Well from what I’ve gathered a few console gamers have a chip on their shoulder as they believe that PC gamers treated the console gamers with disdain like they weren’t ‘true’ gamers and were further annoyed when PC gamers started complaining about loss of shelf space and whining about our hobby being ‘consolfied’ with bad ports and games neutered on the PC due to simultaneous development. Of course there’s the endless belief that every generation of consoles is going to be THE generation that kills PC gaming which always seems to stir things up again.
I’d also say that the console wars don’t seem as angry as they were previously. I remember Playstation vs Nintendo vs Sega to be very bitter and personal. Now that energy seems to have become consoles vs PCs.
Personally I think it’s the same kind of mindset that drives people to argue over their favorite team. It’s pretty pointless and trivial but you can find yourself sucked in pretty easily.
Well what do you define as ‘decent’? 1280x1024 isn’t huge but it’s the monitor’s native resolution. I don’t understand why you would have trouble believing this. Though now that I think about it I believe it was only 2xAA not the max (8?). Certainly nothing anyone would care enough about to upgrade just to play WOW.
I’ve certainly seen things that look leaps and bounds better than WOW on the consoles. The choking point would be the wide open areas eating up memory a little optimization of their procedural loading of zones mixed with perhaps a lowering of line of sight and it could be done. It might not be as pretty or fluid but not some insurmountable task.
Well it is true. If you own a computer that’s not totally outdated you can get WOW to run. A guy at work who doesn’t PC game at all tried it once (he asked me to show him how to play) he had some crappy eMachine with integrated graphics though I don’t know what setting it was on it seemed to run fine.
Nevermind the fact that you need an always on internet connection. That’s not worth mentioning.
All gaming has a barrier of entry. Consoles have a one-time upfront hardware cost, but that cost is essentially a one-time cost and is projected to stay state of the art for the platform for 6 years or more. Online gaming is still a vast minority on consoles.
PC gaming usually requires incremental upgrades over time and with the dominance of Steam and various DRM schemes an always on internet connection is nearly mandatory. Online gaming is also a dominant share of PC gaming.
Neither platform can claim to be “free” to play. Many people are more comfortable with the idea of a one-time investment that doesn’t require internet access and is easy to gift. Other people prefer to use and upgrade existing equipment and piggyback on an existing broadband connection which accumulates in cost over time. It’s analogous to buying something in cash versus buying something on credit, two means to the same end.
The frustrating part about this thread is that PC fanbois bend over backwards to bemoan the issues with the traditional console gaming numbers, but absolutely are blind and belligerent to subsequent claims that these PC gaming numbers have their own flaws.
PC Games - USA - (Retail) - 538 million
PC Games - Worldwide - (Retail, Online, Subscriptions, Microtransactions, Advertising) - 13 billion
Console Games - USA - (Retail) - 10 billion
Consoles Games - Japan - (Retail) - 3.5 billion
I couldn’t find numbers for console sales in Europe, Australia or the rest of Asia. But I still say the numbers we do have show PC gaming ranked near the back of the pack.
Well…no it’s not. We were discussing hardware issues. Even if you want to bring the net into it I miss your point? I admit I’m out of touch when it comes to consoles but I was under the impression that all the latest platforms are capable of online gaming. Certainly the aforementioned guy I work with goes on about playing online with his X-box all the time.
A vast minority? Do you have any numbers on that? I thought Online gaming was huge on consoles and growing all the time.
I can think of three games I own that would require an always on internet connection. Counting the Steam games I own I can think of about 20 games that required me to be online once to validate but can be played offline as much as I want now (and most of those could have been purchased through other sources that don’t require a net connection). I couldn’t be a PC gamer with the crappy net connection I have if always on was ‘mandatory’. Perhaps in the future as the trend does seem to be that way.
Once again I’m not sure what you are on about. I was arguing WOW was a crappy game to say it drives any type of hardware sales. Not that PC gaming doesn’t have an ongoing costs to maintain. As someone that sinks way too much money into my PC I’m well aware this habit costs me.
So am I a PC fanboi? I’ve openly questioned the inclusion of ‘online advertising’ in the numbers. I also don’t believe I have been belligerent to anyone. Heck I’ve spent more time debating other PC gamers in this thread then arguing with console gamers.
You are STILL drawing the same false equivalences. What the heck is wrong with you?
On the one side you have 13.5 billion for PC’s (worldwide) and on the other you have 13.5 billion for consoles (US and Japan).
It’s like Pascal’s Wager all over again. The two things are not equivalent. On the one side you have 1 platform, and on the other you have the combined retail revenue of the 3 current gen consoles, god only knows how many last gen consoles, handhelds, etc.
A more fair comparison would be the PC market vs the xbox market, or the Ps3 market. Quit piling on all consoles + handhelds and comparing it to the PC. This is about the viability of a PC as a platform, not the viability of the PC as the be all end all of gaming.
Are you dense? Those numbers are never released. This is the best we can do and have to make educated guesses at the rest.
This is my point. PC Gaming (which includes games, subscriptions, microstransactions and advertising) gets 13.5 billion worldwide. Console games (and just games) gets 13.5 billion from just three countries. When you add in Europe, Australia and the rest of Asia, you’ll get a number that even when split will put all of the consoles well ahead of the PC.
1280x1024 is fine, I just find it hard to believe because “maxing out” means max on every graphical setting, and while that’s how I run and I usually run a solid 50+ FPS, WoW is not a completely lightweight game at the highest settings. I have a much better system than some throwaway 3 year old system.
Right, you could make a version of WoW graphically that could work on consoles with massively nerfed view ranges and less detailed content. The actual rendering on medium-low settings isn’t that tough and a console cpu/gpu could do it. My point was responding to someone who implied that WoW is like some lightweight web based game that didn’t need any hardware at all to run.
Of course that’s not worth mentioning. How the hell are you supposed to play a multiplayer internet MMO without an internet connection? Duh. Who cares?
Well, “state of the art” in terms of consoles. The state of the art passed them by in the design stage and now they’re 6 or 7 years behind. Or using your definition, if no one ever sold a better console than the Atari 2600 and we were all playing space invaders in 2010, that would be state of the art.
Steam only actually has to connect once every 3 months (IIRC) to keep working in offline mode. To play multiplayer/online games, obviously you need a connection. “Online gaming” being a dominant share of PC gaming is a negative now?
So the big advantage is for people who shun the internet? I don’t even see why this is a consideration.
How is that? I already said that I don’t trust the 13b numbers linked in the OP. NPD numbers to compare platforms is utter bullshit. It’s not even close to a reasonable comparison. You realize this, right?
Could you answer the question I posed in post #33, btw? Specifically:
“I’m confused. By “26x multiplication” are you saying that people on average spend 26x as much on games/subscriptions/etc as they do on the console itself?”
I may be misreading you, but is your meaning to say the average console user spends 26x more money in games/subscriptions/advertising/etc. as they do on the console hardware? As in the average person who buys an Xbox 360 at $300 spends $7800 on the other stuff?
Where are you getting those numbers? Not saying I disbelieve, but I’d like to see the data. In any case, since retail PC gaming sales are a minority of sales, why do you feel that this is a fair comparison?
But even so - if you accept the 13b number (and I’m not saying I do), then you are accepting the PC non-hardware market has at least as much money as the retail sales for console games for the 2 biggest markets for all consoles. If you are conceding that the market is that big, how could you possibly say “Any way you slice, PC gaming is still an insignificant sliver compared to the business created by console gaming. That’s not to knock it, it’s just reality.”?
Besides which, again, do you think it’s fair to compare every DS game, every iphone game, every Wii, 360, PS3, PS2, etc. game and stack it up all against one platform? Obviously the numbers would look bad against any particular platform in that comparison.
So because we don’t have the numbers we will just do all consoles vs the PC? That seems be the rather silly.
Assuming any of these numbers are even kind of close to reality, which would be a pretty big assumption, the PC is clearly ahead of any single console. Either way, however, it’s clearly not dead even if the numbers are half what’s being thrown around here it is still probably ahead of any one console.
All the niggling about what counts and doesn’t count is the entire point of the debate. It might not have been your specific point in that post but it gets at the greater point. Using complaints like “console sales numbers include hardware! Pwned!” while completely ignoring the incidental costs of PC gaming is disingenuous.
Without comprehensive numbers and a clear thorough breakout of what is what you can’t draw any meaningful conclusions from those numbers.
The OP drew a conclusion from a poorly written article quoting numbers from a biased source. The debate calls into question the methodology and highlights the vast chasm between these numbers and previously reported numbers. The retort that “console gaming numbers are also fucked up” is perfectly valid, but lets not pretend that these are the “real” numbers. If you want to expand the debate to disparage consoles due to the need for proprietary hardware you need accept that PC games can be disparaged for their ancillary costs like video cards, a constantly moving bar for minimum system requirements and the predominance of broadband costs. Of that supposed $13B a huge, huge proportion is clearly built of MMOs, online sites like Steam and and online gameplay. Potentially 85% of that number is entirely dependent on broadband access, so it’s as pertinent to the discussion of “what it costs to get into the game” as console hardware is.
No, the numbers aren’t available, just like the breakout of console game sales isn’t available. If it were available it’d still be suspicious because there’s a vast difference between having an Xbox Live account and downloading updates versus actually gaming online. The majority of XBox owners have gamertags I’m sure, but few probably see online gaming as the majority of their use.
You can play many games online but it’s not the core of the gaming experience. XBoxes, PS3s and Wiis were build to be stand alone products first and foremost. That’s where the bulk of the market still is. Nevermind PSPs, Nintendo DSs and various other handhelds that don’t offer online at all.
Wii makes up the largest share of the console market and it’s online presence is essentially negligible. My assumption is pretty likely when you treat consoles as a group.
You can PC game offline just like you can console game online. But if these revenue figures are to be believed they necessarily imply that broadband is a massive component. WoW and other MMOs are going to make up the lionshare of that revenue. The argument isn’t about what’s true in the isolated case, it’s whats true for the market as a whole and how it puts the OPs quoted cite into question.
Again, the entire point about the internet is in retort to the complaint about console hardware. Set it aside if you’d like, that’s fine with me, but then stop highlighting the cost of a xBox in the debate. You need to compare apples to apples. With the numbers available that’s very hard. But when pointing fingers at the other camp you need to take a larger view of the costs of both systems.
I quoted you but I was furthering the debate of the entire thread. Your comment seemed to best highlight the point I needed to make.
Again, not picking on you, The last half of my reply was directed at the thread and not at you. These threads happen all the time and PC gamers get very defensive about criticism of the platform. I consider myself to be objective on the subject as a non-gamer who owns a dusty XBox 360 with all of 4 games for it and a PC with perhaps 4 games by it as well. The only game I’ve played in the last year is Civ 4 for the PC. It baffles me how reasoned people lose all sense of perspective in this debate, it’s less coherent and logical than the Microsoft vs. Apple debates and Sarah Palin vs. the World debates.
They’re put out by NPD and Enterbrain, the top reporting agencies of US and Japan console sales. The news articles reporting the numbers are at GameSpot.
The 13 billion number includes PC Retail game sales, Online game sales, Subscriptions, Microtransactions and Advertising. It includes much more than games. It probably correlates pretty closely to the software + hardware listing for console sales.
Also, Japan is not even close to the second largest gaming market. The UK is much larger.
There is no etc (only games going back to PS2 are sold new anymore) and the iPhone is not counted in the NPD chart.
The NPD numbers for PC sales is $500M. The numbers in this thread were $13B. The difference is 26x. That’s my point, it’s suspicious. And it’s as unfair to compare PC NPD numbers to console NPD numbers as it is to compare these new PC numbers as it is to old console NPD numbers. The OP basically is making the same flawed argument that you say console gamers have been making. I was rhetorically asking what increase the console gaming numbers would see if the same methodologies used in the OPs link were applied to the console market.
That doesn’t make sense. We’re not talking about how much it costs the end user. The debate in question is how PC gaming is dead because the revenue it generates is tiny and insignificant. The fact that console hardware is counted in the revenue numbers and PC hardware isn’t artificially creates the impression that the PC market is smaller.
I agree.
You have a hardon for broadband that perplexes me. How big is the demographic of people who otherwise don’t care about internet access but otherwise get it just for the purpose of gaming? In any case, Xbox live is a pretty big part of the platform (not sure about PSN) so it’s not even a very interesting point anyway.
Either way you need an internet connection. … And either way, just about anyone who has the money to afford a computer or a new console has an internet connection.
Again, who cares? Whose interests are you concerned about here?
Ok, so I think I sort of understand your point even if it’s a total nonsequitor. You seem to think people get internet connections specifically to play PC games, but not console games, and they don’t already have the internet connection because, you know, it’s a vastly useful thing to have anyway. And therefore PC gaming is costlier than it looks. Or something like that? You might as well say console gaming is expensive because people have to buy TVs, ignoring the fact that almost everyone has a TV anyway.
Still not relevant, since the whole issue is whether the console hardware was included in market size comparisons.
I assume a lot of this is directed at me, so where exactly have I been losing all sense of perspective and logic? I’m the one here who did not accept the numbers posted in the OP without explanation, yet everyone on the other side seems to have jumped to obviously flawed numbers which support the conclusions that they want, which would be the NPD numbers.
Of course it’s fair. The 13 billion figure counts a lot of extra things beyond games and is counting worldwide sales. PC gaming is a lot bigger in Europe than it is in the US and even with all the extras there’s 13 billion dollars. Just US sales of console games is 10 billion. If we use educated guesses to separate everything out, I believe PC games would rank below Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 games.
SenorBeef listed the DS and PSP separately and then asked about an etc.
But there are reasons to suspect while the 13B may be flawed (or it may not be - I can’t make a judgement without seeing their metholodgy), there is lots of reason to suspect that the NPD does not accurately reflect the size of the PC market. For one, PC games are largely sold through digital distribution where sales aren’t reported. That alone is huge. So right there, it’s obvious that the PC game market is far bigger than the $500m retail. There are a lot more subscription-based PC games than there are for consoles, and that money is unaccounted for.
You seem to be saying “uh, well let’s just take that 26x multiplyer and apply it to consoles too!” without any rational basis for doing so. NPD does a decent job of capturing most console sales because retail is still the primary (and for most games only) method of buying them on the console. They also don’t have as revenue generation methods beyond the game itself, like monthly subscriptions. So there is valid reason to believe that the PC market far exceeds the NPD number, but not so much reason to believe the console market does too.
Heh. Well if you want to include internet subscriptions as part of the PC game market that’s fine with me. How many more billions did that add to the size of the PC game market? You can’t count console hardware as a profit and turn around and subtract internet costs as a minus.
The numbers on both sides have always seemed like BS to me. Are you demanding a similar treatment of the console numbers as well?
Ok. I’ll stop pretending. Not that I ever recall doing so.
I assumed you were talking to me considering you quoted me but I don’t recall saying anything like anything you are posting about here. Who/what are you addressing here? Also who in this day and age doesn’t have reasonably priced broadband? Also what is it about Steam? You do know you can buy pretty much any Steam game in the store or Amazon right? People that buy from Steam and download from Steam because they are already equipped to do so. Not that they have to.
Well I’m happy to take your word for it. Are you happy to take mine that I don’t consider online gaming to be the majority of my use?
Just like the majority of PC games. I don’t understand your obsession with the online component. Aside from WOW I haven’t played a MMO game. Aside from about 3 Starcraft games I played against other people out of curiosity I’ve never played against strangers online. I don’t feel like I have to play online games on my PC.
How does it put it into question? Online sales don’t count? MMO’s don’t count? They’re somehow offset by people with broadband? I can’t make any sense of your argument here. People are paying to play these games. They are willing to pay again when a new game comes along.
I never spoke of the costs of the XBox or any console for that matter. Without re-reading the thread I can’t remember anyone putting for the costs of console hardware as a huge barrier to entry. If they did that was odd as I usually hear it in the reverse that PC’s are the ones with the huge barriers to entry and people trying to reject that by comparing that to console costs and video cards.
No offense but I really saw your comments as coming out of nowhere and still do. If you want to rebut specific arguments you should be quoting them. If you just want to sound off at your own strawmen quoting people directly just makes you sound like you’re going off on tangents.
Yes I have seen PC gamers get very defensive. Usually after they are told about how small and unimportant they are and that they should just STFU and accept they’ll never have any more impact on their hobby. There’s certainly obnoxious PC Gamers but they usually come out of the woodwork after a thread starts about how console gaming dominates.
Why do you care so much if you consider yourself a non-gamer? I know I am biased towards PC games but you don’t seem to have the moderate road either.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - when the gaming industries make it worthwhile to buy PC games again, I will. The primary reason I pirate all of the software I want is because the mast majority of PC game releases over the last couple years have made it a huge hassle to own a legit copy, between activation, reactivation, installing malware along with the game, asking for the disc every time I want to play (ONLY for verifying I still own the disc, even though 100% of the game runs off the HDD), and some games that won’t install AT ALL because they don’t like something else I have installed. Say what you will about pirate groups, but they know how to release a quality product. I miss the days of code wheels…
Yeah, I don’t buy it. Using Steam (and probably the other digital distribution) services is pretty much entirely hassle free. No DVD checks, no activations and all that (except a very small number of games that demand to leave their third party DRM intact on the steam versions, but they are clearly labelled), etc. You’re just making excuses to do what you want to do anyway.
One thing that really DID impress me about Steam was how I was able to buy the new, re-polished version of Half-Life for FREE, just by providing the serial # of the original version I bought back in the 90s.
Here’s my problem with buying online content: often-times, it is linked to the hardware you purchase it for, so that if you ever get a new computer/gaming console, the software can’t come with you. I bought Mega Man 9 for my roommate’s 360, and after he moved out, he got to bring the game with him, and there was no way to transfer it to my 360 if I ever bought one. I ran into a similar problem buying music through itunes. It links your purchases to not just the hardware, but that actual installation of the OS. Every time I do a fresh install on Windows (on the SAME computer, and with the same serial # – which sometimes requires making a lengthy phone call to WGA), everything I bought through the itunes store stops working, saying it was already activated on a DIFFERENT computer.
So yeah, I just stick to the non intrusive methods.