I agree with his vid alot really. What PC gamers love, is not going away, its just coming to us in different ways. I hate when PC gamers are elitists against consoles, since consoles are just becoming PC/console hyprids of perfection.
Well my day has just been ruined...
- Thread starter Vault101
- Start date
Recommended Videos
What the hell are you even on about?Ultratwinkie said:
Source please, because until proven otherwise this is total bullshit of the highest grade.
Don't listen to Mr.Chipman, the video was a little twisted anyway and it's not so much on about Pc gaming dying but the fact that the Pc is being replaced by other media outlets and gaming will come around onto those.Vault101 said:
I disagree with his whole stance however.
The only true flaw with PC gaming is a lack of standardization and that hazards that come with it. 360, PS3's and Wii's are all meant to be essentially the same system so it is easy to get them all to run the same program with the same limitations. PC's don't have this and so things get muddled up which is why some developers shy away from it as a medium. But despite this PC's are doing just fine.
Hah. Bob is one guy on the Internet. Root pretty much disproved him on the first page, but plenty of other people have continued to do so with hard data.
Bob's argument in that video is fundamentally flawed due to him not correctly defining his terms. His definition of a PC and the actual definition are not the same thing. Just chill and enjoy your PC games and stuff. If there's one place were development costs are low enough to encourage innovation and the cost of gaming can fit any budget, it's the PC.
I say this as a console gamer, too.
Bob's argument in that video is fundamentally flawed due to him not correctly defining his terms. His definition of a PC and the actual definition are not the same thing. Just chill and enjoy your PC games and stuff. If there's one place were development costs are low enough to encourage innovation and the cost of gaming can fit any budget, it's the PC.
I say this as a console gamer, too.
I like my huge ammo box taking up space in the corner (I wouldn't have bought a case modelled on an ammo box if i didn't want something big and chunky).
I could go on about how i need something huge and highly overclockable for academic purposes so I'll not be getting rid of the desktop until I get kiddies first quantum computer, but tbh thats a fairly uncommon use for it anyway. So instead, i think i'll just bring up Steam which will keep PC gaming running forever. I completely migrated to 360 gaming when the introduction of steam into my life made me decide to upgrade practically everything in the PC and now game as an odd hybrid of consoling and PCing. Xbox online is a pretty unreliable and unfriendly system whereas steam is happy and i can buy a game for a quarter of the price and have it ready for me in the time it takes to make some tea. I think steam is definately bringing the PC gaming back into fashion.
I could go on about how i need something huge and highly overclockable for academic purposes so I'll not be getting rid of the desktop until I get kiddies first quantum computer, but tbh thats a fairly uncommon use for it anyway. So instead, i think i'll just bring up Steam which will keep PC gaming running forever. I completely migrated to 360 gaming when the introduction of steam into my life made me decide to upgrade practically everything in the PC and now game as an odd hybrid of consoling and PCing. Xbox online is a pretty unreliable and unfriendly system whereas steam is happy and i can buy a game for a quarter of the price and have it ready for me in the time it takes to make some tea. I think steam is definately bringing the PC gaming back into fashion.
Blech. No, PC gaming isn't dying.
Well ok, quite a few things have changed with this console generation: More and better visuals aren't that important anymore so even the best gaming PC will not offer a visual quantum leap from any console. Entire Genres have been migrating to the consoles; but, moviebob completely forget to mention that not all is well in console land. Consoles not only have games that where PC exclusive, they have issues that where PC exclusive. Buggy software, malfunctioning hardware and quality standards below anything i'd see as reasonable.
Frankly, i would like a console like the old 8 and 16 bit ones. These where damn near indestructible and the packaging for the games proved useless since the game is far more robust.
Modern games on discs are flimsy. Well, i blame the disc medium for that, but the consoles are flimsy as well. Who builds a game system more robust, more reliable and even customizable? Microsoft? Sony? Nintendo? Or me?
I don't normally toot my own Horn but in this Case: *TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT*
About the difficulty setting up a PC: You set it up once and then you can play the installed games. You can learn how to built a PC from scratch in the time the console is in the shop for repairs.
This Argument may seem like trolling, but the consoles are losing some positive points they once had. They aren't as reliable anymore.
Another positive point of the consoles is, or rather was, the Price. PCs are getting cheaper like everything and they aren't getting obsolete as fast anymore. Sure, new stuff keeps coming in, but you don't need new stuff for your PC if it already surpasses the consoles in processing power.
You don't need a Computer that plays crysis with the highest settings. If you have one, you wont need a new gaming PC until the machine breaks down. Which probably wont happen as fast as your console breaking down.
A computer that surpases the consoles is pretty cheap by now, so the price argument is losing weight and if you do need a computer for anything at all, the price argument is gone already.
Moviebob neglectet to consider any of the arguments for PC gaming and did infact, make up arguments that don't hold water. See the space waster argument. Instead of having a computer and a console i just have a computer. Big space waster.
Well, my Computer is big because i have several Harddrives in it, but it doesn't have to be. Rip all your movies onto the hardrive and stuff the dvd shelf in the basement. Oh yeah, my computer wastes a lot of space.
So i have to consider Moviebobs video trolling. And its working, look at the pages upon pages of replies the thread has.
There always will be at least some People who like a machine that they can fill in multiple roles. So, at least until there's another wondrous device to do everything, there will be people with PCs and a videogame company will be able to make a few extra bucks with conversions to the PC platform.
Well ok, quite a few things have changed with this console generation: More and better visuals aren't that important anymore so even the best gaming PC will not offer a visual quantum leap from any console. Entire Genres have been migrating to the consoles; but, moviebob completely forget to mention that not all is well in console land. Consoles not only have games that where PC exclusive, they have issues that where PC exclusive. Buggy software, malfunctioning hardware and quality standards below anything i'd see as reasonable.
Frankly, i would like a console like the old 8 and 16 bit ones. These where damn near indestructible and the packaging for the games proved useless since the game is far more robust.
Modern games on discs are flimsy. Well, i blame the disc medium for that, but the consoles are flimsy as well. Who builds a game system more robust, more reliable and even customizable? Microsoft? Sony? Nintendo? Or me?
I don't normally toot my own Horn but in this Case: *TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT*
About the difficulty setting up a PC: You set it up once and then you can play the installed games. You can learn how to built a PC from scratch in the time the console is in the shop for repairs.
This Argument may seem like trolling, but the consoles are losing some positive points they once had. They aren't as reliable anymore.
Another positive point of the consoles is, or rather was, the Price. PCs are getting cheaper like everything and they aren't getting obsolete as fast anymore. Sure, new stuff keeps coming in, but you don't need new stuff for your PC if it already surpasses the consoles in processing power.
You don't need a Computer that plays crysis with the highest settings. If you have one, you wont need a new gaming PC until the machine breaks down. Which probably wont happen as fast as your console breaking down.
A computer that surpases the consoles is pretty cheap by now, so the price argument is losing weight and if you do need a computer for anything at all, the price argument is gone already.
Moviebob neglectet to consider any of the arguments for PC gaming and did infact, make up arguments that don't hold water. See the space waster argument. Instead of having a computer and a console i just have a computer. Big space waster.
Well, my Computer is big because i have several Harddrives in it, but it doesn't have to be. Rip all your movies onto the hardrive and stuff the dvd shelf in the basement. Oh yeah, my computer wastes a lot of space.
So i have to consider Moviebobs video trolling. And its working, look at the pages upon pages of replies the thread has.
There always will be at least some People who like a machine that they can fill in multiple roles. So, at least until there's another wondrous device to do everything, there will be people with PCs and a videogame company will be able to make a few extra bucks with conversions to the PC platform.
Big desktops have pretty much bitten the dust for all but hardcore PC gamers and the very cheapest home PCs (a cruddy miditower case is still cheaper than a well made SFF pizzabox). Integrated-everything and USB2 has pretty much killed the need for more than one or two half-height expansion slots in the average home computer (practically everything that the "normal person" would use is either integrated or external these days), and maybe room for one or two extra drives. I know very few people still using one, and it's usually either a hanger-on, or they have specialist needs. Plus you can get an alarming amount of power out of a loaded mini-ITX board these days ... we have machines at my workplace that are the size of 1980s lunchboxes but sport high-ghz quad core chips, 4gb of fast dual channel memory and still cram in a hard disk (2.5", but a fast one), slim DVDRW, decent integrated graphics and a couple of PCI-e slots. DVDRW too rubbish? Not enough HDD space? Want higher quality audio, or more than the 2 monitors its DVI-I port supports? Plug something into the USB ports. Job done. Vast internal expandability just isn't needed most of the time.C.B.M. said:
However, most people have just gone over to laptops and are perfectly happy. The amount of power you actually need has stagnated somewhat, so if you bought a decently specced machine some years ago, it's still good to go today if you keep it maintained. (The problem is people buy cheap stuff that's already borderline or even flat-out slow at purchase time, never think to upgrade it, and let the system state go to shit... then wonder why it's unusable and blame the computer rather than their lazy carelessness and short-sighted stinginess)
I'm currently using a subnotebook (note: not netbook!) which is approaching its 5th birthday, and apart from some sluggishness when converting a big pile of audio/video files at max quality, or general uselessness at games (was never sparkling at either task), it's still fine. Because I bought one with a decent, though not top-of-the-line spec - a "normal" mobile chip instead of the celeron (or gen-1 atom) junk almost everyone else seems to plump for, sufficient RAM with the option to share a bare minimum with the GPU (instead of "just enough to run windows but no programs" and "it eats at LEAST 32mb, and that's after you've raided the BIOS", which I see too often), a decent HDD and a solid case and keyboard, wireless G/bluetooth/IR, good battery... but skipping a few other, actually largely detrimental fripperies (integrated optical drive, piano-gloss widescreen display amongst others) to keep the price down. I use it daily for all my non-gaming computing stuff, with two monitors even at the moment (8mb gfx just about handles it).
Admittedly I have upgraded it, but only the RAM (512 -> 2048mb wasn't expensive) and storage (40 -> 120 internal and a couple terabytes external, again inexpensive). Everything else is original. I spent wisely, a little more than a bargain basement one, and have an "old" laptop that's still absolutely fine. The thing I'm most bothered about is the dead fly or whatever it is that's rattling around the fan at the moment.
Obsolete far quicker than a desktop? Well, of course, a laptop costs more than an equivalent spec desktop. That's the price paid for portability and a much smaller desktop, volume and power consumption footprint. But if you've bought one of equivalent spec to a decent desktop it won't be out of date any earlier (upgrade compatibility cycles run about the same these days) other than maybe the graphics, which are rarely high spec anyway. In fact they can probably have their lifetimes dragged out to similar extents, playing to their strengths - the desktop as a hideous mutant with endless expansions for niche purposes crammed inside, the laptop (after a fresh battery) as a battle-scarred but disposable war pony, still happy to be used for word processing and blogging where others fear to take an iphone.
Gaming laptops I can see your point though. Upgrading the card in THOSE isn't usually easy, if even possible. But then I suspect anyone happy to drop two grand or more on an alienware special rather than a small form factor but still upgradable desktop probably won't give a crap about trading it in after 18 months. My own use is largely MS Office (for which an old 486 would do, if it had the RAM and resolution), file pushing and web browsing, with an occasional bit of encoding or HD playback being the hardest stress... it doesn't really enter the same league.
Virtualisation and the like could put an end to all that though. Like that cloud-based console that was released to much fanfare last year and seems to have quietly disappeared from view (hmm, trying to do twitch gaming over an AV link with an inherent 100ms or higher lag, plus the transmission time for the control packets... can't see how THAT would be an issue). We're experimenting with "micro servers" here at work... one central, very powerful (but still desktop-class) PC hosts a good number of windows sessions, including desktop rendering to virtual screens using the GPU, and pipes the results out to the user terminal (which can squirt input the other way, natch) - regardless of what it is, from another similar server, down through regular desktops, various older workstations that were destined for the trash, cheap NetPC type things, and probably even smartphones over wireless. I'm highly skeptical that current networking standards have anything like the required bandwidth for decent video performance that way (XGA at 60fps in true colour is more than 1Gbps uncompressed, motion-PNG isn't super efficient, and you can't really MPG a computer screen so well), but then there's this other thing called Remote FX which can be used if your terminal has its own graphics accelerator, so - like the PCI accelerators of yore - it just chucks the raw drawing commands, textures and uncompressed video data down the line (MUCH more compact) and lets the client GPU deal with it.
Get that working and your desktop machine need never go out of date, at least for performance reasons. Much like the modern motorcar, it would instead die either of actual decrepitude (gumming up, critical parts failing) which is something that usually takes a couple decades, or by gradually becoming so feature-poor compared to the most recent ones that interoperability starts to be difficult.
Again, probably no good for gameplaying, but you could just have some shared-use consoles hooked into it somehow. Let your micropayment (say, $0.10) for an hour's use go through, and off you go, playing the latest PS4 hit on your late-noughties laptop. EVEN one of the horrible cheap ones. The client software is featherlight...
If you're getting facist undertones from Halo, you're overannalysing the game way to much. It's as simple as that, and I think almost anyone who has played Halo will agree.MorphingDragon said:
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Finally, we have some hard data! Thank you! I remember hearing bits of this over the years, but you really brought it together.Ultratwinkie said:
What I want to talk about is the importance of portability. MovieBob mentioned this, but I think he missed the point. He predicated the supplanting of PC's by tablets and phones. I think he's seeing the trend, but drawing the wrong conclusion. It's more true to say that PC's and assorted smartphones/tablets are developing towards each other. These ultra-portable devices are becoming more powerful, and PC's are becoming more portable. Look at what you can do with a phone that fits in the palm of you hand these days. That kind of processing power would have been insane only a few years ago. And look at how portable computers are getting. Alienware has a netbook that apparently can compare with gaming PC's (Thanks ads!). And while that's expensive and unusual now, it'll be commonplace within a few years.
And then look at consoles. They may be getting more powerful, but they aren't getting smaller. Even desktop PC's have gotten a lot smaller over the years. But handhelds are thriving, and we can see the demand for portability again. The DS has sold close to twice as many units as the Wii (144 million to 84 million), and almost three times as many units as the 360 and PS3 (144 million to 50 million and 47.9 million). Even the PSP has sold as many units as the 360 and PS3 (51 million units), and that number was as of June 2009 (everything else as of December 31 2010 or later).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#Worldwide_sales_figures_5
While this is only a quick examination of the technology market, I still think that this is a valid point. Consoles are simply getting too expensive to profit on (thanks Ultratwinkie), and the demand for them pales in comparison to portable computer systems, whether they're laptops, smartphones, tablets, or handheld consoles. I think what we're going to see in the future is some sort of blend of all of these systems into one ultraproduct. Something powerful, yet portable. PC gaming is not going to die. It's just going to be more portable.
Why should I?Internet Kraken said:
You refuse to think a game might have political undertones. Most media has political undertones. What, games aren't mature and serious enough to have any sort of serious political themes in them?
Edit: I now read into the actual article. *ashamed* This is what happens when I speak before I read. It's not on the death of PC gaming, just the desktop. On that subject, the desktop won't die, because my laptop runs so hot I burn my leg when I play just about anything and it still isn't top notch. I don't care how good your laptop is, it just can't rival a desktop. This is why: http://www.hardcorecomputer.com/desktops/index.html Not to mention the satisfaction of building your own custom desktop if you decide to go that route.
My original post if you're interested:
Here's the thing: I've been playing a lot of Oblivion lately, and I've come to the realization that PC gaming can never die. Why? Because the PC has this marvellous thing we like to call freedom. My friend plays Oblivion on the PS3, but I recently convinced him to get (in addition to his PS3 copy) the PC version for its pirate mods, armour mods, map mods, gameplay mods, quest mods... the list goes on. I love my PC, because all the way from the days of IDDQD to The Elder Scrolls Construction Set I have the freedom to play the game the way I want to play it. Would Nightfire have been anywhere near as entertaining if I couldn't turn the gravity way down? What would I do if I couldn't make custom maps for Doom and play them in a brand new engine that's been redesigned for OpenGL and has available high resolution texture packs and fantastic new deathmatch modes? (Yes, I still play Doom, and I don't think I'll ever give it up) Sure, consoles have exclusive games. Sure, I wish I could play LBP, but I wouldn't trade my PC for the world. That's all there is to it. PC gaming will never die because they can take our Little Big Planet, but they can never take our freedom! Now we just have to keep asking for cross-platform multiplayer.
My original post if you're interested:
Here's the thing: I've been playing a lot of Oblivion lately, and I've come to the realization that PC gaming can never die. Why? Because the PC has this marvellous thing we like to call freedom. My friend plays Oblivion on the PS3, but I recently convinced him to get (in addition to his PS3 copy) the PC version for its pirate mods, armour mods, map mods, gameplay mods, quest mods... the list goes on. I love my PC, because all the way from the days of IDDQD to The Elder Scrolls Construction Set I have the freedom to play the game the way I want to play it. Would Nightfire have been anywhere near as entertaining if I couldn't turn the gravity way down? What would I do if I couldn't make custom maps for Doom and play them in a brand new engine that's been redesigned for OpenGL and has available high resolution texture packs and fantastic new deathmatch modes? (Yes, I still play Doom, and I don't think I'll ever give it up) Sure, consoles have exclusive games. Sure, I wish I could play LBP, but I wouldn't trade my PC for the world. That's all there is to it. PC gaming will never die because they can take our Little Big Planet, but they can never take our freedom! Now we just have to keep asking for cross-platform multiplayer.
MorphingDragon said:
I didn't say that about games. However, claiming that Halo has fascist undertones is a clear indication of overanalysing a relatively simple story. From what I can recall from the books the UNSC (I think?) definitely had questionable morals but I don't recall them having fascist qualities. Even if they did you'd only get that from the books so it doesn't really count. The Covenant does have fascist qualities, as the Prophet of Truth disposed of the council and his two governing brothers to become the sole source of authority in the Covenant. However, Movie Bob did not focus on this and actually painted the Covenant in the positive light due to their diversity, ignoring the dictatorship and ethnic cleansing of the Elites. He argued that the humans in the Halo story promoted the fascism aspect.
So you could get fascist undertones from the Covenant, but bring that up is pointless when I was talking about how Movie Bob analyzed the game. Claiming the UNSC is fascist based solely on the games, as Movie Bob did, is just ridiculous and my post meant to point that out.
Either way you insulting me wasn't necessary.
Bob to me is an extremely biased nintendo fanboy. I believe that does who have played Metroid: Other M and saw his episode of game overthinker on it can honestly say this. He praises the game as being nearly flawless while the controls were clunky, the gameplay at times frustrating with leaps of faith, and a frankly ludicrous story. He goes on saying that giving Samus characterization was brilliant. First of all, she already had character, just take a look at Extra Credits' most recent episode. Second, just because she had character, doesn't mean it was good, nor does it excuse everything else wrong with the plot. Also, I see some posts about Halo on here, so I don't think I need to go into much further detail than; The marines were more culturally and ethnically diverse than the covenant, whose army is made up mostly of races that they conquered. Also, they want to DESTROY humanity, not conquer them.