Death of PC gaming?
ELSPA, the games industry body, has released some interesting and worrying sales figures. On the one hand console game sales continue to rise, but PC games sales are dropping.
Game sales for the first half of 2008 have been released and they are up on almost all formats. Revenues for the last six months topped a whopping £738 million, which is 31.3 million units sold. This is a rise of 42 per cent on the first half of 2007.
Out of that total, consoles made up £690 million of it whereas PC games accounted for only £48 million. Sales of PC games were down 29 per cent on last year.
This is a difficult time for PC gaming. Consoles have never been more popular, not just the Wii but also the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Then there's the issue of game copying, which is a lot easier on the PC than on the consoles.
As we've said before some developers and publishers are worried about PC piracy and are considering whether to launch exclusive titles on the platform in the future.
Other issues with PC gaming are that it's quite a solitary pursuit - consoles are generally in the living room connected to the main home TV - PCs aren't. And then there's the issue of performance and the ever changing hardware for PCs. DirectX 10 was supposed to rectify this by setting a level playing field for gaming, but even this doesn't appear to have helped drive sales.
PC gaming has always been a fairly niche pastime and something of a haunt for more the hardcore gamers. Previously it was also the most powerful and advanced platform, but with the rise of the current crop of consoles even that's no longer the case.
Maybe the biggest issue though is that of titles. The consoles attract the biggest names such as: GTA, Metal Gear Solid, Fable and Gears of War and when big names are released on the PC, such as Crysis, even then the response isn't huge.
Even MMORPG games can't be relied on to keep PCs going as this is a genre that is now equally happy on the consoles as the PC.
This all could be just a blip, but from where I am sitting the future of PC gaming doesn't look that rosey.
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Comments (14)
Leave CommentI can understand why PC gaming is slowing down, just look at the cost of consoles vs. PCs. Also the fact that you can use consoles with the TV in your living room makes the whole console experience 'bigger' than trying to play a game on a 17" or 19" monitor. Personally I love PC gaming, probably because i'm an old fart who prefers a mouse and keyboard to a controller.
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I have to agree that the future for PC gaming doesn't look especially bright, but I'm not so sure that the PC is about to die as a gaming platform. These industry reports and surveys are all well and good, but they can be a bit misleading. 1st half sales figures are quoted as being £48 million for the PC, whereas console sales are around £690 million. However we must remember not to classify 'consoles' as a singular platform this figure of £690 million, encompasses at least the 5 current generation platforms (360, Wii, PS3, DS and PSP). I'm also doubtful as to whether these figures account for digital sales, subscriptions and so on which are likely to be higher for the PC. I am sure once the next WoW expansion arrives it'll be accompanied by reports of 'Oh my god PC gaming is on the rise again!' :D The major advantage the PC has over consoles is that the install base is a lot higher. Everyone these days has at least one PC in their home. There just needs to be more games developed to run on a wide variety of PCs (like WoW and the soon to be released Spore), rather than games (like Crysis) which can only be enjoyed on about 5% of the PCs out there in peoples homes. Anyways nice to find this, as it's the only game related thing I can access in work! Keep up the blogging :D
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It'll swing back... in a form. We can all see it's 'merging'. PC's are (pretty much) Media centers. Consoles are becoming media centers. PC monitors ("HD screens") are getting bigger. TV content is becoming HD (making it look better on your monitor). So really you could say in the short future the platform (PC or console) will be a defunct question - as they're all becoming the same thing. [A bit like phones/camera's/sat-nav/mp3 players] The real question is, which format will win out? [Online streaming? blu-ray? solid state]
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I've noticed this for quite some time... games appear on the consoles but never make it to the PC, and lets face it the xbox is a pc so porting should be no problem, but it rarely happens. I still think my PC beats all the consoles (and I have few) on picture quality, especially crispness, but maybe that's down to the quality of TVs vs monitors and not necessarily the consoles themselves. If PC gaming is dying then it makes me wonder how this will affect the never ending advance of PC technology, not just companies like Nvidia and ATI which rely on the PC gaming market, but the majority of hardware companies that encourage the general populous to keep upgrading and buying their products. Without PC gaming who would need to buy any new hardware or the latest OS. After all how much PC "power" would the average Joe need to run Word or surf the net.
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There are games and there are games. In our household there's the Wii in the living room, used by all the family and often played by more than one person and the PC in the study generally used by one person at a time for homework, internet use (browsing, email etc.) and gaming. The sort of games suited to the Wii and other consoles are often highly graphical (sports, first person, racing), short-burst type games. Lots of fun but not particularly educational. Games played on the PC tend to be more strategic, long-session type games; Civilisation, sim-City, Total War series, MMORPG etc. Again a lot of fun, and often 'pseudo-educational' in nature. One aspect not discussed so far is the concept of 'Gameplay'; many modern games have fancy graphics, you run through them once to complete a 'story' and are then often traded in for the next title when you get bored of them. Many console games tend to fall into that category, whereas the strength of successful PC games is their longevity due to good engaging game design - 'gameplay'. Long may the PC game publishers continue to serve this market; they can get their repeat business through well designed upgrade/expansion packs or online subscriptions when they do find the right formula (e.g. Sims, Total War, MMORPGs etc).
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"Even MMORPG games can't be relied on to keep PCs going as this is a genre that is now equally happy on the consoles as the PC." I don't think so. MMOs are still yet to make any impact on consoles. As far as I know there isn't any for the PS3 and XBox 360 only has "Final Fantasy XI" and "Phantasy Star Universe" which have a minuscule market share compared to PC titles of which there are hundreds. Microsoft were developing "Marvel Universe Online" but this got dumped because it was too complicated (see Edge magazine this month). If Age of Conan makes it to the 360 it will be a good sign that people are willing to play MMOs on the console, but but personally I just don't see it happening as I don't think consoles are a good fit for the genre. Finally, while you talk about "PC Games Sales" dropping, it is worth noting that there are many many games for the PC that can be downloaded and played for free or some minor charge. These games will be excluded from the sales figures you've seen as they are developed by independent companies. As it happens a lot of them fall in to the MMORPG genre. A good list of available and in development commercial MMOs can be found here: http://www.mmorpg.com/ Note that they are all for the PC/Mac platform. Cheers, Chris
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The main thing that I think really helped consoles become mainstream over the PC competitor is price. You can buy a console and thats it, other than a few add ons etc you can have your console and for its full life you can play any game that comes out on it how the developers wanted you to see it. PC's to play games at their full potential have to be upgraded each time, and to get the best you can end up paying hundred of pounds each year. World of Warcraft, a game that can work on low spec PC's has proven to be popular - most normal people can afford to play it. Consoles are more pick up and play, they can be played in 15 - 30 (a good example is some of the games available on xbox live arcade) and they fit in with peoples lifestyles. Saying that I couldn't do with my pc even with all the consoles ^^.
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Lets not also forget the flexibility of PC games with respect to community input. For over a decade users have been given the tools the original developers have used to create games with and have resulted in several spin-offs, modifications and improvements - you only need to visit ModDB to see the vast expanse of individual talent that has arisen from there, not to mention those that have made mainstream like Counterstrike and Portal. As far as consoles are concerned however Little Big Plane is the first (that I am aware of anyway) that encompasses this idea with users submitting home-made levels. This is being hailed as a breakthrough for some reason but the only breakthrough is that people too stupid for keyboards and mice can now mindlessly bash at a console and something comes out half decent. PC gaming isn't dying - the communities won't let it. Anyway, what seems new on the consoles has probably already been done on the PC.
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A lot of people are refusing to buy PC games precisely because of the attitude of publishers with regard to piracy. Just like with video piracy, the individuals who small and un-skippable adverts are targeted at won't see them, because no doubt when a film is pirated, they won't really bother including the anti piracy film. The same goes for zealous copy protection and digital rights management software (DRM). Seeing a PC game has DRM has stopped me from buying it. Bioshock is a classic example of a superb game which I bought at a bargain price after holding off because of the restrictive DRM. I felt quite sorry for the designers, story writers and programmers who were obviously extremely talented, as I would have liked to have paid full price on the day of release. Continuous patching of games and a seemingly uncaring attitude towards a broken product ('we'll fix it later, computer games are difficult!'), also leads to me waiting for a 'gold' edition (with a more or less complete game), which normally sells with all expansions for a much lower price. Sadly all the decline in PC gaming will do, is limit us to un-programmable (for the majority of us) platforms, and game developers will be at the mercy of companies like Nintendo, who are selling a brand and an image (remember the 'not on our console' debate about Manhunt 2).
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One thing that the gaming industry surely is aware of is the fact that, if PC gaming was dying (don't hold your breath, it's not gonna happen anytime soon, the reasons have been mentioned above), console games will be cracked like PC games have been cracked for a long time. It's the price that nurtures piracy, and mankind always desires to have most what they can't afford. To just stop the sales of PC games won't help the gaming industry make more profit. Let's have a look at the sales figures in a year from now. ;-)
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I find it quite hilarious that Crysis of all things was mentioned as a wonderment of why it failed. That game was tripe dressed up in graphics that barely any pcs could handle. The real reason the PC is on a down curve is down to the retailers..go look in ANY game store and tell me which PC games you see...the same 20 EA sports game v08 coupled with the same tired, generic FPS which fail to do ANYTHING new, just make more people need more new hardware. Graphics do not make a good game. Why do the best games on console come at the end of the life cycle every single time? Because the Dev's are no longer pushing for graphics but trying to make decent games. The PC market is having a tech boom right now, sure the fancy cards make the lucky players feel great but the majority just don't want to put out the money when they can get the same selection (of generic crap) on their already existing 360. Given a year or two, if retailers start stocking an actually decent variety of games, alongside some levelling of hardware and PC gaming will pick right back up as the wave of people with computers capable of playing the games catches up with the technical leaps - right now the PC Dev's aren't giving players a chance and this is the real reason.
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Every time a new set of consoles is released certain elements of the industry (typically not gamers) start crying about the death of PC gaming. Comparing masterpieces of gaming with a long pedigree (MGS, GTA) with shoddy, not-so-hyped releases (Crysis) is a poor way to look at things. Regarding piracy, if you talk to development houses they really don't care. The fact is the amount of money you lose to piracy (which is much lower than shock studies when you take into account all the relevant factors) is gained by the costs of not having to pay fees to any manufacturer. If piracy is killing the industry, it's because DRM is putting customers off purchasing the product. Regarding DirectX10, I think somebody read too much into Microsoft's blurb. DirectX10 was highly divisive from its conception and has been one of the most controversial aspects, to gamers, of the XP/Vista split. Lets fact it, we've all been using DirectX9.0c happily for a while now. Regarding MMOs, I don't see what evidence there is to support this. Experiments in MMOs on consoles have fallen flat on their ass. The UI just isn't there. The argument that the PC is not capable of what consoles are capable of achieving gets banded about with every generation of consoles and everyone soon realises how superior the PC is. If consoles being more supportive of multiplayer gaming is going to be the death of the PC then the PC is more alive than ever. The PC has always faced off against consoles in this respect and only recently had gained the ability to fight back with internet play. If you want hype for PC games just look at Spore. The only thing likely to kill Spore's inevitably gigantic sales is, ironically, the anti-piracy measures cooked up by a dimwitted committee. Why buy a 3-install/upgrade limited copy when you can get a pirated one? It makes no sense, even to an otherwise law-abiding consumer. I also imagine the figures (which you haven't cited) probably fail to account for digital downloads and MMO subscriptions. "Also the fact that you can use consoles with the TV in your living room makes the whole console experience 'bigger' than trying to play a game on a 17" or 19" monitor." In response to the above: Nothing to stop you plugging your PC into your new HDTV. PCs have been running at HD resolutions for a decade.
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From my own personal experience, I'm loath to buy PC games, since every time recently I've done so for the kids, I've ended up having to upgrade their (relatively new) PC until at the moment in performance terms it blows away anything that sits in my office - and I've got a few since I develop software. Thankfully gone are the days when installation would cause clashes with other games and DLLs, but the dreaded curse of "dad - its not running fast enough", or "dad, there's not enough disk space" is only temporarily abaited until the next generation of games comes out. So for me, its no competition. Whilst some of the games my son plays on the PC are super and much preferred (flight simulator, Warhammer, Battlefront etc.), for sheer simplicity and peace of mind, the Wii in the front room on the 46" wins hands down.
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Maybe this is the answer, PCs built specifically for game releases? http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07/31/ea_pc/ It's making PC gaming more console like though. Also, I'm not sure I'd want to buy a new PC every time a game came out though.
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