Piracy ain't the only reason why PC gaming is dying (my rant)

LOL PC gaming is dying.

PC gaming will never die out. Why? because when theres a market, there will always be someone to fill that hole. Then others will want a piece of the cake too, and there will be competition.

So all this talk about "PC gaming is dying" is just nonsense. :p

More likely they don't want to spend the time and money porting a console game to the PC given how low the sales will be. It's not just piracy, it's the fact that console-to-PC port games are aimed at a rather small minority of gamers who only own a PC. If you already own game X for your console, you're not going to buy it again for your PC, are you?




The fewer games EA makes for the PC, the better. Seriously, they're a terrible developer who ruin games made by other studios by buying them out and releasing sub-par sequels. If they give up on the PC market, there's a very good chance they'll stop buying up great PC developers and making shitty sequels of their games.




Only an idiot would jump to the conclusion that if one game is full of bugs than all games on the same platform suffer from the same problem.




The number of PC gamers who do NOT have Internet access is, I imagine, so small that sales really aren't affected by the loss of revenue from them. I mean, I imagine there are more gamers with Internet access than there are gamers with DVD drives, yet nearly every single game released in the last 2 years has been on DVD.

Also, it ALWAYS states in the game's system requirements that you need an Internet connection to activate a game; if your computer doesn't meet the system requirements, you can hardly blame the developers for you wasting $45 because you didn't read the game's sys reqs.


Mad Cat

I've been hearing "PC gaming will die" for untold years; since my Amiga. You do realize, don't you, your using a PC to tell millions of people with a PC that PC gaming is dying. . . .  ;p 

thanks for making the 3rd thread on this issue instead of just posting it in the existing ones

many of the original games had no protection and were insainly popular. the largest game publishers are quickly becoming their own worst enemies. if they continue to push the restrictions on games then eventually it drives away the players.

I have a bad feeling that Stardock is next on EA's list of companies to buy out.

Frogboy has already stated that stardock is not for sale. He says he does what wants, and makes money doing it.

Why should he sell his chosen way of life for a lump sum of money?

You can't buy out a privately owned company unless they agree to sell. Stardock has stated that it wont happen.

FYAD you bastard forum. Six minute lag and no edit button again...

People need to learn about business before they start nonsensical ramblings about it, honestly...


ALL COMPANIES are concerned with money. ALL OF THEM. Every. single. one. I'm going to say it once more so you get the point: ALL companies are concerned with money.

EA isn't "evil" because it values "money over customers". It's stupid because it values rush jobs over maintaining a solid consumer base. This is the essence of console gaming, for example, wherein games that are relatively short in play-time are rushed to market for holidays, etc. and when you are tired of the game you return it to Gamestop or wherever. Hell, there's a whole pseudo economy those stores depend on that revolves around this principle, but I digress.

PC gaming isn't dying. That's akin to saying gaming is dying. It's not as popular as console gaming, this is true, but D&D is less popular than both of those and I will slap you until you bleed from your hair if you dare say it's dead or dying. PC gaming is less popular because of the higher entry-level of investment, both intime and effort, that is the nature of PC's. Consoles are just easier. They're easier to purchase, play, etc. and on and on.

Also, the reason devs don't like to port to multiple platforms that include PC's is that it's hard to do, not because it's "unpopular". Consoles have similar specs, they have similar control schemes, and PC's absolutely defy both of those with a barrage of different possibilities: it's HARDER to make games for PC's unless you set out from the beginning to do just that.

To put the blame on so-called "cruel devs" in EA (which totally ignores the fact that EA is a PUBLISHER) is to simply shift blame for an imaginary fault. PC Gaming isn't dying, calm down, there is nobody to "blame" because every fault is a figment of your imagination.

Sethpenguin, PC gaming is going through a restructuring and revitalization right now. Some companies are tearing down the ghettos and putting up useful modern amenities (Valve) and others are dilapidating buildings to contribute to the problem (Epic Games, EA Games). It's commonplace in the industry today for a company that once knew the market to consider 40 million attempts to log online with pirated keys as 40 million lost sales (Epic Games seriously thinks this--they are consuming the world's supply of Kool Aid!) or the difference in sales from a flagship title and the number of units sold by another company/platform's flagship title to be lost sales (EA with the whining that Crysis, which sold 1.5 million, should have sold between 3 and 5 million because Halo 3 did).

I say good riddance to all these companies leaving for the console scene. It's becoming easier than ever before to make your own game on top of the fact that smaller organizations are looking for ways to expand and fill the void the larger organization exodus is producing. There is a market for PC games and that's not something that's going to disappear. As more people acquire more and more PC's, particularly portable devices, there will be more and more developers who spring up to support those devices and hopefully soon answer the call of non-Windows users as a potential point of market penetration.

People are tired of crappy products by companies that cut corners, developers/publishers that blame pirates for their own faults, having to pay an arm and a leg for a decent modern graphics card every game release (because the games push these things these days), being forced to sit through terrible plots, and playing games that are more shallow than a kiddie swimming pool. It's only a matter of time before today's PC gaming market comes back while the consoles flounder with the same issues we face today. PC gaming is ripe with opportunity, but only to those who grow and foster their own companies and organizations unlike the colossal acquisition firms such as EA and others.

That's because back then there weren't any commercial CD burners, very few people new what the Internet was, let alone have access to it, and even if you were lucky to have access, a 1 megabyte picture (which you could only hope was nude as advertised since you couldn't see the thumbnail because the Internet was mostly textbased and bandwidth was ridiculous small) took 30 minutes to download.


Mad Cat

Another thread why PC gaming is dying. It is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

It is just going in a new direction. Stardock and the other developers that care (Ironclad, Gas powered games, Valve) are helping make PC gaming better. They just have to dodge idiots like EA, if you know what I'm saying.

Also, Wildtangent has created a new program called ORB, which will allow you to play big name games FREE (they show ads during loading). This will draw a ton of people to PC gaming.

Also, people say CONSOLE gaming is starting to die. The guy who led the XBox 360 program said that console gaming will die is because the creators of the consoles poured billions of dollars into these machines, and not get a huge amount of profit. They said PC gaming will become king in a few years or so. What do you think about that?

You cant say never, as everything is for sale at the right price

Good point -- plus, he could always sell the company and use the proceeds to start something similar, but different enough to not violate anti-competition provisions in the contract.

The guy who started the "Price Club", eventually to be bought out by "CostCo", did exactly that. He sold his "Federated"(sp?) line of Retail stores to "Target". The contact specified that he couldn't start up a competing Retail chain. So he started a Membership Wholesale chain.

Very odd that you use Space Empires V and EA in the same example as their games are buggy for totally different reasons. SE V is because the whole game is designed by practically one person, and EA is because they don't give a damn about their customers. I doubt that your casual PC gamer would even know what SE V is, they would be unlikely to stumble across such an obscure game by accident, find it buggy and draw a conclusion that all games are buggy.

I don't think PC gaming is dying, more that certain genres within PC gaming are shrinking. Fortunately there are companies out there such as Stardock keeping the less mass-marketed genres going.

If it wasn't possible to make money with PC gaming, then it would be dead - all you'd have would be a very small group of people making games for free, which on average would be of an inferior quality (and before you start referencing to games already out there that are free+good quality, just consider for a moment why someone might make a good game for free. In many cases it's likely to build up their cv/be able to impress potential employers. Thus, if there are no such companies out there hiring because none of them can make money, you'll see some of the good quality games go, and will be reliant on those people who are prepared to spend countless hours making a game that will be free). Hence you should be glad there are companies out there wanting to (and making) money. Also bear in mind the more money that is made by one company (with a game), the more attractive PC gaming then becomes to other companies, so you have more games being produced. With gamers presumably on average buying a good game more than a bad game, you then have a clear financial incentive for developers+publishers to make a good game.

The problem is more that companies like EA aren't actually going after what will make them the most money (no DRM), but instead are paying money for something that will decrease their sales. This implies that they misinformed and/or care about other things aside from money.

Of course I doubt PC gaming will die - as long as PCs are such a staple in our lives, gaming will carry on (although it could diminish a bit). The only way I see it dying is if some new technology comes along that replaces the PC, but I really can't see that happening over the current horizon.

Just a follow up, are you trying to say that if a person buys Space Empires V and finds that it has a lot of bugs, they will go off and buy a Wii instead? Wouldn't he/she more likely look for other PC games in that genre instead after realising that consoles don't offer games anything like that? The fact is, PCs can cater to gamers in ways that consoles will NEVER be either able, or willing, to achieve.

There is a method to the madness of consumers who drift away from PC's as their gaming center. Simply put, consoles can offer things that PC's do not offer the day the game is released. Fantstic graphics at a relatively cheap price. Take the xbox 360 for example: default graphics are HDMI into an HDTV while most PC's have no video support beyond DVI.

PCs however will never die out as a video game market because their games are better protected against the wash of time. Eventually there will be no NES' left to play their games while the text based games of MS-DOS will always be around for gamers to experience. That's a pretty crummy example of why PC's will survive as a game port but I'm out of time so I'll summarize the rest of my point:

Consoles are dedicated gaming systems with multi-player in one place

PCs are less social machines but will always have games for them to play.

When things change, people, often those who refuse to change and can't seem to imagine any way but the old one, start saying that such and such is dying. There are several areas all doing that right now, movie, music distribution, and PC games among others, and the companies behind all are refusing to change while crying about their businesses dying. Meanwhile, fresh new companies are making plenty of money by ignoring the old ways and adapting to the times.

It's the way it's always been, going back centuries, every time there's a major change in the way technology effects business.

HDMI TV's are a bad joke right now. The signals being sent to them are insufficient to actually use the bandwidth capability of HDMI 1.3, and 1.0 was about half the speed of a DVI link. If the consoles stop using 30 fps refresh rates, you'll begin to have a reason for the HDMI link on a 1920x1080, non-interlaced screen. The DVI link can handle it at 60Hz just fine. The only current benefit from HDMI over DVI is that it includes the 8 channel sound instead of needing audio plugs as well.

Have you not noticed the problems with the economy and gas prices, of course people aren't going a $250 Wii, or a $350 Xbox 360 or a $600 PS3, because they are payiing a shit load of money on gas or food. This all because Bush started the war with Iraq, because i belive that the high gas prices are being used to secretly fund the war in Iraq and the military, why else wouldn't Bush lower the prices, because he wants to continue the war because either he wants oil or something else and if this war continues the US will be in so much debt plus we've lost half of our military because of this endless war. Nothing is oging to save PC gaming.

At the risk of going off topic, oil prices are determined by supply and demand, nothing more, nothing less. If demand is low, the prices are cheap. If demand is high, prices are high. Thanks to developing countries like China and India, who collectively account for more than 1/3 or the ENTIRE planet's population, the amount of demand for oil is increasing very, very, very, very fast, faster than oil companies can find and extract new reserves. Also, the increase in the number of gas-guzzling cars in the West isn't helping.

That's why we have such high oil prices. It has nothing to do with Bush or Iraq, nor can any government do anything to really reduce prices.


Mad Cat

[quote I doubt that your casual PC gamer would even know what SE V is, they would be unlikely to stumble across such an obscure game by accident,[/quote]

i bought it but i had no idea about the glitches and i think in SE 6 they should call it, Space Empires IV: More bugs than you can imagine!

Nothing is "oging"? Is it "going"? Just joking.  

Seth, I agree with you on a lot of stuff, but not this. The evidence saying that PC gaming is alive and well is overwhelming and overshadows your argument.

Also, there was also a thread talking about this before. You should have put your arguments there.


Etrius