PC Gaming Too Specialised?

magerette

Hedgewitch
Joined
October 18, 2006
Messages
7,834
What would a news day be without yet another lament about the death of PC gaming? bit-tech.net brings us this one where in a report by Next-Gen.biz, from the Nvidia GeForce LAN 4 Event in California, spokespersons from Nvidia, Microsoft, EA and Crytek examine the state of PC gaming after several years of seeing consoles impact profits:
Representatives from Nvidia, Intel, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and Crytek used Nvidia's GrForce LAN 4 event in Alameda, Calif. to ensure consumers that the state of PC gaming is healthy, although there were signs that the proliferation of home consoles which cater to both serious and casual gamers appear to have put the PC gaming industry on the defensive, reports News.com...
...The PC gaming industry has combated the increased capabilities of next-gen consoles to cater to casual audiences by playing on its unrivalled capacity to deliver increasingly hi-tech titles such as flagship PC game Crysis (pictured), said Roy Taylor, Nvidia's vice president of content relations. He then acknowledged that the first-person shooter can't be played at its maximum settings even on many of today’s top of the range PCs, forcing consumers to upgrade their systems simply to play the game in all its glory.
"Something needs to be done so a person buying a PC at Wal-Mart could be a PC gamer too," noted Randy Stude, director of Intel's gaming platform office. He suggested that Intel’s integrated graphics chipset, which delivers basic graphics performance for cheaper PCs, could be one solution for getting casual gamers interested in the PC as a gaming platform again.
More information.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
7,834
Or how about they stop trying to push the graphics envelope so much and figure out how to make the game better? Or maybe spend some time optimizing the games so they run better without having to get a new graphics card, etc.?
 
Joined
Oct 24, 2006
Messages
1,769
Location
Minnesota, USA
Article makes some good points.

PC Gaming is great (or at least used to be great) and thus it should be more popular than it is. Hardware upgrading has to be a big part of the problem. It's not just a money problem but a nuisance as well. The money problem is probably here to stay, but the industry (especially Microsoft) could do a lot more to help reduce the nuisances associated with upgrading.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
622
When a state of the art console costs $600 and a state of the art PC costs $6000 , to run the same game, you do have a problem.. yup, you do.
Hope this saves them the cost of major analysts and committees looking into the 'issue'.
Grey
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
189
Location
Houston, Tx
Why the hell shouldn't they try to cater to larger audiences?

The cutting edge is a cool place to be, but the constant emphasis on it isn't exactly what it seems. It's just the small driving the large, the natural progression of high technology. But we're human beings, not just another piece of hardware or system to be upgraded.

PC customers should wise up and stop acting like lemmings. Statistics are to be applied, not worshiped. It's convenient and absurd that high-technology companies only have to concern themselves with the contemporary status of their products.

There’s still a long learning curve to go through, I suppose. But this would be a good time for PC customers to insist on raising the bar by thinking in terms of real value of PC products and applications. That mindset would bring about real progress.
 
Joined
Nov 11, 2006
Messages
1,807
Location
Orange County, California
When a state of the art console costs $600 and a state of the art PC costs $6000 , to run the same game, you do have a problem.. yup, you do.
Grey

A state of the art PC doesn't cost $6000. It's not even close. My PC can run Crysis with almost every setting maxed out and it cost me about $1,500, including what it cost to have it assembled. And it's not the same game. Even with today's "high end" consoles (i.e. the XBox 360 and the PS3) you end up with toned down graphics and longer loading times for pretty much every multi-platform game. For the $500 that a PS3 costs, you can upgrade your PC to play Crysis.

Which brings me to my next point. The problem with PC gaming is less about cost and more about educating the public about what options are available to build or upgrade your PC cost effectively.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
622
Also, and I have said this probably a thousand times, console gaming is cheaper than PC gaming in part because Microsoft is subsidizing it with massive losses -- going on seven years straight now. If the XBox were a regular business and not attached to a gigantic cash cow, it would have gone out of business years ago. The only two quarters where Microsoft has ever made money on the XBox are the quarters when Halo 2 and Halo 3 came out. Imagine how much cheaper PC gaming would be if Nvidia and ATI were willing to lose $100 or $200 on every video card that they made.

The primary custodian and beneficiary of PC gaming is subsidizing a competing business and losing money on it, and in the meantime, they are killing the core business that pays the bills.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
622
I think what's bad for PC gaming is that an increasing number of the games are dumbed down console ports. For instance, I really didn't enjoy Knights of the Old Republic at all. I didn't like Fable. I don't like Lost Planet. I didn't like Jade Empire. These games just didn't 'feel' like PC games, IMO. I didn't like the interface in Oblivion, which was basically a console interface to accommodate the XBox 360. I don't think it's a matter of consoles themselves killing PC gaming, it's game designers forcing PC gamers to accept completely lame and unintuitive interfaces, and games that are too easy, and often have features that don't take advantage of the PC gaming platform. Just my ten cents.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
852
Location
Columbus, OH USA
I agree wholeheartedly. There are still good games here and there, but the overall average quality and the frequency of great ones has dropped off tremendously in the last few years.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
622
Well we've gone a good 7 months or so without a PC Gaming is dying article. So I'd say it's a little past due. I also read somewhere that the sky is going to be falling in about 2 months over South America.

I think the problem is just rooted in greed. When Nintendo revived the console market back in the mid-80s with its NES it became the goal of most publishers to make the PC and Videogame demographic the same in terms of sales. And when the PC market cannot match the sales of the videogame market, 'something is wrong and PC Gaming MUST be dying.'

I see the demographic of PC Gamers and Videogame-gamers uniquely distinct, eventhogh there are some people like me who love PC Gaming and also own every vidoegame machine ever made since the original Odyssey released sometime in the mid-70s.

It's much like trying to sell the same cheaper Hawaiian vacation to a billionaire or sell that ultra expensive Hawwiian vacation to your average Joe making 30k a year.

The insistance to mainstream the PC like the videogame market may just not work. It's a smaller demographic with people who generally have 2k every few years to blow on a new pc or upgrades. Perhaps if this is just accepted, we could return to the days of fewer developers but better games. Just my very brief 2 cents.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,897
Location
Oregon
Gee Doctor Kaz, where exactly is your store located?
And how many hundreds of thousands did you supply to the public?
I was referring to manufacturers like Dell and the like and what it costs to buy a state of the art PC from them, I was not a liar. And you sir can kiss my ass.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
189
Location
Houston, Tx
you know i could sell you a state of the art apple (red or green) for sixty bucks. its a great deal...
pc gaming is the home depot of remodeling. anything relatively easy you pay some else to do like build a computer or tile a floor you're throwing away savings in the triple digit percentages.
 
Joined
May 26, 2007
Messages
812
Location
standing under everyone
The PC has a far larger audience of casual gamers than any game console; however they are playing $5.99 budget-CD games, Web browser games, and Windows Solitaire.

Full-priced PC games generally target the "core" gamer audience and have fairly hefty system requirements. They often need a lot of fiddling with game/system settings and device drivers to get them working properly (or acceptably).

I've mostly drifted away from PC gaming over the past few years, in no small part because there just aren't that many PC games that appeal to me any more. FPS, MMO, and RTS games seem to dominate the PC gaming market, and I'm not terribly interested in any of those. I'm not overly thrilled with PC RPGs these days either; too many of them are seriously buggy and unpolished and just not fun to play.

Civilization IV is about the only PC game that I spend any significant amount of time playing anymore, although I load up Galactic Civilizations II once in a while as well.

I would agree that PC gaming is overly specialized (although not "on the verge of death" or anything); the bulk of the higher-profile games fall into the FPS, MMORPG, or RTS genres and require fairly significant hardware to run properly.
 
Joined
Nov 26, 2007
Messages
21
Gee Doctor Kaz, where exactly is your store located?
And how many hundreds of thousands did you supply to the public?
I was referring to manufacturers like Dell and the like and what it costs to buy a state of the art PC from them, I was not a liar. And you sir can kiss my ass.

Completely unnecessary.

He has two very valid points:
- A new PC at PS3 / X360 specs costs far less than $6k. Heck, I run laptops and I spend no more than ~$4k for top end systems.
- Consoles are heavily subsidized. At launch the $400 X360 cost ~$600 in parts. The $600 PS3 cost ~$900 in parts.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
14,932
Gee Doctor Kaz, where exactly is your store located?
And how many hundreds of thousands did you supply to the public?
I was referring to manufacturers like Dell and the like and what it costs to buy a state of the art PC from them, I was not a liar. And you sir can kiss my ass.

I bought the parts off of newegg.com and then took them to a guy in my town and he built it for me. :) You do make a valid point that the Dells of the world charge people out the ass. My machine would easily be north of $2,000 if it was a Dell. Probably about $2,500. (But that's still not even close to $6,000.)

And herein lies one of the PC's major problem. Most people, even lots of avid PC gamers, do not know that they can simply buy parts and have somebody assemble them for $500 or $1,000 less than what a PC from Dell or Alienware would cost. And then they aren't aware that they can spend $200 for a mid-range video card that will play any game out there. People see huge $550 price tages for the highest end video card and they think that you need one of those every year to play the latest games, but you don't.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
622
Gee Doctor Kaz, where exactly is your store located?
And how many hundreds of thousands did you supply to the public?
I was referring to manufacturers like Dell and the like and what it costs to buy a state of the art PC from them, I was not a liar. And you sir can kiss my ass.

I'll back up Dr Kaz. I work in high-end computer graphics every day and my home system cost under $1,400 about a year ago, -sans monitor- but state of the art. It was ordered from HP online by the way. You can probably find their website on your own.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,470
Location
USA
I'm sure Blizzard are quite happy taking the lions share of the pc market. When companies say it's dieing all it means really is they aren't competing.
 
Joined
Oct 26, 2006
Messages
2,080
Location
UK
My current PC is 4 years old. And I have upgraded its videocard once, it was in february 2006 where I bought a Nvidia 6600 GT card to play Oblivion. And I can still play most games with that card. Even the Bioshock demo ran nicely on that card.
I tried playing Crysis, but the clipping were horrid and the game froze at some point. I'm not even interested in Crysis, just wanted to check out the game, but I couldn't so I just left it alone. The point is that my current machine is now 4 years old and I have updated the videocard (and the ram) once nearly 2 years ago, in February 2006. And the machine still keeps playing the games I buy...

Even NWN2 and G3 ran smooth :)

As for the whole high end pc talk, I once talked to clerk in an electronics store. He said that people who just needed a PC to be used for internet,word, excel, and maybe some picture editing weren't convinced that a 500-600 US$ would be enough to fullfill their daily needs so they bought the full 1000 US dollars or full 2000 US dollars PC machine. [As for the US dollars, please note that in the US most computers parts are a bit cheaper than they are in Europe. I can't buy a 7600GT card for 90 US dollars, taxes and customs + package would make it at least twice as expensive. Just to make a comparision; A videogame cost about 50 US dollars, that is like 260 Danish Crowns. In Denmark that same videogame would cost about
399 Danish Crowns 75-80 US dollars (with the current exchange rate). If you're from Sweden, you get to another 10% on top of that, and if you're from Norway, please add another 10% to that. In Norway a 50 US dollars would probably cost, in Norwegian Crowns, 90-100 US dollars or (with the current exchange rate).

In Europe, I think, most new games are released at 39.99 Euros or 49.99 Euros?
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,147
Location
Denmark, Europe
When a state of the art console costs $600 and a state of the art PC costs $6000 , to run the same game, you do have a problem.. yup, you do.
Hope this saves them the cost of major analysts and committees looking into the 'issue'.
Grey

State of the art pc does not cost 6000$. You can get a decent gaming rig for 1000-1500$. And as for consoles you have to pay 10-20$ console tax for each game (20 games => 200-400$ extra) which evens it quite a bit.

The biggest reason why I havent bought state of the art console is infact the cost of the console games. They are way too expensive when compared to PC games.

Also, and I have said this probably a thousand times, console gaming is cheaper than PC gaming in part because Microsoft is subsidizing it with massive losses -- going on seven years straight now. If the XBox were a regular business and not attached to a gigantic cash cow, it would have gone out of business years ago.

Cheapness of consoles is just an illusion. In this world you get nothing for free. You always pay one way or another. Todays printer business is a good example. They sell the machine cheap but new color cartridges are extra expensive.

Similarly you are able to buy the console cheap because the real price of the console is hidden into the game prices. With each game you buy, you pay more for the console:

Assasins Creed PC 47.00€
Assasins Creed Xbox 360 64.90€
Assasins Creed PS3 67.90€

BioShock PC 46.90€
BioShock Xbox 360 66.90€
BioShock Xbox 360 66.90€

Colin McRae DIRT PC 46.90€
Colin McRae DIRT Colin McRae DIRT Xbox 360 64.90€
Colin McRae DIRT Colin McRae DIRT PS3 64.90€

67/47 => 42% higher price - pretty big difference.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Dec 28, 2006
Messages
3,160
Location
Europa Universalis
Back
Top Bottom