SenorBeef:
The degree to which PC gaming is dying is exaggerated. Traditional market analysis and sales numbers don’t account for digital sales, which is becoming more dominant in PC gaming as time goes on. And this is good for the developers and publishers - the games sell at full price but have no shipping/shelf space/production/etc costs. They get more profit per unit sold.
Since the xbox 360 is basically just an underpowered PC coding for both platforms isn’t that hard. They both use DirectX. But the problem is… PCs are years ahead of consoles now in terms of technology, so when you co-develop for all platforms you end up with the lowest common denominator determining your design limitations. You can especially tell when you compare actual PC games which are miles ahead of codeveloped games, with the exception of multiplatform games that took extra time to improve the PC version. Between that and dumbed down gameplay, the actual quality of games available for the PC has been steadily declining since 2005 or so. So there’s legitimate reason for a market decline, and it’s the fault of the industry.
So PC gamers have sort of grumbled about accepting us being locked into 2005 technology in a field where what you can do with gaming improves at a very fast rate. But now we’re actually losing capabilities that we had before, not just halting progress. IW (and Rage and possibly other upcoming games) aren’t even giving the proper multiplayer model anymore. It’s a huge step backward and I’m glad to see there’s a big backlash. I hope it convinces developers not to shaft the PC version of games.
But it’s sort of a self fulfilling prophesy. The PC version of COD6 won’t sell well because it’s a substandard product worthy of boycott, and then IW will probably take the lesson of: “see? It doesn’t even sell on the PC, let’s not bother” instead of “woops, we fucked up”.
If you’re looking for a longer single player campaign you’ll be dissapointed. It’s shorter than the first game… the reviews say 6-7 hours, but people on forums I’m reading claim to be able to beat it in 3.
Edit: The upcoming release of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will give some idea of where the PC market stands.
Interesting, thanks. Why aren’t there more hugely successful and cool games like Fallout 3 on the PC? Me and my reclusive self generally prefer singleplayer gameplay by default, although I enjoy the multiplayer option too.
Why isn’t it profitable for Infinty Ward or whomever to make a more sandboxed version of a COD game with a gigantic singleplayer mode? Shit, wasn’t COD2 like six discs or something? That was really cool!