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?

Comments

Re:You're kidding, right?

[twistedsymphony]

Yeah, I don't think it's so much a niche market as it's a SILENT market. Meaning a whole lot of the people who game on PC don't really consider themselves gamers, they don't camp out at Best Buy for the latest releases, they don't bombard message boards about their hobby. They'll pickup something that looks fun while they're out shopping for other things, or download something and play it in their spare time.

You can't track sales of PCs that get used for gaming like you can consoles that get used for gaming... and the number of games available for the PC dilutes the market so you don't get clear winners like you do on a console with only a fraction of the library. PC games have a lot more staying power too. PC gamers are likely to buy WoW or EVE and be good for the next 6 months to a year, unlike console gamers who buy a gamer or two every month (because that's about how long most of them last). Not to mention the mod community adds to the longevity of a PC game's life.

I wouldn't call PC games a niche market... PC gamers are just a DIFFERENT market, the gamers who play there have different tastes and attitudes towards gaming and the machines are good at running different types of games. The back and forth is pretty pointless because neither platform is going anywhere anytime soon.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[richdun]

HD? Surround sound? Do you friends realize PC gaming has been pushing high res and surround sound for years? Sure, poly counts aren't always enough to make things look like real life, but my two year old machine can still crank out just about anything on my 20" wide monitor (1680 x 1050...so 10 lines short of HD, whatever) and optically connected DTS/Dolby Digital surround sound.

Re:Market

[thebdj]

You do know 7 million subscribers is less than the number of copies Blizzard has sold with Diablo2 and with Starcraft right?
I call partial BS. I will give you Starcraft and the 9 million copies. The numbers here may be a bit old, but you will have a hard time, without a valid updated sales number, proving that they managed to sell another 3 million copies of D2. Don't forget this platform also has The Sims at nearly 20 million. I would hardly call this a niche market yet.

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.
I call BIG BS on this one. I do not think there is nearly as much combination testing as you think. Also, this notion they are spending more time and money to enhance the game is laughable. One of the biggest complaints about the industry has been a repetition of gameplay with only graphics getting better. Don't forget your PC has more storage for a) better graphics, b) more levels, and c) more gameplay/extras. I do not buy this notion that less testing somehow equals more work on the game. Remeber for PC, you have an unlimited beta community. You can do pre-release betas and thanks to the patching (which apparently consoles are slowly catching onto) you can fix the bugs you didn't catch in Betas.

People are just bad at math.

[Kirin Fenrir]

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.