Is PC gaming dead?

nolimit · 8 Sep 2006 at 23:07

Nothing really interests me these few years on any platform but the Nintendo DS is really refreshing and Pro Evo 6 on Xbox 360 looks tasty.

basmic · 8 Sep 2006 at 23:23

krooton said:
I havent upgraded my ram or HDDs in 4 years.

HangTime said:
Yeah I think attributing the cost of HDDs to gaming is a bit much, I mean for actual gaming use even a 5 year old 40gig drive is fine. OK so if you want 10 gazillion games installed at once then maybe you need a little extra, but the same was true if you wanted 10 gazillion saves on a console, you had to splash out on memory cards.

Some people don't want to wait for ages for games to load, and insist on buying the fastest (ie: Raptors).

In the case of RAM, try running F.EA.R. on a machine with 512mb of RAM - you'd soon want to install another 512mb.

The point I'm trying to make is, that as games grow more complex they need more RAM for the game to load into, and quicker and/or larger hard-drives to gain reasonable load time.

Foehammer2003 · 8 Sep 2006 at 23:39

RobertN said:
i would say this is the worst period pc gaming has gone through in a long time
although i dont think it is just the pc

for me i think games in general are in decline i think the market is very stale in general even the xbox 360 does not have any games good enough to make me want to part with £250

hope it bounces back but for this to happen there needs to be a revolution in either games or technology i think

Personally I think that games are only as intresting as the gameplay, all the avenues of which have mostly been explored.

So the only reasonable route game dev's have left to improve on is sound, image and depth/scale of games. Games just wont get much more original imo. A few games come out very rarely that push the envelope, but most good games are and will be going forward, simply re-invention. All we pay for these days is a re-structure, sound and image polish and (small) feature introduction. Personally i'm ok with that, if I wasn't then I wouldn't partake in the purchase of the hardware

RobertN · 8 Sep 2006 at 23:57

that is how i think it is going stale i dont really see the need to upgrade anymore my 6800gt is getting on a bit and struggles with some really modern titles hdr games and cod2, tomb raider, fear on the highest settings

but i dont like any of these games that much to justify yet another £200 upgrade

for me software develpment has struggled to keep up with technology and game develpment has become to expensive this is why we keep seeing clones of the same old stuff with more eye candy from masive software publishers

Fridge_Raider · 9 Sep 2006 at 01:20

Foehammer2003 said:
Personally I think that games are only as intresting as the gameplay, all the avenues of which have mostly been explored.

So the only reasonable route game dev's have left to improve on is sound, image and depth/scale of games. Games just wont get much more original imo. A few games come out very rarely that push the envelope, but most good games are and will be going forward, simply re-invention. All we pay for these days is a re-structure, sound and image polish and (small) feature introduction. Personally i'm ok with that, if I wasn't then I wouldn't partake in the purchase of the hardware

I actually feel that although we as gamers are paying for re-invented games, we are paying for more than that. You are buying an interactive story to play through. Gameplay is unlikely to change drastically in any genre in the near future. When you've played one FPS you've played them all, similarly to when you've seen one horror film you've seen them all. They are all built on the same set of tried and true groundrules, and it's only the stories and the characters that keep us interested, in addition of course to the fact that a game needs to look good and play well in order to maintain our attention. For example, Prey looks virtually identical to Doom 3. Do most of us really give a monkeys? It's a different story. There are new characters and a new universe to explore. There are gameplay aspects in Prey that are different to Doom 3 which does make it different. Although we can probably guess what's going to happen at the end, we still want to know how we get to the end. Sounds like clichéd movies to me, yet they have stood the test of time.

dannyjo22 · 9 Sep 2006 at 09:05

Its dead for me, my last 2 pc gaming upgrades cost me too much money to make it viable for a couple of decent games. I Still play RTS on the PC but thats it.

I would never say PC's are not as good as consoles, just that the price to keep up aint worth it to me anymore.

Plus I know when i'm playing online with my console it's standard, no one has any edge over someone else. Same equipment no cheats, apart from the odd game glitch.

Psyk · 9 Sep 2006 at 11:49

SC04 said:
Lets not forget the DVD format was designed for home video market and adopted and name changed by the PC standards people, so maybe the PC has become more like a VCR ?

Here's a random bit of trivia about DVDs. Officially DVD doesn't stand for anything. The commitee could never decide on which meaning to use so it just doesn't have any meaning.

fdxd · 9 Sep 2006 at 19:35

graphic cards sales on the rise...

Drukk · 10 Sep 2006 at 02:05

Frank Butcher said:
I think the fact that WoW has verging on 7 million paying subscribers proves that its not dead.

Read an article awhile back saying WoW has actually hit the sales of other games so its had quite a negative affect on games sales. a lot of people who get in to WoW dont have so much time for any other games!

Foehammer2003 · 10 Sep 2006 at 11:53

fdxd said:
graphic cards sales on the rise...

Thats most likely as so many people have realised just how easy it is to install them, where before they had no idea and too scared to poke the inside of their machine, like mobile phones... older people soon lost the fear lol. I would imagine that many upgraded systems atm would be on AGP as thats whats mostly sitting under the desks of an 'average joes' house, but then i wouldn't know where to find the info to back that up tbh. Nor do i really care that much lol... I'm just having a Sunday morning blah :rolleyes:

SC04 · 10 Sep 2006 at 12:19

Foehammer2003 said:
Thats most likely as so many people have realised just how easy it is to install them, where before they had no idea and too scared to poke the inside of their machine

you will see a rise in sales for most computer components, + scanners and printers etc, its just the way the market has expanded, there will still always be people scared to poke around, and still older people who buy a PC and will rip it open first chance they get, LOL what do you call old ? anyone under 45 has grown up with the vast accelaration of technology, and the 50/60 and 70 year olds were the ones designing the first IBM compatible PC's

Foehammer2003 · 10 Sep 2006 at 12:34

yeah thats true, but the majority of people who are older view anything new as scary and 'not to touch', a broad statement, but true i think. And now we are getting to a stage where people delving inside their rig is as common for all ages as those who never used to text (we all know the type), but now dont buy into a contract if it doesn't offer enough texts in its package. I also heard that graphics card sales are much higher in percentage than the relative rise in peripheral sales.

lol and old is: for those who deem themselves too old to learn new things, not a particular age bracket.

SC04 · 10 Sep 2006 at 12:45

Foehammer2003 said:
yeah thats true, but the majority of people who are older view anything new as scary and 'not to touch', a broad statement, but true i think. And now we are getting to a stage where people delving inside their rig is as common for all ages as those who never used to text (we all know the type), but now dont buy into a contract if it doesn't offer enough texts in its package. I also heard that graphics card sales are much higher in percentage than the relative rise in peripheral sales.

lol and old is: for those who deem themselves too old to learn new things, not a particular age bracket.

theres always a chance that if an older person views something as 'not to touch' it comes from experience with age mate

, not actually being scared of touching stuff LOL and having the money to pay someone to do it properly.

anyway, thats irrelevant to PC upgrading, as the market tells us to upgrade.

Metalface Mark · 13 Sep 2006 at 16:46

Well i took the plunge again anyway, 6600, 7900GS, dell 2407, so will soon see if its dead or not