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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?
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 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.
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?
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.
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!
Someone needs to write a unique and really great game that is only available for Linux.
Commercial companies would never do that, as they'd be shooting themselves in the foot profit-wise, and most private games won't stand up to the quality or scope of commercial games.
Granted, simple games can be really great, but they're also easily copied and aren't likely to convert anybody in the first place.
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.
to get console (640x480) graphics, you can use a frickin on-board vga chipset.
... hi bingo
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.
Anyone who paid US$400 for a graphics card to play Half-Life 2 is a complete sucker.
Bear in mind that for some people that doesn't even make a scratch on their monthly disposable income.
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
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...
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)
I wanted to reply to this specifically because HDTV was mentioned which is becoming more and more of a requirement to get the great visual quality from these new console systems/games. PC games are not going to get replaced by consoles anytime soon because of a number of reasons, but one reason is that people need to upgrade their TVs to something a hell of a lot more expensive (HDTV) to get the picture quality that you can get on a fairly cheap monitor...
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
You hit it spot on.
Trying to lump "gaming" together as a single market is an extremely shortsighted and naive view. There are at least two "very different" types of gaming.
The trend in console games is to optimize for graphics. For certain types of games this is absolutely perfect. FPS, Racing, one on one fights, etc.
For Strategy games, (MMO)RPGs, RTS etc the gating factor is the game's decision making AI rather than the ability to render graphics. The PC hardware is optimized to maximize processor cycles, which is more suited toward neural nets and decision trees.
One other note: As long as people have PCs, there will be a PC gaming market. I need a PC for other reasons, and since I have one, I see NO reason to spring the $$$ to buy a console. If the console could do everything my PC can, then I might consider the switch.
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
The problem with that is, it doesnt sell the maximum number of games. That's where the profit is.
The more consoles out there, the more games can be sold when they come out. It's in the munfacturer's interest to sell as many consoles as fast as they can produce them to get the games sales.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
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.
I guess the next gen of consoles having standard USB ports will probably help the adoption of support for these types of input.
The only sad part of that is the possiblilty that you're going to have to keep up with the best of devices in order to compete if you do online multiplayer. One of the nicer aspects to playing Halo 2 on Live is that you can be pretty sure that everyone is on the same playing field.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
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. -
So, you need a special TV or monitor for a console to become good for some games. And then, as others have mentioned, you need to plug a keyboard and mouse for some other games. In the end, the difference between a console and a PC is exactly what?
Basic consoles have two advantages over PCs: they are cheap and small. They have several disadvantages: poor screen resolution on standard TVs, restricted choice of input devices, do not run non-gaming software. If you start improving a console to eliminate these disadvantages it becomes a PC. My bet is that consoles and PCs will continue to coexist for a long time.
Of course, there are some titles that aren't available in PC versions, but there are also titles that aren't available for every console as well. If you want to be able to play every game available in the market then a console is not enough, you need to have one console of each model.
Let's see you console do full 1080i on a $100 TV.
Even $5K TV will only give you 1380x780 or something.
Seen as a package High Def TV + console vs PC , PC is cheaper even with a $400 card.
And you STILL need to get a PC at home, even after you paid for a console and its overpriced games.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
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.
Why? If I'm playing a game on my PC, I don't want to wait for a reboot to be able to play the game. Unless you can reboot in a matter of seconds (just shutting down Windows and the BIOS POST takes longer than that), it's too long. Besides, you've just removed one of the few benefits left to PC gaming -- you can use the machine to do other things. I may not leave Word open while playing Far Cry, but I'll certainly leave IE running. Unless your PC is specially engineered, it's never going to reboot as quickly as a console (and if it does, why would you buy a $1000 PC when you could buy a $300 console)?
You're not quite right on the console advantage. Sure, console games generally get to provide their own run-time environment, but that's not the win. The biggest benefit a console provides is a standard hardware environment. Even if you have a standard run-time, you'll still have to deal with ambiguous hardware on a PC. What kind of video card, CPU, RAM do you have? I can almost guarantee mine will be different than yours. PC game developers have to test against that, regardless of the run-time environment (really, when was the last time you saw a game fail due to incompatible library versions? Maybe drivers, but I don't think I've ever seen library versioning problems). A live CD/DVD environment can't fix hardware ambiguity.
The "patch it later" attitude is a significant cause of the decline of PC gaming.
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.
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
One other note: As long as people have PCs, there will be a PC gaming market. I need a PC for other reasons, and since I have one, I see NO reason to spring the $$$ to buy a console.
As well, there are those of us who, believe it or not, don't have TVs. I have a 21-inch LCD which is more than adequate for watching movies, playing games, or doing just about anything else. As there is absolutely nothing on television that I consider worth adding to my life*, I have zero need for a crappy 620x480px television for playing games.
If the console could do everything my PC can, then I might consider the switch.
If the console could do everything the PC can do, then it would be a PC.
<rant>
* One of the neatest experiences I've had has been the [almost] complete removal of advertisements from my life. I live in Vermont (were we don't allow billboards), don't have (or otherwise watch) TV, use Ad-Block to remove Web-Ads, and only listen to CDs, college radio, or NPR. As such, then only advertising I see on a weekly basis is that in magazines and newspapers.
What was most shocking to me was not the lack of advertisements (I honestly didn't notice they were gone for 5 years), but rather -- having become re-sensitized over years -- how insulting advertisements seem when confronted with them again while traveling/visiting friends.
All advertisements are trying to sell you their product, implying that your life would be better were you to buy their product. While this may seem benign (and may be with simple notifications such as, "Joe's pizza: opening Saturday"), the flip-side is that they are implying that your life is not full/rich/rewarding and that their product can make it so.
Think about that one for a minute. It seems to say that the difference between an an un-fulfilling life and a fulfilling one is the advertised product. If my dreams, goals, career, family, friends, etc couldn't make my life fulfilled, but this item can then they must be worth roughly the same. If this wasn't the implication (lets say them implication was that friends are a hundred times more valuable than items), then I should quit wasting my money and just go out and make one new friend every year.
So, if this advertisement implies that I will be fulfilled having purchased something, then they are in effect implying a monetary value on the rest of my life. I am insulted that anyone would tell me that the worth of even a single family member is as little as that of a Ferrari (and you don't see many advertisements for Ferraris).
</rant>
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers