If PC gaming were to go away. What would become of:
Intel, Amd, Nvidia, all the high end motherboard makers, high performance Ram manufacturers.
Too many big companies have a stake in this market. Hell even consoles rely on the above companies for tech. Without PC gaming the entire industry would fall apart.
If anything PC gaming has been growing steadily despite recession. Last years games software sales alone were at 13.1billlion usd which was 3% ahead of the previous year.
Highend hardware purchases were at 9billion usd, its estimated 50% of which was for gaming that would put hardware alone at 4.5billion usd.
ATI in its first 5months of release of 5000series release managed to sell 6million gaming capable gpus (thats only ATI 5000 series doesnt even coun...
Console hardware and software sales are down 5% this month compared to last year. The trend goes on as we see a year on year decline 2009 worse then 2008. 2010 so far worse then 2009.
Its the inevitable fate of any closed platform. Sooner or later they will cause people to move on to the next system. So more software can be sold. I fully expect this to happen with current gen consoles too.
Gaming has become very generic. Asides forcing people to make the jump console makers wont have much of an option soon. Watch the next COD as it basically will just have a 5 hours SP campaign, the MP part will just be simulart to MW2 with new maps(of course later they ...
Consoles see a hardware reset every few years. 2-3years from now when the next consoles launch they will again be at 0. While PC numbers keep climbing with nothing to stop them. Meaning Consoles can never catch up to PC no matter how mainstream they do get.
So you actually want them to sell you hardware at a loss, then give you the ability to play PC games. For which they get no royalties , what sort of business sense does that make? Everyone would buy PC version of games then as those would be cheaper.
They are trying hard, i wouldnt go for it though.
@cgoodno
Lol i hope you do realise 8800gtx is a PC GPU and has nothing to do with te Xbox360 and yes most games will probably be backward compatible on it.
Haha we know. You are still being utilized in one of my PC's btw. Didn't know Gpus could log onto the forums, is this an Nvidia exclusive feature?
Agreed. PS3 not getting:
Mass Effect Series,
Splinter cell,
Left4Dead series,
Being inferior to the Xbox on most multiplats is alot of ignorance on devs part.
Sony made up for it though with their in house teams.
Since when did Frag Fx come packaged with the PS3? that would raise the price.
Also the article puts the PC at 1000usd. I could easily build a good gaming one for 500-700usd, even the 500usd version would be way ahead of any console.
@below
If its about the price then the PC then the 1000usd listed for the PC are for a very high spec machine, while even a 500usd machine will outperform a console multiple times. Not to mention the same 5...
Check out tomshardware.com
You could make a 2000usd PC and completely botch it with a poor GPU. Remember the GHZ on your CPU dont mean much without a good enough GPU to back it up.
Tomshardware is a good place to start with, for 500-700usd you could make a PC that will far surpass any console.
Trading games is like giving a kick in the nuts to the devs, since the next time that sells the dev doesnt get any royalty.
Lastly most devs are now taking counter measures to this, people who buy used games will need to pay to use activate certain content. Hence you may not be getting the deals you currently get when trading console games. I think the deals on steam more then turn the tide around. Bought bioshock 2 few nights back for 14usd. try getting that price anywhere...
Its the needless royalities paid to Microsoft and Sony that drive up console gaming costs.
Over time this becomes huge, however since people generally dont see how much they pay over time they think consoles are cheap. Which is something these companies are banking on. If anyone calculated how costly console gaming is over time and the inferior experience it would be hard to justify a console asides the few exclusives every year.
PC already kinda is that universal system. I had 2 friends who were console gamers. One of them a PS3 fan another a Xbox 360 fan. Both are really good friends and would like to play MP games together.
They recently made the shift to PC gaming. Both played Splinter Cell conviction. The X PS3 gamer played on his DS3 while the other used an Xbox controller. They said it felt like playing on super high powered console, however they could finally MP together and get to play on c...
The PC version by no means is lacking compared to console, infact its still superior.
However its much lower then the standards set on the PC platform.
TF2 is by far the most fun FPS out there. Miles ahead of anything like MW2 or BC2.
Infact it gives user the control to do stuff Activision would charge a hell lot for.
I recently watched a modded TF2 game which was using L4d2 Map. As a zombie you could only melee while i saw engineers trying to hold and defend. It was really funny.
diablo 3 isnt even out yet? you sure u gamed on pc?
why pay 15usd more get less?
Steam is an awesome platform.
Though remember one thing. Every game bought on steam will not only run this gen, Next gen when you might be upgrading to a 1600p TV. You wont have to pay anyone to Up res those games for you. They just will run on the next HD res.
With consoles you are forced to buy the same game again and again. Sony might as well sell you a 1080p version of uncharted with the PS4.
However when PS5 comes out they might have to ...