Indeed. Reggie, president of Nintendo of America, actually just touched on this:
http://kotaku.com/5752195/nintendo-frowns-on-most-cheap-iphone-games
My question is, how do the old numbers stack up to the new ones? It’s possible that most of the people who like that sort of game were already the type of people buying it, and it hasn’t decreased in popularity sales wise, just PERCENTAGE wise. So the new more popular genres mostly brought new people in, rather than changing the tastes of the existing crowd. I think it’s likely that the type of games that used to dominate PC were niche already, it’s simply that that specific niche happened to consist of people who knew how to work a computer back before all the cool kids were doing it. It makes some sense, strategy (one of, if not the dominant big PC genre) would be liked by A) critical thinkers who were liable to do programming or other computer tasks more complex than “check BBS” and “maintain spreadsheet” and perhaps B) military people who were using computers at their job and thus got a lot of exposure (who may or may not cross over with A in many instances).
Of course, this is all a hunch, I’m just putting it out there. In this case it wouldn’t be an issue of dying so much as not keeping up.
I wonder if the market will ever become "de"fragmented-i.e. where one platform dominates all the others. And if this does come to pass one day, will it be a good thing or a bad one? Does the competition between platforms help or hinder creativity and/or revenue overall?
When you realize that the people who spent their childhoods playing video games and PC games are now in their 20s and 30s, you might begin to understand the passion. It’s an issue strongly connected to childhood nostalgia, and that’s a powerful force. Underestimating it is to underestimate a large part of human psychology.
Love Total War but strongly do not want 64-player multiplayer.
It’s been touched on before, but part of it is that because it’s so difficult to cost-effectively develop across multiple platforms, so you end up with either a sort of “lowest common denominator” effect (particularly for PC gamers) or a developer says “I’m not bothering with a [platform] version full stop”, which is why PC gamers don’t get to play Red Dead Redemption, much to their understandable frustration.
I can’t speak for all PC gamers, but to me, consoles are what kids play with before graduating to PC games (that was basically how it worked back when I was a kid and teenager, when computer gaming was a lot more complicated than it is today- EMS/XMS memory, anyone?), and it bothers me to an extent that the mere existence of so many different consoles (there’s at least three of them now) dilutes the market (strictly IMHO) and holds back the most technologically advanced platform, the PC.
Now, I actually quite like the fact that PC Gaming tech hasn’t changed much in the last few years, because it means I don’t constantly have to keep spending money to upgrade my computer so I can play whatever’s coming out (and, just to head off a hijack, computer stuff isn’t particularly cheap in this part of the world, so it’s a comparatively expensive hobby in that respect). But at the same time, I think about what PC gaming could be doing if so much of the creative effort wasn’t being spent making sure a given title can be ported to four different platforms with totally different technological capabilities.
While there is no “autopilot” feature, you can go in Free Roam mode, set your speed, and watch your train head on down the line. You’d want a model train simulator for anything more than that, like automated loading & unloading.
I honestly wish this debate would go away. Let’s take a look at the linked chart.
Consoles 10.6 Billion (all consoles lumped together and I assume hardware sales as those usually are in these number)
PC 4.6 Billion. (just retail + downloads)
We can sit and argue about what should be included and what shouldn’t be and how fair the numbers are but the end fact is that PC games just on their own without MMO’s are just under half the size of the entire console market. There is no way to look at that and think ‘niche’ or ‘dying’ or ‘unimportant’ unless you have some type of weird axe to grind. Nobody is going to look at a 15 Billion dollar market and think “We can just disregard 5 Billion of that as it is just niche”.
There are a lot of analogies being thrown around (I like analogies for some reason) but it would be like studios deciding that Action movies are unimportant because Romances are 2/3rds of the market. Even if entire studios devote their lineup to Romances or Action/Romances to try to get both groups (crappy ports) there will always be someone else who just wants to make Action movies and is more then willing to fill that vacuum.
A new game costs millions these days to produce.
Certainly if there is a market someone will try to fill it so PC games are never going away.
Unfortunately the stuffed-suits will opt to make a game for both the PC and the console. This forces the programmers to work to the weakest link in the chain…the console. As a result games are, largely, getting shittier.
We are seeing more and more of that kind of crap. Consoles are screwing the gaming market.
Some few will continue to develop for the PC but they are fewer every year.
No. That’s not what the word dying means. Dying specifically requires that there will be a death at some point. If something is still popular, even in a niche community, there is no evidence that it is heading towards lack of existence. It’s when something falls below niche that it there’s a risk of non-existence.
The fact that computer gaming has fallen into a niche means it is likely here to stay, even if it’s less popular than it used to be. You’ve got to realize that what you guys think of as dying is just a boom going back to normal levels. This isn’t the first time that consoles have been more popular: people who like to game tend to choose dedicated gaming devices over multipurpose ones.
And that’s the fear that makes no sense. Bit games exist because people like them, not because developers can’t afford to make the video games you like. As long as there are people who want PC video games, there will be PC video games developed. If they stop being developed, it would be because enough of you guys have become console users.
Again, what I think PC gamers don’t get is that the popularity of PC gaming was an anomaly. The fact that things are going back down to normal is not an indication that the entire industry is dying. The desire for a multipurpose device will never completely die out.
I just can’t get over how different expectations are nowadays (heh I’m not that old I swear but these conversations make me feel it). Games that were considered mindblowing 15 years ago wouldn’t rate a flash game now. Even if you updated the graphics for Zelda, Baldur’s Gate the gameplay/story would still be sub-par. Heck even playing Deus Ex feels awkward as hell (still enjoyable just the controls feel off). When people talk about how games have gotten crappier I can only feel that their expectations have outgrown the product not that the product has gotten worse. Though yeah I do agree it’s always a bummer to see a game not take advantage of the PC and is either a quickie port or should have been PC first but was made to be easily ported, but that’s just not filling potential not games aren’t as good. Maybe that is the disconnect. You felt that Baldur’s Gate was being the best game it could be where Dragon Age is good enough that’s still easily portable. DA may be the better game (don’t shoot! I say may be) but it feels crappier because it didn’t try as hard.
Also I don’t seem to recall the golden age of PC gaming. About once every two months I would find a game that interested me. About once a year I would find a game that really excited me. It’s been this way since in college I couldn’t afford Super Nintendo games and PC games and went with the PC. Now there seems to be a steady stream of games that are interesting and about 2-3 games a year that are exciting. It seems to me that PC games have only ‘shrunk’ as they didn’t grow as fast as the gaming market as a whole, but the amount of titles are the same or increasing.
Just out of curiosity does anyone have a link to titles released per year on the PC? I’d be interested to see how many new games per year there are compared to say 95 and 2000.
So around and around we go again huh?
You know, it occurs to me that (except for Valve) these are all publicly traded companies we’re talking about. And it’s trivial to obtain their sales numbers for each individual platform. So that’s what I did.
Here’s Activision Blizzard (they haven’t released their numbers for the last three months of 2010 yet):
Q1-10 Q2-10 Q3-10 Q4-10
X360 384 240 126 XXX
PS3 304 182 109 XXX
Wii 136 76 56 XXX
PS2 15 9 6 XXX
Hand 39 39 23 XXX
PC 53 81 73 XXX
MMO 306 289 289 XXX
Notice how they break out the “MMO” platform because WoW is such a juggernaut. But even with WoW, some quarters the MMO category is pounded on by the Xbox 360 and counting the PS3/360 together (which is fair seeing as how if one didn’t exist, those gamers would surely buy the other), they dwarf the money made from WoW.
You see a similar pattern if you move on to Electronic Arts, which doesn’t have a premier MMO, but still releases a lot of PC games:
Q1-10 Q2-10 Q3-10 Q4-10
X360 276 262 172 285
PS3 272 209 152 282
Wii 71 40 25 130
PS2 22 11 29 20
Mobile 55 52 49 59
PSP 37 19 17 22
DS 32 21 18 49
PC 178 186 157 155
Other 46 25 22 51
So we can keep going round and round again. Or we can realize that the PC is just another platform, albeit one that is near the bottom of the heap even when you break “all consoles” down to their individual platforms.
A lot more. The PC still has the most exclusives of any platform. This year for example it has a couple more than the large (and pretty good) lineup of the PS3.
Try this: http://www.pcgamingfan.com/
He lists the exclusives (huge list though I’m only interested in about 50% of it) thent he multiplats coming to PC.
Steam is going to run me to the poor house!
Edit: Actually you wanted to compare the list back to the 90’s. I don’t have that.
I’m not sure what that is, but it’s not a list of exclusive games on the PC.
Tat the PC is yet another platform, was not in dispute, except by Cubsfan who called it “dead”.
That it’s at the bottom of the heap is NOT reflected by the overall market, regardless of what your two company comparison says.
Digital + retail + MMO is larger than ANY other console platform. Period.
And I don’t know why MMO’s keep being excluded. It’s PC gaming. Shall we arbitrarily dismiss console genres? How about we don’t count movement control games? Or lol, wii fit?
Yes it is. If you click on “2011 games and beyond” the exclusives are listed first, followed by the multi-plats. The title is right there in large red letters.
It’s not a hard concept to get man. Why you mad?
So you’re just going to poo-poo hard numbers direct from the two biggest PC game makers that show the PC below the PS3/Xbox 360? How surprising.
Then why don’t the financial figures of the two biggest PC game makers show that?
That was the entire reason that I posted these numbers. MMOs AREN’T excluded. They’re right there in black and white. And the reason MMOs get discounted is because you’re no longer paying for the game, you’re paying for a subscription. And there are tons of console-focused subscriptions (Xbox Live, PSN Plus, Gamefly) that don’t get counted in the grand scheme of things either.
But that’s neither here nor there. Because again, the numbers I posted do include MMO subscription numbers.
Mad? Bwuh?
The site you linked to isn’t the list. This is the list: http://193.106.106.103/?page_id=719
And I admit, it’s fairly large, but a similar list could be made for console exclusives and you know it.
Oh god. :rolleyes:
Whatever dude.
It also depends on your definition of what “dying”, “PC”, “game”, ands “specifically” is as well.