05-07-2008, 11:48 PM
http://www.torontothumbs.com/2008/03/27/.../#more-482
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The State of PC Gaming
By Adam Russell - March 27th, 2008
Will future generations of gamers know the significance of these keys?
As usual, I seem to be writing about the PC again. That’s not to say I don’t love consoles, too: The ‘Hottest Party’ is every night at my house (bad DDR joke [you’re tellin’ me – ED.]). But as a diehard PC Gamer hearing all the recent talk about the future of the PC platform, I feel the need to address a few things.
This isn’t so much my opinion on the future of the PC, but rather a review of the current popular ideas that are floating around. The waters have gotten a bit murky as of late and are in need of some clearing up.
First are the detractors. Those that subscribe to the quite common belief that the PC Games platform is dying, if not already dead. Recently we have seen some high-profile developers call into question the validity of the PC. There was Cliffy B. of Epic games saying that the PC is in a state of “disarray,” which isn’t too surprising considering that his main focus is on the console. However, even Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games (his last game being Supreme Commander, a big PC title) believes people are going to stop making big investments on the PC “when it just doesn’t work” and instead take their investments more console-centric, so that games will only be “ported back over to the PC.”
Quite probably the most popular sound bite comes from another person at Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, who was famously quoted as saying “PCs are good for anything, just not games.”
All this talk inevitably causes many people to shout “The PC is dying.”
This is nothing new though, as PC Gamers have heard this cry many times before. What’s interesting this time around is the presence of another, somewhat dissenting opinion, that seems to have taken hold. The idea that PC games aren’t dying, but rather they are evolving into a new form. Proponents for this argument see the future of the PC as more mainstream, appealing to a wider audience. Web-based Flash-style games that take hardware out of the question, or games that emulate the few mass market successes in the PC like The Sims and World of Warcraft complete with their low system requirements. The more recent examples like upcoming Battlefield Heroes (developer DICE and EA’s latest entry into the Battlefield franchise: it has low spec requirements and is free to play as it gets its revenue from micro-transactions and advertisements) or Quake Zero (Quake in a browser) are used to illustrate the perceived direction that the market is heading.
Personally, I find the latter argument the most interesting. The initial question that comes to mind is “Is this a healthy future for PC gaming?”
The answer, as always, depends. Specifically it rests on exactly how you define PC gaming. If your definition is merely “games that are played on a PC,” then yes. All is rosy.
However, I don’t think the definition of PC games is as simple as that. If tomorrow the only games released on the Xbox 360 were Live Arcade games, would that be considered healthy for the system? While technically they are 360 games, I don’t think you’d get any argument if you tried to say that the Xbox was “dead,” too. Then the same must be true of the PC.
If all the future only holds is flash/web-based games then those games might as well be on a cell phone, for all they represent PC as a platform. PC games, as they are traditionally defined, require discrete graphics hardware (like a video card). They tend to ride the cutting edge of technology and are typically deep games, possibly complicated, and they ultimately lead to very rewarding experiences. As many PC enthusiasts lament, any future that does not include these aspects is no future at all. So the somewhat startling conclusion of both arguments is ultimately the same: the cessation of PC gaming as we know it.
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Hey to our Canadian members: I found this at TorontoThumbs.com -- "News For the Canadian Gamer" You should check them out!
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The State of PC Gaming
By Adam Russell - March 27th, 2008
Will future generations of gamers know the significance of these keys?
As usual, I seem to be writing about the PC again. That’s not to say I don’t love consoles, too: The ‘Hottest Party’ is every night at my house (bad DDR joke [you’re tellin’ me – ED.]). But as a diehard PC Gamer hearing all the recent talk about the future of the PC platform, I feel the need to address a few things.
This isn’t so much my opinion on the future of the PC, but rather a review of the current popular ideas that are floating around. The waters have gotten a bit murky as of late and are in need of some clearing up.
First are the detractors. Those that subscribe to the quite common belief that the PC Games platform is dying, if not already dead. Recently we have seen some high-profile developers call into question the validity of the PC. There was Cliffy B. of Epic games saying that the PC is in a state of “disarray,” which isn’t too surprising considering that his main focus is on the console. However, even Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games (his last game being Supreme Commander, a big PC title) believes people are going to stop making big investments on the PC “when it just doesn’t work” and instead take their investments more console-centric, so that games will only be “ported back over to the PC.”
Quite probably the most popular sound bite comes from another person at Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, who was famously quoted as saying “PCs are good for anything, just not games.”
All this talk inevitably causes many people to shout “The PC is dying.”
This is nothing new though, as PC Gamers have heard this cry many times before. What’s interesting this time around is the presence of another, somewhat dissenting opinion, that seems to have taken hold. The idea that PC games aren’t dying, but rather they are evolving into a new form. Proponents for this argument see the future of the PC as more mainstream, appealing to a wider audience. Web-based Flash-style games that take hardware out of the question, or games that emulate the few mass market successes in the PC like The Sims and World of Warcraft complete with their low system requirements. The more recent examples like upcoming Battlefield Heroes (developer DICE and EA’s latest entry into the Battlefield franchise: it has low spec requirements and is free to play as it gets its revenue from micro-transactions and advertisements) or Quake Zero (Quake in a browser) are used to illustrate the perceived direction that the market is heading.
Personally, I find the latter argument the most interesting. The initial question that comes to mind is “Is this a healthy future for PC gaming?”
The answer, as always, depends. Specifically it rests on exactly how you define PC gaming. If your definition is merely “games that are played on a PC,” then yes. All is rosy.
However, I don’t think the definition of PC games is as simple as that. If tomorrow the only games released on the Xbox 360 were Live Arcade games, would that be considered healthy for the system? While technically they are 360 games, I don’t think you’d get any argument if you tried to say that the Xbox was “dead,” too. Then the same must be true of the PC.
If all the future only holds is flash/web-based games then those games might as well be on a cell phone, for all they represent PC as a platform. PC games, as they are traditionally defined, require discrete graphics hardware (like a video card). They tend to ride the cutting edge of technology and are typically deep games, possibly complicated, and they ultimately lead to very rewarding experiences. As many PC enthusiasts lament, any future that does not include these aspects is no future at all. So the somewhat startling conclusion of both arguments is ultimately the same: the cessation of PC gaming as we know it.
----------------
Hey to our Canadian members: I found this at TorontoThumbs.com -- "News For the Canadian Gamer" You should check them out!