Where do you see PC gaming in next few years (not another 'dying' thread)

This one is good, but I think your “Now What???” gif was the perfect picture for this thread. Bring back now what!

Man, if everyone deleted their OPs because adree posted a stupid picture as one of the first replies, we’d have no threads at all.

I can’t tell now if the picture was relevant but it can’t have been post-deleting-ly relevant.

Oh and in case your sarcasm-meter is broken: ignore everything kerzain says. Those of us that do not have him on ignore right now only view his posts so we can mock them, there is nothing of value there.

Aww. And I was looking forward to this thread.

Coming from you, all of us are noobs mr. 13k

It’s not the post count that matters. As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t remember the old blue bulletin boards, then u r n00b. (I kid, I kid…sorta.)

Me too.

What the heck, I’ll just answer the question posed in the subject.

I see pc gaming expanding in the next few years. With even the most basic integrated graphics chips running almost all games within a generation and the cpu being able to pitch in as of Windows 7, a lot of the barriers to entry will fall. I predict that by Fall 2010 any pc bought could be a gaming pc. Downloadable games will expand in marketshare and within 3 years I expect a full on renaissance for pc gaming.

There was an article linked on RPG Watch that described PC gaming surpassing consoles over the next few years…it was very exciting. :)

Lemme see if I can find it.

I think if we can get a handle on piracy, PC software will flourish. Sadly, I don’t see how it’s going to happen with current trends. I really like the model of "if you pirate software, you miss out on free DLC content/patches, but sadly the games that represent this type of model (I’m looking at you, Dawn of War II) take MONTHS to get the free DLC out and then it’s irrelevant.

Maybe the solution is to burn a deliberately broken game to a CD and then require online activation to “fix” it, which is CRAZY unfair to the folks with no/slow internet connections and the ones that aren’t technically savvy. shrug

I’m pretty sure PC games will continue to do well though, PC’s are getting SUPER cheap, a very decent desktop PC only runs about $350 (I’m floored at the video cards you can get for $40 these days) and if THAT trend continues, along with super hits like WoW and Sims 3 selling well, PC’s will continue to be strong.

What I HATE seeing is games that belong on the PC being ported to the PC and feeling like a console game. I think all of the PC gamers on this thread can attest to that trend as utter trash. sigh

Piracy is bad on every platform. The sooner publishers get pass the idea that pirates are lost customers, the better.

Yes, and just like a usenet kill file, it works best if you loudly announce your intention to use it, and make reference to how many people you have kill filed at every available opportunity.

PLONK’D!

Yeah I know, it’s stupid. I love and hate it at the same time. I look at it this way. There are certain people that who are very sucessful in pushing my buttons and causing myself to spaz. It is best for me and the board in general if I don’t see their posts.

Here is the blog entry I reference from Digital Trends. He talks about the consoles aging and the new DirectX version as reasons the PC might just blast past the consoles. I guess this may be partially the case as each console generation winds down. I do not remember a particularlly large PC explosion before, but maybe he is onto something this time.

Longer console cycles (apparently 10 years this time) would necessarily mean a larger gap in computing power between PC’s and consoles just before a new console launches. This could mean there is a relatively larger PC boom at the end of this console cycle than has historically been true.

On the other hand, pure Moore’s law speed increases are lower now (isn’t “manufacturing cost” the new Moore’s law criteria or something?), so that difference would seem to be less pronounced, meaning the PC boom may be offset appropriately, probably coming out in a wash, more or less.

But significantly, I don’t think you’re ever going to pull the new expanded casual market into the PC, even at the end of the console cycle. For all that the audiences have expanded, the PC crossover audience is probably relatively stable. So, I expect the PC will stay about where it is now for the forseeable future: and enthusiast machine for the hardcore.

Er? Mobile computing and gaming has blossomed wildly. Even if power gains level off somewhat, I would still forsee the little netbooks and iphones of the world supporting more pc games. With people talking today about 300$ gaming pcs with current components, I figure its not impossible to see small and cheap home entertainment tv/pcs evolving out of dvrs.

I think some of the future is tied up in whether or if pc can follow the waggle revolution that continues amid the console world. I think failure for the pc to support the ps3’s or natal’s controls, if not both, means that at least console->pc ports will become less frequent. PC support for these technologies on the other hand, would spur innovation and adoption, opening up a wide potential for change in pc gaming.

Waggle control in the long run will be a fad. In 5-10 years it will end up being like the light gun.

I saw the original post before it was edited and actually had a reply composed before the thread…uh…altered course.

The OP asked several questions which were roughly:

Will Microsoft make any sort of significant push for PC gaming?

Will PC games leapfrog the current consoles in terms of graphics and make it a more noteworthy platform?

There was a third question but I don’t recall it now. But basically he was pondering whether PC gaming will flourish or at least get more attention than it does at the moment.

My responses were along the lines of no to the first question. To Microsoft, gaming = Xbox. Gamers for Windows has been a resounding flop and as long as they remain in the video game business, they will never give PC gaming more than lip service. Their support of PC gaming now almost looks accidental.

On the graphical superiority of PC games, it seems that with PC exclusive games becoming rarer and with Triple-A PC games rarer still, we are far less likely now to see the “superior” graphics of PCs vaulting past consoles as in days past. Or another way to put it might be to not expect many more Crysis-type games to be PC exclusives (the next Crysis game itself is going multi-platform).

I think PC gaming will remain viable and there will continue to be PC-only games that are hits (see: The Sims 3, any Blizzard title, some possible future MMO and perhaps a handful of others) but the days of exclusive Triple-A games for PCs, for the PC being the platform of choice for shiny new tech just feels over now.

Good ol’ plonk’d. The term that conjures up images of weird people who like to hear the sound of their own shit hitting the bowl.

I don’t think an enhanced graphics API is going to amount to very much as far as advancing PC-gaming in the long run goes.

I think Rob Merrit’s line of thinking is where hope for the PC lies. PCs are pretty much ubiquitous but unfortunately most of these PCs can’t play AAA games. If over the next few years that problem goes away and we end up with 450 million viable gaming PCs out there, that would be a huge boon for PC-gaming.

Imagine a AAA game that runs on pretty much every PC and is played/distributed over MySpace and/or Facebook. The potential is HUGE!

Well that sounds like it was a pretty normal post. Maybe not original, but certainly nothing to be embarrassed about. Not ‘delete me’ worthy anyway.

Yeah, come on op! Take the irrelevant mocking like the rest of us and keep posting. You were blessed by Adree on only your second post. You should be honored.

Interesting that you mention the Wii-casual market on the console end. The PC most certainly tapped into the casual market as well and it was before the Wii was even introduced. The casual games market for PC’s is thriving. And while this sometimes is looked upon with disdain from some of the hard core gamers that may or may not populate this board, it is impossible to ignore the phenomenon in any discussion regarding the future of PC games.