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

[Samurai Goomba]

A laptop. Is. A. PC.

A PC and a Gaming PC are two very different things. While your average laptop will run Office and FarmVille without a problem, it will have a much harder time playing Crysis or any other "gamer game". The amount of PCs in the world has after all never been the problem of the PC gaming market, the problem is that a lot of those PCs are not very good for modern games.

Your average PC with any kind of ability to display video can run literally thousands of games. Even laptops. This ability will only improve as technology does.

Your mistake is equating PC gaming with playing Crysis and its ilk. How is super meat boy not a "gamer game?"

Even if there was a schism between "gamer" PCs and regular PCs, it doesn't change the fact Bob is totally wrong about portable computers being PCs. They just are. He's pretty much trolling his fanbase (his Other M review is another example of this).

 

[floobie]

Late to the party as usual. But, random thoughts:

- A lot of this is just arguing over a definition. Laptops are quite arguably still PCs... right? The argument seems to be more that DESKTOP gaming is dead. It's certainly becoming way more niche.

- Desktops are becoming increasingly useless. 95% of my computing is done on my Macbook (and more and more of that is being shifted to a smartphone). 95% of my gaming these days is done on my PS3. My desktop really only exists as an enormous hard drive (2TB over various drives for music and movies) that I can play the odd PC only game on. Basically, media storage that I don't want dominating the hard drive on my Macbook, and the odd Valve/Blizzard games. Hell, I can theoretically play any of those games on my Macbook anyway... just not quite as nicely. So, once I grab a new one with beefier graphics, my desktop will literally be a glorified external hard drive that I'll have hooked up to my TV.

- A RTS game would be absolutely awesome on a sufficiently large tablet. Picture playing Starcraft II on an iPad. Instead of mousing all over the place, you just physically touch the unit(s) you want to select, and physically touch where you want them to go. Some changes would need to be made to make it awesome, but if done right, I think RTS games would be way more awesome on a tablet.

- I'm not sure that first person shooters are predominately console games. Granted, the only ones I'm still interested in come from Valve. Still, from what I've heard, nothing, not even the fancy new motion controllers can beat a mouse and a keyboard. Maybe that'll change. Hell, it probably is changing. But, I don't think one can make that claim quite yet.

So, I suppose PC Gaming is dead. With a lot of asterisks and footnotes. And if you define a PC as a desktop computer.

 

[frago roc]

If PC gaming is dead why are 3 of the 4 finalist on the Escapist March Mayhem Developer Showdown almost exclusively PC Devs?

 

[Anaphyis]

Hey, Bob? Could you please refrain from talking about things you haven't the slightest clue about which is really, REALLY apparent in some of your newer videos? Just because something is sure to provoke some meaningless internet slapfight and give you more views doesn't mean it has to be made, especially with the level of incompetence you display towards the subject matter.

 

[wire_]

All these devices can still be defined as a PC or at the very least a computer. The difference is the way you interact with it, consoles are limited both in hardware and software severly enough that you can't out perform most actions PC's are used for. Tablets and phones might have some functionality of a desktop but not close enough that, I'm going to ditch my desktop for a small screen and try to program on it.

I could buy all these small devices in hopes it will remove my "cluttered" desk with my black matte tower that is covered in pretty lights and my two 23" screens side by side. But why would I want to switch between all of these for an array of tasks and then spend more money on them than a desktop when I could just sit at my desk with all the tools and performance available to me.

This video was full of ignorant statements.

 

[D64nz]

*sigh*



Here's the Little Picture: [HEADING=3] Consoles are becoming PCs.[/HEADING]

PC is the abreviation of personal computer. And we'll always have a personal computer. It's Consoles and phones that are catching up. What's really changing is for the better as in they are gonna be less bulky, and take up a lot less space. The flatscreen is a perfect example. I can type this on a half meter desk because I have flatscreen. A CVT simply wouldn't fit.

Take the idea of the Ipod dock. You have your Ipod, and now you can plug it in and you have speakers rather than headphones, and everyone can hear the music. If you could pack into something the size of an ipod the amount of computing power or have it buffed (like speakers in the dock) to do each specific role better, then ideally you could have a unit that basically carries the information, and the hardware you want to use at the moment ie large screen, some beefed up CPU power and graphics acceleration is all you'd need for gaming, large screen for TV/Movies, then that would be brillant. You wanna go meet you mate in another town, you take your ipod sized unit and just plug it in at the other end.

It's like how people use external harddrives now, but with a basic interface really. All you need is faster DX recognition and your away. Note to the newbies, DirectX was made to stop having to do indivdual setups for eavy part of hardware. Once apon a time you had 3 graphics cards to choose from and it was the game programmers job to programm the game for all three. Now you have DX11 and all the programmers have to do is use the common (DX) language. It's like everyone from overseas having to have a translater that can speak english basically.

Err.. long rant, anyways, its the shape of the PC thats changing, and it was a great point for MBob to bring up. Made you think, didn't it

 

[DenimDemon]

PC gaming dead yeah right,niether Bioware nor Blizzard seem to agree with u and since they the only 2 gaming company's in the world that actually matter, it seems u are saddly mistaken sir.

 

[Fleabr]

*sigh*

Redefine words to mean what you think.

Lovely.

I'd love to think that you just created this for page views, out of spite, because most of the reviewers have their own little hate pad against computers.

I know this isn't true though. You've just redefined all the words. Whee. That's nice. And added a disclaimer that if anyone flames, you're right as well.

I'm not going to get angry, because the writing on the wall's been there for some time. You work on PCs, you play on consoles, so because you hate work, you have to differentiate them.

Comfort over Versatility. Sad. Maybe it's all just for page views though? Part of me wishes it was just a troll attempt.

Here's the Little Picture: [HEADING=3] Consoles are becoming PCs.[/HEADING]

BAM, thread should've been closed after this comment.

Any person with half a brain has realized that consoles are gradually evolving and turning into PCs

It's not as much as PC is dying, but consoles, not in the sense that they will cease to exist, but that the console as we know it know just won't exist.

Of course that will take some time, not because of technical limitations but Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft will hold on to them as long as possible.

 

[freddi91]

Ironically enought, MovieBoB seems to miss the big picture.

We, PC gamers, are displaying blatant fanboyism etc. because we notice that consoles are indeed PC's in their own merit. What we fail to understand then is that if the two can achieve the same things, why are certain games restricted to consoles? If keyboard and mouse are the problem, why not get a usb-plugged gamepad? or usb plugged motion controller? Certainly having a centralized and portable machiene to everything on is the best solotion to home entertainment.

The console idea started out as something meant for people that had a light computer at home but still wanted to game. What it ended up to be is more entanglement in the oligopoly that is games publishing today.

 

[300lb. Samoan]

::snip::

tl;dr = bragging about your PC. This is why people don't like the PC gaming community, cus it's all about who spent how much on what flashy piece of gear. I honestly do not care, one day there will be a tablet powerful enough to crush your current system and it will let people play Starcraft or any other conceivable game where ever they feel like. And yes, of course I would rather play on a nice big screen, my point was that one day it's gonna be a touch screen and that will be pretty nifty. Jesus, glad I didn't bother reading that troll bait back when it was first posted...

 

[ionveau]

No its ok i would rather not give up the freedom of PC for something that dose the same thing except has more restrictions and is overall worse

 

[garbageman2012]

this wasn't well done or acurrite, i started on 360 and moved to pc (never used 360 again) this was the first video of his i watched and will be the last

 

[Sepphyre]

"PC GAMING IS DEAD!!!!!!"... the catch-cry of the teenager or 20-something year old who is under the delusion that the world started once they were born.

*sigh*

I have heard this quote so many times over the years.

Guess what?

PC gaming didn't die the first time it was mentioned. Nor the second, nor the third, nor the umpteenth. Such wisdom to believe that it will happen because they are the ones saying it, as if this sort of thing has never ever been mentioned before. I mean, how could it have been, the world wasn't around back then.

Wish there was some way we could sticky this thread, so that we could come back in a year and ask... "Are we dead yet?"

So that we could come back in 2 years, 5 years, and 10 years and ask... "Are we dead yet?"

Now go out and play in the garden, boys and girls... just try not to eat too much dirt!

/elitist rant

 

[Snooder]

::snip::

tl;dr = bragging about your PC. This is why people don't like the PC gaming community, cus it's all about who spent how much on what flashy piece of gear. I honestly do not care, one day there will be a tablet powerful enough to crush your current system and it will let people play Starcraft or any other conceivable game where ever they feel like. And yes, of course I would rather play on a nice big screen, my point was that one day it's gonna be a touch screen and that will be pretty nifty. Jesus, glad I didn't bother reading that troll bait back when it was first posted...

You misunderstand my point. Yes, someday the specs for my current system will be obsolete. However, simply physics, common sense, and a bit of historical perspective will show that a desktop system will ALWAYS be more powerful than a tablet or some other such device, and that said power will be necessary for something.

I tend to forget that not everyone understands computers and how hardware works, so let me explain it better. The reason why desktops are faster than laptops is exactly because of the size. Faster chips run hotter, and thus, require more cooling. Decent cooling requires the space in a desktop. This is something you can't really change unless you change the laws of thermodynamics or invent some radical new cooling system. And at that point, you'll start paying a premium for said radical cooling system.

Back in 2000 or so, I remember hearing about someone overclocking a pentium above 1ghz (with liquid nitrogen iirc) and being amazed at how much computing power that must be. Nobody could conceive of such power, I thought. Of course I was wrong, and now quad core systems running above 3ghz are commonplace, and indeed necessary for certain applications.

This is how things go. As you get more power at your fingertips, people figure out how to do more with it. Maybe you use the extra power to render a thousand enemies on a battlefied instead of a hundred. Maybe you use it for better, faster, more responsive AI. Maybe you use it to simulate environmental damage models in realtime. Or heck, maybe you just use it to create a realistic 3d hologram on the holoprojector that replaced your monitor.

I know that stuff seems farfetched now, but back 10 years ago, 2 TB drives were impossible to conceive, 1080p video was a pipedream, and the sort of graphical fidelity that we take for granted today was just not doable. And yeah, back then the same sort of people were wondering if the PC really needed the extra power. Why would anyone ever need more than 100 GB of space? cmon each doc file is like 1meg at most, how many files would u need to fill up that much space?

 

[awdrifter]

While I agree that PC gaming is dead (or at least on its last leg), it's not because of the reasons described in the video. PC gaming is dying because big companies are actively killing it! MS and Sony are actively paying devs to make console exclusive game. For example, the Halo series, originally also available on the PC, MS just stopped publishing it for the PC. Same with Gears of War, Alan Wake, and tons of others. Sony paid to have Heavy Rain, originally a PC title, to be exclusive on their console. If AMD and Nvidia would just set their differences aside and pay some devs to make some games for PC, or even just make good ports for PC, PC gaming wouldn't have died.

 

[300lb. Samoan]

::snip::

:snip:

:snip:

I believe you misunderstand my point, which is that one day a Tablet will be as powerful as today's PCs. It's obvious that a desktop system, unencumbered by the practical limitations of portability, will always be more powerful. But that innovation trickles down over time, which is why cell phones now are every bit as powerful as desktop systems from just a few years ago.

And please, stop with the condescending remarks and lectures about PC technology - I've been a PC user since I was 5 and have learned all I care to about desktop technology. I do not care what someone overclocked a Pentium to 10+ years ago, that couldn't hardly be less relevant to what I'm talking about. Desktops will always be cutting edge, that's why we love them, but the average user doesn't have a desktop - they either have a laptop or a tablet now.

Multiple edits: sorry about that

 

[Snooder]

I believe you misunderstand my point, which is that one day a Tablet will be as powerful as today's PCs. It's obvious that a desktop system, unencumbered by the practical limitations of portability, will always be more powerful. But that innovation trickles down over time, which is why cell phones now are every bit as powerful as desktop systems from just a few years ago.

And please, stop with the condescending remarks and lectures about PC technology - I've been a PC user since I was 5 and have learned all I care to about desktop technology. I do not care what someone overclocked a Pentium to 10+ years ago, that couldn't hardly be less relevant to what I'm talking about. Desktops will always be cutting edge, that's why we love them, but the average user doesn't have a desktop - they either have a laptop or a tablet now.

Multiple edits: sorry about that

I understand your point, I'm trying to tell you that believing in that point is shortsighted. See, my graphing calculator is as powerful as a PC from the late 80s. My laptop as powerful as a six or seven year old desktop. These machines maybe quite capable of running games from those times, but they are not capable of playing the current generations of games or doing whatever the current 'needed' computation is.

The benchmark constantly changes and it always WILL constantly change. If you agree that desktops will always be cutting edge, I fail to see how you can make a logical leap to that cutting edge being obsolete. You seem to be making the assumption that we will be playing current games, or games designed for current desktop machines in the future. We won't. And since the desktop is the arena of 'cutting edge' then we will playing those future games on future desktops.

I apologize if I appeared to be condescending, that was not my intent. My point with the anecdoctal history about overclocking was to point out how far progress in the PC desktop market has come, and how, at every step of the way people have constantly presumed that there would be no more, or that because the hardware could run the current software well enough, there would be no need for any further improvement. Which has been proven time, and time again to be false.

 

[300lb. Samoan]

I believe you misunderstand my point, which is that one day a Tablet will be as powerful as today's PCs. It's obvious that a desktop system, unencumbered by the practical limitations of portability, will always be more powerful. But that innovation trickles down over time, which is why cell phones now are every bit as powerful as desktop systems from just a few years ago.

And please, stop with the condescending remarks and lectures about PC technology - I've been a PC user since I was 5 and have learned all I care to about desktop technology. I do not care what someone overclocked a Pentium to 10+ years ago, that couldn't hardly be less relevant to what I'm talking about. Desktops will always be cutting edge, that's why we love them, but the average user doesn't have a desktop - they either have a laptop or a tablet now.

Multiple edits: sorry about that

I understand your point, I'm trying to tell you that believing in that point is shortsighted. See, my graphing calculator is as powerful as a PC from the late 80s. My laptop as powerful as a six or seven year old desktop. These machines maybe quite capable of running games from those times, but they are not capable of playing the current generations of games or doing whatever the current 'needed' computation is.

The benchmark constantly changes and it always WILL constantly change. If you agree that desktops will always be cutting edge, I fail to see how you can make a logical leap to that cutting edge being obsolete. You seem to be making the assumption that we will be playing current games, or games designed for current desktop machines in the future. We won't. And since the desktop is the arena of 'cutting edge' then we will playing those future games on future desktops.

I apologize if I appeared to be condescending, that was not my intent. My point with the anecdoctal history about overclocking was to point out how far progress in the PC desktop market has come, and how, at every step of the way people have constantly presumed that there would be no more, or that because the hardware could run the current software well enough, there would be no need for any further improvement. Which has been proven time, and time again to be false.

You think people won't be playing Starcraft in the future? Seriously? Starcraft 1 enjoyed a thriving community from its release all the way up to the release of SC2 - that's 12 years. I think you might be the short sighted one, thinking that a desktop PC is the only viable gaming system just because it has the highest processor specs. There will always be innovation in gaming, not all of it will be in the horsepower department. While people will be playing current and future games for ages to come, on all sorts of hardware, there's nothing that says the keyboard and mouse will always be the most relevant control scheme. Gimicky as they may be now, expect motion control systems and touch/gesture systems to pave the way for some real valuable developments in the way we interact with our games in the coming years.