will_chellam :
I'd have to disagree on most of your points unfortunately.....
That's always best for a hearty discussion
1. The original playstation - runaway success largely due to to the availability of pirated games - I didnt know anyone *without* a modchip (perhaps 30 or 40 people with playstations)
Should have "dropped a dime" on all of them. The numbers are what they are. If the bean counters aren't worried, I trust that they have access to better data than we do.
3. More consoles than PC's? I think not 110million total sales of 360/ps3/wii combined - this year alone 241million pc's sold - now mine is three years old and runs current games perfectly well - so ?600million pc's that could play games
Take away all those bought by businesses and what you got left ? Take away those owned by grandma and grandpa, aunt tilllie ..... I have 12 PC's in my house.....3 are used for gaming.
But why not just use real numbers:
http://www.mygaming.co.za/news/News/4407-Opinion-versus-Console.html
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/06/17/computer_vs_the_console/?page=1
"And market research company NPD Group says that while North Americans spent $18.8 billion on game software in retail stores last year, just $910 million went to PC games, down from $970 million the year before."
That's over 20 to 1.
4.You dont need the best graphics card to play the latest games - my 7950GT plays the new flashpoint at 1280x1024 (somewhere between 720 and 1080 hd resolution on a console) with everything on high and no lag - i reckon with judicious purchasing over the life of two consoles you could get away with one pc and a few upgrades
And your 7950 machine cost you how much compared to a $299 console ?
Let's let the knowledgeable folks chime in:
Cevat Yerli of Crytek, the makers of Far Cry, Crysis and Crysis Warhead has publicly stated:
"We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy, to the degree [that PC gamers who] pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. "
John Carmack, often called the 'father of PC gaming', and co-founder of id software, makers of the Doom and Quake series, recently stated:
"It's hard to second guess exactly what the reasons are. You can say piracy. You can say user migration, but the ground truth is just that the sales numbers on the PC are not what they used to be and are not what they are on the consoles."
Cliffy B, lead creator at Epic Games, makers of the Unreal Tournament and Gears of Wars series, has been quite outspoken on this topic:
"Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC. Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy. "
Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games, makers of Supreme Commander, also chimes in with his assessment:
" ...people are going to stop making [games] on the PC because of my earlier point, what's happened on the PC with piracy. The economics are ugly right now on the PC. You're not going to see these gigantic, epic investments of dollars on the PC when it just doesn't work. The economics have to work. You're going to see those investments made on the console side and it's going to become a more console-centric investment. And then you're going to see them ported back over to the PC and that creates a different experience on the PC. "
Robert Bowling, Community Manager at Infinity Ward, the makers of games such as Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 4, provided a fairly blunt opinion on the issue. He made a blog post entitled 'They Wonder Why People Don’t Make PC Games Any More', the title of his post along with the contents clearly linking the move away from PC game development with piracy:
"On another PC related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn’t fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online).... the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding. "
here's some more data from
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_5.html
"Back to our comparison of Call of Duty 4 PC and console sales. Even if we double the number of copies of COD 4 sold for PC to 766,000, ostensibly to account for the best case scenario of an equal number of additional digital distribution sales to that of retail sales, that is still nowhere near the 3 million+ copies of the exact same game sold solely on the XBox 360 in the same region during the same period;
it's still a 4:1 sales ratio in favor of a single console over the PC platform. To counter claims that US NPD sales data is non-representative of global sales, because the PC is supposed to be much more popular in Europe for gaming, look at European GFK Chart Track sales data for the more recent Fallout 3 release, showing that 55% of Fallout 3 copies shipped were for the XBox 360, 28% for the PS3, and 17% for PC.
In other words once again, an almost 5:1 ratio in favor of the consoles.
Very well written conclusions here:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_10.html
Again, I have never played a game on a PS3, X-Box or Wii.....I have no wish to. Despite my personal preferences, the game industry (read bean counters) is clearly focused on a different path. Who would have though they'd ever hear anyone say that the next Unreal Engine at this point is console only.
I agree w/ the tweakguide folks that PC gaming is changing .... and needs to in order to be factor. $900 million is still a significant market. Porsche doesn't sell as many cars as GM or Toyota, but they still make money.....I don't think the folks in Stuttgart are worried about job security.
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