Are PC Gamers a Dying Breed?

[seantpage]

I went into my local Gamezone the other day here in London & it was wall to wall consoles games....there was one small shelf for PC games & the selection was naff.

As mature gamers who have played on all kinds of systems - do you think the days of pc gamers are numbered? It certainly seems so....

[Archangel]

I doubt PC gaming will ever die, for one simple fact. It's far, far, far easier to write a game for PC than anything else.

And, given the 360 is mostly a PC anyhow, and the PS3 isn't too far removed from it either, coding for the PC makes it damned easier to move to console later.

The only issue with the above statement is that developers themselves aren't usually smart enough to know this, and so they go off and code for a PS3, saying they'll have a 360 or PC port a few months after initial release, and then they realise none of their code can be reused on a PC or 360, and that they screwed the pooch. And that's where we get bad PC ports from.

But yeah, I don't think PC gaming will truly die. With any luck, people will get smarter and there'll be an increase in PC games, but I don't like my chances. I know Valve is on my side though. Thems some smart fellas.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Nope. Consoles are headed the way of glorified PCs with a static configuration, anyway.

[Lance]

Its not so much that PCs are dying I don't think - it's more that things like Direct2Drive and Steam (moreso) are becoming the norm. PCs have decidedly more space and speeds are increasing so in most cases downloading the game is far simpler and cheaper from a distribution point of view.

Why go to a shop and buy the game when you can just download it?

[CemeteryGates]

Its not so much that PCs are dying I don't think - it's more that things like Direct2Drive and Steam (moreso) are becoming the norm. PCs have decidedly more space and speeds are increasing so in most cases downloading the game is far simpler and cheaper from a distribution point of view.

Why go to a shop and buy the game when you can just download it?


That's exactly what I was gonna say.
For me, it takes going to the LAN house I go to play PC with my friends... all their games are from Steam, and the one I went to before it was the same.

But I also think it's cheaper to buy a console than a gaming computer... I know this year I spent $300 on the PS3, but if I wanted a computer able to play today's games, I'd have to invest something like $700, and if I wanted to buy a computer that could not only play today's games, but was also good for playing games to be released in the next 2 years, I'd have to invest even more.
I know in the US, with those $700, you could buy yourself a PS3, X360, and a few games, instead.

[MyNameDidntFit]

You can easily get a gaming rig for less than a thousand dollars (and I'm talking AUD here, so for US or, well, anything else, it'd be around $700/800). With peripherals you're looking at maybe a thousand dollars.

Consoles, though, you want to be able to play them sitting on your lounge, so you need a reasonably sized television which is at least a few hundred dollars. Then you have to pay your Live subscription (or, on PSN, just miss out on the features a PC delivers for free), buy peripherals which are more expensive than PC periphs. You also have to bay considerably higher amounts for most games due to the lack of viable digital distribution for consoles...

Sufficed to say, in the long run, a console is going to cost you considerably more than a reasonable gaming PC whilst leaving out the countless features PCs hold over consoles.

[Archangel]

Yeah, when you put it into perspective, consoles aren't really cheaper. The issue is intelligence, though.

To get aforementioned good gaming rig, people have to hold the intelligence to know that they can get one for a thousand-ish bucks, and know where they can get it. Which most folks don't. It makes me sad.

[Lance]

Irony (http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/07/23/065207/Digital-Distribution-Numbers-Speak-To-Health-of-PC-Game-Industry?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashd ot%29&utm_content=Google+International)

It isn't that PCs are dying, it's that dedicated PC gamers mostly buy digitally these days