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PC Gaming Alive and Dominant
An anonymous reader writes "Ars reports on a panel at PAX East which delved into the strength of the PC as a platform for games, and what its future looks like. The outlook is positive: 'Even as major computer OEMs produce numbers showing falling sales, the PC as a platform (and especially a gaming platform) actually shows strong aggregate growth.' The panelists said that while consoles get a lot of the headlines, the PC platform remains the only and/or best option for a lot of developers and gamers. They briefly addressed piracy, as well: 'Piracy, [Matt Higby] said, is an availability and distribution problem. The more games are crowdfunded and digitally delivered and the less a "store" figures into buying games, the less of a problem piracy becomes. [Chris Roberts] was quick to agree, and he noted that the shift to digital distribution also helps the developers make more money — they ostensibly don't have everyone along the way from retailers to publishers to distributors taking their cut from the sale.'"
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The console makers stopped focusing on making it a game machine, instead trying to make an 'entertainment center.' If you want to push the envelope in graphics, you need to go to the PC.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
After years of reports that PC gaming is dead while it was clearly booming, should we take this as a sign that it's finally on the decline?
...Maybe not.
big, coordinated marketing efforts. PC has no such coordination. Steam could try to do that, and I think that will still be the biggest contribution of the Steam Machines. Quite ironic if you think, as I do, that the Steam Machine effort seems quite uncoordinated nowadays.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
Most people who I know that are PC gamers are generally pretty dedicated. They have special keyboard, mice, monitors, routers, network providers, etc. This is isn't even talking about their machines. Minimally they have a $200 video card if not pushing past $500. Then there are the special motherboard, overclocking, crazy cooling systems, even the glowy bits.
That all said, they are not building these systems to play tetris. They are going to get the latest and greatest games as fast as they come out. Then if the game is good they are going to play the crap out of that game.
What probably distinguishes this market from the console market is that gamers typically are chosey about their games. They aren't getting these games as gifts. They are looking at the reviews and the opinions of their friends. Thus the crappy games that typically are pumped out to exploit the fans of various blockbusters (which are 90%+ crap) just won't get much traction in this market. Thus a bomb is probably a total bomb in the PC world whereas there are going to be grandparents, fanbois, and parents who get suckered into buying the latest Harry Potter movie for their little Harry Potter fans.
This would apply all the way down to the bargain bin. Steam has a bit of a bargain bin but I suspect that a Playstation bargain bin at Walmart will do far better than the same bargain bin for PC games.
Quite simply to have a halfway decent gaming rig you are plunking down a minimum of $1200 with many doing a multiple of that. Thus these are people who are proven willing buyers.
And then there is Goat Simulator....
I'll make sure to let the 7,518,856 other people I play Dota 2 with every month know (that number from just loading the game and looking at the unique monthly players figure).
That is, if I can get their attention while they're all trying to be the next team to win $1m in cash.
(Related aside: check out Valve's Free to Play documentary; it's a great watch for some insight into the lives of professional gamers.)
This story is BS. "Crowdfunding", early access and F2P are killing gaming. Developers have learned that they no longer have to complete a game. "Game development" is no longer something you do in order to make a game, it's something you do in order to make your next game, which is also never completed. Why would you ever actually deliver a complete game experience when you can charge $20 and up for a practically empty game engine and a slick trailer?
And don't get me started on F2P games. They're creepy, sad and even the best of them leave you empty. The only grand vision is, "Get a bunch of people playing and hope there are enough 14 year-olds with the password to their parents PayPal account to make it pay. Enjoy the kickstarter money and move on to the next project.
The last 2 years have been the worst for PC gaming since I started playing games on my Commodore 64. I can count the number of actual AAA titles in the past 2 years worthy of the name on one hand.
And console players shouldn't get smug. You're in the same boat. You want to pay $60 for six hours of gameplay? How many hours did you pour into the games of the past? Corporate gaming has figured out that like cereal, you can make a bunch of money charging the same price for a shrinking product. It's why consoles are being sold more for their "entertainment center" features (really a "consumption center") than for the possibility of playing a continual stream of first-rate games for them.
The platforms are fine. It's the gaming industry that is moribund, getting fat and lazy on an increasingly locked-in income stream that has nothing to do with good games.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There are some good info graphics on actual data here. PC has 51% of the playtime marketshare and consoles only have 30%. http://www.superdataresearch.c...
Free to play games are where the big money is now. League of Legends made $624 million in revenue in 2013. They even gave out $14.3 Million in tournament prize money.
Crossfire (a counter-strike clone popular outside the USA) had the most revenue and made almost a billion dollars in revenue last year.
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It is a platform by itself, sure. There are games only available on Steam. But there is no marketing effort there. I cannot say for ads on the Internet overall because I use AdBlock, but I don't see Steam trying to grab attention of gaming media. I don't live in the US but I'm could guess that Steam does not use TV ads just as MS and Sony does. Their public is on another place already. Sure they get a lot of attention on the Internet because they matter a LOT, but nowadays they don't need to try to get attention. A simple Gabe's sneeze sends ripples through the entire PC gaming community right away. I think the difference between Steam and hardware platforms is that a console adds an entirely new capability to a television. Steam depends on an already present computer, and for some reason people likes to play in front of a television, that is usually far away from computers. To make Steam more like a console they made the Steam Machines. That is the entire point of the Machine, even if they seem quite lost about it.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
To not mention the endless QTEs that are meant to pretend the player is playing the game
I've always wondered why these "press X to not die" scenes continue to be named after QuickTime even on non-Apple platforms.
Flight sims? better with a keyboard and mouse instead of a HOTAS? You're bugnut fucking crazy. You also just dismiss Super Mario out of hand as a worthwhile game experience so, I don't know what to make of that. I can't sleep, so here goes a screed.
The overall point you're missing is that not all games are designed to be played with a pointing device. Music games SUCK on a keyboard. Fighting Games suck on a keyboard. Mech and Flight/Space sims suck on keyboard. Puzzle games can make wonderful use of a joypad.
Having to design a game where the guaranteed input device is a keyboard and mouse means you're designing games that are limited by the limitations of keyboards and mice. Games like Virtual On and Katamari Damashii don't work on mice or keyboards. They're designed with control schemes that are clearly NOT KB/M friendly. Beatmania doesn't work on a keyboard and lord knows I've -tried-.
Being able to move in non-discrete increments and move the camera also in non-discrete increments is something you can't do with a mouse and keyboard. Metal Gear works really well on a joypad, for instance. When you're not worried about shooting someone in the face, and worried more about sneaking around? The KB/Mouse combo becomes a liability.
The only games that benefit from a KB/M are games where the camera's fixed and being pixel perfect is an advantage. So RTS and FPS work out very well in those cases.
TPS? TPS games benefits from having the camera be on another non discrete control. MMOs that sit in the third person perspective are a mess of modifier keys that change how the mouse interacts with the UI. How MMO players deal with this is really beyond me. Granted, these games tend to also feature auto-targeting systems so you have one less thing to worry about too...
Game design in the aggregate shouldn't be locked into some soulless orthodoxy where you have to design your game this way or else you'll have players at your door with pitchforks and torches because they don't want to learn how to engage in diverse ways. I mean, games like Senjou No Kizuna just wouldn't work on a KB/M setup.
It's bad enough WASD is what ships standard and rebinding to ESDF means a lot of keys get bounced around(Seriously, who has their hands shifted off the home row? Doesn't anyone touch type anymore?). Heaven forbid you're not using a US style layout and suddenly keys aren't where you expect them to be. Poor French players who have to figure out what to do when games don't support rebinding.
There's this bizarre orthodoxy with you PC gamers. If things aren't exactly the way you demand them to be, everything's terrible and somehow no progress can be made. The only progress we can make is more polygons and more DPI on mice. Clicky keyboards too, make them clickier. more of the same! more of the same! It's ridiculous. I can't stand you people. You're what's wrong with gaming. Console gamers, as a culture, do have their orthodoxy, but it's not this bizarre cult like obsession I see with the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race.
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