Will PC gaming make a comeback?

[Palooka]

@Cascade

First of all, the people who’ve been PC gaming for 20 years don’t care about World of Warcraft? I have quite a few acquaintances who would disagree with you there.
It doesn’t take long to find a great many hardcore gamers who play or have played World of Warcraft or some other MMO.

I have to correct you on your second point, the PC market, excluding digital distribution is NOT about $500 million, the US PC market is (assuming we trust the stats). Let me repeat, the US market is not the world market. PC gaming is global, not confined to the US, and what happens (and sells) in Asia or in Europe has a huge influence on everyone, including american gamers.
Take Starcraft 2, for example, where South Korea alone accounts for 33% (give or take) of all copies sold.

All this ignores the fact that money is just one of many indicators. If you truly want to determine how PC gaming is doing, quality and quanity of releases, vibrancy of communties and hours spent gaming are much, much better indicators.
Beside the fact that much of the PC gaming revenue is basically uncountable, or unknowable due to it’s diverse nature, there’s also the fact that a very large portion of the time PC gamers spend gaming, is done playing games that are free, old and very cheap. Just think of all the people are still playing Counter-Strike 1.6 or any of the myriad of mods that exist for old games.
Untill Starcraft 2 was released, a great many people still played Starcraft 1. Despite the fact that a lot people spent years playing that single game, they all paid maybe $80 at most, probably less. Compare this to XBOX Live membership fees and planned obsolences (such as shutting down servers).
This is just one example of factors that skew revenue comparisons.

You’re right on all of this, of course. I think you’re nitpicking though. While I’m aware that consoles do worse in other regions than they do in the US, I don’t think it changes the characterization of the marketplace presented by the easily-accessed NPD Group numbers.

I don’t think those other indicators are really that important either, since anyone looking to make a new game wants to know about who is buying stuff. Certainly because of those things, the PC market is somewhat understated, but I think it’s a minor portion of the PC market and absolutely trivial compared to the console market.

The quality and quantity of releases doesn’t matter if no one is buying them. The vibrancy of communities doesn’t matter if they don’t buy new games. It says a lot about how great the present of PC gaming is, but it doesn’t mean much for the future of new product.

@Kinthalis

Ok, I knew there was a software cite somewhere: PC Gaming Market Worth $11 Billion (And Other Fun Facts)

$11 Billion for the PC gaming market world wide. No hardware as I understand it. From the PCGA but the report is from a third party industry marker.

I’m getting tired of this game where you post something stupid and then I need to waste 20 minutes of my life fighting ignorance so that the people reading this thread understand that classic PC gaming is dwindling and will rise up and do something about it. I’m not even going crazy into this one. The big problem with that number is the Asian PC gaming market, which looks nothing like the North American one. If you take their North American numbers and ignore the advertising and MMO stuff (aka WoW [see above]), you’re left with 1.7~ billion. Call it 8 billion to 1.7 billion. I don’t care. It doesn’t change the fundamental message that console gaming is the place to be if you’re a new developer.

[SenorBeef]

@Palooka

Because for the longest time, and in particular during the “golden years” of PC gaming, no one played MMOs. It’s been my experience that a ton of people who play WoW just play WoW. They aren’t “PC Gamers” they’re “WoW players.” It’s kind of like counting Farmville players as PC gamers. The platform is incidental.

How is WoW not a real PC game? It’s fairly graphically beefy, it requires a lot of controls and hence only input methods PCs would provide, it’s massively multiplayer with a huge world where you can raid with dozens of other people. You couldn’t do the game on consoles.

I doubt your assertion that WoW players aren’t PC gamers otherwise in general - most of the people I know who play WoW do lots of gaming - but it’s definitely some weird form of elitism not to consider it a real PC game, on par with some flash game or something.

@Kinthalis

Well it’s not for lack of trying on the console side of things. An xbox 360 high up mentioned how they try to stagger the PC release of a game in Europe because if the console and PC version gets released at the same time, everyone will opt to play the PC version (Of course, who wouldn’t want to play a game on a superior platform?). So they don’t. They purposely delay the PC version.

80% of the US population apparently.

I actually feel sorry for a lot of them - they just don’t know better. A few months ago a guy I know who played Dragon Age on the xbox 360, then tried it on the PC, and basically said “What the fuck? Why would people even try to play this on the xbox?” and was instantly converetd.

@pyromyte

That being said, I gave up PC gaming when the first XBOX came out. I was tired of spending $$$$ on PC hardware. I spent about $300 on a graphics card to play Quake II. When Quake III came out, it was already obsolete.

I also hate when things get better. Ideally, the Atari 2600 would’ve been the last gaming system ever made. Just think about it! We could’ve got 30 years of entertainment out of a $100 initial purchase! IT WOULD BE GAMING PARADISE!

@Palooka

Unless you’re a PC fanboy in denial, it doesn’t make much though to realize why including PC hardware sales in a software discussion is stupid. A campus or office refitting its PC labs with Dells isn’t the PC gaming sale.

The PCGA is a joke. NPD numbers are fine, except for the omission of digital distribution numbers (which I was completely upfront about.)

Don’t the NPD numbers include console hardware sales right alongside console software? Almost all of the comparisons I see include console hardware + console software vs retail only PC software (and on top, they include all consoles in one big aggregate vs PC as a single platform) in a ridiculously stacked comparison.

[Palooka]

@SenorBeef

How is WoW not a real PC game? It’s fairly graphically beefy, it requires a lot of controls and hence only input methods PCs would provide, it’s massively multiplayer with a huge world where you can raid with dozens of other people. You couldn’t do the game on consoles.

Come on. I didn’t say it wasn’t a real game or a flash game. I said it wasn’t PC gaming as people know it. It’s starting to become what PC gaming is, but it wasn’t what people thought about during glory years of 1998 - 2004.

I know I’ve seen something that said the majority of WoW players are exclusive to that game. I know that’s in line with the WoW players I met at university, the people I know who played WoW for a period, and was pretty evident when trying to watch SC2 beta streams, since half of them were WoW multiboxers asking “what is this shit?” after building two pylons and before returning to idling in Dalaran. I thought it was part of that Daedalus Project thing, but it isn’t.

@SenorBeef

Don’t the NPD numbers include console hardware sales right alongside console software? Almost all of the comparisons I see include console hardware + console software vs retail only PC software (and on top, they include all consoles in one big aggregate vs PC as a single platform) in a ridiculously stacked comparison.

NPD includes accessories like extra controllers, but not actual consoles. I don’t think it’s really changing the picture that much. Same with the consoles being lumped together, since the design philosophy doesn’t really change between Xbox or PS3. The Wii is kind of problem though, but what’re you going to do? It all doesn’t add up to enough to change the fundamental point that you’ll sell more if you design a console game instead of a PC game.

[Mekhazzio]

Don’t forget that even many of the titles that aren’t exclusive, may as well be; Team Fortress 2 is an obvious example. You technically can play it on a console but whyever in the world would you, it’s missing most of the content. This rarely happens in reverse, and most complaints about a “bad console port” are simply because the port didn’t improve things up to a PC game’s standards, such as removing the ubiquitous scrolling menu systems.

That said, exclusive titles aren’t exactly necessary. All a platform has to do to be successful is continue to be a reliable source of money for the developers, and there’s no possible metric that could claim otherwise for the PC, especially with the prevalence of digital download increasing the rate of return so substantially.

The PC is no longer the de facto gaming platform simply because the types of games that require a PC are no longer the dominant genres that they once were. Remember, back in the day, a hardcore flight simulator could control top spots on sales charts for months. That era is long gone.