I totally agree (except about that Sony part). I really think anti-piracy measures should become MORE draconian. All that whining about Safedisc…we haven’t seen anything yet. Why not use something like XP’s product activation combined with a lookup on the internet? Or requiring save games to be stored on a remote location? No technical solution will be perfect, because clever hackers will always find some way around it. However, I really think that all you have to do is make piracy inconvenient.
The publishers of PC games probably have thought along these lines as well, and it is telling that they keep sticking with Safedisc. They really only are interested in making it more inconvenient for the casual gamer to copy a CD. There is a tradeoff between the number of sales you gain by making piracy more inconvenient and the cost of implementing the anti-piracy technology. Apparently, implementing it is not worth it. By the way, I don’t believe that such measures would alienate customers. There will be lots of moaning and whining, of course, but just as everybody still buys buggy games, they will also buy protected games.
I totally agree (except about that Sony part). I really think anti-piracy measures should become MORE draconian. All that whining about Safedisc…we haven’t seen anything yet. Why not use something like XP’s product activation combined with a lookup on the internet? Or requiring save games to be stored on a remote location? No technical solution will be perfect, because clever hackers will always find some way around it. However, I really think that all you have to do is make piracy inconvenient.
Wouldn’t this drive more people away from PC Games in general? People moaned about Product Activiation for Windows XP. Whats gonna happen if they had to do it for every game they buy? As for saving games… ech - Look at the size of some save games these days, and you can see thats no where near unfeasible, not to mention what happens to the people without internet connections?
Of course, none of that will stop the pirates - I betcha a couple of days after release they’d have a game out that removed all those ‘features’ thus causing even more people to pirate than do currently.
There will be lots of moaning and whining, of course, but just as everybody still buys buggy games, they will also buy protected games.
People whine about having to have CD’s in their drive and the incompatability some drives have with safedisc. Do you really think that most gamers are going to put up with even more draconian measures?
It’d much smarter for companies to adopt a Stardock like policy of having no copy protection - but providing continued support through updates etc
Coincidentally - People have been prophesing the death of PC Gaming for years, but its still present and going strong.
It depends. The idea is to make buying the product much more convenient than downloading it. So a cd-key check over the internet would probably be acceptable, at least if you have broadband. People will put up with a lot. Don’t be fooled by the loud-mouthed minority that is being angry on usenet and forums.
People moaned about Product Activiation for Windows XP.
Exactly! Now, do you believe that actually hurt acceptance of XP? I think the product activation of XP was a great success. Everybody grumbled but in the end they accept it.
Whats gonna happen if they had to do it for every game they buy? As for saving games… ech - Look at the size of some save games these days, and you can see thats no where near unfeasible,
That is a designer’s issue. In principle you could store a single integer that represents the number of the checkpoint you’ve arrived in the game.
It’d much smarter for companies to adopt a Stardock like policy of having no copy protection - but providing continued support through updates etc
I agree there. The Stardock policy was really smart. Basically anything that keeps people downloading content is smart because it would have to be cracked time after time again. And crackers like to take the big credit for ‘releasing’ a game, not keeping up to date with patches. It may make sense, business-wise, to release a game that is crippled after the second level because only legitimate users will be able to download the patch and continue playing.
Coincidentally - People have been prophesing the death of PC Gaming for years, but its still present and going strong.
Oddly enough people for years have claimed the pc market is fine while the pc market has shrunk to half with no sign of bottoming out, shelf space in most places for pc games in next to nonexistant, virtually all the big pc developers have either folded or switched to consoles, and gaming varitey has slowly gone away. The most annoying part is every year for the past 3 or 4 fans claim the pc is back and again every year for the past 3 or 4 that year fizzles out.
There are still games, and some genres are doing well and that could go on for another 5 or so years.
Given a lot (and I do mean a lot) of thought on this and I’ve come up with a few reasons, five, why this is happening.
Microsoft isn’t behind the PC platform for gaming anymore. They were the unifying umbrella. At one time, Apples had a thriving gaming community. While Apple itself put out only a handful of average games, engaging developers was important. Apple decided that it wasn’t its job to court developers and make them happy, the game market died withing a matter of two years.
North American game development is in shambles. Can’t go a few months without some once great development house closing up. Can’t go a few weeks without hearing some new development house folding before it gets its first title out. While this effects consoles as well, PC development base IS north america and thus adversly effected. Europe has its own problems with the quality software houses closing up there as well. There are a lot of eastern europe software houses springing up and more often than not, the poor quality that do get release probably are harming the platform more than helping.
Because of the marketing trends, the pc platform makes suits nervous. The market is shrinking so publishers publish less tent pole games. Less tent pole games makes the market shrink.
Consoles short life span drive developers and publishers to produce quality games in a short amount of time,
The cost of after market support for pcs. Even if its fairly small compared to the budget of the game, and marketing the game, its still more than the non-existant cost on consoles.
Yes they can, and in fact they are a great comparison.
While a PC programer can’t just start programing a console game instantly it is quite easy for them to learn the differences so they can do it.
So most companies can either make PC games or console games (or both!)
That being the case it is a simple matter of looking at the pros and cons of each. One big pro/con that companies have to look at is profit If it costs the same to develop a console game vs. a PC game but the console makes twice the amount of money then it is only smart business to make console titles.
Quite honestly using console games is a great benchmark for developers because they could be doing console games instead with minimal investment in training and new hardward.
I don’t think the Apple analogy really holds water. Apple was outright hostile towards games, as a corporate culture thing. That’s what drove game developers away. Microsoft may not be making many PC games any more, but they were never a huge PC developer, and certainly not a “unifying force.” In fact, prior to Age of Empires, they weren’t much of a PC game developer at all. The unifying umbrella, if there is one, comes through their OS support for developers through DirectX. That’s not going away.
North American game development is in shambles. Can’t go a few months without some once great development house closing up.
This happens every few years, though. There’s an ongoing cycle of consolidation and then bankruptcy that this industry has gone through since the early 90s. The writing has been on the wall for companies like Interplay for a long time, in any event.
Because of the marketing trends, the pc platform makes suits nervous. The market is shrinking so publishers publish less tent pole games. Less tent pole games makes the market shrink.
Is it? I honestly don’t know, but my impression was that it was just growing slower (albeit a lot slower) than the console market. I think the smart publishers will stay in PC games (as well as console games) because smart publishers want to diversify their risks.
Consoles short life span drive developers and publishers to produce quality games in a short amount of time,
Well, it also drives them to produce a lot of shallow junk. I know I’ll get flak from a few folks (Hi, DaveC!) for saying it, but there are a lot of “filler” games on the console shelves at my local EB. I’m not saying that PC games are inherently better or anything–heck, I own two consoles, and I like a good console game as much as the next guy–but the signal to noise ratio is every bit as skewed towards the noise side of the equation as it is in the PC world, maybe more so.
The cost of after market support for pcs. Even if its fairly small compared to the budget of the game, and marketing the game, its still more than the non-existant cost on consoles.
That’s true. Even after deducting the cost of the more rigorous testing that consoles require, you still probably save a lot on the fact that you are developing for a fixed platform. You’ll never have to do compatibility testing for a console game. On the other hand, you don’t have to pay licensing fees to publish PC games, either.
There is no question in my mind that PC games are in a slump. I don’t think they are dead, or even dying, though. Heck, I remember when console gaming was a hell of a lot deader than PC gaming is now, and it came back with a vengeance. It just seems counterintuitive to assume that gaming on the PC is going to disappear, even as the platform itself gets more and more ubiquitous. I guess we’ll see.
That being the case it is a simple matter of looking at the pros and cons of each. One big pro/con that companies have to look at is profit If it costs the same to develop a console game vs. a PC game but the console makes twice the amount of money then it is only smart business to make console titles.
Is that really the case, though? Because this is one thing that a lot of folks say that makes me very skeptical. Folks say things like "look at how much money you can make on a console, because Final Fantasy (or whatever) sells millions! And while that’s true, does the average console game sell anywhere near that much? I mean, this seems like trying to lure someone into PC development by showing them how well Warcraft III and Rollercoaster Tycoon sold. That’s nice, but it’s not a very useful benchmark. Does your average good (or even great, but not blockbuster) console game sell that well? How well did games like Ico, or Culdcept, or Fatal Frame 2 sell? As a publisher, I’d be less interested in hearing about the wild success stories and more interested in hearing about the average experience. Because PC gaming had and still has the same wild success stories, but as most publishers discover, not every game can be The Sims.
Because PC gaming had and still has the same wild success stories, but as most publishers discover, not every game can be The Sims.
Can anybody explain to me why there are not more games like the Sims? I can think of SpaceColony and Singles, but that is pretty much it. What is keeping people from trying to emulate its success?
That would be my guess. The Sims is all about open-ended gameplay and complex AI behaviors, and that stuff isn’t easy to do. Still, there are some attempts. “There” is obviously trying to skim off the Sims’ success, as is Singles.
In 1998 the pc gaming market was at its peak at 2 billion dollars. In 2003, the pc gaming market was 1.2 billion. That isn’t even factoring in that game development cost is up 400% since 1998.
/edit: And to be clear, its been a steady decline. Not a cycle or anything like that.
Is it? I honestly don’t know, but my impression was that it was just growing slower (albeit a lot slower) than the console market. I think the smart publishers will stay in PC games (as well as console games) because smart publishers want to diversify their risks.
Yeah, I think publishers will keep their hand in the PC market, but more and more it’s by doing cross-platform games. How many PC-exclusive games is EA making now? Sims 2, that LotR RTS game, a Call of Duty game and I can’t think of anything else. There may be more, but certainly there’s not too many. That says a lot coming from a publisher that size. If the PC market isn’t funneling a steady supply of good, interesting games to its player base, that player base may just lose interest.
Yeah, I think publishers will keep their hand in the PC market, but more and more it’s by doing cross-platform games. How many PC-exclusive games is EA making now? Sims 2, that LotR RTS game, a Call of Duty game and I can’t think of anything else.
Also Battlefield 2 and Black and White 2, which makes more exclusives than they have for any other platform. But the bulk of their game roster is definitely aimed at the console market, I’ll grant you.
In 1998 the pc gaming market was at its peak at 2 billion dollars. In 2003, the pc gaming market was 1.2 billion. That isn’t even factoring in that game development cost is up 400% since 1998.
According to the head of Microsoft Game Studios, that’s going to change. He admits they shifted almost everything to Xbox, for obvious reasons, but expects more PC titles in 2005 and beyond. But for a while, they’ve only done 4-5 PC games every year.
The market is shrinking so publishers publish less tent pole games. Less tent pole games makes the market shrink.
Your “$2 billion to $1.2 billion revenue” omits subscription fees, which fill in some of that revenue gap.
With three major consoles, is it really surprising that PC market share declined?
And yes, Half-Life 2 and DOOM 3 will have an impact, because both will remind people that PC games have an enormous technical advantage over consoles. That said, DOOM 3 is, er, DOOMed because it will be pirated up the wazoo.
I agree 100% with Rod Humble about piracy. Even a cursory glance at the NPD lists shows that the big selling games are those that appeal to adults or families, or that require online validation. People buy Battlefield Vietnam because they have to; they pirate Painkiller–and will pirate DOOM 3–because they can.
Stardock’s model works for Stardock because warez kids aren’t interested in its games in the first place. Those crazy kids aren’t going, “d00d, did you get that GalCiv update? It adds normal mapping!”
In other words, if you make PC games for adults, they seem to do okay. If you make them for teens, you might be in trouble.
That’s an interesting question Sluggo. I think Doom 3 and HL2 doing poorly would hurt the PC game industry. It would certainly hurt VU and Activision. Here’s my question for you Sluggo… do you really think they’ll sell poorly?
The future of PC games will be those made and sold direct from the developers via their website. Stardock is a perfect example and yes I know I keep bringing this up but they handle the whole customer aftermarket experience so well.
PC gaming will continue to trend towards the mature adult gamer. I can’t see console games appealing to the 40-60 year old market any time soon without some drastic technological advances and a move away from the “magic mushroom” syndrome.
This may sound strange but I am glad that we don’t have thousands of PC titles to choose from. What is out on the market now is highly refined and very focused in their execution.
We’ve definitely left the bad old days when 60% of PC games released in any one year were total crap. Now I can pick up a PC game - albeit from a very small selection - and be reasonably sure it will be good.
Plus the PC is still the No.1 platform for decent multiplayer gaming.
Can you post your source for that information please?[/quote]
The big problem is most of the time you have to pay someone for this information. Its not available in a handy link nor legal to repost. disclaimer: Some of the links have gone dead since I first started work on this and would appricate anyone who can fill in holes. Some figures I had to esitmate from figures in other article, plus I haven’t factored in what they are in 2003 dollars. They aren’t 100% the same as the paid researched data, but its close enough.
Ofcourse these are just averages and uber expensive games like Wing Commander IV (12 million)were made in the early 90s during the sillywood frenzy. Over all, when your cost jump 10x and your sales are flat, thats not good.
I view that as a tiny niche market on to itself. Almost another platform and really, most publishers looking at the supporting the pc platform, they are ignoring that anyway. Espicially after the big 3 EA failures.
