[b]COMPLETELY SERIOUS THREAD HERE[/B]
I am PC Gamer. I haven't played a console game (with the exception of Shadow of the Colossus) in about a year.
I've seen it popping up all over the internet, in the forms of jokes and such, but now it's becoming a bit more serious. I really started to notice when CliffyB (huge faggot) was *****ing and moaning about how Unreal Tournament 3 wasn't selling well, and how he (Epic games) was going to stick to consoles.
I know, it doesn't seem like a huge loss, but what if this were to start a domino effect? What if other developers were to go from PC development, to development specifically for the 360/PS3/Wii? What would the PC Gamers be left with? The newest Sims expansion, an engine demo, and a soulless MMO, or some shovelware crap?
Speaking of MMOs, I'd like to say a big "go to hell" to blizzard. Yeah, WoW is the top PC game of all time. Blah, blah, blah. You've single-handedly the industry from differing projects to MMOs that are all from one cookie-cutter mold. For example, Warhammer Online was supposed to bring DAoC style PvP back to the arena of MMOs. For those of you who aren't familiar with Dark Age of Camelot, let me tell you, the PvP years ago was excellent. Now, not so much. Back to WAR, it now seems like every MMO ever made, and Mythic wants to charge more then 20bux/month for it! When will Blizz start charging 20bux/month for WoW? Ugh, I hate MMOs.
One thing looking up for PC gaming is digital distribution, such as Steam, but that's about it. Digital Distribution is great, but it'll take more then that to fix this problem.
I think that for now, PC gaming is going to die myself. But to be truly honest, I think it's only due to that capitalistic aspects of console gaming. I perceive a massive change in gaming sometime in the future, when technology becomes stronger and soft-ware more easily attained. Because of this, I think that Console gaming will be wiped out and it will move to "PC" gaming. But I also see the concept of "PCs" being destroyed, and computers becoming more unified.
Then again that just may be utopian idealism. Meh.
I think it's been pretty stagnant for awhile, though clearly not dead. More and more publishers/developers seem to be speaking up about the PC and piracy. Couple months back IW spoke out about how disgusted they were with the amount of people pirating CoD4 and they're a pretty solid contributer to the platform.
Honestly, I don't blame developers for shying away from PC and focusing on consoles. Why would they want to put resources into a platform if so many users are just going to steal it?
Obviously, but the degree of pirating on consoles compared to PC is completely different, to the point where pirating on current home consoles is almost moot. The only case where it's a problem for current consoles is the DS. You don't see almost 900,000 copies of CoD4 on the 360 being pirated, unlike the PC.
9 or 10 million WoW subscribers, countless indie Steam downloads and webgames. It's not dying, just turning away from the usual gung-ho "look at our graphics that only 200 people can afford to see running" school of design.
[quote=Speedfreak;825827]It's not dying, just turning away from the usual gung-ho "look at our graphics that only 200 people can afford to see running" school of design.[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/Crysis_Boxart_Final.jpg[/IMG]
Anyway, I work in a LAN caf
Pretty much hit the nail on the head. Crysis is a particularly good example because, in my opinion, the gameplay was actually pretty mediocre. More and more PC devs are just missing the point.
They also make the pretty flawed assumption that because you can make a more powerful PC than a current next-gen console (oxymoron!) that means all PCs are. But if you averaged them all out you'd probably find the power of the average PC is well below that, even if you only counted PCs that people wanted to game with. They're not even aiming their products at most of their market.