Why are our bargain bins dissapearing?

[Nostromo]

They certainly seem to want to kill it off

What in the world makes you think that? The gaming press? Newsflash: don't believe everything you read in the press, especially not the gaming press...

and you can see the advantage for them in having a console captive gaming audience?

I'm not sure what you mean here. I have a PC and a Xbox and I don't see why I'm captive... or why a PC-only gamer would be any less captive.

Still it doesn't help when PC gamers get tepid console ports inherent with all the restrictions that implies....

In order to prove your point, you'd have to take a representative sample of PC games published, say, in the last couple of years, then figure out how many are actually console ports, then how many of those ports are tepid, and how many have "restrictions". Only then will you have a good reason to believe that there are more and more console ports and that is a bad thing.

There was a good "PC gaming is dying" thread a while back. Nobody convinced me that PC gaming was dying. At most, its consolidating, in part because of the competition from the consoles. But competition is good. IRC, one of the conclusions of the thread was that PC gaming was actually doing pretty good. I'll try to dig it up...

I think a lot of the PC-gaming-is-dying-crowd are a bit like little boys afraid of the monster in the closet. Don't be afraid, little boy, there's no monster in the closet.

[RGBVideo]

thanks, I was clueless there

Originally posted by DrSpike


Yes.

wtf

combine this with the fact that companies subsidize their consoles in order to capture market share and try to get even by increasing the cost of the games for their consoles and you'll reach the conclusion that...

hmm, I think I'm going to buy an Xbox

[Nostromo]

But, you need a mod chip and an hard disk with extra room. And that also means that you'll not be able to get on Xbox Live. If Xbox Live finds out you have a mod chip on, it doesn't let you in.

[RGBVideo]

But, you need a mod chip and an hard disk with extra room. And that also means that you'll not be able to get on Xbox Live. If Xbox Live finds out you have a mod chip on, it doesn't let you in.

...exactly what I thought, it's impossible to warez thru p2p with consoles and store them on your console HD. Well, impossible without making the console partly non-functional, and for many of the players, mp is the key feature in games. Which brings us to my original speculation: console game sales are having an increasingly large advantage over PC game sales because you can easily warez with PC's. Which is why game developers have been and are slowly moving away from PC's. Sad, since PC has far more power potential from a gamers POV.

[DrSpike]

Yeah, it's more of a pain to pirate console games.

[lord of the mark]

PC gaming probably isnt dying, but then its not exactly thriving either. Its either just holding its own, or its slowly fading.

A recent survey based study (no, I dont have a link handy) indicated that a very large proportion of US PC sales revenue, like a third, I think, was online sales of one form or another, including casual online games, MMOGs, electronic distribution, and online orders. Sales not included in the traditional retailer survey sales figures. Which seems to indicate that 2005 sales (in nominal terms?) were about the same as the 2002 sales brick and mortar sales, which previously looked like a peak year, from which there had been significant decline. OTOH, I dont think anyone knows what the 2002 online sales were - while certainly far smaller than in 2005, Im sure they were not negligible.

The death spiral of less sales - fewer games - less shelfspace - less sales - seems to have been avoided for now. mainly cause there are some big genres like RTS that consoles cant seem to break into, cause there is one new genre (MMORPG) that is making a huge difference, and cause Will Wright continues to release the Sims games on PC first. What the future holds is unclear, and the PC as a platform continues to have a lot of issues.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by nostromo

edit....................

I think a lot of the PC-gaming-is-dying-crowd are a bit like little boys afraid of the monster in the closet. Don't be afraid, little boy, there's no monster in the closet.

exhibit a: monster 1

http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/

exhibit b: monster 2

http://www.ps3portal.com/

i think the relevance of monster 1 to PC gaming should not be underestimated. After all microsoft has been such a driving force in the world of the PC, that it could all by itself hold the future of AAA PC gaming in its hands?

Edit: I should make it clear i would actualy be fairly happy if the big guys moved out of PC gaming in favour of the console market - i'm coming to believe this will be the only way we may see some great games again on PC?

[dunk]

Originally posted by El_Cid
For these folks they probably dont even read review magazines often, and that is why we often see a high proportion of movie tied in games in the game charts - these games are usually rubbish, but that never stops them getting their top-ten placings.

I would say that a good deal of this comes from gift-giving. Oh, he liked that movie, he'll probably like the game too.