The slow death of the PC...my opinion

[Werewolf486}12thVR{]

Well the longer I'm alive the more I learn to hate progress just as much as I love it!  PC's are going the way of the Black Rhino! Why, because of tablets and Console game systems with less processing ability than a gamers desktop. It really seems stupid that the once great PC will eventually be no more, replaced by game consoles that require you to own more than one to play all your favorite games. With the current cost of game consoles it would be cheaper to buy those instead of investing THOUSANDS of dollars in a gaming rig PC. Although I'd rather spend the money on a rig, I've found that most would rather buy 3 different gaming systems.

I recently had a friend who bought Skyrim for his laptop, only to find his laptop wouldn't run it. His HP DV8000 was to old and out dated. So I sent him links to new Asus G74's and G73's that would easily play that and MWLL. Rather than updating his laptop, he bought a new Xbox Kinect and the Xbox version of Skyrim. To him this seemed very logical and a better idea, but for me I could not agree at all. I thought it was crazy to buy a new console system just for that one game! I thought it was a better idea to replace the obviously outdated laptop with something modern that would get him into the next century. I just think it's crazy to have all those systems in your house. I respect his choice even if I don't agree with it and I don't say anything to him about it.

A solution! Instead of buying all those systems and having switches, and finding storage for all of it, I would rather buy a great PC or Laptop. The game console people need to make money too, fine, how about they sell their OS in a bundle with controllers and then let me install it on my PC or laptop! I'd rather have a rig next to my entertainment center with 4 OS on it than to have 1 rig, 3 consoles and all the crap that goes with them.

I didn't notice change in my preteen years, loved most change in my teens, didn't really notice it in my 20's, but in my mid 30's I gotta say I'm not liking it much. Console games taking over, my visions is starting to get bad enough I may get glasses, I have a long list of stuff that hurts in the mornings, the economy went in the tank and hasn't gotten better, and change seems less like a good thing with each passing year.

[Mitchpate]

I wouldn't worry about it.  The XBOX720 and PS3 are >3 years away and even now the better games on both have be played at far less than 720p.  Most high-end games don't even get close.  Black Ops was 1040x608 on Xbox 360 and 960x544 on PS3, BF3 is 1280x704 on both, and MW3 is 1024x600 on both.  Eventually the quality is going to get so poor, and the upscaling so obvious, that gamers will be forced back to the PC market.

The appeal of consoles is that they're a cheap and easy way to play games at high settings.  When they become just a cheap and easy way to play games the appeal of them fades.  Quickly.

[DFDelta]

I agree to most of this.

I don't quite get how people can buy 3 consoles but say that buying a new PC is waaay to expensive.
For the same price they payed for all the consoles they could have bought a new PC and kept it up to date for several years. (I don't know about the hardware prices in other countries, but in germany you can easiely get a good PC for 500€ that will last a few years)

Also PC games here are generally cheaper by 10€ - 20€ (at least here), so if you buy 10 or so games each year on PC instead of console you alrady have saved enough money for a small upgrade.

And lastly I don't really understand why people play some games on console in the first place.
The only games I play on consoles are (J)RPGs, party games and 3rd person action games (Assassins Creed, Tonb Raider and similar), everything else just feels bad and wrong with a console controller. Especially FPS and simulations, I'll never understand how people can actually play those with a controller instead of a good joystick or mouse/keyboard.

[Xesle]

Armored Core is the only reason I still care even a tiny amount about consoles.  I've never been much of a jrpg fan, though I did several of the final fantasy games and phantasy star, racing games are all the same to me, most shooter/adventure games nowadays aren't worth forking out 60 dollars for when you get less than ten hours of singleplayer gameplay, and most any wrpg you can get for console is better to have for pc.

[Mitchpate]

I don't quite get how people can buy 3 consoles but say that buying a new PC is waaay to expensive.

Console fanboys don't like this kind of math and during an argument with one their attention span isn't stable enough to stay on the topic of how much they've actually spent long enough for you to prove this point.

You're better off just letting them continue to bask in their own ignorance and go back to playing the hottest new releases, that you paid less for, at much higher graphics settings, much higher resolutions, and much higher framerates all while playing on a device that, in the end, cost less money, gives you better control over your character, and has much better matchmaking.

[sleepysheep]

I've seen skyrim on the xbox. Trust me your friend is a fool and would cry at night if he knew what he was missing out compared to the pc. It doesn't even get 30fps on the xbox ffs with poor graphics and stupidly long loading times.

There will always be some games I just buy on consoles to play online with RL mates. For everything else pc all the way. Hell I have brought the same game twice just so I could play it on pc after my friends gave up on it, that's how bad and ugly games run on xbox.

Too many people think you need a 2k gaming rig to game and its not true, sadly I can't persuade my mates when I own a 2k gaming rig so its a bit tough for me lol.

Let the console people enjoy what they have, while you can enjoy it on the pc and really enjoy it. Oh and you can just plug your pc into a tv, plug xbox controller into pc and ta da super uber powered xbox basically lol.

[(TLL)KitLightning]

I don't think you'll need to worry much there Werewolf. All games needs to be passed by a PC to develop it *snickers* doesn't matter which platform they are meant to be launched for. Only issue is of course keeping up with that and updating the PC on-the-run which is a torture at times economically.

On one thing we need to worry and that is if the numbers for the PC versions sold, drops significantly, but then the developers would most likely switch to online distribution exclusively for PC owners *shrugs*

The price for both PC and consoles will always wary depended on the number of units sold, all we can do is encourage anyone to invest in PC's and tell them horrible lies/truth (delete whichever seems inappropriate) about consoles... And of course help the poor illiterate PC peps to get a better understanding of the PC's capabilities and make sure that there is nothing whatsoever to be afraid of, cause you are right by there side

I've seen skyrim on the xbox. Trust me your friend is a fool and would cry at night if he knew what he was missing out compared to the pc. It doesn't even get 30fps on the xbox ffs with poor graphics and stupidly long loading times.

Yeah all that cheesy modding I made myself a new Nightingale skin for my sassy thief

[Stahlseele]

Well, Streaming-Services such as On-Live will probably be changing the way games are handled soon enough . .
You won't really need that much processing power anymore, because all of it is done in the cloud.
You just need a good internet connection so you can get all the data without problems i am afraid.

As for me:
No, i will stay with computer gaming.
I have, in this room alone, 6000€ worth of computers, and that's without periphery such as displays . .
rest of the flat ups that to 10K € without periphery . . god damn it, when i think about it, i put waayy too much money into this o.o;,

It's a sad and inevitable truth that consoles are more easy to get behind and to use than computers. And most people take the limitations as long as it's:insert, wait, play.

Only consoles i really like are the old sega stuff and the nintendo consoles, because of the mario series . .
i still have a SNES and N64. Maybe i'll be seeing about getting an older used black WII for myself this christmas, with mario kart and mario again.

[Aidan]

Well the economic decision to buy a console is justified and short sighted. The PC architectures of now and into the future will always be generations ahead of the game consoles. AMD and NVIDIA, with their next product release, will be in the 28nm range. In 1 to 2 years it will be common place to by a high end GPU card with 6GB of graphics memory. Then next design cycle down will see resolutions in the teens nm.

The PC hardware speaks for itself. The question is will the software created for the PC truly take advantage of all the PC compute power.

[(TLL)CapperDeluxe]

A) PC gaming is ahead of consoles technologically (we all know this)

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/11/25/2126215/pc-gaming-a-generation-ahead-of-consoles-says-crytek-boss


B) Indie games in general are not selling well on consoles, but they're thriving on Steam

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/07/22/1821252/indie-rpg-struggles-on-xbox-yet-thrives-on-steam


C) http://technologizer.com/2011/11/11/pc-gaming-isnt-dead-just-cyclical/


Also lets not forget that there's not really any Free 2 Play games on consoles, and some of those are making a killing.



Honestly I think Microsoft and Sony create this FUD to get people to spend more on their consoles, even though they got a each have new consoles coming out in a just a couple years so getting a new console now makes less sense than upgrading your PC.  When you think about what the cost of a new cutting edge console is ($400-600 last time around) its about the same price as getting a brand new PC with similar specs nowadays.

[sleepysheep]

Well the economic decision to buy a console is justified and short sighted. The PC architectures of now and into the future will always be generations ahead of the game consoles. AMD and NVIDIA, with their next product release, will be in the 28nm range. In 1 to 2 years it will be common place to by a high end GPU card with 6GB of graphics memory. Then next design cycle down will see resolutions in the teens nm.

The PC hardware speaks for itself. The question is will the software created for the PC truly take advantage of all the PC compute power.

As long as XBox360, wii and PS3 games sell and making multi-millions, no we won't see PC hardware scaled up on many games. It's one of the reasons why I like BF3. EA actually gave a damn and gave us pretty graphics worthy of a 2011 game without dumbing the crap out of the game which they so could of done. Wish more games would follow suit.

[KingLeerUK]

Almost without exception the choice for which platform to produce games on comes down to one thing.
 
This  -->   $
 
It is simply easier to make games for a console than it is for the PC, at least in terms of single target platform and "known quantity" for hardware/OS when creating, testing, shipping and supporting your game.  As MWLL sitting on top of Crysis Wars with a relatively small audience we actually have had a fair number of technical issues reported to us that have been due to unique client configuration, hardware compatibility/limitations or interfering software.  Going the console route eliminates a great majority of your variables, which equals less time spent trying to accommodate the unknown when producing your game.  Faster production cycle = less money, faster time to market and more opportunities for yearly or bi-yearly franchise cycling.

[Aidan]

Almost without exception the choice for which platform to produce games on comes down to one thing.
 
This  -->   $
 
It is simply easier to make games for a console than it is for the PC, at least in terms of single target platform and "known quantity" for hardware/OS when creating, testing, shipping and supporting your game.  As MWLL sitting on top of Crysis Wars with a relatively small audience we actually have had a fair number of technical issues reported to us that have been due to unique client configuration, hardware compatibility/limitations or interfering software.  Going the console route eliminates a great majority of your variables, which equals less time spent trying to accommodate the unknown when producing your game.  Faster production cycle = less money, faster time to market and more opportunities for yearly or bi-yearly franchise cycling.

Sometimes Capitalism sucks!

[sleepysheep]

Almost without exception the choice for which platform to produce games on comes down to one thing.
 
This  -->   $
 
It is simply easier to make games for a console than it is for the PC, at least in terms of single target platform and "known quantity" for hardware/OS when creating, testing, shipping and supporting your game.  As MWLL sitting on top of Crysis Wars with a relatively small audience we actually have had a fair number of technical issues reported to us that have been due to unique client configuration, hardware compatibility/limitations or interfering software.  Going the console route eliminates a great majority of your variables, which equals less time spent trying to accommodate the unknown when producing your game.  Faster production cycle = less money, faster time to market and more opportunities for yearly or bi-yearly franchise cycling.

Sometimes Capitalism sucks!

Agreed. But it's always why we can all afford better PC hardware. And why PC hardware continues to get better. So eventually it will be the downfall of the consoles

For the moment PC gaming isn't enough better than console games to persaude the masses. But give it a year, max two years and PC gaming is gonna be soooooo much better. Going to be doubling our core count on CPU, and GC will be 100% faster at least using less power and less heat. Eventually someone is going to go, fapp it, lets use the hardware at 100% and it's going to blow everyones mind.

[Cloudburst]

PC's will begin their slow rise to domination when PlanetSide 2 goes viral. When.

Consoles simply can't compete with that amount of Awesome at any level. Technologically, financially, socially. The original PlanetSide would make even an Xbox 360 cry. That's partly due to poor optimization, but it's also partly because of the steps made in order to make the game itself possible.

For PCs, the generation is all in the game's played. Sure, new games come out every year, but only every once in awhile does the epic community-shattering game come around and define a generation of PC Gaming. Usually, these games don't have sequels until 3 or 5 years have passed, sometimes a full decade. They live off of the pure ecstasy of the original game and what the community does with it. Likewise, the companies that produce these generation-defining games make an absolute killing. An amount of money that mainstream console developers would envy. I know some of these names might sound like curses to you, but they are keeping the PC alive: Riot Games, Blizzard, and Valve. Bethesda and BioWare play a role there, as well, but they release on the consoles too. These companies spend a proper amount of time and effort on their games, and it shows both in how long their games are successful and the time before their next is released. For Consoles, the generation is in the hardware. Within one generation of consoles, you see the same game with a different name released over and over, sometimes 3 or 5 times, multiple times within a single year. They have a quick turn-around for money and new content, but a relatively low quality and low support.