PC Game Sales - Bad To Worse

[Phil_Stein]

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/stocks/troywolverton/10204379.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

U.S. Retail PC Game Sales

2002 $1.4 Billion
2003 $1.22 Billion
2004 $1.08 Billion

The article only goes back to 2002, but I believe the peak was actually in 2000, and there have been 4 consecutive declines in PC game sales. Germany, the #2 PC game market in the world, has also seen substantial sales declines.

[DeepT]

PC games are DOOMED!!1!!1!!!

[MikeTwain]

Hey, if you had listened to my advice about RRT3--you know, the stuff about the tricked out combat trains with guns lances doing a train joust--then you could have made the extra 392 million all by yourself.

:twisted:

[Charles]

Those stats are skewed by the fact that a large amount of the titles which come out for PC nowadays also come out on console.

[Thrrrpptt!]

Those stats are skewed by the fact that a large amount of the titles which come out for PC nowadays also come out on console.
Eh? How is that skewing the numbers? Skewing implies some kind of error in the data so that they don't represent reality. Cross-platform games are actually a real example of why PC game sales might be declining.

[Reed]

But how many of those were PC games to being with? Typically they are console games ported to PC.

[Thrrrpptt!]

Doesn't matter. Sales are sales. It would only be skewed if, for example, sales of console-to-PC ports weren't included in the numbers. I doubt that's the case.

[Chris Nahr]

The article doesn't consider MMORPG revenues, so that genre might be doing just fine. Non-MMO PC games seem to be DOMED indeed, though.

It almost doesn't matter whether console-to-PC ports are included in the figures, by the way. The article says PC games have dropped to a whopping 15% of total video game sales... original PC games have virtually vanished in either case.

[Nellie]

Does it take into account the relative rise of the MMORPG?

why splash out £30 a week/month etc on new games when you can buy WoW or SWG or Eve or Planetside etc once for £30 and carry on playng it at £10 a month for 6 months+ instead.

I buy far fewer games when I have an active sub to any MMORPG.

[edit] norty boss delaying my post by those crucial 7 minutes.

[Phil_Stein]

It's retail sales only. So, it misses MMORPG revenues and the downloadable/web game market (Bejeweled, etc.), which is small but growing (especially among women 40+)

My speculation as to the reasons for the decline:

1) Rise of console games, which consumers are preferring for many reasons, including that they're easy to run (no driver fiddling, minimal crashes, etc.), generally, easier to learn, require a lesser hardware investment, and support rentals.

2) Bad consumer experiences trying to install 3D games. The downtrend in PC game sales started roughly when hardware 3D acceleration really took over (ca. '00). For casual consumers, knowing what to buy, what drivers to install, etc. is a nightmare. 2D games, by and large didn't have this problem. Plus, to play a high-end 3D game, you need a 'gaming PC', or at least to add a good 3D card to your $700 HP/Dell. This was not the case for 2D games, and puts up a high barrier to entry.

3) PC game piracy has probably increased over the last 5 years. This is more of a factor overseas, but is still significant in the U.S.

4) MMORPGs - suck the time and dollars from gamers, away from retail. If you subscribe to 2 MMORPGs, you're likely buying fewer retail games.

5) General market focus on console games. With console game sales at several multiples of PC game sales, the media and public focus on them, and developers/publishers target them. In '98-'99, it was common for mass media (i.e. Wired, Newsweek, etc.) to write about PC games, now it's rare. PC games are getting lost in the shuffle.

6) Lack of a breakout new genre. The Sims phenomenon never really evolved into a true genre - just lots of Sims expansions, but no competing games capturing the sales magic. RTS and FPS are showing their age as genres, appealing to the hard core, but bringing in few new users. A breakout new genre would help PC games, but I don't know what that genre might be.

[Thrrrpptt!]

The article doesn't consider MMORPG revenues, so that genre might be doing just fine.
Ah, that is a good point. A few of those are money mills. MMORPGs aren't going to stay on the PC, though (c.f., FF Online)

original PC games have virtually vanished in either case.
2004 was a huge year for original PC games. Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Rome: Total War, WoW, Pirates!, Warhammer, The Sims 2. Probably others I can't think okf off the top of my head.

[Mark Asher]

I think MMOs do have an impact, explaining some of the lost revenue going into MMO monthly fees. I am also much more unlikely to buy other PC games when I'm actively play an MMO.

Still, I don't think MMOs can account for all of the decline. I expect it to get worse as fewer PC games are made and more of them are cross platform games.

[Dave Long]

The Best Buy here in Reading is definitely heading to a smaller PC section once their inventory period is over. It looks like that space will be given to console games.

--Dave

[Rob_Merritt]

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/stocks/troywolverton/10204379.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

U.S. Retail PC Game Sales

2002 $1.4 Billion
2003 $1.22 Billion
2004 $1.08 Billion

The article only goes back to 2002, but I believe the peak was actually in 2000, and there have been 4 consecutive declines in PC game sales. Germany, the #2 PC game market in the world, has also seen substantial sales declines.

I'm actually surprised it broke 1 billion this year. I knew they were way down the first half of the year. Guess the trio of Doom 3, Half Life 2, and World of Warcraft really helped. Here is the numbers I have for the past 10 years.

year/ total income / 1994 dollars
1994 ~ 966 million 966 million
1995 ~1.4 billion 1.36 billion
1996 1.7 billion 1.6 billion
1997 1.8 billion 1.66 billion
1998 1.8 billion 1.64 billion
1999 1.9 billion 1.73 billion
2000 ~1.6 billion 1.38 billion
2001 1.75 billion 1.47 billion
2002 1.4 billion 1.15 billion
2003 1.2 billion 959 million
2004 1.08 billion 791 million

Also don't forget the average cost of game development has grown from 1 million to 10 million. Though some AAA have 30 million + budgets.

There isn't a way to paint a pretty picture.

refs: (some dead links)
http://news.com.com/2009-1001-228291-2.html
http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue43/overview.html
http://www.gamesdomain.com/gdreview/e398/idsa.html
http://www.idsa.com/releases/4-21-2000.html
http://www.pcvsconsole.com/news/news.php?nid=1159&filter=4
http://www.tdctrade.com/mne/toy/020302.htm
http://www.digitalgamedeveloper.com/2003/01_jan/news/dlidsa12803.htm
http://press.releases.filefront.com/25
http://www.npdtechworld.com/techServlet?nextpage=pr_body_it.html&content_id=720
http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue43/march.html
http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/10/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/
http://www.newsengin.com/neFreeTools.nsf/CPIcalc?OpenView&Start=1&Count=30&Expand=1#1

[Dave Long]

Now you know why Adam @ Sierra was telling us game prices must go up. Gotta gouge those who still buy and support PC gaming so the budgets don't drop and the games continue to get made.

--Dave

[Rob_Merritt]

My speculation as to the reasons for the decline:

Here is my two cents..

The platform has suffered without a cheerleader. Microsoft doesn't care if you game on the Windows platform anymore. They are too busy courting people for Xbox and NextBox. Even at Microsoft own booths at E3 and CES, you have to hunt for pc games. Without someone promoting a platform, it whithers and dies. No one is courting and working with developers, no one is going into stores making sure PC games aren't getting shoved into the corner next to the used Dreamcast games, and no one is advertising that the best games are on the PC (even if it isn't true, if you aren't preaching it, it isn't going to happen).

[MikeTwain]

The Best Buy here in Reading is definitely heading to a smaller PC section once their inventory period is over. It looks like that space will be given to console games.

--Dave

Yeah well they're hardly going to turn the space over to Gamecube titles man.

" :D "

(Now see what you've made me do Dave? I would never have even considered getting on your case before your snarky "Stop Posting" gif comment.)

[Thrrrpptt!]

Now you know why Adam @ Sierra was telling us game prices must go up. Gotta gouge those who still buy and support PC gaming so the budgets don't drop and the games continue to get made.
So you're saying that buying PC games is kind of like tipping strippers? You're just enabling a career choice that ultimately goes nowhere?

[Chris Nahr]

2004 was a huge year for original PC games. Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Rome: Total War, WoW, Pirates!, Warhammer, The Sims 2. Probably others I can't think okf off the top of my head.

That's true, and I bought a bunch of those as well, but how do you square that with the ridiculously low 15% figure? Assuming it's not just made up I'd have to assume that those big titles were the only ones that sold any number of copies, and all the remaining titles rot on the shelves.

[Kitsune]

I think PC gaming will always be like reading books compared to something like going to the movies and as such will always have a healthy enough market to keep going, but sometimes its going to look like the sky is falling, like it always does in the book industry when you look at the figures. I know a six, seven and an eight year old respectively who play (again, respectively) Neverwinter Nights, Call of Duty and Empire Earth. (I should mention there are American kids from American families when I lived there and this whole analogy obviously ignores where I live, because in Japan bookstores outnumber theaters and video stores--I just seemed to notice that reading didn't seem to be a terribly appealing activity a lot of Americans.)

Also, a question, do these figures include all the shareware-type games, services like Stardock and sales through Steam?

-Kitsune

[Case]

The platform has suffered without a cheerleader. Microsoft doesn't care if you game on the Windows platform anymore. They are too busy courting people for Xbox and NextBox. Even at Microsoft own booths at E3 and CES, you have to hunt for pc games. Without someone promoting a platform, it whithers and dies. No one is courting and working with developers, no one is going into stores making sure PC games aren't getting shoved into the corner next to the used Dreamcast games, and no one is advertising that the best games are on the PC (even if it isn't true, if you aren't preaching it, it isn't going to happen).

I think we'll see an increasing emphasis on PC games from Redmond this year. Look at Age of Empires III -- they're pulling out all the stops on that one.

[Supertanker]

1) Rise of console games, which consumers are preferring for many reasons, including that they're easy to run (no driver fiddling, minimal crashes, etc.), generally, easier to learn, require a lesser hardware investment, and support rentals.

2) Bad consumer experiences trying to install 3D games. The downtrend in PC game sales started roughly when hardware 3D acceleration really took over (ca. '00). For casual consumers, knowing what to buy, what drivers to install, etc. is a nightmare. 2D games, by and large didn't have this problem. Plus, to play a high-end 3D game, you need a 'gaming PC', or at least to add a good 3D card to your $700 HP/Dell. This was not the case for 2D games, and puts up a high barrier to entry.

I think the combination of these two is the main problem. All of the people that used to ask me about PC games and how to upgrade their PCs now just buy an Xbox or a PS2. Typical computer users have always been hesitant to tackle the technical issues, and now a console lets them avoid it completely.

[Thrrrpptt!]

That's true, and I bought a bunch of those as well, but how do you square that with the ridiculously low 15% figure? Assuming it's not just made up I'd have to assume that those big titles were the only ones that sold any number of copies, and all the remaining titles rot on the shelves.
Whether PC game sales are dropping overall and whether original PC titles "have virtually vanished" are two different questions. I was just making the point that in 2004 there were a number of big budget, blockbuster PC games so the latter isn't true. Like you, though, I also suspect that these titles accounted for a lot of the PC game sales (though we know that the original The Sims and its various expansions squatted at the top of sales charts all through the year).

[Dave Long]

I'll also always stand by the opinion that Xbox has taken a large swath of its consumer base from former PC gamers. I really don't think there were that many new gamers this generation. I think there were a lot that moved from the PC platform to the console platform.

--Dave

[RickH]

It's retail sales only. So, it misses MMORPG revenues and the downloadable/web game market (Bejeweled, etc.), which is small but growing (especially among women 40+)

My speculation as to the reasons for the decline:

1) Rise of console games, which consumers are preferring for many reasons, including that they're easy to run (no driver fiddling, minimal crashes, etc.), generally, easier to learn, require a lesser hardware investment, and support rentals.

2) Bad consumer experiences trying to install 3D games. The downtrend in PC game sales started roughly when hardware 3D acceleration really took over (ca. '00). For casual consumers, knowing what to buy, what drivers to install, etc. is a nightmare. 2D games, by and large didn't have this problem. Plus, to play a high-end 3D game, you need a 'gaming PC', or at least to add a good 3D card to your $700 HP/Dell. This was not the case for 2D games, and puts up a high barrier to entry.

3) PC game piracy has probably increased over the last 5 years. This is more of a factor overseas, but is still significant in the U.S.

4) MMORPGs - suck the time and dollars from gamers, away from retail. If you subscribe to 2 MMORPGs, you're likely buying fewer retail games.

5) General market focus on console games. With console game sales at several multiples of PC game sales, the media and public focus on them, and developers/publishers target them. In '98-'99, it was common for mass media (i.e. Wired, Newsweek, etc.) to write about PC games, now it's rare. PC games are getting lost in the shuffle.

6) Lack of a breakout new genre. The Sims phenomenon never really evolved into a true genre - just lots of Sims expansions, but no competing games capturing the sales magic. RTS and FPS are showing their age as genres, appealing to the hard core, but bringing in few new users. A breakout new genre would help PC games, but I don't know what that genre might be.

I think you nailed it with 1, 2 & 5. I'm not convinced the same customers for Doom 3 & HL2 are MMORPG players, but I could very well be wrong. Wouldn't be surprised if WoW has a great deal of crossover/1st timer appeal, though.

#1 also should include the easy sellability & standardized packaging of the console title. The retailer that buys or trades games from the general public knows exactly what is being sold, check for scratches and that's it. The PC game industry screws itself by resisting standardized & non-disposable packaging to this day. Will I get a jewel case, a cardboard case, or paper sleeves? Buy it and find out, chump!

#2 is dead on. I know folks who bought a PC game that wouldn't play on their system; it went on the shelf and they never bought one again. The shitty Intel 3D chip commonly found in budget PC's has gone a long way towards killing PC gaming. When a mid-range 3D card costs as much as an Xbox, all but the enthusiast and hobbyist market is eliminated.

#3 is pure speculation. I've yet to see any study that tracks consumer behavior with regard to piracy vs. purchase. If piracy was truly suppressing sales, then Scrapland, which has yet to be warezed, should be selling demonstrably better than a similarly-situated title.

#5 why shouldn't the market focus on console games? The retail channel knows that the average PC game will result in X number of "it won't run on my machine" returns (or attempted returns, anyway). The easy availability of the post-release patch has made the PC gaming industry lazy and complacent about quality. That's driving customers and retailers to the easy to sell & support console market.

Then there's the social aspect. Consoles are plugged into the TV, which usually occupies a place of honor in the high-traffic area of the home. PC's are off in another room, with smaller displays, ususally played in isolation. Consoles are social, PC's aren't.

[unbongwah]

Also, a question, do these figures include all the shareware-type games, services like Stardock and sales through Steam?
I believe NPD, the source for these numbers, only tracks sales of retail copies - no online-only sales like Steam and Stardock and no MMOG revenue (beyond what's sold at retail). And I'm not even sure they track all retailers.

To be honest, until someone figures out how to accurately track these alternate revenue streams, I'm unwilling to get too concerned about PC gaming. Yeah, PC gaming's roughly half what it used to be 5 years ago at retail; yeah, console games are crowding PC games out of B&M stores; and yeah, a lot of worthy games get utterly buried in the marketplace because no one takes notice of them.

But when an industry makes over a billion dollars a year, that's still a lot of money. Toss in the moolah for online-only sales and MMOG fees and you've got a serious pile of cash. Yeah, PC gaming's not the dominant force in the marketplace - so? We got lots of great games last year; and it looks like we'll get lots of great games this year, too. As long as companies can still have blockbuster hits on the PC, I'm convinced they'll continue trying to tap into that market.

[mouselock]

So, it misses MMORPG revenues and the downloadable/web game market (Bejeweled, etc.), which is small but growing (especially among women 40+)

...

6) Lack of a breakout new genre. The Sims phenomenon never really evolved into a true genre - just lots of Sims expansions, but no competing games capturing the sales magic. RTS and FPS are showing their age as genres, appealing to the hard core, but bringing in few new users. A breakout new genre would help PC games, but I don't know what that genre might be.

I think you've answered your own question here. There are two new breakout genres, and both circumvent retail heavy sales chains to generate revenue. I think the MMO stuff will saturate reasonably quickly because of time investment (although god save us if someone comes up with a game that can unlink the time invested = progress mechanism and still remain compelling as a game), and the web-type games are really the up and coming mechanism?

Aside from hardware/ease of running concerns on platforms, I think one thing that doesn't get noticed a lot is the ease of play issues. Nobody reads instruction books for console games. In general, introductory tutorials are pretty quick and to the point. They're designed to be popped in and played, in a sort of round-robin fashion, by not only the purchaser (hardcore gamers like us here) but also whoever drops by (probably more casual).

I still think one of the reasons the sims was so huge was that the game mechanics were absurdly simple. You could sit down, click around a bit, and *poof* you knew how to play the game. This is a reasonably large rarity in PC gaming space. It's a lot more prevalent in console space. However, consoles are starting to span the range to complex gameplay. PC games, however (at least the boxed variety) aren't going back the other way in return. That's why I think you're seeing web games taking off.

There's just simply got to be a larger market out there for people who'd sit down and play a game for 20 minutes than those who'd sit and play one for 200. PC games traditionally cater to the latter crowd, while consoles aim far toward the former. And those 20 minute games are the "gateway games" to more complex stuff, but if all the loyalty is already built up from playing 20 minute games on the XBox, who's going to bother looking anywhere but the XBox section for the 200 minute games?

[mouselock]

Now you know why Adam @ Sierra was telling us game prices must go up. Gotta gouge those who still buy and support PC gaming so the budgets don't drop and the games continue to get made.

--Dave

I'd actually prefer to see game makers focus on trying to figure out whether or not there's a way to make new games, rather than bigger, stronger, faster version of last year's game (with a new name, a new, shinier engine, etc..)

Is there really any creativity left in the PC space? I don't want to touch off the whole PC vs. Console flamewar again, but there seem to be more attempts to do different things on the console. Or more publically visible ones. I think the PC game section is so closed these days they've blocked out any avenue for fresh ideas to be presented to the mass public, and it's come back to bite them in the ass.

(i.e. Where's my full 3D version of Twinsen's Odyssey, dammit? :P )

[Bub, Andrew]

U.S. Retail PC Game Sales

2002 $1.4 Billion
2003 $1.22 Billion
2004 $1.08 Billion

The article only goes back to 2002, but I believe the peak was actually in 2000, and there have been 4 consecutive declines in PC game sales. Germany, the #2 PC game market in the world, has also seen substantial sales declines.

Could it be a simple thing like: "Fewer PC games are being made and sold?"

I only know what's reported above, so this is just speculation. But I do remember an economic example where they showed how an industry could show a "loss" in overall sales while also showing a rise in "profit." Meaning, if the industry makes fewer PC games this year compared to last, you're going to see a loss of overall sales - but that doesn't necessarily mean the companies who put out the games lost profit on the one's they did release.

How many copies does an A-list big game sell now compared with 2000? Are those numbers down?

[noun]

Could it be a simple thing like: "Fewer PC games are being made and sold?"

Sold maybe, not made. How many titles came out in Q3-Q4 last year? 100? Who can afford to buy that many games? Who has the free time to PLAY that many games?

[Brad Wardell]

I can only speak for myself but MMORPGs cost the game industry probably at least 3 to 4 game purchases from me.

I've been playing World of Warcraft (beta and then final) most of the year.

I suspect the PC game industry has generally relied more on "hard core gamers" as a demographic and MMO games are really compelling to hard core gamers.

Moreover, games last longer then they did before. I can still play 3 year old games. Look closely at Rob Merritt's chart. The peak years were during the migration from DOS games to Windows based games. Once those old DOS titles simply didn't work anymore very easily for most gamers, the sales of games grew.

So now, in 2004/2005, I can still play that game from 2001 or 2002.

You take those two factors and you have a steep decilne in PC game sales.

What we really need is a good demographic study of PC game buyers. Because if it really does turn out that industry revenue was driven largely by hard core gamers (who now spend $230 on ONE game per year with only $50 of it counting in these revenue sales instead of purchasing 6 games you have much of your answer).

[Rob_Merritt]

Assuming it's not just made up I'd have to assume that those big titles were the only ones that sold any number of copies, and all the remaining titles rot on the shelves.

You are basically right. I think a large number of those didn't make it onto store shelves. Not that they would of sold even if they did.

I think we'll see an increasing emphasis on PC games from Redmond this year. Look at Age of Empires III -- they're pulling out all the stops on that one.

I've heard that before. That Microsoft is preparing to do a big pc gaming push with the release of Longhorn late 2005 and all of 2006. I hope its true but I've also heard comments that its only half hearted and doesn't have any long term developer relations behind it. I've even heard comments that Apple is more interested in getting game developers on its computer platform that Microsoft it. We'll see how that pans out.

[Andrew Mayer]

Retail is just a sucker bet for PC games. The popular game category (bejeweled, Diner Dash, etc.) are selling boatloads of games at $20 a pop, while the boxed titles linger on the shelves until they hit $9.

I think the market is heading in that direction, and we'll see most retail dry up in the next few years. I believe in that model to the point that it's now the business that I'm in.

[Phil_Stein]

One more factor I'd add that's changed since the boom peak, circa '99:

It's a lot easier for users to find good game content for cheap/free now, making it much harder for publishers to sell more than a handful of must-haves at $40+

For free, with relative ease, you can download and play:
Web games
MMORPG Betas
Warez
Mame

For cheap (<$10), you can pick up jewelcase versions of the hits from 1-2 years ago, many of which had production values on par or above what's coming out today.

(Yes, some of the above were around before, but I think they're all more prevalent/easier for the average user to access than before).

And, as mentioned above, there's now a window of almost 10 years of games (~'96 to '04), that play on a modern PC, delivered on CD-ROM, with decent production values (RT2, released in '98, looks better than many strategy/tycoon games released in '04). Whereas, the switch from 5.25" to 3.5" to CD-ROM, and the switch from DOS to Win 95, meant that at any point from ~'92 to '97, games more than 2 years old were unlikely to be readily playable on a then-current PC.

[Jasper]

original PC games have virtually vanished in either case.
2004 was a huge year for original PC games. Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Rome: Total War, WoW, Pirates!, Warhammer, The Sims 2. Probably others I can't think okf off the top of my head.
Original?!

Half-Life 2: Sequel, a prettier HL-1
Doom 3: Stunning originality
Rome:TW: 3D models, and a somewhat reworked strategic model
WoW: Basically the same as other MMORPGs, with more polish
Pirates: I loved this, but it's still an updated clone of an old game
Warhammer: Yet another RTS
Sims 2: Same as Sims 1

Some of these are good or even great games, but Original? Consoles really _do_ have greater variety. There are whole genres of games you'll see on consoles that you don't see on PCs, but the reverse is rarely true with the only real exception of mouse+keyboard FPSs, and to a lesser extend hardcore strategy games and adventure games.

I've been a diehard PC gamer, but that's starting to change. Consoles are cheaper, less of a hassle to get to work, more social, need much less patching, and lately have more variety and freshness. Before this generation I never even owned a console -- now I own two. Out of the above games only Pirates grabbed me.

For me the biggest issue is that you can count on most PC games needing a solid patch. I'm so fucking sick of that. Perhaps this will get better when Microsoft starts expecting a 3D card for it's next OS, and undoubetedly starts enforcing some standards. Lovely, I have to look to MS to save the day? PC gaming is DOMED.

[MikeTwain]

Maybe we need another platform shift then Phil. I suggest enforced migrations from WinXP => AmigaOS 4

:D

[Jasper]

And, as mentioned above, there's now a window of almost 10 years of games (~'96 to '04), that play on a modern PC, delivered on CD-ROM, with decent production values (RT2, released in '98, looks better than many strategy/tycoon games released in '04). Whereas, the switch from 5.25" to 3.5" to CD-ROM, and the switch from DOS to Win 95, meant that at any point from ~'92 to '97, games more than 2 years old were unlikely to be readily playable on a then-current PC.
This is even more true for Console games, and doesn't seem to hurt them...

[Thrrrpptt!]

Original?!
I meant "original" in the sense of not a port or not multiplatform at or near release.

[Thrrrpptt!]

This is even more true for Console games, and doesn't seem to hurt them...
With the notable exceptions of backwards compatability in the PS2, GBA, and DS. Also, I think it's still cheaper to buy a new console every few years than it is to buy (or even upgrade) a new PC in the same timeframe.

[Rob_Merritt]

Maybe we need another platform shift then Phil. I suggest enforced migrations from WinXP => AmigaOS 4

:D
You know, if it wasn't for the fact that I spent like $5000 on my home theater, I would slap down the $1000 or so it is needed to get parts for the new amiga.

Show up at a lan party with an amiga running a quake II port. That would be the talk now wouldn't it?

[Phil_Stein]

Rob - I'll skool u with my vintage Vectrex running Scramble (runs really nicely, too...)

[shang]

2004 was a huge year for original PC games. Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Rome: Total War, WoW, Pirates!, Warhammer, The Sims 2. Probably others I can't think okf off the top of my head.

Eh, what? I can give you quality, but original?

Doom 3: fancy engine, and I know some liked it, but name one original think about the game. Widely considered as a linear, dark game with silly and predictable monster spawning

HL2: Easily the biggest dissapointment of 2004 for the HUGE hype it got. Very linear paths through the game world, with stupid scripted stuff like "bad guys break into the house, run away, ooops you took a wrong turn, die (cause you don't), quick load", jumping from railing to railing while getting shot from indefinately spawning bad guys from above, "emergent gameplay" in the form of boxes that almost scream "LOOK AT ME! THE GAME DESIGNERS PUT ME HERE SO YOU CAN PUT ME UNDER THE WINDOW TO CLIMB UP". By the time I got the canals I was yawning so badly I couldn't bring myself to continue. Haven't touched the game since.

Rome: Total War: This I plan on getting this at some point. However, I already own both Shogun and Medieval for this sort of gameplay, so it's a low priority purchase. I'll get it when it hits $20 or so.

WoW: Bought it. Great quality and I enjoy it a lot, but can hardly be called original either. 10 points for not being blatantly player-hostile like most MMORPGs, but it's still the old DIKU levelling formula.

Warhammer: The demo was a real "meh". Brings almost nothing new to a tired genre that is overflowing with clones. Same old micro-heavy clickfest, but with pretty graphics. The only good point was using the company system instead of controlling individual units.

Sims 2: Not my kinda game, so can't really comment in depth, but after seeing it in action, didn't seem like it adds much beyond "life goals" to Sims 1 + expansions.

Pirates!: I give you this one. Although it's a remake of an existing game, there really hasn't been a lot of similar titles.

The new PC games I bought in 2004 were Kohan 2, EQ2, WoW and TotalGaming.net sub (and maybe something in Q1/Q2 that I don't remember at the moment). The rest were PS2/GBA games or used/bargain bin games. That last point is what I personally consider the biggest factor in declining sales. The market is simply oversaturated with great games. Only the hardest of the hardcore gamers can claim to have played all the good games from the last few years. I still got tons of good games from the last four years that I haven't had the time to play and I can buy them at the fraction of the price of new games. The games of 2004 aren't fundamentally better than games for example from 2002, just newer and helluva lot more expensive.

[Jasper]

Original?!
I meant "original" in the sense of not a port or not multiplatform at or near release.
PCs have a fair number of such games, and good ones at that. Most of the games I've enjoyed aren't ported to/from Consoles.

On the other hand, the stale retread trend for PCs is strong. Funding for more offbeat PC games just doesn't seem to exist, and the lack of variation and/or originality is something I really miss in the PC market.

[shang]

Original?!
I meant "original" in the sense of not a port or not multiplatform at or near release.

Doh. Missed that too. Oh well, I needed to get that rant out of my system.

[graller]

Shang EQ2 is "new"? There is not a more derivative sequel in your list then EQ2. Hi look at me!!! Same game new graphics. You make good arguments to that point but wow....

I think it is a variety of factors others already mentioned. I have been playing NWN for 2 years now. I am currently replaying BG 2 and TOB from end to end. Other games this year? R:TW, RT3,Kotor. Plenty of gaming goodness there and I certainly contributed some money to the 1 billion this year

[shang]

Shang EQ2 is "new"? There is not a more derivative sequel in your list then EQ2. Hi look at me!!! Same game new graphics. You make good arguments to that point but wow...

Err, that was "new" as in released recently and bought as new and not used. Wouldn't dream of calling EQ2 the pinnacle of originality. I bought mainly because it was cheap, I hadn't played any MMORPGs for a while and there was no eta for Euro-WoW.

[Moore]

I can only speak for myself but MMORPGs cost the game industry probably at least 3 to 4 game purchases from me.

I've been playing World of Warcraft (beta and then final) most of the year.

I suspect the PC game industry has generally relied more on "hard core gamers" as a demographic and MMO games are really compelling to hard core gamers.

Moreover, games last longer then they did before. I can still play 3 year old games. Look closely at Rob Merritt's chart. The peak years were during the migration from DOS games to Windows based games. Once those old DOS titles simply didn't work anymore very easily for most gamers, the sales of games grew.

So now, in 2004/2005, I can still play that game from 2001 or 2002.

You take those two factors and you have a steep decilne in PC game sales.

What we really need is a good demographic study of PC game buyers. Because if it really does turn out that industry revenue was driven largely by hard core gamers (who now spend $230 on ONE game per year with only $50 of it counting in these revenue sales instead of purchasing 6 games you have much of your answer).

I agree, it's even worse with me-

When i'm not playing an mmo, I buy probably 4 games a month, usually at least 2 pc games.

When I'm subscribed to an mmo? I dont buy any new games, other than portable stuff. This lasts 2-3 months, then I hate the mmo and go back to buying games. Scary thing though- I came back to COH and I like it more now, so I'm probably done buying anything until after e3. The only games on my shopping list are ds games.

[hermyhermit]

Personally speaking, I find that sitting in front of a monitor in a chair is just not really for me anymore. I far prefer to "chill out" on the couch with a console.
There is no question that the graphics of a console are inferior but I'm finding as I get older I really don't care either. The ability to put in a disc and start playing without any hassles greatly outweighs the graphics appeal now.

There are still certain things that annoy me about console games: inability to save anywhere, having to replay parts of the game over and over, inprecise control of a gamepad vs. a mouse, etc. But I'm growing far more tolerant of these things in contrast to the being burned a few times on PC games recently with semi and/or completely faulty games that I ended up being stuck with due to draconian return policies. So for my dollar, put it in, press a button, and play has become very appealing.

[Jason Becker]

2004 was a huge year for original PC games. Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Rome: Total War, WoW, Pirates!, Warhammer, The Sims 2. Probably others I can't think okf off the top of my head.
Original?!

Half-Life 2: Sequel, a prettier HL-1
Doom 3: Stunning originality
Rome:TW: 3D models, and a somewhat reworked strategic model
WoW: Basically the same as other MMORPGs, with more polish
Pirates: I loved this, but it's still an updated clone of an old game
Warhammer: Yet another RTS
Sims 2: Same as Sims 1



And whats so origional about all the big console titles?

Halo 2 = sequal
GTA San Andreas = sequal
MGS 3 = ditto
Gran Turismo 4 = ditto
Metriod Prime 2 = ditto

and I could go on and on.

The whole gaming market is about big budget series for the most part. Are there origional titles on consoles? yea, but what did %95 of console gamers buy this year? The titles I listed and the other big stuff.

[shang]

And whats so origional about all the big console titles?


Hey, at least there's Katamari Damacy! (is that big? I figured it has sold pretty good, at least tons better than they expected)

[Midnight Son]

The biggest thing that turned me off of PC games is the pathetic attempts at DRM and copy protection. (And I've been playing them since 1986!)

The other thing is that I'm tired of shooters that you need to buy a $500 graphics card to enjoy.

Then there is Steam. I refuse to get Steamed. I buy a game, I get to play it whenever and wherever I want.

In late 2004 I bought my first console system since the Sega Genesis I had way back when. I play a few action games on my new PS2 along with Disgaea and a few other RPGs.

As of right now, my PC gaming mostly consists of nostalgic games of AOW: Shadow Magic, some MOO2 and Wizardry 8. If something like these comes along without activation and crazy copy protection, I'll pick it up. (After reading all the info I can find about it.) I won't buy anything when it's first released.

(Yo Phil, good job on RT3! I play it a lot too.)

[Thrrrpptt!]

Though I still play a lot of PC games, Tribes 2 convinced me to expand to consoles, too. I saw it on a co-workers' machine and thought it looked and played great. When I installed it on my system, which more than met the minimum system requirements, I had to turn everything down so that it played smoothe but looked like crap. Then the crashing started.

[wildpokerman]

It's retail sales only. So, it misses MMORPG revenues and the downloadable/web game market (Bejeweled, etc.), which is small but growing (especially among women 40+)


If it's missing online sales it's missing quite a bit, I spent quite a bid on downloadable games, I bought the halflife silver package totally online at $60 and spent $50 to upgrade to a totalgaming.net package with my Galciv. I'd buy all my games online now that I have broadband if I could. I could just start the download when I leave for work and have a new game when I got home. Also I wouldn't be at the mercy of what my local Walmart and Gamestop feel like carrying in the PC area. Game makers wouldn't have to worry about those pesky MSRB rules, Sierra didn't have to sell the edited version of Leisure Suit Larry because when you sell online you can do age verification.

I'd say most game advertising is taking place online and a whole lot of sales are generated by online word of mouth. I'm suprised the major game publishers are still in the age of "here's a great game try to track it down in your local gamestop's bargain bin" rather than being able to say "here's our game, click here put in your password and you'll be playing in two hours."

As more and more publishers get with the program like Valve and Stardock I have a feeling that publishers that mostly distribute in stores are going to be left further and further behind. Firstly you lose sales because if I can have something immediate or wait a few days for shipping for your title, if it's even in stock at my online retailer, I'm going to take the immediate purchase. Secondly I think companies are going to lose a lot of impulse purchases. The other day I went to the store and I bought the game I was looking for, I also bought 3 other games. When a company reverts to online sales they are going to be able to keep more of the impulse dollars to themselves. Another example of this is when I bought Half life 2 I could have purchased the basic package, however I purchased the silver. If I would have gone into a store my options for spending the same amount would have been to buy the regular edition and another game or to buy the collectors edition. There's a good chance that extra $20 would have gone into someone else's hands.

Online distribution is the future for PC games, it's the only thing a PC does better than the current crop of consoles.

[Dhruin]

The biggest thing that turned me off of PC games is the pathetic attempts at DRM and copy protection. (And I've been playing them since 1986!)

I've never understood this argument. Aren't all console titles protected? And don't they always require you to change the disk, unless you have a modified box?

[JM]

But at least they'll work in your console, rather than failing because you've got one of 145,483 drives that clash with the copy protection.

[Jasper]

The difference is that it's quite possible to buy games with copy protection that will either prevent the game from working, make it work badly, or even screw with other applications. This doesn't happen with Consoles.

[Tim]

I have definitely slacked off on my pc gaming in recent years. Just not much time for it - I am spending more time on analog games with the family though.

So while people like me are not a specific huge impact on sales, I can vouch for the copy protection hassles. I got Thief 3: The Subtitle this month. Half the time I start it, I get a 'wrong disc' message. I just 5 minutes ago gave up on playing after getting the error 6 times in a row.

Now I don't know that it's actually the copy protection magic that is causing the error - maybe the disc is damaged or my drive is flaky. But copy protection is the only reason the disc is needed at all.

This was also the first game I'd ever gotten (in a little over 10 years of having a pc) that required more horsepower than my computer already had. I had a GeForce4MX video card, which did not support the required AlphaBits magic in hardware. Its big feature for me was dual monitor support. The thing is, my old computer, though very out of date (866MHz P3, 1gb ram), worked great for everything else I do with it. Years ago, it seemed easy for me to find non-gaming justification for upgrades too.

I actually bought a whole new computer. It was about $450 for mobo, cpu, case, 512mb ram, 40gb hard drive, and ati 9600se video card (also with dual monitor support). But I should get over $200 back in rebates. I had planned on just getting a better video card, but given the entire computer I bought aside from the video card came to about $150 (net), it didn't make sense to spend that much or more just on the video card. This one had the required hardware, and turns out to run the game fine for me.

I'm a huge geek and really do know & have some understanding of the graphics capabilities this game demanded. Somehow, I just don't care about that enough to need to be willing to keep a system loaded with the latest stuff any more.

[Mark Asher]

As more and more publishers get with the program like Valve and Stardock I have a feeling that publishers that mostly distribute in stores are going to be left further and further behind.

I think you're vastly undestimating the power of traditional retail and overestimating the demand for online sales.

[steve]

The biggest thing that turned me off of PC games is the pathetic attempts at DRM and copy protection. (And I've been playing them since 1986!)
So why weren't you turned off by the copy protection of 1986, the code wheel, the "look up word 4" protection, that red paper, the dongles (huh huh), etc. Hell, my Atari 800 had games with copy protection--they wrote bad sectors to the disks, which occasionally caused the games to refuse to load.

I'm kind of thinking that, relatively speaking, copy protection today is pretty innocuous and invisible.

[wildpokerman]

As more and more publishers get with the program like Valve and Stardock I have a feeling that publishers that mostly distribute in stores are going to be left further and further behind.

I think you're vastly undestimating the power of traditional retail and overestimating the demand for online sales.

Do you have any numbers on online sales for HL2 vs retail? Maybe there is demand but it's not being fufilled. I have spent $500 on PC games in the past 6 months and I've spent it all online. Some publishers have provided me with a download and gotten all the money for themselves, some have sold CDs to a third party who then sold it to me and split the profit with them. Which developer do you think makes more of my money? It's a win win for me and them, they make more and I get it sooner.

Everquest has online only expansions, there are downloadable modules for Neverwinter Nights, Valve has steam and I think if it weren't for their prior contract with the publisher it would have been a steam only download.

Within 5 years a company like Blizzard or Valve will make a game online only and it will sell as well as any game in the stores. In 10 years your PC and console won't even have disk drives. There's a whole lot of demand Mr. Asher it's just that most publishers have been slow to supply. Subscriptions to online only services are growing and I think were only one generation away from kids who are as familiar with disks as you are with fountain pens.

[Dante Rising]

If these numbers listed above are indeed just for retail sales, then the actual PC game marketplace may be in better shape than illustrated. Speaking anecdotally, most people I know only buy games from places like gogamer.com- and these are hardcore, dedicated PC gamers who buy 2-3 titles a month. Last year alone I dropped about $1500 at gogamer, and only about $100 at retail stores.


I think, overall, the days of game incompatibilty are on a massive decline. But there are several issues that still need to be addressed:

-One thing that would make PC gaming more palatable to many people would be for the game to simply play from the disc. With the types of optical speed available today, I don't see why people still need to sit through 25 minutes of installation.

-PC games need to have better gamepad design and support. My biggest hurldle in getting people to play PC games is their aversion to using a mouse and keyboard. It is not unlike trying to get a person to move from an automatic to a stick shift car.

-programs like Safedisc and Starforce need to disappear. They hurt the honest consumer far more than the pirate, and are probably the number one cause of conflicts and performance issues on a PC system.

[Rob_Merritt]

One thing that would make PC gaming more palatable to many people would be for the game to simply play from the disc. With the types of optical speed available today, I don't see why people still need to sit through 25 minutes of installation.

-PC games need to have better gamepad design and support..

Long Horn and the next version of Direct X are suppose to adress these

[steve]

-One thing that would make PC gaming more palatable to many people would be for the game to simply play from the disc. With the types of optical speed available today, I don't see why people still need to sit through 25 minutes of installation.
That's a nice option, but I'd rather have a one-time 25-minute installation and then have a game take a third as long to load everything.

-PC games need to have better gamepad design and support. My biggest hurldle in getting people to play PC games is their aversion to using a mouse and keyboard. It is not unlike trying to get a person to move from an automatic to a stick shift car.
I'm not sure why anyone thinks that gamepad is somehow more intuitive to a non-gamer; if anything, people should be more comfortable with a mouse and keyboard.

What PC games would be better with a gamepad? A shooter? Racing and sports games are pretty much marginal categories on the PC.

Anyway, Microsoft has demoed certain PC games with an Xbox controller. It could solve the whole issue of gamepads by just making and supporting and adapter that lets Xbox controllers work with Windows. Whether it's willing to do this, though, is hard to say. People from the big M say, in public and to the press, that Windows gaming is "back on the radar." Of course with 2-3 year development cycles, it's taking a while to get back in the game.

-programs like Safedisc and Starforce need to disappear. They hurt the honest consumer far more than the pirate, and are probably the number one cause of conflicts and performance issues on a PC system.
I'm inclined to think 3D accelerators and old drivers are the bigger issue. Or systems full of spyware and viruses. Copy protection is probably pretty low on the list.

[mouselock]

I'm not sure why anyone thinks that gamepad is somehow more intuitive to a non-gamer; if anything, people should be more comfortable with a mouse and keyboard.


You're kidding, right? Let's take a standard FPS. You're a new gamer and really want to play. Let's even assume you get the concept of mouselook and the auto-inverted Y axis bit. What keys are you going to use to move around with? The only ones that make sense are the arrow keys. So if you have a numpad on your keyboard (and most do these days) your left hand is cramped up right there, in a godawful position crossing the keyboard and making ergonomic engineers cringer, while your right hand works the mouse. Maybe you're going to use the cross shaped arrow key cluster instead.. that is, assuming you have one that's full size. That's also a pretty heinous ergonomic situation.

Or you can use wasd. Which is about as intuitive now as it was back when it was used for rogue. Which is to say not at all.

Now, compare that to a gamepad.. hmmm.. I wonder what makes me move right.. why, look, it's pushing right. I wonder what makes me move up.. why, look, it's pushing up. And look, if I need to push buttons to play with with my other hand, they comfortably rest in non-wrist bending joy right next to each other.

[Dave Long]

That's a nice option, but I'd rather have a one-time 25-minute installation and then have a game take a third as long to load everything.

I don't know what console games you're playing that take so much longer than PC games to load. Most of the console games I've played in the last year (and I played a hell of a lot of them) load as fast or faster than those I play on the PC. And I didn't have to sit there for 30 minutes waiting for the console game to install, nor did I have to go through swapping four discs to during that process either. I just put the disc in, turn it on and play.

Gamecube games especially load like cartridges used to for the most part.

--Dave

[Kool Moe Dee]

I don't know what console games you're playing that take so much longer than PC games to load. Most of the console games I've played in the last year (and I played a hell of a lot of them) load as fast or faster than those I play on the PC. And I didn't have to sit there for 30 minutes waiting for the console game to install, nor did I have to go through swapping four discs to during that process either. I just put the disc in, turn it on and play.

Reasons that console games have better load times:

Predictable, guaranteed drive speeds. (edit for clarity: this is why PC games don't stream from CD/DVD except in cases like movies)
The ability to pre-generate more kinds of data so they can be read directly off the disc, into memory, and used in-place. (particularly swizzled textures) This is the big one.
There is no guarantee of contiguous storage on a hard drive where a game might be installed.
There are TRCs/TCRs against long load times on consoles, typically, so developers are forced to be more conscious about load times throughout the development process.

[Dave Long]

Yeah, that's all cool stuff Kool and it's just one more reason that console games are cool. Load times really suck. On the PC, they can be really nasty too. I deal with them because I like PC games, but given the choice I would prefer Gamecube-like loading across the board.

--Dave

[VegasRobb]

Get the MMOs to stop offering their expansions as downloadable content, that'll boost sales a bit

[Midnight Son]

The biggest thing that turned me off of PC games is the pathetic attempts at DRM and copy protection. (And I've been playing them since 1986!)
So why weren't you turned off by the copy protection of 1986, the code wheel, the "look up word 4" protection, that red paper, the dongles (huh huh), etc. Hell, my Atari 800 had games with copy protection--they wrote bad sectors to the disks, which occasionally caused the games to refuse to load.

I'm kind of thinking that, relatively speaking, copy protection today is pretty innocuous and invisible.

Back then, I had C64's, Amigas and 386s. I had no problem with the above since I didn't have an Atari and no games I played had dongles. I have no problem with the other things at all. Todays INVASIVE copy protection like Starforce or the ones that look for CD copying software can go straight to hell. And I'm not going to jump through Steamy hoops either. The new PC games I'll buy in the next year are all going to be niche titles after I've let others be the guinea pigs. I am not alone.

[shang]

The biggest thing that turned me off of PC games is the pathetic attempts at DRM and copy protection. (And I've been playing them since 1986!)

Oh yes. If it wasn't for GameCopyWorld, I would've abandoned PC gaming a long time ago.

I don't have a problem with copy protection on consoles, since the systems where designed with the protection in mind from the get go. There won't ever be a 100% problem-free copy protection on the PC because of this. Secondly, as there is no storage on the console (xbox excluded), it makes sense to play directly from the disc. A PC game that makes a 2gig install on the harddrive and then asks for the disk "just because" is just as bad as dongles.

Now the thing that will eventually turn me off console games is probably region locking. Goddamn that's annoying and totally worthless except as a price gouging mechanism. When the next generation of consoles comes around, I won't be buying one until I know working modchips are available.

[Dave Long]

I know there's some kind of legitimate reason for region locking, but I can't quite figure out what it is. :?

At least Nintendo's handhelds have avoided it. I think PSP is going to be region locked though. :(

--Dave

[steve]

And look, if I need to push buttons to play with with my other hand, they comfortably rest in non-wrist bending joy right next to each other.
Have you ever watched a new player play an FPS on a PC or console?

I have, and both interfaces were equally unintuitive.

[steve]

And I didn't have to sit there for 30 minutes waiting for the console game to install, nor did I have to go through swapping four discs to during that process either. I just put the disc in, turn it on and play.
Rationalization #102 for giving up on PC gaming: The trauma of the one-time install. Geez, gamers can be such babies.

And if I never have to hear, "When I play console games, I just put the disk in and play," I'll be a happy man. Is anyone on the planet unaware of this benefit?

But when was the magical time that this wasn't true? Again, why didn't everyone give up on PC gaming when it was 20 floppies versus a cartridge?

I dunno, I've never seen a game install as some great burden. Does it make just popping in a game I haven't played and don't have installed a bigger issue? Sure. But that's WHY I also have a console, for times I want to just throw something in and play.

Anyway, why do PC games still have longer load times? They support higher-resolution graphics, with higher-resolution textures. That's just more data offsetting the quicker IO.

If you play a straight port of a console game on a PC, one without enormous changes in texture size and quality, the load times for the PC versions are typically considerably shorter (though as always, you mileage--or hard drive speed--may vary).

For example, there's about a 1-second pause in the PC versions of GTA 3 and Vice City when moving from one part of the city to the other, vs. a 10-15 second one (or longer, I forget) on the consoles.

If next-gen consoles bump up texture size/video memory, and are still loading from DVD, there could be issues. They might come up with a clever solution, but they can do this with closed platforms.

Can you imagine what it would be like to load a DOOM 3 PC level, or one from Half-Life 2, from a DVD? Do you realize how much graphic data we're talking about? There's no way the console versions will have that much texture data, so the load times will probably even out.

[steve]

I know there's some kind of legitimate reason for region locking, but I can't quite figure out what it is. :?
Different publisher/distribution agreements in every region. Same with DVDs. If Company A handles movie A/Game A in North America and Company B does in Europe or Japan, they want to make sure that everyone is on a level playing field, for sales purposes.

[steve]

Back then, I had C64's, Amigas and 386s. I had no problem with the above since I didn't have an Atari and no games I played had dongles.
Did you pirate all of your games for the C64? Most of its games had copy protection too. Those bad sectors could fuck up the C64 hard drive, throwing the head out of alignment.

The code wheels, manual checks, and red paper look ups were common with all games in the late 80s/early 90s. Dongles were mostly used with applications for many platforms.

I have no problem with the other things at all. Todays INVASIVE copy protection like Starforce or the ones that look for CD copying software can go straight to hell. And I'm not going to jump through Steamy hoops either. The new PC games I'll buy in the next year are all going to be niche titles after I've let others be the guinea pigs. I am not alone.
You read a lot of Slashdot, don't you? Nice all caps on INVASIVE. It SHOWS how SERIOUS this PROBLEM is for YOU.

I'm willing to bet forum posters who claim they will avoid copy protection altogether are a pretty small number. And like Slashdot posters, they'll break down when faced with that "one game they really want." Look at people's movie and music stance: with all of their "fuck the MPAA, I won't watch or buy movies" rhetoric, they go ga-ga over Star Wars news, or the latest blurb on some other sci-fi film.

[steve]

Warning: long, rambling generalizations.

When people talk about leaving PCs for consoles, coming up with all of these reasons (copy protection, bugs, prices, install problems, hardware issues, etc.), one thing that never comes up is what I think is actually the root of the issue.

Anyone who's played games for 10 years or more knows that all of the above issues have afflicted PC gaming since day 1. They're not worse today; they're better. The main difference is the Internet, and the ability of everyone to get together and collectively wallow in their hatred, but I don't think that's the cause.

I think the common thread here is that the people complaining are getting older. When you get older, you have less time. You're more annoyed by things. You're less likely to jump through hoops.

For example, when I was in college, I immersed myself in music. I read every magazine. I bought every CD. I visited every record store. I went to every concert. I was dialed in.

Today, I go to maybe 1 concert per year, buy a few CDs, and only read a few music sources. The only way I hear about a new band is via word-of-mouth, a small chance of hearing something on the radio, or via some review that mentions some point-of-reference band I dig.

I don't like music less; if anything, I love the few bands I love today more than I ever did when I was dabbling in everything. But it's a hassle to keep up with everything.

Now I guess I could run around and blame the RIAA. I could blame Britney Spears. I could say, "Music sucks, bah!" But I think it's just me getting OLDER. Did I really expect to keep up my 18-year old level of enthusiasm for another 10-20 years?

So maybe PC gaming is better served targeting younger players, who are more willing to put up with its hassles, the patches, the driver updates, all the shit that bugs everyone. They have the persistance, and the crazy passion, and the crazy time, to keep up with everything.

Sure, there will still be some games people of all ages think is worth the effort. But I wonder if most of the people complaining the loudest are those who've been playing the longest, who've hit some point where gaming just isn't as important as it used to be. Oh, they'll deny it, in the strongest possible terms.

But honestly, how many people in their 20s think they'll love games as much in their 30s as they do today? How about those of us in our 30s? Will we still be gaming with as much zeal in our 40s?

And if we are still gaming, will we still be willing to put up with any hassle whatsoever?

[Phil_Stein]

A lot of the problems with PC games COULD be solved, if all PC game publishers agreed on certain standards, or were forced to by Microsoft, and/or if MS improved various OS features in Longhorn.

However, these things are unlikely in any kind of near term time-frame.

First, Longhorn will likely slip to mid-'06 or later, as every major MS OS slips. In the rush to deliver a belated OS, game-related features will certainly take a backseat, and the 'wish-list' of features for games that was floated around a year or two will likely be truncated. With their X-Box strategy, PC games are simply not a priority for MS - illustrated in more ways than I care to list here.

Second, once Longhorn ships, it will be some time before game developers really utilize whatever features it does provide. Game developers have to target broad market segments. Generally, our rule of thumb was to support all PCs built in the last 3 years before our game shipped. And we wouldn't add a lot of features that only a small portion of the consumer market supported. So I'm guessing real Longhorn support won't show up until circa 18 months post Longhorn release, and won't be ubiquitous until 3-4 years post release (i.e. early '08 to late '09). That's a long wait for a rapidly declining market segment.

There are lots of things publishers could do now to make PC games more appealing, in general. Some of these are:

* Universal switch to DVD delivery.
* Less intrusive installs.
* Much more robust testing and polish.
* Consistent documentation (far too many games are falling back to essentially unusable PDFs, if anything, for documentation).
* End click-through licenses (what value do they really add), spyware installs, 'Sierra Utility' type garbage, etc.
* More accurate and consistent recommended specs on the box.
* Universal implementation of good tutorials for games of moderate complexity or better.
* An end to shovelware - games of such low quality that virtually all who purchase them give up on that game (and perhaps all PC games) within 30 minutes of installing)

However, I don't see any situation in which the above will happen. While these things would make PC gaming as a whole more attractive, none of the items add enough value for any individual publisher to break ranks and implement it (i.e. the changes would be good for all, but only if all implemented them). In the console world, the hardware makers shake their big stick at publishers, and force them to implement standards similar to the above (i.e. TRCs). But in the open PC marketplace, Microsoft has no such clout, and publishers don't have the right incentives.

So basically, I don't see much potential for positive change in the next few years (call me again when Longhorn becomes ubiquitous).

[Phil_Stein]

steve -

The decline in interest among older gamers is also something that isn't new.

However, there was a 'wave' of gamers that started, circa 1980, with median age of say 14. As they aged, and mostly stayed with gaming, the addition of younger generations behind them caused considerable absolute growth in the gaming audience. i.e. In 1980, only those aged 10-14 played games. By 1990, many of the first wave were still playing, plus younger gamers, so the gaming audience was more like 10-24. This was a positive trend for the industry, up until perhaps the last few years, when that first wave started hitting 35+, and really dropping out. Sure, there are still younger gamers coming up, but the absolute expansion of the age bracket playing games has probably slowed somewhat. (Yes, there are gamers in their 60s and older, but they're a small minority).

Aside from the age thing, what is different about gaming now versus a few years ago is that there's a more attractive, easily accessible alternative to PC gaming (i.e. consoles), and I think the PC hardware/driver compatibility issues have truly worsened since the transition to hardware 3D.

[Silverlight]

Different publisher/distribution agreements in every region. Same with DVDs. If Company A handles movie A/Game A in North America and Company B does in Europe or Japan, they want to make sure that everyone is on a level playing field, for sales purposes.
Or, alternatively, they want to make sure they can price-gouge the Europeans while still sticking to the accepted price points of the US, without having people import their stuff. Region coding is a way to limit the company's exposure to all that pesky free-trade stuff while making sure that it's the company collecting the tariff instead of the local government.

I think the common thread here is that the people complaining are getting older. When you get older, you have less time. You're more annoyed by things. You're less likely to jump through hoops.

That's a good point, but it isn't a complete explanation.

Let's start by conceding that the PC has gotten easier. It's debatable, but I'd rather concede it right off and then prove that it's totally irrelevant.

We have three potential markets here:
1. Hardcore techies who will fiddle with PCs
2. Not-so-hardcore people who nonetheless have a clue about PCs.
3. People with no technical knowledge but an inclination to game.

If we assume PCs are getting easier, then, fine, PC gaming can now effectively sell itself to group-2 people, whereas ten years ago it would have been an exercise in frustration. The problem here is that groups 1 and 2 grew a little and group 3 grew a lot. It hardly matters that group-2 people can more effectively game on the PC, because they're still a small piece of the pie. Most people neither want nor have technical knowledge and do not have the wherewithal to do the experimentation required to learn technical subjects properly, so they're going to be console gamers until such time as the PC is an extremely stable platform.

Ironically, the constant press for better graphics and sound by game developers, as a substitute for gameplay innovations, is a primary culprit in forcing this situation. To paraphrase OMM, PC gaming wasn't murdered, it committed suicide-by-system-requirements.

[steve]

The decline in interest among older gamers is also something that isn't new.
I know, but it is for the people in denial about why they're unwilling to do things they've been doing for the past 10 years, things which are actually easier to deal with today.

Aside from the age thing, what is different about gaming now versus a few years ago is that there's a more attractive, easily accessible alternative to PC gaming (i.e. consoles), and I think the PC hardware/driver compatibility issues have truly worsened since the transition to hardware 3D.
But consoles were always easily accessible.

And do you really think compatibility issues are worse then the days of DOS, or the transition to Windows 3.1/95?

I've had one game fail to run in the last 5 years, maybe, and that's due to having CD Clone installed. It's not hard to download drivers; it's a pain in the ass to need to, sure. Yes, people with "Intel Accelerated Graphics" are pretty much screwed, but with Windows Update and its ilk, I don't buy that it's gotten worse compared to EMM386, HIMEM, LOADHI, MSCDEX, 600K base memory, file handles in Windows, etc.

[Midnight Son]

Steve, there is no problem. Everything is just fine.

Meanwhile, in the real world, it's not so easy to ignore the evidence. :roll:

[Nick Walter]

I have transitioned more and more towards consoles for a variety of reasons. The main ones are:

1. If you don't like FPS or RTS games then that removes like 65% of all new major games from purchase consideration on the PC.

2. It used to be that PCs always spanked consoles pants in technology. I remember playing the first VGA King's Quest game (3?) and being blown away by the graphics. PC games were slicker, more sophisticated, with better graphics, better audio, etc. Nowadays I'm sure that's still true as the graphics nerds will earnestly go on about frames per second processed through the Z-buffer in terms of the dynamically lighted 3D doowhicky multiplexer.

But I can't see or hear the difference these days. The quality of a game's graphics/audio has to do with the talent and effort of the game developers and not the platform anymore, at least as far as I can perceieve.

3. Console games don't have bugs, or if they do they have on average about 1% as many as PC games.

4. Console games don't have compatibility issues.

5. The good games are Japanse console games. I have no idea why this is, but those are the games that I end up enjoying and playing endlessly. SMT:Nocturne, Front Mission 4, Culdcept, Disgaea, Final Fantasy X, Super Monkey Ball 2, and Katamari Damacy have all been huge time sinks for me in the last year. By contrast, the only PC game I've put equivalent time into was Dom2.

[Jose Liz]

Reading the last page has made me quite happy that I still have that 18 year old zeal. ;)

[DaveC]

steve, isn't the old saying, "misery loves company"?

[mouselock]

And look, if I need to push buttons to play with with my other hand, they comfortably rest in non-wrist bending joy right next to each other.
Have you ever watched a new player play an FPS on a PC or console?

I have, and both interfaces were equally unintuitive.

Umm.. yeah.. they're both horribly non-intuitive. However, that doesn't make a gamepad a less intuitive controller than a mouse/keyboard combination. It makes it an equally obtuse controller for FPS. I'll handily admit that point, they're both awkward. (Although I'd point out that in general people get the concept on a gamepad with dual analog sticks very quickly, it's just a lot harder to gain the skills IMO.)

I didn't think we were talking only about FPS, though. And frankly, a FPS is about the best game for PC interaction controls. (Ever play Yie-Ar Kung Fu on a keyboard? Ye gods the pain!)

I think in general a gamepad is pretty intuitive, bordering to non-intuitive at times (unless it's a frigging Nintendo designed gamepad, in which case it's non-intuitive from the get-go these days). I think in general a keyboard/mouse combo is pretty non-intuitive unless a game is played only by mouse effectively. (Diablo is pretty intuitive, though the right/left mouse button mapping is a bit tricky at first.) I can't think of many games that cross platforms (so that we can compare) which have that type of interface though. Point and click would be horrible on a gamepad. It developed on a PC because actually pushing up to move your character up on a PC was a non-trivial task due to the aforementioned dificulties.

I'd point to arcade games which almost universally have joysticks and were designed for people to come up and play out of the blue as decent proof that, for gaming, joysticks (and gamepads by extension) are better intuitive controllers than keyboards.

[mouselock]

But when was the magical time that this wasn't true? Again, why didn't everyone give up on PC gaming when it was 20 floppies versus a cartridge?

The difference here is that at that point in time computer games were worlds ahead of consoles in terms of complexity offered. We had to wait til the NES before a console system could come close to approximating Ultima 3, and Ultima 3 wasn't near the height of complexity or engaging depth for computer games.

Nowadays if you're not playing RTS or TBS, you can do just as well on a game system. Yes, the controls for FPS are wonky over that way, but aside from those two genres I can't think of anything that hasn't put forth a decent effort on a console. I think that's the major reason other, smaller differences (like pop in and play) become amplified.

[Kitsune]

But when was the magical time that this wasn't true? Again, why didn't everyone give up on PC gaming when it was 20 floppies versus a cartridge?

The difference here is that at that point in time computer games were worlds ahead of consoles in terms of complexity offered. We had to wait til the NES before a console system could come close to approximating Ultima 3, and Ultima 3 wasn't near the height of complexity or engaging depth for computer games.

Err, are you talking about the early years like 1983-1985 for the NES/Famicom? Even then there are some games that are roughly on par with Ultima 3 and after that there are countless games that surpass U3 in complexity. (Dragon Quest isn't actually the first console RPG, its just recognized as such in the same way Super Mario Bros. isn't the first platformer, but gets recognized as such because its the standard.

And I hope your not implying that NES/Famicom games didn't have comparable depth to computer games of the time.

-Kitsune

[mouselock]

But when was the magical time that this wasn't true? Again, why didn't everyone give up on PC gaming when it was 20 floppies versus a cartridge?

The difference here is that at that point in time computer games were worlds ahead of consoles in terms of complexity offered. We had to wait til the NES before a console system could come close to approximating Ultima 3, and Ultima 3 wasn't near the height of complexity or engaging depth for computer games.

Err, are you talking about the early years like 1983-1985 for the NES/Famicom? Even then there are some games that are roughly on par with Ultima 3 and after that there are countless games that surpass U3 in complexity. (Dragon Quest isn't actually the first console RPG, its just recognized as such in the same way Super Mario Bros. isn't the first platformer, but gets recognized as such because its the standard.

And I hope your not implying that NES/Famicom games didn't have comparable depth to computer games of the time.

-Kitsune

The point I was making is that there's far less difference between consoles and PCs these days. Nobody was going to make Wing Commander II on a console and have it be anything like Wing Commander II on a PC. Nowadays you have to give up a bit here and there (mainly in terms of complexity of control schemes with gamepads vs. keyboards), but there would be no doubt that they were effectively the same game.

It's much harder to be bothered with the nuisances of a PC when any little differences betwen PC and console are pretty minor. Unless, of course, you play one of the PC centric genres (RTS, TBS, and super-ultra graphically intense FPS, although that last one seems to be sidling over to the consoles pretty quickly).

And yeah, at the time, I think in general the PC games were "meatier". I had a console (multiple, actually) and a computer (or two) at the time, and I don't recall things like Wing Commander or Syndicate or Powermonger for the NES. I know the NES had some things like Ultima and the KOEI games (pretty sure there was a copy of Bard's Tale for the NES at some point, etc..) but that sure didn't seem to be the primary market for the system at the time when PC gaming was taking off like mad. There are exceptions to every rule. I'm sure there were great PC action games in the time period, though I sure as heck couldn't prove it. But I do think in general there was, at the very least, the perception of PC games being more meaty and having mroe depth, and console games being more twitch based and more about fast action. I don't think that perception persists to the same degree at all any longer, and I believe that's a large part of why suddenly the little niggling things that people used to happily put up with to play games on a PC suddenly become issues. (Steve is right IMO, no amount of driver wrangling in WinXP makes up for trying to write batch files for each game to free up enough extended memory to run. Ultima VII anyone?)

[Kitsune]

I don't doubt there was a perception of that, and it was probably mostly due to the fact that Sega was primarily known as an arcade game maker in the US and Nintendo's devious ploy to disguise the NES as a toy kind of backfired when they couldn't quite guarantee the same audience for things like sims, strategy games and RPGs that were flourishing in Japan.

But that doesn't mean it was true. For instance, you only got a fraction of Koei's titles and there were any number of other strategy/sims (as PC gamers tend to point to those most often for the depth and complexity) ranging from economic to political to submarine to trading to space-faring (Elite was on the NES too, but that's not what I'm referring to) made by the usual suspects like Konami, Capcom and Namco and so on. We're talking hardcore spreadsheet, hex-based gluk here. These weren't exactly niche games either, yes Romance was extremely popular to the tune of over a million copies, but it wasn't the only one. And let's not forget the whole SRPG pretty much started on the NES (and even Fire Emblem had precursors). Its also prudent to mention that back then the Advance Wars titles are less complex than the predecessors (but luckily in a way where removing complexity actually adds to the game)? And surely you've heard of Daisenryaku right? In any case, its hard to make a case that the PC specializes in TBS more when they were just as prolific on the console.

Then there was odd "only in Japan!" like hybrid of mixing board games with sims, strategies and RPGs that was prolific in the Famicom age (giving way to such cool stuff as Enix's Itadaki Street, which has absolutely diabolical AI). I know there are complex boardgames all over the world that do something similar, but you have to kind of have to play the games to see the difference and know what I mean. (And no it wasn't like Archon, though Archon rocked and was also available on the NES.)

On top of that there were any number of RPGs that were translations of Japanese tabletop RPGs and also pretty damn similar and in some cases, way more complex than their PC counterparts (we're talking the usual RPG, like latter Wizardries, Bard's Tales, Might & Magic, Bard's Tale III is the only that didn't come to the NES/Famicom, because by then the DQ style RPG had begun to won out and the MSX generation and popularity of 1st-person style RPGs was starting to wane, thus Japan-produced titles in such a mode became much more viable than translations, though games like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder still proved to be a hit on the SNES/SFC and such). I remember playing Might & Magic II on the NES and looking at the PC version years lately, and thinking some things were actually worse in that version. Mind you, I played Might & Magic II like in the late 90s, but it was still published like, I dunno, before I was born?

In any case, a lot of console-born RPGs were comparable too. In 1987 the original Megami Tensei had moongate-like time periods and a hierarchy of morality, as well as of course, the series highly flexible party configurations and its certainly not the only one. Chaos World, Radia Senki, Dark Lord, Sa Ga and lots and lots of others were pretty damn sophisticated as well.

This is all ignoring the idea that there is no such thing as a genre that has more depth than another. It would be like saying Go hasn't got as much depth as Age of Empires. Stuff like R-Type, Puyo Puyo and SMB lasts for years and much deeper than many a PC snob can or will recognize, but I have the feeling that just because the basics are much easier to grasp, they don't think it can go much farther than that, when that's very untrue. (Have you ever seen the complex diagrams, charts and dictionary of terms for movements and strategies you can make in Puyo Puyo for instance?)

I feel comparing Powermonger and Syndicate and such to the NES/Famicom is quite unfair though. While it was still producing some titles at the the time, the bulk of attention had moved onto the Genesis/Mega Dribe, PC Engine and SNES/SFC (which had Syndicate, just with lesser graphics and the control was actually quite nice). But when we're talking about Syndicate, I mean geez, the PlayStation and Saturn had already been out for a while when that game was popular. And don't forget that the PC Engine matched the innovations of PC gaming's CD games for the longest time before they arrived and proved extremely popular in Japan.

As one last thing to say, did you know adventure games and IF were a pretty big genre on the Famicom? Sega used to do a whole bunch, including like nine Phantasy Star ones...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, Japan, Japan, Japan. Who cares? Most of you couldn't/can't play these games. Well, its just this. It seems only fair to compare the largest PC industry to the largest videogame industry and its only quite recently that Japan shot down to number 2 (like in 1999, or 2000). Even if Europe you get the sense that the crash didn't quite affect things so much, if I'm right by noticing that might be one of the reasons that European PC-like platforms (some of them are kind of hybrids, aren't they) like the Spectrum, Amiga and C64 and so on, have more of a mix of console like genres and PC genres than the American PC industry usually did. Its just a hunch and anyways, Amberstar's great fun, so yeah. That the US crash made the industry have to start from scratch again is unfortunate, but the reality is the actual things that were going technically with consoles is much different than what the American picture at the time represents.

I mean how would you judge age acceptableness of some NES games when Nintendo would let practically anything go in Japan and kiddify games for the US?

-Kitsune

[mouselock]

But that doesn't mean it was true. For instance, you only got a fraction of Koei's titles and there were any number of other strategy/sims (as PC gamers tend to point to those most often for the depth and complexity) ranging from economic to political to submarine to trading to space-faring (Elite was on the NES too, but that's not what I'm referring to) made by the usual suspects like Konami, Capcom and Namco and so on. We're talking hardcore spreadsheet, hex-based gluk here. These weren't exactly niche games either, yes Romance was extremely popular to the tune of over a million copies, but it wasn't the only one. And let's not forget the whole SRPG pretty much started on the NES (and even Fire Emblem had precursors).

But inasmuch as we're coming at it from the perspective of PC game sales (primarily or wholly in the Western World) I don't really care what was releasaed in Japan that never made it over here. I know there was a far, far broader spectrum of Famicom games than NES. A lot of this, IMO, is because PC gaming wasn't nearly as established in Japan at the time (is it now? It was always my impression that PC gaming was a distant runner in the gamespace in Japan, aside from a few specific niche genres). Over here, the NES really didn't compete for the PC gaming space. Nobody wanted to enter commands on a D-pad, and in general the people into the "deeper" games (quotes for everyone's sanity, I agree stuff like Puyo Puyo can have deep game play) just stuck to the computers they'd always used. I think that trend has gone away over here with the last two (and especially the current) generation of consoles. I wouldn't be surprised to see next gen consoles have mice/keyboards available for cheap this time around and see some real RTS/TBS games show up there too. Because there's probably a bigger market, there's plenty of capability, and the storage capacity is finally probably large enough to hold more than one save game per mem card.

[Kitsune]

I thought we were talking about the technical capapibilities of the NES/Famicom though? In response to your comment about how it took the NES to approximate Ultima 3 and mine that there were a lot more complex games than that?

I agree it doesn't matter for sales and that the market has broadened, that's why you see the good trend of American companies now creating the most popular games, its generally not healthy to have to depend on a foreign country's products in an entertainment business and I'd much rather see the US have an independently wealth of good console games for its own taste in much the same way as it does in the PC space.

My whole point is the genres and complexity you used to see in the States is a sign of demographics and market conditions, not of the capability of the machine. PCs are generally terribly useful, versatile things, obviously. But consoles have also generally matched their capabilities for gameplay in the ages they were competing technologically. Its only a misnomer to say otherwise.

And actually the PC market used to be much bigger, but the arrival of Square and Enix's domination of RPGs changed that forever in the SFC era and everything that resulted from that. The demand went down for direct Western style and changed to that ones that more closely approximated Japanese tastes, though sometimes they had indirect Western influences, such as, say, oh Ogre Battle. In much the same way as say, Mega Man doesn't command as much power as GTA in the US these days.

Before then, I'm not sure how popular PCs were, but gaming on them sure was a lot more prolific and widespread. These days, its dominated by hentai titles (like 50 a month! I'm not kidding you! You can go to Amazon and check!) but even so its starting to experience a slow revival. This is mostly due again, to Square and Enix, but also to interest from software from the US, Europe and Korea again, as well as Enterbrain's incredibly amazing support of one of the downright frickin' most awesome freeware scenes out there. (They used to give gobs of money to whoever could create the best game each month in multiple genres and programming is a pretty common Japanese high school or middle school elective.) Japanese also apparently much prefer to play online titles on their cellphone or PC, by a factor of 4 to 1 in several polls.

-Kitsune

[shift6]

I just put the disc in, turn it on and play.
Once I've put the disc in the first time, spent a few minutes installing it, and then grabbing ILLEGAL HACKER WAREZ from the internet, I never have to even open the box again. Clearly, PC games require less effort to run on a per-play basis. Why do console people waste all their time putting a disc in the drive? 8)

[steve]

Meanwhile, in the real world, it's not so easy to ignore the evidence. :roll:
What evidence? Retail sales tracking is down for PC games, but there's a lot of revenue not being considered, from online sales to MMO subscription revenue to downloadable games. So are PC games declining, overall? It's hard to say. Are they as big as console games? Nope, and they haven't been for years.

And the anecdotal, "This is why I'm playing less games," well... and I say piracy is hurting PC gaming. So I guess that's evidence too. A kind of evidence, at least.

I remember when it was a big deal that the PC could do parallax scrolling like a SNES and Genesis. Then you had 2D accelerators, but of course they were expensive.

Then the PlayStation and Dreamcast showcased amazing 3D graphics; sure, the PC was there, but they were impressive. And then 3D accelerators shipped, and everyone bitched that you needed a Rendition or 3dfx card, and they were expensive! Who had $600 worth of SLI Voodoo 2s, plus a regular 2D card in their $3K PC?

PC gaming is cheaper than it's ever been, and it's easier to get everything working. But people are still moving to consoles. I agree that consoles are close to PCs in terms of graphics (assuming you throw resolution out the window), but there have always been windows where the consoles and PCs were close.

I can better understand the "there are limited genres on the PC." But what genres are you finding on the consoles that were previously the domain of the PC? The RPG has hit another dry spell on the PC, at least if you take the MMO out of consideration, but what else is there?

So what is it? Are kids buying console games because they have to, and warezing PC games because they can? There's more interest in reading about PC games then there was years ago; why wouldn't that translate into more sales?

[Shadari]

I would really like to see some statistics on sales of PC and console games that includes non-retail sales as well as MMO subscriptions.

[Rob_Merritt]

Look at this news post at Wargamer
http://www.wargamer.com/news/news.asp?nid=1650

And now look at my message:

I'm actually surprised it broke 1 billion this year. I knew they were way down the first half of the year. Guess the trio of Doom 3, Half Life 2, and World of Warcraft really helped. Here is the numbers I have for the past 10 years.

year/ total income / 1994 dollars
1994 ~ 966 million 966 million
1995 ~1.4 billion 1.36 billion
1996 1.7 billion 1.6 billion
1997 1.8 billion 1.66 billion
1998 1.8 billion 1.64 billion
1999 1.9 billion 1.73 billion
2000 ~1.6 billion 1.38 billion
2001 1.75 billion 1.47 billion
2002 1.4 billion 1.15 billion
2003 1.2 billion 959 million
2004 1.08 billion 791 million

Also don't forget the average cost of game development has grown from 1 million to 10 million. Though some AAA have 30 million + budgets.

There isn't a way to paint a pretty picture.

refs: (some dead links)
http://news.com.com/2009-1001-228291-2.html
http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue43/overview.html
http://www.gamesdomain.com/gdreview/e398/idsa.html
http://www.idsa.com/releases/4-21-2000.html
http://www.pcvsconsole.com/news/news.php?nid=1159&filter=4
http://www.tdctrade.com/mne/toy/020302.htm
http://www.digitalgamedeveloper.com/2003/01_jan/news/dlidsa12803.htm
http://press.releases.filefront.com/25
http://www.npdtechworld.com/techServlet?nextpage=pr_body_it.html&content_id=720
http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue43/march.html
http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/10/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/
http://www.newsengin.com/neFreeTools.nsf/CPIcalc?OpenView&Start=1&Count=30&Expand=1#1

Now I don't mind the lifting of my message for a new post. However he should of at least quoted where I got my data from since only a few numbers came from NPD.

[quatoria]

Jesus, look at that drop from 1999 to 2000. I knew it got bad after that year, but I didn't realize it had been THAT bad. Wow.

[steve]

Amazing, the rise in P2P software usage also sees a drop in PC game sales. Coincidence? Probably. Right?

[Rob_Merritt]

Amazing, the rise in P2P software usage also sees a drop in PC game sales. Coincidence? Probably. Right?

Its also the same time when publishers stop funding AAA games other that MMORPG, FPS and RTS. Its also the time the Microsoft shift attention from PC gaming to Xbox gaming.

[Ed Solomon]

There's more interest in reading about PC games then there was years ago; why wouldn't that translate into more sales?

Because the more time I spend reading about PC games the less time I have to actually play PC games?

I'd like to see sales broken out by age. I'd guess PC gamers are just getting older and have less time to game. I think Stein nailed it when he spoke of a cohort starting gaming in 1980 at age 14. Which is so close to home for me it's spooky.

Edited to correct for my inability to tell one developer from another

[BobJustBob]

Amazing, the rise in P2P software usage also sees a drop in PC game sales. Coincidence? Probably. Right?

It also corresponds to the rise in ever-more-draconian copy protection software. Obviously I can't speak for the market as a whole, but for me personally, the rise of software like Starforce was a major factor in my decision to abandon PC gaming.

[Mark Asher]

So what is it? Are kids buying console games because they have to, and warezing PC games because they can? There's more interest in reading about PC games then there was years ago; why wouldn't that translate into more sales?

More semi-worthless anecdotal evidence. I think the kids are mostly locked into consoles now and it's the post-20 crowd that is mostly into PC gaming. I asked my son at college what games everyone played, and it was PS2 and Xbox. He'd heard of Half-Life 2 but didn't know anyone playing it. Everyone played Halo 2 for online play.

Thing is, Halo 2 had a lot of buzz among the kids at his school even before it shipped, and then it just was the game of choice for a long time. None of his friends even talked about Half-Life 2.

(One other thing - a lot of these kids get PCs as freshman, and I'm betting that most of them are the cheap Dells and Gateways that wouldn't really run a game like HL2 all that well. My son opted for a notebook and there's no way he can play any kind of 3D PC game on it.)

Anyway, I'm sure HL2 has sold well to college-age kids, but I don't think it was the event that it might have been five years with the same demographic. Same for Doom 3 and any other PC game.

And yes, I know, teenagers go to LAN parties with tricked out PCs, but what kind of numbers are we talking about? Several thousand?

PC gaming has taken a backseat to console gaming. It would be interesting to compare the split among 14-20 year olds for consoles vs. PCs to what it was 10 years ago. I bet it's much more tilted towards consoles now in that demographic.

One last point -- if the demographics for PC gamers is skewing older, older people get pickier about purchases. That alone would push down sales a bit, I would think.

[Silverlight]

Amazing, the rise in P2P software usage also sees a drop in PC game sales. Coincidence? Probably. Right?
Its also the same time when publishers stop funding AAA games other that MMORPG, FPS and RTS. Its also the time the Microsoft shift attention from PC gaming to Xbox gaming.
Not to mention that it's the same time that console FPSing went from being a joke to being a serious enterprise. And it's the same time that console online multiplayer went from nonexistent to extremely prominent.

[tronnc]

I think the gap in hardware is what is really hurting PC gaming myself. Think back to 97-2000. You could go out and buy a cheap new system and pretty much all games would run on it well. All that really mattered was if you had a fast enough processor and enough ram.

But now if you go out and buy a cheap new system your almost garaunteed to have a Intel/SIS/S3 ProSavage onboard graphics. Which means pretty much all new games will either simply not run, have horrible graphics corruptions or if they do run have horrible performance. For someone who buys a brand new (albeit cheap) computer and a game at Best Buy on the same day only to have the game not work. That is just not acceptable.

Game devs need to make sure their games work on those low end graphics cards. Their failure to do this has resulted in hurting the pc games industry.

[steve]

I think the gap in hardware is what is really hurting PC gaming myself. Think back to 97-2000. You could go out and buy a cheap new system and pretty much all games would run on it well. All that really mattered was if you had a fast enough processor and enough ram.
I think you lived in a different 97-2000, since I seem to recall it being full of S3 and Intel video as well. Low-end cards have always been the problem.

Game devs need to make sure their games work on those low end graphics cards. Their failure to do this has resulted in hurting the pc games industry.
I agree.

And the gamers and press need to stop criticizing games that don't take advantage of their $500 videocard.

[steve]

More semi-worthless anecdotal evidence.
I know, though it certainly didn't stop you from your semi-worthless anecdotal evidence. I see kids looking over the racks of PC games, and if you ask them if they buy the games, they say no. They just download them. More anecdotal evidence!

I'm just curious why people completely, 100% discount piracy as having a negative impact on PC sales.

[steve]

PC gaming has taken a backseat to console gaming. It would be interesting to compare the split among 14-20 year olds for consoles vs. PCs to what it was 10 years ago. I bet it's much more tilted towards consoles now in that demographic.
I suspect you'd find it's probably a similar split. PC gamers have always been older; kids always played console games. Only with the last generation, older people are playing console games too.

One last point -- if the demographics for PC gamers is skewing older, older people get pickier about purchases. That alone would push down sales a bit, I would think.
Almost all of the drop in overall revenue can be found in MMO subscriptions. At a minimum, if you assume 1 million MMO subscribers across all games in North America, spanning 12 months, at $15/month, that's the $200 million dropoff in revenue right there.

[scharmers]

Everybody is someone else's lamer.

Maybe this OMFG TEH PC GAEMS IS SDYING!!!11@@11ampersand!! is because console games have matured along with the former early-90's uber-PC gamers.

A few years back, there simply weren't any console games I would touch with a stick. Platformers and Shoot 'em Ups got real old around the Amiga times, which is why I migrated to the PC.

These days, though, there are some very rich and very deep console games, and even the platformers have been polished to a high sheen that makes them interesting again (see: Ratchet and Clank). Some eccentric and niche-y stuff (Naval Ops, etc.) is moving here as well instead of rotting away in some dusty, forgotten PC corner.

It's gotten to the point that if someone took my PC away today, just leaving me my PS2 and PS2 game collection, I wouldn't be homicidal, just a little disappointed. Then I'd trade in all of my PC games and get Mercenaries and CoN II.

--scharmers

[Phil_Stein]

tronnc wrote:
I think the gap in hardware is what is really hurting PC gaming myself. Think back to 97-2000. You could go out and buy a cheap new system and pretty much all games would run on it well. All that really mattered was if you had a fast enough processor and enough ram.

I think you lived in a different 97-2000, since I seem to recall it being full of S3 and Intel video as well. Low-end cards have always been the problem.


PC games up through '98 were largely either 2D, or had a highly optimized software rendering path. FPS's went hardware 3D a little earlier, but they were appealing to core gamers anyways. Major strategy games (the #1 genre by far) didn't start to go hardware 3D until Black & White in spring '01.

And for non 3D HW accelerated games (i.e. 2D) , the S3 and Intel chips were pretty solid - maybe running at 70% of the performance of a better card, but with 90-100% of the features.

In the modern 3D accelerated world, a SiS or Intel chipset runs at 10-25% of the performance, and 40-70% of the features, of a reasonably high-end 3D card. That's a much more difficult chasm to bridge for a developer, especially when they know that preview hype and even most reviews will be based on how the game looks on high-end hardware.

[Phil_Stein]

The bg hit strategy games of '98-'00 were The Sims, Starcraft, Age of Empires 2, SimCity 3000, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, and perhaps Railroad Tycoon 2. All were 2D-accelerated only.

Starting at about '02, almost all strategy games went 3D. Again, this shift happened 1-3 years earlier in other genres.

[steve]

The bg hit strategy games of '98-'00 were The Sims, Starcraft, Age of Empires 2, SimCity 3000, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, and perhaps Railroad Tycoon 2. All were 2D-accelerated only.
Fair enough, that makes sense.

So was there a drop in strategy games sales due to the move to 3D, and does it account for the lost revenue? That would imply that action games and RPGs (including MMOs) are doing fine, or even increasing in sales.

[shang]

I'm just curious why people completely, 100% discount piracy as having a negative impact on PC sales.

I can't speak for the others, but personally I don't think that the amount of piracy has increased all that much during the past ten years (relatively speaking). Back when I was in elementary/high school, every gamer in that age group warezed games. We used to trade/copy them after school, so everyone had an easy access to them. Sure, internet and p2p make it easier to copy stuff without actual social contact, but I don't believe there's been any significant percentual increase.

[Shadari]

There isn't a way to paint a pretty picture.
If you plug the numbers from 2001 to 2004 into a spreadsheet, you can see that the rate of decline is decreasing. It may bottom out. Furthermore, if you account for what I suppose (and hope) are increased sales via online channels and such and account for revenue from MMOs, then things certainly don't sound as bad as all the doomsayers would like us to believe. I'm not saying the numbers aren't disappointing, but I think the end is not yet nigh.

[steve]

Sure, internet and p2p make it easier to copy stuff without actual social contact, but I don't believe there's been any significant percentual increase.
It's possible the ease of warez moved it out of the younger social groups to the colleges, and even post-collegiate.

An entire generation has grown up knowing they don't need to pay for single-player PC games because they're just a click away. You no longer need that one guy that downloads it from some BBS, or from some 1337 members-only FTP site.

For every big hit like Half-Life 2, there's a few dozen Painkillers or NOLFs that get great reviews, and everyone seems to have played them, yet were poor sellers. It's a curious phenomenon, for sure.

[jpinard]

I think those numbers are off. Retail sales ARE declining, but web-based sales are on the rise in a huge way. It's not my fault I'd rather buy most my games via web download now vs. a box on the shelf. I'd rather have my money NOT go through for smaller developers so I make sure they get the most money possible. Games that will not be registered in those figures (just to name a couple):

* The intro sales of all Battlefront games.
* Most of the sales from Matrix games.
* Most of the game from Shrapnel Games.
* STEAM sales of Half-Life 2.
* Direct download sales of Stardock games.

I'd say 40% of my purchasing in the last 2 years has shifted from retail to direct-download from developer.

[Shadari]

I'd say 40% of my purchasing in the last 2 years has shifted from retail to direct-download from developer.
Yeah, I probably buy half of my PC games direct now. Two or three years ago I pretty much bought all my PC games at retail.

[Mark Asher]

PC gaming has taken a backseat to console gaming. It would be interesting to compare the split among 14-20 year olds for consoles vs. PCs to what it was 10 years ago. I bet it's much more tilted towards consoles now in that demographic.
I suspect you'd find it's probably a similar split. PC gamers have always been older; kids always played console games. Only with the last generation, older people are playing console games too.

One last point -- if the demographics for PC gamers is skewing older, older people get pickier about purchases. That alone would push down sales a bit, I would think.
Almost all of the drop in overall revenue can be found in MMO subscriptions. At a minimum, if you assume 1 million MMO subscribers across all games in North America, spanning 12 months, at $15/month, that's the $200 million dropoff in revenue right there.

I doubt you can attribute all of it to MMOs.

2002 $1.4 Billion
2003 $1.22 Billion
2004 $1.08 Billion

That's a $392M dropoff right there, and in 2002 MMOs were going strong. EQ, UO, AC, and I think DAoC were all launched. They were running then and they are running now yet the drop in revenue continues.

PC games have definitely lost ground to consoles. It may get worse when the new consoles launch.

Another thing to consider is how much of that 2004 revenue represents console games ported to the PC? You have Halo, Grand Theft Auto, etc. Not only is the PC as a platform losing ground, but it's losing some stature as a unique platform. If most of the PC games end up being console ports, we might as well just play them on the console.

[Linoleum]

* The intro sales of all Battlefront games.
* Most of the sales from Matrix games.
* Most of the game from Shrapnel Games.
* STEAM sales of Half-Life 2.
* Direct download sales of Stardock games.

I would be surprised if Matrix, Shrapnel and Stardock together was more than $2-$3 million in sales.

[tronnc]

The bg hit strategy games of '98-'00 were The Sims, Starcraft, Age of Empires 2, SimCity 3000, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, and perhaps Railroad Tycoon 2. All were 2D-accelerated only.
Fair enough, that makes sense.

So was there a drop in strategy games sales due to the move to 3D, and does it account for the lost revenue? That would imply that action games and RPGs (including MMOs) are doing fine, or even increasing in sales.

Its not just strategy games, while 3d hardware was big in the late 90s-2000, almost all 3d games back then would run well enough in software mode. Even FPS games like Halflife, Unreal/UT, all the quake1/2 engine games, I believe even quake 3 could run well enough in software mode with low details. For the hardcore they didn't run well without 3d acceleration but they ran well enough that you could play and enjoy them. Most RPGs I recall were still 2d like Baulders Gate 1/2, Diablo, and all the clones of those games. All the sports games ran well in software.

Its not to say that there weren't games in this era that did require 3d hardware acceleration but they were very rare.

Today if you buy a new system and you don't know anything about computers and your at Best Buy comparing two systems, both have the same speed processor, same ram, both advertise 64mb video card. One is $200s more because it says ATI on the spec sheet. Which doesn't mean anything to you so you get the cheaper system. Now if you buy any game at the store, its very likely that the game won't run acceptably on your brand new system. And you can't even return that game, your now stuck with it. You don't understand why it won't work, but your mad and highly unlikely to buy another PC game and risk that not working either.

So now the cheap PCs for the most part simply won't run modern games and could be considered like another platform in the eyes of the PC game market. The user install base of PCs capable of playing the latest games are simply less than they were back in 97-2000. Thats some numbers people should try to get, you always see numbers on how many systems ofPS2, or Xbox, or even new PCs sold. There are always lots of new PCs sold, but I've never seen them differenciate the new PCs sold by video card. If you could subtract all the new PCs sold with horrible onboard graphics you would see a much smaller number of PCs capable of running your game. Thus a smaller market for you to sell to.

Probably a smaller number of PCs capable of playing latest games than there were in 97-2000 being sold.

[mouselock]

PC gaming has taken a backseat to console gaming. It would be interesting to compare the split among 14-20 year olds for consoles vs. PCs to what it was 10 years ago. I bet it's much more tilted towards consoles now in that demographic.
I suspect you'd find it's probably a similar split. PC gamers have always been older; kids always played console games. Only with the last generation, older people are playing console games too.

I'm 31. I'm real close to the first generation to have grown up with consoles all my life. The folks 5 years back, the ones that pushed PC games to record sales in 2000, would have been 10 when the Atari 2600 came out. They would have been, what, 18 when the NES was at its crest. Their ideas of bitching first game machines would have been Commodore 64s or Atari 800s, and the next-gen was the ST or Amiga. (Note, I'm talking about seeing these computers primarily as game systems.)

The people 5 years younger than me (you know, the ones leaving college and finding all their disposable income for games and such is available without having to worry about paying for wives and kids yet) grew up with the NES. When they turned 12 or 13 they got a genesis or a SNES. When they headed off to college or right before, they had a PSX.

They quite simply have never seen computers as the primary or even prime source of being able to play games. They probably, at best, have vague memories of playing superior action games on a 65xx based computer. They likely have no memory of trying to control something on a PC with one of those piece-of-crap, non-centering joysticks while dealing with CGA (or worse, Hercules emulating CGA) graphics.

I don't think it's that certain types appeal to certain ages so much as that we play what we grew up with, and all the old fogey types who play and primarily buy computer games are being outnumbered by younger folks for whom consoles are a far more natural way of playing games. Why the hell would kids have tried to sneak in a bit of gaming time on the PC when their Genesis had Altered Beast anyway? Unless they were a Wing Commander or Ultima or Civ fan, of course.

[Mark Asher]

* The intro sales of all Battlefront games.
* Most of the sales from Matrix games.
* Most of the game from Shrapnel Games.
* STEAM sales of Half-Life 2.
* Direct download sales of Stardock games.

I would be surprised if Matrix, Shrapnel and Stardock together was more than $2-$3 million in sales.

Yeah, and I'd be surprised if Go Gamer was much more than that too.

I wonder if Amazon reports to NPD? I wouldn't be surprised if they do. I bet some online sales are being captured by NPD.

[Jon R.]

It's possible the ease of warez moved it out of the younger social groups to the colleges, and even post-collegiate.

An entire generation has grown up knowing they don't need to pay for single-player PC games because they're just a click away. You no longer need that one guy that downloads it from some BBS, or from some 1337 members-only FTP site.

Well, console games are equally warezable. Just a mod chip away.


Also, i'm really curious what kind of future the PC games industry is building for itself. Talk about piracy and returns and whatnot is nice, but when was the last time anyone played a PC game that didn't require you to massively alter your perceptions of fun to be enjoyable? When was the last time a PC game felt like a big wet "Thank You" to play, instead of feeling like a long string of compromises? How many games feel like they'd be better if they'd let you enjoy them? If they're not soulless, they're usually broken in some way. Like, Pirates! is nice, but it's both a retread and a severely flawed one that could've been far better.

Now, maybe i'm a little console-centric, but this is kind of how i see it. The last PC game i gave a shit about was Tron 2.0, and the only one i look forward to is Oblivion. I can't even count the number of great, varied, and truly entertaining titles spread over the 3 current consoles. Hell, Metroid: Zero Mission made me buy it during a time when i didn't even have a GBA. I was compelled to buy it after playing through it entirely on an emulator. How does it feel to be a PC gamer, on the other hand? Feels like shit to me, all things considered. That's not fun. Maybe that has something to do with it? The fact that the PC side inspires a sense of mediocrity and apathy as the norm, compared to the console side's freshness and sense of progress?

It usually goes to show that making crap tends to lead to lesser sales. This may be a wholly new concept to PC game makers, but it has held true for their console cousins. The big guys in the console world look like they still take chances while actually trying to not fuck up too much, whereas the exact opposite seems to be true on the PC side. The big names of console games are still going strong, while the big names of PC games are has-beens.

[Wholly Schmidt]

Hey, cool, we haven't had the "modding is as easy as PC piracy" debate in a while. Modding your console isn't as easy as downloading a game. There's a physical task to be done, and more importantly and prohibitively, there's an actual monetary cost. That's significant when the whole reason for piracy is to avoid spending money. Obviously it's gaining in popularity, but console modding isn't as easy or prevalant as pirating PC games.

[shift6]

I wonder if Amazon reports to NPD? I wouldn't be surprised if they do. I bet some online sales are being captured by NPD.
Wasn't there something awhile back about huge retail outlets like Walmart not reporting to NPD, or something like that? If so and if NPD's numbers were used on this study, would that not affect both PC and console sales figures?

[Dave Long]

Wal-Mart is included in NPD sales now I do believe.

--Dave

[chumpface]

And don't forget NPD only covers _roughly_ 60% of the North American market and nothing outside of US and Canada. I say roughly for two reasons:

1) They don't cover WalMart. My undrestanding is they extrapolate WalMart sales based on hand stock counts by NPD staff at 8 local Wal Marts to NPD.
2) When they claim to cover 60% of the market, do they mean 60% of gross unit volume, gross revenue, specific retailers, shelf space inches, or what? It's all very unclear, and I'm kinda in the know on these things. I've never had a straight answer from anybody I've every asked from marketing guru to Vice President of whosi-whatsis.

Point of data: On one of our games, NPD listed 179k units. Our royalty report from the publisher listed nearly 400k units. Using the traditional extrapolation of 60%, that's sales of 252k units to 400k units. Though my publisher may have artificially elevated their financial obligations to us in their royalty report, for some reason I doubt it.

Here's another few words along with steam that call NPD stats into question:

Amazon, Walmart.com, EBGAMES.com, etc.

[graller]

Jon R I am afraid I have to take issue with you on the "freshness" of the console industry. Maybe you are trolling? But running out to buy EA's latest Sports <insert year here> title that has no voice overs compared to last years version is fresh challenging innovation? PC's have sequelitis too but not to any greater or lesser extent then consoles. Seeing as I am currently playing thru BG 2 for the 3rd time, still playing NWN, and hacking at Rome Total War for kicks on the side in between games of Pirates I really cannot agree with your claim that the "fun" has left PC gaming. I also can't understand calling Blizzard, Bioware, id and Valve hasbeens. Rockstar is not pumping the same game out over and over again right now?

[graller]

Sorry for the double post...

[Qenan]

Also, i'm really curious what kind of future the PC games industry is building for itself. Talk about piracy and returns and whatnot is nice, but when was the last time anyone played a PC game that didn't require you to massively alter your perceptions of fun to be enjoyable? When was the last time a PC game felt like a big wet "Thank You" to play, instead of feeling like a long string of compromises? How many games feel like they'd be better if they'd let you enjoy them? If they're not soulless, they're usually broken in some way. Like, Pirates! is nice, but it's both a retread and a severely flawed one that could've been far better.


World of Warcraft was still fun as of last night. :roll:

I bought several consoles this year, and have tried to get into them. While there are some games I've enjoyed, on the whole I still prefer PC gaming. I like the input devices better, I like the hi res, and I like the complexity level. The biggest problem for me is that not very many interesting games come out each year. (I'm not a fan of FPS or RTS, which form a huge fraction of current PC games.

I wonder how much of this is really about PC games vs. mass market. As game production costs go up, they need to be sold to much larger markets to be profitable. Unquestionably consoles represent a bigger market -- they are more kid/young adult focused, are cheaper and easier to get running, etc. How many $20-million titles can the PC really support? And a lot of that has moved to MMORPGs. It's only a matter of time before the average technology in the home improves and those switch to console as well. (I'm thinking HDTV and wireless internet will make a big difference.)

I'm not sure why there is so much anguish, though. It isn't as though I have to chuck my PC if I want to buy a console and play some games on it.

[Phil_Stein]

NPD covers the U.S. (and I think Canada too). There are similar agencies covering the major Euro territories. Germany is the 2nd biggest PC market, and is also sharply off its sales peak. The German game dev. industry, which used to thrive with many small-ish devs. and pubs (JoWood, SunFlowers, etc), has taken a huge hit in the last 4 years.

NPD has never covered 100% of retailers. Not all retailers choose to report to it. Wal-Mart hasn't been in the weekly numbers for years - I believe they are in the monthlies (which are the ones used for stats like the ones at the top of this thread).

NPD claims to estimate/extrapolate for the percentage of the market not covered. I think their current claim is that they cover 84% of the market for the monthlies. As retailers drop in/out, and or the relative market share of the retailers that are in or out of the survey change, NPD changes it's extrapolation number.

That number (i.e. 84% at the moment), is probably reasonably accurate for the market as a whole. Whenever you see the 'NPD states that the PC game market for 2004 was $1.xxx billion' type statements, they will be the fully extrapolated figure (i.e. including estimates for non-reporting retailers), There's probably a +- 3% of so error there, but not enough to mask big trends like the decline in the PC industry.

However, the error for an individual game could be MUCH higher than for the market as a whole, if that game derived a big percentage of it's sales from non-reporting channels. I've seen this happen for a few of PopTop's games, especially when they sell a lot of jewel-case/budget copies through semi-obscure channels (Costco and stores like it). It's a real concern for developers wanting accurate data on individual titles, and more of an issue for games outisde of the top 40 (most of which are sold through the usual BestBuy/CompUSA/Wal-Mart channels), but it's not much of a factor on industry-wide numbers.

I'm not sure if Amazon is included/estimated in NPD - I think it is, but can't recall for sure. As for smaller mail-orders (GoGamer, direct publishers like Matrix, etc.), I agree with the general sentiment that they're of a fairly trivial sales total, in comparison to the market as a whole. Steam MAY change that, but probably wasn't that big a factor for 2004.

[Jon R.]

Jon R I am afraid I have to take issue with you on the "freshness" of the console industry. Maybe you are trolling? But running out to buy EA's latest Sports <insert year here> title that has no voice overs compared to last years version is fresh challenging innovation? PC's have sequelitis too but not to any greater or lesser extent then consoles. Seeing as I am currently playing thru BG 2 for the 3rd time, still playing NWN, and hacking at Rome Total War for kicks on the side in between games of Pirates I really cannot agree with your claim that the "fun" has left PC gaming. I also can't understand calling Blizzard, Bioware, id and Valve hasbeens. Rockstar is not pumping the same game out over and over again right now?

Yeah, i left out -maybe too conveniently- that the console side isn't immune to unexciting and/or mediocre titles. What i was trying to get at though, is that for me there's always a few staples to look forward to. Even sequels are often something to look forward to; Zelda, Mario, and Metroid from Nintendo are basically guaranteed to be acceptable if not wonderful progressions from previous entries in the series; Jak and Jak 2 didn't really dissapoint; Capcom, though very guilty of sequelitis came up with something very enjoyable with the Megaman Zero games; Konami's there with Gradius 5, Metal Gear, and CastleVania; and so on with Sega et al. I don't feel that at all with PC games, where my attitude is generally one of waiting and seeing, hoping the developers learn from the elementary mistakes they've made before. Sometimes things even come out of the blue and turn out to be real gems, like Wario Ware or Katamari Damacy or Rez.

The last string of PC games i've played, on the other hand, really ask for you to overlook too much. I'd love Painkiller unconditionally, but the load times are inexcusable and some of the secrets are more punishing than they are rewarding.
Doom 3 had me until i got to the midpoint and realized that my hopes of having something to shake up the gameplay were in vain. One expectation ended in dissapointment. And honestly, everything from Quake 1 on sucked in singleplayer.
NWN and its first expansion, honestly, are insufferably boring singleplayer and i owe my current enjoyment of it wholly to the yahoos i'm doing muliplayer with.
Deus Ex 2 was a debacle. Another title i anticipated ending in dissapointment for no good reason.
Pirates! would've been acceptable like this years ago with a system as limited as the Genesis. The core game is a wonderful concept, but it just falls needlessly short. Sneaking into town? Whatever. Land battles? Simplified in all the wrong places. Dancing on the higher difficulties? The whores can keep to themselves, as it'd probably be easier and more fun to marry Baron Raymondo. Or Baron Raymondo. Or Baron Raymondo. And fuck the Trade Winds.
Valve... dear god, there's so much wrong with HL2. Great graphics and fantastically paced beginning followed by supply crates, ridiculous ammo limits that, if increased to a comfortable level, would REMOVE the need for supply crates, tired cheapshot headcrabs, non-sequitur zombie area that serves only as a tech demo for the gravity gun, teammates that hate mobility and can't fight for shit, and a completely absent story. I didn't expect much from Valve to begin with, but holy fuck.
Vampire: Bloodlines was the exact opposite with a decent story and some interesting sections, but it is clear as day that Troika thought they could slap the Source engine on Quake3-level visuals and have it do all the work. Looks worse AND runs worse than HL2, to the point of being nearly unplayable even if you really want to. Melee combate, despite being the way to kill stuff, is terrible.

Even the titles that are supposed to be AAA for the year often just ask too much and give too little. WoW, which Quenan brought up, would also be a joy if it weren't for the arguably unnecessary problems associated with it. Again, it feels like everything requires major compromises to enjoy: This is great, if you can deal with the load times. This is great, if you can suffer the framerates. This is great, if you can live with the fact that the developers made numerous rudimentary mistakes with gameplay that can be seen within 5 minutes of playing. This could be great once it's patched... I just feel that such compromises are kept to a minimum on the console side of things. With consoles, there are at least some very reliable comanies that seem happy to make games that will at least meet me halfway. The can still miss, but they do it far less.

[graller]

Thanks Jon. I know some will say the game should be in the box but I have to disagree on NWN. I download something great to play every month still 2 years after release. I agree the original campaign was the "blah" but as an engine, game concept and toolset it has given me more play value then anything else in recent memory. Also I am absolutely not an FPS guy so I avoid the HL2, Doom etc blahs. RPG's have been of very high quality in recent years ever since Bioware kicked of the renaissance in 98. Between that and innovative RTS like Rome and Kohan and RT 3 I have more then enough fun on my computer.

[plankdimension]

Interesting debate, in that the drop off in sales $ in US/EU does appear to be real. I'm in the camp that says that sales of MMORPG are not being included in the drop off, nor are sales through downloads (as is discussed above), but I also think that it utterly ignores the emerging PC markets of Korea, China, India and Russia (which do no provide sales figures)

I also think that part of the reason for drop off is publisher preference: SONY and MS have the best parties, so the marketing teams all want to work on PS2 and XBox titles :roll: simple really.

[Rob_Merritt]

I also think that part of the reason for drop off is publisher preference: SONY and MS have the best parties, so the marketing teams all want to work on PS2 and XBox titles :roll: simple really.

Thats probably the most likely answer.

[Phil_Stein]

Korea, China, India and Russia
These markets are effectively worthless to American/European developers, due to 95-99% piracy rates for games, and that the remaining 1-5% of non-pirated sales are generally at $3-5 retail, of which a foreign developer may get $.10 to $.20

For all of PopTop's games (many of which won awards from the Russian gaming mags and were widely played in these markets), 2nd/3rd world sales (i.e. everything outside of North America, Western Europe, Japan Taiwan and Australia) amounted to 0.3 to 0.5% of our total sales/royalty revenue.

[Rob_Merritt]

Zombie thread... rise!!!!!

PC market for this year: Not so good

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3144672

Just to buck the trend here, I think we are at the bottom this year and next. There will be an increase with Windows Vista and Direct X 10 cards. Also as digital distribution grabs hold, we should see a better selection of games and genres as games can be made an delievered for smaller amounts of money.

[RickH]

Just to be a contrarian, here's some reasons why your factors might not help:

1) Vista will have 7 versions and confuse the market. Any features included in the "Ultimate l33t Gamezorz" version won't get supported by publishers at large for the same reasons the X360 HD is less useful now that it's optional. And then there's the folks still running XP or 98SE with no intention to change.

2) This was the year of the big sequels. HL2 (late 2003, I know), Quake 4, Doom 3, AoE 3, GTA:SA, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. If sales were going to spike it was going to be this year. Next year, the new consoles will take the stage and soak up money from gamers that might otherwise go to PC upgrades and software.

3) Digital distribution sounds absolutely terrific to developers and absolutely ridiculous to consumers. Good for you to eliminate the middleman, but the end buyer sees less value for the same price. "So wait, I can pay the same amount of money and get nothing of actual substance? Wow, here's my credit card number!" Selling $.99 iTunes downloads is not the same as selling $55 PC games.

[Rob_Merritt]

1) Vista will have 7 versions and confuse the market.

XP has 6 editions available for purchase and yet market confusion isn't that much of a problem.

[Phil_Stein]

3) Digital distribution sounds absolutely terrific to developers and absolutely ridiculous to consumers. Good for you to eliminate the middleman, but the end buyer sees less value for the same price. "So wait, I can pay the same amount of money and get nothing of actual substance? Wow, here's my credit card number!" Selling $.99 iTunes downloads is not the same as selling $55 PC games.

Digital Distribution is already having a big impact, it's just not being felt in 'traditional' PC games (i.e. FPS, RTS, etc.)

The two biggest, fastest growing sectors for PC games are MMORPG and Casual Games. I believe that this year or next, these two will pass retail PC games in US revenue (though I don't have stats handy, but I've seen them).

It's just that the games that sell well under these models are obviously not the same types of games that have historically sold well at retail.

So now there are basically 5 types of PC games that can make money:

1) Traditional, high-end, high-quality retail-oriented games (i.e. Doom, Quake, Half-Life, AoE, etc.) But revenue for these is declining. Most existing franchises are looking to console-primary SKUs to support their large budgets. And new franchises in this area are VERY hard to find (perhaps The Movies will break through).

2) Traditional, low-quality, retail oriented budget-ware. The endless low-budget tycoon games and the like. Made for a song, with either a clever theme or license as a hook. Quality is usually low (there's no marketplace reward for high quality for these games).

3) MMORPGs. Still booming, obviously. Success outside of high-fantasy settings is still questionable.

4) Casual games (i.e. Bejewelled, Zuma, etc.) Growing very fast. Budgets are small, but games must still be high quality, as marketplace is very competitive, and consumers almost always use try-before-you-buy models (so poor quality games will be 'try-ed' but not 'buy-ed'.

5) Serious games/ad-ware. Games that don't make money by consumers paying for them, but rather, by a commercial entity paying for their development (i.e. adware), or a governmental-type entity paying for them for training and/or advocacy reasons. Covers everything from $5,000 Flash games to $5 million America's Army type games. Growing big-time at the moment.

[Charles]

I think you hit something with the 'low-quality' idea. Except, it doesn't have to mean low-quality, just low production values. And there will eventually be a larger market for that on PC, as more and more would-be developers fail to find the funding for a console project, due to the high production costs in order to be competitive.

Consider a game like Fate, which is absolutely fantastic, but was made with only a handful of people and a very small budget. Coupling these games with digital distribution is great because it cuts a lot of costs (and requirements) out of the loop.

These low-budget titles will allow for continued pc development, just on a smaller scale. It'll be the play ground for the indie devs too.

[RickH]

Digital Distribution is already having a big impact, it's just not being felt in 'traditional' PC games (i.e. FPS, RTS, etc.)

Good point, I was clearly locked into "retail" thinking. But the MMO games provide ongoing value (we hope) in exchange for ongoing payments. There's a parallel for the consumer, online payment for online content. If MMO publishers could get beyond the "buy in" requirement of a retail package and give away the client software online, retailers would have even less reason to care about PC software.

With regard to casual gaming, I think it's closer to the "impulse buy" that a legal music download can be. $10-$20 versus $40-$60 is a big deal. I know I'm outside of my interent comfort level when I'm ordering more than about $30 of stuff online.

Oddly enough, I've been disappointed by the "deluxe" (i.e., for money) versions of casual games the couple of times I've tried them. Both Zuma and Bejeweled were less fun than the demos, Zuma in particular seemed less focused. It's got to be hard to balance between hooking potential buyers and holding something back to reward them once they come across.

[metta]

I recently switched to a Mac desktop, fulltime, and picked up a Nintendo DS. On the PC, I feel like I've been playing the same 2-3 games for the last seven years. The same RTS, the same FPS, and the same RPG; just with newer and chunkier engines.

Age of Empires III, 2005, and the troop AI still can't do things that Total Annihilation was doing eight years ago. I've had it. I'm tired of paying for engine upgrades.

The only 'PC' game I play anymore is WoW (and I play that perfectly well on the Mac). Otherwise I'm fiddling with the DS, and having a blast.

[zabuni]

Consider a game like Fate, which is absolutely fantastic, but was made with only a handful of people and a very small budget. Coupling these games with digital distribution is great because it cuts a lot of costs (and requirements) out of the loop.


With regard to casual gaming, I think it's closer to the "impulse buy" that a legal music download can be. $10-$20 versus $40-$60 is a big deal. I know I'm outside of my interent comfort level when I'm ordering more than about $30 of stuff online.

I'd have to say this is the primary reason I bought Fate, which was the last PC game I purchased. It was cheap, ran on my puny laptop, and allowed me to try it out before I bought it. The $20 led to a low threshold for impulse buying.

[steve]

World of WarCraft has depressed the market. If you put its revenue--and that of the other MMOs--in the PC game revenue bin, there would be no decline. And if Half-Life 2 did a signifcant percentage of its sales via Steam, that also wouldn't be counted in these totals.

Since retail has little interest in PC gaming, PC gaming needs to be less fixated on retail.

[Midnight Son]

There is still a box sold for every copy of WOW, right? So that's valid. So is the point that people playing WOW might not be buying any other games since they get so much out of their monthly membership. HL2 copies sold directly should be added in, but are they giving the figures? I believe that overall, PC game sales continue to decline and that Vista will make it worse.

[Xemu]

The PC market will always be alive and kicking as long as people need PCs for lots of other things. I think the core analysis is that specialty shop shelf space is edging out PC titles for console titles, which is reasonable given their business models. Most PC titles move through places like Best Buy, Fry's, and Walmart now. Plus I think the insights on all the non-retail PC game revenue sources (MMOs and direct-sales niche sites) are dead on.

Battlefront and Matrix may not have anywhere near the volume of a "real" publisher but I'm sure they get more profit per sale.

To me as a gamer, what matters is that the kinds of games I want to play are still being made. Whether they are on PC only or also console is kind of irrelevant. I don't see that going away on the high end (Oblivion, Civ 4, FEAR) or the more niche market games (Combat Mission, Space Empires, Decisive Battles).

[steve]

There is still a box sold for every copy of WOW, right? So that's valid. So is the point that people playing WOW might not be buying any other games since they get so much out of their monthly membership. HL2 copies sold directly should be added in, but are they giving the figures? I believe that overall, PC game sales continue to decline and that Vista will make it worse.
Retail sales may decline, but revenue might be up. World of WarCraft alone could be generating the difference.

And yes, the theory a lot of people have presented, including the head of EA, is that World of WarCraft has reduced sales across the board. It monopolizes people's time, as well as their money. (And that's true to some extent of all MMOs.)

Valve does not release figures for Steam. People I've spoken with have thrown out numbers in the millions, while others say it's less. It's only one game, so at most it could probably only add $25-$100 million to the total. But if you also add every other direct download site--and consider that Sony is now offering all of its EverQuest expansions as downloads--it's not unreasonable to say you're making up that 12% decline with direct download sales that aren't counted in these totals.

(Of course I'm assuming that PWC is using NPD's sales tracking. They often break out online gaming into its own category, so they just be considering "regular" games.)

[Joe O'Malley]

I come at this from the direction of a marketer/sales/consumer viewpoint. My take is a little different from most of those here. Here's what I think of diminished PC sales. Explanations below:

1. Lowest common denominator wins.

2. Access breeds success.

3. Reputation=survival.

1. In 1993 CompuServ and GEnie were the two largest online services. By 2000 neither one of them existed in real form any more. AOL came along with bright, pretty screens and buttons that took you where you wanted to go. Compared to the tty commands you had to type in with Compuserv it was a dream for the technical illiterati, who until that time had not seriously ventured online. Four years later AOL had destroyed the competition and become a major corporation in its' own right.

PC games are not as accessible as consoles. Some console games may require a little complicated button-mashing, but overall they are simple to learn and play. They are also mostly easy to put down, not requiring you to finish a mission or reach a save point that may be hours off. They do often have save-points or missions, but these tend to be much faster or more focused than their PC equivalents.

PCs cost more than consoles, so people don't buy them. Most casual Americans have PCs that are several years old and can't be used to play newer games. Consoles, no matter the age, all have their games written for that platform, so there are no fears of compatability when buying a console game.

There are obviously many more arguments that support this point, but I think you get what I'm saying.

2. Access breeds Success. In the early 90s most towns didn't really have many/any big-box retailers like Best Buy or Wal-Mart. Smaller, specialty stores would carry games from wherever they could get them, including local suppliers. The appearance and subsequent success of the big boxes has destroyed the distribution channel for smaller game companies, forcing them to rely on profit-eroding distribution deals and internet sales for their product. Additonally, the big boxes typically have very limited shelf space for this type of product, much less than a specialty store might have provided. Getting good exposure for your game is much tougher now.

By comparison, the console market has always had better distribution, since most or all games are made under the sanction of the console company. You still have to make the deal with the console company, but at least you have a distribution channel. The cost of new games are still prohibitive to small companies, but there is probably still a better shot for them with consoles than PCs.

Additionally, the access to the gaming platform needs to be considered. Most homes only have 1-2 computers. Those same homes may have a television set in each person's room. It is MUCH easier to reserve time on a console in your room than to share computer time with the rest of the family. A console is also more affordable than a computer, making it a much more appealing gift item.

Last, consoles are plug-and-play. No fiddling required. PC games often require a level of technical expertise for tweaking drivers or settings or Direct X versions and whotnot. This is a -major- turnoff for the entire casual gaming community, most of which don't know a driver on a computer from a driver in their golf bag.

In short, access is just much better for consoles, on both sides of the equation.

3. Reputation=Survival. While there are some buggy console games (the save feature on the first release of "Morrowind," for example), they are mostly very stable and reliable. PC games, by comparison, are not.

Basically, if you buy a game for your XBox you can have a perfectly reasonable expectation that you can take it home, drop in the disc, and play.

This is not true for PC games. They have a wide variety of hardware/OS/software/speed requirements that may need to be met. Assuming your PC can actually run the game you have just bought there is no reasonable assurance that it will run well out of the box. Just last week Black and White 2 went on sale with major issues that needed to be resolved in a patch that a) was not immediately available on release and b) destroyed all a player's save games when installed. In 1998-2000 you couldn't buy a game from Sierra or Microprose and have a decent chance of it running properly without 1-3 patches.

PC games have a horrid reputation compared to console games. Many parents won't even consider buying a PC game as a gift, because even the names can be confusing. How many copies of Warcraft 3 variants, Warcraft Battlechests, etc. were sold at Christmas last year to parents thinking they were getting WoW for their kids? I was in Best Buy one day last year and saw 3 people in as many minutes starting to make that same mistake. Those same parents will buy a console game, though. generally, within the same platform, they feel safer with making sure they got "the right one," and knowing it has a better chance of working than a PC game. Older versions of the game will often be for an older version of the console, amking the choice easier and safer.

An additional problem is that most consumers don't identify games by the brand of the company selling them, but by the platform it runs on. Thus, it isn't an Activision Mech game, it's an XBox Mech game. Age of Empires isn't an Ensemble Game, it's a PC game. This is a real problem for software houses, who work hard for a good reputation, only to inadvertantly come under scruitny due to problems with system compatibility or past sins of other "PC" game makers.

In short, people don't trust PC games, for many valid reasons. Some invalid reasons, to be sure, but the issue is trust. It doesn't matter if the mob burning down your castle is wrong to do it. The fact they feel compelled to do it in the first place due to perceived wrongdoing is much more important.

There will be standouts, sure. Some things consoles just can't do that well yet. WoW is a great example of a game that takes great advantage of the advantages a PC can give. Honestly, though, those games are few and far between. Worse, when a hot game like WoW comes along it tends to take away from the rest of the market by reducing the amount of gaming dollars a gamer needs to aprt with over the year, further robbing the PC of ordnance in the war with the consoles.

In the key areas or access, convenience and confidence the PC games just lose out. It wasn't such a big deal when consoles were more limited platforms. But consoles are becoming more sophisticated and multi-purpose with each generation. Internet access, new types of controllers, more actions that can be taken by the player and, of course, vastly improving sound and visual capability and going to make consoles the inevitable platform of choice for casual gamers.

[Jason Becker]

Since this "analysts" total reasearch probably consisted of looking at the standard NPD retail sales numbers these conslusions are worthless. They don't incluse MMO fee's or online sales like HL2 through STEAM.

The PC gaming world is starting to change. I'd suggest these "analysts" get off their lazy asses and do some real research.

[DeepT]

There is a lot more to it then that, look at the negatives on the console side.

1. TVs < Monitors. Maybe this will change in the not to distant future, but seeing the same image on a montor vs TV illustraits the HUGE quality difference.

2. The human-machine interface for Consols sucks compared to a PC. The design games around controllers opposed to just designing the game and figuring out the rest later. Yes for games like super monkey ball or soul caliber 2 a game pad is far better. However, for RTS games, FPS games, and RPG games, keyboard + mouse is vastly better.

3. Game depth is hindered greatly by lack of resources on consoles. Do you think KOTOR II would have had such modularized tiny areas if it was a PC game? The worlds you explored would have been much bigger just by using average PC specs opposed to XBOX or PS2 specs.


When the day comes that people are willing to fork out 800 bucks for a console that has plenty of resources such as ram and hard drives, and they solve the human-machine interface problems to allow any kind of games to be played equally well on consoles as well as PCs, and finally when everyone us using a display device that is equally good for a PC as well as a console, then yes, PC gaming will be in trouble then.


What I really see happening, however, is that PCs and Consoles will merge. Either consoles will end up doing everything PCs do, or PCs will being to do everything consoles do. They both will proabbly move toward each other and just at some point people will just feel there is almost no difference between the two.

[Shadarr]

Since this "analysts" total reasearch probably consisted of looking at the standard NPD retail sales numbers these conslusions are worthless. They don't incluse MMO fee's or online sales like HL2 through STEAM.

The PC gaming world is starting to change. I'd suggest these "analysts" get off their lazy asses and do some real research.
That was my initial thought. It sounds exactly like the kind of baseless suppositions we used to hear from Gartner during the .com boom. None of them came true, but by the time there were real metrics to refute Gartner's made-up five year projections, they'd just moved on to making up numbers for the next five years.

[Tom McNamara]

When the day comes that people are willing to fork out 800 bucks for a console that has plenty of resources such as ram and hard drives, and they solve the human-machine interface problems to allow any kind of games to be played equally well on consoles as well as PCs, and finally when everyone us using a display device that is equally good for a PC as well as a console, then yes, PC gaming will be in trouble then.

People already are paying that much for 360 preorders. Premium Pack, plus extra controller, a small handful of $60 games, extra wireless battery, charge and play kit, "advanced AV" cables, then sales tax and possibly shipping.

And of course, buyers have been talking a lot about how they got extra (eBay) units because there's supposed to be a production shortage at launch. I found myself quite appreciative of this aspect of human nature when I went looking for a place to pre-order a few weeks ago. Asstards.

[Charles]

There is a lot more to it then that, look at the negatives on the console side.

2. The human-machine interface for Consols sucks compared to a PC. The design games around controllers opposed to just designing the game and figuring out the rest later. Yes for games like super monkey ball or soul caliber 2 a game pad is far better. However, for RTS games, FPS games, and RPG games, keyboard + mouse is vastly better.

3. Game depth is hindered greatly by lack of resources on consoles. Do you think KOTOR II would have had such modularized tiny areas if it was a PC game? The worlds you explored would have been much bigger just by using average PC specs opposed to XBOX or PS2 specs.


There's a lot of people who would argue that console controllers are better for most applications, and I'm in agreement. Except for games that outright need a mouse, console controllers are superior. Why? Because it's a standardized interface, and it requires developers to be intelligent about their interface choices. Some people believe that using every key on a keyboard is good design; the opposite is true. The fewer keys you use, the better your interface is.

3 is just outright false. The only reason consoles don't have huge sprawling worlds... is because some developers chose not to have them. If a game is designed from the ground up to have streaming level loads, there's no reason the world has to be broken in to parts at all. That was true on the PS1, and it remains true on the next gen systems. If you want to argue that console games don't have huge sprawling worlds, I'd suggest you check out a little game known as GTA3 (or one of its variants). And conversely, there are plenty of PC games that have all their shit broken down in to levels for no good reason. It comes down to developer choice, and whether or not they want to put the work in.

[Joe O'Malley]

There is a lot more to it then that, look at the negatives on the console side.

1. TVs < Monitors. Maybe this will change in the not to distant future, but seeing the same image on a montor vs TV illustraits the HUGE quality difference.
---SNIP---

When the day comes that people are willing to fork out 800 bucks for a console that has plenty of resources such as ram and hard drives, and they solve the human-machine interface problems to allow any kind of games to be played equally well on consoles as well as PCs, and finally when everyone us using a display device that is equally good for a PC as well as a console, then yes, PC gaming will be in trouble then.


What I really see happening, however, is that PCs and Consoles will merge. Either consoles will end up doing everything PCs do, or PCs will being to do everything consoles do. They both will proabbly move toward each other and just at some point people will just feel there is almost no difference between the two.

When I was taking my mandatory marketing classes one of the great examples they liked to use was a laundry detergent ad. This detergent company said that at a microscopic level their product cleaned better than the competition. The trouble with making the ad, however, was that there was no visible difference between a shirt washed in their brand or "brand x." Basicallly, the product might have been better, but no one could tell enough of a difference to justify buying it over the competitor. The detergent company had placed themselves in the position of relying on a distinction that casual laundy-washers couldn't perceive.

As an example, let me use Morrowind again. I originally played it on the XBox, and thought it looked great. When I eventually played it on the PC I was stunned by the difference in graphics quality. HOWEVER, 99% of the population that played in on the XBOX never would have bothered to try the PC verion afterwards. Flatly said, the graphics difference wasn't important. Also, a number of the genres that are alive and well on the console but not so much on the PC emphasis big character models that don't require the level of detail of the little miniature units so often found in staple PC genres like RTS, turn-based strategy, etc. as a result, they can actually sometimes look better to the untrained eye than the smaller, darker PC equivalents.

The advantages of the PC are there, no doubt. But compared to cost and convenience and ease of use and reliability it takes a back seat. An $850 Xbox sounds expensive (actually it sounds damn expensive), but even an expensive console will be perfectly good for 3-5 years. A high-end PC shows it's age after just 1-2 years, and a "shelf standard" PC ages even faster. factored over the life of the machine, assuming the console gets good use, it's not a bad comparative investment. Especially since you'll probably never have to upgrade the console, vs. semi-annual upgrades to the PC (a hassle as well as an expense, and technically challenging to lay people to boot).

My original caveat was that I was looking at this from the eyes of a consumer. I am well aware of the advantages of PCs, as probably is anyone who reads this forum. The point is that it doesn't really so much matter what we know, as what the public either a) does not know (like technical work-arounds for game problems-most of them probably never even know that patches are available, for instance) or b) what they perceive (3 of their last 5 PC games didn't run well out of the box, but 5 of 5 of their last console games did).

[steve]

An $850 Xbox sounds expensive (actually it sounds damn expensive), but even an expensive console will be perfectly good for 3-5 years. A high-end PC shows it's age after just 1-2 years, and a "shelf standard" PC ages even faster.
I don't disagree with your points, but since you're looking at this from the eyes of a presumably less-savvy consumer, how would they know that a PC ages in 1-2 years? Wouldn't they just say, "This is a kick-ass machine," then find out a few years later that it chokes on DOOM 6?

And honestly, only the hardcore PC gamers even understand performance and frame rate issues. The less savvy gamer probably uses default settings, which generally don't pose much of a problem for most systems built in the last 3-4 years because they don't default to 1600x1200 with 4x AA and 8x AF enabled. They're usually 800x600 with medium detail.

I think you'll also find that less savvy people aren't really all that hip to what constitutes a "poorly running" game. 10FPS of cool graphics is only a problem to someone who understands technology and knows that 60FPS is better.

[Shadarr]

What I really see happening, however, is that PCs and Consoles will merge. Either consoles will end up doing everything PCs do, or PCs will being to do everything consoles do. They both will proabbly move toward each other and just at some point people will just feel there is almost no difference between the two.
I don't see that at all. I see the consoles trying to become mediacenters/DVRs, and the desktop PC being replaced by portable devices like laptops and cellphones. The types of things most people need a PC for (word processing and internet) don't need very much processing power, comparitively. That can be accomplished with a bottom-of-the-line laptop or a Mac Mini. In a few years, it might be something you only need a PDA for.

I also don't see a big push to get word processing and email on the consoles. There are enough other devices doing that that it's not a real selling point for a game machine.

[Charles]

An $850 Xbox sounds expensive (actually it sounds damn expensive), but even an expensive console will be perfectly good for 3-5 years. A high-end PC shows it's age after just 1-2 years, and a "shelf standard" PC ages even faster.
I don't disagree with your points, but since you're looking at this from the eyes of a presumably less-savvy consumer, how would they know that a PC ages in 1-2 years? Wouldn't they just say, "This is a kick-ass machine," then find out a few years later that it chokes on DOOM 6?

And honestly, only the hardcore PC gamers even understand performance and frame rate issues. The less savvy gamer probably uses default settings, which generally don't pose much of a problem for most systems built in the last 3-4 years because they don't default to 1600x1200 with 4x AA and 8x AF enabled. They're usually 800x600 with medium detail.

I think you'll also find that less savvy people aren't really all that hip to what constitutes a "poorly running" game. 10FPS of cool graphics is only a problem to someone who understands technology and knows that 60FPS is better.

I used to think that, but playing WoW with my girlfriend showed me I was wrong. She's not really a gamer, and she knows jack shit about computers, but I got her playing WoW. At first she was playing on her laptop, which was able to run it on low settings at about 20-25 FPS most of the time, but it wasn't good enough for her. She couldn't stand all the 'lag and stuttering' as she called it.

I ended up having to give her my second pc which is a P4 2.8ghz with a 9800pro.

Fact of the matter is, they may not really know what's out there, but they know when they don't like it.

[BooTx]

10 FPS will make anybody's eyes fall out of their head.

[DeepT]

Charles: 3 isn't outright false. Limited memory / resoruces in general is EXACTLY WHY. What gameplay advantage in Kotor was there to have the Jedi Enclave world (I forget its name) sliced up into several 'zones' ? Why not seamlessly let you walk from the landing pad to the back of the cave where the spiders were? Why so many loads?

Don't even try and tell me its because the devlopers could have easily done it that way, but for some other mysterious reasons they chose to do it that way.

In making console games, level size was always an issue. It was drop a few models to get memory back, shrink that room a bit, we need less geometry. In some cases it was like "Split that level into 2 smaller ones".

Sorry dude, but reason 3 is totally valid. Id really like to know where you arrive at this miraculious conclusion that is because the developers chose to do it this way opposed to being forced to do it this way.

Streaming content isn't easy. Also, as you mentioned GTA 3, Ill mention it looks like total ass. Horrable graphics, but yes, its not zoned. Kotor, much nicer graphics, but zoned. I did not say zoneless levels were impossible, just that developers do not make this choice simply because they envision a zoned world. They choose the lesser of two evils. PC developers do not have to make such a choice. Look at WoW, zoneless and beautiful. It runs fine on the average PC. A console game could not even think about doing that.


Joe O'Malley: Your point is valid. If someone played console games and never saw a PC game, then they would not think how much worse it would look.

However, in todays world, how many console gamers have never seen a PC game? Even if they never play PC games, thier friends do. Of course they see all sorts of graphics on PCs every day (most likely) since PCs are used for a lot more then games.

In order for one side to win, it requires the other side to turncoat. So a PC gamer will need to be aware of both consoles and PCs, and then decide they will no longer upgrade thier PC and just spend the money on consoles. In this case the PC gamer will clearly know how games appear on both TV's and monitors.

Finally, on the price, the $800 comment was for the bare-bones console. Not for the console plus bunch of goodies. The idea is this, when a new console comes out that is totally superior to PC hardware, then there will be trouble for the PC market. For example, its uncommon for PCs to have a gig of ram. Now if XBox 360, shipped with 2 gigs of ram, and a phat HDD (lets say 120 gigs), and a graphics chipset equivilent to the nivida 7800 line (or even better), then console developers would not feel as constrained as they do now. It would be like chistmass for them, all the ram and disk space they could ever want, and the hardware is totally standardized. Right now, compare the XBox360 and PS3 to the average PC. They would already be on the "Upgrade very soon" list, and they haven't even come out yet.

[Charles]

Charles: 3 isn't outright false. Limited memory / resoruces in general is EXACTLY WHY. What gameplay advantage in Kotor was there to have the Jedi Enclave world (I forget its name) sliced up into several 'zones' ? Why not seamlessly let you walk from the landing pad to the back of the cave where the spiders were? Why so many loads?

Don't even try and tell me its because the devlopers could have easily done it that way, but for some other mysterious reasons they chose to do it that way.


Actually, I could tell you exactly why they didn't do streaming loads on KOTOR, but it would break my NDA.

I'm not saying there aren't times where there are technical reasons to choose to break things up, but it's not as cut and dried as you think it is. When building an engine from the ground up, you can create it to be streaming, and it doesn't have to look like ass. To say that your point is absolute is to question why PC games have levels at all, and to wonder why any console games have streaming worlds.

I believe one of the Jak games on ps2 had a full streaming world, and it didn't look like ass. For MDK2, we made a streaming load system that was absolutely transparent to the user, and fit it on the dreamcast, for christ sakes.



In making console games, level size was always an issue. It was drop a few models to get memory back, shrink that room a bit, we need less geometry. In some cases it was like "Split that level into 2 smaller ones".

Sorry dude, but reason 3 is totally valid. Id really like to know where you arrive at this miraculious conclusion that is because the developers chose to do it this way opposed to being forced to do it this way.


Level size is an issue on any system, any platform, because you always have memory constraints. But how you choose to approach those limits is up to the developer. Fact of the matter is, yes, breaking a game in to discrete levels is the easy path. But it's not the only path, which is why your argument is baseless. If developers want it, they can do it.

[RickH]

Level size is an issue on any system, any platform, because you always have memory constraints. But how you choose to approach those limits is up to the developer. Fact of the matter is, yes, breaking a game in to discrete levels is the easy path. But it's not the only path, which is why your argument is baseless. If developers want it, they can do it.

"Baseless" seems a bit too harsh here. I've read too many dev interviews/postmortems in which there are bitter words for the least capable of the systems involved in a multi-platform development. I recall the devs of Indiana Jons and the Emperor's Tomb complaining about the constraints imposed by including the PS2. Stranger's Wrath turned out to be impossible to de-hance down to the PS2's level. Vicarious Visions was constantly asked how they were able to thunk Doom 3 down to the console level.

It's hardly controversial to point out that single-platform games can make use of the full measure of what that platform has to offer. R&C and Jak 3 look great, but they used an engine super-optimized to run on the PS2. AoE 3 will use the high resolutions and RAM availability exclusive to the PC. Don't tell me the outcome would be the same if AoE 3 was also an Xbox title.

[steve]

She couldn't stand all the 'lag and stuttering' as she called it.
Had she seen it running on your PC? If so, then she had something to directly compare it to. Without that, she may have just assumed "that's the way it is."

[Desslock]

As Steve indicated, you cannot understate the massive impact of World of WarCraft.

[Charles]

"Baseless" seems a bit too harsh here. I've read too many dev interviews/postmortems in which there are bitter words for the least capable of the systems involved in a multi-platform development. I recall the devs of Indiana Jons and the Emperor's Tomb complaining about the constraints imposed by including the PS2. Stranger's Wrath turned out to be impossible to de-hance down to the PS2's level. Vicarious Visions was constantly asked how they were able to thunk Doom 3 down to the console level.

It's hardly controversial to point out that single-platform games can make use of the full measure of what that platform has to offer. R&C and Jak 3 look great, but they used an engine super-optimized to run on the PS2. AoE 3 will use the high resolutions and RAM availability exclusive to the PC. Don't tell me the outcome would be the same if AoE 3 was also an Xbox title.

Multi-platform titles are a different case. But the fact that multiplatform titles exist still doesn't preclude developers from doing a streaming system. It also doesn't make the original argument any more potent. In fact, I'd say it's actually worse, since a lot of the level based systems in multiplatform games are there... because of the fact that they use PC based engines, which are notorious for being designed with laziness and memory hogging in mind.

[Charles]

She couldn't stand all the 'lag and stuttering' as she called it.
Had she seen it running on your PC? If so, then she had something to directly compare it to. Without that, she may have just assumed "that's the way it is."

See, I'd jump to that conclusion too, but she had some problems with Alice which she'd never played elsewhere, and identified that it wasn't smooth enough. I think from her POV, games should be as smooth as movies.

[DeepT]

You would have to break your NDA for KOTOR, after all this time its still in force? What, do you work for Bioware? Hell all the NDA's I ever signed for game companies that I worked for had a 2 year life, maximum.

[Kevin Grey]

You would have to break your NDA for KOTOR, after all this time its still in force? What, do you work for Bioware? Hell all the NDA's I ever signed for game companies that I worked for had a 2 year life, maximum.

IIRC, Charles used to do soundwork for Bioware.

[Charles]

You would have to break your NDA for KOTOR, after all this time its still in force? What, do you work for Bioware? Hell all the NDA's I ever signed for game companies that I worked for had a 2 year life, maximum.

Knowledge of code and systems and certain corporate knowledge is permanently NDA'd until that knowledge is made public by other means. I was a programmer there.

[Dave Long]

You would have to break your NDA for KOTOR, after all this time its still in force? What, do you work for Bioware? Hell all the NDA's I ever signed for game companies that I worked for had a 2 year life, maximum.

IIRC, Charles used to do soundwork for Bioware.

You're thinking of my long, lost nemesis, DaveC.

Charles post confirms it, but it was pretty clear he was a programmer. :)

--Dave

[Jonathan Blow]

Multi-platform titles are a different case. But the fact that multiplatform titles exist still doesn't preclude developers from doing a streaming system.

I just find this to be a lame argument. Yeah, you can make a streaming system. But it's much harder to make something streaming than to make it not streaming. (Harder both during development and testing).

So the argument was "resource constraints on consoles are limiting all these games and forcing them to have small levels," and your reply to that is "But the developer could have put in all this extra work and made it stream, they just chose not to!!!" That's crap, because that extra work would have had to come from somewhere, i.e. less work would have gone into other parts of the game.

If the resource limit were not an issue, then they wouldn't have to worry about making things stream. They would just load big levels and everything would be fine -- just like it is on the PC.

So obviously, the resource limit is an issue.

[Charles]

Multi-platform titles are a different case. But the fact that multiplatform titles exist still doesn't preclude developers from doing a streaming system.

I just find this to be a lame argument. Yeah, you can make a streaming system. But it's much harder to make something streaming than to make it not streaming. (Harder both during development and testing).

So the argument was "resource constraints on consoles are limiting all these games and forcing them to have small levels," and your reply to that is "But the developer could have put in all this extra work and made it stream, they just chose not to!!!" That's crap, because that extra work would have had to come from somewhere, i.e. less work would have gone into other parts of the game.

If the resource limit were not an issue, then they wouldn't have to worry about making things stream. They would just load big levels and everything would be fine -- just like it is on the PC.

So obviously, the resource limit is an issue.

Resource limits are *always* an issue, it doesn't matter the platform. It's just how the developers choose to deal with those limits that matters.

Anyway, even if you choose to say that the 'limits' of the console result in that kind of issue... well, it won't be an 'issue' with the next gen consoles cause they all have plenty of ram. Which is the only thing that was stopping consoles from just loading big inefficient levels before.

The only reason this is a problem at all is because a generation of sloppy-ass PC programmers decided to make console games.

[RobotPants]

Out of all my friends with PS2s and Xboxes and whatnot who don't also have good PCs to play games on, there's not a single one of them who has ever complained about framerate issues or how the resolution is too low. If the game's fun and it's not ugly, they'll enjoy it. Saying that consoles are inferior gaming platforms to PCs just because of the difference in tech specs just doesn't apply to most people.

I think all Charles is trying to say is that DeepT's overly simplified explanation that the lack of depth in console games is directly related to the console's technical abilities is just not completely true. Sure, games designed for consoles have to be made within the boundaries of the the hardware, but to say that all console games suffer because of it is just wrong. I've had many fantastic gaming experiences on consoles and many on my PC as well. Playing games on each is a totally different experience, but it has nothing to do with the differences in the hardware.

[Kevin Grey]

You're thinking of my long, lost nemesis, DaveC.

Charles post confirms it, but it was pretty clear he was a programmer. :)

--Dave

That's right! I forgot though I do remember Charles mentioning doing work for Bioware in his previous posts.

[Mark Asher]

Since this "analysts" total reasearch probably consisted of looking at the standard NPD retail sales numbers these conslusions are worthless. They don't incluse MMO fee's or online sales like HL2 through STEAM.

The PC gaming world is starting to change. I'd suggest these "analysts" get off their lazy asses and do some real research.

The NPD numbers are a pretty good metric of the overall health of the traditional PC game industry, though. Sure, WoW and maybe HL2 might account for the missing revenue, but that just means we'll see fewer games developed for the PC. This is not good news for PC game fans who enjoy variety and a continuing stream of new games to play.

I'm not even convinced that the MMO market is all that healthy in terms of offering variety. Who can compete with WoW?

[Charles]

I'm not even convinced that the MMO market is all that healthy in terms of offering variety. Who can compete with WoW?

Anyone willing to make a game that doesn't appeal to the catass sector will not only compete with WoW and other current offerings, but absolutely dominate them.

[Mark Asher]

I'm not even convinced that the MMO market is all that healthy in terms of offering variety. Who can compete with WoW?

Anyone willing to make a game that doesn't appeal to the catass sector will not only compete with WoW and other current offerings, but absolutely dominate them.

You mean like Planetside? An MMO that doesn't require a big time investment? I guess Guild Wars might be another game that fits your description.

I don't think of WoW as being a giant timesink, really. Getting to level 60 doesn't take that long. Getting epic gear, yes, that's a bit of a timesink, but you don't really need it.

Anyway, players like spending time in the game world in MMOs. That makes the monthly fee acceptable. If you design an MMO where players only need to play a few hours a week to advance, I think the monthly fee will be a hard sell. I'm also not sure how an MMO that doesn't have catass elements will hold up for the core MMO audience, which enjoys spending a lot of time in the game.

[Charles]

You mean like Planetside? An MMO that doesn't require a big time investment? I guess Guild Wars might be another game that fits your description.


Except planetside isn't very accessible, especially considering how long it can take to actually *do* anything, and Guild Wars just isn't very good, and has the same failings as many other MMOs.

I'm also not sure how an MMO that doesn't have catass elements will hold up for the core MMO audience, which enjoys spending a lot of time in the game.

Of course you aren't, because you haven't seen one, and no one has done it, because everyone takes the stance of "I don't know how you'd do it without the catass factor".

One day, someone will, and they are going to not only make a lot of money, but make everything else look like crap.

Oh, and you missed my main point.

a game that doesn't appeal to the catass sector

[Mark Asher]

Ok, but what kind of game can you make that doesn't appeal to the catass sector but will make other people pay $15/month to play it? The catass sector is your core market. If you're not going to sell to them, you have a lot of work to do.

[Charles]

Of course. Making games is hard. But that won't stop someone from doing it.

[Hetzer]

It´s real easy to me.

As long as most of the games i want to play come up for the pc i play with the PC. (Civ 4, Homm5, Ufo Aftershock etc.)

When the balance shift to the console i will buy a console....

Happend all the time. My first comp was the C64. Then i shifted to Apple because cool RPG´s (wizardry) and strategicals were coming out for Apple and not for c64.

Then i shifted to the Atari ST for the same reasons, got after that an Amiga and then finally a PC. I believe i had an Sega Mega Drive because of the Advanced Military Simulator in between.

So i will happily wait what the futur brings on.

[Gordon Cameron]

My first comp was the C64. Then i shifted to Apple because cool RPG´s (wizardry) and strategicals were coming out for Apple and not for c64.

C'mon, all the Ultimas (through VI), the whole slate of SSI RPG's during the 80s, and numerous others came out for the C64. On the strategy side we had Lords of Conquest, Colonial Conquest, Storm Across Europe, Modem Wars to name a few. It wasn't all shoot em ups you know. :)

[BlindSwordsman]

You would have to break your NDA for KOTOR, after all this time its still in force? What, do you work for Bioware? Hell all the NDA's I ever signed for game companies that I worked for had a 2 year life, maximum.

IIRC, Charles used to do soundwork for Bioware.

You're thinking of my long, lost nemesis, DaveC.

Charles post confirms it, but it was pretty clear he was a programmer. :)

--Dave

Well I have heard some not-too-shining things (http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=21956&start=0) about Charles so I'm not sure it's a good idea to get your hopes up on what he says. For someone worried about breaking NDA’s all the time, he sure does talk a lot of shit.

LOL, sorry Charles, I could not resist that one.

Anyway, I also do not agree with Charles extremes statements about 3 being outright false but these limitations have surprising little impact on the mass consumer. Consoles to date have generally been more limited then PCs - that is fact that really cannot be disputed if you compare hardware specs from year to year. However, limits can often force developers to make improvements/optimizations in code. Thus, console developers have learned to overcome many of the constraints by finding tricks to overcome these limits (ie streaming) to the point where the average consumer would probably not be able to tell the difference between a PC game and a console game on technical levels.

In many cases it not that the developers “choose not to” but it’s that they don’t know how to do it or they plan their design poorly and cannot retro fit it into the design further into production. In the end, I believe that the talent of developer outweighs the difference in hardware. The hardware is having less of an impact every subsequent generation.

Pulling it way back on course to declining PC sales, I believe this particular issue has little impact at all on sales. I do agree that PC/Console game will merge or even that hardware platforms will eventually disappear. But that’s another discussion ;).

Blindy.