PC Games Giant Rouses From Slumber

An anonymous reader writes "The Rocky Mountain news has a piece up looking at the revival of PC gaming." From the article: "'PC gaming used to take up the entire store,' said Ken Levine, president and creative director for Irrational Games. 'Now PC gaming get's a tiny little shelf. Literally you have a fraction of the shelf space.' So which is it for the future of PC gaming? Is it a dinosaur marching toward the tar pits or a sleeping giant ready to wake and reclaim its past glory? The industry's top advocates say there are plenty of problems keeping PC gaming down - but just as much potential that portend its inevitable rebirth."

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[American AC in Paris]

"Now PC gaming get's a tiny little shelf. Literally you have a fraction of the shelf space."

The day that PC games do not literally have a fraction of the shelf space in a store is the day the universe faces some serious, serious issues.

"Shelf space" is obsolete

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

"Shelf space" is obsolete - the last few computer games I bought were 100% pure electrons. (I paid online too, of course, before downloading.) The "shelf space" battle will always tilt toward the console-playing, Best-Buy-shopping, mouth-breathing masses. Show me "units sold" or "revenue per unit" and I'll pay more attention.

Re:"Shelf space" is obsolete

[hal9000(jr)]

The "shelf space" battle will always tilt toward the console-playing, Best-Buy-shopping, mouth-breathing masses.

Not to be a dinosaur, but in the last 20 years, I have seen size of PC games shelf space cycle at least twice. The last big swell was when PC were selling like hot cakes a few years ago. I'd go into EB or even Walmart and somewhere like 75% of the shelf space was devoted to PC games. I think the problem now is that people aren't turning thier PC's as fast as they the "industry" thought they would. In addition, alot of modern games require some serious hardware like sound and viddeo cards that aren't always installed on units. So people don't buy the games because their machines won't run them. Christ, I have a pretty ripping laptop, but I can't play Quake on it.

Really?

[mwheeler01]

When you have great games like FEAR or Civ IV or HL2 or Battlefield 2 still being produced, you can hardly say that PC games are on the way out. I don't buy the argument that if you're providing less and less shelf space for a product that the product itself is getting marginalized. If customers know it's there they'll seek it out and grab at it. I think the shrinking shelf space is a symptom of pressure to push crappy console games from EA or the fact that the used console games market is where games stores are really making their money and reselling PC games is sort of an area that most retailers would rather tread lightly in if at all.

Take a look at Walmart. Walmart deals in small margins anyway so they don't care what you buy as long as you're buying. They give just as much shelf space to PC games as they do the each of the major consoles.

Part of the Problem

[MorderVonAllem]

I think part of the problem is that whenever I go into Fry's Electronics (i used to work there), there are 100's of games on the shelf. It's hard to weed out the ones that might be interesting to you.

Also, most of the video games come in fairly large packaging with just a CD. Even the manuals are now in PDF format on the CD. Give me a break. I wanna hold it in my hand and read it.

Third. Most games only make like 50 cents to a couple bucks profit per game, when stuff like stuffed animals (fry's electronics sells them in the same area) make probably 800%-1000% profit. Not much incentive to give shelf space to a product that doesn't make you that much money in the first place.

From TFA

[CoderBob]

He points to piracy as a chief culprit in the sales drop. He says developers need to first find ways to make people pay. "What developers and publishers need to do is come up with distribution plans and new copy protection plans," he said. "When you see a game that requires you to be online to play, people can't steal that game."

It's also a good way to get people to not play your game. It's always the "big bad pirates" who are stealing money from the game manufacturers. The industry doesn't want to admit that they're churning out a lof of junk lately, so let's jump on the bandwagon of "It's those damn pirate kids" to save face.

I haven't bought a new PC game in about a year (I've purchased a couple "older" games now that they're in the <$20 market)- and I haven't pirated any, either. I've bought console games, though. When the PC market comes out with something that's worth playing, I'll probably be first in line. Where are the X-Coms, or the RTSes that actually break new ground? Where are the adventure games with their beautiful story arcs? Hell, Deus Ex was a phenonmenal game, and I could see a variation on that (new story, but a similar engine) selling well- something that actually draws the player in. What about stuff like Dungeon Keeper? That game was a blast, it spawned a sequel- and then dropped off the face of the earth. What about Worm- before the 3D crap that made it so much more irritating to play? What about the Baldur's Gate-style RPGs? Hell, Icewind Dale was somewhere between Diablo and BG, and that game was loads of fun. It had it's own feel to it, even though the interface was almost an exact copy of BG.

It's sad that the days of off-the-wall games that sucked a gamer in seem to be gone in the PC World. Instead we get direct sequels that don't offer much more than a smoother engine or prettier graphics. We don't get the stuff that either offers an incredible story or that brings about something "new". And as the gaming market ages, that's going to keep being a problem- to keep the "veteran" gamers around, they're going to have to draw them in with something that they haven't seen before.

Irrational Games, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

PC gaming may not be dead, but when the idiots at Irrational put Starforce on their game, they're helping to kill it.

Re:Is Piracy really the #1 problem?

[ivan256]

I think the complaints about piracy are actually developers being optimistic that there is actually somebody out there running their buggy pieces of trash.

Huh?

[Evangelion]

They've released another game since I bought WoW?

Re:PC Games have one big problem...

[The_reformant]

In the other hand on a console if you hit a bug your completely screwed. I played morrowind on the xbox and a flaw in one of the quests resulted in a death sentence incurred for completeing one of the quests not being lifted on completion. The result meant that i couldn't safely enter about a third of the cities in the game making it pretty much a waste of time.

This was a known bug in the PC version which was patched and could be addressed in a non-patched copy using the command console but unfortunately those with the xbox version were left screwed.