Poll: PC Gaming Future?

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Vigormortis

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I picked the last option, but really I was looking for one that read as follows:

PC gaming will, like all other forms of media, change over time to become something new.

It's inevitable really. It'll end up being some combination of old and new technology and techniques. It may take a while, but we're already starting to see drastic changes in how we interact with our technology. It won't take long before these changes lead to even more drastic changes and then become the "norm".
 

surg3n

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I think it depends on whether PC gamers actually support their platform. Too many PC gamers are pirating games, and there is very little incentive for them to stop doing that, at least on the surface. Steam provides exactly the same service as a Torrent downloader, there is practically no benefit in paying £30 for a game, than just downloading the torrent. Steam and it's contemporaries are doing nothing to improve matters. Console piracy is only a fraction as bad as with the PC, with the 360 and PS3 people are less inclined to pirate games. It could be said that piracy is 1/10th as bad on consoles, and PC sales is 1/10th of console sales - generally PC gamers need to step up to the plate if they want to survive... like a reduction in piracy or an increase in sales would make a big difference to developer confidence.

I don't know how many times I've said it, but Steam and similar services need to get a freakin grip. I can pay roughly the same for a console game, with instructions, disc, etc that I can then re-sell, as I do for a PC game which I download. Downloadable PC games should be dirt cheap, like at least half the price they are right now. People have to see piracy as a grubby, miserable option, and the only way to do that is to stop charging the earth for a few hours gameplay. I actually makes me angry to see games sold for £30+ on Steam, no wonder piracy is so rife, and it's Steam versions that people are distributing these days - do publishers think our support should really cost that much!, do they think tha Steam experience can really justify those prices!. Steam is great for picking up little bargains here and there, for picking up new full price games, really it's the worst option.
 

Kingjackl

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I would argue that the future of the PC as a gaming device is in the indy games market, as opposed to the big-budget triple-A titles. Experimental indy titles play on one of the greatest strengths of PC gaming, namely easy access to digital distribution, plus the vast majority of them tend to be quite low-tech. This means they can thrive on gig's most diverse platform without fear of blocking off players who cannot afford a high-tier PC.

Think about it: look at some of the biggest PC titles: Minecraft, WOW, Plants vs Zombies, Peggle, most Valve games, EDGE, etc. The thing they have in common is that they are best played on PC because, not in spite of, their low system requirements. Many PC gamers who like to spend their lottery winnings upgrading their rig would argue that the PC's capability to be more graphically powerful than consoles is a point in its favour, but it is simply not. The great strengths of the PC:

- Mouse and keyboard interface offers a more diverse gaming experience
- Unrestricted community support (mods more easily available)
- Best online support
- Best access to digital distribution
- More viable to indie developers

The main weakness of the PC:

- Unstable and costly to maintain as a gaming platform.

Therefore, it is my belief that the ideal future for the PC would be a gaming environment which caters to the artistic and creative independant developer sphere, NOT to the vocal minority of golfing enthusiasts and neglectful husbands who want a machine they can tinker with to so they can make their pirated copies of Crysis run at a 5% faster frame-rate.
 

Doktor Sleepless

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I clicked mobile gaming, and I'll explain why. PCs, consoles, phones, and hard-drives will soon all cease to exist as separate concepts. The next paradigm shift in storage and computing technology will see people accept a unit as small as a phone as standard, akin to the shift to the smaller laptops as standard. This one computing module will be carried around as a phone/ personal assistant while out and about, and when at home will be attached to various peripheral devices to play games or watch media on a larger screen than the one on the device. The console as we imagine it will be obsolete, but I'm fairly sure that these devices will be made by at least Microsoft, if not Sony, so they'll still exist in this updated form. I imagine that people who want more power than their device can give will be able to plug into the usual PC gaming tower. No technology ever "dies", it just becomes something else.
 

Sigma Van Lockheart

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Jun 7, 2011
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pc gaming is not as hard as you think also you dont need to keep upgrading that often. Also its cheaper but im not going into that now.
 

Joccaren

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Mar 29, 2011
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Twilight_guy said:
My knee-jerk (extra emphases on jerk (ha, ha jerk)) response as I read:
You not allow to sell your opinion as fact calling one inferior hardware is not a valid statement to make. You can compare the specs and take facts from that but I'll just retort that you can't predict the future and thus you don't know how PCs and consoles will stack up in 10 years or 5 years or 15 years or however long the OP is looking.
You can call one set of hardware inferior. Compare the things about it. I am not saying that the idea of consoles is inferior, only that the hardware within those consoles are. If they were on equal grounds, or the console hardware was greater than PC hardware, then anything that could be done on PC could be done on consoles. Since the opposite is true, and PCs can handle far more intensive stuff then consoles and display it at a higher quality, it comes out that console hardware is inferior.

Prove to me that consoles apply to a casual audience. Define casual. Tell me that the 13 year old jerk on X-box live are casuals. I think you're wrong.
Note that I said 'casual' not casual. The inverted commas need to be noted, as I do not mean it entirely literally. I have yet to find a good definition differentiating casual from hardcore. One of the arguments often used by console users in PC v Console wars that tends to put them in a more casual light is the 'its easier' argument, which implies they don't care about the quality of the game, only that its easy to set up and play, whilst the 'hardcore' (Note inverted commas) players care more about the quality than ease of use. And by quality I am mainly talking about graphics, but there are other things PCs can do that consoles can't (See BF3 Player limits, vehicle respawn times, map sizes, ect).

I'm not implying anything about the physical age of the technology so much as pointing out that the idea that consoles are killing the PC is wrong because Consoles have been around for just as long as neither has died yet thus one market cannot be slowly killing the other unless its a process so so that it takes decades in which case, judging form the current PC market, you won't have to worry about it in your lifetime.
Exactly. Point 2 was meant to be taken in a different light to point 1.

I have an undying boiling hatred for elitists. It stems from my great displeasure at fanboys. Also, technically saying one is better is saying the other is inferior by default. If one is good then the other must be less good.
As I've said, 'elitist' definition changes from person to person. Some would say that because you buy a new car and look back at that car made 30 years ago and say its not as good as your new car, you are elitist. Well, at least that's what the argument of 'PC hardware is better than console hardware' 'ELITIST' amounts to in all reality.
And yes, I imply that console HARDWARE is inferior by that statement, but I do not imply consoles on the whole are utter crap. There is preference and how easy each will be for you to obtain and all that sort of stuff that factors into whether consoles are crap or not, and that sort of thing changes from person to person. For me, consoles are crap because they have inferior hardware to PCs, are harder for me to obtain than PCs, I hate the controller, I would barely ever use it as someone else is always using my TV, and I'm not too interested in any of the exclusives. To someone else, they might have one PC in the whole house, have a hard time getting new PC parts or a new PC, someone always is using that PC for work, yet they have a spare TV, consoles are easy for them to obtain, and they have an interest in some of the exclusives. Different strokes for different folks really.

Anyways, Be sure not to conflate specs with overall quality or significance since there is more to games and systems then raw numbers.
Yep. It is the reason that I don't actively go around saying consoles are absolute crap and should stop being made, though I would question whether anything about a console is higher quality to a well made PC. As I said above, different strokes for different folks. Dependant on what works best for the individual, both PCs and Consoles have a place. From something that I read in one of the other posts, it sounds like console gaming is dying due to the high production cost of the consoles themselves for low return, but I'm just taking that at the same value as 'PC gaming is dying', until games for either, or platforms for either, stop getting made, I'm not going to believe it.
 

Bostur

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BreakfastMan said:
Looking at the industry in it's current form, it seems like console and PC gaming will merge. Consoles are becoming more and more like PCs, and PCs are becoming more and more like consoles. I would wager 15-20 years from now, the descriptions of "PC" and "Console" will become obsolete. Or, it could be that we will play everything on our iPhone 500s. Either way, the future looks awesome.
That would be my guess as well, or at least what I hope for. The distinction between PC and console doesn't make sense from a technical point of view. The only reasons to separate them is caused by marketing and DRM.

I envision compact modular gadgets that can be plugged into a TV or monitor. With various accessories like keyboards, controllers, storage devices, network devices etc. CPU, memory and graphics chips are encapsulated into cartridges that can be easily exchanged.

Basically a merge of console and PC.

There is no technical reason why this can't happen already.
 

Snotnarok

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Nov 17, 2008
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Glademaster said:
Snotnarok said:
Glademaster said:
Snotnarok said:
Console gaming actually will probably be blended with PC gaming given that the next Xbox is going to have windows 8 on it. I'm hoping for consoles with modules that you can upgrade as time goes on (Ram, video card, wireless card, HDD etc) so consoles can be made more affordable by adding what the user wants rather than a bunch of junk that never gets used.
The only thing is while that would be great in theory I don't think it would ever work in practise as if you look console hdds more specifically the xbox ones and compare their prices to others on PC they are way overpriced.
Yes but people still buy it and others claim that building a PC is too hard and requires upgrades every 2 weeks to play games. I hear this all the time, so even if prices were inflated, I think it'd still sell well considering.
The only people claim this are people who haven't built a PC. There are videos of monkeys putting in Video Card and what not it isn't that hard and also no one ever says upgrades require every two weeks. That is a myth. Upgrading would be just as hard either way as you would have to open up the console/PC and change the parts.

The only difficult things are making sure you get the right RAM and putting in the Heatsink but even that isn't too bad. I mean there are whole websites and many people on this site who will help you make it.
Yes I'm fully aware that making a PC is easy as I've never owned a prebuilt machine, but just browse around a bit and even on the escapist you'll find people saying consoles are better than PC simply because "You don't need to upgrade your video card every week to keep up" .

My favorite is "PC has more glitches" and his proof was rage, which was promptly fixed and now it's the best version of the game. There's 10,000 ways to argue about which is better, honestly I think it matters what said person needs or cares about.

But yes PCs are very very easy to make.
 
Jun 11, 2008
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Snotnarok said:
Glademaster said:
Snotnarok said:
Glademaster said:
Snotnarok said:
Console gaming actually will probably be blended with PC gaming given that the next Xbox is going to have windows 8 on it. I'm hoping for consoles with modules that you can upgrade as time goes on (Ram, video card, wireless card, HDD etc) so consoles can be made more affordable by adding what the user wants rather than a bunch of junk that never gets used.
The only thing is while that would be great in theory I don't think it would ever work in practise as if you look console hdds more specifically the xbox ones and compare their prices to others on PC they are way overpriced.
Yes but people still buy it and others claim that building a PC is too hard and requires upgrades every 2 weeks to play games. I hear this all the time, so even if prices were inflated, I think it'd still sell well considering.
The only people claim this are people who haven't built a PC. There are videos of monkeys putting in Video Card and what not it isn't that hard and also no one ever says upgrades require every two weeks. That is a myth. Upgrading would be just as hard either way as you would have to open up the console/PC and change the parts.

The only difficult things are making sure you get the right RAM and putting in the Heatsink but even that isn't too bad. I mean there are whole websites and many people on this site who will help you make it.
Yes I'm fully aware that making a PC is easy as I've never owned a prebuilt machine, but just browse around a bit and even on the escapist you'll find people saying consoles are better than PC simply because "You don't need to upgrade your video card every week to keep up" .

My favorite is "PC has more glitches" and his proof was rage, which was promptly fixed and now it's the best version of the game. There's 10,000 ways to argue about which is better, honestly I think it matters what said person needs or cares about.

But yes PCs are very very easy to make.
Yes and that is a giant load if people even bothered to look into it they would know that you don't need to upgrade your video card every two weeks and if you do know about it then why are perpetuating the myth the Video cards need upgrading every year when they at most need every 5ish years depending on how much power you want.

The only reason people make those arguments is because they don't know better there are reasons why consoles are better in some ways but upgrading isn't really one of them.
 

sinterklaas

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Dec 6, 2010
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Yes and that is a giant load if people even bothered to look into it they would know that you don't need to upgrade your video card every two weeks and if you do know about it then why are perpetuating the myth the Video cards need upgrading every year when they at most need every 5ish years depending on how much power you want.
Exactly. My old laptop with a graphics card straight from the stone age and a CPU stolen from my TI calculator could still power Starcraft 2 on low to medium settings.

The only reason why someone would need to upgrade their videocard every year is when he/she runs 3 monitors Eyefinity and wants to play every game on absolute max the moment it comes out.
 

DSK-

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I can still play my games from 1997, 1998 and so on if I wanted to do so. On the same platform, the PC.

PC gaming will always be around until technology negates the need for having such a large box of tricks and makes a control system more intuitive than the humble keyboard and mouse.
 

VladG

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Actually you don't need to upgrade a PC that often at all. My last upgrade was 3 years ago, there isn't a single game I can't play, and that upgrade was actually cheaper than a console.

Also pre-build rigs are available everywhere if you don't have the know-how to build one yourself.

No, I don't think PC gaming is dead, quite the contrary.
 

Guardian of Nekops

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May 25, 2011
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For me, the problem with PC gaming as my primary medium is that the games all try to use every scrap of resource available... only, they don't know what resources I have. As a result, I'm faced with the inability to play on my crappy machine more often than not, and the games that should barely work are risky to buy... if they don't for some reason, I'm sure not going to get my money back.

Granted, console games try to use all their resources, too... but in that case the limit is known. Games for consoles just WORK (with some few exceptions), I don't have to worry about them... and the console costs me $400ish for the life of the system, as opposed to the thousand bucks I have to spend on a good computer... at the right time... to have any hope of playing modern games. The computer I bought two years ago is useless to me for gaming, while my Wii and my PS3 are still going strong with each new title that comes out. I don't have the money to buy a new laptop every year to stay on the cutting edge, and the idea of shelling out for a new graphics card and keeping up with the components on a tower is only slightly less unappealing.

As long as games push the envelope graphically, I think this will continue to be a problem for people with my priorities... each better compy will only be able to play the new games for a short while, even less with all the other junk my computer seems to think it has to run. Virus scans, spyware scans, registry scans, updates and the stuff all that's supposed to protect me from all want a slice of the pie, and keeping track of it all, turning off what I don't need, and worst of all finding a way to SHUT IT UP about reactivating it is just a bunch of aggravation I don't want to deal with.

I just want to come home, fire up my machine, and play. My consoles let me do that.
 

Atmos Duality

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AD-Stu said:
On the flipside of that though, don't a lot of developers prefer consoles because the hardware is standardised and they don't have the PC-related problem of testing and optimising the game for a million different hardware configurations?
That question is difficult to answer, because the developers have no real power.
In terms of mainstream gaming, the publishers control just about all of it, and if they say "consoles", the developers will say "Which ones, and do we port?".

One could argue that the developers would wield considerable influence over what they make because they're essential to keeping their respective franchises alive, but we can't even assume that anymore.
Remember: the original developer of Call of Duty 4.x turned out to be COMPLETELY expendable.
Their predecessor went right on to (sadly) set sales records.
 

Twilight_guy

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Nov 24, 2008
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brainslurper said:
There are lots of ways to prove that PCs are superior gaming devices. Is it people saying that X users are worse then Y users that you have a problem with?
Depends on how you define 'superior'. It is entirely a subjective if I want to I can define superior as the one with a slower processor for example. You may argue with me but since there is no set criteria we are working by then it doesn't matter. People calming not only that their's is better based on their own set of criteria and not considering that they areas of interest might be biased, but also that everyone else is inferior to them is what makes me mad. I ahte people who says "oh mine can process 34 million vectors per second and your can process 23 million, I'm the bestest ever and my system wins" without considering that their are other factors at play. In general I hate people who feel the need to say that "I like X therefore I am better" and that's at the core of so many arguments that someone who owns a PC has the better system and thus is better. It's so idiotic to not only associate your being with a hunk of metal and say possession somehow affect the quality of a person but then to go further and make the rating scale completely arbitrary and thus easily manipulated into being unapproachably biased. It's like two cell phone networks, one with more coverage and one with better service both making commercials claiming to be clearly superior based on their one strength and ignore the other factor as if it doesn't exist. That kind of thinking infuriates me.