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It's no secret that more and more game developers have shifted their focus to consoles. And the ones who have yet to succumb are bitching about the current state of PC gaming.
The game developers want us to believe that consumers are the problem. Piracy, they say. It's those dirty pirates. Every game pirated is a sale lost! Every person who pirated the game would have bought it legitimately if he hadn't had the opportunity to pirate it! Now, I'm not here to say that piracy isn't a problem. I'm here to say that the real "problem," if you want to call it that, is so common as to be practically mundane: the market is changing, and the industry isn't changing with it.
Total laptop sales are expected to eclipse total desktop sales for the first year ever in 2008, and by 2011, it's expected that 71% of all consumer PCs sold will be laptops. But you probably knew that. All your friends own laptops or are in the market to buy laptops. Young people today, the chief gaming demographic, buy laptops. You don't need a statistic to tell you that.
I'll give you a moment, though, to think about the implications of this change. The vast majority of new PCs in the United States—we're talking about PC owners who, with their brand new machines, used to be the primary target for game developers—are going to be running integrated Intel graphics. A new PC used to mean a new graphics card capable of running any game currently on store shelves. That's just not the case today. The X3100 graphics solution used in most laptops today can barely run Half-Life 2, a three-year-old game. But it can run World of Warcraft and The Sims, which, together, comprised six of the ten best-selling PC titles of 2007. Command and Conquer 3 specifically mentions in its system requirements that it will run on Intel GMA 900 graphics. Age of Empires III will run on a lesser system, and SimCity 4's requirements are almost laughable in this day and age. The only game in the top ten sales list that will not run on the typical, modern laptop is Call of Duty 4, which is so mind-bogglingly awesome that it bucked the sales trend.
Then there's the console side of things. A PC graphics card can cost anywhere from $150-500, and there's no guarantee that the new card will play every game released in the next three years. The PlayStation 2, on the other hand, was on the market for seven years before its successor appeared. Even the original Xbox, which was thought to have an extraordinarily short lifespan, was on the market for four years. And the prices? Both debuted at $300, about the cost of a top-notch graphics card. Even the newest consoles, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, cost less than an 8800GTX, and that's just one part of a PC. Yes, I know you can make a capable gaming PC for $500 with your l33t overclocking skillz and some savvy shopping, but you're not the market. Joe Consumer is.
Consoles are able to sell at these lower price-points because companies have a vested interest in the success of their platform. Console sales mean game sales, and game sales mean royalties for hardware manufacturers. Despite their intrinsic link to PC gaming, PC hardware manufacturers cannot generate revenue without hardware sales. They are forced to sell their products at a profit, something that console manufacturers, with their proprietary platform and potential for future software royalties, are not bound to do. They can sell at a loss and expect to make up the difference later.
What does this have to do with TeamLiquid.net or professional gaming? Well, not a whole lot. But it has everything to do with StarCraft 2, Warcraft 4, Diablo 3, World of Warcraft 2, Supreme Commander 2, Command and Conquer 4, Spore, Spore Evolved, SimMultiverse, Leisure Suit Larry 18, and every other PC game that's going to come out within the next ten years. PC game developers need to identify their market and cater to it. They need to design their games around the lowest common denominator. Otherwise, they are isolating a massive number of potential customers in favor of a clientèle that is more willing and able to steal from them. Michael Capps of Epic Games addressed this very point when he said, “the market that would buy a $600 video card knows how BitTorrent works.” Developers who produce graphically-intensive games aren’t in the dark on this matter. They realize that the very market they serve is the one most likely to rip them off.
Rather than change, developers seem content to complain. They are affected with the dogmatic belief that the PC is the location in which to push the technical envelope, the place where next-generation graphics come to fruition today. While this might be true due to the ever-evolving nature of PC hardware, it is false in that mainstream graphics technology has actually taken a step backwards in recent years. Nowadays, consoles are the place to flex graphical muscle; by virtue of owning the console, consumers automatically meet the recommended system requirements.
The simple fact is that piracy cannot be stopped on any platform. The key is to expand your market to the point that piracy is a non-issue. You don’t see Blizzard and Maxis decrying the impact of pirates upon their business, and there’s a reason: if you have a market of 500 million potential customers, does it matter if two million people pirate your game? Even if they hadn’t pirated it, would they have bought it? Giving your game mass-market appeal through low system requirements makes the number of dedicated pirates out there nothing more than an asterisk next to the number of real consumers who are willing to legitimately purchase your product—if it’s any good, of course.
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Belgium8305 Posts
*drops power ball* dear god you're right, we are screwed
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United States20667 Posts
Bravo.
It's really a bummer that my computer doesn't run jack shit. Otherwise I'd actually buy something. I thought I was in the minority on this [despite my computer being a fairly new [2007] and fairly decent VAIO] but apparently the masses use similar computers.
I do have a PC that can run more stuff, but eh. What's the point. I'm not going to buy a crap game with fancy graphics if it plays like crap and I get bored of it that fast. This is why people should focus less on graphics and more on gameplay.
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Thats an interesting essay DJEtter
On February 28 2008 09:43 Last Romantic wrote:
I do have a PC that can run more stuff, but eh. What's the point. I'm not going to buy a crap game with fancy graphics if it plays like crap and I get bored of it that fast. This is why people should focus less on graphics and more on gameplay.
i agree with you so much here
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Consoles starting to own us PC users  Just recently, with no relevance to this whatsoever, a friend of mine went "Well, I won't buy a new PC... When I'm seeing all the features that the PS3 and Wii have, why would I need a PC? I'm going to get myself a good console and have fun with it. And you'll see, in 5-10 years consoles will take over PC-gaming". I obv said "naw, dont talk bull$h1t" and now I'm reading this :S
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ORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR, we all start buying pirated console games, eh ;D.
In fact, all but 4 games for my X-Box are pirated, (around 40ish games, havent counted). Do your duty to defend the honor of the PC :D
actually, yeah, we're screwed
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On February 28 2008 09:33 DJEtterStyle wrote:StarCraft 2, Warcraft 4, Diablo 3, World of Warcraft 2,
Sorry for being off topic but something just occurred to me. Do you think the reason they are gonna announce the zerg in korea in march is because they have a different announcement planned for the world wide invitational? ah, nevermind
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Michael Capps of Epic Games addressed this very point when he said, “the market that would buy a $600 video card knows how BitTorrent works.”
I think this is why Multiplayer games are better on PC, because they can't be pirated most of the time (and even when they can there isn't a mean to play online w/o a legitimate cd key).
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This is a real dilemma. It's true that the market that knows how to []D [] []V[] []D their PC also know very well how to pirate games. I think companies like Valve know what's up because they set up a system to sell mods and give away freebies to legitimate license holders. Genres like RTS, MMORPG will probably stick around on PC a while longer, or any game that needs a mouse or keyboard.
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Melbourne5338 Posts
New games are so system hungry and so boring, I don't even think about piracy anymore.
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Belgium8305 Posts
I agree with your assessment, and I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing a large growth of the console market, causing the PC gaming market to shrink. I do, however, think there might be two factors that can save our asses.
Firstly, we're kind of seeing the Firefox Syndrom (yeah i just made that up now) in the console market, in that piracy isn't much of an issue because nobody cares yet. Remember how Firefox used to be soooo secure? It was because nobody cared enough to actually find holes in it.
As the console market grows, so will console piracy. People will start putting in more of an effort to get games for free when the supply increases dramatically - us youngsters don't like shelling out fifty or sixty bucks for a game that might be good. This is when developers will really see that instead of whining and escaping to a different market, they simply need to produce high quality games.
Secondly, porting. If you've got a really good console game on your hands and it's making you a fortune, what would make it just that tad sweeter? That's right, an even bigger fortune. The time and cost of porting a game from console to PC isn't much compared to the actual production of the game, and you know there's still an eager market out there for quality games. It's just bidniz.
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D:
We are screwed. Interesting writeup there, Etter <3
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On February 28 2008 09:43 RtS)Night[Mare wrote:Thats an interesting essay DJEtter Show nested quote +On February 28 2008 09:43 Last Romantic wrote:
I do have a PC that can run more stuff, but eh. What's the point. I'm not going to buy a crap game with fancy graphics if it plays like crap and I get bored of it that fast. This is why people should focus less on graphics and more on gameplay. i agree with you so much here Just quoting the obvious
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Im going to upgrade my computer when SC2 comes out. My computer is so shitty it barely runs Wc3.
No game was worth the investment of upgrading. I wont buy a bleh game because it has pretty lights in it. There were to many games visually stunning at the time of release with absolutely retarded AI. Battlezone2 lol. Gamedeveloppers adapt or roll over and die plz.
If they have high end graphics in the game they think its ok to slack of on the other aspects that make up the other 90% of the game.
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United States17042 Posts
I think that pc games are going to be just fine, although they're going to need to focus on the gameplay and not the graphics as stated before. There are way more computers than consoles, and there have been many more hours spent by people in front of their computers. For gaming on the computer, the developers need to start writing games that everyone wants to play and that run on everything. Example: Jetman on facebook. It's in the top 10 installed fb applications (i think, feel free to correct me if i'm wrong) and has an amazing number of hours put into it by various people. But it's one of the simplest games in the world.
Games like crysis might be dying, but only becuase the market for it isn't that large. What this means for sc2? make it run on intel integrated graphics so that everyone can play it. Focus on the matchmaking, so that people can play with their friends and you get exponential growth. Let there be room in the game universe for both the hardcore players that want to play python and lt and be at 250-400 apm, and make room for the fastest player to meet other fastest players who play at 30-60 apm.
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HonestTea
5007 Posts
I love it when any industry blames the consumers instead of the industry for their ills.
Michigan blames us for wanting greener cars.
Big Music blames us for piracy
Now the PC gaming industry...
Motherfuckers, you the supply. WE THE DEMAND.
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The gaming industry needs to learn how to master the networking effect and use it to push game sales. Give the market a game that most computers can run and be able to compete online on a simple to use multiplayer interface.
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Single player games with short play time are bound to be pirated. Consumers know its not worth the time to purchase a game that will hold their attention for only a few days. Sadly, most games on the market, both console and PC, are developed in this fashion.
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Starcraft 2 is going to be horrible if the dude from C&C3 was watching it.
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I say it all the time - why buy a $300 video card when I have a $300 Xbox that can play it? If it won't work on my laptop, fuck it.
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EPT
