Yes the *console developers* fight piracy. That's a good thing. With Sony and M$ fighting the piracy, game developers don't have to worry about it. [see also: Valve's comments about the PS3]. That's a big problem on PC right now. So many resources get put into fighting piracy by the game devs because it'd be silly for the OS developer to do so. On a dedicated gaming machine, that's the OS developer's biggest concern.
Yeah, Sony's trying to defeat Piracy by using <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.258722-Rumor-Sony-Fighting-PS3-Piracy-With-Install-Keys?page=1>install keys...-_-
But the thing is, it's not piracy that's hurting consoles - it's the used sales market. Gamestop alone racked up $2 billion in used sales last year, none of which went to the devs.
But anyway, the fact is, it's obviously not nearly as bad as the PC. Yet (quoting myself)...
Crysis and FarCry sold 3 million+ copies each on the PC. BF2 sold 6 million+ on all platforms, around 4 million of which were on the PC. Half Life 2 was leaked like Crysis, and yet it outsold Halo:CE. SC2 hit 3 million sales in its first month. Piracy is rampant, but that didn't stop Steam from racking nearly a billion dollars last year. Note, nearly every single franchise has set itself up on the PC, and after they gained enough revenue, they started working on console development kits - which are damn expensive, and the chief reason why small developers usually make PC exclusives only. Piracy has not stopped games like STALKER, Metro and The Witcher sell millions of copies and warrant sequels. These developers didn't even spend money on large ad campaigns, and gained popularity through word of mouth.
If it's a good PC oriented game, it will sell well.
Fact is, making multi-platform titles is an economically sound decision. What I'm trying to point out is that the PC market is not a niche market, and makes up a large portion of overall gamers. So devs should actually give a shit and develop the PC titles alongside the consoles with the same priority.
Steam games aren't cheaper. And willingly letting in a monopoly is certainly not the answer. You don't buy all your games on steam either. Also even if these savings existed, they don't make up for a $1000 machine every two years. Lastly: PSN.
Steam games aren't cheaper... ? You obviously have no experience with Steam. Launch sales are the same as retail, but the prices depreciate fast and weekend bargains are epic. Just hear it out from <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.270796-Has-anyone-else-here-actually-migrated-from-console-gaming-to-PC-gaming#10411795>this guy. He owns over a hundred games on Steam but he spent only around $300. Hell, they gave away Portal, Unreal Tournament 3 and Alien Swarm
for free at a weekend bargain.
Also, Steam might have the larger share of the digital distribution market, but it doesn't have monopoly. We have GG, D2D and GoG as well. It's PSN and XBL that have monopolies on
consoles. And MS doesn't stop itself from <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.271491-Microsoft-Defends-Games-on-Demand-Pricing>abusing it's position.
And about the $1000 every two year bit...
did you buy completely new prebuilt PCs every time? That is madness...
Follow this <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.272899-Want-to-build-a-PC-on-a-budget-Meet-the-500-gaming-rig#10531988>thread about how to build an absolutely new high end rig for $500. Of course, when you upgrade after around 3 years, it's not going to cost
another $500, since you're not going to replace your monitor, casing, keyboard etc. All you'll probably be buying is a new GPU. Also, the thread is very interesting in the regard that the discussion basically ends up showing that in the long run, the cost differences between the platforms aren't that much after you buy peripherals and games.
You response really doesn't address the lack of standardization, so I'll elaborate a bit more. When a game developer develops for PS3 they know that every PS3 (or Xbox) meets a minimum standard. Also all PS3s and Xboxes can play their game looking as good as possible.
Actually, it's tougher to develop games for Xbox and PS3 simultaneously. XBox360 has the same x86 architecture as the PC, so it's easier to develop these two side by side. Remember what Gabe Newell (since you brought in Valve) had to say about the PS3 architecture?
Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There's nothing there that you're going to apply to anything else. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created... it's harder to get it to the same standard as the 360 and PC versions. - Gabe Newell
Also, dedicated PC GPUs all share the same API, so it's not like the days of Rage 3D, VESA drivers or "special editions" of games that would only run on specific video hardware anymore. As for hardware optimization, I would have to point at Valve again. They have a small 200+ development team, and if
they can manage it, the others are just being lazy. CoD:BlOps, for example, was poorly optimized for the PC. But it wasn't like that was the only front they failed at; it was a poor port altogether.
Linux of course. You will find (as I did because I share the hobbies you listed) that web design, word processing, and programming are actually *easier* there. You've got us on 3D modelling though. Open source has produced semi-decent software (Blender is OK) but there's not much in the way of graphics hardware vendor support yet. You'll find that most game console emulators run well there too.
Well, here's the thing. CSS5 refuses to run well on any processor that isn't multicore, not to forget at least 1GB RAM. Work with Blender's SubSurface tool on a low-end PC, and it'll start lagging after Level 2. Hell, even Google Sketchup slows down when you're working with too many polygons and groups if your hardware isn't powerful enough. Besides that, I gave up on learning Python to work on GameBlender a while back, and am currently working on UDK, which itself requires a high end machine. What you're asking me to do is maintain a separate pretty powerful PC and console simultaneously. Why should I bother doing that when I can throw a couple of more bucks on my rig and make that the centre of everything?
I'm learning Dreamweaver and WAMP, and they both work fine on Windows.
Small development companies (Frictional and Mojang are perfect examples) should learn to make their things OS independent.
Linux hasn't measured up yet in terms of ROI compared to the other platforms. Even Unity doesn't provide Linux compatibility. And small companies have even less resources to spend on making something multiplatform.
But I do think that, contrary to what the OP asserts, consoles are definitely a good thing...
For the record, I
never attacked anyone for using a console. It's perfectly possible that people wouldn't have the patience or time to go through all the trouble of building a PC like researching, purchasing individual hardware, getting intimate with the computer's innards etc. Whenever there's a shitty PC port, I always blame it on the devs, not the consoles themselves. And frankly, there are a lot of console exclusives I would love to get my hands on to (mostly Atlus titles).
While I can perfectly understand why some might buy an XBox360 or PS3, I'm going to stay with my open platform and <url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4w50Gs5jZ0>RTS games, thank you.