Will developers flood back to the PC as digital downloads take hold?

[Strife212]

Nothing to do with piracy, just the fact that hardly anyone buys PC games. PC big hitters usually sell 1-2 million (except the rare HUGE games like Blizzard games), on consoles they can expect to sell almost 10 times that amount. MMO's are a seperate matter, they will always be played on PCs.

PC Games will always come out but I think the days of huge big budget PC exclusives is almost over. Stuff like the Sims + WoW is selling hugely and will continue to.

 

[FrenchTart]

You've not seen the disposable email address services then?

I was just kidding anyhow, but yes, I have.

 

[Ogs]

Every time someone says this to me I fail to see the logic in their words.

A few fun facts for you:

- Game sales charts rarely take in to account Digital Download sales, meaning that published sales are often much less than they actually should be.

- Surveys that look at PC Gaming revenue often fail to take subscription fees to MMO's into account. 10+ million World of Warcraft subscribers does not suggest to me that the PC is a dead format.

- The PC isn't actually the most pirated format! The main culprit is out little handheld friend, the Nintendo DS. Don't hear people saying that's dead though.

1. True, things would look a lot less dire if those figures were shown, but its still miles below what console sales achieve.

2. Yeah, MMO's are a good way to earn money on the PC, if they survive long enough, but saying the PC is alive and well because of 1 genre isnt exactly a good thing. It adds to the niche perception that its all the PC's good for.

3. Yeah piracy is high on the DS, but like the consoles, the general population just buys the games because its straight forward. On the PC, you have to be fairly knowledgable in how to get the PC setup to play games and what hardware you need, and usually the people who know all that also know how to pirate (no im not saying everybody who owns a high end pc is a pirate). Your average joe simply isnt able to buy the right pc and pickup any game they want and play it, let alone know about driver installs and what not.

On a good note, the guys who made The Witcher have announced theyve sold 1.2 Million copies, good on them .

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/45275/The-Witcher-Enters-PC-Best-Seller-List

 

[cjmUK]

Piracy was never an issue of the magnitude they made it out to be.

The biggest problem with PC gaming is with the diverse hardware platform combined with the more-critical buying public.

It's far easier to build a game for a technologically modest, standardised platform where even a mediocre game will make a tidy profit.

The reason Epic are turning against the PC is not because of piracy, as they claimed. It's because they haven't made a decent game since the earlier incarnations of UT. There will be no Gear of War 2 because PC buyers didn't like the original, yet console owners lapped it up. Why struggle to keep the demanding PC buyers happy, when you can save yourself a lot of effort (and development cost) and still ship millions on the PS3 & 360.

That is quite a comical idea tbh....

Not comical if you want to sell your games on.

I added L4D to the same account that I use for TF2, because I knew before I bought it that it was a game that I would keep playing.

However, I have successfully sold HL2 + EP1, The Ship, Dark Messiah, Dangerous Waters and I few others I forget on a number of Steam accounts. In fact, the HL2/EP1/Ship account earned me enough for the orange Box Which had HL2/EP1/EP2/TF2 in it - quite a good bit of business.

 

[FrenchTart]

Yeah, if you're planning on selling on games it's definitely a good idea. I personally don't sell games (including CDs/DVDs) so it's not something I'd bother with the hassle of.

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

I doubt it. I think mainstream PC gaming will be dead in a few years time.

I'd love to see you try and play a decent MMO on a Console.

 

[Strife212]

I didn't mean no one will play PC games at all, MMO's will be one thing PC's will never be beaten at.

And Final Fantasy XI is out on PS2 and 360, you install it onto the harddrive and use keyboard and mouse

 

[Le_Petit_Lapin]

And Final Fantasy XI is out on PS2 and 360, you install it onto the harddrive and use keyboard and mouse

Yeah. I said decent MMO. Not one for weeabos

 

[AWPC]

Developers have been moaning for years about games piracy on the PC. Many started walking away from the platform supposedly because of the issue.

More recently they have been whining almost unceasingly about second hand sales (mostly console games) affecting their cash flow.

However, with digital download services like Steam, piracy is less of an issue, resales are not currently possible (might be in the future) and the distribution and licensing costs are almost zero.

Therefore, surely as digital download services improve and internet speeds increase, will more developers start returning to the PC platform?

Unlikely as PC gaming is declining. It will never go away totally but apart from Crytek & Capcom very few other companies making anything other than multiplatform ports with no extra PC features now. Piracy is the biggest issue/threat. Future is unlikely to change much as digital downloads can easily be cracked (Steam was a long time ago) as well unless they all include features like 100% online only activation which requires a continual connection to an authentication server. PC gaming should be leading the way as there are over 100m gaming PC's worldwide which is more than X360+PS3 combined. I found a lot of X360 ports lack basic graphical features on the PC's superior hardware as they are obviously putting less effort into porting games as the cost is probably harder to recover. In the last year the PC has had few games sell more than 1m copies. Consider that a decent PC game costs around $22M to make and you can see how hard it is for the developers to even recover their investment let alone turn a profit.

Its an uphill struggle but if: http://www.pcgamingalliance.org/
could educate people that its easy to connect a PC to your HDTV with wireless controllers and have a technically superior experience vs consoles the PC could become the no1 gaming platform as all you need is a reasonable spec PC + 3D gfx card which is cheaper than owning PS3+X360. MS/Sony should be looking to make their nextgen consoles 3D add-on cards for the PC as consoles are already like dumb PC terminals now anyway but thats unlikely to ever happen is it.

Another problem is that companies are making a lot of money out of console games so what motivation do they have to promote PC gaming when piracy is so widespread. My own personal view is that PC piracy is around 65-70% of all PC gamers which is why its struggling more than it should be considering that right now a decent PC is technically a long way ahead of what the nextgen consoles will be.

Nvidia + ATI have the most to lose if PC gaming wanes further as the demand for their cards will decline but they both chose to sit on the fence and do nothing as piracy is actually good for their business as it means people have more money to spend on hardware if they can easily get an unlimited supply of free games

 

[Masterdog]

The biggest problem with PC gaming is with the diverse hardware platform combined with the more-critical buying public.

This. It's both cheaper and quicker (at least in terms of development) to program for the Xbox and PS3, where if it runs on your console it'll run on anyone's. The only thing the PC has going for it is in terms of design and usability (eg - making an FPS playable on the PC is a lot easier than doing it on a console, with the kb and mouse advantage).

Also, on the PCGA - I had high hopes when it started but I'm disillusioned now. nVidia and ATi are just making things more complicated, not less. And Microsoft obviously have a vested interest in the XBox. I can't think of one useful thing they've done.

 

[snowdog]

I doubt it. I think mainstream PC gaming will be dead in a few years time.

I highly doubt it, playing a strategy game is a pain in the *** on the consoles... You'd have to be an idiot to rather play games like civ4 or ra3 or total war games or coh or supcom etcetc on a console than on a pc.

 

[willthepirate]

until companies start making games that are actually for gamers and not faggy enthusiasts who just want to show off their expensive hardware then pc gaming is going to the dogs

i know so many people who cross to consoles for the price, and use their older pc's for internet/work stuff instead of upgrading, you can get a 360 for £160 nowadays, you can JUST about get a moderately good graphics card for that...

graphics around the level of HL2 etc are as good as they need to be at the moment, theres realy not much point in anything else, fair enough it looks impressive and whatnot, but very few actually give a toss about it

 

[Ogs]

Until they start selling pre-built gaming capable rigs for reasonable prices (see the Crysis Warhead rig for example), i cant see PC gaming going anywhere. People in general still think of PC gaming systems as Alienware and the likes. They also need to stop advertising expensive "Gaming" PC's that have SLI'd 8500GT's, FFS STICK A 8800GT IN THERE.