWAYS be people playing them.
Xbox 360 is powerpc based
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Why, it looks so simple to me.
Write your own barebones OS, maybe leverage F/OSS stuff. Probably support just a subset of PC hardware, that's what hardcore gamers will buy anyway.
Then make it a bootable disk. Use flat files or whatever on HDDs for storage.
You get the benefit of being on a PC without the hassle of a OS.
What is that you miss? A crippled BIOS to support your lame "sell at a loss then lock developers in" marketing strategies?
13-4=54/6
I switched from my pc to an XBox in 2001 and never looked back. Maybe I do miss using the keyboard and mouse ala Half Life and maybe I miss the great graphics of an Everquest II, but not by much. I sure as heck don't miss sitting inches from a computer screen for hours at a time any more than I miss paying $200 to $400 every year upgrading my video card, or my amount of RAM. Or finally having a nice system only to find it insufficient to run then next great thing out there. The money I save on upgrading my pc constantly can go to other, NON-computer related things. heh Those people dismissing consoles as unimportant subsets of a pc are missing the boat. If I can pay $400 once instead of every year, AND play games from the comfort of my couch, why the heck wouldn't I? Only reason I touch a pc for games nowadays is if my itch for RTS or MMORPG gets strong. But for the most part, Madden and Halo can scratch any itch I get...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I, luckily in my opinion, fall somewhere firmly in the middle.
Since I get to geek for a living, I am far more passionate about gaming, however. Lemme tell yah something about gamers. We really don't give a rip how many polygons you are spitting out. Not really. We can sit and play Tetris or Pacman all day and be more-or-less content.
See, that is what 98% of the posts I have read don't get. The sheer power of the PC over the console is unarguable. For a geek, this is enough. But for a gamer, who gives a rat's butt if I have a NASA mainframe but no games to run on it? I would rather, any day of the week, plug in the old 2600 and some old school game than mess with a driver, setting, etc etc. I do that all day long, why would I want to in my 'fun time'?
What is occuring right now is a fundamental shift in the concept. Yes, I love geeking out on things like Half-Life 2. But fact is, I don't **need** that to play fantastic, engaging games. No, I don't get the facial expressions or the reflections or all the other things that mean absolutely nothing from a gaming perspective but I get my game on. And, in N weeks I likely will have all that stuff, so my choice seems to come down to:
Play the absolutely cutting edge on an uncomfortable PC and deal with all the headaches.
Or play just as enjoyable games on a console, sitting comfortably and never, ever, ever once even see a system message.
Hmmm...one sounds like "sorta fun" the other sounds like a whole lotta more fun.
Anyone who says that the PC gaming market vs. the console gaming market will be the same in 5 years as it is now is making a claim akin to those who said the TV would never replace the radio. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the appeal of the technology and the interest of the market. PC gaming will never truly "die" but it will move in such a way on the profitability scale that it will return to the fringe from hence it came.
I hope this is true - I can hardly wait for the day when glitz and eye candy moves exclusively to the consoles, and the only games available on the PC are those that emphasize gameplay over glitz.
Personally I've not seen a better setup for an FPS, then a mouse and a keyboard(of somekind), the other controlles are just too slow or too inprecise
-- Tim
TKrabec Pahh
How many of us will be willing to wait so long between hardware upgrades? Sure, kids won't be spending money every year for the latest graphics card. But thre's still enough demand for keeping up with the latest chips that something will keep PC games selling, so we aren't forced to wait 6 years before getting a better gfs chip.
Besides, wouldn't converting EVERYONE to such a slow upgrade cycle slow down chip development?
Both PCs and consoles have their strong points, both run certain types of games better than the other and each have their strong points.
I see these two as mutually exclusive, one cant ever totally kill off or steal the market of the other.
When you get a gaming PC, you get more than just something to play games with. A PC does everything a console does an more.
PC gaming may be smaller because it requires more knowlege to use, where as a console is just put the disk in and play.
Ill continue to buy whichever console suits me as well as a decently powerful PC to play the PC games that I want as well as do day to day PC things for work and school.
With blizzard and ID as our flagship we will overcome flybynight consoles!
:P
I have boxes full of old and unusable game cartrages. NEVER AGAIN! I would rather not share a screen with Player 2, thank you very much!
PC Games raise the bar of innovation. Why buy a console when you already have a PC???
My PIII with Nvidia NForce 256MB with 300MB ram will Ph0|/\ ytour puny Xbox
Then I think Linux coders should attack it from the other end. Add extensions to the kernel that make it very easy to make games.
With Linux itself being essentially free, as in beer, and there being CD versions we could well see linux packaged with games.
FPS for Consoles are dumbed down, in fact, FPS for just consoles are dumbed down because they dont get the same control of aim using a d-pad or joystick. You need a mouse, and a good one with a good mouse pad (for maximum control) if you want to be a really good FPS'er.
Most, if not all console FPS's have an auto aim, not a big one - but its there. This alone removes them from possibly being a good FPS. FPS are all about twitch, and if you play enough you can get a bit of pre-cognition, just watch some of the Cyberathletic Profesional League (CPL) demos or videos, its disgusting the twitch some of them have.
Personally, i would say that Counter-Strike is still the best FPS out there, for casual and competitive play. Its been time tested, its not 100% "hack" proof, but in cases that it matters it can be seen and taken care of. CS:S could become the next leader, but currently it is not ready. There are just too many flaws.
PC gamers drive the video card industry, it's the reason we have geforce 6800's and anti x800's vs the original geforce card or voodoo cards. If people won't buy those new cards why put research into them? I suppose that the video card companies could just focus on consoles every 5 years and create some new business model, but I doubt that would even work. Much of their research into video cards for high end pc's ends up in consoles, so how is that going to work when they aren't designing cards for high end pc's? We wouldn't see the same rate of progress in terms of video card technology. All those console lovers better hope and pray that computer gaming stays around for a long time to come.
Many arguments here are compelling to stick with PCs: Open hardware, hardware mod flexibility, superior screen, blah, blah, blah...but, for me, it's the mouse.
I play FPS games only...and they ALL suck on consoles. For decent game play, you need a mouse for free look, a keyboard, and a desk. When consoles work that out, I may try again.
BTW, don't underestimate the value of a PC's flexibility for hardcore gamers. I play CoD on the PC and it has no headset support. No problem, I just run TeamSpeak or Vent in the background and I am set. Try doing that with a console. If a console game doesn't have headset support then you are done. That's it. End of story.
Didn't the enemies stop moving once they stopped seeing you or does that only happen at lower skill levels?
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
My daughter destroyed the keyboard on my Mac G3 Powerbook -- playing Tomb Raider Chronicles -- thereby rendering an entire laptop useless as well as hopelessly obsolete. IMHO, personal computing is not the proper venue for videogaming, especially when appropriate apparatus sells at commodity prices. Because I expect these old games to be running even better under emulation within a few months, either on PSP or Nintendo's next-after-next, I don't mind popping nine bucks for a Playstation copy of TR 2.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Yea, and people really like web tv. This is going to put the nail in the coffin on the desktop PC! Its the next killer app. Those web tv boxes are only like $100 and a PC is what, $500 at least? So I think we've seen the end of the desktop PC. Those web tv boxes are just flying off the shelves too.
The point of the sarcasm is that if you buy the cutting edge PC of the day, and the cutting edge game system of the day, the PC will always do vastly more and run vastly more software unless the Game system becomes a PC- at which point the PC has put the nail in the coffin on the game machine.
There is no coffin, nor a hint of mortality to the PC. The games market on the PC is very healthy, and the conspiracy necessary to get all publishers to drop their profits by not publishing games for it would be the grandest, furthest-reaching collaboration of all time. The day EA stops publishing PC games is the day some Venture Capitalists fund another company to takes its place and collect the profits they are losing. Thats the truth of the matter. Will developers stop developing for the PC? Only if they too wish to kiss a part of their revenue stream goodbye.
Bottom line, it won't happen. Pretending it will is just silly.
There is one benefit of PC games I haven't seen on consoles yet: the modding communities. These creative people add new gameplay elements, new content/levels/etc that keep a game alive much longer in replay value.
Three cheers for the modding communities!
6 times out of 10 when I try to install a PC game it fails to install for some hardware or OS incompatibility. Or my requirements aren't good enough. If it does install, every time I want to play I have to boot up my system, FIND the CD, load the game and play. Then when I'm done the process is reversed. On top of it all I have to sit at a desk- something I do all day and I'm not keen on doing it when I get home.
For my console games, I plop myself on the floor, or stretch out on the couch (aaaaahhh), turn on my TV and system, and I'm playing in seconds.
Gee... tough decision eh? When my hard drive died a year ago, I didn't even bother re-installing any games. Although I do miss my RTSes and Half-Life!
1. Because the PC will still exist for other reasons (e-mail, web, word processing, accessing office network from home, etc.) As long as the PC exists, there will be PC games. 2. MOUSE & KEYBOARD!!!!!!!! If neither the Xbox 360 nor the PS3 will let me use a mouse and keyboard for FPS's and RTS's, then the bulk of my gaming will continue to be on the PC. Why is it that a racing-game fne can connect a racing wheel, but an FPS fan cannot connect a keyboard/mouse-style controller?
How most of the next gen consoles (PS, XBox) are trying to be more than a console. Like for example playing mp3's, DVD's, sharing pictures etc.... Well I have something that already does these things and much more. There called PC's.
The gaming companies may win but, not because the have a better/cheaper product but because they have marketing muscle that the PC simply does not have in gaming.
M$ it's whats for diner!!!!!
I can remember when my favorite genre died, Adventure Games (Inventory, point n click, story driven games). There simply wasn't a market for hard games that almost required hint books with no replay value.
Now as game consoles sport hard drives and usb ports (USB keyboard, joysticks, etc), even games like World of WarCraft will soon make their home on a console. Less spyware on a console and in theory, they should be easier to secure and have less complicated file systems. Right now the graphics quality on a computer screen is still better, but soon that will change too.
This isn't a bad thing through. Games are the last challenge. With games removed from the PC, it will be easier to convert people over to Linux or MacOS! All their office and Internet applications will be avaiable (or have reasonable equivilants) making the switch seem much more plausable as a change to escape the evils of Windows based spy-ware.
-Sumit
The PC has always been and will continue to be the plane of experimentation and innovation of new and better gaming technologies. The PC gets more powerful almost daily whereas the console only gets a boost every 3 years or so and generally is made equal to a high end PC at the time. So generally, 2 years into the life of that console, the PC has already surpassed it leaps and bounds. Probably why HL2 and D3 came out for the PC before XBOX, PS2...If they ported Gran Turismo to the PC, then I would be ditching that PS2.
Anyway, thats my 2 cents.
Mac gaming ain't going anywhere!
I take it you didn't try to play doom 3 when it came out! I had just bought a $250 ati AIW 9600 XT 128mb.... its only playable at 800 x 600 resolution on my pc. (dual xeon 2 ghz, 1 gb of ram)
There's two sides to it. Personally, I play games on consoles, PCs and Macs. Each platform has different game play and are better suited to different games. I like to play FPS games like ET, RTCW and Doom 3 on a pc because i value a keyboard/mouse, i like to play strategy games like Age of Empires 2 on a Mac because its easy on the eyes and i benefit from a keyboard/mouse (not a mac mouse of course) and i like to play racing/sim games on consoles. They tend to have the best play control for that type of game. Compare Need for speed on a console vs a PC. Sure the graphics are better on a pc, but try to take a corner without buying some special joystick or steering wheel addon.. then try to get it to work in windows! ugh!
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
as long as someone CAN code a game on the PC, people WILL play games on the PC. Heck the original IBM PC was never intended as a gaming platform anyways, but people wrote games because there was an interest. Has the interest waned? Possibly, it's also quite possible that interest started waning when the big game developers stopped caring about the PC, thereby creating a self fullfilling prophecy.
Sure PC Gaming may bottom out more, but eventually people will be back. And the whole price difference argument is moronic... if that was the case pc gaming would have died out in the 80s when you could buy a Nintendo for the fraction of an 8086 (or whatever was the l33tness of the time)
Articles like this makes me wonder if people have heard the term "boom and bust cycle"
Sigh, it's not an either/or situation. A game can be produced that supports both. Nothing stopping the developer from putting in keyboard and mouse support no matter what. For example Quake II, X-com, C&C and Warzone 2100 all support the PSone mouse, but it's not required.
Some statistics that I have seen show something on the order of 80% of the dollar revenue of game publishers comes from consoles with PCs getting the remaining 20% (check out the financial stats of a publicly traded company like EA).
Now put yourself in the shoes of a game developer...What is going to make you the most money? A 20% dollar market or an 80% market?
Compound the fact that developing games for the PC is far more expensive -- there are all sorts of different hardware configs and not always stable driver headaches to deal with. This means longer testing times and therefore more expense. Remember that developer time is the most expensive resource in a game company.
Constrast that to a console which has a very consistent and well documented hardware platform. It's easier (read cheaper) to develop for a couple of configurations (xbox/ps).
Now even a 20% PC market is huge, so there will probably always be PC games. Another reason is that most development and content creation is done on PCs. But do not under estimate the enormous advantages of the console from a game developer's perspective. The PC market will increasingly shrink and fall into a niche when it comes to gaming.
Not to mention the big cost advantages of the console with their subsidized hardware model. Yes there are people willing to pay $400 for a graphics card, but these people are definitely in a niche market. The bulk of the money is made in the low-end to mid-range segment.
Sure you can most certainly read e-mail on a console, FFXI owners do it.
And if you have a Linux kit for the PS2, you can do whatever you want, read your e-mail, post to Slashdot.
Hardcore gamers like PC games because we are just that; hardcore! Just because video games are becoming more and more mainstream doesn't mean the hardcore guys are going anywhere.
Also, if you've been paying attention you'll notice that the new console's CPUs do NOT do branch prediction. You'll have 3.2 Ghz of GPU pumping madness in these new consoles, but it will perform like an 800Mhz celeron in terms of doing physics or AI code. That's what we need alright! More graphics and less game play!
What's worse is that I've been reading e-mail and posting to Slashdot on my PS2 (with Linux kit) for three years.
no
I am Spartacus
I play computer games because they're better. I will not humor the inability to type or quicksave just because of...wait what were the reasons to buy a console again?
We don't inherit the earth from our parents. We borrow it fom our children.
until one can play Nethack on a console. And that time is right now. Compiles just fine on a PS2 with a Linux kit.
PC graphics advance much much faster than console graphics. I've purchased 2 or 3 video cards, each with much better performance in the time I've had my xbox. We're nearing photo realistic real time rendering in pc hardware, and that ain't gonna make it's way into consoles until at least the next generation (the one after xbox 360, which will have another 2-3 year run.) They've been saying consoles are gonna kill pc gaming since the SNES. The reality (to me) is that consoles are great for arcadey games, sports games, driving games. I don't care how good halo was, mouse+free matchmaking services are better for FPS, and RTS on a console does not sound like fun.
PC gaming will die when consoles start being able to do all the things my PC can. At which point, consoles will basically be proprietary PCs that don't do word processing. All I need out of a gaming PC or console is internet access, hard drive, great graphics, great sound, mouse, keyboard, joystick, email, and web access. At that point PCs won't be necessary for gaming.
The thing that won't kill PC gaming is price. While upgrading a PC can be expensive, it doesn't have to be done very often. With the new prices of consoles the price issue is less and less important. Expect the xbox to cost $400. I paid $900 for my last big upgrade to my PC and that was 5 years ago. The only upgrade I've needed since then was a new video card. I bought a geforce FX 5200. I can play Half Life 2, Counter-Strike:source and WoW with relatively no video lag. Admittedly I need a serious upgrade but the games are playable. With new consoles coming out every 2 to 3 years thats going to be $400 to every minor PC upgrade that I need.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
The main reason is that not only can I rent and play console games without the risk of purchasing a dud (or get stuck with something that was released as Beta), I can trade in used console games for a reasonable return. PC game rental isn't a possibility (as far as I know), and the most you can hope to receive in trade for a PC game is 2-5% of the original sale price most times.
Gamefly has saved me countless $$ on titles that I would have otherwise had to purchase for my PC. The only titles that I see worth purchasing for my PC are MMPORPGs and the occasional FPS, but if I ever see a console that offers up a wireless mouse/keyboard as a standard interface option, that could easily change.
I take it you didn't try to play doom 3 when it came out! I had just bought a $250 ati AIW 9600 XT 128mb.... its only playable at 800 x 600 resolution on my pc. (dual xeon 2 ghz, 1 gb of ram)
Well, then, exercise a little self control and wait a few months before playing the game. If you believe this chart, a GeForce 6600 GT can play Doom 3 at 1280x1024 at 60 FPS. That's for $150. Plus, by buying Doom 3 now, you get to spend $40 instead of $65.
Besides, exactly how shitty does it look at 800x600? That's still as good or better than the resolution you'll be getting on the TV hooked up to your console.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
While the consoles are very convenient and work very well for several games, I think actually the opposite will occur; As the average person becomes more computer saavy, more will look to the computer to suit their gaming needs as they would not want to spend additional money on a console when they can easily play on their powerhouse PC.
Please re-read my post. I never claimed it would work (in fact implied the result was unclear) just they were making the attempt, which is almost undeniable. Both companies have said a number of times now how these consoles are going to be home entertainment devices for a broad range of uses like sending pictures, chatting, and so on.
So far nothing has reall ymanaged to unseat PC's but I think with enough resolution and horsepower they might have a shot - the final piece though would be letting anyone develop software for the units (without buying a very expensive dev kit) which neitehr Microsoft or Sony has said they will do.
In the end I don't think they will really quite take over the place of the PC but they may well unseat it from a few traditional roles.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've just bought a SLI motherboard and two kick ass graphics cards you insensitive clod!
I think consoles will kill off PC gaming, sooner or later. They've already gone and started stepping on the PC's toes, now that they're coming with hard drives and online gameplay.
...and keep in mind, this is coming from an ardent PC gamer that just built a brand new top-of-the-line rig. I love PC gaming, but I'm really sick of the cost and hassle. Once a console can duplicate the good parts of the experience, I'll be more than happy to tell ATi and nVidia just where they can stick those $500 video cards I keep buying to get my fix.
But stop and think about it critically...
The only advantages the PC really has aren't inherent to the PC itself - they're higher-resolution displays, input devices, and moddable games.
But HDTV is catching on, and 1280p-capable displays put all but the most hideously expensive PC monitors to shame. And mice/keyboards? Really, does anyone honestly think they'd be anything but trivial to impliment on the consoles? There already are a handful of them.
I don't think the Xbox 360/PS3/Revolution are really going to make any headway into the PC gaming market, but the next generation? I think it may be the last nail in the PC's coffin. Or rather, I think consoles, at that point, will be practically identical to PCs in gaming capability, while still retaining the "it just works" edge consoles currently have, and a vastly superior price point.
Even if the next next-gen consoles weigh in at $500, who in their right mind would want to shell out $1500+ for a high-perfomance gaming rig when they exact experience can be duplicated on a console, without the headache of drivers, bugs, and patches, for $1000+ less?
So, I don't think consoles are going to "kill" PC gaming, per se, but once we start seeing a prevalence of hi-def displays in peoples' homes, and games that take advantage of them, well... that's the real backbone of what makes PCs "superior" gaming systems, now. Without that, they're nothing but overpriced and buggy, in comparison.
PC gaming offers the most flexiblity. When I was a kid and SNES came out, I thought, awe crap, I wont be able to play those games on my NES. Try adding a mod/mutiplayer mod to a console game. Try no game updates, no bug fixes, and no improvements whatsoever. Enjoy your console.
I fervently hope PC gaming will die cause then no one will have a reason for microsoft on their home copputer.
RIGHT NOW I remain on a microsoft platform at home because I want access to all that commercial grade entertainment stuff. But if the games I want to play are no longer available for Windows then I can make my home machine a linux or bsd box, or switch to Mac, and keep my gaming console seperate.
There are plusses to doing this. 1)gaming consoles are more secure against hax IMHO. 2)Easier to develop for gaming consoles allowing for a smaller variety of bugs and solutions.
THere are things consoles still need before they can kill off PC gaming though. These include keyboards and mice as well as some cross-platform capability. People are going to be sorely disappointed when they cannot play the same game as their friend cause of different brand names on the consoles.
My opinion? Eventually microsoft will release an application which is part emulator to play xbox games on the PC. Sony will follow suit, though Nintendo might not. Dont know what will happen to nintendo.
Essentially, what you see on the horizon is the dawn of true appliance computing where all "simple" processing will be done on a disposable box. Call it thin client, distributed storage, consumer grade computing or whatever.
When it comes to competition between PC and Console games the fact of the matter is that Console systems do not offer the wide range of input that PC games offer. So while FPS games such as Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and Quake 4 as well as sports games such as FIFA and MVP can easily be played on a console system, much more complicated games such as the very popular World of Warcraft game cannot be run on any console because of the wide variety of input options that it requires. The diversity available for a gaming platform is what makes it special and what makes it attractive.
While this argument may seem convincing enough to keep the RPG genre on the PC, it goes without saying that even in the FPS world, hardcore gamers and programmers thoroughly enjoy the diversity and portability of the PC platform because it allows them to modify the game. Console platforms not only discourage this kind of gameplay because they don't offer the input or software development tools necessary for this work but also because they require the use of proprietary media (such as the special DVD's used on the XBOX or the new BluRay discs that will be used in future platforms). Not only are PCs more accomodating to gaming input but development of games is always done on a PC and then running a game on a console is simply an end result. Thus the PC is a more powerful system.
Aesthetically, Consoles have an advantage in the living room because they seem to fit in well with your VCR and your DVD player (or even replace your DVD player) and thus consoles provide computerized entertainment to the masses of jocks or other computer illiterate people. I am of course not saying that all console gamers are computer illiterate, but simply that console games are more user friendly for those who dislike computers as well as socially friendly (its easier to sit around a tv playing your XBox with your friends than to sit around and watch one player play a game on their PC). So while computer games may take the place of the book, console games take the place of the fireplace.
PC gaming has in the past and present enjoyed the modification that an avid gamer desires. Such themes are often put proudly on display, such as the Batman theme displayed recently at Computex. This kind of modification of gaming computer, a monument to the gaming PC, is quite common in the gaming realm but is unlikely to ever strike the console, or at least in that kind of way. This kind of modification is usually a symbol of pride in ones ability to customize a computer for the sole purpose of gaming and for the simple reason that consoles, to date, are not customizable in their hardware, customizing thier cases is less likely to ensue.
So I guess what I am really saying here is that for the hard core gaming geeks, or for those who are addicted to RPG games, the console platform is no competition for the PC platform because of the PC platforms powerful development platform, vast input options, and customizability.
That does work with the PS2. plug in any old USB mouse and keyboard. certain games (half-life in particular) will use them just fine.
The Practicality of using a mouse and keyboard with a console - I use my P2 sat on the sette, where am I going to put a mouse and keyboard? Coffee tables too low and on my lap would just be awkward.
I haven't seen anyone point out that XBox uses a Windows derivative and runs on nicely packaged commodity PC hardware. Whose to say Microsoft won't make it so game developers can write the game once and then easily tailor it to btoh platforms (if they haven't already)?
Yes. Is that what you wanted to hear?
The way your talking, your acting like you (the general populance that is, not /. in particular) get a choice.
The way I see the market going in the future is the console will get all the quality titles, whilst the PC market will dwindle down to homebrew.
There is no real advantage to major companies to go PC. Sure its cheaper, royalty wise, but there is all the hassle of competition. On the console competition is relatively limmated. Its a manufacturer controlled market, because you need a development lisence to actually make anything on it. And to get one of those you need to have made a decent game, or fall in line getting bought out by one of the major game producers. Now with the power theese massive developers have, I cant see it being difficult to stiffle the wretched original and creative competition. The established developers have so much sway over a manufacturer (a good game lineup can make or break a console, look at the dreamcast) that they can effectively block a rival developer.
The PC land is where the innovation is going to come from. All the small creative folk will live there thinking up great new addictive games. But all the great fps, driving games, and the rest of the established generes will remain firmly in the grasp of the console except possibly the RPG.
Wow, a whole post about gaming, and it didnt turn into an EA rant! Arent I good.
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/07/22/0820213.shtm l
Please, some noob says the same thing every console generation. It doesn't happen.
I think the article as a whole is looking at the situation the wrong way. The issue isn't the hardware on either side, it's what the software providers decide to support. Their decisions while based on sales volume and profit margin, also end up influencing those same figures, and I think any real damage to PC gaming is mostly coming from games being released early without broader testing, and related problems of minor hardware incompatibilities . The more companies cut margin by relying on after-market patching, the more casual gamers go over to consoles, imo. Now, that's only one issue, and much like hardware differences it's hardly the whole picture, but I think the mentality of the software providers themselves is the greater issue in terms of continuing pc support and what direction it takes.
first, it doesn't take over my TV when I'm gaming, which means I can game and let guests, kids, watch the tube.
Second, because I can do other things besides games on it (duh) like email, filesharing, web browsing, program developement, CAD work, and inventory stuff.
Third, because the $400 for the console doesn't cover display, keyboard, and most peripherals. The peripherals are often proprietary for just that model console. Add ons (drives, memory, controllers) are typically more expensive, and "used" is not an option.
Fourth, *I* control what goes in, what it does, how it's used. I can mod the software, choose my own online services, serve my own LAN amnd multiplayer games, add bots, whatever I want. Does the PS3 ship with developement tools for creating bots, skins, skeletal models, weapons, maps, or other mods?
You'll never see the end of PC gaming as long as you have people who play games as an auxiliary function of their hardware, rather than the sole justification for it.
Is anyone really taking this seriously? I remember the exact same story when the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube came out. They even used the same "nails in the mostly shut coffin" metaphor. This is utter crap. As long as people use computers, they will want to play games on those computers. As long as people want to play games on their computers, developers will make them and stores will sell them. Computers develop incrementally. That console may look like hot shit now, but in 2 years it won't have changed at all while PCs have been zipping ahead. MMOs are big and getting bigger. There are a few console examples, but its a genre best adapted to PC.
Don't hold your breath for the death of PC gaming.
namely because people, for the most part, already have to buy computers to do one thing or another. So why not spend an extra couple hundred dollars and get a sweet gaming console at the same time? In addition, PCs are better suited to quickly react to new technologies in the market. Consoles will not be the death of desktop video gaming.
...then I'll move completely over to a console. I spend the majority of my gaming time in that environment and it simply would not work on a console.
Blizz is pushing on Starcraft Ghost and I'll buy that when it's done. But the game experience just isn't the same from console to PC - despite the USB ports sitting on current/nextgen consoles.
I've played console ports on the PC (sent my Halo PC back to MS ffor their 30-day $$ back guarantee it ran/looked so bad), Star WarsBattlefront. You can just tell that the game was built for input from a controller versus key/mouse.
Vice versus - Starcraft Nintendo 64? Or Command and Conquer on console? They were laughable at best. They just don't work - they were built from the ground up for a particular experience that is difficult (not impossible) to acheive moving from one platform to another.
P.S. I don't want a similar TYPE of game to WoW, I want THAT game. That is why i will have a dedicated PC for gaming, as well as my consoles.
the only difference between a rut and a grave, are the dimensions
I take it you didn't try to play doom 3 when it came out! I had just bought a $250 ati AIW 9600 XT.
Actually I bought my 9600 XT for about $150 soon after it was released, OEM at local computer swapmeet - we were refering to DIY'ers, and I play Doom 3 at 1024x768 or 1280x1024. Seems find to me.
Sure the graphics are better on a pc, but try to take a corner without buying some special joystick or steering wheel addon.. then try to get it to work in windows! ugh!
The joystick or steering wheel is not an add-on for consoles? Also I've added a USB joystick, and all sorts of other USB devices, to my PC and they work just as well as on my Mac. I was actually surprised when I plugged my first digital camera into Win2K and it autodected and mounted the camera as a removable drive with JPG files on it, just like on my Mac. Haven't tried a steering wheel, a friend is more into driving games and he has a USB device and I've never heard any complaints. We tend to swap info on stuff like that, good or bad, so I expect that I would have heard something.
Lets compare what matters
Graphics - PC's win. You can choose the level of graphics you want. Consoles have limits and cannot be "upgraded".
Controls - PC's have a MUCH higher controller selection as well as customizability. Consoles have very little. And the speciality controllers don't work between different consoles.
Cost - Sure a PC has a higher upfront cost. But that's like comparing a porshe to a moped. A console.. is just that. Games. A PC is games, work, email etc etc etc etc. It does a thousand things a console can't do (out of box you hackers!).
Maintanace - PC's win again. If something goes bad you can easily replace it. Consoles once it goes bad might as well buy a new one.
Upgrades - That word doesn't compute with consoles. Buy a new console! PC's... I'm most situations you don't have to upgrade. You can.. but you don't have to. Where as a console you HAVE TO to play their game.
Game costs - Oh wait.. they're the same!
Party Value - This is the only one that a console wins in. The reason is it's portability out of box, ability for multiplayer games without everyone having a PC, and most of all everyone can be right by each other.
That's why I bought an Xbox. Fusion Frenzy, DDR (drunk people playing DDR is entertainment) etc. I made the mistake of buying a PS2 for Final Fantasy X. IT was worth it until they released the bastardized game of X-2.
There is no way that Consoles will EVER beat PC's in the current strategy. There are more PC's in more homes than all consoles combined. The average family has what? 2 pc's? 3 now?
There is NO WAY a console will every beat out PC's for gaming. IT's just too convenient and customizable and cost effient to do that. Consoles will eventually merge with the computer market and manufacturers will realize that HEY... I can charge the same price for my game to play on a PC... and i won't be eating the cost of a console.
Right now... the marketing strategy is to only let a certain game appear on a certain console. IE, ZELDA... IE Final Fantasy.... Get my point?
Thats what is going to cause the fall of the console industry. Sorry guy... your view is completely wrong. Thanks for trying!
It's really this simple: PC smoke consoles when it comes to: MMORPGs RTSs FPSs Simulators Consoles smoke PCs when it comes to: Fighting games Driving Games Sports Games
I'm not Bingo. :-)
pwned! :-P
There is no way to count all PCs playing games. First of all, there is a huge percentage that never buys any games, but pirates them (I am talking about the world, not the US specifically). Secondly, there are lots of types of games to play on the PC, not possible on consoles. Thirdly, the only platform that truly innovative game titles can come out is the PC. Forthly, consoles may have better games the first year or two of their lifetimes, but after that the PC smokes them. Right now, my Athlon 64 + Geforce 6800 GT runs rings around the XBOX, let alone the PS2. HL2 (arguably, the best game ever) would not be possible without great sactifices in graphic detail on the XBOX or the PS2 or the GC.
So the PC games market isn't gonna go anywhere, it is going to stall a little while the new consoles establish themselves. Let's not forget that the new consoles' games will take many years to come out, due to the complexity of the hardware, and the PC game vendors do not afford to ignore the PC market.
It's funny how the most obvious thing in this entire discussion has been missed, namely that if you continue this trend you'll eventually end up with a PC, except a PC you can't upgrade as well....
Think about that, I'd say.
My current setup is a 500Mhz iBook, a PS2, and a 25" low-def TV.
I do all my web and application development on my laptop. And it's more then fast enough for web browsing.
My playstation2 has high enough resolution that most of the newer games I buy run at the same resolution as my tv. Sure, a few objects are blocky around the edges, but the textures are as good as my TV will go. According to the specs I've seen, if I buy a new system, it'll be a PS3, since it doesn't REQUIRE a HD TV, which I have no interest in getting.
So far, I haven't seen any games on the PC that are worth the money to upgrade my computer.
Then again, maybe I'm biased. My first gaming system was Pong, (at a ripe old age of 5) so I'm still blown away by the graphics on the PS2.
BTW: When are they going to come out with Pong on the PS2!? I want to see 3D paddles and IK ball motion and voice acting by Julia Robberts! ("boop"..."beep"..."bonk")
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
You're forgetting MMOs. They work much better on a PC, where people have already worked out their own internet access rather than paying Sony or Microsoft for more access (XBox Live!, for instance).
Also, you are forgetting the controllers. Consoles have wonderfully ergonomic controllers (or at least the Cube does), and PCs have 101 buttons. Some games require 101 buttons.
Also, joysticks. No one buys a joystick for a console. So MechWarrior and flight games will always have a place on the PC.
Also, who gives a crap about High Def? That's right, people with a lot of money. I bet they have plenty of money for keeping up with PC graphics card costs, too. So your points about High Definition TV fall flat.
You're also getting confused about how long it takes to develop games. It takes that much work no matter whether you're developing for a console or a PC. Check Halo 2's production cost sometime.
Oh, and A-List titles are still on the PC just as much on the consoles. The only thing is, you've never heard of them. Why? Because they aren't advertised the same way. I understand that that is somewhat of a contradiction in terms. Let me put it this way: PC games don't need as much advertising up front because they are easier to try for free. Partly, this is because it is easier to crack and illegally distribute the full versions of PC games, and partially it is because it is easier to get your hands on demo versions of PC games. Thus, PC games can ride on their merits more often than console games can. That means that you haven't heard about great PC games because they are already selling well without having to buy huge ads.
The market for PC games is big enough for that. For proof of all this, go to http://www.ddo.com/ and check out the 'Alpha' status. There are thousands of hardcore fans rabidly waiting for a game you've never heard of. They will advertise a bit to catch the mainstream, but since they're already assured by release time that they'll make back their production cost, they don't care the same way Microsoft did about Halo 2. Microsoft was so worried about Halo 2 that they paid for an different entire game (http://www.ilovebees.com/ in order to advertise it. PC game makers don't have to do that.
Playing pornographics games during the day is evil! Play at night!
...I guess plenty of console company execs believe that old cliche "we'll make it up in volume"...
Call me crazy, but I tend to think that those making a profit will last longer...
Long live PC gaming!
What I think is likely is that consoles will try to do all of these things. But since they will be implemented by companies that want tight control, it will be very limited. Joe Sixpack may use a console to rent tons of DRM music or videos, pay for time in online game playing, and related things, while having a computer for real work. Us nerds will also use the PC for entertainment, ripping our music and damn the torpedoes, as gaming systems, and to program, regarding consoles as mere toys. And I think this is preferable to the worse but harder to envision future, where general purpose computing dies and computers morph into consoles, into toys.
Two female orangutans......*beeeeep*
PCs are great for certain types of games (mmog's..fps..rts..Some good single play rpgs) And consoles are great for some other sports games/fighting games (sit on couch drink beer and play games with your friends type of games) and driving games...not to mention the rpgs that will never see release on a pc
I don't think either will ever totally eclipse the other. They are truly different in their content and mode of play (anyone who thinks a fps has ANY business on a console and being played without a mouse truly does not know the true nature of the force) consoles are easy to use..realtivly low cost and no maintenance. Have a variety of games and can be played on the big TV you got sitting there in your living room. and have controls that are well suited to certain game types. PCs have smaller screens but with significantly great graphic detail and can host a radically more complex game and can utilize just about any type of input device, the PC is a non specialized device and has a reason to be in most houses regardless o its gaming potential. They are significantly harder to use as far as upgrades and just getting a game to work. But I can tell you one thing although annoying from time to time this aspect of PC gaming ahs forced both of my children to go well beyond being a clueless user of PCs they both have gained some insight and trouble shooting skill as a result of PC gaming, now yes that's a poor reason to sell into something (well I like land rovers because I learned so much about cars due to them breaking down all the time) but ...
In short they are fundamentally different machines with a different primary purpose..
Don't lock your self into a monogamous relationship with a certain one ;-)
"tell the ones that come after me that 5 is to much"
As long as their is a texture detail slider and other options, PCs will thrive.
Running Doom3 on it's highest video settings with my 9800 Radeon OC'd video card and OC'd processor make me happy. =)
Of course, it could be possible to OC a PS3, but I barely managed this(Hey, it was easy so I did it! I didn't do it to prove anything to anybody!)
Just as soon as there is one out that can play Duke Nukem Forever!
Visit my blog at http://johnkiniston.blogspot.com
You can't play these games without a mouse, impossible, not doable, don't even try, thank you.
Not everyone has a console. Many adults think consoles are for kids, but would not mind buying a casual game for their "work" PC to play at lunch.
What about Real Time Strategy, Turn-based strategy, and First Person Shooters? RTS and TBS are best with a mouse and keyboard. I cannot play an FPS with that gamepad, and they will not likely allow keyboard and mouse use for shooters on the next gen systems. Keyboard and mouse gamers would ruin every online FPS game for those gamepad console players. They know that, and will only allow usb keyboards for text entry only.
Why do we always ask this question when there's a wave of new-generation consoles announced? We will never have a set-top-box and consoles will never kill PC games.
The problem with consoles, is you have a few buttons to use and that's it. Even with add-on controllers, it's not nearly as customizable as a PC games controls.
I'd hate to play some of the stuff I play on my PC on a console. Ick. Plus, the graphics seem better on my PC (even with an older video card).
I take it you didn't try to play doom 3 when it came out! I had just bought a $250 ati AIW 9600 XT.
Just what exactly did you do to your system? I can play Doom 3 on that card with half the RAM you have at 1024x768 at adequate quality with at least 30-40fps.
If I've got to buy a $1000+ TV to take advantage of it (but then) a lot of LCD monitors don't support 480i
A lot of TVs priced well under 1000 USD support 480i/240p. Unless by "$" you mean HKD (1000 HKD = 128.50 USD), I don't see your point. What stops you from borrowing someone else's TV to put your system in progressive (480p) mode, and then using a ProprietaryConnector to VGA adapter?
The best strategy is to start playing a game a year after everyone else has stopped playing it.
::) ).
This is the best strategy IMHO (I actually use it
Imagine playing Quake I on my Athlon64 w/1GB RAM and a crummy GForce MX 4000!
Doom3 will look really good in a couple of years when I finally get to it. It will only cost me $5 at a used games store too!
I just can't bring myself to purchase a gaming console. I may have been raised on Atari2600 but the last console I owned was the original Nintendo. If games stop comming to computers maybe its time I stopped playing games, sure would get a lot more done. I'm sure that emmulators for consoles will be available, maybe that's my next step. However I find it hard to believe that a day will come when no one writes games for computers, maybe I won't get the latest cutting edge stuff but that's fine by me.
Dell's 24" WUXGA 1900x1200 panel is about $1.1K, but it is 24".
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
I would say yeah, in a couple of generations the consoles will be a much cleaner development platform for games, which make them attractive to developers as well as consumers; consumers who no longer have to worry about updating or even understanding the hardware in their machine to play a game. The second group of consumers offer a much larger market anyway and will easily muscle out pc gamers, so through an economic lense, it does make sense gaming will move off the pc. I am really for this though, because we all know the distance between what we all think of as pcs and consoles is razor thin, and with ingenuity on consumers part, accessing all freedoms that the console hardware provides is a definite possibility. Then its just another piece of hardware with good games, and maybe new glories for the hacking community.
I can categorically say No.
Unless the PS3 and XBox360 turn out significantly better than the specs that have been released to date.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
except for browser games most games are not written in java.
The point being that if consoles completely replace the PC for gaming, then browser games will be the only playable new games published by somebody other than a member of the oligopoly.
I play consoles and PC games (though not as much as I used to for both of them) but for consoles if you want the latest and greatest hardware, you have to wait a couple years. With a PC and some money, you can make upgrades. Plus I do everything else on my PC, why not game?
Consoles cost about the same when you factor cost of good TV and do a lot less than PC. Also PC and console games are usually a lot different - PCs are FPS, RTS, RPGs, mmorpgs and consoles are dumbed down vesrions of FPS, RTS and RPGs with lots of jumping puzzles thrown in.
You might want to check out this thread on the very same topic. It's an interesting conversation if I may say so myself. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php ?t=310547
Ever hear of a mod chip?
I remember this same tired old argument when PS2 and Xbox were released. Yawn...... Sure the console market is going to gain a large market share for a few years. And it will have more graphically impressive games than PC. But the PC technology will catch up and surpass the consoles, again, and PC will regain it's losses. Until consoles can offer the utility that a PC does the PC game market is very safe and secure. I have yet to see anything that says the nextgen consoles will provide the utility that a PC does. Once the consoles do reach a point where they can offer the vast array of services that a PC does the PC will have changed it's very nature and make the console game platform idea completely obsolete.
Because of the fact that id Software creates *next* generation gaming engines. Doom3, in and of itself it like a tech demo -- the game pretty much sucked. But if you turn up the details and resolution, you will see (probably very choppilly) what to expect in games very smoothly in the future.
So yea, maybe you couldn't play it. But the games that use the Doom3 engine in the future well... you will see some wonderful things.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I did nothing.. the game is not multithreaded. 2 cpus can't help you when the game developers don't multithread their games. I have hyperthreading disabled for just that reason. (otherwise windows sees 4 processors) I don't get people that game with HTT on actually. With dual core cpus coming out i'm hoping they will get the hint.
Also, to clarify again.. i bought the all in wonder model. Its more than just the generic at your local pc store.
Yes it is better than my tv.. but i dont use my tv.. i use my pc monitor with my AIW. Its rather nice although of course the resolution is not that high.
I can play racing games with a gamecube controller just fine. I don't need to buy the extras for it.
Previously my pc had IIS and ASP.NET because i also did web development on it. I've switched to a UNIX webserver and now don't need the extra stuff. I have not tried since then. Of course i did turn off IIS, SAV, and all non essential services before gaming. I also periodically update all my drivers. The original drivers with the card had doom 3 issues.
I'm also aware i could have bought the game later, but I loved the doom series and wanted it right away. No harm in that. I got the video card before the game came out as i always wanted an AIW. its great for recording tv and making dvds. I payed 52 dollars the day it was out at best buy, not 65.
For all the down sides of the pc, running a UNIX like os on it with two cpus is very rewarding. it was worth it for that reason alone. (linux 2.6 kernel and freebsd both rock!)
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
All the new consoles have ethernet, so when they are hacked, it would be easy to just use them as your graphics platform.
Have your computer upload the program through the ethernet connection, and control it through the connection.
This gives you the best of both worlds, and designers can load some software on the PC and other parts on the console.
It also allows a sort of "command screen" or something like a spaceship control console on the computer side, if you were using a TV for the game play that is.
So don't spend your $$ on a graphics card this year!
That way I dont have to keep upgrading my PC.
The real reason I think that consoles will never compltely destroy the PC market is the input. Real-time strategy games are an example of this.
5 2673&fp=46
It's also up to who is delivering the best content, a good PC game can hurt console sales. For example:
"Issuing a profit warning in March, Larry Probst, chief executive of the biggest games publisher, Electronic Arts, said everybody in the industry had been surprised by WoW's success and how much time people were spending online - to the extent they were not buying as many console games."
http://firstnews.com.ua/en/techno/techno.html?id=
He wasn't necessarily talking about playing games the day (or month) they come out, the games are still good if you have the patience to wait a little.
And besides, an AIW is a TV capture card, of course it cost a fair amount...
The only people who wish death for the PC for gaming or anything else are those who want to return to a centralized computer system similar to what we had in the late 1960s and 1970s when computers were too big and expensive for the average person to own. Once the PC came a long the result of it was another monopoly to begin with (Micro$oft) but later became GNU, Linux, Apache, Mozilla and other Free and Open Source softwares that allowed much greater FREEDOM in both individual computing and Internet communication than the Corporatists wanted users to have. To destroy that freedom was the motive behind the original "thin client" and "network computing" campaigns of the 1990s and the move try to kill off PC gaming now in favor of crippled "consoles". Never surrender the FREEDOM a PC gives you over any other type of computing applience because of the marketing hype of companies like Sony, Micro$oft, and other copyright and patent empires behind the "console" industry. Thay have shown time and time again that they are only into perminent totalitarian control over you through "intellectual property" law and DO NOT have the best interests of their users at heart. If we can't find good "off the shelf" games for PCs anymore than let's again support the Shareware and GPL licensed "donationware" gaming industries again. These in fact are where many of the popular "console" games originated anyway but NEVER surrender your FREEDOM. Stay with the PC.
Ever heard of a light gun? I had one for my Dreamcast and used it to play games like House of the Dead 2 and VirtuCop 2. Much, much better than a mouse, and much more realistic too.
You can't kill computer gaming -- you would practically have to force people to quit making and playing computer games. How you gonna do that?
And besides, I've been around long enough to remember these dire predictions about how the Sega Genesis and Super NES were going to kill computer gaming. After that it was the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation that were going to do it. Somehow it didn't happen.
However. . . The shape of the business may change.
I suspect that the huge, massively expensive, Hollywood-style productions may gradually disappear from computer gaming. I suspect the focus may shift back to where it originally came from: cottage industry, small companies, even shareware, and less ambitious and less costly games that don't have to sell 100,000+ in order to break even.
All this talk about graphics performance is getting ridiculous. We've reached a level of diminishing returns, where graphics cards are getting more and more powerful, more expensive, hotter and more power-hungry -- and yet the improvement in visual appearance with each generation is becoming less and less, while development costs balloon. (And as others have noted, actual gameplay doesn't seem to be advancing at all. Does anybody remember gameplay?)
The big-money, big-projects side of the computer gaming industry is locked into an economic death spiral. But scurrying around under the feet of these lumbering giants are a bunch of small companies making small-but-fun games. They never went away, they've just been overshadowed by the behemoths.
In other words: The future doesn't belong to Electronic Arts, it belongs to Freeverse and their kin.
no one seems to be pointing out the obvious, that almost everyone needs and owns a PC. Its easier just to pay an extra $300 from dell and get a higher end computer that will both be more stable for regular use and okay for gaming. This rather than paying for an additional $300 toy.
PC gaming wont die for 3 reasons then in my opinion:
1. some gamers (like me) prefer to play FPS and RTS on a pc, with a mouse and a huge keyboard they a crippled controller. Not to mention the ability to multitask means i can have p2p and audio runnin g in the background
2. PC sales are increasing, undoubtedly people will use existing hardware for games... esspecially if they cant afford or dont want another console... this is esspecially true since even lower end computers are able to run many of the new pc games out there (aside from like doom 3)
3. theres YEARS inbetween new consoles, but computer components are always being updated, so in those lulls i feel the consoles tend not to be the strongest players. This and the pc is the most universal game platform what with the wars between Xbox and PS -- everything eventually makes it to PC.
Mike
I heart the RIAA & MPAA, im sure its mutual...
I'm on my PC all day and night. When I want to unwind with a game, I'd much rather alt-tab.
Besides, what console will ever allow you to IM, pay your bills, debug code and download pr0n all at the same time?
hey- I used a TNT 2 back in the day when I had my pentium II 350mhz gaming machine. It was like 98, so i had my reasons. It was great. I got it for what $30 so I could play RTCW since my crappy card at the time didn't support open GL. Granted now I have myself i nice athlon xp 2700, and an nvidia quadro 4 gl somethign or other, and It's great. But I got about 3 years out of that TNT before I upgraded to a geforce 2 mx 400. (i know i know, I was a low-budget gamer at the time, but now i have a job. But I guess my point is, old technology works. yes, there are better things out there. But I would rather have last years model, because by then all the kinks (overheating etc. are genrally worked out. I'll be using my quddro 4 for at least another year till i probly for a 5700.
Some people made some comments that if you want power and have the money, buy a nice PC for gaming.
Thing is that, I'm not a kid anymore. I don't want to spend $1500 on my main computer just to play games. It's not a question of affording it, it's a question of not *wanting* to spend that much just for gaming. I have tons of ram and hd space. I don't need an upgrade anything else to do anything I want to do on my pc.
I just have better things I been eyeing. Like a digital SLR camera or an ibook.
I was looking at video cards recently and my video card still runs over $200 and it's old school now. A worthwhile upgrade would set me back $400. I jumped ship and bought an XBox and Forza Racing (that game kicks total ass by the way). It cost me $230 canadian. And by the numbers it's more powerful than my PC.
A console is all about the package deal. You plug it in and it works.
Can't say that for PCs.
I'm sold now. I know I'm going to be in line to buy an XBox 360 the day it comes out.
PC gaming will survive just fine. Most of the damage has already been done--games brain damaged in cross-development.
;) That's an extra special brain twitch many /. folk have.
"First of all, ignore Yahoo! games etc., because that's a different market"
Agreed, though it's worth keeping in mind. I play Tangleword or Wordyacht most every night. Free, word based, definitely requiring PC.
"1. You need A-list titles like Half-Life to sell PC gaming rigs, garner interest, make big money."
PC will continue to slip but won't bottom out. It'll always be the only source for some niche games like flight sims (same as fighters are console only). Yet to play an FPS on a console where I didn't want to through the controller across the room from combined frustration with auto-targeting, squished verticals, and save points.
"2. The last half-life took YEARS to develop, and there's nothing wrong with the development team."
And?
"3. Game graphics will flat-line to the point you can't tell real TV from videogame TV."
Sure. On the NEXT-next generation of consoles.
"4. The new consoles are on High-Def- often higher Def than computers."
I'll believe it when I see it with decent frame rates. Should happen a couple years into next console generation when developers have mastered the new equipment. For late released titles on current set it largely boils down to art direction: some games look really good Big (resolution aside) and most look better on a PC if given a decent port.
"5. More people are buying laptops."
And?
"6. Game and computer companies are getting serious about IP, and the computer is their weak point. You can't copy anything on a console."
Point taken, though I'd reverse it: I know many who are moving to console version of cross-platform games *because of* the protection on PC games. Also know a couple people who gave up playing PC games entirely because it was so much easier to download and burn all PS2 & XBOX games.
"I think real PC gaming is done. My friends still play Starcraft"
Equivalent to saying, "Console gaming is done because all my friends are still playing with their N64's."
"You're not a fool, but you're on the wrong side."
To your credit, you're not claiming open source triple-A titles will save PC gaming.
I don't disagree PC gaming has taken a hit. I do think it ridiculous to imagine it a body blow.
For the PC, consider:
1) PC's are used for other things. All the non-game functions touted by the upcoming consoles are available to any $499 (monitor included) Dell slimline, plus the online play without ongoing fees. Plus same system does online billing, Yahoo! games, etc.
2) PC games are generally cheaper.
3) Mods are important. Yes, consoles are (very slowly) moving in this direction--but they're also picking up the patching and bugginess that is PC games' worst "feature".
4) Indie developers or new kids in their Russian parents' bedrooms can knock out a PC game without the millions required to dev kit and release a console title. Do most suck? Sure! but not all. More and more the PC (perhaps running Linux) will be the birthing ground of the new talent.
5) MMORPGs are the world of PCs. Love 'em or hate 'em. I mostly hate, A Tale in the Desert aside--come say hi there. Wait! that's an indie title! and revolutionary. See #4.
New generation of consoles will steal the thunder, PC will bounce back in a couple years. Maybe not bounce as high as before but it'll happen. Same as last time. And the time before...
Feeling so good natured I could drool
consoles are comming of age . they have matured to the point to where they are acheiving the long desired goal of realistic exiciting gameplay .
.. and these consoles will do them and do them well and to those who dont really care much about pc gaming in the first place it will seem as if the consoles crushed the pc
...
these new consoles will be great eye candy and provide quality entertainment to those who seek a console based gaming fix.
i forsee a shift in gaming maybe some will call it the death of pc gaming especially if microsoft scores some big coups and gets more exclusives on the xbox 360
but the coups will only gain the consoles manufactures what is already standard fare on the pc
first person shooter based engines
halo 3 will be all the rage other fps based games will score headlines and denounce the pc as archaic and unable to acheive dollar for dollar equality with consoles
this will go on but the pc player will not care as they will be to busy
sighting cordinates for the artillery barrage on the oncomming tank platoon sniping enemy soliders and charging command points... ala battle field 2
(yes halo3 is multiplyer but the multiplayer of consoles still has a long ways to go until it reaches the depth of the new generation of online battle games)
to busy because
they will be in a group in search of the rare and newly spawning kummelfudge striders that are droping some perty darn cool loot and its all the rage at the moment to find and slaughter one...
ala name your favorite mmorpg
(sure theses new consoles will have mmorpgs but lets not kid ourselves the consoles will never be able to match the pc's capabillities in the requirments to fufill an mmorpg demands)
to busy because
they will be contolling and managaing the citizens and technolgy trees to try as hard as they can to keep from being surpassed and on to become a global power so they can nuke the living bejeezus out every continent in the world in civilazations 4
(i have yet to see a console system even come close to matching the real time stratgy and or turn based strategy games of the pc)
to busy because
the pc gamer will be playing the next generation of gaming techlogies that always trickle down to the consoles
and with the advent of stronger processers and even more storage space and the oft forgoten open nature of pc gaming while consoles will be maturing
pc games will be trancending to a even higher level that will shine the light for consoles as pcs have always done
Music the Paint dancefloor the canvas your body the brush
imo if consoles would "kill off" PCs in terms of gaming, that wouldn't be that bad after all. as long as there will be PCs around (and they definitely will for "serious work") there will be a market for games too. it might be a smaller one but this can turn out to be an advantage:
remember back in the early 90s how the situation on the PC-gaming market looked like? there were fewer PC around, but those who owend one often were hardcore gamers. for this reason the games made for the PC were ofter really tough (wizardry7, x-wing, system shock, ultima7 or even indy4).
today there all millions of PCs on the desktops all around the world and the gaming industry mainly targets the occasional gamer. this makes totally sense as for 1 hardcore games there are 10 occasional gamers today contrary to the 90s where the situation was the opposite. sadly this situation lead to "simpler" and less innovative games that are easy to learn and are completed in few hours of gameplay. my hope is that if the main focus moved on to the consoles that the "few" PC gamer who stick with their system will eventually be rewarded by more demanding games.
Whatever will they imagine when they're given a GUN??? I mean look at all the kids who grew up playing Nintendo!!! They're all trained assassins and evil minded and that's why this country is going to hell! They've thought-manipulated their elders into subconsciously writing the PATRIOT act and then blaming the entire thing on poor Mr. Ashcroft! THE POOR CHILLENS WILL NEVER RECOVER IF YOU MANUFACTURE A GUN!!! JUST ASK SEGA AND NINTENDO OF AMERICA!!! RED PIXELS + MOLDED PLASTIC = KILLING PEOPLE NO MATTER HOW YOU LOOK AT IT!!!
My first inclination is that console gaming has been so limited in it's basic inability to allow for online gaming (e.g. MMORPG's).
6 464_7-31355104-2.html?tag=top
/.'r wrote above, no CEO in his/her right mind will walk away from such a huge (albeit shrinking) market.
But this factor is really becoming a non-issue since the consoles are starting to become Internet-enabled, for this very reason.
see http://reviews.cnet.com/Nintendo_Revolution/4505-
It will really be interesting to see what happens in the future.
I'm personally hoping that the demand for PC gaming goes way down, alone for the fact that if demand goes down, so will the price!
As one astute
I whole-heartedly agree.
http://augustwestproducts.i8.com
My ATI Radeon 9600 cost me about $65.00, People tell me that ATI sucks, but hey if a guys got a tight budget I'm gonna use the parts with the price that work! haven't had any problems yet (computer frying in the background)
GCS/MU d- s: a--- C++ W+++ w+ M-- PS--- PE++ t+ R+ tv b+ DI++ G e- h! !y
And if getting a game approved for Xbox 360 requires that it has mouse-style controls?
If big developer houses like EA would stop producing PC titles indie developers step in into vacuum at once. For now inide producing mostly casual games for low-end PC and retro games. But if there will be vacuum in PC games existing indie developers would scale up and diversify their production, and a lot of game programmmers/designers wonna be would move from mainstream IT industry into games.
Then I remember the computer game industry growing to over $300 million a year, when the console industry was around $3 billion a year, and I thought "Hey a tenth the size, not too bad". Then computer games got to a BILLION dollars a year, when videogames were around $5 to $6 billion a year, and I thought "Wow, bigger than a tenth, and over the billion mark, not shabby at all!" I was getting paid a lot better than in the early 80s, too.
Now computer games are a multi-billion dollar business if I remember right, and videogames are around $10 billion - or is that oft-touted $10 billion number for both combined? I haven't been paying attention. And some guy says "Oh, those multiple billions of dollars in sales might vaporize because consoles are a more cost effective way to play hot 3D games". What planet is he on?
Nobody is going to stop playing card games, backgammon, monopoly, or word games on their PCs - and these are the biggest categories of online games by number of players, though hardcore gamers (and developers) prefer not to realize that. These games don't require advanced 3D hardware either. Nobody's going to stop playing things like The Sims either - best selling PC game of all time, even though it wasn't as demanding of graphics hardware as some.
This guy's argument seems to be more about whether gamers will buy new PCs, or more about buying 3D cards, then whether the over 100 MILLION PC owners (is it over 200 million now? Remember I'm not paying attention) will suddenly stop playing their old favorite games or stop buying $10 and $20 bargain games or stop going to popcap.com or pogo.com (I love Popcap games myself). Of course apart from the monstrously huge installed base of existing PCs, people will continue to buy new PCs to do work, browse the web, write, work on videos or music, etc. etc. And then as long as they have the machines, they'll play some games too. Duh, no brainer.
If he'd said "Will the new consoles lower the amount of money spent on PC gaming significantly" he might have more of a leg to stand on... But suggesting something could "kill" it or even drop it back down to the tens of millions of dollars a year like it was in the 1980s... Just too ludicrous to even consider. But it's a more attention grabbing headline to exaggerate ridiculously like that.
The only reason the PC game industry was so small in the late 70s and early 80s is because only a few million hardcore computer nuts had computers in their home at ALL until the Commodore 64 and Atari 800 came along and changed that. (Tip of the hat to Sinclair Spectrum and BBC Acorn and a few others in the UK.) The home PC audience is no longer that small, and never will be that small again.
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
But how useable is the web on a TV screen? I mean, I tried all that on the dreamcast (last console, maybe only one that supported dial up - all that was available where I live till a month or so ago), and was - shall I say - underwhelmed. Oh, yay, I can see the top left eighth of the webpage!
Let me scroll around the screen trying to read this. While I try and input stuff with the pad that came with the console. And deal with the fact that the console browser doesn't support any current websites (and this was in 2000, right after the dreamcast came out)...
One thing is that console based browsers ought to finally start beating those IE6 only websites with a really large 2x4... If all these predictions of everyone doing their webmail and ebanking via their PS3 or whatever come true (which I really doubt).
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Of course they do, just like all the previous generations did.
Oh, wait.
exactly... as long as there is a possibility to play game on a platform... there will be games available even if its a small 128x128 pixeled phone so its much more a safer bet on PC
crts give more vibrant and true color representations. this is why most color-sensitive design work is performed on crts.
lcds have been improving response times, but usually at the cost of color fidelity. if you look at those 16ms response lcds, you'll find that they are sacrificing in the bits per channel figure [ie they are not true 24 bit devices].
sum.zero
There is no way to count all PCs playing games. First of all, there is a huge percentage that never buys any games, but pirates them
Then why do the publishers care about such numbers? Someone who pirates the game isn't buying their games, and so they don't count as part of the market. Game developers are not going to target the PC because of all the pirates, in fact the opposite is more likely true.
HL2 (arguably, the best game ever) would not be possible without great sactifices in graphic detail on the XBOX or the PS2 or the GC.
So you're saying that the 'greatest game ever' relies almost entirely on its graphics? Whatever happened to playability? If you take the graphics away from a game and it ceases to work as a game, then it's hardly the best game ever is it?
Every time a new console comes out that question is asked, and everytime the PC keeps right on ticking... ...move along, there's nothing to see here.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
Well I run X in 640x448. I could go higher with a SoG monitor or DTV. Yeah, theres scrolling but I have a mouse, with a wheel. :-) It's basically just like browsing on "PC" only with lower resolution
As for site compatibility, I've got current FireFox and Mozilla too, no problem there. (except for Flash)
PC Games have been the biggest driver of technology that eventually ends up in the consoles. When the PS3 comes out it will still not hold a candle to graphics that will be possible on the fastest PC of that time, the consoles will always be chasing behind the technology available on the PC. I have been hearing the "PC is dead" cry for the last ten years and I confidently predict that people will still be yelling it when the PS5 or PS6 comes out. There will always be those that will pay $1000 for a videocard so the PC will always be the cutting edge game platform.
I'm confused as to why this is viewed as an either/or situation. One isn't forced into buying a console or a gaming PC. Many people have both, and I see no reason why this wouldn't continue in the future. In fact, I wonder how many people with a current-gen console *don't* have a reasonably decent PC for games as well?
And what demographic groups do they think are currently buying consoles? I'd bet 75% of console sales in the US is to that same 18-34 demographic -- a group to which I (sadly) no longer belong...
8 x the comments compared the article below it dealing with helping the childres - who, if you didn't know, are our furure
heh.
I will proably never buy a console:
- I hate those fucking little tiny joypad thingies
- Who the hell wants to download crappy amateur porn to their television sets, and how the hell can you use perl scripts to scrape it all in?
- I've yet to see a console feature "Clippy."
I mean, really.
s'wut i sed.
Anyone else find this...? Playing Halo on X-box took a friend of mine over a month to complete.. when i had a bash with it, I found that it was difficult to target using the keypad. Now.. being a PC gamer, I brought the game which and ran it on my comp, which is still running a geforce 2 MX 400 incidently, and I finished the game in 3 days, playing it in the evening. The huge difference was targeting, I found that on X-Box i was lucky to hit the enemy, while on PC the mouse is so accurate i could shoot through the little gap in the aliens shields. Maybe console players don't know the difference because they havent used PC, but i thought it was pretty cumbersome playing on console. Ive had the same card for 5 years, and im about ready to upgrade to something that can run the latest, because my card wont run the likes of doom 3, but its lasted me through a hell of a lot of games..
Duh - the PC gaming industry is not trying to compete in that market. It is its own market.
Mark my comments (and I did have some dumb statements) as being about the market for PC games. I know that my friends are not the universe and I know a couple of hardcore PC gamers. But in college the difference between the PC and the Super was light-years. The difference between GT4 and PC racing games isn't that apparent, and that's mostly a matter of economics, not hardware!
MMORPG's are staying on the PC, and if the developers could make 50 of these and sell all of their subscriptions, they would. But the market isn't that large, see: Motor City, Dragon Empires, Sims Online, etc.
Your reasons why PC gaming is fine (the first 4 reasons anyway) is also why developers are abandoning the PC. Rethink it from the business perspective. $500 computers and cheap games are the problem, not the solution. Without licensing fees, the hardware maker isn't as much, the software makers aren't paid as much (and deal with MORE piracy, though of course consoles have that problem, too, my mistake).
I also wanted to say that M$ originally SAID they were bringing out the XBOX to encourage PC games to be developed (so they admitted the problem years ago!) and now are switching to an IBM architecture, basically admitting they are more serious about this and that the PC-compatible architecture of the first XBOX was a problem. So there will always be PC games, but the golden era is over, and the A-List titles are starting to thin out. Note that M$ stopped developing sports titles for the PC after the XBox started (it didn't hurt that they sucked, but since when did that stop them?).
Buy a console for £300 guarenteed to load every game you put into it and look exaclty like it did on the box, start playing within a few minutes and be sure that this is going to be the fact for the next 3 years. OR . Buy a PC, spend £200 on a graphics card alone. put game in wait half an hour while it installs, spend 15 minutes configuring controls. 15 minutes configuring graphics start game only to find it looks nothing like it did on the box, rip out £200 graphics card, buy £300 graphics card. Marvel as the game now looks like it does on the box until your computer crashes. Spend the next six months playing game (in between periodic crashes). buy new game after 6 months find it looks nothing like it did on the box. Rip out £300 graphics card (now worth £150) buy new £400 graphics card, Rinse and Repeat.