XBOX one: the last nail to the coffin

This has been said so many times and every time wrong.

It is only wrong when you see it as meaning that playing games on PCs will no longer happen.

Since games that were produced in the 1990s and even before can still be played on PCs, you'll have games to play on PCs.

But PC gaming is not a reference to the capacity to play games on a PC. Who said that games would no longer be played on PCs when knowing that compatibility of games published in the past ensures games will be played on PCs?

Telling that PC gaming is dead means that games will no longer be played on PCs is a made up statement. It is not about that.

PC gaming is a reference to the time when games were specifically designed for PCs, pushing up the limits of the available configurations by being commonly designed for high end PCs.
There was a time like that. Not that distant.

The space allocated exclusively to PC gaming is shrinking to very little. Developpers less and less think in terms of PC potential. Developpers who think in terms of potential look at console gaming. It is where they want to push the limits now.

Watching the video, it appeared that developpers held back certain game features. The features could have been supported by recent PCs, but they simply prefered not to include them in PC games to keep them in store for console gaming.
 
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PC gaming is a reference to the time when games were specifically designed for PCs, pushing up the limits of the available configurations by being commonly designed for high end PCs.
There was a time like that. Not that distant.
This has been the case for many years - AAA devs have focused on consoles for a long time now. But PC gaming didn't die and is far from dying. Times are changing with Kickstarter - and mid-range developers are putting a lot more focus on PC-centric games now.

I actually think we're entering a new renaissance of PC-centric gaming, brought through Kickstarter. Many of the most exciting Kickstarters are designing for PC first and foremost.

And these are games made with passion - not designed by a marketing committee.
 
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This has been the case for many years - AAA devs have focused on consoles for a long time now. But PC gaming didn't die and is far from dying. Times are changing with Kickstarter - and mid-range developers are putting a lot more focus on PC-centric games now.

I actually think we're entering a new renaissance of PC-centric gaming, brought through Kickstarter. Many of the most exciting Kickstarters are designing for PC first and foremost.

And these are games made with passion - not designed by a marketing committee.

Well said Feargus Urquhart said the same thing from a news post earlier. It's time for mid-sized developers to adapt and emerge on the PC. I'm excited for the current kickstarters, and hope they deliver so we get more in the future.
 
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Thanks for the list.

It is about originality, not innovation.

I did play any of those games, will try to see that. At first glance, they fit the category of the student class projects.

And not to mention that every gen we lose popular genres. On the NES we had games similar to Lolo etc. Now we are left pretty much with CoD clones.
 
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Actually it is consoles that need a break-out in their business model - why do you think that XBOX One is about everything BUT gaming?!? Because all AAA console games are doing is getting narrower - they cost more, so they are more risk averse, so they only bank on guaranteed successes ... and a guaranteed success on XBOX was 500k, early X360 was 2 million, and now is 6-8 million copies. XBOX One games like Call of Battlefield OhCrapSameGameAgain will need to sell 12 - 15 million copies TO BREAK EVEN.
 
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Console games costing more? Who says? If Microsoft starts charging for used games and kicks pirates hard and where it hurts, they could halve that surcharge and publishers could charge less, too. "Could" doesn't mean "will" but if XBox games start costing $40, it will make for some interesting marketing.

The thing I'm most excited about, of course, is that my PC games are finally going to get serious tessellation in lots of games.
 
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This has been the case for many years - AAA devs have focused on consoles for a long time now. But PC gaming didn't die and is far from dying. Times are changing with Kickstarter - and mid-range developers are putting a lot more focus on PC-centric games now.

I actually think we're entering a new renaissance of PC-centric gaming, brought through Kickstarter. Many of the most exciting Kickstarters are designing for PC first and foremost.

And these are games made with passion - not designed by a marketing committee.

Transitioning takes time. Transitioning from the period when games were developped with the potential of a PC in mind to a the period when PCs are the cheap platform to release on, with ports, student class projects, or the same, same old, tried and tested game designs.

In the past, consoles started on strong bases relatively to PCs. As shown by a chart posted on this chart.
This generation of consoles starts even with or slightly behind PCs. And XBOX premiere revealed that developpers held back on games features to reserve them for consoles. It tells everything for PC gaming. It no longer exists. PCs provided the potential to support certain game features but developpers did not take the opportunity.

Hard to see any KS project signaling a PC gaming renaissance: most games if not all are games that could have been released at least five or six years ago. PCs could already support them.

KS projects are more from developpers who cant afford to developp for consoles as they cant simply compete and use PCs to release their third world games.

Actually, all these developpers are going to be fed by the achievements released by console gaming. They will copy the innovative features.

If games released on PCs were only ports of tablet, IPad games etc, I bet you could find easily players reporting a PC gaming renaissance.

There will be games played on PCs for a long time. Does not mean that PC gaming is not dead.
 
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XBOX One games like Call of Battlefield OhCrapSameGameAgain will need to sell 12 - 15 million copies TO BREAK EVEN.

To break even with what?

15 millions copies and you are near or over the billion dollars gross.
 
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The space allocated exclusively to PC gaming is shrinking to very little. Developpers less and less think in terms of PC potential. Developpers who think in terms of potential look at console gaming.

I disagree, there has been many quality adventures and strategies that are PC exclusive in recent years, and that market is growing(paradox strategies for instance have incised sale each year,same thing goes Relic,Ironcald games and lot other strategy developers),and now new wave of PC exclusive RPGs coming, some of those game are innovative.Are they pushing hardware limits,no(well maybe Company of heroes 2 and Sui generis and star citizen but it's hard to tell before they actually come out ),but they don't really need to except for good graphic which is always nice but not really essential.
 
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To break even with what?

15 millions copies and you are near or over the billion dollars gross.

The costs of the game which include development, marketing and distribution.
 
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What concerns me is that PC today live on four constellations, the loss of any of these have severe impact on the platform:
* Intel CPU's (under threat)
* Windows OS (under threat)
* Nvidia / ATI (no great need to upgrade anymore)
* Steam (depends on the hardware)

In particular the first two are my most major concerns and one of the great reasons for the windows mess is the change of focus into restricting the user and reducing user-choices and instead control the platform and it's content. From it's DRM-schemes to XBox they are basically going apple, attempting to control a market which openness, adaptability and diversity was it's greatest survivability. By becoming an AAA-product rather than a platform it lost it's appeal and vision.

It may therefore be ironic, that the XB1 is a nail to the coffin, not for PC, not for XB1 but for Microsoft.

Without the platform, most things discussed in here is moot. They all rely on PC as an open tool. But it's continued centralization into Microsoft and Intel and an increasingly top-down attitude, is basically the computer edition of the Soviet Union.
 
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To break even with what?

15 millions copies and you are near or over the billion dollars gross.

You really have no clue, just a mindless "PC gaming R dead" straw man, eh? I am sorry, but you are clearly a troll and not worth the time if I have to explain basic game economics.
 
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Way too early to proclaim PC gaming dead but AAA PC gaming is going to take a huge hit. We will be bombarded with a slew of console exclusives and I believe we can only hope that some of those will merely be timed exclusives instead of all-out exclusive.
Microsoft seem to be rather serious about combating the used game market and piracy. So even if AMD's Jaguar technically allows for improved portability it's just not gonna happen. You think that Microsoft will allow pirateable and possibly tradeable HQ PC ports for $40/50 to coexist with what they really want which is $60/70 closed system console games? Please think again.

The first signs are already showing like FIFA 14 which will be getting an inferior engine on the PC to make it less attractive. And MS readily admits now that AAA PC gaming is no priority to them.

The way I see it is that we can call ourselves extremely lucky that the crowd funding took off the way it did just in time before the arrival of the new consoles. I am quite firmly convinced that the PC will be seeing less TLC than ever before from the big name publishers. The big franchises (like Star Wars, Assassin's Creed et al) are pretty much guaranteed to be at least timed exclusives or inferior ports... or both.
If Star Citizen ends up being as good as it looks then I don't see myself really caring though since I'll be busy playing that game for years to come :) . So thank you, Chris Roberts, and I salute you... and here's the other type of salute to MS, Sony and the rest of the gang _|_ :biggrin:
 
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An newspaper article here rather highlights the 1984 "Big Brother" abilities of the xbox :

- It can watch and monitor people
- it can recognize faces
- it can recognize gestures
- it can see how people react (of course this must be programmed as well)
- it is able to "see" even in the dark (infrared vision)
- it is therefore able to use face recognizion and gesture recognition to monitor how people react towards movies, advertisements, games, etc. …

It is therefore the perfect surveiillance tool.
Because everybody buys it at free will.
 
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PC gaming will never die. Just stop it already

Worst case scenario we have no more bland, boring, soulless AAA titles created for the lowest common denominator of mass dummy-dom. This is a bad thing?

No, the AAA bullshit market may live or die, but computer gaming itself is not going anywhere.
 
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Worst case scenario we have no more bland, boring, soulless AAA titles created for the lowest common denominator of mass dummy-dom. This is a bad thing?

Not really bad per se.... but a bit umm... inconvenient maybe... if and when one of the few desirable AAA games pops up like a Dishonored 2 or another BioShock game or a Star Wars game that is not Clone Wars or Lego and so on.
It will be much easier to ignore any annoying exclusivity deals or portability issues thanks to there hopefully always being an interesting crowdfunded game to play but it may still sting just a little bit to watch the consoleros have all the fun ;) .
 
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To break even with what?

15 millions copies and you are near or over the billion dollars gross.

Remember that in bulk everything is negotiable. If Best Buy sells a game at $60 I bet they buy them at $30. Maybe $40 for a guaranteed hit.

MS gets some sort of cut.

Is there another middle man Best Buy gets them from? Then they get a cut also.

What does the games publisher get?

I think the game maker is lucky if they get 25% of the selling price for console games.
 
Remember that in bulk everything is negotiable. If Best Buy sells a game at $60 I bet they buy them at $30. Maybe $40 for a guaranteed hit.

Actually there was data put out showing that even the best retailers are paying $45-50 for that $60 game. MS & Sony get ~$7-10, and after distribution, etc, the publisher gets ~$25 of the $60.

So if you think that Star Wars The Old Republic costs $200 million, and that most AAA games are well over $100 million budget on 'current gen' - again, up from $10-20 million on 'last gen' ... it is easy to see a game costing $250 million to produce - meaning 10 millions sales just to cover costs of development.

Then there is advertising - which as we see everywhere can actually outstrip development costs. Here is a sobering figure - Samsung spent $400 million advertising the Galaxy S3 and Note 2 in 2012 ... mind-boggling!
 
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