Opinion: Who Killed PC Gaming?

Many valid reasons, but the entire premise is flawed. I fully understand the distinction and constant use of "...at retail", but when you say "...at retail", you're simply ignoring reality.

Retail is a dated model in the PC space. The only thing that's "killed" PC gaming is the endless bitching and moaning about "x killed PC gaming". It's not just MMOs (and not just WoW) seeing incredible success, but even your standard PC games too. Fallout 3, Call of Duty 4/World at War, Left 4 Dead, and plenty more incredible cross-platform games did great numbers on PC - there aren't solid numbers available, of course, but simple anecdotal evidence and extrapolation from the data we do have says plenty. Whenever a top-tier game has a *simultaneous* release on PCs and consoles, the PC version seems to do pretty damned fine.

Last two arguments:
1) The only dollar numbers we have are for North American retail sales. PC gaming is still far bigger in Europe, especially with publishers like 1C making a killing time and time again.
2) The number of games continuing to come out speaks for itself - http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/games-of-2009/

What, really, is a "death" when 2009 has already been one of the best years of PC gaming in a very long time, and Starcraft II isn't even out yet? Not to mention the countless other holiday releases that are sure to be hits.


People proclaim the death, time after time, year after year, yet the number of games coming out this year, next year, and beyond.

Wow....sorry for that wall of text. Your comments box doesn't particularly like formatting :-)

And sorry for the triple post, but it's worth noting that while console gaming saw tremendous growth last year, literally 99% of that growth came from Nintendo. That's a real number, not an estimation. With Guitar Hero and Rock Band on the PS3/360 as well seeing huge sales, it's incredibly casual games across the board. Great games, but not the hardcore gamer releases that many think. Outside of a few huge sellers like GTA and Gears of War, that console gaming increase is incredibly misleading if you're going to totally ignore non-retail PC releases.

Is this counting total gaming revenue or just box sales? A lot of money comes in nowdays from subscriptions and online sales.

PC game box sales may be down but PC game total revenue and profits is most likely a lot larger than any particular console.

Firstly, I invite everyone to read my first paragraph- PC gaming is not dying but changing in form and there's serious money to be made with online titles; we know and acknowledge that. What we're talking about is a general tendency over the past decade that's not opinion, it's fact. Multiplatform releases on PC don't usually do "pretty damned fine" all of the charts say that the consoles are the lead platforms on sales in the vast majority of cases. Certain sales numbers are certainly lost in the nebulous void of direct downloads that nobody reports, but that's still the way things are. You concentrate on simultaneous releases smithton, failing to mention that when games are ported to the PC later, they typically do very, very poorly. There's tons of games, but there always has been on PC because there's no licensing fee. When id talks about how PC only releases aren't enough to support their games anymore, when Epic purposefully keeps Gears of War 2 from PCs, when GTA IV (the latest in a franchise that used to come to PC first) releases for PC several months after PS3/Xbox 360, that's what we mean about core PC gaming dying. There are still the passionate fans out there, but the numbers suggest those numbers are shrinking. P.S. I apologize for our lack of comment formating. We're working on it.

It's worth noting that the date not only is restricted to retail only, but to US retail only. Worldwide the revenues for PCgaming are growing, even in China and Russia, the warez strongholds sales of legal games are rising by respectively 30% and 50% each year.

I guess it depends on what one considers "core games". I mean, the games that seem to be disappearing from PCgaming are big budgeted mainstream games, those a bit on the shallow side. Basically mostly FPSes. The reasons you've listed aren't responsible for decline of PCgaming (as on a whole worldwide it is rising), but for slowed down growth of userbase. Simply put costs were rising faster than sales. It's even worse on consoles (both development costs and especially marketing costs are much much higher), but it's still a big problem on PC.
If you take a look at who "switched" to console side you will find mostly the big boys, the giants on industry. When a smaller company tried it (like Taldren, Revolutions, Iron Lore or ION Storm) they almost always failed. We've reached the point when only a huge companies can survive on consoles and even they can't do it alone (notice how independent developers are almost extinct on consoles? Everyone was bought out or went bankrupt).
However this isn't all that bad. Because during the period that plenty of people who complain about "PCgaming dying" consider as golden era wasn't such for many older players.Sure, 7-10 years ago we were getting all those exclusive PC FPSes, but at the same time most of typically PCish genres, like simulators, adventure, 4X, puzzle or wargames were simply almost dead. The big games killed them. And those genres are the blood and soul of pcgaming, not FPSes which came a decade after those genres ruled our hobby. Today when huge companies switched to consoles there's suddenly a lot less competition in PCgaming, because even if the developers release PC versions, PCgamers don't care for it as much as for PC exclusives (best example: STALKER completely spanked Bioshock PC in sales, despite having nowhere near as big hype, marketing campaign or even review scores). And this void has been filled with niche companies. Companies that can't afford to make $20+ mln budgeted megaproductions, but thanks to that they can afford to make smaller games that cater to specific niches. That's why adventure games are so plentiful nowadays, why we have so many puzzle and wargames to play with, why we're witnessing the resurgence of simulation genre. We wouldn't be having any of that if it wasn't for consoles "stealing our developers"

In my personal opinion, titles being released exclussively for console are a big part of the downturn of PC gaming. Attitude like "we won't release Gears of War 2 on PC because PC games get pirated" is just basically a joke. If I remember correctly, pirated versions of the Xbox360 version of the game were available for download even before the game's official release date. I think publishers are were getting greedy with pricing of PC games, all at the asme price point as their console versions, or a mere $10 cheaper. The sale of one PC game (even at $10 less) makes the publisher much more profit than a console version because there are no licensing fees, etc. PC Games could and should be priced 30-40% lower than their console versions with the same profit margins. After all, PC Gamers easily have to spend double the cost of a high-end model Xbox360 or PS3, to build a system that is be able to play at the same quality (probably a bit less these days, but that was easily true at the time when these consoles were first released). And finally, I think my final valid point should be the resale value of a game. Gamers can easily re-sell a used, recently released console title for 60-70% or more of its original value. This doesn't work well with PC games when you have to worry about transfering ownership of the 'key,' or installation limitations (aka DRM). This is also another reason why PC games should have a much lower initial price-point; once you buy it, it's yours for good.

Rise of laptops

bs, ignore the craptops, there is a lot of unused power out there. just make a game that push regular crap like this to the limit b( 8800GT / 9800GT / 2GB / 3GHZ Core2) ( 10 times any console toy) so yes, stop crying, work your lazy asses ( but not like cryless, use
my fkin resources wisely, baseline? 720p + 30 fps. thanks fuckers


DRM true!


piracy. BS what about consoles? pirate heaven. the truth is this money hungry scumbags like consoles so much because they can get away doing lame stuff like charging for "keys" and "upgrades" " downloable content" ( the name use to be mods. they where FREE) "microtransactions" " shitty peripherals" " broken hardware" exploiting the ignorance of the regular dumbass that just dsnt know any better.


Hardware Issues

XD XD XD !!!!
BS. what issues? There are no issues. My 3.2 ghz e6600 ( 2006 buy) still crushes any console game out there, the xbox2 btw ( 360 launch) still has horrible dead problems till this friking day! XD hilarious ( also the ps3 "blu ray" > dead in a year of use > fix pay 150! and that was a 600 launch console!) PRICELESS ja-ja-ja a love those neogaf threads full of scamed console kidies crying salty tears " lulz pc gaming sucz balls the counfy couch"
"O NOE MY CONSOLE EXPLODED" "BUAAAAAAAAA!" XD !!!!!!


IMO biggest problem? the business model. Lower the prices dipshit, i dont care how, find a way. ALSO Make games for everybody not only the virginal NEOGAF nerd. expand the market A BIT.

AND Xbox 360 didnt kill nothing. Ruined a lot of games? YES! ( bioshock im looking at you) i have a lot of CRAPFEST 360 games (pc) superior version.



Windows Vista true. I have a dx 10.1 gpu. im rocking windows xp. fu microsoft. you are not going to push crap dowN my throat


YOU ARE FORGETTING ABOUT GAMES FOR WINDOWS LIVE. STOP PUSHING THAT BLOATED CRAP! MS! GOOGLE PLEASE COME TO THE RESCUE OPENGL FOR THE WIN!!!!!

Great article! I think the #1 culprit is the rise of the "multiplatform release," magnified over the past several years. It's a "problem" that affects all the gaming platforms, but it hurts the PC most of all due to a high-cost barrier to access for capable PC gaming rigs. As prices come down for current-gen systems, gamers will opt to pay less money for the same experiences they can find on their PCs, albeit with slightly lower resolution (given the success of the Wii, that doesn't seem to matter much to the average consumer regardless).

That said, as others have noted, PC gaming will remain a viable industry as long as developers are dedicated to releasing gaming experiences that have a notable place on the platform (e.g., RTS games) or take advantage of a PC's unique capabilities.

I remember the "glory" days of the late 90s (which, as Adrian points out wasn't necessarily the case as even then many classic PC genres were dying), and it's too bad that consoles have become so dominant. I've got no problem with them per se; I love my PS3 and only a good PC keeps me from wanting a 360, but the biggest problem is that consoles just can't provide the sense of community that the PC platform did. I remember the Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike communities, which went far beyond the actual games - you had IRC, forums, mapping communities, community-run leagues and tournaments, and more. There were genuine communities, and you might know hundreds of players. Xbox Live is pretty good for matchmaking, but it just can't give you that comprehensive experience, and the result is that the "communities" on consoles tend to be very immature and not close-knit if you're not playing with real life friends (this has been my experience with Halo and COD4). Nowadays its hard to find a good community outside of MMORPGs, which is why I generally avoid online games. On the other hand, there are still plenty of quality PC games out there, including most Triple-A titles, so it's not all bad for single-player fans.

I have noticed over the past 5 years that there are hardly no games that stay pc exclusive anymore, barring mmo's and the occasionally super pc required entrants like Crysis. After seeing trailers for games like Farcry, Painkiller, Half-Life 2 and Fear several years ago at E3, I kept hoping they would all eventually get released for consolse. And thats exactly what happened. Theres still money to be made on pc gaming in certain aspects(mmo's, Steam, etc), but the pc gaming landscape as a whole isn't what it was 5-10 years ago.

The writers of this article are retarded. The so-called 'death' relies on sales data. THERE IS NO SOLID SALES DATA.

Quoting:

"Anyone thinking that PC gaming is declining because of that [I]pathetic[/I] piece of 'research' has to have about as much insight as a particularly retarded wallnut.

http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/games-of-2009/

and there's no solid statistics showing the amount of money people put into PC games. Retail sales are the old way of buying software for PC gamers. It's like we're using email and everyone else is still fucking around with mail boxes and stamps.

Retail data, that is data from physical stores on the street, don't include sales on:
- Steam
- Impulse
- Blizzard Downloader
- EA Store
- Amazon Games & Software Downloader
- MMORPGs paid for electronically
- Independent dev sites [like www.illwinter.com ; www.bit-blot.com]
- www.terragame.com
- direct2drive.com
- gog.com
- terragame.com
- egames.com
- gamersgate.co.uk
- gamelibrary.org
- downloads.uk.pogo.com
- games2download.com
- lilgames.com
- ebgames.com

They may as well decry the death of communication via text because stamp sales have slumped. Retards."

Also, your webiste's comment system sucks ass. It can't parse line breaks.

Sarah pretty much hit the nail on the head. I just wanted to add that PC gaming will never die. It's been "dieing" for the better part of 10 years now. PC games have superior visuals, superior controls, superior customization, superior multiplayer, superior community, player-made mods, skins, maps, etc. Consoles are for the casual computer illiterate user. I agree that Microsoft has only hurt PC gaming in general the past few years, and yes DRM and limited installs can suck, but piracy is a cop-out used by devs to make excuses for poor ports and poor sales. It's true something needs to be done about piracy in general, but don't make it a PC-exclusive issue. Piracy is a problem for consoles too.

Truth is that something has happened to the PC Gaming market. A lot of titles that 10 years ago would surely have been published on the PC are now console only. Now, it's a matter of opinion whether that is a good thing or not. I really don't think the PC market is dying, rather it's more focused now; again, it's a matter of opinion whether that's a good or bad thing. However, what you guys are forgetting here is that game companies are businesses, not charity foundations, and as long as they see profit to remain in the PC market, they'll stay. Some of the big name titles haven't been ported or released for the PC due to business reasons, bee it piracy or installed base or whatever. It really makes no difference, I'm sure every company has a different set of reasons for not coming out on PC. The point is that it's business and profits what's changing the PC games market.

You seem to have forgotten one of the most important factors. Slotting fees, guaranteed sales, distributors

To add on to that, and i was hoping that this be introduced as one of the culprits. PC Game delays when multi-platform titles are announced. PC versions get delayed 5months to a year, most of us also have consoles, and then when those games finally arrive on pc they have been played to bits, then they complain that they do not make any sales, i think its kinda dumb, those games wont make money because 75% of the people already played them months ago on thier 360's and PS3's

Look, you can try to justify this article with as many constraints and "buts" as you want, but the fact is that the article, in the end, is nothing but a cry for hits and attention. When you need to qualify your statements so much, it quckly reveals how baseless the premise is. Fact is, you combined every console together and compared them against hopelessly incomplete pc sales data. Why would you pretend that console sales are combined together as if the companies share revenue, instead of displaying the reality where ps3, 360, wii, ps2, and ds are not added together? Because, of course, your arguements are already weak as it is.

To quote DARUKU:

"bs, ignore the craptops"
Unfortunately, we can't. As much as PC gamers such as myself scoff at laptops with integrated graphics, its incredibly difficult to argue against laptop sales numbers (such as netbooks), and even desktop sales. PC computer manufacturers have started to figure out that if you give the 'average' consumer a choice between better capabilities at a higher price, vs giving up the ability to play Crysis and saving hundreds of dollars, the majority of people will opt to save money. This goes hand-in-hand with:

"Hardware Issues BS. what issues? There are no issues. My 3.2 ghz e6600 ( 2006 buy) still crushes any console game out there"
Good for you. So does my Core i7. But since so many people are buying netbooks with Atom + GMA945 and desktops with Pentium Dual Core + HD3200, they're going to run into problems. Hell, my computer exceeds all requirements for everything out there at the moment and I still hit glitches and crashes. True, all of the consoles have had (and some still do) issues, but that's because something breaks. When things aren't broken, you stick the disc in and play, that's all there is to it. Nothing is broken on my computer and the game still doesn't run perfectly every time.

"piracy. BS what about consoles?"
This is a huge issue. Even with the more invasive DRM schemes, people have still found out a way to pirate PC games. Xbox and PS2 were the same way, but with this current generation I have yet to see the flood of 360 or PS3 games hit the internet the way that PC games have, and still continue, to do. I applaud companies like Stardock that skip DRM, and I hope that their trust of the consumer doesn't bite them down the road. Plus, those microtransactions and paid DLC are alive and well on the PC too (Fallout 3, Burnout Paradise, MMOs).

"Pricing"
Games are expensive. But you're forgetting that PC versions are often $10-$20 cheaper than their console counterparts, unless you spring for the collector's edition (which is a choice).

I am, and always will be, a PC gamer. It hurts to go to a Gamestop or Best Buy and have to hunt for the single PC game shelf among the dozen shelves of console games. But this article points out a good number of the issues facing PC games (considering the available data) today that the industry has to face head on to solve the problem, and they'll need help from us as well.

Now, I don't think Microsoft's support for PC gaming is flawless... but +1 to smithton - thank you for speaking the truth.

Besides, despite utilizing all those constraints and concessions (to the fact that PC gaming is thriving - see Capcom's new release policies for a good example - or Steam for that matter) all credibility in the article is lost when the last sentence states: "All we can say is congratulations Microsoft: you killed PC gaming." Ultimate contradiction. Ultimate fail.

Firstly, DRM assumes all gamers are pirates. That turns off new gamers. Second Piracy is an evil created by the industry to cover up the lower quality games we get every year. From Starcraft a decade ago to The Sims now we have titles that sell 10's of millions of units on PC. This is the target PC games companies should be going for, but they don't know how to any more since the suits moved in. From the moment the industry decided PC games should be in DVD cases instead of big boxes, so they looked like console games it was obvious the accounts now ran PC games companies. For all the false arguments this was about making a few more pennies per unit. This article says it itself: Gamers who cannot afford to buy every game will generally buy the best and pirate the 'second string'. These pirated games would never have been bought any way. The industry, for reasons of their own, assumes every pirated game is a lost sale.It is likely that less than 10% of all pirated games are lost sales. The other 90% result in sales (games are downloaded as a 'demo' that are seldom made any more and then bought if liked) or where the game would never have been purchased in the first place.

Hardware is an invalid argument now. PC don't have to be upgraded as often because nearly every PC game is a console conversion from a machine (360) that is 5 years old. As PC gaming has been tied to console gaming in this 'multiformat' market we are in now in games that demand PC upgrades are as rare as 'PC only' games. The only reason some console conversions might need high powered PC's is that the game engines publishers use are designed to push out 360, PS3 and PC games and this means they are not as highly
optimized.

The top two reasons are never going to be mentioned, because it would be the media that would have to talk about it, and that's that PC gaming media, over the last 5 years have become so supine to the industry. Interviews are now PR shoots with no hard questions asked. If a publisher drops a feature in a new game, the old feature that was lauded by the media when the previous game came out now poo poo's that feature. They never push the publisher as to why a feature was dropped. The media never ask why games have to be 10-12 hours long for $60, meaning PC gaming has has got way more expensive with no debate at all! No media has every queried this rise in PC gaming through shorter games.No one in the media wanted to start a debate on why PC games had to go to DVD cases, no media has ever given any hyped AAA PC title from a major company a sub 70% review. A bad AAA game from Bethesda (Star Trek Legacy?) still gets high 80's.Only small publishers get their games marked in the 60'%;'s and will get the equivalent of those bad hyped AAA titles when their games are good! The implication being a bad game from a large publisher is as good or better than a good game from a small publisher. This is a bias that devalues the media in the public's eyes.

Finally gamer's, that would rather go after other gamers who dare say PC gaming has troubles than stick together. One reason publishers can feel they can put those terrible DRM on games is because they know gamers are never going to work together to change it.

We have no Computer Gamer Organisations, we have no not for profit pressure groups, we organise in no way at all and we beat down on anyone, in a regular forum, that starts or points out in a thread that he just 'thinks' PC gaming might be declining' and 'what can we do about it'!

A stronger consumer base and PC gaming media would go a long way to help turn PC gaming around, but it ain't going to happen PC gamers don't want to give on their hope that PC gaming will 'somehow' survive and the media will not give up on it's free trips and free game copies.. Within two years there will be no more PC games in retail stores and no more AAA titles released for PC.

If it weren't for Blizzard PC gaming would be already dead. :D I don't believe that it was in Microsoft's monoplistic plans to kill PC gaming. They are working on Windows 7 and on DirectX 11 right now. I mean Windows 7 is alredy RTM, im using it for 2 weeks or so now. They just fucked up with Vista, just like they did with Millenium. What happend after ME? XP! And what happend in the era of XP? Far Cry, Civilization 3 and 4. The Sims 1 and 2, Age of Empires 2 and 3, NFS Underground 1 and 2 (Best NFS's EA ever did), Half Life 1 and 2 (with counter strike), Call of Duty 1 and 2. And dont say that they weren't any consoles back then, there was the xbox and the ps2. I think that Vista really was a big hick-up for PC gaming but im sure that Windows 7 is going to make it right like XP did 8 years ago.

Odd how many commenters want to debate the fairly commonly accepted notion that PC gaming has been going downhill. While it is true that the PC game market has successfully gone into new areas like flash-based games and MMOs, that isn't want the article is referring to.

It is talking about how in the 90s and early 2000s there were many fantastic games out there that were 100% PC games, and lately it has been pretty meh. Most of the best games lately are cross-platform games, and many of the best franchises and genres have died out completely (MechWarrior (ok yeah there is a new one in the works but it has been dead for years), the Dark Forces/Lucasarts series of PC games, the Bioware series of RPGs, flight sims, space sims, RTS games, Myst-type adventure games).

Now it does look like some of these may be coming back soon, thanks in part to the ever-expanding total video game market and improvements in cross-platform development, but since about 2001 something has definitely changed in the market.

I think everyone in the video game industry pretty much agrees with this, so it is futile to argue against the basic premise of the article.

I do think piracy is a big part of the answer. The ratio of console to PC sales can't be ignored. The gaming population of entire countries get by never paying for a PC game, so its illogical to argue "people who pirate wouldn't have bought the game". In a whole country no one would buy the game? Copy protection can also cause bad reviews when people complain about bugs and crashes in cracked versions that would never occur in the legit version. Downloading a pirated game and installing can be done easily, with zero risk, and with no hardware modifications. The need for hardware modifications and warranty problems easily cuts the number of people who can use downloaded pirate Xbox games by 80% or more. Yes, that's right, 80% of Xbox owners will NOT mod their consoles, despite how "easy" gamers that post here think it might be. You might not think there is actually much risk if you know what you are doing, but some risk is a lot more than NO risk (PC piracy).


I'm not a moralist so I won't admonish anyone for pirating games, I don't even think it is a bad thing to do. For a long time now it has allowed all of us to enjoy many more games than we ever could have by paying for them, and has gotten many lesser-known developers more attention than they otherwise would have. I don't believe it is anyone's business what I do with my personal property, and companies will simply have to come up with new business models that take the reality of easy downloading, copying, and cracking into account. "MMOs" that are in truth largely single-player experiences seem to be the most immediate and obvious answer. A return to low-cost development that can survive on user trust and small donations is another answer. Requiring frequent updates and checking CD keys against known pirate keys can play havoc with pirate copies.


But why not just have the best of both worlds and support REAL mouse, keyboard, and computer monitor support on the Xbox, turning the "console" into the PC for all intents and purposes. The only real gaming differences that remain between the PC and Xbox are the distance to the screen which allows for much more detailed display of information (try playing EVE, Supreme Commander, Hearts of Iron, or even WoW on your TV...I have and it is quite headache-inducing), and the input capabilities of the keyboard and mouse. Hopefully this final merger will arrive soon and the whole PC vs. Console debate can be over with.

As you stated (although I'm puzzled by the contradiction of the title of your article and the content) - like you I don't think PC gaming is dying at all. It's evolving.

Another commenter mentioned that digital downloads aren't factored into PC game sales stats - I've read articles with quotes from Gabe Newell (Valve, Steam) backing this up.

For the first time in ages I'm seeing Indie developers getting their products out on services like Steam and doing pretty well on the charts too - AudioSurf, Braid, World of Goo etc. This reminds me of the situation in the early 1990s - the diverse assortment of titles in PC games shops available at that time - also remember the shareware stuff on bulletin board systems? BBS shareware games like Wolfenstein and Jazz Jackrabbit were by publishers who eventually gave us Doom, Quake, Unreal.

Some of these Indie developers may be the next id Software or Epic.

I think that services like Steam and publishers like Blizzard have proven that if you hit the right balance between modest system requirements and great gameplay - a PC title can do extraordinarily well.

I think the PC market represents an amazing opportunity right now.

My 2 cents.

Regards
Julian
http://www.growlingdoggames.com

The author should read some of my ISN blogs on this topic.

A shame that this graph doesn't include ROW (Rest of World) & the money exchanged as a result of Digital Downloads/Distribution/etc.

A shame this graph also doesn't depict all the different Console MFG's broken out separately. The Console bucket of money doesn't all go to 1 company now does it?

Retail is pretty much dead for Gaming IMO. The interesting trend here is that what you see here for PC Gaming... is also happening to Console Gaming. This is why we see all the major Console Mfg's are jumping on the PC Digital Download & Online Band-Wagon. The big irony? Consoles look more & more like proprietary PC's all the time.

Perhaps the OEMs ought to start requiring a better Gaming Story from Msft than what they've been getting over the past decade of 'Fail' for PC Gaming.

Personally I found myself choosing to purchase games for my console as opposed to my PC for several reasons. Foremost I didn't need to worry about hardware requirements. If there were framerate issues it was something wrong with the game, not the console. As opposed to worrying if the game would run right on my 6 year old PC that was top of the line at the time but is now mediocre at best. And buying a new console every 5 or so years is generally cheaper than constantly upgrading. Not to mention more stable.

Secondly, I guess, would be user-friendliness with the controls (with the exception of Dragon Age, where you have more abilities than the game gives you hotkeys for...). Console controllers tend to be more user friendly and I prefer to use them for action games. Hell I used a gamepad when I played on my PC if the game allowed it and it made sense.