The Big Picture: PC Gaming Is Dead - Long Live PC Gaming!

[Luke Cartner]

While I agree in theory with what he says, in theory because my 'pc' isn't a PC, that is I only use it for gaming. I really think the high graphics custom build niche that has been filled by the PC will continue to go strong. Look people have been saying what Movie Bob said since before y2k, yet PC games hang on. Maybe not AAA games, but lets be realistic here the good titles on the PC have always been the indie titles, and in fact many of the pc game brands we know and love for example id and blizzard started as indie shareware game companies.

And lets face it its those extremely low barriers to entry (barriers so low they make xbox live arcade entry barriers seem mountainous) that have also resulted in the high level of innovation in the games we see.

 

[vviki]

About the controls, Yahtzee said it in his review of the conduit. You can only turn slowly and it the remote only works when you are pointing it at a screen. There is a quick turn button, but if the enemy is 90 degrees from you, you end in the same position. I'll admit defeat the moment I see some people that need 15 buttons on their mouse only to play some unknown game, like lets say WoW, get on with a controller that actually has only 15 buttons. Then there are the kinds of people who buy mouses that have 2000dpi, less than a 1ms delay before they even recognize that you are using them, a buffer to store all the commands given and play a competitive fps with it like lets say, some game that no one plays anymore like Counter Strike. To top it about RTS games, there is the juice, if I see a Korean doing 600apm+ (needed in another alien game that has never been in WCG, and that no one plays) on a motion controlled RTS on a console, then I might agree with some of the things you said about consoles being able to replace PC. Until then, though, no, PCs won't die, they will evolve, the once you showed with CRT monitors and boxes that could be inserted into drawers, my cheap-ass-school doesn't have them, in a country where Teachers get the same money per month as janitors (that's how low school budget is and they don't have thous PCs anymore). New ones might be voice commanded, have multiple interfaces, not limited to mouse and keyboard, but still it will be like the one ring. The one PC to rule them all. You wouldn't say that in Lord of the Rings the one ring is irrelevant, if you have the other nine, would you? Or for that matter that we don't need computers anymore. We do, in the same way we always will need something centralized, might not be a King, but a Parlament, and still you won't be able to get rid of it.

 

[Clonekiller]

Yeah, I can see that... Assuming the free enterprise system remains independent and continues to develop better and cheaper stuff, as well as assuming that the world economy holds up. The palm stuff is totally the way of the future, but it costs a lot of $$$

 

[Fortesque]

Ill say this, I love my PC and will always have it for games. I fucking hate tablets, laptops or any of that shit.

My PC is awesome. That is where I will game... and my 360

 

[SkellgrimOrDave]

Doesn't matter how many things one device can do, A traditional PC is the only device that can be made/bought to do all these things WELL.

Want the most powerful processor the world has ever seen? Make it.
Want a tiny thing to just to office on? Bolt some ram and a HDD to a screen.
A traditional PC is what you make it. You can add to it as you wish, making it far better (in potential at any rate) than any console that if you touch with your own creativity you lose all rights to it.

 

[Auxiliary]

People always say buying a gaming pc is so expensive, that is a load of bullcrap. Any person who takes a few minutes to take a good look around will notice that great pc hardware is becoming cheaper and cheaper with every generation. My first "ultimate" gaming pc cost me 1500 euros, this year I bought another new one with extremely satisfying hardware for 800. A big issue here is that people still buy their computers at far too expensive retail stores instead of selecting the parts seperately and letting either the store or someone else assemble it (most people can't do it themselves, scrubs).

I have a shit television. If I want to get the same enjoyment out of a console, I first need to invest in a good television. Good television + console + extra controllers and whatever else you need for a console to be fun is going to be just as expensive as a new gaming computer if not more. Being able to upgrade parts is also a huge moneysaver. Because when your console is outdated, you need to buy an entirely new console. If computerparts are outdated you can often buy new parts relatively cheap and get another year or two out of the computer.

I have said it before and I will say it again, Bob is terribly wrong on this one. The PC is not going to die for a long time. Books, Radio and Television have all died, right? Consoles are merely PC with unupgradeable hardware and lesser functions.

 

[Live4Lotus]

LoL...that got a lot of comments.

Here is the thing...consoles don't want to be PCs, and mobile devices won't be able to catch up with desktop technology any time soon. Sure, I can use a keyboard and mouse to go online with the PS3, but good luck finding any games that support the combo...so far, the only PS3 FPS that uses this, the best set of FPS controls in existence, is Unreal Tournament. If consoles wanted to steal one of the last things that PC gaming still has, they could...but they don't.

If you need more proof, just look at geohot, Graf, etc...these guys have done nothing but to bring some small shreds of PC functionality to the PS3 and they end up in court because of it. Consoles are never going to replace PCs as long as console manufacturers are fighting PC functionality so hard.

Offer me a console that supports PC functions (without getting me banned or sued), and you are no longer offering a console...you are just offering a prebuilt PC with an unusual operating system. The days of windows gaming may be numbered, but PC gaming has a big future...it is console gaming that is going to die along with the last true consoles.

One other thing...you don't need a big computer desk to use a computer. My PC is sitting next to my two PS3s, it is a bit bigger, but I don't have the foggiest idea what you mean when you said that PCs are multiple big clunky boxes...you have the tower and the screen, and consoles need screens too. Nothing is stopping you from using a PC from your living room except your own preconceived notions of how to use a PC. Actually, unless you are doing your taxes or something, I really see no use for the desk at all.

 

[Chaos Marine]

Bullshit. That is all.

 

[jonyboy13]

Thank God we got a good PC community in the Escapist.
I just wonder how or actually if Bob gonna react to the comments here.

 

[Tax_Document]

Consoles are extremely weak and can't multi-task, and Xbox's cost money to play online and you can't chat via text so I have deal with screeching annoying microphones cluttered with pre-pubes.


By the way, I think we'll be seeing PC GAMING growing, just sayin', because we can mod, we can type, we can code, we can HACK, and basically PC's are superior.

 

[Roryomg]

An issue is that console games are more expensive to offset the cheaper cost of the console itself.

Why on earth would people have four devices? that's just inane nonsense. They will have a version of the PC which is portable ( to whatever level of portability you can imagine), which is a hub and does EVERYTHING.

Whether or not that is on cloud computing is not related, it is still a single computing device.

a PC of sorts.

 

[Natdaprat]

Consoles are extremely weak and can't multi-task, and Xbox's cost money to play online and you can't chat via text so I have deal with screeching annoying microphones cluttered with pre-pubes.


By the way, I think we'll be seeing PC GAMING growing, just sayin', because we can mod, we can type, we can code, we can HACK, and basically PC's are superior.

This is what I think. If consoles are slowly becoming PCs, why bother with them when I can just have my PC? PC's are far superior, and consoles are simplifications of them that broaden the gaming audience. PC Gaming will not die because of an alternative method of gaming, or because some people have far too much disposable income for fancy gadgets.

Ultimately, Bob is speaking out of his own life. He doesn't seem to like PC's full stop.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

A better argument than most, since the best argument that PC gaming will live on is that as long as people have PCs, they will want to play games with them. On the other hand, I just don't see the PC dying. We don't really have a better input device than the keyboard for writing (a stylus is slower, voice control covers up sound) and if you have to have a big bulky keyboard with your screen (bearing in mind that, for a lot of applications, a small screen isn't better), you may as well have a device that can perform as many functions as possible. I think we're still a decent ways away from find an economical, better replacement for keyboards and large screens.

Also, as far as the computing power of consoles increasing to match PCs, I see two problems with the logic. First, increasing computing power is eventually going to lead console manufacturers to just start marketing them as multipurpose devices (eventually becoming so multipurpose that they just are PCs). We're already seeing pushes in that direction. Also, computers are becoming more and more powerful, while game graphics are finally beginning to plateau. The need to have the latest fastest hardware is bound to slow once the ability to produce the art that needs to be rendered becomes more difficult than rendering it. At that point, PC gaming will be much easier.

In fact, I think the most likely direction computing will go is AWAY from this current fad of specialization. Right now, if you make specialized devices, you get a better device because it has to do fewer things. Once typical computing tasks become trivial compared to average hardware, I can't see why things wouldn't start integrating. There's no reason to have separate devices if one device can do everything just as well as separate ones could. Right now the issue is that a laptop makes a lousy iPhone and an iPhone makes a lousy laptop, so you might need both. But one could imagine a device with the size and functionality of an iPhone and the size and functionality of a laptop (imagine a projected screen for instance). There'd be no reason not to go for the combined one. As far as consoles go, my best guess would be that they might grow into the Dell and HP of the future - prebuilt machines powerful enough to do whatever you need them to do. If computing tasks are trivial, there's no real reason other than hacker's nostalgia to buy anything but a prebuilt system: they'd be the same or worse, just more expensive.

Lol at vague reference to "cloud computing".

 

[stikku]

I haven't owned a PC in years, I get by perfectly fine on a laptop, an xbox and a good phone. Pc gamine these days drives me crazy with all the antipiracy stuff they've introduced, i bought hard copys of 2 games and couldn't play either because the giant fail that is Steam wanted me to download both games, which i can't do because I'm on a limited data usage plan.

a laptop is a pc einstein. it is just a portable pc, so big flash you do own a personal computer.

and let me say this, technically speaking xbox, ps3, wii and even a freaken microwave have a computer inside them. its just not personal

 

[Dense_Electric]

A rare miss, Bob, a rare miss...

As far as the consoles vs. PC thing, I don't see one ever overtaking the other. As powerful and versatile as consoles could undoubtedly get, their main appeal is and will remain accessibility. Un-box, plug it in, start up your game, and go. There's enough of a market to keep that going for decades. PCs, on the other hand, require much more assembly and tinkering, but the extra power and versatility ensure that there will remain a large market for that as well. I do foresee an interesting possibility though, that at some point consoles may become general, multi-purpose machines (filling the function of a modern PC), while PCs may become powerful, dedicated gaming devices (filling the function of a modern console - though rendering, programming, and other media creation will still be done on the PC for some time to come).

I must say that Bob brings up a good point about what we think of as a PC is changing (though his choice of words was very poor, a laptop is as much a PC as a desktop, but he used the term to only refer the the latter). Most of the general populous doesn't need a big box sitting in their room, and can get by on a laptop, a console, and a smart phone (tablets don't count until they start doing it right). HOWEVER, there are enough people out their who need the extra power that a desktop offers (for rendering, programming, gaming, or whatever), or who just prefer the fixed setup that it's not going anywhere in the immediate future.

I think Bob's mistake in this episode was not understanding who PC gaming appeals to. With the exception of stuff like Peggle and Farmville, the casual gaming crowd just doesn't usually play games on their PCs. They play almost exclusively on their consoles, hand-helds, and smart phones. They can just use a laptop for their PC-needs. We modern PC gamers, however, still need those big boxes on our desks. The way we play games is fundamentally different from the way other people play games - at least for the foreseeable future, it's simply not possible to duplicate the experience of playing CS:S or TF2 on, say, an iPhone. PC gaming in its current form will live on until portable devices actually catch up to what desktops are capable of, which won't happen until there's a change in the basic technology. For now, the box simply offers room for more circuits and more processing power.

 

[AssOnFire]

This is the first of your videos that didn't make any sense to me. Maybe it's that, at the age of 21, I am just old and in denial.