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PC Gaming Declared Not Dead Again
We've reported once or twice on stories declaring the end of or salvation for PC Gaming. Today, Next Generation weights in on the latter, declaring PC Gaming is Not Dead Yet. From the article: "Relying on NPD's number blinds one to the ongoing evolution of PC game distribution. The key insight, as summarized in a new report from IM Consulting (the market-intelligence unit at Ignited Minds), is that 'the PC game software market is much more robust than a cursory glance at the data suggests...(our analysis) becomes a call to publishers to recognize that the PC market can be a very lucrative and profitable place to publish, if the games are done properly in the right genres.'" Ie: Make the right casual game or a hit MMOG and you can print money.
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Note: if casual gaming and MMOs are the real breadwinners, than why is the mainstay of PC gaming the multi-million-dollar story-driven FPS game? Why is the industry trapped in an endless cycle of repeating Half-Life?
This is ridiculous. These so-called experts are full of it. If anything, it's console gaming that's starting on it's path to extinction. First of all, those systems are slowly turning into PCs. Secondly, they have this desire to appeal to non-gamers, which is a market for more accessable via PCs. A non-gamer is far more likely to spend $40-$50 on a PC game than they ever would be to spend $200+ and another $50-$60 for the game. Third, computers are far more pervasive than consoles and I don't see that every changing.
In fact, the main reason consoles have been sustainable thus far is because of all the effort the Japanese gaming industry has put into them. The glory days of consoles are fading. The PC has demonstrated itself a viable platform for gaming long ago. Consoles no longer have any hope of matching a PC's performance, at least not getting dramatically more expensive.
I predict what we will see at some point is a real computing appliance, something with a simplified interface, but powerful enough that the average user can do everything he or she needs, and without needing to deal with the nuisance of installations and whatnot. They can pretty much drop in whatever media the computer uses and game just as easily as they would browse the internet.
The only form of console gaming I expect to persist is portable gaming, and we'll see what form that takes as phones, PDAs and laptops slowly evolve. I don't even see how this is something that can be argued; what doubt is there that PC gaming is thriving? Didn't WoW just hit 5 million subscribers worldwide?