Intel: PC gaming is not dying, it's doing better than all the other consoles

[Marmooset]

Hah! Piracy has very little impact on the actual market. I've seen statistics showing as much as 1 in every 100 PC game pirated would have been bought otherwise. So, they've lost what? A couple hundred units? In the grand scheme of things, yes, it adds up, but it's negligible.

(DON'T TURN THIS INTO A PIRACY RANT THREAD. JUST DON'T DO IT.)

Wait - you just did.

 

[iLikeHippos]

PC gaming is dying? Who the hell said that in the first place?

I've yet to hear it from Blizzard. Cause when BLIZZARD tells it, THAN I may believe it.

Otherwise it's a huge load of shit to begin with.

With more than 11.5 million monthly subscriptions in December 2008,[12][13] World of Warcraft is currently the world's most-subscribed MMORPG,[9][14][15] and holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG by subscribers.[16][17][18][19] In April 2008, World of Warcraft was estimated to hold 62 percent of the MMORPG subscription market.[20]

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft

 

[AlanShore]

Can you name 3 PC only games that make PC gaming better/equal (as far as you are concerned)?

http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/games-of-2010/
http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/2011-games/

Those lists are fantastic. It always makes me laugh when people say that PC's never get any exclusives. If anything they get more than the others, you just never really get to hear about them, which is a shame.

 

[hottsaucekid]

Can you name 3 PC only games that make PC gaming better/equal (as far as you are concerned)?

http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/games-of-2010/
http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/2011-games/

That is one amazing list to say the least. i mean just wow i didnt know that the pc had that many exclusives. truly amazing

 

[Klepa]

Hah! Piracy has very little impact on the actual market.

Seriously tho... Name 3 games that are PC only..... and do the rest of us care about them?

Holy crap what happened there..

I was just tryin to express my console love, while giving credit to the PC games that I love as well.

It is one sided I admit, but I'm kinda a snob about things. At least I post that way more often. Sorry to offend a bit.

Can you name 3 PC only games that make PC gaming better/equal (as far as you are concerned)?

I don't really think that anyone's trying to downplay consoles or spew out PC superiority, atleast not yet, and not in this thread. Just a bunch of people discussing about an article without taking sides, as far as I can tell.

Games with heavier UI's, like strategy games, most current MMO's, and old school WRPG's tend to lend themselves better on a mouse and keyboard setup.

Console controllers, on the other hand, are better at God of War/Devil May Cry type games, which are quite popular on consoles.

He's talking about "Enthusiast PCs" (read gamer PCs) which he defined as having at least a DirectX10 capable graphics card (which is better than any console): http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Ah yeah, you're quite right. Should've slept last night, I kind of missed that part.

 

[tautologico]

I was just tryin to express my console love, while giving credit to the PC games that I love as well.

It is one sided I admit, but I'm kinda a snob about things. At least I post that way more often. Sorry to offend a bit.

Can you name 3 PC only games that make PC gaming better/equal (as far as you are concerned)?

As far as I'm concerned... there are lots. MMOs (though not much into them right now), the whole strategy genre (the Total War series, Civilization series, Starcraft/Warcraft), RPGs (not just recent ones, I've been replaying Fallout 1 lately, still good), etc.

I don't think the PC is "superior", it's just that PC games are more in line with my tastes. I also like consoles too, but I still haven't bought a next-gen console because not enough console exclusives catch my fancy.

(And yes, your original reply did come out as overly aggressive, without apparent reason for all the rage).

 

[Continuity]

Cause we all know that using a mouse is easier than using skill. Err I mean, twiddling your thumbs.

I've seen you post something like this before and I have to say that you are very much mistaken if you think using the mouse as a control system requires less skill, its more effective but that does not equate to requiring less skill.
I'll draw an analogy, using a mouse is like drawing with a pencil where as using a controller is like drawing with a pencil attached to a 3 foot pole, both can do that same thing but its much easier to get better results with the pencil that isn't attached to a pole... but if you have no drawing skill then you're not going to get a decent picture out of either. (ok its a crap analogy but w/e)
Seriously, if you think using a mouse in FPS games requires no skill all I can suggest is that you give counterstrike a go, don't forget when everyone is using a better control system (the mouse) then the standard of performance you need to compete is much higher.

 

[Continuity]

He's talking about "Enthusiast PCs" (read gamer PCs) which he defined as having at least a DirectX10 capable graphics card (which is better than any console): http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Ah yeah, you're quite right. Should've slept last night, I kind of missed that part.

Don't forget that pretty much every laptop above a certain price point ships with a dx10 grahics card but I'll bet very few of those laptops will ever use their dx10 capability (i.e. won't play proper games)

 

[AlanShore]

He's talking about "Enthusiast PCs" (read gamer PCs) which he defined as having at least a DirectX10 capable graphics card (which is better than any console): http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Ah yeah, you're quite right. Should've slept last night, I kind of missed that part.

Don't forget that pretty much every laptop above a certain price point ships with a dx10 grahics card but I'll bet very few of those laptops will ever use their dx10 capability (i.e. won't play proper games)

While that's true, the article says that they considered sales of discrete DX10+ cards, which wouldn't include laptops.

 

[Arcticflame]

Cause we all know that using a mouse is easier than using skill. Err I mean, twiddling your thumbs.

I've seen you post something like this before and I have to say that you are very much mistaken if you think using the mouse as a control system requires less skill, its more effective but that does not equate to requiring less skill.
Seriously, if you think using a mouse in FPS games requires no skill all I can suggest is that you give counterstrike a go, don't forget when everyone is using a better control system (the mouse) then the standard of performance you need to compete is much higher.

Yeah, I get kinda defensive when I'm called a thumb twiddler.

For reference I will use Valve as an example.

Both Portal and Halflife 2 I find more enjoyable with a controller. That makes me (INSERT CONSOLE HATE HERE) but I realize that PC vs Console fps = PC point and click for the win.

I grew up never owning a console till I was able to buy one myself. I was pure PC gamer till Dreamcast was released. I grew up with Castle Wolf... Doom.... Quake.... Halflife...and more point and click adventures than you could shake a stick at (Where is the Zak McKrakken remake!!!!)

It is easier to use a mouse and keyboard. Any PC fanboy will admit it, but since I am making it sound like a crutch, I see why you would disagree.

I think I might have railroaded this thread (as far as my posts) away from what is was meant to be, so let me just say this then:

PC gaming is doing better than Console gaming. Just ask any PC gamer. They will tell you that every time.

But since my $900 PC can't play new games, I find myself preferring console to PC except for EVE Online, Warhammer II, and Civilization (those are enough to justify a PC as being a better system).

Sorry if I was rude earlier, that is just how I am.

Just wondering, but why can't your 900$ PC run new games? How old is it? because a 900$ PC built well can last for at least 4 years, if not longer.

Also, consoles use auto-aim for most games, and/or balance around controller skill for their level of difficulty, for me personally, all this leads to is immersion being worse, as the level of control I have over a player tends to influence the level of immersiveness the game provides. I preferred GTA:SA on PC so much more, partly due to the control scheme, partly due to user tracks.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

Can you name 3 PC only games that make PC gaming better/equal (as far as you are concerned)?

Company of Heroes, Starcraft 2, Starcraft 1, Half Life, Half Life 2 Episodes, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike, Dragon Age: Origins, Mount and Blade, The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and Oblivion (It's all about the mods, baby!), Diablo 1 and 2, Worms, Civilization, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Garry's Mod, Age of Empires, The Sims, Max Payne, Total War Series, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas(Multiplayer), Deus Ex.

That good enough for you?

 

[IamQ]

Not sure if this was posted before but this surprised the hell out of me

http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2010/04/19/hear-that-knocking-sound-its-pc-gaming/
[NOTE: There are some fancy, elaborate, and complicated charts and graphs in the link]

Hear that knocking sound? It?s PC gaming!
By Mandy Mock (Intel) (1 posts) on April 19, 2010 at 1:14 pm

Do you know what the opportunities are in PC gaming? They?re probably better then you think ? the PC gaming market is much bigger than consoles, both in installed base and in money made.

Sound hard to believe? Between how fast changes are happening in game models and distribution mechanisms and industry reports that only give a piece of the whole picture, it?s hard to get a really good feel for what?s happening in PC gaming. And yet, knowing things like how many gaming PCs are out there, how much revenue PC games generate, what the most popular gaming styles are and so forth is critical to deciding what kind of game to build, how to generate revenue from it, and how to distribute it.

We here in the Visual Adrenaline team have struggled with this too. We ask all the same questions as we try to find the best ways to work with games developers and to help them leverage the IA platform. We?ve accumulated a lot of data internally and done a lot of analysis on it. We think it?s helped us to form some answers to these questions, and we want to share the data we?ve put together with you and hear your thoughts on it. Our hope is that together we can create greater accuracy and more transparency around the trends that are happening in PC gaming.

Let?s start with the question of whether there are more consoles or gaming PCs. We consulted reports from the usual suspects - IDC*, DFC*, Mercury*, NPD*, IN-STAT*, Screen Digest*, the PCGA* and a bit of our own internal data to come up with the estimate in the graph for how many units of each platform there are out there today and over the next 5 years.

For the console numbers, we used the number of active consoles globally (in other words, consoles sold minus an estimate of how many have gotten broken or lost or stuck in the back of the closet.) For PCs, we took 2 years cumulative sales of DX10+ discrete graphics cards to estimate the number of enthusiast PCs that are capable of playing most games. That means the estimate might be a little high, since some of those cards might have gone into the same systems or non-gaming systems. At the same time, the estimate might be a little low since we only used 2 cumulative years worth of sales, which is a little short for a PC lifespan. We think those 2 factors probably balance each other out and that this estimate is pretty close.

What?s interesting to see is just how much larger the PC base is than any of the consoles. To tell you the truth, I really hadn?t realized how large a difference it is until I put this chart together. Enthusiast PCs are 62% of the total market, and there are 4PCs out there for every Wii, 7 PCs for every Xbox360 and 8 PCs for every PS3. Wow.

The second interesting thing is that almost all of the forecasted growth is in notebooks. For a lot of people now, a notebook is the only way to go. I think there will always be a place for desktops, especially with really serious gamers, but a larger and larger percentage of gaming is happening on notebooks.

Now on to the question of how much revenue from gaming each platform generates. We used a similar process to develop our estimate here as we did for the chart above.

The top 3 sections of the chart show, in US dollars, the total amount of revenue generated globally from all types of games on the Wii, the Xbox360 and the PS3. The bottom 3 rows are all gaming revenue from PCs, broken into 3 categories. The bottom category we called PC Traditional Game SW. This basically covers games that you pay for upfront. Whether purchased in retail or downloaded online, if you paid for the game before playing it, we put it in this category. The PC MMOG category covers subscription based gaming. And the PC Free to Play category includes games that are based on transactions (like buying equipment or upgrades in the game) and on advertising.

Today, PC gaming generates 43% of the total gaming revenue. The next closest platform is the Wii, which generated 24% of the total gaming revenue in 2009. And the PC share is growing ? by 2013, the forecast is that PC gaming will represent 56% of the total pie.

It?s interesting to see that the growth in PC gaming revenue is predicted to come from the newer business models ? subscription and online transactions. This matches my intuition ? with piracy being difficult to overcome in the traditional games model, the newer business models are increasingly attractive. And a good chunk of that growth in the number of units of PCs out there is due to growth in developing markets. In those markets in particular, lower upfront cost models are extremely popular.

So, there are our estimates for the number of PCs out there versus consoles and the revenue generated from PC games. We think it paints a pretty compelling picture for developing games on the PC.

Does this mean we might get less DRM crap?

 

[fix-the-spade]

I always thought piracy had somewhat of an impact...

My question: Why are developers "leaving" the platform?

For the most part, they aren't. A few with ties to console developers have done, because the Sony/Nintendo/Msoft makes it worth their while to do so. But the actual number of developers to abandon PC develoment is small.

Although, releasing a PC game is much riskier. Get it right and you can have consistent sales for over ten years (see, Quake, StarCraft, Counter Strike) but get it wrong and PC gamers are much more cynical about hype, getting good first month sales is less likely with an average game.

It's probably worth noting that PC gaming is much more varied than console too, you don't see MMOs, facebook/flash and browser games on consoles. They've all got to count for something.

 

[Last Valiance]

The problem with this is that it is clearly completely wrong.

 

[Kharneth]

Personally, I've always felt that the whole "Oh, piracy is so rampant on the PC, that's why we're making our games for consoles only!" deal was nothing more than an excuse from slave-driving producers (*ahem!* EA and Activision) who just want the dev teams to churn out game after game after game without providing ANY after-sale support for the customer (i.e. Mods, DevKits, etc etc.)