The Big Picture: PC Gaming Is Dead - Long Live PC Gaming!

Circusfreak

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Void(null) said:
2011 PC Exclusives.


STRATEGY

Shogun II: Total War

Might and Magic Heroes VI
New entry in one of the most beloved turn based strategy series of all time.

Age of Empires Online
The rebirth of one of the biggest RTS franchises of all time.

DOTA 2
The mod that started the whole genre is now getting a commercial sequel from Valve Software.

Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy
After disappointing affair with modern combat Battlefront returns to what they do best: WWII tactical wargames............
I herewith award you for "best post of the year". Bob has been very wrong for a while now.
 

Monsterfurby

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snakeakaossi said:
@Bob: great movie as always.

@haters: Don't worry, you'll first loose interest in your PC before in order for PC gaming to really die. By that time you won't care.
It was a good episode, I agree, but I still don't agree with its assessment.

Also, why do we always have to seperate every discussion into "Haters" and "Fanboys"? I for one own a pretty decent gaming PC as well as an XBOX and a Wii (which I gave to my parents). I play PC for my fix of strategy and MMORPG games, I play XBOX for RPGs, Sports and Action-Adventure games, and Wii with friends and family.
I also have an iPhone to play games on the go if need to.

Without PC gaming, I could not conquer the world in Europa Universalis or fight epic battles in Shogun 2. Minecraft would not have been made because its creator would never have afforded the equipment to develop a complex program on consoles. Portal would not have been made for similar reasons.

Without consoles, I would miss out on some amazing RPGs, sports games and other games that focus on controller action. I would not have the Suikoden series, Final Fantasy or Fight Night (yeah, jumped a genre there).

So what's your problem? Neither platform will go away. If anything, they will move closer together with digital distribution and matchmaking platforms.
 

Jenx

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Sure Bob, I'd love a nice big and shiny laptop, and maybe one of those tablet things. Why don't you send me over the cash required for it, and I'll throw away my PC. Oh wait, I'm half-broke most of the time, guess I'm stuck with not being in the hip new wave of the future.

Not all gamers live in the states and have enough cash to own several consoles and a laptop, man. Try keeping that in mind. Otherwise, nice video.
 

omicron1

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I can see two things that currently set PC gaming apart from both consoles and mobile devices (for the most part), and I doubt that they're going anywhere fast.

1. PC gaming is an open platform. I notice you didn't even make mention of the indie development scene - an omission which can be charitably described as "unfortunate." Anyone can make a game on the PC - heck, I've made about a dozen myself. You don't need to meet arbitrary quality standards, have a development team in the hundreds and a publisher, or pay the platform holder a weighty Danegeld for the "privilege" to coexist on their platform. For all the inane boasting about Xbox Live and PSN, they still have less real innovation, less novelty and fewer quality games on them (that MS and Sony didn't buy, that is) than the PC does. Likewise, the combination of the digital distribution revolution and the middle-market (game developers who focus on niche categories with small teams and low development costs) is bringing to light an entirely new population of talented people, rushing to fill the void left by the profit-hungry publishers and their overfed, unwieldy pet development teams. Yes, the casual market is big and getting bigger, but we of the "hardcore" are not going anywhere.

2. PC gaming is a constantly advancing field. Where consoles, tablets, and mobile architecture are fire-and-forget hardware, launched slightly ahead of the curve every five or seven years, then left to become hopelessly outdated as time goes on, PCs have the luxury of getting better and better over time. This means that developer missteps, poor optimization, and expensive hardware costs are eventually overcome by the passage of time, and the PC gamers who don't have the latest, greatest hardware now can play your game on very high settings at insane resolutions sometime down the road. This is a mixed blessing - it means you have to keep upgrading your hardware as time goes on, if you want to keep up with the system - but the potential benefits are plain to see, as Crysis surpassed the consoles' graphical ceiling 3.5 years ago, and nowadays even an RTS can look better than most console games.

Yes, the PC hardware setup may become irrelevant. Tablets and laptops and other fire-and-forget devices may overtake it completely. But PC gaming will not die, sir, not even in its most traditional form. It will simply move on, with its loyal followers, its independent developers, and its niche audiences, into a new and fertile land.
 

Vibhor

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Just looked the definition of a console on wikipedia
It seems that if you install any other software on the 360 than games then you are essentially making your 360 a PC. And if that day comes, 360 gaming would be dead because of piracy and then DRM and then more piracy because of DRM which means more DRM.
Sooooo, go ahead!
This is the sole reason sony did not wanted people to modify their console in any way.
 

teebeeohh

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PC gaming will not die simply because the PC is an open system while consoles are a choke hold on creativity and customer friendliness. I will trade in my PC the Day there is a console that allows me to run whatever OS i want, use whatever input method i want and connect to whatever online service i want.
 

WanderingFool

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Wakefield said:
I bougt a Laptop specifically to play games on. So, that doesn't count as PC gaming? What is it laptop gaming? I guess. Who knows.
I did the same thing. I liked this episode.
 

SimGrave

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Not to mention living room hardwares like the boxee box, the apple tv and Sony Internet TV Blu-ray Disc Player that as Google TV OS embedded and comes with a wireless keyboard.

Google TV with all the Google utilities almost make my PC obsolete since I don't play games on it; Chrome for internet, Gmail for emails, Google Documents for office suite and even some games via their AppStore. I can watch Youtube on it, as well as Netflix and obviously Blu-Rays. All this plus my PS3 and Iphone... and I'm all covered in ways that I found more interesting than using a PC... but that's just me... I can see how it's not for everyone.

My girlfriend uses my computer for photoshop, illustrator and zbrush. It is only use as a working tool and that's all.
 

Delusibeta

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Mar 7, 2010
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i64ever said:
Hate if you want but he's right. Within a few years, if it's not portable, it will be gone.
[footnote]This image has been brought to you by March Madness[/footnote]

Problem?

Vibhor said:
This is the sole reason sony did not wanted people to modify their console in any way.
OtherOS argues otherwise.
 

Void(null)

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Circusfreak said:
I herewith award you for "best post of the year". Bob has been very wrong for a while now.
Most of it is copy/pasta but people pay far less attention to a link than they do a huge wall of PC exclusive titles that seemingly has no end as they try and scroll past it.

Basic psychological warfare. If PC gaming is dead, why is the list of exclusives for it so gorram annoyingly long?
 

Feylynn

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I'll permit you a great many 'PC gamers' do perpetuate an unsavory stereotype (But really what group on the intarwabez doesn't have that faction?), and that in the future there will always be that which surpasses the present(I'm there with you waiting for it).

But today, and probably for the next few years (at minimum), I don't think my PC sees the other consoles on my desk as very formidable threats in vying for my time. The Consoles used to be the only games here but I don't see them as comparable currently.
The next console releases will have to polish a few things to come out ahead I think. Better browser, the ability to use the already supported keyboard and mouse in game, both very big steps in replacing my PC.
The largest challenge they face is the "multi-tool" aspect. I want information while playing a game, listening to music, talking to my friends on vent, and installing another game in the background, downloading podcasts, streaming 140 escapist videos, I don't know, everything else short of baking a cake. My PC does it simultaneously. But if I'm serious for a second and drop the hyperbole then I do often listen to music, talk on vent, browse about for random curiosities for a couple minutes with a mere alt+tab while playing DragonAge2 or League of Legends or WoW or Oblivion. With a console they can't do many of those well, let alone simultaneously. Opening the browser closes the game, installing anything closes everything else, opening a game pauses downloads, etc.
That's the key thing they need to fix.

Other then that it's all personal "Where my friends at!?".
Mine are on the PC, they have their PS3s and their xBoxs, but they never ever ever go their to communicate and all of our multiplayer is PC based.
What a console DID have over a PC for me? That's gone with the days of local multiplayer.

Long post short: Hopeful for the future, Console for the Past, PC for the present.
 

Korne

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Nov 30, 2009
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The things Bob says in the first half are seriously unwarranted. Point and click games are seeing a resurgence on the wii? Sure, they are there, but people are playing Telltale games almost exclusively on the PC. All games that are on the consoles play just as well as on the PC (with better tech supporting it on the PC), and if you don't like the mouse and keyboard, you can always use your game pad. The only thing against PC gaming is that it is expensive and intimidating to most.

The second half of the video very interesting, and I can definitely see the classic sense of a home computer go away, just to be replaced by a smaller version of the machine.

PS: This has been written on my laptop, which I use for most of my gaming.
 

loc978

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It still amazes me how long a debate on this subject can go on this forum... especially considering how little knowledge of computer science is generally involved. The PC vs. consoles/mobile devices thing is going to become less and less of an issue as standards are made in the industry and integration happens. The only thing keeping you from playing XBox or Playstation games on your PC right now is copyright. If you have a blu-ray drive in your PC, chances are it could do a better job rendering a PS3 game than your PS3 could, if only it had access to Sony's code... and it most likely will. Soon.
 

ZombieGenesis

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Delusibeta said:
i64ever said:
Hate if you want but he's right. Within a few years, if it's not portable, it will be gone.
[footnote]This image has been brought to you by March Madness[/footnote]

Problem?
1) Alienware is a rip off :D

2) On a more serious note, I can't help but wonder why a few people here seem to think PC/Laptop are two different things. Sure one is portable, but they're both computers. The full name of a laptop is a laptop computer- and they fill the same functionality.
Some laptops are already upgradable, and many more will be in future. Laptops ARE PCs, and what they lack in hardware power, they make up for in market presence.
Face it, your mum probably owns one.
 

Syntax Error

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The way I see it, all those smaller devices are becoming PC's, which isn't a sign that the PC itself is dying.

The only real advantage of consoles over PC's is the unified hardware. They don't need to optimize for different settings because the hardware's set. That, or the developers went down with a bad case of the lazy / were pressured to do a rushed port job (something as simple as frame rates are bogged down. For example: Transformers War For Cybertron needed an external program for unlocking the FPS cap; Dead Space 2 needed to force V-sync through your graphics card's control panel; etc).

Also, that massive list at page 1 didn't allow this thread to render completely for the first time. I didn't even know you could fit that much text in one post!
 

mrhateful

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Apr 8, 2010
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teebeeohh said:
PC gaming will not die simply because the PC is an open system while consoles are a choke hold on creativity and customer friendliness. I will trade in my PC the Day there is a console that allows me to run whatever OS i want, use whatever input method i want and connect to whatever online service i want.
In other words the day your console becomes a pc.
 

Harbinger_

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If I wanted to figure out what to put in place of my tv/computer it'd be a holodeck or similar VR system.
 

Iron Mal

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To be fair, the PC is dying, in decline, falling from grace, whatever poetic or avoidiant terminology you choose to use.

I saw somebody on here post a long ist of games to supposedly prove the contrary, but looking through most of them (we're going to discount indie titles since they aren't 'professionally' manufactured games and thus don't contribute to the games industry at large) most of them were either relatively obscure (truth be told, I hadn't even heard of more than half of the titles on the list) and quite a few of them weren't actually exclusives (I'm not even talking about the multi-platform part of the list here either).

This shows us that:

a) PC gaming (as the 'dedicated crowd' would define it) is becoming increasingly more niche and isolated.

b) PC gaming has lost it's 'edge' over the console, for all the features avaliable on a PC (that the average player would actually care about, so no, you can't bring modding in here) most of them are either already on the Consoles or are actually better on there.

PC gaming isn't dead so much as it's dying, even if only slowly. Yes, we still have releases coming out on it, yes you still have World of Warcraft and a very dedicated community but at the end of the day, this probably won't count for much in the long run.

Cost, simplicity and accessability are on our side.