Cliff Bleszinski: "I'll Never Make Another Disc-Based Game"

[Crimsonmonkeywar]

So no, the "PC space" hasnt changed, what has changed is his opinion because he now sees profit to be made in a market he has previously ignored, if not actively shunned.

Really? Scinse the realease of Gear of War 2, 6 years ago

Steam went from 13m accounts and a little over 1m concurrent users to 75m accounts and over 7m concurrent users

PC gaming revenue went from a plummeted 701.4m to over 20b

GOG launched in 2008 and GMG in 2010

Price to performance on hardware is moving at a faster rate than development allowing the PC to outpace the console space at a much faster rate.

All dedicated gaming platforms are now X86 based

The iPad released in 2010 eliminating the need for regular PC usage.

EA released Origin and Ubisoft Uplay

Big picture mode is a popular steam function as well as the idea a of PC media center[/quote]

PC space was never terrible. It is a myth perpetrated by idiots who spout things like "Only PC gamers pirate" and other such nonesense. A lot of attentino was paid to consoles back then since they still offered competetive hardware (was the last time they did actually) and unlike PC gamers, console gamers accepted to bend over and be raped with things like Xbox Gold.

Numbers don't lie, revenue, PC gamers to Console ratio, and number of released titles beg you differ.


My point being, to act as though PC gaming has always remained on top in delusional. It was ahead of the herd before but now with everything set in place(Bandwidth, hardware cost, User base, unified storefront, quality support and Youtube) it's looking to decimate. Developers who were once PC gaming only are coming back to a vastly different market than before. You can stay bitter but I for one am glad to see Ken Levine, Peter Molynuex, Cliff Bleszninki and other powerhouse minds coming back into the fold. Heck, Japaneses developers are now starting to find a market and cheap development cost on the PC that they don't have on consoles.

 

[A-D.]

So no, the "PC space" hasnt changed, what has changed is his opinion because he now sees profit to be made in a market he has previously ignored, if not actively shunned.

Really? Scinse the realease of Gear of War 2, 6 years ago

Steam went from 13m accounts and a little over 1m concurrent users to 75m accounts and over 7m concurrent users

PC gaming revenue went from a plummeted 701.4m to over 20b

GOG launched in 2008 and GMG in 2010

Price to performance on hardware is moving at a faster rate than development allowing the PC to outpace the console space at a much faster rate.

All dedicated gaming platforms are now X86 based

The iPad released in 2010 eliminating the need for regular PC usage.

EA released Origin and Ubisoft Uplay

Big picture mode is a popular steam function as well as the idea a of PC media center

Alright im going through these point by point.

1: The Number of accounts is largely irrelevant, just because there are now more accounts than in the past does not imply anything. Its like saying consoles became the main market because the Xbox 360 sold more units than the original Xbox. Many games have adopted Steamworks, which is essentially DRM and ties games to steam, some need steam running, some do not. Basicly if you bought skyrim, you have a steam account, but whether you use it regularly, or have any other games on steam is another matter altogether. It is therefore valid to assume that all those users who have a steam account now just didnt have one before, that does not imply they werent playing primarily, or exclusively, pc games.

2: Thats the Industry for you. When all the big publishers think that the money is only on consoles, then yes, the marketshare of the PC will drop because nobody makes games for it anymore. Couple that with stupid opinions such as Ubisoft not too long ago who actually argued that the PC as a platform is only used by pirates, where as all legal consumers only use a console, which is basicly bullshit.

3: Again largely irrelevant. GOG used to be about "Good Old Games", hence the name. They have since changed their business model to also include more recent releases when available, but the first idea was to re-release old games which are basicly not supported anymore, either by a publisher or even a OS. These games by and large predate most consoles, except Nintendo which was already in the market back in the day.

4: How is that relevant? This has been the case for years, in fact this has been utterly normal for over 20 years now. In 1995 i got my first PC, a Pentium S with, if memory serves, 80 MHz and 8 MB RAM. Hell i even had a 2gb Harddrive couple years after, back then that was modern. Then came Pentium 1, 2..the list goes on. Even when the PS2 was new, the PC was the more powerful platform, hell even when the original Playstation came out in 1997, the PC was the faster, more powerful platform.

5: Nope, not all of them. Unless Nintendo also uses it but i dont have any sources for this. Also the XBox One is not a dedicated gaming platform, its a media-center, its not exactly the same thing. A PC isnt a dedicated gaming platform just because you can play games on it either after all. However you prove my point that by changing to similar architecture, which i also pointed out, consoles are now PCs, pre-built and made for the living room, they are no longer consoles.

6: Entirely irrelevant to the PC market. Thats like saying the Laptop eliminated the need for a regular Desktop machine. Plus the iPad can not do everything that a PC can do, or rather being a competiting product from Apple, it probably doesnt run stuff like Excel, nor is it made for this purpose. The iPad wasnt designed to be a pocket-PC so to speak.

7: First, thats a DRM method and second, they wanted a cut of the pie. Its the same reasoning as to why Steam has more users now, being forced into the service does not imply that the market has changed in any way. Example, Mass Effect 1 does not require Origin, nor does it install Origin or need a activation code for Origin. Mass Effect 3 on the other hand you can not play unless you install Origin and register with the service. Additionally most accounts Origin has are not active, EA simply moved all accounts from its subsidiaries to Origin, such as Maxis and Bioware Accounts, thats how i got a Origin Account even though i never used and never will use this service.

8: Irrelevant honestly, the PC as a media center is not a new idea. It could already be connected to a TV before hand, in fact i distinctly recall friends having done so in 2003 and after, long before Big Picture was a thing. Additionally the PC could always play videos, music and play games, even the Controller for PC is not a new design and has been standard for many years. What is different is that it is much easier now to do so, see HDMI and so forth, but that is not inherently a change in the PC space at all.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

Hmm, so apperently Cliff Bleszinski has actually gotten some intelligence in that head of his and not just antipiracy propaganda. Despite how much you dont want to admit it, he is right, this is where gaming is going.

I'm glad he thinks everyone lives in a place without download caps and horrible speeds.

I'm lucky, I've got moderate high speed internet.
-Averages around 500-900kb/s.

Some of my friends don't even get 100kb/s.
There's NO WAY they're going to be able to deal with a 15GB download or whatever.

C.B. is nuts.

Everyone that cares about modern videogames affords to. The only reason you and your friends dont have decent speeds and have donwload caps is because your ISP is abusing you, likely because they are monopolistic assholes. There is an easy solution - force your ISP to provide decent service. Of course, for that you need to work united across all its users, so its not that easy in the end since humans fail to cooperate.

Also, even back in 2000, you know, back when 100KB/s internet was normal, i downloaded files even 8 GB in size (back then we had 100 GB per month limit, but limits been lifted since 2008). It took longer, granted, but thats about all the trouble it was.

The PC space was terrible then, and if it continued downward we would not have CB, let alone any developer releasing titles on PC. Every tom dick and harry was getting out of that space, it was not a fun time as a gamer. Luckily Steam continued to grow, GoG emerged, and studios like Sega, Blizzard, CDPR, and Capcom continued to release titles. Not to mention Youtube personalities LP'ing and reviewing PC titles as well as Minecraft taking off and turning many a young gamers into PC gamers.

PC space was never terrible. It is a myth perpetrated by idiots who spout things like "Only PC gamers pirate" and other such nonesense. A lot of attentino was paid to consoles back then since they still offered competetive hardware (was the last time they did actually) and unlike PC gamers, console gamers accepted to bend over and be raped with things like Xbox Gold.

I get the facebooks generation is all hyped about nonsense like this but I remember all this happening before, and it never ends with good results.

You remmeber digital distribution being done before? Do tell us how it ended.

How is this guy in any way relevant to game industry at the moment, sure he made Gears of War and popularized chest high walls but anything else aside from that and antagonizing a lot of people?

His last game was only 2 years ago. You dont become irrelevant in only 2 years you know.
He is also responsible for creating unreal engine. you know, the engine that over a hundred games were developed for (and a big profile ones you know) and that is STILL being used to develop tens of games every year. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games]

I've never played anything he had ever had a hand in. My life's intersection with his had purely been his jibber jabber on sites like this about stuff unrelated to any ACTUAL work in progress.

well, then i guess you missed a lot of games [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games]

You know, games like Mass effect, Bioshock, spec ops, Xcom and many other titles.

So that link wasn't really helpful, unless you believe that he personally developed games like Deus Ex, Magna Carta, Silent Hill Downpour, and Borderlands. Those being the only games on that list I have played with any enjoyment/at all.

This is a more helpful link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Bleszinski#Credits

 

[Saltyk]

Fair is fair, and CliffyB has made some big contributions to the game industry - bigger than most. But in predicting the future and trying to find his place in it, I think he's in basically the same boat as the rest of us: flailing about as he tries to figure out what's going on. Maybe he'll never make a disc-based game again, but maybe he will, especially if he comes up with a hit and Take-Two or EA shows up with the money truck.

I don't think conventional retail is dead. Lots of people, myself included, use it as their primary method of acquiring games. It's easy to have an "all hail digital" attitude when you live and work in an area with unlimited, super-fast broadband access, but when you don't - and believe it or not, lots of us fall into that category - it's a different situation. And as others have said, I like "owning" my games. I like boxes and manuals and quick reference cards and all that bullshit, and it infuriates me that I so often have to buy special editions to get that stuff these days, but I do it because it's an important part of the experience. A game that doesn't get a retail release is a game that I'm far less likely to buy.

He does make some interesting points, but I don't happen to agree with them - and more to the point, I hope he's wrong. A digital future is not my future.

This, I agree with. While I do download a few games and PS+ makes that all too appealing when they give me games for free, I also really like owning the game. My internet speed isn't even bad, and those games still take a good hour. Being able to pick through my collection with my own two hands and decide which game appeals to me today. It's nice and gives me a feeling of ownership.

Games I download are a separate beast entirely. And what happens when I switch to a new PC or a new system? Assuming the game can still run on my new system, I still have to go through the whole process of downloading all those games.

I also like the experience of shopping in those "brick and mortar deathtraps". Looking through the games, talking to customers and employees. Asking opinions, giving advice, or just swapping stories of our gaming experiences. And, what I find funny is that people keep predicting the end of this style of gaming while laughing about how people were predicting the end of PC gaming. Do they not see the hypocrisy in that sentiment?

 

[Alleged_Alec]

So, Brozinski is opening his gab again? I'm sorry, but I'm not going to take what he says seriously. Everything he says is based on what kind of profit he can make by saying that. I'm not going to buy any of his games. The only fun games he has ever made were Tyrian and Tyrian 2000. CliffyB is and always has been a douchnenozzle. He is abrasive and one of the worst people in the industry.

a lot of games [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games]

U wot mate? You're wrong for two reasons:
1: Just because people made games in an engine doesn't make the people making the engine responsible for those games. Engines are tools, if you don't use one, you'll just use another.
2: CliffyB is not John Carmack. He's not a tech guy and had nothing to do with the creation of the Unreal Engine.

 

[Strazdas]

Seriously folks, we don't all live in an area that gets great, superfast internet.
Some of us live in areas where you can only connect to the internet a certain times!

You dont need great or superfast internet. you need decent internet. If you dont have one there are 3 reasons:
1) you live in a third world country that has trouble having electricity let alone internet.
2) your ISP is monopolistic asshope which you and other loca users must pressure into providing decent service.
3) you live alone in middle of nowhere in which case you are in extremely small minority of users.

I don't think anyone argues that discs are bad, I don't see why anyone who can use digital distribution would even care if discs were available or not.

Other than, say, publishers licking retailers poop exhaust pipes and strangling digital sales at identical prices? Yeah, thats totally nothing to worry about.

Numbers don't lie, revenue, PC gamers to Console ratio, and number of released titles beg you differ.


My point being, to act as though PC gaming has always remained on top in delusional. It was ahead of the herd before but now with everything set in place(Bandwidth, hardware cost, User base, unified storefront, quality support and Youtube) it's looking to decimate. Developers who were once PC gaming only are coming back to a vastly different market than before. You can stay bitter but I for one am glad to see Ken Levine, Peter Molynuex, Cliff Bleszninki and other powerhouse minds coming back into the fold. Heck, Japaneses developers are now starting to find a market and cheap development cost on the PC that they don't have on consoles.

Yes, numbers dont lie. You provided none though. Gaming revenue was down during that time, PC and consoles both. That was what we call the 2008-2009 financial crysis. PC Gamers were always much larger group that people anticipated. This is because we dont go around itnernet spouting nonesense most of the time as we are busy enjoying our devices that arent limited to 30 fps or 720p. There were plenty of releases for PC games at any given time. In fact, if we count indie games in PC had more games released than any consoles at any given year. So your theory is bogus.

The iPad released in 2010 eliminating the need for regular PC usage.

You... what? Regular PC usage is eliminated? I guess thats why the sales are rising.....

So that link wasn't really helpful, unless you believe that he personally developed games like Deus Ex, Magna Carta, Silent Hill Downpour, and Borderlands. Those being the only games on that list I have played with any enjoyment/at all.

This is a more helpful link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Bleszinski#Credits

He developed an engine that still makes the company millions in licenses. He made the engine that runs these games. If thats not contributing then i dont know what is.

 

[Evonisia]

So the man who once worked on a series which thrived on physical copies (besides the crap PC port and the free download you got from Gears Judgment) now decides to distance himself from physical copies. He belongs on PC; it's a match made in heaven.

 

[james.sponge]

His last game was only 2 years ago. You dont become irrelevant in only 2 years you know. He is also responsible for creating unreal engine. you know, the engine that over a hundred games were developed for (and a big profile ones you know) and that is STILL being used to develop tens of games every year. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games]

This gets thrown a lot, but I think Tim Sweeney is the brain behind unreal tech, Cliff was just responsible for various incarnations of UT games that's true, but not the engine itself.

So that link wasn't really helpful, unless you believe that he personally developed games like Deus Ex, Magna Carta, Silent Hill Downpour, and Borderlands. Those being the only games on that list I have played with any enjoyment/at all.

This is a more helpful link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Bleszinski#Credits

He developed an engine that still makes the company millions in licenses. He made the engine that runs these games. If thats not contributing then i dont know what is.

This should clarify this issue, good luck finding Cliff there!
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Unreal_Engine_Versions/3

 

[Dijarida]

An incredibly handsome man makes an incredibly handsome decision. /swoon

 

[putowtin]

Seriously folks, we don't all live in an area that gets great, superfast internet.
Some of us live in areas where you can only connect to the internet a certain times!

You dont need great or superfast internet. you need decent internet. If you dont have one there are 3 reasons:
1) you live in a third world country that has trouble having electricity let alone internet.
2) your ISP is monopolistic asshope which you and other loca users must pressure into providing decent service.
3) you live alone in middle of nowhere in which case you are in extremely small minority of users.

I live in a village 10 miles from the UK's 6th biggest city and it takes 30 minutes to stream an episode of Zero Punctuation! I have a friend who lives on an airforce base who can only access the internet at certain times of the day.

Until the day comes that we can all download things at the drop of the hat we still need physical copies of games, movies, books and albums

 

[Broken Blade]

Well, that's okay, because I'll never play another Cliff Bleszinksi game again?

Oh wait. I've never played a Cliff Bleszinksi game at all. He has yet to make a game that interests me enough to even buy it used, let alone continue to support it or the series its attached to. So, yeah. There's that. And now I'll go back to playing the games that I like and buying the disc-based games that I want to buy.

And as a side note, man, is this guy full of himself.

 

[misg]

I completely get where he is coming from. For 3 years now I have only done digital with the amount of games I have digitally it is the best way for me. I do get some people having issue with low download speed but here is the thing. With steam you can download and back up the game at a friend's house and just a thumb drive to get it to your house. I hate to say this to the people without highspeed access but you are becoming a smaller and smaller group of players and inside the PC market It's more or dead, the places to buy box games in brick and mortar store is getting very difficult aside from a couple huge titles like CoD and Battlefield.

 

[Atmos Duality]

This is how the Always Online Hell will be forced: Prominent developers and producers going digital only. Then they go-service only for the easy grind model money. Then they start forcing that crap into everything.

And the masses will buy into it like the sheeple they are, until it collapses on them.
*shrugs*
Whatever. I'm prepared for that day. I have a couple new hobbies lined up, and not every developer will follow this model.

2) your ISP is monopolistic asshope which you and other loca users must pressure into providing decent service.

If they have a monopoly, they have no reason to listen, no matter how loud or frequent the complaints. That's what they want: High profits at minimal effort. If user quality suffers because of this, so be it.

Only thing to do is lobby the government for intervention, which is simply NOT going to happen in the USA.

 

[Crimsonmonkeywar]

You... what? Regular PC usage is eliminated? I guess thats why the sales are rising.....

Really? PC sales are rising.....ya, I see were this conversation going. Also, none of those numbers are made up, PC gaming is at an all time high while PC sales for general task are at an all time low.

 

[Crimsonmonkeywar]

Alright im going through these point by point.

1: The Number of accounts is largely irrelevant, just because there are now more accounts than in the past does not imply anything. Its like saying consoles became the main market because the Xbox 360 sold more units than the original Xbox. Many games have adopted Steamworks, which is essentially DRM and ties games to steam, some need steam running, some do not. Basicly if you bought skyrim, you have a steam account, but whether you use it regularly, or have any other games on steam is another matter altogether. It is therefore valid to assume that all those users who have a steam account now just didnt have one before, that does not imply they werent playing primarily, or exclusively, pc games.

2: Thats the Industry for you. When all the big publishers think that the money is only on consoles, then yes, the marketshare of the PC will drop because nobody makes games for it anymore. Couple that with stupid opinions such as Ubisoft not too long ago who actually argued that the PC as a platform is only used by pirates, where as all legal consumers only use a console, which is basicly bullshit.

3: Again largely irrelevant. GOG used to be about "Good Old Games", hence the name. They have since changed their business model to also include more recent releases when available, but the first idea was to re-release old games which are basicly not supported anymore, either by a publisher or even a OS. These games by and large predate most consoles, except Nintendo which was already in the market back in the day.

4: How is that relevant? This has been the case for years, in fact this has been utterly normal for over 20 years now. In 1995 i got my first PC, a Pentium S with, if memory serves, 80 MHz and 8 MB RAM. Hell i even had a 2gb Harddrive couple years after, back then that was modern. Then came Pentium 1, 2..the list goes on. Even when the PS2 was new, the PC was the more powerful platform, hell even when the original Playstation came out in 1997, the PC was the faster, more powerful platform.

5: Nope, not all of them. Unless Nintendo also uses it but i dont have any sources for this. Also the XBox One is not a dedicated gaming platform, its a media-center, its not exactly the same thing. A PC isnt a dedicated gaming platform just because you can play games on it either after all. However you prove my point that by changing to similar architecture, which i also pointed out, consoles are now PCs, pre-built and made for the living room, they are no longer consoles.

6: Entirely irrelevant to the PC market. Thats like saying the Laptop eliminated the need for a regular Desktop machine. Plus the iPad can not do everything that a PC can do, or rather being a competiting product from Apple, it probably doesnt run stuff like Excel, nor is it made for this purpose. The iPad wasnt designed to be a pocket-PC so to speak.

7: First, thats a DRM method and second, they wanted a cut of the pie. Its the same reasoning as to why Steam has more users now, being forced into the service does not imply that the market has changed in any way. Example, Mass Effect 1 does not require Origin, nor does it install Origin or need a activation code for Origin. Mass Effect 3 on the other hand you can not play unless you install Origin and register with the service. Additionally most accounts Origin has are not active, EA simply moved all accounts from its subsidiaries to Origin, such as Maxis and Bioware Accounts, thats how i got a Origin Account even though i never used and never will use this service.

8: Irrelevant honestly, the PC as a media center is not a new idea. It could already be connected to a TV before hand, in fact i distinctly recall friends having done so in 2003 and after, long before Big Picture was a thing. Additionally the PC could always play videos, music and play games, even the Controller for PC is not a new design and has been standard for many years. What is different is that it is much easier now to do so, see HDMI and so forth, but that is not inherently a change in the PC space at all.

1} the numbers are relevant because Steam is a unified storefront that can now advertise directly to 75m players
2) the total sales for PC has never been higher, and it used to be pretty high in the mid-90's. That makes it a lucrative market

Both points mean that it's a lucrative market to AAA and indie alike

3)I'm well aware of the history of GoG and the PC gaming market, I've been gaming since the AppleII. I'm saying that it's the rise of a digital PC market were many like it that weren't Steam were closing doors.

4)It's relevant because the lengths you had to go to were increasingly more expressive and complicated to out do the cohesive metal-to-metal coding of a console unless you had a graphics card with dedicated software(Vodoo). DirectX didn't come in play until 1996 and it added a tremendous overhead to hardware that previous dedicated hardware did not. This, along with consoles being sold at a lost meant that you to spend far more to get something that's marginally better or performed on the same level. Even with the release of the PS3 and X360 it wasn't until 2009 or 2010 that you could build a PC for a similar cost to console units to get the same performance. As of now, 3 months after it's launch, you can build a PC for a similar cost to a consoles and match, beat, it's performance. John Carmack has a pretty good interview with PC gamer discussing this.

5)I stand corrected, WiiU runs on PowerPC. However, it still means that XB1 and PS4 ports of the core game to and from PC are, in a sense, seamless. Therefore cheaper.

6)I never said it could do everything a PC can. I'm saying that the idea of a dedicated PC for gaming or media is increasingly becoming the defacto for personal usage. PC hardware sales are at an all time low, but dedicated gaming hardware and software have skyrocketed. This is mostly due to tablets and therefore they are relevant.

7)DRM or not, it shows investment.

8)Again, never said it was. In 2010 the iPad was released, tablets weren't any thing new, but it took the tablet and shot it into public consciousness. Steam Big Picture and devices like Apple TV are gaining ground which shows people like the concept.

Everything stacks, and although you may believe it to be simple progression. It ALL happened in the span of 2008 to 2014. The PC gaming landscape is a different animal now and it's never been more prosperous,affordable, marketable, expansive, or simple and at the forefront than it is now. It's all relevant and developers both Indie and Corporate are taking notice, normal expansion or not.

Honestly, I believe the PC is going to replace consoles and eventually tablets the PC and to me, if I was a tablet gamer and my platform became the go to for all games and living room media, to say It's irrelevant, nothings different, even to something as simple as Moore's law. I think is a little bit silly.

 

[Strazdas]

This should clarify this issue, good luck finding Cliff there!
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Unreal_Engine_Versions/3

It does to a point. Thank you.

I live in a village 10 miles from the UK's 6th biggest city and it takes 30 minutes to stream an episode of Zero Punctuation! I have a friend who lives on an airforce base who can only access the internet at certain times of the day.

Until the day comes that we can all download things at the drop of the hat we still need physical copies of games, movies, books and albums

Your situation is most likely the 2nd option considering how UK government threw millions at private ISPs who then failed to do ANYTHING about the situation of internet (and UK remains with worst internet in Europe). Basically your ISPs need to be jailed for taxmoney wasting.

Your friend in an airforce is a small exception, however its doubtful that airforce internet is very bad considering its the frigging military. Downloading a game does not take that long. Also i am not sure how the leaves are handled there, but he could go to public library download the game and bring it back on a USB or something.

It took me 15 minutes to download TF2 on a whim when my cousin wanted me to play it. In fact, i spend more time installing games than downloading them. and i got the economical package internet.

If they have a monopoly, they have no reason to listen, no matter how loud or frequent the complaints. That's what they want: High profits at minimal effort. If user quality suffers because of this, so be it.

Only thing to do is lobby the government for intervention, which is simply NOT going to happen in the USA.

The complaints dont have to be loud or frequent. theyn eed to be in unison. If 80% of your users are revolting then you aint getting those profits either way. however, humans fail at uniting for common goal, so this wont likely happen.

Really? PC sales are rising.....ya, I see were this conversation going. Also, none of those numbers are made up, PC gaming is at an all time high while PC sales for general task are at an all time low.

Yeah, i derped here, PC sales stopped rising in 2013.

 

[Crimsonmonkeywar]

Really? PC sales are rising.....ya, I see were this conversation going. Also, none of those numbers are made up, PC gaming is at an all time high while PC sales for general task are at an all time low.

Yeah, i derped here, PC sales stopped rising in 2013.

Ehh it's cool, I thought for a second you were being a blind loyalist or trolling. Sorry for my brash remark, but ya, it shows that PC's are now associated more with 'specialist' task than ever before. I think it actually turned out to be a good thing.

 

[Strazdas]

Really? PC sales are rising.....ya, I see were this conversation going. Also, none of those numbers are made up, PC gaming is at an all time high while PC sales for general task are at an all time low.

Yeah, i derped here, PC sales stopped rising in 2013.

Ehh it's cool, I thought for a second you were being a blind loyalist or trolling. Sorry for my brash remark, but ya, it shows that PC's are now associated more with 'specialist' task than ever before. I think it actually turned out to be a good thing.

No worries.
I do however think that tables arent killing Desktops. They are killing laptops. There is no reason to have a laptop now. For anything with intesive tasks you got desktop, for portability tablet does the trick.

Thing is, even if PC sales arent rising that does not mean their usage isnt. See, a decade ago PCs were always in need of more power, always need faster parts, ect. Not so anymore. You can do word processing on same computer for 10 years even using the latest software, heck, new games released can be played on computers you bought 5 years ago, so there is simply much less reason to buy new and instead more reason to use what you have, as its only the specialist tasks that really need this massive power we got. Its not that the power is useless, mind you, its a lot of because the software needs to support multitude of devices such as obsolete-on-launch console hardware, which means that PC version will either be extremely unoptimized or not very demanding. So i can still game on ly 5 year old laptop for example, and while i do plan to buy a new PC this year, 1 machine every 10 years isnt boosting sales, especially when majority is finally realizing that pre-built is a ripoff and many metrics ignore hardware part sales.
I guess you can understand where im going with this.