The demise of PC games has been predicted many times in the past. There is a flurry of articles written on this every time a new console generation comes out. So far they have been wrong. PC games are still aliving and kicking and in fact they will always be. But then so will the Macintosh.
My position is the PC games are going to be an ever shrinking share of the “Gaming” market probably dwindling down to “Applesque” market share.
Consoles have always held the advantage over PC games in things like ease of use and accesiblity (in the living room).
PCs have had networking, a keyboard/mouse (which suits certain game styles) and if you spend the money – more horsepower.
The current generation of consoles is showing that consoles can network. The next generation will take this farther. A keyboard/mouse can be added and probably will be more common on new consoles as they get used for surfing etc. While console’s will always trail high end PCs, only a select few even among PC game players can afford to stay ahead in an arms race where the latest video card is more $$ than the latest console system
But none of that is the real reason why PC games are in trouble.
PC games are in trouble because of development costs. Games cost so much to produce that is more and more difficult to innovate. The ability to do innovative kinds of games has always been a huge strength of the strength of the PC platform.
- Myst
- Doom
- Sim City
- Diablo
- Command and Conquer
- The Sims
Its pretty unlikely any of these would have been a console game without first having success in the PC world. If you aren’t a PC gamer you would miss the opportunity to play these games in thier best form.
Now its so expensive and there is so much risk aversion that what publishers want is a game on all platforms with a known genre and preferably a license. Once your game has to run everywhere its hard to take advantage of the things that make pc games special so why not just play the games on the console.
For the game player the PC still has the advantage that games are easier to pirate. But that argument isn’t going to convince any publishers to invest more in PC games. Instead, this next round of console will cause alot of publishers to move more of their efforts into console games and I don’t expect they will look back.
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