Article ? A Critical Analysis of the Current and Future State of the PC Gaming Industry in Light of the Rise of Console Gaming
Examining it's strengths & weaknesses; it's potential and the possible threats - an amalgamation of ideas
(aka Differentiation & Development or Declining Slowly into Obscurity)
Introduction
First-off just to explain where this thread came from is originally from all the speculation in response to the news of the latest generation of consoles coming out. I thought it deserved more particular analysis and investigation than the news article comments. While, forum posters have done something to investigate the current situation and the future of the PC gaming industry they have typically been too subject to emotional leanings and ?fanboy-ism?. Given the sheer expense and effort many of us go through to enjoy PC gaming at its best perhaps this should not be surprising. However, this article is to attempt to take a more circumspect and objective analysis of the gaming industry at hand. In this though, I admit my only comparative ignorance as I have not been involved in the PC gaming industry first-hand nor do I have any financial interest in it. I?m writing this casually, in my own time and off my own back. Nevertheless, as an outsider looking in, I hope I can offer some objective analysis and get some sort of more detailed discussion going.
This is a long piece of writing but I hope some people have the time and patience to read it (it?s taken me long enough!) ? I hope any game developers would be especially interest to comment on this. For those too lazy to read extensively, I?ve edited this to make skim-reading as easy as possible.
My reason for this article
Everything is subjective and everyone has bias and so to fully comprehend an article you must know the mind of its author and his reason to write it. That is something my studies have taught me and so to be categorically explicit I am neither a hardcore gamer nor quite a casual gamer but somewhere in the middle. In a way, gaming on the PC I couldn#'t give any other response as often the hoops I have to jump through and the energy I often have to invest to get a PC game working well excludes me ever being able to be described as a casual gamer. Therefore, I am not the atypical gamer who is casual and just wants some readily picked up inexpensive fun. That said that strikes a common theme in this writing. Nevertheless, to conclude, while I have gamed on consoles and enjoyed it, I am a PC gamer through-and-through and accordingly care about the PC gaming industry. Maybe that is representative of an emotional investment of sorts - or maybe being sardonic, just my wallet! In short, I want the PC industry to not only survive but thrive in its own unique way. I am worried by what I see as the long term trends where PC gaming seems directed towards increasingly marginalized and eventually hollowed out as money and talent leaves the industry in favour of console gaming. In my opinion, the survival of PC gaming is meaningless if ultimately it is a largely uncreative shell which lacks its own strong identity and something it can unquestionably claim as its own against the ever-encroaching consoles.
PC gaming in decline - the under-pinning conviction of this article
The PC game industry is not only in relative decline but a real decline as the emphasis increasingly shifts from PCs to consoles. Examining the US game markets PC games declined to $1.1 billion from $1.2 billion in 2003. This is despite releases of long-awaited titles like Half Life 2 and Doom 3. So we must ask what would have happened if these games had not been released? An industry can?t survive on the strength of a few recognized game titles alone. In fact, that the recent biggest titles and recent PC gaming can be characterized as sequels is testament to how financially risky and weak the PC gaming market is. If games were more profitable, not only would revenues be increasing but there would be many more innovative games that widely known franchises that can guarantee a decent amount of sales.
To further contextualize the figures of $1.1 billion; that decline must also be set against inflation meaning the decline is actually still more significant. Additionally, set against inexorably rising development costs especially as graphics are pushed ever further (and pushed to compete with consoles), there is a very real squeeze being placed on the PC industry where its long term survival in any meaningful way could start to be questioned. While there will always be die-hard gamers, can they support an industry alone? Moreover, as the newer generation gets more wholly embraced by consoles earlier on (gone are the days where you had to game on PC to enjoy the best and widest breadth of gaming) and consoles offer ever wider experiences, PC gaming risks the newer generation will growing up divorced from PC gaming and set in their ways as the grow older. Indeed, some of the unique features like meaningful online gaming which PC?s have always monopolized seems to be a target of the coming generation of consoles. While last generation?s attempt at and implementation of online gaming was poor, this time round things seem set to change. Why, this is so important is because this is the last absolutely unique feature that PC gaming has had (FPS and RTS has already been bridged to some extent) and this has been the conduit through which many have become initiated into PC gaming.
In response to those that might say PC gaming is not threatened and will always continue just as it always and this is just doom-saying that we've heard all before:
FACT - As above the PC games market is not growing and even shrinking despite recent releases of some big and long-awaited games. This alone obviously isn't enough to just assume the PC gaming industry is facing a long term and serious threat. However, longer-term realities are changing:
- Economically the industry is under threat regards development costs against sales: The cost of developing games is increasing (ever increasing graphics, physics trying to keep up with consoles while PC developers face added cost with developing for thousands of different setups - now in the future add dual-core, quad-core etc support and its a real expensive mess) while PC sales are not increasing. More particularly, the games out there few sell enough - only a few games make it past 500,000 copies. Thus, the PC market is a huge risk venture with very little change of making a good profit. This will mean there simply won't be many games coming out in the future while innovation will suffer at the same time.
- Economically the industry is under threat from the end-user perspective - As the rise of consoles continue so they will benefit from ever larger economies of scale that will make PC gaming comparatively more expensive. While, PC gaming may benefit as the R&D into graphics cards on the consoles may benefit the PC market as a whole consoles will be able to price themselves alot cheaper for a comparative gaming experience.
- Consoles are expanding to become multi-media centres. This includes massive online support planned (Xbox360 especially) while it is known that the Xbox 360 will have keyboard and mouse support - it's simply not known whether this will extend to game support or just data entry for the internet. Turning it to gaming use would be incredibly easy. Either way if they don't this it this generation keyboard and mouse gaming input will become de facto for the next generation for sure. These moves will threaten the tradition segements that have sustained the PC gaming industry (FPS, RTS and MMORPGs) - if just online support is proper and effective MMORPGs on the PC will be under pressure as casual gamers now no longer will have to go through the PC to play them.
Essentially, the PC faces long-term economic, infrastructural challenges. However, this becomes far more fundamental if consoles adopt the keyboard and mouse and continue their set strategy to push strongly into the online arena. If that arises what will PC have left that is 'unique' to justify the increased cost and less accessibility of gaming on PC? While many diehard PC gamers may stick with the PC regardless, they cannot support an industry alone - as consoles attract more people away from the PC, things will get more expensive both hardware and software as economies of scale change - that could risk starting a downward spiral. That said, It's too early to start doom-saying and I will not be doing so in this article. Despite there being some long-term threats to PC gaming and if left unacknowledge and countered the future for the PC gaming industry is grim, there is potential and areas for the PC industry streamline itself and grow. Fundamentally, to meet these challenges the PC industry just needs to make itself more profitable and differentiate the gaming experience it offers from the consoles, which is possible.
Therefore, to continue with some simple conjectures:
- That consoles and PC can co-exist so long as the PC gaming industry can differentiate itself from that of the consoles rather than trying to emulate the consoles strengths. PC gaming as an industry will never be able to compete with consoles head-on and so must use its architectural and platform differences to differentiate itself. Indeed, it must do so before consoles encroach on it too far and risk the situation where the industry is too enfeebled and too discredited a platform in the public?s eyes.
- To reassert that PC gaming will find it increasingly difficult to match the particular strengths of consoles - as a platform consoles are ever maturing, expanding, and get ever larger amounts of money behind them and in design getting more specialized, accessible and optimized for gaming.
- Games matter above all for the success of any platform rather than graphics. Graphics can certainly create a richer and more immersive gaming experience but without decent games it's worthless. Accordingly, the PC industry does not necessarily need to have a leading position graphical over consoles to be successful. Indeed, looking at the success of the Sims is validation of this point. Developers do not need focus so much on graphics - seemingly its often just for the 'elite' gamers, which is not where an industry can be solely based on.
Overview
With those in mind we need to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the PC industry and what it can do to build on them or otherwise limit their impact.
Strengths:
1 - Strong catalogue of existing PC titles (although are often untapped due to OS incompatibilities and now consoles have developed titles as well)
2 - Some excellent games and a still a dominance in FPS, RTS and MMORPG which has defined and guaranteed the survival of the PC industry (although if/when consoles begin to use the keyboard and mouse as gaming input devices this could be radically undermined)
3 - An enthusiastic modding community that has shown itself to be both talented and creative (this is a fundamental strength and I will come back to this later)
Weaknesses:
1 - PC hardware is inherently not as highly optimized as consoles and will therefore find it difficult to keep up with the console industry (although graphics are not of absolute importance)
2 - Consumer impatience at having to fiddle with drivers and settings to find acceptable/best possible gaming experience ? contrasted to the easily accessible ?plug-and-play? nature of consoles.
3 ? ?Gaming' hardware is inherently more expensive for the PC given consoles are subsidized and benefit from massive economies of scale due to its identical proprietary nature.
4 - Consumer ignorance of PC hardware acts as a serious barrier to viewing PC gaming as a real alternative to gaming on a console ie what simple and comparatively inexpensive hardware upgrades could turn their 'Office' PC into a good gaming platform.
5 - Developing games are too expensive. This is especially important as game development costs go up while the PC market remains comparatively small/stagnant and has the potential to put a ?squeeze? on the PC gaming industry where its pushed into obscurity. Moreover, this is linked to all the varying PC hardware setups increasing development costs.
6 ? PC gaming is increasingly suffering at the hands of pirates which in an industry, which is experiencing a squeeze is incredibly detrimental.
Closer examination of the list of strengths and weaknesses:
The two major factors consoles will always have over PCs that they are more optimized and are plug-and-play. However, while PCs can never match those two factors, they can strive to bridge this game ? to become more streamlined both in optimizations but also in accessibility. The latter is of absolute importance to court the masses of casual gamers. Moreover, consoles benefit from comparatively cheap costs at least initially to get into console gaming. In contrast, the PC industry for consumers minds seems expensive and generally a confusing, fiddly, less social, inaccessible platform. Nevertheless, the industry has still demanded attention from any gamers wishing to game online, or play FPS and RTS. As said above, this may be changing. In short, the only real unique long-term strength of the PC is its moddable nature of its games. This is something I cannot stress enough how important it is.
While other aspects of PC gaming such as online gaming can be wrenched from the PC industry regards the masses of casual, ?not too fussed? gamers, the ?modable? nature of PC games can provide the differentiation PC games need to meaningfully survive. Reiterating - PCs cannot compete directly with consoles ? the console wars are fiercely cutthroat enough without another competitor which has inherent disadvantages. In short, PC gaming must offer something different and richer to justify to gamers why they should invest in PC gaming given its comparative disadvantages otherwise (cost, accessibility etc). Only the richness and individuality as expressed through modding can allow this. This is perhaps the greatest new growth area in the gameplay and nature of games.
Developers have always tried to offer as broad, immersive, freeform and individual an experience in games as possible - however, with an open style of game and a modding community all these things can be realized - and more as users can customize their very gaming experience. This can be best seen with the game Morrowind. The PC version with its expansion packs and mods is an incredibly far cry from its console brethren. Thus, modding is something which is inherently exclusive in the nature of PCs general and flexible architecture which consoles can never attempt. Consoles particular architecture and indeed their business structure makes this impossible.
Summarised version of what can be done to counter PC weaknesses and build on its strengths:
- A more optimised gaming environment perhaps with a 'gaming OS' (and more optimised 'DirectX' if feasible) (to help cut the minimise the inherent difference in gaming power for specs so as to make PCs more hardware competitive or lessen the need to spend money on upgrades fopr the end user)
- A more streamlined and accessible gaming environment - auto-updating drivers and patches (to make it more accessible for consumers)
- The increased use of middleware (increased profitability and thus to allow a greater production of games)
- The use of Direct Distribution (increased profitability and freeing creativity as entry costs are very low)
- Better marketting to consumers (the raise the awareness of PCs as a viable (cost and accessibility) and exciting (modding and freedom enjoyed) platform)
Detailed examination of the strengths of weaknesses:
Discuss those strengths:
1 - PCs do have the greatest and most developed and diverse catalogue of titles but currently, alot of these remain untapped or ignored. Often, incompatabilities in the MS OSs prevent many titles being run. eg some titles need Windows 98 to run. While there are workarounds possible such as dual booting or finding patches or hacks this is a convoluted process that is beyond what a casual gamer wants - he just wants to quickly play the game.
What could be done about this is to create a 'gaming OS' or perhaps more specifically a more compatible stripped down version of Windows. This could be done simply where say in Windows XP you are given an extra boot setting where you can boot into Windows where all extraneous processes are cut out, reducing overhead while at the same time increasing compatibility eg where Windows 98 kernel could be accessible.
2 - PCs have a lead over consoles in FPS and RTS and this is thanks to the implementation of keyboard and a mouse. Without these, consoles will never be quite able to approach PCs in these areas and will guarantee the survival of the PC gaming industry. Thankfully, the XBox 360 appears to be able to use the keyboard and mouse setup only as data input (although this could change very easily). Should the keyboard and mouse not be implemented, this will also allowed other genres like developed flight Sims and MMORPGS to remain firmly in the territory of PCs. Of those genres, FPS and MMORPGS are particularly important to industry as MMORPGs account for an ever larger marketshare of the gaming industry, while both are the main forces pushing and financing hardware development on PC - this is as contrasted to RTS RTS.
3 - The modding community is something I have experience first hand with Morrowind and all I can say is I am amazed by the commitment and talent of individuals that have enriched the gaming experience of so many. As I've stated before, this is something utterly unique to the PC industry and will remain so as the consoles can never copy this because of how optimized they are and the control the consoles and developers which to retain over their product.
Meanwhile, the PC industry as a whole is far liberal and should embrace that ? the very nature of pc computing tends towards the liberal and democratic. However, the PC gaming industry needs to capitalize and harness this force, while at the same time streamlining the very nature of modding so its simpler to the end user. Consequently, game developers should encourage modding actively by providing the high-level, detailed yet easy to use modding tools. Already, this can be seen to some extent with many games like Morrowind, X2 The Threat and Half Life 2. However, this needs to be really encouraged and pushed as to my mind only Morrowind has really been successful with harnassing a modding community and undoubtedly they have benefited from it.
If it was successfully marketed to a wider audience (eg at a simple level get PC games magazines involved ? I don?t know if they are already but it would make sense given the limited number of PC games coming out meaning they would benefit from added content to their magazine) undoubtedly many more people might have bought Morrowind. Fundamentally, if all major games had a strong modding community behind it where you could customize and overhaul your game any way you wanted, then suddenly PC gaming would become radically more appealing the gaming masses. I cannot stress enough how modding can add variety, richness and individuality (in a society which stresses individuality this could strike a very strong chord) and how important this could be. This could completely overhaul and become a force that galvanizes the whole PC industry. Indeed, the very people working on these mods can be the future developers ? mods can bring people into the industry on a massive scale impossible with the current publishers. Moreover, they?ll come into the industry inhibited and with their own unique ideas that can only lead to more diverse and interesting games in the future ? something which consoles in their mainstream and singular nature would be too afraid to touch.
Nevertheless, to properly make modding appealing to the masses it needs to be made accessible and that means direct involved from the game developers themselves. This is something they have shied away from eg Morrowind where it?s left to third parties to host, develop and keep track of all the mods. I?m arguing that while the original game developers should keep distanced from the mods, they should host and look after a central website hosting all the mods. This centralization is key to making it more accessible.
Currently, with Morrowind there are at least 5 different websites hosting various different mods of different version making it very difficult for end users to keep track. Consequently, I suggest game developers should keep creating an official mod hosting website (like MWsummit), while at the same time having a section of general encouraged mods like Telesphorus?s List O? Mods ">http://www.mwmythicmods.com/telesphoros.htm</a>. Moreover, the make this even more accessible to users they need to set it up as a database such that users can send in their current list of mods they use to check against the central database for any updates to those mods. If this was done automatically every time the game started and even offered a possibility for automatic downloads ? this would end up as an amazingly streamlined and accessible for modding such that it could be successfully marketed to people.
As for how this could be supported, it could either be done so through advertising as so many people would visit the webpage and perhaps some sort of small fee per year that would also allow the auto-updating service. Indeed, a further option would be through using torrent technology in distribution radically taking the costs off the game developers so the finances needed to set the service up and establish it would be minimal. This would make it even more attractive to developers and particularly significantly, the smaller less established developers who would lack the resources to set up a direct service and pay for the bandwidth. Moreover, it would help foster an even greater PC gaming community. Of the current upcoming games, Elder Scrolls: Obivion is in a prime position to do this with their extensive, pre-existing and enthusiastic modding community.
In a way perhaps with modding, the PC industry could survive on far less games being produced given that through modding a game can suddenly represent a massive wealth of game experiences sometimes utterly different the original games eg you can see many complete game overhaul mods which end up offering nigh an entirely different game eg there is an attempt to make a Babylon 5 based mod for Freespace 2. I need not even mention all the future mods for Half Life 2. In short, mods could completely revolutionise the PC industry where the PC industry does not need to even produce many games to compete with consoles as modding can more than make up for that.
Discussing those weaknesses:
1+2 - Combining points 1 and 2 about hardware not being optimized and consumer incomprehension at fiddling with settings and updating drivers: fundamentally the PC industry needs to make every attempt to streamline the gaming experience for the end user. In my mind this is the chief challenge for the PC gaming industry (this is why I have already tried to suggest some ways it could streamline the modding experience for end users). Extrapolating to the hardware side of things, auto-updating drivers and patches for any game is a real necessity.
This means like Windows Update, drivers for your graphics card would auto-update for you (I think the new ATI Control Panel interface can attempt something like this) while any new patches for the game would auto-update as well eg Far Cry would prompt you/update itself to version 1.3 for you. This would radically simplify any possible glitches that users might find in trying to play games or at least in the minds of gamers reassure them that the PC can provide a good and simple gaming experience ? in a way the PC gaming industry is faced with a battle for minds of casual gamers in attempting to get over its diehard/overly-complex/glitchy gaming experience.
Now the second suggestion I would make is to have a separate gaming OS or perhaps rather a separate start-up mode for gaming which would streamline the PC to remove nearly all background processes and services and thus unneeded legacy. Already with the X2 dual-core review">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=7</a>we have seen how a second-core taking the load of all the background processes has sometimes allowed it to equal the speed of a single-core processor 200mhz faster. Now, while this may not be that significant with such high-speed processors, if someone was operating a lower speed processor it would become far more significant.
Ultimately, the ideal would be to offer a streamline OS which even entailed some optimizations for gaming such that the performance benefit would be far more than 200mhz. Unfortunately, discussing optimizations one of the most important areas where PC fall down in regards of consoles is in the use of DirectX as opposed to direct writing to the hardware. Just to quote a figure about 50% of CPU power can be 'wasted' in going through DirectX. While this is inherent in the nature of PC hardware, if there was a way for MS to optimize DirectX further, the PC gaming industry would benefit radically.
To summarise, PCs will struggle with comparative un-optimization next to consoles but there is still real and very significant opportunity for the PC industry to close the gap with consoles. This will become ever more important as consoles comparatively increase in power and specialization. In a way I see a possible future where the PC industry is constantly playing catch-up with consoles and only being able to do so towards the very end of a console?s life. Of course, remember graphics are only of comparative importance ? games being far more so and so this is of only relative importance to the gaming industry.
3+4 - Combining points: unfortunately PC hardware will always be more expensive than console hardware ? this is just a matter of economies of scales and manufacturing refinement with its maturity ie when 50 million identical pieces of hardware is shipped there are massive cost advantages. However, this is only relative and must be further reviewed. Often people have bough systems with quite power processors but weak graphics card. If users decided to just stick in a competent graphics card (eg one might recommend now the 6600GT) and perhaps an extra stick of RAM they could have a very decently performing gaming box. This would be at equal cost or perhaps cheaper than a console although contemporary markets and technology will rule over this. As such the price difference between a console and a gaming PC setup is often not seemingly as great as might initially be.
Unfortunately, it?s the end user?s ignorance and general suspicion and fears of upgrading hardware that is acting as a barrier to this. The gaming community as a whole needs to be targeted to convince them that upgrading hardware is not a difficult thing or something to worry about. Moreover, knowledge of what to upgrade to provide the best bang/buck and meet their minimum standards must be disseminate widely, truthfully and freely. ie those consumers with 1280x1024 might be recommended the X700XT, 6600GT or 9800Pro. Both PC games magazines and hardware sites could be much clearer on this than they current are ? ie just simply state whether a card is good enough to play current and near-future games at X resolution. Often, recommendations are convoluted and fail to get to the central point of what a casual gamer might care about.
Essentially, hardware is one very complicated subject and is the very reason why sites like anandtech can exist and where people can argue constantly about hardware! In short everything should be simplified and cards clearly and obviously labeled into categories of sufficiency eg gaming at 1280x1024 at medium-high detail level, 1280x1024 at near maximum settings and ditto with 1600x1200. If this information was included more clearly in game reviews, on the box of a game, or else interactively (forwarded to a contemporary database online even?) when a user was setting up the game, this would both simplify things but also most importantly reassure the casual gamer that the PC can provide an excellent gaming platform and inexpensively too. If PC games could also be produced more cheaply than consoles (discussed in the next point) and this was conveyed to the gamer this could even further reduce the price discrepancy with consoles and appeal even more to gamers.
However, at the same time, hardware manufacturers (namely Nvidia and ATI) could make their product lines much simpler to understand to the consumer by having only several as opposed to a multitude of products - ie low-end, midrange, and high end, so that it is easy to relate to the consumer. Moreover, in specification if they were simpler eg a low-end card should not be matched with 256MB of RAM when by and large 64MB would be more than sufficient. In, short the hardware industry in trying to get ahead of eachother must share some of the blame in confusing the consumer for their immediate gain, when in the long term if they corroborated to just a small degree and set up some standards it would be to the benefit of the gaming industry and them in the long-term.
5 ? About costs of developing games: The PC industry cannot directly do anything about the increased costs of developing for so many different platforms as that is inherent in the nature of PC hardware. However, there is a much more serious problem facing the PC gaming industry that cost of developing games especially with the increasing graphical detail is becoming radically more expensive which is set against relatively small sales of each title. For many years now development costs have been increasing faster than revenue from game sales (this is a situation consoles do not find themselves) and consequently, the number of titles coming out on the PC has been declining such that there are few big releases each year. While the PC industry could survive with a relatively small number of gaming titles (so long as these sell well ie a few that sell well, not many that sell poorly) given a developed modding community whose work is made readily accessible and marketed to gamers, the PC industry still needs to fight this trend to ensure it doesn?t decline too far. This can be done through two means ? through the use of direct distribution ala Steam and the use of more middleware.
If costs were reduced successfully through these means the savings can either be passed onto gamers and back as profits to developers. As such it can only be a positive influence on the industry as it becomes healthier and more games are sold/made - A more profitable industry where more games are sold will stimulate the industry to produce more games, and more importantly, more diverse and creative games. Often creativity is stifled by conservative publishers and that development costs are too high too take risks with something more creative. Steam is a system that might just be able to liberate developers from this. While many people criticize Steam, the PC gaming industry may look back on it in future as a god-send that pushed the industry forward to where it has a new Renaissance.
Through direct distribution costs can be massively reduced meaning more creative games could be produced. Moreover, it?d weaken the power-hold of publishers over developers meaning developers could take a game in their own direction according to their specific vision. While I don?t foresee the end of publishers I see their roles changing and being far more limited: their role may shift towards being much more weighted towards supplying the initial capital, while marketing to consumers takes a lesser part. Moreover, they may assume a greater role of offering support/oversight/expertise for less established developing studios. Ultimately, these services would be for a cut of the studios profits at the end but this cut would be smaller than currently exists while profit margins would still be higher.
Steam, or rather its technology is a real opportunity for the PC gaming industry ? the fact that it is successful at limiting piracy is another big boon the PC gaming industry often too used to being exploited by pirates. However, it is still at a relative stage of infancy as its dependent on widespread broadband adoption while because of its intangible physical form will require more marketing on part of the studios to ensure customer confidence and awareness of the products.
On further thought on using Steam, the costs could even be further reduced if they included using Torrent technology in its distribution ie if you were happy to use your PC to aid extra bandwidth you could either purchase the game more cheaply or alternatively receive premium content or service (the latter is probably much more viable). Of course, before this this could be implemented regards the modding community, fitting in perfectly with its liberal, democratic nature.
The second measure of using middleware (in the sense of offering the basic physics and graphical engines of future games) will perhaps become more important in the longer term future rather than more immediately. This will be a response to increasing graphical and physical complexity demanded in gaming worlds. However, I foresee the idea of middleware as a rather interesting grey area which merges with the idea of the modding community ? in a way the modding community use games as middleware for their own visions just as game development studios might use some engine for their own visions. This could become an interesting cyclical and self-fueling model ? say as costs go down and amateurs gain experience creating mods, suddenly a group could very easily create a team that could take middleware (either a game engine or else properly designated middleware) and produce their own end game. That provides a very exciting prospect.
In all, regarding cost cutting and the use of ?middleware?, the PC has opportunities the console industry will not have at least in its current form. The console makers are unlikely to ever use technology such as Steam (at least in this generation of consoles) given their conservative nature and their will to retain control over content (especially Sony and their will to do all things proprietary eg Blu-Ray) meaning a preference to retain a physical disk. Moreover, console buyers might be up in arms over distributed content as no longer will they be able to take their disk round to their friends house etc or even sell it. As such, it would seem take up on such technology would be slow even if offered. The PC industry would not face such problems.
6 - While I'm not going to make the ridicuolous assumption that every pirated game would equal a sale it is clear that the PC industry would benefit from less piracy. Looking objectively at the lucrative hardware industry that PC gaming, it must become apparent that PC gaming is much bigger than its sales otherwise how else could it be supported quite as successfully. In a sense, while pirating can be a rather effective way of introducing people to PC gaming it only really supports the hardware vendors and not the PC gaming industry itself. Therefore, every step should be sought to limit it as far as possible yet produce games as cheaply as possible to appeal to those who might be otherwise tempted to pirate them.
Additional viewpoint about how this might be coordinated:
Because, of the difficulty in pushing such changes across such a multititude of sometime conflicting parties, an official and progressive PC Gaming Executive Council should be established. It should include all parties involved in the industry - game developers, hardware manufacturers (eg ATI and Nvidia), Microsoft and publishers to discuss the PC gaming industry and how to push it forward as quickly as possible to make it a more viable, attractive, exciting and profitable platform which is in the best interests of all. This is is given because the PC gaming industry is no longer competing internally but rather as a platform others in the form of consoles. Only through some sort of centralized effort can the PC gaming platform hope to evolve itself quickly to meet the growing challenges from consoles. Through unified action of all parties in various ways can the PC be very effectively streamline and optimised and made as a gaming platform accessible and marketted successfully to the wider gaming masses.
Conclusion
Well after a long spiel, that is my assessment of the PC gaming industry. Accordingly, I see the current situation of the PC industry not as under mortal threat by consoles but rather in a position of great opportunity in which they can ensure not only their survival but prosperity into the future. So long as the current generation of consoles do not use they keyboard and mouse setup as gaming input devices, the PC industry will be given enough time to realign itself. Otherwise, it is endangered of being dealt a withering blow before it can which would raise questions of its long-term survival as a primary gaming industry. The industry cannot survive on the modding community alone as it currently stands - they need to be nurtured while costs are radically reduced.
Thus, these next few years will be significant in whether the industry will revolutionize itself or end up accepting a position of increasing relative decline. In the long term, consoles are increasingly encroaching on the PC gaming industry and while they may not do so to create an irrecoverable position for the PC industry this time ? the long term they undoubtedly will. The PC gaming industry must respond to this tenaciously and with a will to revolutionize itself: to optimize itself to be closer at keeping up with consoles; to streamline the gaming experience (eg ?gaming OS? + auto-updating and auto-patching); to inform and more widely disseminate information to relate the unique richness of the PC experience + the relative ease/inexpense of having a gaming machine; to streamline production and development costs to ensure more plentiful and more creative games and to build on the strengths and to streamlining the modding to more widely act as a base to galvanize the PC gaming industry.
In short, what is suggested is a radical and complete overhaul of the PC gaming industry that would change its very nature. To do so, it would need to overcome it?s conservative elements within, while undertake this as a concerted plan and rally the various factions and groups to push the industry forward ? the question fundamentally is ? can this be done and can it be done quickly enough? The PC gaming industry still has time ? the consoles are still some way away. Meanwhile, it?ll take even longer for games to fully utilize their potential and even longer for HDTVs to be taken up enough. Moreover, with such promising technology as the PhysiX Processing Unit, there is real potential for the PC gaming industry. In the meantime games will still be ported from consoles to PC and vice versa from PC to console, but the PC gaming industry?s long term survival is dependant on it having its own strength and its own differentiate products and gaming experience.
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I look forward to any comments. If anyone?s has read this and appreciated the article please say so. More generally, I look forward to anyone?s input and I will gladly respond to any comments or indeed criticisms made.
(NB this is at a mostly complete edit at least regards posting on a forum, I may edit and qualify things more later - nevertheless, as I said this is to provoke discussion and analysis of the PC gaming industry so I do not claim knowing any absolute truths here)
Examining it's strengths & weaknesses; it's potential and the possible threats - an amalgamation of ideas
(aka Differentiation & Development or Declining Slowly into Obscurity)
Introduction
First-off just to explain where this thread came from is originally from all the speculation in response to the news of the latest generation of consoles coming out. I thought it deserved more particular analysis and investigation than the news article comments. While, forum posters have done something to investigate the current situation and the future of the PC gaming industry they have typically been too subject to emotional leanings and ?fanboy-ism?. Given the sheer expense and effort many of us go through to enjoy PC gaming at its best perhaps this should not be surprising. However, this article is to attempt to take a more circumspect and objective analysis of the gaming industry at hand. In this though, I admit my only comparative ignorance as I have not been involved in the PC gaming industry first-hand nor do I have any financial interest in it. I?m writing this casually, in my own time and off my own back. Nevertheless, as an outsider looking in, I hope I can offer some objective analysis and get some sort of more detailed discussion going.
This is a long piece of writing but I hope some people have the time and patience to read it (it?s taken me long enough!) ? I hope any game developers would be especially interest to comment on this. For those too lazy to read extensively, I?ve edited this to make skim-reading as easy as possible.
My reason for this article
Everything is subjective and everyone has bias and so to fully comprehend an article you must know the mind of its author and his reason to write it. That is something my studies have taught me and so to be categorically explicit I am neither a hardcore gamer nor quite a casual gamer but somewhere in the middle. In a way, gaming on the PC I couldn#'t give any other response as often the hoops I have to jump through and the energy I often have to invest to get a PC game working well excludes me ever being able to be described as a casual gamer. Therefore, I am not the atypical gamer who is casual and just wants some readily picked up inexpensive fun. That said that strikes a common theme in this writing. Nevertheless, to conclude, while I have gamed on consoles and enjoyed it, I am a PC gamer through-and-through and accordingly care about the PC gaming industry. Maybe that is representative of an emotional investment of sorts - or maybe being sardonic, just my wallet! In short, I want the PC industry to not only survive but thrive in its own unique way. I am worried by what I see as the long term trends where PC gaming seems directed towards increasingly marginalized and eventually hollowed out as money and talent leaves the industry in favour of console gaming. In my opinion, the survival of PC gaming is meaningless if ultimately it is a largely uncreative shell which lacks its own strong identity and something it can unquestionably claim as its own against the ever-encroaching consoles.
PC gaming in decline - the under-pinning conviction of this article
The PC game industry is not only in relative decline but a real decline as the emphasis increasingly shifts from PCs to consoles. Examining the US game markets PC games declined to $1.1 billion from $1.2 billion in 2003. This is despite releases of long-awaited titles like Half Life 2 and Doom 3. So we must ask what would have happened if these games had not been released? An industry can?t survive on the strength of a few recognized game titles alone. In fact, that the recent biggest titles and recent PC gaming can be characterized as sequels is testament to how financially risky and weak the PC gaming market is. If games were more profitable, not only would revenues be increasing but there would be many more innovative games that widely known franchises that can guarantee a decent amount of sales.
To further contextualize the figures of $1.1 billion; that decline must also be set against inflation meaning the decline is actually still more significant. Additionally, set against inexorably rising development costs especially as graphics are pushed ever further (and pushed to compete with consoles), there is a very real squeeze being placed on the PC industry where its long term survival in any meaningful way could start to be questioned. While there will always be die-hard gamers, can they support an industry alone? Moreover, as the newer generation gets more wholly embraced by consoles earlier on (gone are the days where you had to game on PC to enjoy the best and widest breadth of gaming) and consoles offer ever wider experiences, PC gaming risks the newer generation will growing up divorced from PC gaming and set in their ways as the grow older. Indeed, some of the unique features like meaningful online gaming which PC?s have always monopolized seems to be a target of the coming generation of consoles. While last generation?s attempt at and implementation of online gaming was poor, this time round things seem set to change. Why, this is so important is because this is the last absolutely unique feature that PC gaming has had (FPS and RTS has already been bridged to some extent) and this has been the conduit through which many have become initiated into PC gaming.
In response to those that might say PC gaming is not threatened and will always continue just as it always and this is just doom-saying that we've heard all before:
FACT - As above the PC games market is not growing and even shrinking despite recent releases of some big and long-awaited games. This alone obviously isn't enough to just assume the PC gaming industry is facing a long term and serious threat. However, longer-term realities are changing:
- Economically the industry is under threat regards development costs against sales: The cost of developing games is increasing (ever increasing graphics, physics trying to keep up with consoles while PC developers face added cost with developing for thousands of different setups - now in the future add dual-core, quad-core etc support and its a real expensive mess) while PC sales are not increasing. More particularly, the games out there few sell enough - only a few games make it past 500,000 copies. Thus, the PC market is a huge risk venture with very little change of making a good profit. This will mean there simply won't be many games coming out in the future while innovation will suffer at the same time.
- Economically the industry is under threat from the end-user perspective - As the rise of consoles continue so they will benefit from ever larger economies of scale that will make PC gaming comparatively more expensive. While, PC gaming may benefit as the R&D into graphics cards on the consoles may benefit the PC market as a whole consoles will be able to price themselves alot cheaper for a comparative gaming experience.
- Consoles are expanding to become multi-media centres. This includes massive online support planned (Xbox360 especially) while it is known that the Xbox 360 will have keyboard and mouse support - it's simply not known whether this will extend to game support or just data entry for the internet. Turning it to gaming use would be incredibly easy. Either way if they don't this it this generation keyboard and mouse gaming input will become de facto for the next generation for sure. These moves will threaten the tradition segements that have sustained the PC gaming industry (FPS, RTS and MMORPGs) - if just online support is proper and effective MMORPGs on the PC will be under pressure as casual gamers now no longer will have to go through the PC to play them.
Essentially, the PC faces long-term economic, infrastructural challenges. However, this becomes far more fundamental if consoles adopt the keyboard and mouse and continue their set strategy to push strongly into the online arena. If that arises what will PC have left that is 'unique' to justify the increased cost and less accessibility of gaming on PC? While many diehard PC gamers may stick with the PC regardless, they cannot support an industry alone - as consoles attract more people away from the PC, things will get more expensive both hardware and software as economies of scale change - that could risk starting a downward spiral. That said, It's too early to start doom-saying and I will not be doing so in this article. Despite there being some long-term threats to PC gaming and if left unacknowledge and countered the future for the PC gaming industry is grim, there is potential and areas for the PC industry streamline itself and grow. Fundamentally, to meet these challenges the PC industry just needs to make itself more profitable and differentiate the gaming experience it offers from the consoles, which is possible.
Therefore, to continue with some simple conjectures:
- That consoles and PC can co-exist so long as the PC gaming industry can differentiate itself from that of the consoles rather than trying to emulate the consoles strengths. PC gaming as an industry will never be able to compete with consoles head-on and so must use its architectural and platform differences to differentiate itself. Indeed, it must do so before consoles encroach on it too far and risk the situation where the industry is too enfeebled and too discredited a platform in the public?s eyes.
- To reassert that PC gaming will find it increasingly difficult to match the particular strengths of consoles - as a platform consoles are ever maturing, expanding, and get ever larger amounts of money behind them and in design getting more specialized, accessible and optimized for gaming.
- Games matter above all for the success of any platform rather than graphics. Graphics can certainly create a richer and more immersive gaming experience but without decent games it's worthless. Accordingly, the PC industry does not necessarily need to have a leading position graphical over consoles to be successful. Indeed, looking at the success of the Sims is validation of this point. Developers do not need focus so much on graphics - seemingly its often just for the 'elite' gamers, which is not where an industry can be solely based on.
Overview
With those in mind we need to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the PC industry and what it can do to build on them or otherwise limit their impact.
Strengths:
1 - Strong catalogue of existing PC titles (although are often untapped due to OS incompatibilities and now consoles have developed titles as well)
2 - Some excellent games and a still a dominance in FPS, RTS and MMORPG which has defined and guaranteed the survival of the PC industry (although if/when consoles begin to use the keyboard and mouse as gaming input devices this could be radically undermined)
3 - An enthusiastic modding community that has shown itself to be both talented and creative (this is a fundamental strength and I will come back to this later)
Weaknesses:
1 - PC hardware is inherently not as highly optimized as consoles and will therefore find it difficult to keep up with the console industry (although graphics are not of absolute importance)
2 - Consumer impatience at having to fiddle with drivers and settings to find acceptable/best possible gaming experience ? contrasted to the easily accessible ?plug-and-play? nature of consoles.
3 ? ?Gaming' hardware is inherently more expensive for the PC given consoles are subsidized and benefit from massive economies of scale due to its identical proprietary nature.
4 - Consumer ignorance of PC hardware acts as a serious barrier to viewing PC gaming as a real alternative to gaming on a console ie what simple and comparatively inexpensive hardware upgrades could turn their 'Office' PC into a good gaming platform.
5 - Developing games are too expensive. This is especially important as game development costs go up while the PC market remains comparatively small/stagnant and has the potential to put a ?squeeze? on the PC gaming industry where its pushed into obscurity. Moreover, this is linked to all the varying PC hardware setups increasing development costs.
6 ? PC gaming is increasingly suffering at the hands of pirates which in an industry, which is experiencing a squeeze is incredibly detrimental.
Closer examination of the list of strengths and weaknesses:
The two major factors consoles will always have over PCs that they are more optimized and are plug-and-play. However, while PCs can never match those two factors, they can strive to bridge this game ? to become more streamlined both in optimizations but also in accessibility. The latter is of absolute importance to court the masses of casual gamers. Moreover, consoles benefit from comparatively cheap costs at least initially to get into console gaming. In contrast, the PC industry for consumers minds seems expensive and generally a confusing, fiddly, less social, inaccessible platform. Nevertheless, the industry has still demanded attention from any gamers wishing to game online, or play FPS and RTS. As said above, this may be changing. In short, the only real unique long-term strength of the PC is its moddable nature of its games. This is something I cannot stress enough how important it is.
While other aspects of PC gaming such as online gaming can be wrenched from the PC industry regards the masses of casual, ?not too fussed? gamers, the ?modable? nature of PC games can provide the differentiation PC games need to meaningfully survive. Reiterating - PCs cannot compete directly with consoles ? the console wars are fiercely cutthroat enough without another competitor which has inherent disadvantages. In short, PC gaming must offer something different and richer to justify to gamers why they should invest in PC gaming given its comparative disadvantages otherwise (cost, accessibility etc). Only the richness and individuality as expressed through modding can allow this. This is perhaps the greatest new growth area in the gameplay and nature of games.
Developers have always tried to offer as broad, immersive, freeform and individual an experience in games as possible - however, with an open style of game and a modding community all these things can be realized - and more as users can customize their very gaming experience. This can be best seen with the game Morrowind. The PC version with its expansion packs and mods is an incredibly far cry from its console brethren. Thus, modding is something which is inherently exclusive in the nature of PCs general and flexible architecture which consoles can never attempt. Consoles particular architecture and indeed their business structure makes this impossible.
Summarised version of what can be done to counter PC weaknesses and build on its strengths:
- A more optimised gaming environment perhaps with a 'gaming OS' (and more optimised 'DirectX' if feasible) (to help cut the minimise the inherent difference in gaming power for specs so as to make PCs more hardware competitive or lessen the need to spend money on upgrades fopr the end user)
- A more streamlined and accessible gaming environment - auto-updating drivers and patches (to make it more accessible for consumers)
- The increased use of middleware (increased profitability and thus to allow a greater production of games)
- The use of Direct Distribution (increased profitability and freeing creativity as entry costs are very low)
- Better marketting to consumers (the raise the awareness of PCs as a viable (cost and accessibility) and exciting (modding and freedom enjoyed) platform)
Detailed examination of the strengths of weaknesses:
Discuss those strengths:
1 - PCs do have the greatest and most developed and diverse catalogue of titles but currently, alot of these remain untapped or ignored. Often, incompatabilities in the MS OSs prevent many titles being run. eg some titles need Windows 98 to run. While there are workarounds possible such as dual booting or finding patches or hacks this is a convoluted process that is beyond what a casual gamer wants - he just wants to quickly play the game.
What could be done about this is to create a 'gaming OS' or perhaps more specifically a more compatible stripped down version of Windows. This could be done simply where say in Windows XP you are given an extra boot setting where you can boot into Windows where all extraneous processes are cut out, reducing overhead while at the same time increasing compatibility eg where Windows 98 kernel could be accessible.
2 - PCs have a lead over consoles in FPS and RTS and this is thanks to the implementation of keyboard and a mouse. Without these, consoles will never be quite able to approach PCs in these areas and will guarantee the survival of the PC gaming industry. Thankfully, the XBox 360 appears to be able to use the keyboard and mouse setup only as data input (although this could change very easily). Should the keyboard and mouse not be implemented, this will also allowed other genres like developed flight Sims and MMORPGS to remain firmly in the territory of PCs. Of those genres, FPS and MMORPGS are particularly important to industry as MMORPGs account for an ever larger marketshare of the gaming industry, while both are the main forces pushing and financing hardware development on PC - this is as contrasted to RTS RTS.
3 - The modding community is something I have experience first hand with Morrowind and all I can say is I am amazed by the commitment and talent of individuals that have enriched the gaming experience of so many. As I've stated before, this is something utterly unique to the PC industry and will remain so as the consoles can never copy this because of how optimized they are and the control the consoles and developers which to retain over their product.
Meanwhile, the PC industry as a whole is far liberal and should embrace that ? the very nature of pc computing tends towards the liberal and democratic. However, the PC gaming industry needs to capitalize and harness this force, while at the same time streamlining the very nature of modding so its simpler to the end user. Consequently, game developers should encourage modding actively by providing the high-level, detailed yet easy to use modding tools. Already, this can be seen to some extent with many games like Morrowind, X2 The Threat and Half Life 2. However, this needs to be really encouraged and pushed as to my mind only Morrowind has really been successful with harnassing a modding community and undoubtedly they have benefited from it.
If it was successfully marketed to a wider audience (eg at a simple level get PC games magazines involved ? I don?t know if they are already but it would make sense given the limited number of PC games coming out meaning they would benefit from added content to their magazine) undoubtedly many more people might have bought Morrowind. Fundamentally, if all major games had a strong modding community behind it where you could customize and overhaul your game any way you wanted, then suddenly PC gaming would become radically more appealing the gaming masses. I cannot stress enough how modding can add variety, richness and individuality (in a society which stresses individuality this could strike a very strong chord) and how important this could be. This could completely overhaul and become a force that galvanizes the whole PC industry. Indeed, the very people working on these mods can be the future developers ? mods can bring people into the industry on a massive scale impossible with the current publishers. Moreover, they?ll come into the industry inhibited and with their own unique ideas that can only lead to more diverse and interesting games in the future ? something which consoles in their mainstream and singular nature would be too afraid to touch.
Nevertheless, to properly make modding appealing to the masses it needs to be made accessible and that means direct involved from the game developers themselves. This is something they have shied away from eg Morrowind where it?s left to third parties to host, develop and keep track of all the mods. I?m arguing that while the original game developers should keep distanced from the mods, they should host and look after a central website hosting all the mods. This centralization is key to making it more accessible.
Currently, with Morrowind there are at least 5 different websites hosting various different mods of different version making it very difficult for end users to keep track. Consequently, I suggest game developers should keep creating an official mod hosting website (like MWsummit), while at the same time having a section of general encouraged mods like Telesphorus?s List O? Mods ">http://www.mwmythicmods.com/telesphoros.htm</a>. Moreover, the make this even more accessible to users they need to set it up as a database such that users can send in their current list of mods they use to check against the central database for any updates to those mods. If this was done automatically every time the game started and even offered a possibility for automatic downloads ? this would end up as an amazingly streamlined and accessible for modding such that it could be successfully marketed to people.
As for how this could be supported, it could either be done so through advertising as so many people would visit the webpage and perhaps some sort of small fee per year that would also allow the auto-updating service. Indeed, a further option would be through using torrent technology in distribution radically taking the costs off the game developers so the finances needed to set the service up and establish it would be minimal. This would make it even more attractive to developers and particularly significantly, the smaller less established developers who would lack the resources to set up a direct service and pay for the bandwidth. Moreover, it would help foster an even greater PC gaming community. Of the current upcoming games, Elder Scrolls: Obivion is in a prime position to do this with their extensive, pre-existing and enthusiastic modding community.
In a way perhaps with modding, the PC industry could survive on far less games being produced given that through modding a game can suddenly represent a massive wealth of game experiences sometimes utterly different the original games eg you can see many complete game overhaul mods which end up offering nigh an entirely different game eg there is an attempt to make a Babylon 5 based mod for Freespace 2. I need not even mention all the future mods for Half Life 2. In short, mods could completely revolutionise the PC industry where the PC industry does not need to even produce many games to compete with consoles as modding can more than make up for that.
Discussing those weaknesses:
1+2 - Combining points 1 and 2 about hardware not being optimized and consumer incomprehension at fiddling with settings and updating drivers: fundamentally the PC industry needs to make every attempt to streamline the gaming experience for the end user. In my mind this is the chief challenge for the PC gaming industry (this is why I have already tried to suggest some ways it could streamline the modding experience for end users). Extrapolating to the hardware side of things, auto-updating drivers and patches for any game is a real necessity.
This means like Windows Update, drivers for your graphics card would auto-update for you (I think the new ATI Control Panel interface can attempt something like this) while any new patches for the game would auto-update as well eg Far Cry would prompt you/update itself to version 1.3 for you. This would radically simplify any possible glitches that users might find in trying to play games or at least in the minds of gamers reassure them that the PC can provide a good and simple gaming experience ? in a way the PC gaming industry is faced with a battle for minds of casual gamers in attempting to get over its diehard/overly-complex/glitchy gaming experience.
Now the second suggestion I would make is to have a separate gaming OS or perhaps rather a separate start-up mode for gaming which would streamline the PC to remove nearly all background processes and services and thus unneeded legacy. Already with the X2 dual-core review">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=7</a>we have seen how a second-core taking the load of all the background processes has sometimes allowed it to equal the speed of a single-core processor 200mhz faster. Now, while this may not be that significant with such high-speed processors, if someone was operating a lower speed processor it would become far more significant.
Ultimately, the ideal would be to offer a streamline OS which even entailed some optimizations for gaming such that the performance benefit would be far more than 200mhz. Unfortunately, discussing optimizations one of the most important areas where PC fall down in regards of consoles is in the use of DirectX as opposed to direct writing to the hardware. Just to quote a figure about 50% of CPU power can be 'wasted' in going through DirectX. While this is inherent in the nature of PC hardware, if there was a way for MS to optimize DirectX further, the PC gaming industry would benefit radically.
To summarise, PCs will struggle with comparative un-optimization next to consoles but there is still real and very significant opportunity for the PC industry to close the gap with consoles. This will become ever more important as consoles comparatively increase in power and specialization. In a way I see a possible future where the PC industry is constantly playing catch-up with consoles and only being able to do so towards the very end of a console?s life. Of course, remember graphics are only of comparative importance ? games being far more so and so this is of only relative importance to the gaming industry.
3+4 - Combining points: unfortunately PC hardware will always be more expensive than console hardware ? this is just a matter of economies of scales and manufacturing refinement with its maturity ie when 50 million identical pieces of hardware is shipped there are massive cost advantages. However, this is only relative and must be further reviewed. Often people have bough systems with quite power processors but weak graphics card. If users decided to just stick in a competent graphics card (eg one might recommend now the 6600GT) and perhaps an extra stick of RAM they could have a very decently performing gaming box. This would be at equal cost or perhaps cheaper than a console although contemporary markets and technology will rule over this. As such the price difference between a console and a gaming PC setup is often not seemingly as great as might initially be.
Unfortunately, it?s the end user?s ignorance and general suspicion and fears of upgrading hardware that is acting as a barrier to this. The gaming community as a whole needs to be targeted to convince them that upgrading hardware is not a difficult thing or something to worry about. Moreover, knowledge of what to upgrade to provide the best bang/buck and meet their minimum standards must be disseminate widely, truthfully and freely. ie those consumers with 1280x1024 might be recommended the X700XT, 6600GT or 9800Pro. Both PC games magazines and hardware sites could be much clearer on this than they current are ? ie just simply state whether a card is good enough to play current and near-future games at X resolution. Often, recommendations are convoluted and fail to get to the central point of what a casual gamer might care about.
Essentially, hardware is one very complicated subject and is the very reason why sites like anandtech can exist and where people can argue constantly about hardware! In short everything should be simplified and cards clearly and obviously labeled into categories of sufficiency eg gaming at 1280x1024 at medium-high detail level, 1280x1024 at near maximum settings and ditto with 1600x1200. If this information was included more clearly in game reviews, on the box of a game, or else interactively (forwarded to a contemporary database online even?) when a user was setting up the game, this would both simplify things but also most importantly reassure the casual gamer that the PC can provide an excellent gaming platform and inexpensively too. If PC games could also be produced more cheaply than consoles (discussed in the next point) and this was conveyed to the gamer this could even further reduce the price discrepancy with consoles and appeal even more to gamers.
However, at the same time, hardware manufacturers (namely Nvidia and ATI) could make their product lines much simpler to understand to the consumer by having only several as opposed to a multitude of products - ie low-end, midrange, and high end, so that it is easy to relate to the consumer. Moreover, in specification if they were simpler eg a low-end card should not be matched with 256MB of RAM when by and large 64MB would be more than sufficient. In, short the hardware industry in trying to get ahead of eachother must share some of the blame in confusing the consumer for their immediate gain, when in the long term if they corroborated to just a small degree and set up some standards it would be to the benefit of the gaming industry and them in the long-term.
5 ? About costs of developing games: The PC industry cannot directly do anything about the increased costs of developing for so many different platforms as that is inherent in the nature of PC hardware. However, there is a much more serious problem facing the PC gaming industry that cost of developing games especially with the increasing graphical detail is becoming radically more expensive which is set against relatively small sales of each title. For many years now development costs have been increasing faster than revenue from game sales (this is a situation consoles do not find themselves) and consequently, the number of titles coming out on the PC has been declining such that there are few big releases each year. While the PC industry could survive with a relatively small number of gaming titles (so long as these sell well ie a few that sell well, not many that sell poorly) given a developed modding community whose work is made readily accessible and marketed to gamers, the PC industry still needs to fight this trend to ensure it doesn?t decline too far. This can be done through two means ? through the use of direct distribution ala Steam and the use of more middleware.
If costs were reduced successfully through these means the savings can either be passed onto gamers and back as profits to developers. As such it can only be a positive influence on the industry as it becomes healthier and more games are sold/made - A more profitable industry where more games are sold will stimulate the industry to produce more games, and more importantly, more diverse and creative games. Often creativity is stifled by conservative publishers and that development costs are too high too take risks with something more creative. Steam is a system that might just be able to liberate developers from this. While many people criticize Steam, the PC gaming industry may look back on it in future as a god-send that pushed the industry forward to where it has a new Renaissance.
Through direct distribution costs can be massively reduced meaning more creative games could be produced. Moreover, it?d weaken the power-hold of publishers over developers meaning developers could take a game in their own direction according to their specific vision. While I don?t foresee the end of publishers I see their roles changing and being far more limited: their role may shift towards being much more weighted towards supplying the initial capital, while marketing to consumers takes a lesser part. Moreover, they may assume a greater role of offering support/oversight/expertise for less established developing studios. Ultimately, these services would be for a cut of the studios profits at the end but this cut would be smaller than currently exists while profit margins would still be higher.
Steam, or rather its technology is a real opportunity for the PC gaming industry ? the fact that it is successful at limiting piracy is another big boon the PC gaming industry often too used to being exploited by pirates. However, it is still at a relative stage of infancy as its dependent on widespread broadband adoption while because of its intangible physical form will require more marketing on part of the studios to ensure customer confidence and awareness of the products.
On further thought on using Steam, the costs could even be further reduced if they included using Torrent technology in its distribution ie if you were happy to use your PC to aid extra bandwidth you could either purchase the game more cheaply or alternatively receive premium content or service (the latter is probably much more viable). Of course, before this this could be implemented regards the modding community, fitting in perfectly with its liberal, democratic nature.
The second measure of using middleware (in the sense of offering the basic physics and graphical engines of future games) will perhaps become more important in the longer term future rather than more immediately. This will be a response to increasing graphical and physical complexity demanded in gaming worlds. However, I foresee the idea of middleware as a rather interesting grey area which merges with the idea of the modding community ? in a way the modding community use games as middleware for their own visions just as game development studios might use some engine for their own visions. This could become an interesting cyclical and self-fueling model ? say as costs go down and amateurs gain experience creating mods, suddenly a group could very easily create a team that could take middleware (either a game engine or else properly designated middleware) and produce their own end game. That provides a very exciting prospect.
In all, regarding cost cutting and the use of ?middleware?, the PC has opportunities the console industry will not have at least in its current form. The console makers are unlikely to ever use technology such as Steam (at least in this generation of consoles) given their conservative nature and their will to retain control over content (especially Sony and their will to do all things proprietary eg Blu-Ray) meaning a preference to retain a physical disk. Moreover, console buyers might be up in arms over distributed content as no longer will they be able to take their disk round to their friends house etc or even sell it. As such, it would seem take up on such technology would be slow even if offered. The PC industry would not face such problems.
6 - While I'm not going to make the ridicuolous assumption that every pirated game would equal a sale it is clear that the PC industry would benefit from less piracy. Looking objectively at the lucrative hardware industry that PC gaming, it must become apparent that PC gaming is much bigger than its sales otherwise how else could it be supported quite as successfully. In a sense, while pirating can be a rather effective way of introducing people to PC gaming it only really supports the hardware vendors and not the PC gaming industry itself. Therefore, every step should be sought to limit it as far as possible yet produce games as cheaply as possible to appeal to those who might be otherwise tempted to pirate them.
Additional viewpoint about how this might be coordinated:
Because, of the difficulty in pushing such changes across such a multititude of sometime conflicting parties, an official and progressive PC Gaming Executive Council should be established. It should include all parties involved in the industry - game developers, hardware manufacturers (eg ATI and Nvidia), Microsoft and publishers to discuss the PC gaming industry and how to push it forward as quickly as possible to make it a more viable, attractive, exciting and profitable platform which is in the best interests of all. This is is given because the PC gaming industry is no longer competing internally but rather as a platform others in the form of consoles. Only through some sort of centralized effort can the PC gaming platform hope to evolve itself quickly to meet the growing challenges from consoles. Through unified action of all parties in various ways can the PC be very effectively streamline and optimised and made as a gaming platform accessible and marketted successfully to the wider gaming masses.
Conclusion
Well after a long spiel, that is my assessment of the PC gaming industry. Accordingly, I see the current situation of the PC industry not as under mortal threat by consoles but rather in a position of great opportunity in which they can ensure not only their survival but prosperity into the future. So long as the current generation of consoles do not use they keyboard and mouse setup as gaming input devices, the PC industry will be given enough time to realign itself. Otherwise, it is endangered of being dealt a withering blow before it can which would raise questions of its long-term survival as a primary gaming industry. The industry cannot survive on the modding community alone as it currently stands - they need to be nurtured while costs are radically reduced.
Thus, these next few years will be significant in whether the industry will revolutionize itself or end up accepting a position of increasing relative decline. In the long term, consoles are increasingly encroaching on the PC gaming industry and while they may not do so to create an irrecoverable position for the PC industry this time ? the long term they undoubtedly will. The PC gaming industry must respond to this tenaciously and with a will to revolutionize itself: to optimize itself to be closer at keeping up with consoles; to streamline the gaming experience (eg ?gaming OS? + auto-updating and auto-patching); to inform and more widely disseminate information to relate the unique richness of the PC experience + the relative ease/inexpense of having a gaming machine; to streamline production and development costs to ensure more plentiful and more creative games and to build on the strengths and to streamlining the modding to more widely act as a base to galvanize the PC gaming industry.
In short, what is suggested is a radical and complete overhaul of the PC gaming industry that would change its very nature. To do so, it would need to overcome it?s conservative elements within, while undertake this as a concerted plan and rally the various factions and groups to push the industry forward ? the question fundamentally is ? can this be done and can it be done quickly enough? The PC gaming industry still has time ? the consoles are still some way away. Meanwhile, it?ll take even longer for games to fully utilize their potential and even longer for HDTVs to be taken up enough. Moreover, with such promising technology as the PhysiX Processing Unit, there is real potential for the PC gaming industry. In the meantime games will still be ported from consoles to PC and vice versa from PC to console, but the PC gaming industry?s long term survival is dependant on it having its own strength and its own differentiate products and gaming experience.
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I look forward to any comments. If anyone?s has read this and appreciated the article please say so. More generally, I look forward to anyone?s input and I will gladly respond to any comments or indeed criticisms made.
(NB this is at a mostly complete edit at least regards posting on a forum, I may edit and qualify things more later - nevertheless, as I said this is to provoke discussion and analysis of the PC gaming industry so I do not claim knowing any absolute truths here)
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