When will PC games be powerful again?

Wondering, when does everyone think that companies will make games to push hardware again instead of mostly ports?

When there wont be any money in the console business.

I hate the fact that a lot of games are ports, look at cryis2 - no advanced graphics settings, no dx11, (admitedly there is a patch coming but still....) However I cant blame the games companies though, 15years ago consoles were not as big and PC gaming was still a niche market. Now console gaming is huge and these same developers want to make money, (they are a business after all) so they aim at the console market. Unfortunately it ends up with a lot of them forgetting their "roots" and the customers who helped get these companies where they are now. There was a lot of nerd rage about bf3 being a console port, but DICE have implicitly stated it is being developed on PC and the PC version will be given much love. So it appears some companies do listen

@Alex

PC market is not small, it sells much better then PS3 or the Xbox 360. however developers are a business, if they can make the same game and sell to 3 platforms then why not?

You should check out Steam Sales figures to judge PC market is not small. Steam alone sold worth 1billion usd last year which is about 50% (software wise) what sells on the PS3. Now if only 1 distribution service is selling so much add in the retail add in MMOs i am sure PC is ahead of any of these consoles.

I should rephrase. What I meant was PC Market is not as profitable...I'm not talking about the number of units being sold. Steam may sell a lot of units but at very low profit margins (they have to because of piracy, consumer price demands, and other PC online retailers' competitive prices).

Finally, Steam don't release sales figures. So I'm curious to know where you got your information (or did you just made it up)?

Actually PC game sales on steam are incredibly profitable. It's the main reason PC game sales are moving out of the retial sector. The average game on a retail shelf yields 4 - 7 dollars in profit. While a Digitally sold game yields 35 - 45 dollars in profit. Steam is in itself it's own DRM. People buy from steam instead of pirating because the games are far cheaper then the average $60 price tag that you run into. Digital game sales are going to be the wave of the future it's just a mattter of time. I wouldn't be suprised if you stopped seeing PC games on store shelfs over the next decade. Digital sales just yield higher profits. Thats 4x plus more profit per $60 title. Thats incredible.

@alex

check this link out from Fade

http://fadellc.com/press_14.html

i hope thats enough evidence. Overall i feel we as PC gamers should simply stop upgrading, send a point across to AMD and Nvidia that if there is no software demanding the hardware we wont be upgrading either. They can stay happy selling the piddly number of GPUs they do sell to the Console market.

that game came out four years ago and it did so well that crytek made the sequel a....console port (still a good game)...so let's stop waving it around as an example.

there is more money in a multi-platform launch then a PC exclusive, simple business decision. why make a game only a small niche can play?

Changes is coming. The line between consoles and PC is going to get incredibly blured with the next generation. Many people are clamoring for scaleability and upgradeability with the next generaiton of equipment. They are also asking for far more power. Every generation of console has costed progressively more and the next generation of consoles will be no different. The last gen of releases were 400 and 600 respectively at release depending on the model of xbox or ps3 that you wanted. 600 is about the limit any midclass person is going to spend on a console system before they start looking for alternatives. Case in point is 3DO and Panisonic. They tried releaseing a multimedia platform a few years back that did everything but it cost 800 and consumers never adopted it. If trends mean anything the next generation of consoles will costs between 600 and 1000 dollars each at release. This is a low estimate in my opinion. To keep prices at a level customers can afford they are going to have to either sell at a loss and make up losses in software sales and boost the price of games too what? $80 - $100 per title? They are going to have to sell it at cost which will significantly reduce their sales. A quality gaming PC can be had for < 1000 dollars. The reason consoles took of as they did was because you couldn't get a quality PC 5 years ago for under 1500 and compared to a 400 console it was hard to justify. Now days you can build one for under a thousand. That being said there will be little or no differnce in cost between the platforms at release and PC games are still going to be ahead graphically at time of release.

I should also mention that you need to include perhipherals in the cost of the console so add an additonal 150 for controllers.

Metro 2033 is the quite demanding. Crysis 2, eh... at least more people can play it.

Both of markets are "plagued" by piracy.
Also both of markets wouldn't be as big as they are if there won't be any piracy.

It's like windows. There are two types of windows users. Those who cracks windows and uses it for free, it fills the gap of users who wants to use free os. Others buys ,whatever the reason is,but they fills the second gap.

Result - stunning.

First of all console are way cheaper than a mid-end pc. You don't have to worry if your pc would run any new game. No more spending for expensive vga or cpu upgrades.

I think it's all about expensive PC hardware. People stop thinking that companies dictates us what we should buy to play and have no headache. It's our money who dictates all the rules, every new console user - it's a new spender in that category. It's a one less for a PCs

sorry for my awful eng.

Actually piracy is more overwhelming on PC than the other platforms, this unfortunately causes the devs to move elsewhere and not put effort into PC games like they used to as when they do some retard goes and pirates it, don't know if you have noticed a decline in PC games as well sales.

With regard to whats cheap and not so cheap, Yes we build our PC's and spend thousands, You buy a console worth about half of a standard PC but for what we pay in hardware you pay for games. Take a look at the difference in pric of PC games and console games, i like to call this a catch 22.

Exactly so as long as there are consoles and mid PC's who cares who has what, Games are standard so enjoy and stop moaning people

I think what Dice is doing with BF3 is a step in the right direction.

I can get a used console for well under $200 and play games just fine

Uh, I may be wrong, but I don't think EA makes games... I believe they publish them for companies that make them. Either way, EA does tend to publish games that are good. They handle a lot of console ports from PC, and from what I've seen console gamers are happy to get a PC game.

It's too bad that PC gamers get so riled up over the PC getting a console game.

Ok but you understand my point about a standard game "Console Port " Can't enhance it anymore than its set to unless a patch was made to allow a graphics menu, Example: Darksiders only thing you can adjust is the resolution and maybe the brightness, Do i need a highend machine to play it? Nope.

Its not about who has the best, you must remember we in a market that thrives on money, so who is the target market? Console gamers. Why did we as PC gamers recieve hand me downs? because although we have lost the competitive edge there is still money to be made off us PC users.

So why go all out on creating a game that indulges in the best software enhanced coding when you can take a normal DX9 game and code it to PC of which at the same time get the money from all platforms.

Its not about creation anymore its about how much money can we make.

So although out of a 100 games we may get one exclusive to PC i highly doubt we will see a change, this is why i say instead of moaning about the game rather enjoy what is available to you now.

So complain about gameplay not detail,lol

Battlefield 3 and STALKER 2 are probably our best hope for a demanding game. Oh, and Metro 2034. So this year, just BF3...

Its actually in business terms " Supply and demand ", and its really got nothing to do with age its statistically driven on which platform is in more demand and judged but alot of others business stratergies which we won't go into.

Numbers maybe showing an increase in creation of PC games no doubt about but lets take a look at the average person who is a PC enthusiast.

They now build a wonderful I7 2600k PC with the best of the best, Long awaited PC exclusive Crysis 2 on the way many others begin the massive upgrade upon the release. What happens? They made it a port as consoles suddenly became first choice merely on the fact its easier to code.

The problem is not many people care about gameplay its more on the lines of why have i built a machine that only gets to enjoy something that you would play on a mid - low end machine.

DX11 tesselation,enhanced detail,PC exclusive PC gamers want to harness their PC's full potential.

End of the day this thread will never end because no one realizes that its controlled from powers higher than our own or the publishers,creators its market related in turn it hurts PC gamers financially and mentally.

Touching on the piracy aspect here, which I dont really understand tbh. For a single player game, yes I see the appeal to "borrow" the game and "test it out", But if you pirate any modern multiplayer game, BFBC2, BLOPS, MW2, Etc, Etc, you lose out on the multiplayer funtimes! Being limited to single player isnt very appealing when the core gameplay is online. If Devs made good multiplayer games and released them through a platform like steam, piracy wouldnt be as much of an issue. imho. (Still wont help single player games but who on earth plays those anymore? ^^)

your absolutely correct when you discuss the impact of piracy on the industry ...

i don't see things getting better , i see many more MMO'S in the pipeline , none of which i'll be playing ...

This economy is garbage , more and more people are going to turn to piracy ... we will be lucky if we can get to microsoft flight and mass effect 3 before the industry gives up the ghost

a few interesting articles
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/04/15/ [...] -say-dice/

http://kotaku.com/#!5792848/of-cou [...] generation

It just makes me mad as how some Developers/ Publishers use piracy as the scapegoat for bailing out on the PC platform. I mean there is potential money you can make with the PC if you actually put effort into the game instead of trying to over hype like other people do on console games. Look at Blizzard I mean they sold a crap ton of copies of Star Craft 2. I remember what CD Projekt said to the people live Cevat Yerli and Ubisoft who bitched about low sales on the PC "If you make a good game on the PC a lot of people will buy it, and be honest how many of those piraters would buy the game if they couldn't pirate it or have any other alternative to get it for free?"
it seems Crytek was looking at the unrealisticness of how much Crysis would sell if it were on consoles I mean I think they were pretty dumb since the main motivation to get Crysis was to play the game at max graphics since most people at the time couldn't even play Crysis maxed out unless they were using an SLI/Crossfire set up or had it at a very low resolution. I'm surprise 1 million dollars in sales for the first year isn't enough to satisfy them and the number of copies grew as new hardware was coming out."
Too me it seems everyone wants CoD sales. I'm pretty pissed at how Crysis 2 turned out and if Crysis 3 is the same Crytek wil only be known as Sell outs to the PC community. I have no problem with PC games being multiplat as long as PC is the leading platform.
I'm a bit pissed at how companies like Rockstar games completely turn their backs on the PC, from looking at GTA IV I believe the reason they didn't make RDR and LA NOIRE for PC is because they are too dumb or lazy to put effort into the PC port. And if they blamed piracy for the reasons of why their GTA games sold small in comparison to console versions I bet $300 they never even played the PC ports on release and just copy and pasted the console versions and gave it to the PC community in a cheap plastic baggy.
Although the strength of Indie games on PC has grown some examples are Penumbra, Amnesia, Minecraft(which is only a BETA!), and Braid. I like how the Indie devs show what you can do with so little money instead of putting most of it into heavy advertisments and Graphics.
I don't see why companies don't use profits of console versions to fuel all the things to satisfy the PC community. I don't mind console ports of certain games if they aren't originally PC series like Devil May Cry or Darksiders. I was enraged at Crysis 2 at how generic the multiplayer was (Killstreaks, No vehicles, Small maps, Small maximum amount of players, barely any dedicated server features like kicking hackers out game rooms etc)
the single player was ok but didn't live up to Crysis 1 and Warhead I mean a lot of stuff is prebaked, scripted, and linear. The physics is one of the main things I like about crysis now most of the physics is scripted or simple stuff. I don't like all the BS excuses people made to defend Crytek to what they did to a what could of been a great force in the PC world and gain them potentially more money.