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On Jan 15, 10:40 am, "Tom" <no...@nothere.com> wrote:
> "The King of Gaming" <king.of.gam...@hotmail.com> wrote in messagenews:ac7171ff-f590-47a5-841e-44a301937bff@r19g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
> > Wow, interesting that this debate has continued on. You would think
> > the PC died as a gaming platform yesterday, as opposed to a decade ago
> > when it actually kicked the bucket.
>
> > As "N" said, obviously there is some hyperbole when saying PC gaming
> > is completely dead. You can still play some great games (as long as
> > the publisher feels like porting them) and even some exclusives (in
> > niche genres), and regardless of what other platforms they appear on
> > any setup where you can play Modern Warfare 2, Fallout 3, Mass Effect
> > 2, and others is not bad at all.
>
> > But if you make a list of the gaming franchises that don't appear on
> > the PC in any shape or form, it's staggering. This wasn't always the
> > case. PC gamers used to sit pretty with their Deus Ex, their Half
> > Life, their Fallout 1 & 2, while still getting the most important
> > console games (just ran across my PC version of Final Fantasy VII the
> > other day). Now they get no original games and minimal effort ports
> > (no leaning in MW2, wtf?).
>
> > Really, the only PC game of any significance in the last five years is
> > WoW, which isn't really a game but an addictive, social chat room/
> > grindfest that can be run on a five year old Celeron laptop.
>
> > Finally, I'll simply say this. Two of the most (if not the most) over-
> > saturated, often published, overexposed franchises in history, Madden
> > and Guitar Hero/Rock Band, cannot be played on PC. EA pulled the plug
> > on PC sports games last year, and after GH III flopped it never
> > returned to the PC. So two games I can get on my *phone*, published
> > by two huge, greedy companies who would make games for calculator
> > watches if they thought they could turn a buck... yet they don't
> > appear on the PC. Now that is what I call dead. I'll even make a
> > slogan out of it: "If you can't play the current Madden on it, it's
> > dead."
>
> But the point is, that it isn't dead, just that ports go both ways now. PC
> gaming started going down long before Half-Life, and the earlier Fallouts as
> PCs back then at the high end were way more costly than the high ends now.
> PC gaming started a serious slide when NES hit and the mass of games on NES.
The height of PC gaming prior to the MMORPG/casual era was in the mid
to late 90s with games like Half-Life, Quake II and Quake III Arena,
Baldur's Gate, Diablo, Warcrafts I and II, Command & Conquer,
Starcraft, SimCity, etc.
The highest selling games are Sims and Sims 2. After that, it's
Starcraft at 11 million and Half-Life at 9.3 million.
> Hell I remember Doom in 93 on a decent rig that would cost well over 4K
> then.
I don't remember Doom requiring very much. My family never had a
decent PC. I bought a relatively cheap piece of crap just so I could
do Java programming in college and was able to run Doom just fine on
that. I think I spent about $800 on it, which sounds like a lot until
you consider that you really couldn't buy much cheaper than that at
the time without putting it together yourself. We didn't have $400
bargain bin computers readily available in retail stores back then...
> I remember the first HDD cost $1K for just a 20meg drive back in the
> late 80s when they came out. As I stated before, the games I listed sold
> well on the PC and are clearly superior, those are the type that are doing
> the business anymore, shooters lost their way when the PS2 and og Xbox came
> along, especailly the Xbox introducing XBL really waa a game changer for
> online multiplayer..
>
> Almighty's point, and a valid one, is that most don't care about PC gaming
> because the console versions are good enough now and the cost is cheaper for
> the hardware. Throw in HDTVs getting cheaper with nice resolutions, and you
> have the recipe. There's still well enough of a market out there for these
> PC game and ports, otherwise we'd see Nvidia and ATI calling it quits, yet
> their stocks are still doing well. As long as I have this PC, there will be
> no RPGs for the 360 for me. Dragon Age simply shits on the console version
> by miles. Oblivion, the same way. I didn't get ME for it, but it is far
> superior And ME2 is a definite PC purchase with this rig I bought. Maybe ten
> years from now, PC gaming will either have to get into line price wise while
> challenging the graphics of consoles or certainly die. I do think in a sense
> that ultimately, PC gaming will go down the tube within the next decade or
> two.
I don't know... as long as there's that small niche of people willing
to spend the price of two consoles just on a graphics card, I think
it'll keep on living. You don't need *that* many people willing to
early adopt the latest and greatest graphics cards in order to do well
in that market from a hardware perspective.
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