Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
The future of retail and gaming
Published on November 25, 2003 By Draginol In PC Gaming

Historically the argument of PCs vs. Consoles as game machines was an artificial argument. The two appeals to very different demographics. Many gamers, such as myself, simply were not willing to tolerate playing games on a television. How can you go from playing at 1024x768 to what amounts to 512x384? (That's 1/4th the resolution).

But times are changing. More and more people are getting HDTV and many games are starting to support this. This trend definitely doesn't help the PC game market grow. And the statistics back that up. But there are still certain kinds of games that only make sense on the PC. They boil down to games that need a mouse or a keyboard.

  • Real Time Strategy Games
  • Turn based Strategy Games
  • First Person Shooters
  • Massive Multiplayer Games

I'm playing Knights of the Old Republic on the PC right now and it's painfully obviously that it was designed with a console in mind based on the annoying controls and inventory system. And the game suffers for it.

The issue isn't whether the PC game market will die. It won't. The issue is whether PC games will be able to keep up with console games from a production values point of view. The answer to that is sadly...no with a few exceptions. So let me illustrate this with a report from the year 2007.

By 2007 the only PC-only big budget games will be massively multiplayer games, which will be well on their way to becoming cross platform to consoles. First person shooters (Duke Nukem Forever won't be out yet though) and the occasional RTS. And RTS, btw, won't be considered "big budget" anymore either by that point. With DirectX 9 or later, you can actually create your own pretty decent 3D engine.  Give me a team of 10 people (5 programmers, 5 artists) and I'll give you a Warcraft III clone in 18 months that has better graphics.  Warcraft III, of course, didn't have all the advantages that came into being with the more recent DirectX's so it's not that we're smarter, it's that it's gotten easier.

What this means though, from a retail point of view, is that when you go into the store to buy a game, it will be totally dominated by console games with a tiny area for PC games that will have (Wait for it) some sort of RTS, the first person shooter, the MMORPG, and a few other popular PC games that are either cross platform or fall into some unique category.

This, of course, is what PC advocates fear. But I'm afraid it's inevitable. It's not that the PC market is dying. It's not and it's annoying when people try to argue that. The problem is that retailers can make more money on console games than PC games because console games have been growing in sales much faster than PC games have.

Why Console Games are taking over retail

When I was a kid, my game machine was a Commodore 64. After the Atari 5200 and Colecovision's of the world died off, the console  market was gone. Then one day Nintendo introduced the NES but it didn't really matter because they couldn't remotely compete with computers yet in any important category. Gamers were willing to put up with the pain of freeing up more of that last 384K of "Upper memory" to get Wing Commander to work. They were willing to tolerate Ultima VI's annoying proprietary pseudo-OS.  They were willing to put up looking through the user manual of Power Monger to look up the copy protection key every freaking time they wanted to play. There wasn't really an alternative.

Eventually Windows and CD-ROMs made life on the PC easier. And it was good. For awhile. When the Playstation was released consoles started to get more competitive. But they still couldn't hold a candle to the PC in many areas. Outside crummy arcadey games, now in quasi-3D, the consoles were still not very appealing.

But now, even I have a console. Sure, Nintendo gave me one for free for helping them create a Nintendo Desktop (our non-game side of the business) but I do play it now. I've bought games for it. The latest generation of consoles have graphics that are "good enough". And with HDTV and the next-gen of consoles looming, they are poised to overtake or at least be equal to the latest/greatest PC games in visual quality.

And they already outsell most PC games.  So what are the reasons for this? Why not just keep using a PC for games? Why are developers moving to consoles?

  1. PCs are still relatively painful to use. The typical Windows user's computer barely boots. Come on, you know what I'm talking about. Many of you reading this are someone's "computer bitch" who goes over to their friends and neighbors houses to "fix" their computers. You get over there and find that 50+ spyware, DDOS clients, and other crap are being loaded on start-up. That Internet Explorer is so full of spam toolbars that you can barely see the page and the desktop is covered with icons.  And then you get the game and have to install it.  My Knights of the Old Republic took 30 minutes to install on my brand new Dell 2.8 GHz machine. Compare that with just putting in a CD and having it work.
  2. Copy Protection. Someone on Quarter To Three actually had a good solution to this. But it's not generally utilized.  Forcing people to have the CD in the drive negates the one major advantage PC games have - that you install them on the hard drive.  If I'm on-line, I shouldn't have to have the CD in the drive. Just have it contact some master server to "activate" it automatically. If they aren't on the net then sure, have the CD be in the drive. But this way at least those in the majority would never have to mess with copy protection in any real way.  I wouldn't mind having to have the CD in the drive if I wasn't forced to install some 1 gig game to my hard disk before playing it.
  3. PERSONAL computers vs. PUBLIC televisions. My Game Cube can be played by my 3 year old son without any intervention from me. My 6 year old regularly plays Zelda on his own. But do I want these guys on my computer with their sticky hands? No way. And most people can't afford to have a "kid's computer" nor would they understand the logic of having one.
  4. Cost. The Game Cube is $99. A decent gaming rig is going to set you back $1000. Sure, you can do more with the computer but so what? If you're not doing games, a 5 year old PC will do most of the work that normal people do with a computer. This is almost certainly the biggest reason why consoles have gotten such huge numbers. How can you argue against $99 for a console that comes with games on it?

So then why are developers moving to writing for consoles?

  1. Numbers. That's pretty obvious. As the number of users on consoles grows, the demand grows and so go the developers.
  2. The rise of cross platform libraries like Renderware. Now it's much easier to write once and with some minor tweaks have your game on all 3 major game platforms.
  3. Life for the developer can be easier. If you're a game developer on the PC, you're in a tough land. Our company has a hit game, Galactic Civilizations. If you knew how little we make per unit sold at retail you'd cry. I know I am. Makes me want to just give it up and move to consoles myself. It is becoming incredibly difficult, nearly impossible, to make a retail-level PC-only game that isn't one of the huge genres (RTS, MMORPG, FPS) and not go broke. And even then, only the successful ones make any money. Let me be plain: If it were not for the fine print in our contract that allows us to sell Galactic Civilizations directly, not only would we not consider a sequel, we would have had to lay off our entire gaming side immediately. That's just how screwed up the system is for PC game developers right now. Let me put it this way: 100,000 units are expected to sell at retail world wide, total revenue from those retail sales is expected to be LESS than $400,000. That is less than the revenue we received from direct sales which sold less than 10% as many units. That's not a viable business model.
  4. Support. Tech support on a PC game is significantly higher than on a console where the games "just work".
  5. Piracy. It's not a huge deal on the PC but it is higher than it is on the console. My neighbor has a Game Cube. You think she's going to go onto some site and try to figure out how to pirate Game Cube games? She won't bother with PC games because of the previously mentioned "hassles".
  6. Difficulty in getting published. The "big" publishers are increasingly preferring to move to the model of only releasing a handful of huge titles per year rather than many smaller ones. There is a certain logic in that. Today, most expenses come from marketing, not development. If those marketing dollars can be focused on fewer games they can end up with bigger bang for the buck, in theory anyway.  As much as we'd love to have a mega publisher pick up a Galactic Civilizations II (assuming we could work something out where 100,000 units in sales translates into real revenue for us) we're not going to count on it.  We'll either have to look at doing it ourselves (the whole thing) or work something out with a smaller publisher where retail sales work out better for us.
  7. Support from the console maker. No one really cares if you make a PC game. But Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony care a lot if you make a cool game for their platform. Matching funds and other help are available to developers. There's nothing like that on the PC except in the increasingly rare cases where the publisher provides advances on royalties.

 PC Games in twilight? No.

Does this mean that PC gaming is doomed though? Not at all. But if PC gamers and developers want to continue buying and making PC games, some recognition of the changing reality is in order.

Electronic Purchasing. Yes. Sorry but PC gamers are going to have to stop bitching about the lack of diversity in games available at the local store. It ain't changing. There are lots of PC games in development and released each year that no one ever hears about because they are sold electronically. This is something we're trying to do with Drengin.net. The goal is to allow people to buy all the games or cherry pick the ones they want off of it. Think of it as iTunes for games except you have an option to also pay to access everything that's on there at 18 month increments. Over the next year, we hope to add a lot more games to the library but we've run into snags there which I'll bring up next.

Developers need realistic expectations. We thought it would be easy. We would talk to game developers whose games were already available on-line but had only sold a few copies. The 2002 winner of the Indie Games Festival sold <100 units of their game for instance.  So we would go out and try to bring games onto Drengin.net.  Suddenly though they wanted huge bucks for their game. 

Our standard deal was:

1) Non-exclusivity - you can sell it still on your own.

2) We'd give you a couple thousand dollars advance on royalties -- often more than the game had made total so far (I know that's hard to believe but it's true, most of these cool little games out there have sold only tiny numbers of units).

3) We would give you a royalty off of the total sales of Drengin.net for a set time period.

Number of third party games on Drengin.net so far: 0. Stardock's had to create all of the content so far which won't be sustainable long term. There'd be other snags. We'd get games that were basically early betas. The games we'd want to put on there have to be complete. They don't have to be huge or anything just complete.  Those with complete games would actually ask for hundreds of thousands of dollars in advance. It was unbelievable.  If something like this is going to succeed, some long term thinking is needed -- PC games need an iTunes for Gaming type mechanism where consumers can go and buy this stuff and get it right there and then and be able to access it from a central repository. By the end of this year, Drengin.net will have 4 pretty strong titles on it but realistically we need more than 20 for it to start getting to critical mass. (btw, if you're a developer with a good complete game, even if it's relatively small but still fairly original you can contact me at bwardell@stardock.com ).

But more important than that, gamers will have to get over their fixation of buying boxed copies. If you are willing to only purchase PC games at the store, your options will be steadily decreasing. In the long term, electronic sales are the way to go.  We sell millions of dollars of software electronically each year -- Object Desktop and its components (the non-game version of Drengin.net -- even uses the same program manager Stardock Central). So we know it's doable.  But if PC gamers can't make that transition, the increasingly the only retail games they'll be able to purchase will be in those genres that the PC specializes in (RTS, FPS, MMORPG).

As a PC game developer, we're rapidly reaching a fork in the road. If we can make more selling 10,000 units direct where we don't have to make boxes, don't have to deal with nearly the tech support hassles, have less piracy issues, than selling 100,000 units at retail, then it doesn't take long to realize that maybe if we were on-line only we might "only" sell 20,000 copies instead of the 110,000 total but we'd make more than twice as much as we did the other way. The problem would be that it would be one less PC game on store shelves thus making console games appear even more successful. But I don't see many alternatives.

Of course, none of this is going to happen this year or next year. I'm speaking of the long run here. But console games clearly have a positive feedback cycle going. One that I see only accelerating.


Comments (Page 2)
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on Nov 26, 2003
"PC games just can't compete"

What a load. I hope you enjoy playing your Super Mario Bros. crap, because that's all consoles are good for. Until they make monitor, mouse, and keyboard support for Consoles (like Covert Cowboy said), and also start designing console games to take advantage of them, the only thing the GameCube will be good for is entertaining somebody's snot-nosed, sticky-fingered 3 year old rugrat.
on Nov 26, 2003
Some points:

1. The hope that the unique interface advantages of the computer will continue is probably wrong. My playstation 2 has a keyboard thanks to my involvement in beta testing the network adaptor. I found the base controller to be unworthy of entering chat messages, and picked up an USB keyboard for twenty bucks. With the online component becoming more and more important to the consoles, I suspect that a couple of generations of console will mean they all come with a wireless keyboard. The mouse provides a more difficult challenge to bring to the living room, only because it needs a surface to run on. However, from my testing experience I can tell you that the console makers are aware of the advantage a mouse brings. Perhaps the keyboards will have an integrated track ball (which would work for RTS, but not FPS...)

2. PC gamers are an older lot than the console gamers, and we don't have much time. Ironically, the games for consoles *tend* to be more "sit down, play for a bit, switch it off" than the PC games are. Which means, even though I own a coulple of belchfire computers that can run any game on the shelf, I find myself in the living room when I do have time, playing Tony Hawk 4 or Dark Cloud 2. (Yes, even as an RPG, Dark Cloud lets me enjoy a 30 minute session of monster bashing fun, at which point I switch off, just like every other console game.) The only game that seems to last forever on the console is the turn based stragegy games, like Ring of Red (one mission took me 6 hours).

3. The living room seems more suited for recreation than the office. My buddy can join me for a round of Dynasty Warriors (why more games don't offer co-operative modes is beyond me) just by plunking down on the couch and grabbing a wireless controller. Playing Warcraft III feels more like work than play, if only because of the home office surroundings. The console has the additional benefit that my wife can spectate without sitting in an office chair for hours.

Does this mean I think PC gaming is dead? No, I know there will always be those who write for the PC, if only because of the massive storage, connectivity and upgradability advantages of the PC. In fact, PC gaming may become profitable again once the market becomes "specialty". Mac developers can expect a shareware title to sell *better* than a PC game, because there are fewer such titles competing for attention. However, I do fear that this means that PC gaming will become a backwater of desktop puzzle games and special intrest oddities (and I must admit, eXpand, eXplore, eXterminate turn based gaming is pretty special intrest.) I think anything "big" enough to capture a market of size will eventually be absorbed by the consoles. In fact, they may have some advantages in areas where the PC currently reigns. Imagine playing a FPS where you use a light gun with an integrated movement buttons on it. Mouse and keyboard may *not* be the best control scheme in the end.
on Nov 26, 2003
"What a load. I hope you enjoy playing your Super Mario Bros. crap, because that's all consoles are good for. Until they make monitor, mouse, and keyboard support for Consoles (like Covert Cowboy said), and also start designing console games to take advantage of them, the only thing the GameCube will be good for is entertaining somebody's snot-nosed, sticky-fingered 3 year old rugrat."

Wow, I've never seen someone so angry over the fact that someone is having loads of fun with a machine they just can't understand yet. Enjoy your "yet another doom clone" crap, because I can be narrow-minded and think that's all that's on a PC too.
on Nov 26, 2003
There is another advantage of the PC for the DIY'er, they can build and upgrade their systems for substantially less than buying a prebuilt system.
on Nov 26, 2003
A few more points:

1. The major problem with online distrobution currently is lack of information. I've looked at buying drengin.net online but I live in england. I have no idea what I will actually end up paying since there is no information about what exchange rate you use and whether there is any additional charges. Also the option to order a CD with the game as well as being able to download it. Will I have to pay the extra postage? How about import duty?
What about laws? Does the law in england stop me from doing anything that the liscence says I can do or limits me in some other way so I don't get everything I paid for.

Until stardock and a lot of other people selling their games online realise the internet is international this isn't going to take off completely.

2. 2007 is a rather optimistic date for consoles to have taken over the world by. I have my N64 hooked up to a 10+ year old TV that doesn't even have scart, let alone HDTV and lots of other Acronyms. And it's unlikely to get replaced until it breaks down (Which TVs often take a long time to do).

3. I seriously think that office and simple home PC development is overdue to come to a standstill. If Via can get somebody to program a simple, reliable operating system that does word processing, e-mail etc. for their transmeta chip and bundle it with low-cost low power hardware then they'd blow microsoft, intel and AMD out of that market overnight.

The Multimedia PC will continue to be developed though. Half Life 2 is all very impressive but there's still plenty of room for improvement.
on Nov 26, 2003
I remember when I first played vicman on my vic20 then Autodual on my comodore 64, that brings back memories. When I first saw the NES I was impressed. I built up a small library and traded it all in to get a SNES which I still have. Eventually I bought a PC to help with computer classes. Slowly I started playing more and more PC games until now when I look and any console system I think why bother? Here are my thoughts on why PC's will continue to be a major gaming option.

1. Ten years ago computers not many of my friends had computers. Stores like Future Shop had small computer departments. Now all these years later everyone I know has a computer and computer departments are larger than ever. Regardless of the reason you buy a computer, more and more people have them. Its becoming like TV sets. Everyone has a TV, VCR and a computer ( usually a PC ). What does this have to do with games? Well this is one hell of a large installed base of machines. If you have a computer its only natural to buy a few games.

2. There is no question that consoles cost less than PCs BUT the games for PC are way cheaper if not free. Wait a year and PC games drop in price. Wait two years and you can buy a complete battle chest for $10 to $20. I look at console games at EB and they never seem to get much cheaper. I see ancient game boy games still going for $30 to $40 dollars. Many of the PC games I have purchased eventually offered bonus content. Look at half-life. I bought it for nothing. It was $10 dollars with a $10 rebate. I played the incredible solo portion then I found about 30 bonus mods for it including, They Hunger, Counter Strike, Team Fortress and Natural Selection. I bought Neverwinternights and now I have over 2000 mods to download for it. The same applies to Freedom Force, Morrowwind, warcraft and the list goes on.

3. The argument was put forward that PCs will be restricted to areas that they are good at like FPS, RTS and MMORPG. What about RPGs, simulators ( race car games ) and strategic. PCs absolutely dominate here. Look at, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, NASCAR Racing 2003, Panzer General II. I could not imagine playing any of these games on anything but a PC. If you add up all these categories that just about covers everything in games, except sports and fighter arena types.

4. The issue that PCs only offer better graphics and controls is not the complete picture. Never forget load times. I don't care if my game takes 30 min to install its going to load 10 times faster when I am playing. A hard drive is faster than a CD/DVD drive PERIOD. Also what about wear and tear. CD/DVD drives wear out. I have several friends whose console systems are fussy because the CD/DVD drives are wearing out. Over the years I have found harddrives to be much more robust.

5. I think consoles have ultimately been very good for PCs. I see more and more games coming out for all consoles AND PC. This is especially apparent with the X-Box. In fact the X-box is a PC under the hood. If anything PCs are staying the same and consoles are becoming more and more like the PC.

6. This argument that consoles are easier to use is true but I think I will evenually become a none issue. The new generation of kids are growing up in a computer environment and using PCs is natural. This includes installing and configuring games. If you look at Microsoft and Longhorn there is supposed to be a massive amount of games support coming. By 2007 PCs will install and run games as conveniently as a console. Hell there will probably be X-Box emulators to go back and play these games on your PC.

In summary, I believe the PC game world is heading for a renascence, but I guess we'll find out in 2007.
on Nov 26, 2003
The Pc gaming industry will have to take advantage of all that speed and memory to make better and more exciting games than the consoles.
on Nov 26, 2003
I would expect that consoles will continue to adapt desirable features that PCs have: mouse, keyboard, hard drive, internet access, and those things will become more common in the console environment.

I think that ease of use is the driving advantage of consoles. With a console, there's nothing to install, you don't have to worry about drivers or which version of directX you have, you don't need to worry about system requirements, you don't have to worry about patches, and your game is much less likely to crash.

Patches can be an advantage for PCs, but what I have seen from many developers is abusing patchability by releasing an incomplete and/or buggy game and then patching it later. By the way, Stardock is an exception to that, Galactic Civilizations has had the best post-release support for any non-subscription game that I have seen.

on Nov 26, 2003
The real issue is the audience. Console games generally are for people with little education or for people who want to immediately blow off steam.

Console games also are for people with a lack of history, strategy, or abilitiy to see the fine details such as in a credible 4X game.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is a place for console games just as when there was a place for space invaders and defender at the local gas N sip.

PC games, as much as they diminish, only reflect the growing gap between the educated and the not so educated. If you want to improve PC games or at least their survivability, then you should be an advocate for a better, more literate populace--a populace that can read a manual, manipulate a computer, and play a game that doesn't involve skateboards, cheat codes, ans stupid acts of random violence.

Carpe diem!
on Nov 26, 2003
I might be mistaken, but aren't there plenty of games out there for the PC that involve skateboards (i.e. THPS is out for the PC), cheat codes (i.e. IDKFA), and ultra-violence (i.e. PCs are the founders of FPS, one of the most violent genres out there).
I also think that judging somebody's intelligence by the genre of games they play is rather self-motivated. When will people realize that knowing how to manipulate a computer doesn't mean you're intelligent? It just means you have plenty of time, which I know personally, as intelligence was never a factor of learning how to use my computer. It was more a matter of having the time and boredom necessary to. Some people don't have the time or desire to work with a computer. Does that make them less intelligence? If so, then I guess that automatic transmissions, microwaves, television, sports except for golf, food that isn't homemade, and any style of writing except calligraphy is for the unintelligent.
on Nov 26, 2003
I think one poster hit the nail on the head when he mentioned that PC games can be PATCHED easily while console games can not. Online connectivity has the potential of solving that little problem in the near future though.

In my opinion, in order for the console market to run the PC out of the game arena, the console will have to BECOME a PC. If you have a console that has a keyboard, mouse, hard drive, printer port, an internet connection, and an operating system that allows you to utilize the console for home office applications, you essentialy have a PC. What I think will happen in the next 10 years is that hardware and operating system standardization will allow you to play console games on your PC and PC games on your console.

My vision of the future is that you will be able to go into Best Buy and pick up an XBox III or Playstation IV for 200 bucks, plug it into your home theater system (with HDTV and 7.1 surround sound) and be able to play games, surf the net, or write a resume on it. The PC nuts (thats those of us who build or buy hot rod gaming machines) will still be able to build a PC and run the SAME GAMES on it. Essentialy, the "Console" will be a PC but one that cant be upgraded. 2 or 3 years down the road, you will shell out another 200 bucks for the next greatest console... or if your a PC guy, buy some upgrades for your current system. The trend is already started with Microsofts XBox. It uses DirectX for its graphics API and its operating system is probably based on the Windows kernel too.

Rob
on Nov 26, 2003
As far as im concern,the main problem with pc is the very same thing that made it take over the market to begin with: open architecture.20 different kind of video cards,chipset,memory..ect
The pc urgently needs to put in place standards,real standards and im not talking about dx9.
Until developers have a way to come up with pc games that actually work(without 1 or 5 patches),the console will continue to gain on the pc.
Lets face it im not gona shed 500$ to get that big video card that plays halo at full framerate when i can buy a brand new xbox WITH the game for the same price and still have enough money left to buy 1 or 2 other title...
on Nov 26, 2003
Rare level of bullsh*t. The guy obviously thinks he knows what hes talking about, which i cant agree with.
1. PC is about 10 times more advanced in tech terms, which will keep true gamers on that platform. I cant feel anything but sore for whomever will play Doom3 or HL2 on Xbox.
2. If you think WarCraft3 sells so good for its graphics, no wonder you cant earn from your Galactic something (which i barely heard of, btw).
3. About the price thing --- Yes, PC costs much more. But how about games? PC - 50$ (and its considered VERY expensive), Console - 60-70$. Not to talk about downloading the full games...

The only thing thats slowly
killing the PC market, is the developers themselves. Look at DeusEx2 demo for example - one of the biggest disapointments of the year imo. Lean buttons is too complicated for console dummies? So lets remove it! Action is too fast? Lets simplify it to 3 years old level. Hacking - console ppl cant type, so purple bar is enough. And dont forget the text size --- dear console users cant see that awfuly small text!!! What a crap... I'm NOT going to buy this game. Maybe, just maybe, download it, but not buy. PC gamers used for best. Not just good, but BEST. Sad that the dev's choose to ignore that lately... I'm downloading games, and i'm not ashame to admit it, cause most of them just dont deserve the money asked for. But not all of them. I got GroundControl,WC3, Diablo2, couple of DeltaForce, RedAlert2, MaxPayne,TotalAnnihilation, all of MechWarriors, StarCraft, Quakes, BaldursGate, original, and i'm going to get Doom3, GroundControl2, Quake4 original. The games that i know devs did their best for me.

Yes, PC games require much more work to make, but in return you got so faithful community, no console crap could stand next too (Fallout, ID software, Epic, BG1-2-2.5 NWN, Counter-Strike, Tribes). And those ppl will buy your games ALWAYS, provided you will make them with same dedication. As i see it, all those "Console taking the market, its unavoidable" articles is written only as lame excuses for not-so-talented devs, who maybe will succeed to sell their crap to console lamers, but have no chanse on PC, and by knowing it, they decided to run across.

With disrespect.
on Nov 26, 2003
Well, I am going to join the console team on this one. I was once a hardcore PC player. Purchased a game a week and finished them just as fast, however a couple readers above say the magic word "Patch" well, i have been burned way to many times on software that *1) wont install 2) wont work with my video drivers 3) copy protection thats so secure you cant even use the original disk* These hindering factors demand patches.

Now why do people like Rob say that patches are so damn good? Why is it that a company like Valve, or ID, or whomever can sell a product that is broken for $60? I go to Best Buy and buy a DVD player, but it doenst need a laser added, or a future remote addon. It comes in the box, it works from the beginning. patching is bullshit. 100% bullshit. No game should ever have to be patched. NEVER.

I will admit that I have played a few console games that have had their problems as well. But seeing as that Valve has released 12 patches for half-life, Warcraft has 9, Diablo 2 has 10 patches...i can honestly say that 99% of the games I have played on console are 100% problem free.

Now the resolution aspect. I will give PC gamers that one. PC gamers also dont have the ability to play on a 48" widescreen TV while sitting on a leather lazy boy recliner surrounded by a 5.1 Bose audio system pumping 1000watts of dolby sound. That my friend, i will never give up to play at 1600x1200. Never.

Xbox Live ownz you. If you have every experianced a game of Project Gotham 2 with people from all over the world, or traded pot shots down a hallway in Rainbow 6 3, then you know what I mean. All the rest of yall really should check it out. You will be amazed. MS did online gaming on the conosle right. on their first try.

Consoles will become more like PCs. And PC gamers will gravitate....PC gaming will slowly become more obsucre games, back the sharware days of Doom2.

Just my 2 cents.

I may be back with more rambling. But honestly, PC gamers need to spend more time with their console brothers to see what all the fuss is about.
on Nov 26, 2003
Four Reasons Why Consoles Cannot Replace PCs:

1) Storage
2) User Interface
3) Controls
4) Depth

There are two more, but consoles are showing signs of eventually overcoming them:

5) Patching
6) Community


Storage is the biggest item. The hard drive is not replaceable -- except by another hard drive. If a console includes a hard drive, it is no longer really a console-n-cartridge device any more, but a PC in another package. Hard drives allows users to do so much more. I can have as many saved games for my games as my space allows. I can sort and store them to my taste. I can take screen shots, and manipulate those for upload to the internet. I can write about the game, my strategies, my thoughts, my gaming experiences, and save all of these writings. I can keep copies of old patches, flip between windows and do other things while playing. I can take a break from work, which I do on the same machine, to play a quick game. No console would ever be worth my time unless it had equal storage power, in which case it would be a PC anyway, so what's the point? The previous poster, Rob, made the same point, and I agree with him. The future most likely lies in a marriage of console and PC, for them to become compatible. And, sadly, he's probably right that Microsoft will lead the way and make it happen.

User Interface includes I/O devices and monitoring device. HDTV? No thanks. Not for my computing needs. With my eyesight, I need even better performance than HDTV would provide. I'm one of those guys who paid as much for his monitor as he did for the rest of his PC combined. Consoles couldn't hope to touch that performance aspect unless, again, they became a PC in another package anyway. Mouse needs a flat surface? See previous comment. No way am I moving my gaming away from a desk, where I can sit in an ergonomic executive swivel chair comfortably for hours at a time, to go sit ON MY COUCH, for god's sake, and be squinting at my TV, having other people wanting to watch TV, bustling in, walking between me and the screen. I'm a diehard trackball hater. Real mouse or forget it, and that too requires a desk. My desk can hold a stack of CD's, pen and paper, additional controllers, and most importantly, is set up to support continuous hours of use. A console would have to become a PC to replace my PC.

3) Controls. I tried console gaming a decade ago, with friends who had both PC and console. We had a name for what happened to our hands after an hour on the console: Sega Thumb. OUCH. Are you kidding me? Those crappy little thumbpad hack-jobs are done on the cheap, to keep costs down, not to provide solid control or comfortable use. Maybe kids who grew up on those crappy things have developed some kind of immunity or tolerance for their low quality, but for me? No thanks. Give me real controls. Brad mentioned mouse and keyboard, but forgot the joystick. A top notch PC joystick has five axes: the stick has X and Y, like the console control thumbpad, but that's where it ends for the console, just like the old Atari 2600 joysticks. The PC stick has a twist, adding a Z axis, plus a thumb hat that amounts to a console thumbpad all by itself. Well, fancy console controls with two thumbpads can simulate that, so they can get up to four axes, but they still miss that fifth on the twist. PLUS, the joystick plants on my desk (again missing for the console) while my other hand has access to the keyboard. Consoles can't come close to matching that quality or number of controls. Console games cannot live up to the depth available to immersive joystick games. The mouse and keyboard are not dispensible, either. If you give a console a modern joystick, a mouse and a keyboard, put it on a desk with a high res monitor, and put a hard drive into it... you've got a PC!

Depth. Between storage, interface, and control, there is depth available to PC game makers. Depth that cannot be reproduced on the console. This isn't about "what PC games do better". PC's can do everything better, except simplify. That's the strength of the console: simplification. Plug-n-Play, delivered. Without storage, though, longer games are not possible. Without length, there is less depth to the game. When it comes down to it, aren't consoles the inheritor of the arcade game, rather than the PC game?

The arcades did not die out from the consoles in the 80's. They died out when PC's brought a more compelling game experience, with depth, to the market. Arcade games used to offer more depth than home console games: better controls, better graphics, and a sense of wider community, of competition, because of the high score boards. We paid as much for those as we did for the gaming itself. Posting the high score, or competiting to beat it, was a big deal to most arcade gamers. Consoles couldn't deliver that because they lacked storage! Atari 5200 and Colecovision were dinosaurs before they were even released. They thought they were capturing the essence of the arcade experience but in fact failed to do so. It was the Commodore 64 and ilk that finally took down the arcades, with the "IBM Compatible PC" to finish them off for keeps.

Have consoles finally caught up a bit? Yes. With internet connectivity, and access to mods and patches, and limited storage capacity, they have recaptured some of the bare functionality the arcade games used to have, which consoles of old never had, and so they took back some of the market that had, for years, gone over to the PC. Yet the depth is still missing, and will continue to be absent unless the consoles become PCs anyway.

The internet breathed new life into PC games in the mid and late 90's, but at the same time also sucked the life right out of PC games. What a nasty combination! Gamers, for a while, were so juiced by the increasing capabilities of PC hardware, they were willing, for a time, to go ahead and buy a new computer every two years, just to have the latest, to stay in the loop. That has faded out now, and PC game makers need to find their way to understand the new reality. PC's for a time were the only game in town. They enjoyed both the support of the depth-seekers and the eye-candy addicts. Now the eye-candy-addicts can get enough eye candy from console games. So why, oh please tell me why, are PC game makers abandoning the depth seekers who are their loyal customer base, to go chasing the almighty dollar they think lies with the eye candy seekers?

A console can download patches, but it can't allow for writing and posting feedback to the internet unless it turns itself into a PC. And any console that does not support patching will run head long into what someone else above pointed out: when they release a broken or incomplete game, they can't fix it. That's where attempting to put depth into a console game could backfire hugely. If the games they release are mostly broken and unfixable, there will eventually be a huge exodus back to the PC, if not outright, then by some console maker making a PC in a console's package, and attracting the lion's share of console business by offering some of the strengths of the PC on their console.


The PC game industry has lost its way, by and large. A lot of clones and formulas, as marketing jerks take over, as the soul of the industry has sold out, allowed itself to be dominated by trying to recreate the next version of the previous hit game, instead of nurturing creativity. The business model sucks for developers, as Brad aptly points out, but that is largely because so many small developers started up, the publishers had a buyer's market. And now that "production values" have raised the ante, a lot of good games that would have been made ten years ago are not made today.

I, at least, hunger for good games. Eye candy in some measure is fine, but how does the game play? Is it challenging? Is it fun? How much of my time playing is spent on strategy or execution, vs how much is make-work and tedium? Patching is not even an option on today's games. It's an absolute necessity. A good game needs a year's worth of patches to reach completion, and that's if the design team is skilled in weeding out the feedback they get, sorting the wheat from the chaff of player requests and bug reports. GalCiv has been a good game from the start, but six months in, still has a slew of issues to clean up in patching to deliver on all of its original promises. Gamers will stick with a company who sees that process through to the end. They won't stick with companies who promise too much and then do not deliver. That has been most game makers in recent years. They want to cut corners and expect us to keep on buying. Not going to happen.

I know a lot of gamers, and almost all the gamers I know are sitting around playing old games, polished versions that saw a lot of patching or the rare spectacular gem that needed only a couple of patches, and waiting. Waiting on the slew of crap coming out to be interrupted by something that bows down at the altar of fun, not the altar of eye candy and gimmickry. Word of mouth makes sales. I've brought a few sales to GalCiv, because I have a reputation among my friends. They know if a game holds my attention for any length of time, it's a gem. And I have friends I rely on for the same function. Somebody we collectively know will try almost every game with any degree of promise, and then comes the review. If it's positive, a few more will try the game and add their opinions. If the word is unanimous, almost everyone will buy. We are one heck of a smart pack of shoppers, and nobody puts one over on the whole lot of us.

Somebody here described 4X games as a niche market. Funny, that niche was pretty wide a decade ago, when the top games coming out were Civilization, Xcom and Master of Orion. What? All the people who bought those games dried up and blew away? I don't think so. We're still out here. Look at the anticipation there was for Master of Orion III. The customers are there. It's up to the game makers to GET IT RIGHT for a change. GalCiv could inherit the kingdom if Brad plays his cards right.

The PC game industry is on the decline because game makers have largely lost touch with the needs and wants of their core customers. Instead of filling the various niches and making decent money, they all chase the blockbusters in pursuit of the dollars of customers they view as a large flock of sheep to be fleeced instead of intelligent consumers. And on that score, I believe even Brad has it wrong here. I don't know what writing he's reading on the wall, but we must not be looking at the same wall. I for one will never buy a console, yet some day, many of those console gamers of the new generation will grow up and discover the richer, deeper world of PC games. They will graduate from arcade action to the thinking man's games. Plenty of money to be made off of adults, even though we have less time for the gaming than kids do. The very fact that we do have less time makes it critical that we get games that are polished, fun to play, and engaging. Substitutes and pretenders need not apply. We've banded together out of necessity; we listen to word of mouth and only pay for quality goods. Yet we WILL pay, and gladly. The market is out there, hungering, waiting, hoping.

And yet, not all of us have high speed internet. I don't, and you can forget me downloading anything over 10MB. I won't do it. I don't have the time to waste on that. For me to buy software, I've got to get a CD. Period. I'll support Stardock with direct purchase from now on, so they get the full profit, but I need a CD for every purchase. And as some pointed out, outside the USA, consumers have other concerns, too, when trying to buy American software. Then there's the fact that I now get an Object Desktop component loading on my PC as startup, when I have not purchased or desired that product. Part of the Stardock auto-downloader? I'm not sure. It caused one of my other programs to stop working, though, and sometimes interferes with yet more programs on boot-up. There's no excuse for that. It's sloppy. Computer users don't trust software companies. The wide variety of hardware configurations and drivers is a huge obstacle for designers, I realize, and I don't have easy answers for that. But every customer has their own considerations and concerns, and we all have a breaking point at which we stop supporting a product or a company. In my view, if Drengin.net is to succeed, they've got to do a good job of finding out what customers need and want and delivering that. Customers will go to the best overall deal. There is a huge dearth of good games on the market. GalCiv is a rare exception. It's a good game. That's why I'm here. That issue with the Object Desktop component is a minor drawback. So is the as-yet unpolished state of GalCiv itself. Brad and Stardock have shown a lot of promise, though, and seem to be more in line with my needs and wants, overall, than their competitors.

And yet the key difference for me in supporting Stardock is the intent to finish their game. Many game designs have a lot of potential, if work on the game continues after release. No game nowadays can possibly be all it can be upon release. When thousands of players get their hands on the game and finally play it, its shortcomings and flaws will be exposed in a way even the best beta testing cannot find. Therefore, the only companies who will ever again reach a fully polished game of modern depth and complexity are those fully committed to ongoing or occasional patches, to redress new issues turned up by the players over time, allowing at least a year for all such issues to emerge. Commitment to patching is, for me, the key ingredient. Lack thereof is likewise the fatal flaw. I won't ever again buy from companies who drop a lemon in my lap, take my money and run. And will consoles ever match that requirement? I doubt it. I don't even own a console and I do not expect that to change.


- Sirian
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