General Discussion

People have been heralding the death knell of PC gaming ever since the first consoles came out over 20 years ago.  Its still here and going strong.

As long as consoles remain somewhat limited in their abilities compared to a full blown PC, it will continue to thrive.

The gaps narrowed a lot , but fundamentally games designed to run well with a game controller don't translate to the keyboard.  Both controllers have their benefits, and are better suited to certain gaming designs.

I think we'll see PC games continue for a long time to come.

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Originally posted by Locklain
PC gaming has almost always been a niche thing. Consoles will more than likely trample all over PCs within the next 10-15 years if not sooner. There have been several posts on these forums about people not liking to update their computers to keep up with the updated games and graphics. This is what will end PC gaming when the cost to keep up with the curve becomes too much.

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Actually, no the console and the PC are not in competition really. And you can't write your school paper on a console. Nor can you really IM. Or design a program. Remember, there's about five or so billion humans that don't have either consoles or PCs, so I expect the market to change radically in favor of PCs and mobile devices (especially mobile devices since their deployment is cheaper) over consoles on a worldwide scale. Consoles are a nice market for the kiddies and people who don't want to program, but they don't make the world go round when it comes to education, IT, AI design and theory, or research of any kind. Consoles are the ones that are niche, not PCs.


-- Brede

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Originally posted by Kyleran
People have been heralding the death knell of PC gaming ever since the first consoles came out over 20 years ago. Its still here and going strong.
As long as consoles remain somewhat limited in their abilities compared to a full blown PC, it will continue to thrive.
The gaps narrowed a lot , but fundamentally games designed to run well with a game controller don't translate to the keyboard. Both controllers have their benefits, and are better suited to certain gaming designs.
I think we'll see PC games continue for a long time to come.

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Largely, it's the console maker's fault for the gap as they don't want any customer to tinker about their console box at all. I believe it's a federal crime to sell mod chips even, so you can see what the real problem is with the modern console versus the early/ancestral consoles (at least with them you could actually program on them like with the C64...). And the more these console makers are trying to skirt the edge of the GPL licenses on a number of firmware and software products they're using (such as the Linux kernel and certain BIOS specs) the more they open themselves up to litigation by the FSF (which has won in every case of GPL violation...). So, the console makers better get their noses clean before they pretend to have any sort of magical dominance in the computing industries.


-- Brede

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Originally posted by Locklain
PC gaming has almost always been a niche thing. Consoles will more than likely trample all over PCs within the next 10-15 years if not sooner. There have been several posts on these forums about people not liking to update their computers to keep up with the updated games and graphics. This is what will end PC gaming when the cost to keep up with the curve becomes too much.

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The core reason why this will not happen, unless there is a drastic change with console machines which essentially turns them into cheap crappy PC's or full blown pc's with the same price tag.. is that your console machine is a static entity. To stay with the times, you have to change the whole device. With a PC, you just pop her open, unclick one or two cards and swap em out with new ones.

Believe you me, this console vs pc thing has been going on forever, I recall people saying the original nintendo spelled doom for the PC world. Piece of trash that is was.

Also your game will stay usable on your PC no matter how much you upgrade it (assuming its coded well and not one of those really old games that run at hyperspeed on today's pcs)

In my opinion there will always be pc gaming. Hard to say to what degree though, especially as consoles become more powerful.

most people lack pc knowledge that is why they think they have to buy a $2000 to run new games

PC gaming isnt going any where.  Personally, I dont plan on ever buying another console, theres just no reason to when I get much more use out of a PC.  Sure, they may be churning out tons of console games, but most of them are utter shit.  Why pay $50+ for a game that I could blow through in 1 bored weekend?

Actually if anything.. PC gaming is back on the rise since all the next generation consoles are failures (in their own little way).

The 360 was released too soon... limiting the system to DX9, it broke a lot when it was first released and Blu-ray has won out on the format wars making the 360 rather silly in that regard. Also again like with the X-box, companies are porting games over to the PC with better feature, graphics, controls etc. The biggest exclusives are now on the PC... Mass Effect, Gears of War etc. Only really big one that will probably be on the PC two years later is halo 3.

The Wii is actually probably the only succesful one mainly because it's cheap and families and just about everyone can enjoy it TOGETHER. Basically if you are a loner or like single player games then it's a niche system.

The PS3 is too expensive for many (though it's not as bad as some computers) as well as the game library just plain sucks right now. Most exclusives have been ported to the 360 or PC if not both. They lost Devil May Cry 4. Though the PS3 has potential to rise above the rest. The big 3rd-party exclusives are coming soon. FF13 and all that entails. MGS4. Resident Evil 5 etc.

PC gaming is getting more and more ports of console games, the computer technology is getting cheaper and cheaper rather than more expensive (Ok, some parts start out expensive but they drop somewhat quickly) and with huge amount of players for games such as World of Warcraft and other MMO's. Who is not going to tap into the market?

Originally posted by DeadlyMage

most people lack pc knowledge that is why they think they have to buy a $2000 to run new games

This is another issue.  There are a lot of people out there that would have a brain aneurysm just trying to turn a PC on let alone tinkering with the guts of it.  I am also well aware of how cheap it is to build a nice system, however, said people above have no idea and feel the need to run out and buy the most expensive Alienware they can (more expensive means its better right?).