Slashdot Mirror
PC Game Market 'Becoming A Niche'?
simoniker writes "Gamasutra has quizzed game analysts from Wedbush Morgan, Screen Digest and DFC Intelligence on the state of the PC game biz, with thought-provoking results. From Michael Pachter's comments: 'The PC games market is becoming a niche, substantial in size, but a niche nonetheless.' David Cole also notes: 'When I first started covering the game industry back in 1994, the general consensus was PC games would dominate the market and console systems were doomed.' What changed?" How do you think Microsoft's recent push to treat the PC as the 'fourth console' will affect things?
In the gaming industry, the platform that hosts World of Warcraft and its seven million subscribers is a niche market?
That's the point though... the top end is almost always a niche market. Ferarris cater to a niche market of people want the highest-end sports car, 65" plasma HDTVs cater to the niche high-end home theater market, and PC games cater to the niche high-end hardcore gamer market.
"In the gaming industry, the platform that hosts World of Warcraft and its seven million subscribers is a niche market?"
You do know 7 million subscribers is less than the number of copies Blizzard has sold with Diablo2 and with Starcraft right?
PC's are becoming a niche market - for MMORPG's. Everything else to this point seems better fit for a console.
The number of dollars saved from having to test and develop for endless combinations of CPU/GPU/OS/etc is enormous. That extra time/money is spent enhancing the game rather than just making it work.
With the constant push for fancier and fancier graphics, the push for new hardware keeps people from really getting into gaming on PCs. There are PC gamers, and then there's people who play old games and puzzle games. Sure, you can drop your graphics down a notch and play some of the newest games, but even then they don't often work (and often the graphics that are reduced truly affect the gameplay or ambience, making the game no longer all that fun).
We just had a super-cheesy "article" about why consoles are better, but regardless of subjectivity, it's very true that with consoles people only need to buy one thing, and then are free to play any game for that system. People aren't afraid of gaming on consoles. If Microsoft succeeds in making Vista a "stable target" for game development, with any game that's "Vista-approved" playable to high standards, then I think it could come back. But playing with a mouse/kb is limiting as well, and the gamepad market is all but extinct. If nothing major changes, then PC gaming will likely remain a niche for the forseeable future.
I swear every time this clown opens his moouth, I feel the urge to punch things.
As clueless as he always is, I'm sure he is bound to have heard of World of Warcraft, the most successful video game on any platform, ever.
Niche my ass.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Consoles only seem ahead for most games. But take a look at Oblivion, which clearly looks better on PC than the 360, even though it still looks pretty good on the 360.
The main difference here, thus my preference for the PC version, is the modding. There's so many worthwhile mods out there now that there is no way i could play the vanilla game ever again. If more games were to value the aftermarket effect of moddable games, they'd certainly see sales a year or more after the game first came out. Just look at CounterStrike!
What I find funny is that every time I hear a report that "PC is a smaller gaming market than consoles", they are comparing the PC gaming market to all the current-gen consoles combined. That's hardly fair, since consoles are completely incompatable with each other and shouldn't be lumped into the same market.
Now, compare the PC market to just the XBox 360 market, or to just the PS2 market...and suddenly it's not a niche at all. It's an alternative.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
Which pretty much sums up the console versus PC debate. But that's not what this article was about.
They asked three industry analysts, three questions:
- Is the PC Game industry being marginalized?
- Are consoles an alternative to Piracy?
- Will Microsoft help PC Gaming? Will Vista help PC gaming?
They all seem to agree that spending on PC games will experience decline. Yet none of them seem to reliably explain why. One of them completely fudged all three of the questions.The Realities of Online Digital Media
iTunes. People were "obtaining" mp3's back in 1996. But it wasn't until last year that a storefront was erected, with the necessary legal and contractual agreements, to actually go and purchase a piece of digital music online. Media organizations are among the most stolidly conservative entities in the business world, the reason is because they are shit-scared. Why? Well, it's like how Esther Dyson put it : "The gatekeepers...which are dependant on putting content into inefficient containers...are going to lose."
Big game companies are no different than other big media, having built their entire businesses around the processes and tools that made their products yesterday. New stuff (ie innovation), makes them nervous. Which is why we don't see a lot of radical entertainment coming into mainstream gaming.
Contrary to doomsayers, I've noticed that there is a literal explosion in gaming (particularly online), in which the PC is the central delivery platform. MMOGs. Simple, easy-to-run downloadable casual games. Browser-based games. Digital distribution (from Game Tunnel to Manifesto to Steam and everything in between). The consoles can not do any of these things (they will one day, but right now they're not stealing anyones cake when speaking about online games).
Even WoW has greatly expanded the online gaming market to include people who have literally never played a game online before in their lives. The trend is now unstoppable. Where are they going to go when the lustre of Epic grinding has faded away? They'll try new games. What about the casual gamers (meaning, your grandma)? Is the ad revenue generated by casual gaming portal sites added into the spreadsheets of the PC gaming industry?
Note that not one of the above examples spells monetary goodness for retail stores. But that's the nature of digital media - the suppliers who put stuff on shelves are eventually going to lose and will smartly move to service-based and value-added outlets.
Not Piracy, it's Standardization
Yes modded consoles really stop piracy. Prepare for DEATH when the latest consoles get hacked.
Consoles are less about piracy than they are about a standardized implementation base, which reduces the headaches of supporting a divergent hardware base. This is where the console is vastly superior to the PC. This is where costs are lowered in the release phase of a game (meaning, technical support and patching), and filtered back into the development phase of the game.
Vista
Perhaps, Microsoft will help PC gaming. A greater emphasis on the OS-level can do nothing but achieve this. I don't think the XNA-XBLA route will be particularly significant for AAA, but the casual space should benefit.
A good reason that Microsoft just recently pushed XBLA + XNA for indies is because they control the tools, the media and the channel. They can afford to grab the mindshare because they'll profit from it any way you slice it up. More developers mean more games. More games mean more consoles. It's win-win for them.
Six years ago people were ringing the bell for the PC's demise. Three years ago, yet again. Two...One...oh whoops, the PC is still here. It's all about the games, and how we want to play them. Right now, consoles and PCs seem to make their respective audiences very happy.
Now, if you're really suggesting for a moment that PC gaming is more complicated than it used to be, I might give you that. My gamecube hasn't managed to confuse me too much, so I really don't play PC games any more...
I think you're confused. Games are getting worse across the board. The barrier for entry into "the games market" used to be a few days of BASIC instruction, and some creativity. Now it requires a few hundred-thousand dollars and an expert team, and some of the biggest most successful games these days have budgets that are millions of dollars.
I think we're finding that when it costs so much to even try to make a game, most studios simply put their money where it's already been proven- where they know exactly what kind of return they're going to get.
Really: with less people are trying than ever, did you really expect games to get better?
I must of been too busy playing FPS, RTS, and MMO's to realize that PC gaming is now a niche market.
PC offers a wider range of choice.
The problem is that consoles offer better bang for the buck.
You can spend $4000 and get an incredible PC capable of absolutely wonderful graphics. You can spend $200 and get something barely capable of running an average game. Or you spend $800 for an average setup that allows you to play at very nice, acceptable though not incredible level. Or you spend $400 and get a console capable of the same level as your $800 setup. PC is a pretty smooth performance-price curve. The console is a single point - but located quite a bit below that curve.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2