By Jim Rossignol on November 19th, 2008 at 11:06 am.
Cleverthinks research company Jon Peddie Research have put together a report on the state of the PC hardware market, and it’s looking good. Peddie says: “From Q3 2005 till Q3 2008, 196 million gaming PCs shipped, and 10 million of them were in the Mainstream Enthusiast class—and if we include mainstream desktop and High-end high-end notebook, we could add another 187 million units—now that really is a lot.”
The Techwatch article (currently on the front page of the Peddie site) seems astonished at the rude health of the PC gaming industry compared to the fledgling consoles. In fact it gets a little sarcastic about the HDTV fanfare from console types: “Thankfully HD TVs are sneaking into the living room bringing 720p and, in some cases, 1080i capability. Imagine, 720p almost as good as 1024 x 768—old XGA resolution introduced by IBM in 1988—wow.”
Peddie sums it up: “Fact is the PC Gaming Market is bigger, worth more money, growing faster, and has better technology than the console market. How come no one but us seems to know that?”
19/11/2008 at 11:16 Gaming Guru says:
Good to know in these troubled times…
19/11/2008 at 11:19 Bobsy says:
On better tech than consoles… ’twas ever thus. The problem is that the sheer variety of hardware combinations encountered makes it near-impossible to optimise software for the platform. The original Xbox had pretty feeble tech, but could still crank out the high-end visuals of Halo 2.
19/11/2008 at 11:20 SLDeviant says:
Concentrated truth, leave the non-believers to their consoles. The promised land of PC will be kept for the chosen!
19/11/2008 at 11:24 Paul Inc says:
“Concentrated truth, leave the non-believers to their consoles. The promised land of PC will be kept for the chosen!”
I second that.
19/11/2008 at 11:29 pauleyc says:
“Imagine, 720p almost as good as 1024 x 768—old XGA resolution introduced by IBM in 1988—wow.”
Wow indeed. And a plague upon those PC game reviewers that mention HDTV resolutions with regard to PC hardware: “runs at 60fps at 720p on our system”.
19/11/2008 at 11:31 Mark-P says:
Price must surely be helping. ATI/AMD have done gamers a great service with the 4XXX series of cards. If NVidia had their way we’d be paying £100 more for a decent gfx card. Add on reasonable mid-range Dual Cores from Intel and cheap DDR2 prices, and the realisation from many companies that the low-to-mid range is a huge potential customer base, and you can now get a solid gaming PC for a good price. The price difference with consoles can easily be made up in the reduced cost of the games themselves over a system’s lifespan.
19/11/2008 at 11:46 Gap Gen says:
If only piracy weren’t killing PC gaming…
(sorry)
19/11/2008 at 11:50 Dexton says:
Agree with Mark-P, the price difference between a decent home built PC and a console may seem like alot, but when you factor in games that are nearly double the price you can make the money back after you purchase 10 games or so.
19/11/2008 at 11:59 Okami says:
Gap Gen beat me to it.. damn…
19/11/2008 at 12:06 marilena says:
Well, I don’t see how the health of PC gaming can be measure in hardware sales.
In fact this is even more worrying, it says that people have PCs capable of playing high end games, they just don’t want to.
They may be all busy playing World of Warcraft, or they may be playing pirated games, I don’t know, pick your favorite PC gaming doom bringer, but they surely aren’t buying as many games as console gamers.
19/11/2008 at 12:06 ChaosSmurf says:
If only it was massively easy to pirate console games too :<
19/11/2008 at 12:09 Guido says:
“If only piracy weren’t killing PC gaming…”
Heh, and console gaming, as we saw with Fallout 3 :) The XBox isn’t sold in some regions in asia in the first place for piracy reasons, right?
19/11/2008 at 12:16 AbyssUK says:
I’d like to see figures for fallout 3…
on play.com the pc one was 24.99 while the 360/ps3 was 39.99… i’d like to see how the sales compare.. did more people buy it on the console or the pc ? Then which made the devs more money the pc or the consoles ??
19/11/2008 at 12:17 cannon fodder says:
As usual with the consoles: when they come out they are ahead of the curve/on the bleeding edge compared to PCs in terms of hardware.
Two/three years later midrange PCs are comparable/slightly better and the high end is streets ahead (I’m ignoring the theoretical performance of cell in the real world it’s almost impossible to utilise fully)
Taking in the above it has been noticable how console/PC codeveloped titles are now looking a little tired graphically when compared to their PC specific counterparts. For example Crysis vs. FarCry 2 or Stalker clearsky vs Mass Effect amoung the games I’ve played this year.
19/11/2008 at 12:17 Kieron Gillen says:
Marilena: The “Health of PC Gaming” is a different thing to “The Health of the PC Games Business”. Both WoW and Piracy count for the former.
KG
19/11/2008 at 12:18 The Sombrero Kid says:
this is a point I’ve made before is that it’s in hardware manufacturers interest to keep the pc market going and the pc games industry if they have to they’d fork out the cash to develop a game and give it away for free and have been doing similar things to that for years bloating revenue for games like crysis but shrinking their sales figures
19/11/2008 at 12:21 Down Rodeo says:
Oh, that’s quite nice :)
Thanks for sharing RPS! Gaemz pwn credit crunch? I realise that these are figures from a while ago but it would be interesting to see if the gaming industry will continue to grow or if games will be one of the first things to go when belts get tight…
19/11/2008 at 12:27 notlimahc says:
That 720p comment is a bit dishonest, 1280*720 is larger than 1024*768. Also, going by the Valve Hardware Survey 50% of PC gamers were still using 1024*768 or lower in November of 2006.
19/11/2008 at 12:31 The Colonel says:
Who owns a console that doesn’t ALSO own a PC? Forgetting the extreme cost of games on consoles (plus extra controllers, HDDs, plastic guitars and ‘Expansion Paks’), the total cost of being a PC gamer who also uses Facebook, Microsoft Word and Youtube is surely much cheaper than a console owner who does all these things. A crap computer will still play old games, unless perhaps it has onboard graphics. The great thing about PC titles is that the quality of the best of them doesn’t take a massive dive when the graphics are out of date. Perhaps this is the reason why we’re on Sonic 24 and The return of the return of the return of Solid Snake adventures in Gran Turismo-land.
19/11/2008 at 12:35 Evangel says:
cannon fodder, consoles aren’t anywhere near “top of the line” when they come out, they’re at least a generation behind, if not more.
19/11/2008 at 12:40 Butler` says:
notlimahc, equally, you could point out only X% of console users have a HDTV.
I sniggered at that comment, recalling a ‘debate’ I had with a 360 fanboy at Uni, informing him that ‘high def’ isn’t actually so high for us PC folk :p
19/11/2008 at 12:57 Okami says:
A crap computer will still play old games, unless perhaps it has onboard graphics. The great thing about PC titles is that the quality of the best of them doesn’t take a massive dive when the graphics are out of date. Perhaps this is the reason why we’re on Sonic 24 and The return of the return of the return of Solid Snake adventures in Gran Turismo-land.
I really don’t understand what you’re trying to say with this. There are absolute classic games for old consoles that are easily as good as the best classic pc games. And it only takes an old and cheap console to play them.
The best console games also don’t take a massive dive when their graphics are out of date. Super Mario Bros 3 still is one of the best platform games ever made, Chrono Trigger still is an amazing RPG and Shadow of the Colossus will allways be one of the first games mentioned in any discussions about “games as art”.
I dare you to take a good look at PC games from 5 to 15 years ago and tell me how many of them have aged well. Take an especially good look at your early 3D games..
As for sequels…. Well there are enough PC gaming franchises that are currently in their Nth iteration, so I really don’t see your point there.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my PC, but I’ve never quite understood the hostility against consoles displayed by some pc gamers. I also don’t get the point of bashing consoles or feeling superior to console gamers. Then again, I was brought up on the Commodore 64 and Amiga 500, so I allways was both a PC and a console gamers, since in the glorious age of home computers you used one machine for deep strategy and role playing games as well as for arcade and jump’n'run games.
19/11/2008 at 13:06 Ginger Yellow says:
“I dare you to take a good look at PC games from 5 to 15 years ago and tell me how many of them have aged well. Take an especially good look at your early 3D games.. ”
I’ve got no hostility to consoles, but this seems a bit of a bizarre comment on a site which has massively supported things like Good Old Games and features posts about, say, Carrier Command or, just two days ago, a Spectrum classic . Speaking for myself, I regularly play games from 10+ years ago and love to plunder abandonware sites.
19/11/2008 at 13:08 notlimahc says:
Butler` – Most PC users would be using whichever resolution gives a playable frame rate. Even if you don’t own a HDTV the Xbox360/PS3 hardware is still just as capable of running whatever game at 720p/1080i/1080p.
Personally, I don’t see the need for picking or choosing between PCs and consoles. Picking either one means you’ll miss out on something great.
19/11/2008 at 13:09 Tei says:
I don’t know, but I see more people playing from laptops.
Even If a laptop have a Nvidia 8800, the laptop will be optimized to power saving and what not, maybe even the GPU is not the real one, but a limited version.. to save power.
This result on lots of people with sub-standard hardware.
Yes, there are laptops with good GPU’s, but most are not.
Is that a bad or a good thing? IMHO is a good thing If you like indie games. Is a bad thing If you like EA games.
19/11/2008 at 13:11 Kanakotka says:
Notable too, that there are quite a few people who would never buy a pre-built gaming PC due to the huge overprice with them, and would rather build one of their own. Like i have. In comparison to an equal Alienware puter, i got a much better looking (and better cooling) box for my puter, and saved 1500€. That’s ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED euros, more than what i actually paid for the hardware…
19/11/2008 at 13:12 subedii says:
Between 2005 and 2008, only 10 million “enthusiast” class games machines were sold. This figure is something that really needs to be kept in mind more often.
Now assuming that what classes as an “enthusiast machine” is something that, today, would be able to play Crysis, you begin to understand why a game like Crysis wasn’t actually capable of being a 4-5 million seller like Cevat Yerli claimed it should have been, and much like other system intensive games, had a much smaller market. Given that, the 1.5-2 million it sold was pretty exceptional as far as I’m concerned. I mean, Over 10% of the available market? That’s amazing, surely?
It’s one of the reasons that the numbers argument about how PC gaming is flailing around at the deep end always irritated me. People seem to have absolutely insane expectations about how well a title “should” do, irrespective of the available hardware base or market. This goes even to the extent that titles that cross the 1 million unit milestone are still seen as having performed sub-par. Unless you’re selling into the Halo / Gears range, people will somehow (and even some devs are guilty of this) proclaim loudly that the game should have done so much better. Max Payne 2? “Under performed” at 3-4 million. Supreme Commander? Bad sales at over 1 million. Crysis? Poor performance at over 1.5 million (Apparently it should have done 4-5 times that).
I mean, even looking at the biggest mega hits that Capcom ever put out outside of Street Fighter, their maximum sales have hovered around the 2 million mark. That PC devs come out and say that a game like Crysis should have sold 5 million or more is just nutty. We’re talking about 50% of the hardware base!
19/11/2008 at 13:26 Okami says:
@Ginger Yellow: I’ve got a GoG account and allready downloaded four games from them. Only reason why I haven’t played through Giants for the 3rd time is the absolutely ridiculous amount of games released in the last four weeks. I also play a whole lot of other old games in between all the shiny new releases.
There are good games for PC and there are good games for consoles and good games are good games and will always continue to be good games, no matter how old they are or on which system they got realeased.
The point I’m trying to make is: The Colonel’s argument against Consoles as gaming platforms just aren’t very good arguemnts as they can equally be applyed to PC games and vice versa.
19/11/2008 at 13:28 reiver says:
I’d say a significant number of “enthusiasts” build rather than buy. Since they need a gfx card of decent whack a better estimate of the potential market could be derived from the sales of Nvidia’s and AMD’s sale figures.
19/11/2008 at 13:32 subedii says:
That is a point. The enthusiast market is probably larger than those figures would let on.
I still think sales expectations from mainstream observers and in the industry are very much overboard.
19/11/2008 at 13:36 Kommissar Nicko says:
This article doesn’t seem to nod toward the type of illicit activities that Kanakotka mentions: the Do-It-Yourself. Personally, every salty gamer I know has lovingly assembled his own box from the ground up at least once, and anyone who’s got an eye for quality without paying through the nose will do it this way.
As far as I know, if you want a machine that’s really nice, putting it together yourself is still the cheapest way to go about things.
19/11/2008 at 13:37 Kommissar Nicko says:
Damn you comment blitz.
19/11/2008 at 13:58 Craymen Edge says:
The number of PCs out there doesn’t really matter when publishers see (or believe they see) greater sales and profits on the consoles.
Maybe they’re being unrealistic and expecting to emulate the success of Valve and Blizzard.
Maybe I’m part of the problem; all I’ve purchased on PC so far this year are downloadable indie titles, and telltale’s Sam & Max / Strongbad games.
19/11/2008 at 14:02 subedii says:
It’s not YOUR responsibility to buy games that you’re not interested in. :P
19/11/2008 at 14:18 dreamhunk says:
pircay is on all gaming platforms! the only people who want to debunk the pc is the micro soft’s game devs.
Pc gaming is world wide, pc gaming has the best games, pc gaming has all the indie game devs. pc gaming created all genres.
you can even play console games using emulators
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/989729/how_to_play_ps2_games_on_pc/
no console game can out game tittle such as wow,sims,linage,guildwars,linage,nacy drew,halfe life.
even pc’s hardware is more adavneced than any consoles.
lets compare console best fps to pc best fps
crysisand crysis war head owns gears of 2, cod4, cod5
heck you can’t even runt rts on console. Plus you miss out on all the ionic games such as sins of the solar empire, daiblo, starcraft! I could go on
19/11/2008 at 14:25 Gap Gen says:
“I dare you to take a good look at PC games from 5 to 15 years ago and tell me how many of them have aged well. Take an especially good look at your early 3D games.. ”
Yes, but as you imply, many 2D games have aged very well. Starcraft is still being played and still looks good, for example – much better than Warcraft III, which made the transition to semi-3D before the polygon counts could make it look good. In any case, games like Deus Ex and Half-Life are still classics, even though technical advances have been made – and as a counter-example, Goldeneye looks shit even though it’s a console classic.
19/11/2008 at 14:30 Ben Abraham says:
This must be a lie for everyone knows PC gaming has been dead for years!
/sarcasm and mild annoyance
19/11/2008 at 14:36 dreamhunk says:
chances are consoles will not make the ression. I can look for a job and play free games usin a pc
http://www.edge-online.com/features/recession-could-sting-mainstream-platforms
oh and check the games for pc
http://adrianwerner.wordpress.com/games-of-2010/
19/11/2008 at 14:41 fulis says:
who cares about these numbers
PC games don’t sell well anyway
just get over it. when there aren’t any good PC games around we’ll know it. there’s no point in having arguments over whether or not the platform is dead, it’s stupid
19/11/2008 at 14:46 solomun says:
Starcraft, Diablo, Deus Ex and Half-Life all came out for consoles anyway, so why are you even having this argument?
19/11/2008 at 14:49 Larington says:
I’m beginning to wonder about the potential knock on effects of the economic downturn. My suspicion is that fewer people, parents especially, will be less willing to fork out the cash for a generally more costly PS3 than a much cheaper 360 or Wii… Could Sony be about to start suffering more than anyone could possible have suspected (Never mind the fact PS3 has lost several exclusivity deals its predecessor once had)?
19/11/2008 at 14:51 dreamhunk says:
Deus Ex 3 will not be a console game it will be a pc only game.
starraft was garbage on consoles rts don’t do well. That is why there is no starcraft 2 going to consoles. You can’t play the all the mods for half life on consoles . the best part of pc of that game. You miss out on counter strike too as well.
spore sold 2 mill, crysis sold 1.6 mill, wicther sold a mill and that ‘s not the top of the bar for pc gaming.
19/11/2008 at 14:58 Larington says:
Oops, just realised I messed up grammar on my last post, I meant to say, I suspect fewer people will be willing to spend more for PS3 which has roughly same selection of games as its competitor but with a higher initial outlay to buy the thing.
19/11/2008 at 15:11 Gap Gen says:
Actually, the PS2 is still doing very well – far better than any other last-gen console, and is still the best-selling console ever made. So Sony should be doing OK, if not on the top-end of the market.
19/11/2008 at 15:13 Mr. Brand says:
PC gamers don’t need to adjust resolutions to a playable setting; they adjust QUALITY to a playable setting. Consoles don’t do that. One resolution, one quality setting, one ruler!
It really does seem like PC gamers are spending all their money on hardware and stealing the software, though. Personally I’m not part of the upgrade mill (my March 2007 system is great, thank you) and invest a bunch in Steam and Stardock games. Oh, and limited editions of games like BioShock and Fallout 3 :)
19/11/2008 at 15:22 dreamhunk says:
sony is not doing ok they have lost 3 billion dallors on ps3. Sony is no longer the same company it once was. take a good listen to link here
http://gametopius.com/index.php/video-games/features/250-the-death-of-the-video-game-console-market
19/11/2008 at 15:29 Gap Gen says:
Oop. Still, it’s an achievement that they’re still selling PS2 games.
19/11/2008 at 15:54 Del Boy says:
I’ve got an Athlon 2800, an Gforce 7 series graphics card and 1 gig of RAM.
Is that an enthusiasts machine? I wouldn’t say so yet I can play Crysis, Far Cry 2, Bioshock etc…without a problem.
Obviously not maxed out but they all look great to me.
I think a lot of PC gamers expect so much out of their PC’s….’Oh no, I can’t run Oblivion at 1600*1200 with full AA…must upgrade!’
19/11/2008 at 16:02 Ginger Yellow says:
“Maybe I’m part of the problem; all I’ve purchased on PC so far this year are downloadable indie titles, and telltale’s Sam & Max / Strongbad games.”
That makes you part of the solution, if you ask me.
19/11/2008 at 16:05 Jetsetlemming says:
I’m trying to find the source but can’t. How are the PCs sold counted? What areas does it include? I seriously doubt that’s WORLDWIDE sales, as those figures would be hell to find and track accurately.
19/11/2008 at 16:09 Jim Rossignol says:
It does seem to be worldwide: take a look at Peddie’s press release schedule. They are tracking most of the major manufacturers.
19/11/2008 at 16:35 honky-tonky says:
because on pc we have serius games (sorta… still a game)like il2 sturmovik, arma, lomac etc we have real complex games and also we have acces to old games and more flexibility on upgrade our harware.
19/11/2008 at 16:40 solomun says:
Counter-Strike came out Xbox.
19/11/2008 at 16:40 solomun says:
…on Xbox, I mean.
19/11/2008 at 16:52 Wedge says:
Man… I love the titlebar thing for RPS now.
19/11/2008 at 17:34 SuperNashwan says:
Can’t see anything of substance on their figures on the site, there’s not even a direct link from that page to the relevant research. But even assuming it’s true then surely there are some major issues if the PC gaming market has an installed base of 196m since 2005, when compared to numbers for even the best selling PC games?
According to the HL2 wiki “As of July 14, 2006, the Half-Life franchise has sold 16 million units.” Presumably cross-platform and including both games. As of May 2007 Steam had “over 13m accounts”. WoW has over 10 million subscriptions. WoW and Steam combined don’t account for even 12% of the supposed gaming hardware market.
19/11/2008 at 18:00 dreamhunk says:
HL2 is still selling just like sims, starcraft, wow, guild wars even today
19/11/2008 at 18:02 Paul Moloney says:
One problem with PC gaming is Microsoft’s divided interest in this. It reminds me of Sony’s problems in recent years. As a hardware company, it was in their interest to produce audio equipment that people will buy. However, as a music publishing company, it was not in their interest to produce audio equipment that enabled the playing of freely downloaded MP3s. Hence they produces players using a proprietary format that no-one except the bosses of their music division, and which they eventually ditched in 2007.
It’s in Microsoft’s interest to sell loads of copies of Windows, and therefore in their interest that people buy lots of PCs. However, it’s is more in their interest that people buy lots of XBoxs. Hence their completely lukewarm attiude to Gaming for Windows and their complete and utter poochscrew when it came to Vista. Xbox is the favourite child, and PC will get the scraps from the table.
P.
19/11/2008 at 18:10 Paul Moloney says:
PS: I would love to see a short bullet-pointed list of tangible things that Kevin Unangst has done since his appointment. I don’t mean this sarcastically, I’m honestly curious.
I am amused that his bio says “A technology lover and gamer at heart, Unangst’s first computer was a Timex Sinclair ZX-81, and he has owned nearly two dozen gaming consoles, beginning with the Atari 2600″, but doesn’t mention owning a gaming PC.
I installed Fallout 3 last night to find it does indeed connect up to Games for Windows and allows you to have achievements and all that jazz. Cool stuff, but we should have had this for Oblivion 2 years ago. Also, Microsoft really need to start talking properly to Valve; surely it can’t be beyond their capabilities to make certain elements of Steam and GfW cross-compatible; say, achievements and the like.
P.
19/11/2008 at 19:04 RichPowers says:
@Paul: A Microsoft exec in Germany, I think, publicly said that the company intentionally releases games for the 360 first so that people are encouraged to buy the console. Said exec went on to say that simultaneous game releases favor the PC, especially in markets, such as continental Europe, where PC gaming is still very strong.
19/11/2008 at 19:28 subedii says:
@RichPowers: You got a source article for that? I’d be interested in reading it if you have a link.
Whilst I’m not so certain that simultaneous releases favour the PC in general (although IIRC, out of the two million Bioshock sold, half was on the PC), It’s been pretty evident for a while now that companies have been delaying PC releases with the impression that it helps sales. Although that’s always been chalked up to the fear of piracy so far, so there’s been no actual quantifiable evidence on that front. The fear of it is enough to drive that policy.
It’s one of the reasons that Bionic Commando’s getting a delayed release on the PC. Which is a shame, since I’m really interested in that game.
19/11/2008 at 19:44 unclelou says:
I dimly remember that, but I think it might have been their reasoning not for delays, but for Halo Wars – making an RTS exclusively for the 360 to make us bastard, stubborn German PC gamers who dare to prefer PC versions finally give in. :p
The wording was rather annoying.
Unless I am mixing two stories into one here.
19/11/2008 at 19:45 cyrenic says:
@subedii
Here ya go: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-game-studios-europe-part-2
19/11/2008 at 19:45 Peter says:
Where did you get an abacus? I want one.
19/11/2008 at 19:54 unclelou says:
found it now:
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=164253
19/11/2008 at 19:55 unclelou says:
Hot damn, cyrenic!
/shakes fist :)
19/11/2008 at 20:28 ph0tik says:
Between 2005 and 2008, only 10 million “enthusiast” class games machines were sold. This figure is something that really needs to be kept in mind more often.
Well between 2005 and 2008, about 75 million consoles sold, looking at wikipedia pages for PS3, XBOX 360, and Wii. That’s a hell of alot more than 10 million enthusiast machines.
Yes there will always be alot more PCs so there will always be a bigger potential market, especially if you target lower end machines. But what’s with the console hate in here? I like my consoles. Good lord people!
19/11/2008 at 20:40 Alaric says:
Umm… you do of course know that most enthusiasts don’t actually buy their PCs but rather build them? And that such self-built machines do not fall into the “sold” statistic?
Moreover, I am willing to bet that enthusiast-class PCs that are built and sold by small shops and not by the likes of Dell, are not actually accounted for as well.
Sooo then, how many console players build their own Wiis?
19/11/2008 at 20:49 ph0tik says:
The point wasn’t that people are building consoles, it’s that they know exactly the number of people that game on them. With PCs, you know alot of people have machines capable of playing games but do not know if they actually do game.
19/11/2008 at 21:11 DigitalSignalX says:
“lukewarm attitude to Gaming for Windows” – on the contrary, Microsoft’s stand has been to deliberately shrink wrap and standardize PC games into a format that makes them compatible for the 360. Lukewarm best describes what PC games are turning into as a result.
19/11/2008 at 21:12 Marty says:
Look at it this way; if you’re well off enough to buy a $300 console then you’re well off enough to buy a computer. And you need a computer, everyone needs a computer today. So whats stopping you from spending an extra $300 on a computer with decent graphics card, processor and memory?
A console on the other hand is completely worthless to you by itself. And before you can put it to use for games or the interned you have to pay for everything. And thats their business model. Sell them the foundation then make them pay piecemeal for the rest. It comes to more $ spent and a lot of people don’t realize that. Because these corporate mofos are twats with their little money-grubbing hearts and their little money-grubbing thoughts.
19/11/2008 at 21:13 subedii says:
@ ph0tik: I’m not sure if you’re misunderstanding me, but I need to be clear here: I was saying that developers need to keep this hardware base in mind, largely because it’s such a small figure compared to the large numbers of PC’s shipped. I said as much in the rest of my post beyond that snippet you quoted. There’s no point in building games purely for the ultra-high end and then complaining when the userbase doesn’t exist to even support the 5 million units you wanted your game to ship. There’s plenty of additional “enthusiast” level PC’s out there than what’s counted here, but there’s no real way to quantify the amount.
This however also has the effect that the PC market is not particularly well suited as the “lead” platform towards the mainstream high-budget blockbuster titles. At least in comparison to the consoles. This varies with the standard console cycle but until things get sorted out on a few fronts, it’s an intractable problem for the time being. I’d argue that PC hardware issues rest somewhere near the top of that list of issues.
19/11/2008 at 21:19 ph0tik says:
I actually agree with you subedii, I didn’t mean to quote you, I meant to quot the 10 million from the summary. My bad and no edit feature =(
19/11/2008 at 21:29 Spiny says:
Blessed be the W the S the A and the D.
Ah-meh’n
19/11/2008 at 21:29 Taxman says:
That report was just dripping with blind fandom LOL.
I’d love to know how he calculated PC gamer systems being sold, I’m assuming he took whatever systems passed for gaming duties even if they were not sold as such and lumped them altogether to paint a rosy picture.
The fact of the matter is those systems wont be used for PC gaming & certainly a portion of those that do wont necessarily be for what old school PC gamers like to play (Sims, web based games etc).
The PC can no longer leverage a technical edge either like he tries to proclaim as the platform has dug itself into a hole with costs into the stratosphere so the base platform any developer with a brain is going to aim for are the 360/PS3. Also and this is a big one NOT EVERYONE CARES ABOUT THE LATEST EYE CANDY THEY JUST WANT TO ENJOY GAMES.
The last few remaining studios that appealed to the graphics whores threw in the towel Crytek, Epic, iD etc now focus on the consoles.
Even Nvidia owned up to the fact that PC gaming generally only shifts up to about 0.5 – 1.2m units in a report trying to sell hype on physics. I saw the sales data for the GTA series on the PC for North America (IGN of all places sorry can find the link) but none of the past PC GTA games has managed to break 500k individually in sales, the biggest game franchise out there cant even do that over the past few years when times were supposed to have been better for the PC.
I was and like to think still am a fan of PC gaming but my head is definitely not stuck in the sand pretending everythings just fine.
Costs for creating and marketing for games are too high (e.g. that so-so action game from Midway Stranglehold cost $40 million to make) and the old school PC games market is getting squeezed by consoles that have evolved into quasi PC’s with most of the features minus most of the drawbacks for consumers/developers and on the other side you have things like WoW or free to play titles.
The situation is only going to get worse when the next console generation has 3d/motion mouse like interfaces (similar to Wii Motion Plus) which means the few remaining genres on the PC that need a mouse will be doable on the consoles.
Is this all doom and gloom no call me crazy but I think there is a silver lining and I would like to see the graphics/tech nerd faction for which Jon Peddie peddles their reports excised from PC gaming and it stop being about the latest shader model and that even shock 2D games become acceptable again but the PC enthusiast scene has its claws deep into PC gaming and nothing less than the complete abandonment of the platform by major publishers will shake them loose. With the decline in PC game sales though that just might happen & give way to smaller publishers were it gets back to games not graphics like Stardock.
Nvidia PC game sales expectations link;
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20081028234106_Nvidia_Expects_Improved_Physics_Effects_to_Dramatically_Popularize_Video_Games_on_PC.html
19/11/2008 at 21:38 LST4R says:
We know it, Jim… We know it…
19/11/2008 at 21:39 hydra9 says:
I saw the sales data for the GTA series on the PC for North America (IGN of all places sorry can find the link) but none of the past PC GTA games has managed to break 500k individually in sales
Surely not? I can’t honestly believe that.
19/11/2008 at 21:44 MetalCircus says:
“How come no-one but is is as elitist as we are?”
19/11/2008 at 21:46 subedii says:
@MetalCircus: I’d respond but I’m really not sure what the question is.
19/11/2008 at 21:51 clovus says:
@ Spiny
I worship ESDF, you insensitive clod!
(ok, I’m lying, but thought that that was funny; I use WASD, and I agree that I can’t see ever leaving the keyboard+mouse for a console. I do own a Wii though…)
19/11/2008 at 23:42 unclelou says:
I am a PC gamer since the early 1990s, and buying a gaming-capable PC has never been as cheap as it is today. Not to mention much the much cheaper games. Console gaming being cheaper is a fallacy, especially if you buy games regularly.
19/11/2008 at 23:53 The Shed says:
Have to say I agree with Okami wholeheartedly on this one. Great games will always be great games, console or PC, and prejudice shouldn’t prevent people from seeing that. (I just Ebay’d me MGS + Special Missions and Tenchu 1 & 2- these console games are more than 10 years old and could easily stand up against some of today’s releases)
Something that undoubtedly contributes to console gaming over PC gaming is convenience (as well as cost) to the non-tech savvy. Buy console. Buy game. Play game. Still have fun. On PC a whole range of (often irritating) stages is added, including finding a high end and costworthy computer, or customizing your own, dealing with installation of lots of software- OS’s, drivers, the like, then of course the installation of the game and the possibility that it won’t work anywhere near as well as you’d like. Console is just easier.
[Then of course there's the classic argument that certain games (or types of game, or features of games) work better on console than on PC, but I'll leave that for now]
On topic: I never doubted PC sales for a second…
19/11/2008 at 23:58 Bidermaier says:
I switched from 360 to PC gaming a year ago. Reasonable PC gaming is cheap. Intel Core 2, nvidia 8800GT and ati 4xxx series have made posible all this. Affordable machines with a performance way beyond the current consoles.
20/11/2008 at 06:07 357SIG says:
i’d like to point out that the current consoles only render at 720p and upscale to 1080i/p.
also you can pry my mouse and keyboard off of my cold dead..desk? nevermind i think everyone gets the idea.
20/11/2008 at 08:06 notlimahc says:
@357SIG: Actually, it’s entirely up to the developer which resolution is used. There’s dozens of PS3 games that support rendering at 1080p.
20/11/2008 at 09:27 Max says:
That’s something that has always bothered me about console gamers. They all wax poetic about high definition graphics and online play… while PC gamers have been enjoying these features for years! Before you know it, console gamers are going to start using mouses and talking about how easy it is to aim with them…
20/11/2008 at 10:19 Mark says:
Ah, but only the consoles were the first to make it easy.
20/11/2008 at 10:32 Craymen Edge says:
Re: all this PC vs Consoles suff?
Shit, I’ve been enjoying both for decades, was I meant to pick sides?
20/11/2008 at 13:48 Yak Jazz says:
State of PC games…..blah blah blah.
Anyone seen how cheap hardware is at the moment? Upgrade time.
:D
20/11/2008 at 14:11 mashakos says:
I’m helping my cousin build a gaming PC. If I got him a Dell gaming PC, it would have cost him at least $1900. There is absolutely no reason to go branded with today’s hardware prices.
There’s also used hardware. For $570 I can completely upgrade an ancient an existing machine to the point where it can run Devil May Cry 4 at a resolution of 1920×1200 with a silky smooth 70fps framerate.
Compare that to the crap 1280×720 resolution and fluctuating 20-30fps framerate of a PS3.
…
Consoles will always be cheap and cheerful, but if you can afford to spend $500 – $600 on a complete overhaul or $67 on a used 8800GT gfx card you would be mad not to go the PC route.
Here’s what I’m getting for my cousin for $570:
E8400 cpu
8800GTX
2GB 1.1Ghz OCZ ram (PC2-9200)
P45 mother board (Gigabyte)
Enermax 600w PSU
21/11/2008 at 07:26 Kanakotka says:
@Taxman, ignoring everything always helps. :)
21/11/2008 at 09:43 Anthony Damiani says:
Half a million to a million games shipped is nothing to sneer at, especially if that’s only one of several platforms you’re shipping on.
Historically, developers used to profit more per sale of a PC game than they would for a console one, because the console manufacturers business models involved making up losses on hardware with a cut of the software action. I wonder if that’s still the case with a growing discrepancy between the PC/Console game retail price-points.