Slashdot Mirror
PC Gaming Isn't Going Anywhere
Grimrod writes "Dave Long, one of the editors of GamerDad, has a unique look at the PC as a game platform and how it gets forgotten among the constant barrage of console gunfire in his latest Long Shot column. From the article, 'It might never be like 1998 again on the computer, the year that PC gaming was probably at its very peak, but it's far better than analysts and even armchair soothsayers would have you believe. I got caught up in the hype myself to a certain extent. I started to believe I didn't need the computer for games. Now that I'm back on the inside with current hardware, I realize again how dumb that idea was.'"
PC gaming is where you go if you aren't good enough to land a console publishing deal.
The era of the home computer/workstation is coming to an end. The future growth is and will continue to be in small media devices. Playstations,TiVos,MP3 players,Cellphones,etc.
There will be many indignant posts from the usual crowd of hardcore dudes in their twenties whose entire gaming world revolves around the x86 peecee. They take themselves very seriously. Unfortuneately, the rest of the game development world doesn't.
The only real growth area for the x86 peecee market is MMORPGs. With a few exceptions like some big EA games, Id and Valve stuff, the x86 market is really little more than a mass of diehard Microsoft developers putting out an endless stream of 20k selling titles.
Peecee gaming isn't really going anywhere, it will continue to shrink and become less and less relevant over time. There will of course still be thousands and thousands of noname DirectX dev houses and guys frankensteining together their own spin on the fps or rts game from NVidia code and leaked game engines sources, but they are becoming like ham radio operators. A quaint throwback to a past era.