It is not about specs. It is about exploiting an architecture to push gaming as much as it could be.
And that has not been proven at all. On what are such claims based on? Hear-say? Wishful thinking? Marketing speech?
The release of new hardware (especially consoles) is always combined with territorial claims, muscle playing and straight up bragging. Do you believe what that EA-guy Rajat Teneja claimed or that Epic Games Mark Rein called it bullshit?
In the end, you can believe which ever you want. Still doesn't make it "fact" or "proven" - and that's what counts.
Actually, if PCs specs are superior, it makes even more obvious than PC gaming is dead as consoles act as a limitating factor to games on PCs and how they could be developped.
Clumsy ports and all…
That's pretty much the situation for the last 10 years or so. Will that change with the new-gen consoles? Nope.
However, not being mainstream does not equal dead.
PC developpers have no problem pushing the tech on PCs: they simply do not do it.
Crysis 1, 2 and 3 never happened, nope Sir.
Neither did DirectX 10.1 and 11.
Or the Witcher 2.
100+ players on the same map / battlefield? PC exclusive, sry. Not to mention MMOs where I've seen bigger battles 10 years ago.
All of them are games that could have been released on PCs five or six years ago. They certainly do not require to push the architecture of the current gen of PCs. They are gaming for an older PC generation. As such, yes, they belong to a third world in gaming.
Edit: if that is your definition of "gaming being dead" then yes, PC gaming is dead and that since years. However, for a dead system that's sure a lot of noise coming from - all those years.
Yes they could have been on PCs five or six years ago - from a technical standpoint. No they couldn't have been, because no publisher was willing to go down that road.
Gamers have been asking for a new Wing Commander, Shadowrun, Ultima, Popoulus or Dungeon Keeper not for years, but decades. Nothing happened. Now and within just 1 year, they all have at least a spiritual successor in the pipeline - and mostly PC only.
Microsoft still has the rights on the Shadowrun franchise, one of the biggest you can have in this business. All they managed to do with it, was releasing an uninspired shooter nobody wanted.
Yet a small, previously unknown studio managed to get 36k gamers to literally pre-order their version based on a preview. A version you consider third world in gaming.
If you truly feel that way, you really fail to even grasp how HUGE kickstarter right now is in gaming history.
Edit: on a side note - what's the biggest golden cash cow in gaming history? World of Warcraft. A PC exclusive. Not to shabby for a third world game on a dead system.
Dumbed down? Sheeps? Actually, genres played on consoles are genres that made advance through the last decade. Contrary to many games belonging to the PC stronghold, that have kept stalling.
When it comes to gaming, it is better to play accomplished game design than stuttering game design.
Lucasarts claimed adventures to be dead. Lucasarts left their PC legacy behind, fokusing on consoles. Lucasarts is no more.
Telltale makes a living from adventure games, with the walking dead winning numerous Goty-awards.
Once again, now being mainstream != dead.
You claim innovation being on consoles, then turn around defending the dumbed down, same old, tried and tested game design type, which you blamed the PC before. That twist must have hurt, man….
AAA projects are essentially developped and conceived with console gaming in mind. Publishers, studios are not about to cut themselves from possible sales when they know PC players will buy a clumsy port of a game designed for consoles.
Yes, AAA projects are made with consoles in mind - who doubted that? As pointed out, that IS where a few problems with gaming in general nowadays come from.
And yes, PC players will buy those clumsy ports. For 10 bucks or less on the next Steam sale. Yes the publishers ARE hurting from that and blame piracy for the lack of sales on PC, but not the dumbed down, lousy tacked-on PC port. What else is new?