Was PC gaming ever in its current state?

[ConstipatedVigilante]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom

Was PC gaming ever in its current state?

No, it has never been as big as it is now.

Compare PC vs. consoles in the Atary 2600 days. Console gaming was thousand times more popular than PC gaming.

Compare PC gaming vs. the Nintendo Entertainment System. Console gaming was hundred times more popular than PC gaming.

Now PC gaming is as popular as any individual console. The two most profitable games are World of Warcraft a PC game. The second most profitable game is the Sims which is another PC game.

I'm not so sure you can judge PC gaming based on WoW and The Sims. Neither of those games are very demanding. When people think "PC Gamer" most on here think of a person who tries to keep their hardware up to date within the last 6 months - 1 year for the latest games. On the whole, I'd say console gaming owns the majority of the market now - most suburban households have a PS2, Xbox, Wii, Xbox 360, or PS3 if a teenager is among the occupants.

Another reason developers don't want to develop for PC as much as consoles is the different configurations. On a PC, someone might be unable to get a game to work (or have bugs) specific to their system that could turn off a bunch of other potential buyers (their friends). With so many different hardware configurations, let alone software configurations (different OS's, codecs, background programs).

 

[Ackmed]

PC gaming, is not in a "jam". Dont fall for the propaganda. Also, a lot of sales figures, dont show online games sold thru steam, etc.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
PC gaming, is not in a "jam". Dont fall for the propaganda. Also, a lot of sales figures, dont show online games sold thru steam, etc.

From the last PC Gaming versus Console Gaming thread of the week

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Speaking of game sales, here is something that I have been trying to put together (I considered turning it into a separate thread, but I am holding off for 2008 annual reports to give the PS3 and Wii a fair running), here it is:

Most of the time people combine the revenue generated by the Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo gaming platforms into a single category to pit against the PC. Today, I take a look at the revenue generated by several popular impartial companies (impartial defined as not producing a gaming console). Only revenue from the current generation competing platforms will be listed.

Sources:

• Activision 2007 Annual Report, page 29
• EA 2007 Annual Report (retrieved from EA's website under investor relations), page 112
• THQ 2007 Annual Report, page 33

2007 Annual Reports (all in US dollars)

PC

• Activision: 78,886,000
• Electronic Arts: 498,000,000
• THQ: 149,000,000

Xbox 360

• Activision: 200,394,000
• Electronic Arts: 480,000,000
• THQ: 134,908,000

Wii

• Activision: 54,636,000
• Electronic Arts: 65,000,000
• THQ: 30,025,000

Playstaiton 3

• Activision: 53,842,000
• Electronic Arts: 94,000,000
• THQ: Not Found / Listed

Total Revenue of THQ, Activision, and EA

• 1. Xbox 360: 815,302,000
• 2. PC: 725,886,000
• 3. Wii: 149,661,000
• 4. PS3: 147,842,000

Notes

• The 2007 annual reports were for march 2006 - march 2007, this is a bit unfair to the PS3 and Wii
• Vivendi (owners of Blizzard), did not list their games division's revenue based on individual platform. But, Blizzard did bring in 1.2 billion in revenue and produced the vast majority of the revenue of Vivendi's game division. It is pretty obvious where the bulk of that revenue is coming from.
• Ubisoft (being a European company) listed theirs in Euros, if someone wants to convert their annual report by platform to the value of the USD in march 2007, feel free to do so and I will post it in the OP.
• I was unable to locate a breakdown per platform of Take-Two interactive's 2007 annual report

Please help expand this by posting revenue on a per platform basis from the 2007 annual reports of other companies and I will add them to the OP and totals. I do not have all the time in the world to dig through all of them and notify me of any mistakes in my figures so that I may correct them

I hope that this might prove interesting and again, please post some figures from other companies.

 

[BladeVenom]

Activision merged with Blizzard so add about $1,200,000,000 to the PC column.

revenues of WOW's developer and publisher, Blizzard Entertainment, shot up 58 percent to reach ?814 million ($1.2 billion)

 

[Mandin62]

Thank you Schadenfroh, its about time someone brought some stats to the table. i am so tired of all this "PC gaming is dying." its crap. PC gaming is fine and will continue to be. I am sick of devs, media, and gamers bashing a market that is doing just fine. Have some faith and dont buy all the propaganda. As far as exclusives go, I dont think they are completely necessary but they are nice. But even if it isn't exclusive games like COD4 are still better on PC than they are on console.

 

[IL2SturmovikPilot]

Originally posted by: Mandin62
Thank you Schadenfroh, its about time someone brought some stats to the table. i am so tired of all this "PC gaming is dying." its crap. PC gaming is fine and will continue to be. I am sick of devs, media, and gamers bashing a market that is doing just fine. Have some faith and dont buy all the propaganda. As far as exclusives go, I dont think they are completely necessary but they are nice. But even if it isn't exclusive games like COD4 are still better on PC than they are on console.

QFT.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: IL2SturmovikPilot

Originally posted by: Mandin62
Thank you Schadenfroh, its about time someone brought some stats to the table. i am so tired of all this "PC gaming is dying." its crap. PC gaming is fine and will continue to be. I am sick of devs, media, and gamers bashing a market that is doing just fine. Have some faith and dont buy all the propaganda. As far as exclusives go, I dont think they are completely necessary but they are nice. But even if it isn't exclusive games like COD4 are still better on PC than they are on console.

QFT.

Well, if there isnt a problem, why are devs, the media and gamers bashing the market? Theres always been a fringe "PC gaming is dying" element around, but its never been as prevalent as it is now. Just the perception of a problem alone is a very serious problem. There are plenty of potentially great games coming out for the PC this year, exclusive or not, but I just don't feel the same air of excitement about it as I used to. It no longer feels like PC is at the forefront of gaming, it's like it's taken a backseat to the consoles at this point.

I don't think it's the games themselves thats the root problem, it's the platform. Either way, it's pretty obvious PC gaming isnt dying or going anywhere, it's just stale. There will be plenty of games for the OP to play.

 

[trance247]

Piracy has been about for long time and not going anywhere. The poor games were made always, for PC and for Consoles. We all know best games uthere that are liked by most people and hated or loved by some. PCs becoming more affordable with components like 8800gt and cheap ram/hdd deals, so you can build a really nice pc that will perform like PS3 for not alot more. I personally love consoles, but PC games will always be my obsession. Do I buy games? Sure I do, just wait till the price falls and I would pay to download it from manufacturer but not at the near retail price. This is almost liek buying CD from the artist but at the store price. Say if developers could offer digital download that cannot be shared for 29.99 instead of 59.99 I think alot of people would support them directly, what do you think? I know with electronic dance music, many artists do quite nicely by offering digital downloads at prices few euros per track, so maybe this will be the future of gaming especially for big boys of the industry.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: theprodigalrebel
Reasons why it's worth being a PC Gamer in the Year 2008

/thread

Cheers for that

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: trance247
Piracy has been about for long time and not going anywhere. The poor games were made always, for PC and for Consoles. We all know best games uthere that are liked by most people and hated or loved by some. PCs becoming more affordable with components like 8800gt and cheap ram/hdd deals, so you can build a really nice pc that will perform like PS3 for not alot more. I personally love consoles, but PC games will always be my obsession. Do I buy games? Sure I do, just wait till the price falls and I would pay to download it from manufacturer but not at the near retail price. This is almost liek buying CD from the artist but at the store price. Say if developers could offer digital download that cannot be shared for 29.99 instead of 59.99 I think alot of people would support them directly, what do you think? I know with electronic dance music, many artists do quite nicely by offering digital downloads at prices few euros per track, so maybe this will be the future of gaming especially for big boys of the industry.

The price on digital downloads won't go down until gamestop goes out of business, or at least retail sales are outpaced by digital downloads. Right now gamestop and other large chains basically say to publishers "price it the same, or we wont put it on our shelves". Makes the decision pretty easy for them.

 

[JBT]

How often do we hear this type of thread? its atl east weekly right? OMG PC gaming is dying! I have been hearing the same crap since I started playing PC's. I hear all the time from my friends who have PS3's, Wii's, Xbox360's "oh that thing? nah I have played it in weeks" Games on consoles just don't have the replayablity that PC games have IMO.

Then look at MMO's WoW has what 9 million active subsribers? paying $10-15 a month? That's 90-135 mill a month in sub revenue... I know their servers are no where close to that in maintenance...

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: JBT
How often do we hear this type of thread? its atl east weekly right?

Vote here to give the official State of PC Gaming thread the power to consolidate this subject (applies only to threads created in the PC gaming forum)

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: IL2SturmovikPilot

Originally posted by: Mandin62
Thank you Schadenfroh, its about time someone brought some stats to the table. i am so tired of all this "PC gaming is dying." its crap. PC gaming is fine and will continue to be. I am sick of devs, media, and gamers bashing a market that is doing just fine. Have some faith and dont buy all the propaganda. As far as exclusives go, I dont think they are completely necessary but they are nice. But even if it isn't exclusive games like COD4 are still better on PC than they are on console.

QFT.

Well, if there isnt a problem, why are devs, the media and gamers bashing the market? Theres always been a fringe "PC gaming is dying" element around, but its never been as prevalent as it is now. Just the perception of a problem alone is a very serious problem. There are plenty of potentially great games coming out for the PC this year, exclusive or not, but I just don't feel the same air of excitement about it as I used to. It no longer feels like PC is at the forefront of gaming, it's like it's taken a backseat to the consoles at this point.

I don't think it's the games themselves thats the root problem, it's the platform. Either way, it's pretty obvious PC gaming isnt dying or going anywhere, it's just stale. There will be plenty of games for the OP to play.

because (insert dev here) isn't doing well.

look at epic and UT3 - it *sucks* (well, most people would agree anyway i think). so then, instead of saying "i guess we made a shitty game" you say "well clearly pirates arrrrrrrr to blame!"

the point about intel hurting gaming (integrated graphics sucks) is a valid point i think, though.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Fenixgoon

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: IL2SturmovikPilot

Originally posted by: Mandin62
Thank you Schadenfroh, its about time someone brought some stats to the table. i am so tired of all this "PC gaming is dying." its crap. PC gaming is fine and will continue to be. I am sick of devs, media, and gamers bashing a market that is doing just fine. Have some faith and dont buy all the propaganda. As far as exclusives go, I dont think they are completely necessary but they are nice. But even if it isn't exclusive games like COD4 are still better on PC than they are on console.

QFT.

Well, if there isnt a problem, why are devs, the media and gamers bashing the market? Theres always been a fringe "PC gaming is dying" element around, but its never been as prevalent as it is now. Just the perception of a problem alone is a very serious problem. There are plenty of potentially great games coming out for the PC this year, exclusive or not, but I just don't feel the same air of excitement about it as I used to. It no longer feels like PC is at the forefront of gaming, it's like it's taken a backseat to the consoles at this point.

I don't think it's the games themselves thats the root problem, it's the platform. Either way, it's pretty obvious PC gaming isnt dying or going anywhere, it's just stale. There will be plenty of games for the OP to play.

because (insert dev here) isn't doing well.

look at epic and UT3 - it *sucks* (well, most people would agree anyway i think). so then, instead of saying "i guess we made a shitty game" you say "well clearly pirates arrrrrrrr to blame!"

the point about intel hurting gaming (integrated graphics sucks) is a valid point i think, though.

I think DRM is more to blame for lost sales than piracy, but piracy is quite a convenient scapegoat. Intel integrated graphics certainly isnt helping either.

I still personally think there IS a problem though, simply because up until this generation of consoles, PCs simply did online better, most consoles couldnt do it at all. But with the 360, xbox live is magnificent in ways that the PC can only dream of. Even if it can output higher-res graphics, the PC is playing catch-up to XBL, and its been a very long time since the PC was playing catch-up to *anything*.

It's not that PC gaming has gotten worse, it's just that console gaming has gotten much better. I'd hate to see the PC be relegated to MMOs, RTSes and the Sims just because the industry as a whole couldnt get their act together and solve some very, very longstanding problems.

 

[Modelworks]

What is wrong with gaming in general ?
Graphics.

I depend on graphics to make my living, but its hurting gaming.
Its no longer about gameplay , its about how good they can make it look.

I think developers should be forced to play their game with stick men and square blocks for environments.
If that is fun then add all the graphical ,sound, animation.

How many games are there now that would be fun with just very basic graphics ?
How many rely on that to be the gameplay ?