id Software: PC Gaming "Not Dead, But Different"

[Jodah]

Two reasons PC gaming will never completely die. Strategy games (both Real Time and Turn Based) and WoW (and whatever the next MMO Blizzard is cooking up ends up being). Those two things will keep PC gaming alive not only from the games themselves but because competitors will always be around wanting a piece of the action.

 

[Thorvan]

Hollenshead, id studio president, aligns any slowdown in PC sales to that of the release of new consoles. He told IGN [http://pc.ign.com/articles/111/1112513p1.html]: "Because of the great games you have coming out on the consoles, and for a period of time, the consoles were pretty competitive technically with the PC, [PC] has receded in prominence. Hollenshead believes: "These things happen over time and every time consoles come out, people proclaim the death of PC and then it may struggle for awhile and have its issues, but it tends to be resilient."

"It's probably getting back to the point right now where technically on the PCs you're going to be able to start doing more and more things that you can't do on the consoles," he said. And without new consoles anywhere on the horizon, this may give the PC a chance to get further ahead technically. Hollenshead admits that retail isn't the same way it used to be for PC games, saying it's in "third place" behind the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but doesn't think that means "it's doomed to continue to recede or can't come back."

Can we stop with this technological arms race, please? All that you're doing is making games more expensive to produce and making sure that your customers will have less money to buy them. By constantly upping the stakes you are pressuring you development team into keeping up with them, thus giving them less money and time to be creative, and thus make games lower quality overall!
You are killing the medium with your hopeless aspirations that can already be done for much less money! Why!? Do you want to all go bankrupt? I'M THE ONLY SANE ONE ALIVE! GHAAAAAA-

*ahem*

Sorry, I needed to get that out.

 

[lacktheknack]

To me, the PC is changing slowly but surely into a console. Say what you want, but look at Steam and GFWL and how that's affecting PC gaming.

Steam has pretty much completely changed my buying habits when it comes to PC games. And for other people too, I'm sure. It's had a big impact on PC gaming. But GFWL? The only way GFWL has affected PC gaming is by making it look bad. Seriously, I don't know anyone who has ever had anything good to say about it.

sometimes with gfwl you can get achievements with pc games, thats really the only good thing you can say about it

...This sums it up. And then I can't even GET achievements in games like Fallout 3, because I use mods that kill GFWL.

So... Nope, there's nothing good about GFWL, and the sooner they destroy it, the better.

 

[lacktheknack]

The only thing changing about PC gaming is the games. When developers make more games multi-platform, they have to change the way the game plays to fit the needs of both console and PC players. *This* is why people think PC gaming is dying. There aren't any less PC players or games being released (in fact, both numbers are rising). There just aren't as many developers willing to make PC exclusives or games developed with the PC in mind.

And of course DRM doesn't help the situation. I bought one game from GFWL and will never do so again.

It is easier the second time around... but it still is a bit of a hassle.

 

[Meoith]

When will this talk of PC gaming dying stop?!

Not to say that id's comments weren't reasonable. More then can be said for a lot of talks about the topic. Kudos to you, id.

Imo they are milking it to make pc'er gamers feel greatful for what pc games they release, its a PR/Salesmanship thing to play it up.

Its not going to stop anytime soon :-/

lol@new consoles..

 

[TOGSolid]

I've come to the conclusion that PC gaming is not worth the cost and the hard ache. Here's why I think Consoles are so much better...

1. Upgrading you computer constantly: How many countless times we've had to upgrade our video cards, cpu's and memory just to play the latest Epic, or id software game the way it was intended to be played? Screw that. Paying 400+ bucks for a new nVidia, or ATI graphics card, and over a hundred+ for that new Core 2 Duo,or Athlon X2...[/url]

Oooh, the spam bots are getting better.

PC Gaming, happily dying, etc. etc. etc. I'm glad consoles provide an alternative to PC Gaming. My online experience has vastly improved ever since the latest gen sponged up everyone who couldn't throw down with the master race.

 

[Jared]

Love hoiw everyone always says about the other that its dying, and that its not the future...making it feel like gaming is going down the pan...

 

[silverbullet1989]

its all good developers saying "pc gaming isnt dead its just changing" yeah its changing because of developers like ID software not supporting the pc anymore, or just lazily porting a game over as an after thought.
call of duty 44823432 black ops will have dedi servers because treyarch are going to support the pc and im willing to bet now that it will out sell codmw2 ON THE PC

I know it seems im raging about the dedi server argument but when devs start chaning the pc gaming format, of course its going to die, or change as they say.

Before i get burnt i do belive ID software have said there not supporting dedi servers for the pc version of rage when it comes out... if im wrong i do apologise.

 

[MrJinks]

its all good developers saying "pc gaming isnt dead its just changing" yeah its changing because of developers like ID software not supporting the pc anymore, or just lazily porting a game over as an after thought.
call of duty 44823432 black ops will have dedi servers because treyarch are going to support the pc and im willing to bet now that it will out sell codmw2 ON THE PC

I know it seems im raging about the dedi server argument but when devs start chaning the pc gaming format, of course its going to die, or change as they say.

Before i get burnt i do belive ID software have said there not supporting dedi servers for the pc version of rage when it comes out... if im wrong i do apologise.

I support the idea the PC isn't disappearing that soon. PC gaming isn't that expensive and small upgrades are a possibility to fix problems. Someone quoted $400+ for a graphics card. No need, PC games typically let you customise the graphics quality, Half Life 2 would run on machines with differing versions of DirectX, for example and would run smoothly. Steam has millions of customers and I have a couple of hundred games on that, companies like Introversion, PopCap, Gearbox and iD seem focused on that platform still, although complaints about the porting of games are valid. Just Cause 2 would be a good example, you can play the game using the mouse and keyboard but you have to lift one of your hands to hit the return/enter key to navigate the menus. That's lazy game development.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

It's probably getting back to the point right now where technically on the PCs you're going to be able to start doing more and more things that you can't do on the consoles," he said.

It's been that way for at least a couple of years. What is everybody waiting on? The truth is that nobody sees the buisiness sense in making the most technically advanced game on the market if you can't sell it where most of the gamers are: consoles.

The only games that the PC still dominates on are games that can't be moved to consoles easily- ultracasual games, RTSs, and MMORPGs. Everything else is "Console first, half-assed PC port later". Nobody is making high-profile, big budget PC exclusives outside of those genres anymore.

Also, I'd be able to take ID a little more seriously here if they weren't jumping on the console badwagon along with everyone else.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Microsoft is the major part of the problem.
When they started making consoles Windows games went into the back-burner. PC gaming is still prevalently under the MS paw (Windows, DirectX) so the attitude of the company can influence the perception of the developers towards the ecosystem.

MS still supports PC games as much as they used to. Plenty of games are still getting PC ports, they're just not putting much effort into them.

The problem isn't that there are fewer PC gamers than there used to be or that PC games are harder to make compared to console games- it's just that consoles are a greener market.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

I've come to the conclusion that PC gaming is not worth the cost and the hard ache. Here's why I think Consoles are so much better...

1. Upgrading you computer constantly: How many countless times we've had to upgrade our video cards, cpu's and memory just to play the latest Epic, or id software game the way it was intended to be played? Screw that. Paying 400+ bucks for a new nVidia, or ATI graphics card, and over a hundred+ for that new Core 2 Duo,or Athlon X2...

Direct E-cig [http://www.wellnessstarts.com/direct-e-cig-electronic-cigarette-reviews.html]

Why on earth would you pay those amounts of money for hardware?

I bought my current PC a year and a half ago for roughly 750$ according to the then exchange rates and it plays new games fine, as long as I can live without 16xAA. And that does include Crysis. And as long as most games are made for the 360 as well I foresee now problems and my PC performs better than my 360 and games like Mass Effect, Borderlands and Batman: AA runs at a steady 60 FPS in better resolution than a console can even do. Now I now that all those games are Unreal games and so comes with very few bells and whistles, so it may be a bad example. But then there's Shattered Horizon. That has some crazy hardware demands but I ran it with a pretty stable +45 fps (until an update stopped me from doing that), and it looked gorgeous. Granted, not as gorgeous as it could have been but plenty to satisfy me.

While I certainly would love to get a new PC I don't really see the need for it at the moment. It performs excellently and any new hardware I buy would purely be to satisfy my love for new gear.

But since you asked how many times we have to upgrade I can throw in my own answer. I normally buy a new PC or upgrade some hardware every 3rd or 4th year when I can get decent midrange to high end stuff for cheap. Currently I'm wondering if I should change my mobo, as I may have been a bit too cheap when I got this one. It's pretty craptastic and I'd like some more PCI slots and possibly to be able to pour in some more RAM at some point. But as I said, the current setup works fine and getting a new mobo would just be to satisfy my self, not because I actually need it.

List of my PC:
1995: my fist PC. Changed the gfx card at some point to a more potent 4 MB S3 card.
1997ish: Bought a Righteous 3DFX card.
1998: Bought a new PC.
2000: Changed gfx card to a midrange Nvidia Geforce something.
2002ish: Bought a new PC for about 700$
2005ish: Bought some used parts from a friend and swapped them in.
2009: Bought my my current PC.

And I've pretty much kept on being able to play new releases in all those years, save for a bit between 2004 and 2005 where I was perpetually broke and was at a dead end with some hardware components. Stupid AGP ports. Point is: I imagine that a lot of PC gamers will have similar histories. In my experience it's a minority (very vocal) that keeps on about needing a space ship to play their games on.

As a side note, thinking about this made me realise that my current PC has 32 times more processor counted in just frequency, 250 times as much RAM and a 1000 times as big a HDD as my first PC. That's hilarious. In fact my phone has better specs than my first PC.

 

[Antari]

I would say I refer to the game industry as dying because I'd like to see some of these companies die off.

 

[QCX]

Diatribe incoming....

This is actually one of my favorite subjects to talk about in the gaming industry.

When it comes down to it, in no way is PC gaming dead. Its just taking a weed nap.

Consoles are great, but as everyone knows they are limited. However, I see it as the consoles next generation (after the current) will basically serve as media center PC's. Its already there, the technology is just lacking. Before 360 and PS3, consoles had no hard drive..then bam! consoles got a hard drive, they got a network, they got more like a PC. So the only logical thing to do would to be to turn them into media PC's. And this is easily possible with all the MATX mobo's and the fact that in the hardware evolution, every 18 months everything gets faster and smaller.

I recall reading an article in new scientist magazine about this. It read along the lines of;

"By the year 2015 computers will be so small and so efficient they will replace the wrist watch with a small voice activated holographic computer"

Now I'm going off subject.

When it comes down to it, as the gaming world evolves the hardware will always be 3 steps ahead. That is how it has always been and always will be. This means that we will see consoles released that are more like computer and computers that are 3 times as powerful.

I can see games being sold directly to the customers via say a system like XBL, which they are already, but to a further extent somewhat like steam for consoles. Where you have a massive game library choose from. I don't see how any developer would argue with this as it takes out the overheads of distribution and packaging. We already have system where we can rent a movie directly from our consoles...why not games. 500G for a week or something like that.

I can also see gaming becoming more of a social interaction, rather then a single guy in a dark room dully lit but the glow of his monitor. Farmville, WoW and just about any online game, is a stepping stone to this. Some what like the Wii marketed where you can have an entire family all playing together....but less ghey. (ghey = gay but with the mean of lame)

We are already seeing more games released with online co-op feature and well every company wants to make an MMO atm.

Myself I say bring it on. I love the idea of playing a game like Skate 3 as an MMO or MMO's that cross platform. I love it like Yahtzee love's a good pair of pants.

All in all how can anyone say PC gaming is dead, when development of console games is done on PC and we have games like WoW that have such a large player base they could form their own country.

and to all you haters out there.......suck my hard drive.

 

[L-J-F]

Cloud gaming, of course it's going to play a large role: it means they can make even more money and have even more control (it's kind of like the ultimate-intrusive DRM) so of course it's going to do well - they'll make sure of that.

 

[Digital_Utopia]

PC Gaming: id Software "Not Dead, But Should Be"

 

[jamesworkshop]

What they mean is dead at retail otherwise the PC is far ahead in adopting different delivery and payment methods, subscriptions and ditributed online virtual enviroments like World of warcraft has soo far only been commercially successful on the PC due to maximisng the inhertant benefits of open ended PC design in gaining customer feedback and less delivery obstacles like certification or licensing/devkits

all the pc gamers have simply moved into the online space, no shelves, no reproduction costs, instant worldwide 24/7 sales hours
A retail store can sell out of copies, the steam store is never out of stock