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Is PC Gaming Set For a Comeback?
An anonymous reader writes "A combination of factors like console penetration, piracy, and the huge inherent variability in PC hardware setups have made the PC a third-class citizen for many gaming genres, especially the kind of high-adrenaline action games that were once the PC's bread and butter. Epic is a company that has been vocal in its shift toward consoles, with many controversial statements dropped over the years in reference to piracy being the reason. So it was with some surprise that we noted Epic's VP, Mark Rein, pointing out recently that the PC is as important as ever. Why the turnaround? This article suggests that the extended length of the current console generation will drive some developers back to the PC as new games push up against hardware limits."
Steam is definitely PC gaming's main champion.
last week's incredible sales probably moved more games than any other retailer did during the previous 6 months.
Nowadays, most game developers are owned by bottom-line-oriented publishers who prefer consoles over the PC for the reasons listed in the summary. There are very few developers who are enough of hardware geeks to want to push the envelope beyond what consoles can manage -- iD's Doom 3 and Crytek's Crysis are the only ones I can think of offhand, although both companies have sold out to consoles in recent years. Strategy games and MMOs are still PC-centric due to needing a mouse or dozens of keys; if the standard $200 Xbox 360 came with a mouse and keyboard, PC exclusives would be toast.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It has gotten to the point where I can't just buy a game and install it without having to worry about what kind of malware comes packaged along with it. I've got terabytes of space, so I don't want some capitalistic malware forcing me to put a disk in the drive, so that the disk will get scratched and I will have to buy another copy. I also don't want to have to ask the capitalist pigs for permission to play the games after I have paid for them via on-line activation.
Thus, I have decided to buy all games used from now on, to screw the developers/publishers. The only people I will buy new games from are folks like Frictional Games, who offer native Linux games with no disk-checking or phone-home malware at reasonable prices. I will NOT pay over $20 for a new game.
I'm also willing to buy from www.gog.com, because they don't include capitalistic malware in their games. Many games I want are not available on GOG though, so I buy them used. The publishers are losing money here. No, I don't want to buy your latest shitty un-optimized console port.
Steam proves that the right games sell well on PC.
Steam is a terrific platform and I think it could go a long way towards revitalizing the PC game industry.
Yes, it's DRM. I know someone's going to show up and start yelling about the evils of Steam DRM. It always happens every time somebody mentions Steam. But everything is wrapped in DRM these days, and wishing that it wasn't so is not going to change the world. Sure, we could start boycotting and lobbying and whatever else... But the fact of the matter is that DRM is a part of the game industry these days. And Steam is one of the least-painful forms of DRM out there.
The marketplace is a great way to pick up your games. Buy them on-line and download them. No waiting for boxes to show up. You can even pre-load games before the release date. And you can burn backups of your files, so that you can install them offline later.
Plenty of impulse buys. The lack of physical shelf space means that you can sell stuff on Steam for a lot less than in a brick & mortar store. There's constantly something good for sale for $5.
There's a built-in system of patching, finding network games, finding friends, planning events, achievement, etc. Sure, that's all kind of wasted on a single-player game... But most games include some kind of multiplayer these days. And that's an awful lot of nicely reusable code for anybody looking to implement multiplayer.
And now you've got the ability to use Steam on multiple operating systems. And your games, if supported, will work across multiple operating systems.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
They're selling in spite of (and now because of) folks like me.
Yep, I was one of those haters when the service came out, but I'm a Steam convert. There's just too much to like. Crazy low prices during sales + the almost instant gratification factor = lots of impulse buys. I find myself visiting the steampowered.com site to check out the current deals.
Sure, you won't be lending out discs anymore, but you won't be losing/damaging them either. OTOH, you get easy access to your old games for as long as Steam sticks around (the only possible catch, I suppose).
I'd never played the Mass Effect series before, then saw them on sale on Steam. Picked up ME1 for 5 bucks! (ME2 is currently $24.) That's a LOT of entertainment per $.
What you want is irrelevant; what you've chosen is at hand! - Spock, ST VI
I love PC gaming, but I think it's biggest weakness right now is the confusion created by video card manufacturers that makes it a major research project to decipher which codename/model number is actually good. If they would adopt a simple system of making their cards according to their actual capabilities, like CPUs do, for the most part, they could eliminate the confusion. But I think they actually like the confusion they create. The latest nvidia cards have a wide range, with numbers and names ending in GT, GTX, GTS...the biggest sellers now are in the 200 series, but there are also 300, and 400 series cards out, with GT and GTX versions, and some other random letter codes. They've been doing this a long long time. They should get their act together and stop trying to mislead consumers with confusing model names before some regulatory agency forces them to do it.
Steam is DRM done right - you can move your games from system to system, and if there's any activation limit it's because some loser middleman added more DRM on top of Steam's. Heck, with SteamCloud you saved games follow you from system to system, which is great if you lose a HDD. Sure there's a risk Steam will just stop working on day, but I've lost or damaged far more physical CDs over the years and every game I've ever bought on Steam still works.
Cutting off portions of the user experience at will? Sucks, but consoles now do that too - Live servers are dropping like flies these days. If you want to sell a Steam game second-hand, make a Steam account just for that game, and sell the account. I buy most of my Steam games at the $5-$9 price range, so I couldn't care less about my ability to resell them.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Their sale is the reason why I've purchased about 8 games in the last few days whereas I prefer to pirate usually. Christ, I even bought games I already pirated that I felt were worth paying for. I gave developers money based off of my preference to see them create more material. I'd like to point to myself as a good example as to why the price curve is too high for video games. I'm not spending 60 bucks (takes over 6 hours to make on my measly wage) on a video game that I'm unsure of! Am I supposed to be an idiot or something!?
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
I don't think I'm trying to imply a moral high ground. I'm merely alluding to the fact that the video game market could probably find a peak in their price curve somewhere on the lower end. People have limited budgets and by charging more companies are requiring consumers to minimize the number of available choices they can make. It was reported here not long ago that EA spends 60% of their budget on marketing. If new games cost only 30 dollars, which would trim the budget more than reasonable but work with me here, people could buy twice as many games. :o It would also be easier to get the margin in terms of percentage higher. This would allow for more profit. I feel that this is all so because the gaming world has reached market saturation. So, if it's saturated and users suddenly become able to pick more options, with higher margins, that equals more money flying into the companies' wallets. I'm just surprised some publishers don't go trying to undercut their competition by charging a better price and producing a similar product.
;)
I'd also like to point out that many pirates pirate because they feel the price of the game is set too high to purchase and would purchase it at some lower price point that the consumer feels is reasonable. If companies could accurately price things according to how much people would pay, there would be absolutely no problems with piracy as everyone else wouldn't have paid shit for it anyway.
Sorry about the long response. It's a waken'bake kinda morning.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
You appear to be confusing a UDK license agreement with an Unreal Engine license agreement. UDK is the indie non-source code product. With an Unreal Engine license, you are free to modify the engine source to your heart's content, and most licensees do precisely this. It's also the only license you can get for consoles.
This license costs considerably more than UDK.