I would like to see Nintendo work on a 3D Ipad-like device with graphics that would be up to par with 360.
You are of course, misconstruing me to make your points sound valid. Nowhere do I say it is “voodoo” or that you need to be a “wizard”, simply that the average consumer is still irritated by the amount of work involved. In the thread I linked, the man has a PC. You cannot argue that. But that PC is incapable of playing games. You also cannot argue that. Apparently, this PC is MISSING something that would make it possible for him to play games.
However, PCs are not labelled as “gaming PCs” except for the ludicrous crazy high end stuff from specialty manufacturers like Falcon or Alienware. Joe consumer goes to the store, and buys what he thinks is a perfectly good PC. But it’s NOT GOOD ENOUGH, apparently, even for games that are now multiple years old. What’s more, since it’s a laptop, he can’t even buy a new video card to MAKE it run those games.
If he had bought a PS3 in 2007, he could run Trine. He could run Bioshock. He could run any PS3 game he wants. As it is, he has a PC that cannot run some of the “PC games” he would like to play. This scenario is not uncommon. People don’t understand the difference between a “PC” and a “PC that can run games”. (And even the latter won’t necessarily save you from having to do some fidgety stuff. I couldn’t run Magicka run without updating my video drivers.) I don’t know why it’s hard for the PC cohort to grasp, but most people DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS. They want to go to the store, buy a thing that plays games, and then play games on it. Anything more complicated than pressing A a few times when they get an automatic update distributed to them automatically by the manufacturer is too much work.
I’m not saying it’s too much work you, or for me, or for the average SDMB forum member, but try to think outside the box and realize that people who are stupider than you believe should be allowed to live buy games too.
And… done. The futile arguments have been made. I apologize for my part in derailing this thread. I will not be contributing further to anything PC related here. Interesting numbers though, Justin.
I’m not misconstruing your point. You’re basically saying that a person who expects their DVD player to play their playstation games is pissed off, therefore DVD players suck.
I get it, people who are too dumb to do even the most rudimentary research into their multi hundred dollar purchase should just go ahead and buy consoles. And hey, that’s what happens.
I “cannot argue” that someone being able to figure out whether or not their $300 best buy barebones desktop has a video card is an absurdly high amount of effort required on their part that no reasonable person should be expected to undertake. But I can argue that it’s stupid to blame the PC as a platform for this, as much as it is to blame DVD players for not playing playstation games.
Seeing as Portal 2 has the same price as any other new release I don’t think Gabe really believes that.
Well, it’s $45 on PC, $55 on Console, but yeah, not that much cheaper.
What does a GROWTH TREND have to do with your figures?
In that same thread I pointed out the OVERALL state of the gaming market in the US.
And here is EA’s CEO’s take on the state of the PC gaming market:
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16867
“PC gaming is growing… It is rapidly becoming the largest gaming platform in the world.”
Which agrees with EVERY OTHER major publisher’s CEO’s thoughts on PC gaming and the overall status of the market, as well as the majority of projections.
And that’s all I’ll say, before I’m accused of being the sole reason we’re back on this topic.
Well… sort of. He’ll collect the full price for people who really want the game enough to preorder it, but it’ll be half off within a few months and probably 75% off not much longer than that. That’s been steam’s business model - instead of having AAA titles always be $30 or something, they’ll be $50 but frequent sales to take it below 50% cost. That way you snatch up full price from the people who really want the game and are willing to pay for it, but you end up picking up a lot of sales from people who weren’t willing to shell out $45 but can’t refuse for $25, and in a year who could resist $25, but not $10… etc.
I thought the downside of this policy would be that people would just wait for the sales, but new releases still seem to generate a lot of revenue even though people know it’ll be 50% off within a few months. I guess for primarily multiplayer games this makes a lot of sense - get in there and learn with everyone else, be part of the community while its at its most vibrant, etc.
If it takes X hours to download, it takes X hours to download. Downloading it before release doesn’t address that at all if you aren’t one of those “gotta have every title the second it comes out” types.
Er, how doesn’t it? If the game is downloaded and ready to go, just locked until the release date, then you can play it at release time + 1 second. I don’t really care about this issue because it seems silly, but how does that follow?
Heck, I bought Portal 1 when it was on sale for 100% off. Now, that’s obviously not the right price point for maximum profit, but it can be viable as part of an overall price structure.
I’m going to bet that whatever happens, someone will screw up enough to take a hit. I also predict that even fewer games I’m interested in will come out 
It seems like all the GOOD games this generation are on the handhelds, for some reason.
(Yes, obviously not ALL the good games, but unless you’re into FPS games the consoles aren’t really as attractive as the games for handhelds. Too bad I much prefer to play on a console.)
Idly, concerning consoles and hardware and games: Yes, it is quite common to have a game that doesn’t work right on all revisions of a console. I have several games that supposedly support progressive scan on the XBox(Original, not 360), but due to my specific model of XBox they do not, in fact, work properly. Very frustrating, since unlike a PC there’s no real way to tell if your version of the console works compared to your neighbor’s.
Not to argue your point but just wondering if you knew why EA quit making Madden for the PC in 08? I sorta just figured it was because it wasn’t worth it to them from money issues. I can also understand that the majority of sports games sell mostly to consoles.
It might be because PC gamers aren’t the type to fall for:
Madden 983897480734 now with more realistic grass!!!
No but they will fall for updated rosters…
I think the PC mod community had people that did the updated rosters for free, so that may be a factor.
I’m guessing ignorance was another factor. People seem to be unaware that you can control pc games using anything you want. People constantly (even in these threads) will say “X genre is better for gamepads, so I’d never play it on a PC” completely oblivious to the fact that you can use the exact same gamepad to play it on your pc. So I’m guessing there was a lot of “wtf I’m not playing madden with a keyboard” sentiment.
Yes that did slip my mind as I wouldn’t even have Madden 08 on my PC if I didn’t have a controller, more specific, a PS3 controller. I bought a PS3 controller just for my PC after doing some research on how to make it work (Motioninjoy DS3 Tool), I don’t even own a PS3 but it sure feels like it. Microsoft even verified the driver signing for the controller (just recently) so it’s easier than ever. And of course you can use the X-box 360 controller on the PC.
Thanks for the idea of roster mods, I never would have thought of that, at least not soon…