General Discussion

This in a way surprised me. I could care less about EPIC and I didn't mind them going to consoles after what shoddy game UT3 was. But not IDSoftware....sigh....it's really MMO now who carry PC gaming.

"TG: You're making a push on the consoles now. Is part of that because of the threat of piracy on the PC or is it more about getting the games to as many people as possible?"

"JOHN CARMACK: Well, it's hard to second guess exactly what the reasons are. You can say piracy. You can say user migration. But the ground truth is just that the sales numbers on the PC are not what they used to be and are not what they are on the consoles. Certainly, piracy is a contributor to that. I also think a lot of the people that bought PC games have bought consoles and are happy with them. We still think the PC is a market worth supporting, but we're not making decision around the PC. It's probably more of the junior partner in the cross-platform strategy, although obviously, our day-to-day development is predominately on the PC."

www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/08/07/carmack_interview/

Some developers have just failed to evolve with the platform, blizzard and Valve are doing really well on the platform and so are the creators of The Sims and soon to be Spore. You just can't port a console game and expect it to sell on the PC because most people will just download it or not bother. For example I'd have never of bought Devil May Cry 4 on the PC but I downloaded it, if I couldn't have downloaded it then I would never have bothered playing it anyways. I think most pirated games are like this because people just think "what the hell its free" and go ahead and download it. Developers need to get with the times on the PC because it's evolved past console style games and going into the browser based and digital age where people can have easy access.

 
Carmack can't esactly expect Rage to sell well too because it's such a graphical powerhouse of a game. The problem with the PC platform is theres no industry min requirement PC so like a DELL PC has to have atleast a 8800GT in it etc etc.

Hopefully the new PC force thing will set a standard with all the big premade companies that'll get more people into PC gaming.

It's really no surprise that console gaming has taken so much PC ground. PC gaming is very, VERY expensive and the average user just simply isn't willing to pay that much money for a top of the line gaming PC when there is a perfectly capable console going for just 300$.

Originally posted by Gameloading

It's really no surprise that console gaming has taken so much PC ground. PC gaming is very, VERY expensive and the average user just simply isn't willing to pay that much money for a top of the line gaming PC when there is a perfectly capable console going for just 300$.

aye, but then again, in two years time the ability to buy a video card that is in a console that is selling for 300 dollars will drop to about 50 bucks. Not saying consoles suck but if the PC genre found a pirate-unfriendly way of having people purchase games (via steam, etc) the sales may pick up. Then they may not.

Consoles waist a lot of money. SONY lost about 3 billion dollars with the PS3 and xbox360 lost almost triple that.

Ive got a feeling that companies aren't looking forward to that with the next generation of consoles in the future.

Originally posted by Enigma

Originally posted by Gameloading

It's really no surprise that console gaming has taken so much PC ground. PC gaming is very, VERY expensive and the average user just simply isn't willing to pay that much money for a top of the line gaming PC when there is a perfectly capable console going for just 300$.

 

aye, but then again, in two years time the ability to buy a video card that is in a console that is selling for 300 dollars will drop to about 50 bucks. Not saying consoles suck but if the PC genre found a pirate-unfriendly way of having people purchase games (via steam, etc) the sales may pick up. Then they may not.

Consoles waist a lot of money. SONY lost about 3 billion dollars with the PS3 and xbox360 lost almost triple that.

Ive got a feeling that companies aren't looking forward to that with the next generation of consoles in the future.

Well, they lost that money on hardware, which isn't necessarily reflective of the overall health of those corporation's gaming divisions.  They make back the money on software.

Yeah, Microsoft has never pulled a profit with its gaming division.  The 360, hardware and software, has been a commercial failure for MS.  They only stick with it because it has a lot of strategic value.  Don't tell me they did it last year with Halo 3 because they didn't.  They fudged the books on that one to shift the massive cost of replacing defective 360's to the previous year.  That would have put their gaming division right back into the red.  Complete bullshit, but nobody can accuse today's accountants of not being creative.

Sony is doing a bit better.  Their gaming division is actually profitable, and it always has been, even through the slow early days of the PS3.  Margins have been pretty slim as of late, though, especially compared to their boom days.  Too bad Sony isn't MS.  You'd see a lot more features from the PS3 if they also operated under the mentality of having unlimited money to waste for the sake of some future strategic gains.

I don't really need to talk about Nintendo's recent success.  They've had the best-selling console on the market for a long time, and no, it's not the Wii.  All of Nintendo's hardware is sold at a profit too, even with their dramatically lower prices.

Originally posted by Enigma

Originally posted by Gameloading

It's really no surprise that console gaming has taken so much PC ground. PC gaming is very, VERY expensive and the average user just simply isn't willing to pay that much money for a top of the line gaming PC when there is a perfectly capable console going for just 300$.

 

aye, but then again, in two years time the ability to buy a video card that is in a console that is selling for 300 dollars will drop to about 50 bucks. Not saying consoles suck but if the PC genre found a pirate-unfriendly way of having people purchase games (via steam, etc) the sales may pick up. Then they may not.

Consoles waist a lot of money. SONY lost about 3 billion dollars with the PS3 and xbox360 lost almost triple that.

Ive got a feeling that companies aren't looking forward to that with the next generation of consoles in the future.

Thats completely normal, Console manufactors always sell their hardware at a loss then make a profit through software. It's how the business model works.
 

Keep in mind that people who are making software for the consoles pay a liscensing fee to the companies that manufacture their respective consoles...Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo don't just make money from every console shipped, they also make money for every game made.

Even accounting for all of that, MS is still in the hole as far as gaming is concerned.  They're just willing to eat the loss because they're thinking ahead.

You have to admire their tenacity.  MS, as it stands, is the only company at present with the knowhow and resources to really start to bridge the gap between the PC and the living room.  That's the prize they have their eyes on, and they realize it will be a long road.

Other major corporations have pulled out of the console market after suffering far smaller losses.  Microsoft was thinking like twenty or thirty years ahead, though.  If they really succeed in this gambit, if we reach a point where they offer us one machine with all of the entertainment advantages of both consoles and PC's, the payoff would be massive.  They'd have another asset on their hands as valuable as their Windows monopoly.