From a “gamer’s” perspective, this is probably true. For everyone else, it’s nonsense. Flash games, arcade classics, simple games with few instructions, few buttons and no learning curve trump the mostly esoteric, complex stuff you get on consoles.
This whole thread thus far has been from a gamer’s perspective.
One of the points mentioned in the older thread is still a good reason why PC games will stick around for as long as there are PCs: namely that it is relatively easy for new content and games to be created, shared, and used for PCs by either the developers or the gamers themselves. This is an instant boost to the desirability of a PC game and therefore another reason why PC games won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
(Well, with the exception of games which start off with so little ‘pre-made’ content that it feels like they should have paid you to make the game for them!)
Custom content for the Sims, for instance, is quite doable on a console (assuming an XBox-like device where you can up/download files). A situation like this is where I don’t see much of an edge for a PC over a console or vice versa.
But custom content for Neverwinter Nights? Modding Civilization? Creating new levels for <insert random first person shooter here>? How could you do this easily on a console that doesn’t have a keyboard?
Plus, as it stands currently a disgruntled PC gamer can put their time and skills where their mouth is and mod an existing game to their liking or create their own from scratch. Since as I understand it console games are programmed and emulated on a PC first, so even if someone releases a free-to-use compiler for a console that means you’ll need a PC to get the console game written which in turn means that you will always have to have a PC hanging around somewhere which in turn implies that someone somewhere will want a game to play on that PC. When the time comes that you won’t need a PC to write a game for a console, then I think the lines between the two will have blurred enough that the debate will switch to ‘did PCs morph into consoles or vice versa?’.
(My apologies if the last paragraph is a bit hard to follow: staying up until all hours playing computer games will do that to you. 
)
<< Computer programmers don’t byte, they nybble a bit. >>
I play PC games almost exclusively. In the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a decline in the quality of PC games as too many of them, imho, are cross-developed for platforms. I think the PC and console offer fundamentally different experiences. I think PC gaming can offer a depth of play that consoles don’t, but right now, games seem to be all about the twitch factor and big spashy graphics over gameplay. It’s kind of like Hollywood, car chases over story.
Having said that, the one thing that PCs offer that consoles don’t is the ability to mod. I am amazed at some of the mods coming out for PC games, some of which are as good as any expansion pack put out by the creator. Until consoles can offer the ability to crack games open and tinker with the insides, there will be a place for PC games. I just wish they would stop trying to be console games.
I like to play myst / uru on the pc, but if I had it for console, it would probably be better. From a comfort perspective, Id rather be lying back in my chair than hunched over the screen…now that said, if I was a bit less lazy, I could hook my pc up to my tv, then with the wireless mouse and keyboard, it would be virtually seamless switching between them…
point being, the difference between a “PC” and a “Console” will continue to blur, and we’ll be able to play anything on anything, anywhere.
PC games will not die unless there are some radical changes to the console game industry. Right now, consoles are a very top down and monopolistic business, which leads to huge budget games with a lowest common denomantor target audience. This means they do not have the flexibility, user interaction, oppertunity for specialized titles, alternative distribution structures like shareware, and general freedom that PC games provide. Perhaps right now this is not that important. But as graphics outpace our ability to actually program for them games will either need to get bigger or smaller. This benefits PC games in two ways- since there arnt the same mega corporations in PC games as in consoles, they are less likely to outright completely fail a la Sega when the going gets tough. And they are better equipt to respond to the markets demands when tastes change.
I think that in 2-30 years, consoles will evolve into a PC-light. At that point, there will no longer be a meaningful distinction.
Only if you define “gamer” by a very narrow standard. I mostly play RPGs and strategy games. Hence PC.
- Tamerlane
You guy’s are probably going to find this amusingly quaint, but here’s my $0.02. I’m not much of a gamer, admittedly, but anyway, I just hooked my Xbox up to my shiny new big-screen HD LCD TV, using the component video connection. Now the picture is bigger, and in 480p. Compared to the 360, PS3, even the Wii, the Xbox is pretty primitive iron, right? But the joy of sitting on my couch, in my living room, playing Halo on a big-ass screen with surround sound blows away any PC gaming experience I’ve ever had. It’s just ten times better, IMO, to play a shooter in such an environment than sitting at a desk with my nose pressed to a smaller display. I’m a graphics whore at heart, but at this point I think polygon counts are reaching the zone of rapidly diminishing marginal returns. Increased graphical realism can’t compensate for the deskbound environment, IMO. As things stand, I’d rather play the old crap on my obsolete Xbox any day over sitting in a swivel chair at my desk pounding keys, and it would be an absurd expenditure for me to try to replicate the living-room environment in my office by tricking out my desktop.
The other thing is my old desktop mostly collects dust, and I’ll likely never buy another one. I’ve got a cheap little G4 iBook (returned a newer computer after getting buyer’s remorse), as does my wife, and they do pretty much everything we really need them to do. I’ll likely upgrade in a year or so to a refurb MacBook, as soon as the software I use most often for work has been upgraded. Desktops are a thing of the past for me, but laptops are just not much good for gaming, even when augmented by desktop displays and peripherals. Why have a desktop PC just for gaming? Isn’t a console that costs a couple-hundred bucks and hooks up to my big-screen TV much better for that purpose? Do everything useful on my laptop, waste time in my living room? Isn’t that the way God intended it?
I’m with Loopydude. HD will have a significant impact on gaming. It used to be that the resolution - and thus the quality of the picure - on PCs was vastly superior. Soon, 1080p displays will be the norm. That’s 1920x1080 and 46"+, when PC displays are typically 1280x1024 or 1024x768 and 17" or 19". It’s a totally different experience.
That’s a little bit apples and oranges. You’re comparing a $4000 television to a $300 monitor. For $2000 you can get that 30" apple monitor with 2560x1600 resolution, which given how much closer it is to you will be effectively much larger than the big plasma. Of course, you may be buying the tv anyways in which case it’s no additional expense, where a large monitor would be. Whether or not HDTV will change your gaming platform decision depends a lot on whether you’re already getting a big HDTV.
Adding to Gorsnak’s reply, you could also hook up the PC to a HDTV if you prefer that.
Indeed, and the surround sound stereo system. Any recent gaming PC should have HD component video and digital 5.1 audio outputs. Plug in your USB controller of choice and you’re off to the races. Of course, if you’re going to do this, one might wonder why you wouldn’t get the less expensive console, as you now have a gaming environment which isn’t conducive to the sorts of complex UI games best played on a PC, like the aforementioned Civ and suchlike. 
Well, it really depends on what you want to play and what’s important to you when you play. Sound is probably pretty vital to games like Counterstrike, graphics are necessary for Diablo II and Civ IV; it really varies. You can play Civilization 4 with no sound at all, though it might be a bit less fun. I shudder to think what it would be like trying to play a game like Civ with a controller, though D2 might be manageable.
That’s true right now, but in a couple of years, it won’t be. 1080p displays are still at the high end, but just wait for them to hit the mainstream.
The market’s simply shifted towards consoles right now.
Sometimes you have good times and sometimes you don’t. Popular music was phenomenally innovative in 1969, and phenomentally dull in 1960. Movies didn’t really advanvce much at all in the early 60s, but the 1970s brought a wave of innovation and great cinema. It happens that, for various reasons, we’re in a dead zone of PC game design.
I just got “Caesar IV” and I’m just flabbergasted at how awful it is. It’s been five years since “Caesar III” and in that period of time they have made, as near as I can tell, absolutely no improvements to the game whatsoever. The graphics are higher resolution, and that is the sum total of things that are better about it; the gameplay itself shows no innovation at all. The only games I’m playing regularly now are “World of Warcraft” and “Civilization IV,” both of which are exceptionally awesome games but which are both just improvements on a well-established genre/product.
Entire classes of PC games seem to have vanished from the shelves. Combat flight simulations are as rare as hen’s teeth in the New Releases section; gamers are mostly playing veteran products now. Deep war games have been completely pushed off the shelves by RTS games, 95% of which are indistinguishable from one another and, for the most part, terrible.
But, have no fear; as long as there are PCs there will be PC games. Sooner or later, someone’s going to come along and put together a better city-building game. The upcoming “Supreme Commander” may well be the next true innovation in RTS games, so there’s some hope.
The problem with PC games is that to get the same experience of the new consoles, you need to drop several grand on graphics cars, sound cards, memory, liquid nitrogen powered processor cooling systems or whatever to create a “gaming machine” which will become obsolete in 1-5 years. Your X-Box 360 or Nintendo Wii will be the same unit for as long as your interest lasts (basically 1-5 years).
For the games I like - RTS and strategy PC is still the way to go. Spore, Supreme Commander and World in Conflict look sweet.
[QUOTE=msmith537]
The problem with PC games is that to get the same experience of the new consoles, you need to drop several grand on graphics cars, sound cards, memory, liquid nitrogen powered processor cooling systems or whatever to create a “gaming machine” which will become obsolete in 1-5 years.
But thats just it you don’t, this was the case when the PS2 was release but isn’t now… The “next-gen” GPUs (ignoring the Wii which is not even trying to compete on that front) are equivalent to a pretty run-of-the-mill PC graphics card (around the same as an Nvidia 6). The really cutting edge graphics cards (like the 8800) are already well in excess of what you have on either 360 or PS3.
But thats reason that PC games will still be around. What is now a cutting edge hardware thats only specialists have, will soon be “run-of-the-mill”, so will be targeted by main stream PC games developers. When this happens the consoles, which are still using “circa 2006” hardware will start to look dated. It took a long time for this to happen with the last generation (the performance of the PS2 at its real really put intel and such to shame), but it will happen much faster this time round.
PC games are here to stay…as are console games (for now). For my part, I prefer my games on the PC. It has the controls I like (I use a Nostromo game pad, a Zboard key board and a Logitech high performance optical mouse), and it plays the games I like (strategy, RTS, MMORPG and RPG). I have a nice 24 inch high res monitor, a surround sound speaker system and a nice set of Turtle Beach high performance headphones.
Full disclosure: I find most of the console games…well, a bit childish to be honest. My son (who IS a child) loves them. 
I just find them shallow and not very interesting except from a fast twitch perspective. Granted, my son has the older PS2 system, so maybe the newest systems would be different…though my guess is the difference is in visuals, not game play.
I’m going with others who have said that as long as there are generic personal computers out there (which I don’t see going into any kind of decline), there will be a market for PC games to run on them. I’ll further go out on a limb here…I DON’T think console type games are here to stay, at least not as they are today. The very specialization of the game box I think will doom it eventually.
But then, I have acknowledged prejudices against consoles, so take what I say with a large grain of salt.
-XT
Console games aren’t something new, though. We’ve had them for what, 30 years? As I recall I got my Atari 2600 (then called the Atari VCS) for Christmas in 1980 or 1981, and it was not a new product at that time.
Consoles will always be around for the same reason PC games will always be around; because everyone has a TV, and as long as people have TVs, they are going to want to play games on them. That genie ain’t going back into the bottle.