The future of PC gaming

[nOd3N1AL]

Just curious as to what people think will happen to PCs in the future. Microsoft don't seem to acknowledge the existence of gaming on custom-built PCs. If you go on the Windows website their definition of a PC is just tablets - they don't even acknowledge the existence of laptops, let alone desktops any more! Clearly, Microsoft don't give a damn about PC gamers and probably just want everyone to buy an Xbox or at least make PCs similar ecosystem with Windows 8. So where do we go AFTER Windows 7/8?

With that in mind, I think Valve are onto something with the Steambox. The mainstream media doesn't acknowledge PCs anymore, they think anyone who has a PC is meaning a laptop and not a beefy gaming rig. The market is indeed relatively small compared to mobile devices. But where the Xbox One is a compeltely self-contained, closed off ecosystem, the PS4 is similar but a bit more open, the Steam environment seems to promote free and open source software, multi-platform games and upgradeable hardware.

So, what will happen in a decade or so? Will the good old desktop tower with keyboard & mouse (which is still the best input for computing imo - so fast, efficient and... natural, to me anyway) - still be around, or will consoles, tablets, phones or even TVs take over?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I bet we'll have hybrids that are laptops, tablets and potentially PC with bigger screens. I kind of agree is there any real benefit to resolution over 4k? once a tablet can power a display like that essentially everything will be the same. Personally I think that is great news essentially every game will be capable of running on any machine.

 

[nOd3N1AL]

I think choice would be good. My only concern is whether the market will be too fragmented; i.e. there will be too many platforms for each game. The long term solution is clearly to have cross-platform play using open standards. Portal 2 between PS3 and PC worked brilliantly - no lag, no problems setting it up etc. I think some technologies such as 3D don't add much - they're not healthy, experience-enhancing, practical or particularly desireable. They're just there for the sake of it. For example, the Microsoft Surface 2 tablet has 8GB RAM and a powerful i5 processor, but it's still a tablet. You're still limited by the practicalities and the software!

 

[ImpulsE69]

Honestly? I just don't know anymore. It could go any different direction. In my opinion the new generation consoles are horrible. They did away with 90%+ of anything that made consoles unique. They now act like pc's, priced like pc's, have to install, update, do checks, pretty much all those things that people said for years they didn't like about PCs. Suddenly people are ok with that (even though they all still do it slower than the average midrange PC). People always talk about price, but do not figure in that PC's can do infinitely more than gaming.

I just recently bought a PS3 and I tell you...for the most part I don't like it. Not only is it doing what my PC does, it does it 10x slower. No more, pop a game in and play just play it. It is constantly advertising to me as well. How about put less utilization towards marketing to me and more towards what it is for..games.

 

[BladeVenom]

Microsoft don't give a damn about PC gamers and probably just want everyone to buy an Xbox

After they came out with the Xbox, they quickly became anti-PC gaming. Converting all their gaming studios to Xbox only, or shutting them down if their games weren't suitable for console. Paying developers to stop making PC games and make Xbox exclusives. Shutting down Microsoft Gaming Zone. Then the horrible Games for Windows Live, which I think was meant to transition PC gamers and developers to the Xbox; it certainly wasn't done to benefit PC gaming. The system was worse than awful.

Then there's DirectX. They bullied companies into switching from OpenGL to DirectX by threatening to not support OpenGL in Windows. We'd all be better off if PC developers had stayed with OpenGL. Everyone but MS uses OpenGL.

I think Gabe was right about Windows 8. Microsoft wanted to eventually cut Steam out of the picture, and have all games go through their awful marketplace.

After all they've done, I don't understand how any PC gamer would still want to support Microsoft. PC gamers buying an Xbox are shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[desura]

I'm hoping that pc gaming can be miniaturized to fit into a handheld.

 

[Chaotic42]

I'm hoping that pc gaming can be miniaturized to fit into a handheld.

As long as I can still play it on proper PC, I'm find. I have no desire to walk around carrying a 3" screen to play games.

I think the future is bright. Look at all of the indie games out there. PC gaming may be the best it's ever been.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I wonder what occulus rift glasses thing is going to do to gaming. Will it be cool, will it replace monitors, will it open up game worlds or will it make us sick or give eye strain or be too difficult to do anything unique with

 

[CPA]

In a household full of laptops, tablets, consoles, cellphones and PC's, my 12 year old's Christmas wish was a desktop PC so he could game with me and his brother. I'm doing my best to keep the PC future alive.

 

[BrightCandle]

The whole concept of a personal computer hasn't really changed. Fundamentally they have gotten smaller and lower power so we can carry them around but the PC as a concept is fine. Wintel as a platform and hardware is still by far the biggest platform in the world, there are like 350million PCs sold a year, some 1.2 billion in use yearly. That is far from a dead market, everyone has one and many are still buying replacements.

The current news pitch about sales being down is about sales, not about what people have. Sales are down partly because new hardware and software isn't compelling, whereas tablets are filling a gap in mobile PC (Personal Computers) that has been wanted for a long time, and you have to remember the depression of the 21st century is currently going on, if sales weren't down that would be a shocking revelation for such a luxury item. I just don't see this like the news seems to, sales wane and grow but PCs are incredibly open environment, there is nothing stopping anyone making a better marketplace/3D API/etc on Windows at all. Microsoft might try and compete by packaging it with the OS but if yours is better it will win out.

Its by far the biggest gaming market, its by far the fastest platform and its constantly evolving and changing. Almost every developer out there on the planet uses it for making games for the consoles and the apps for your phone. There is literally no other platform that does it all and does it all well. I just think people like "new and shiny" rather than evaluating the true merits and issues of a platform, MS' marketplace doesn't matter, their threats against openGL are meaningless because the GPU manufacturers ship their own anyway.

 

[Maximilian]

The whole concept of a personal computer hasn't really changed. Fundamentally they have gotten smaller and lower power so we can carry them around but the PC as a concept is fine. Wintel as a platform and hardware is still by far the biggest platform in the world, there are like 350million PCs sold a year, some 1.2 billion in use yearly. That is far from a dead market, everyone has one and many are still buying replacements.

The current news pitch about sales being down is about sales, not about what people have. Sales are down partly because new hardware and software isn't compelling, whereas tablets are filling a gap in mobile PC (Personal Computers) that has been wanted for a long time, and you have to remember the depression of the 21st century is currently going on, if sales weren't down that would be a shocking revelation for such a luxury item. I just don't see this like the news seems to, sales wane and grow but PCs are incredibly open environment, there is nothing stopping anyone making a better marketplace/3D API/etc on Windows at all. Microsoft might try and compete by packaging it with the OS but if yours is better it will win out.

Its by far the biggest gaming market, its by far the fastest platform and its constantly evolving and changing. Almost every developer out there on the planet uses it for making games for the consoles and the apps for your phone. There is literally no other platform that does it all and does it all well. I just think people like "new and shiny" rather than evaluating the true merits and issues of a platform, MS' marketplace doesn't matter, their threats against openGL are meaningless because the GPU manufacturers ship their own anyway.

Well said :thumbsup:

 

[BSim500]

Can't predict the future, but as you say keyboard + mouse = ultimate ergonomic input for many genres. You'd have to prise my mouse out of my cold, dead hands before I'd use a joypad for FPS/RTS. There's a reason why console games need "auto-aim" but PC's don't. Doesn't mean I hate consoles, I actually found some Wii party games fun, and the controller for that is far more accurate than the "Kinect" system. If I were forced to buy a console, it would probably be a PS4. As ImpulsE69 said though, they basically are PC's with a 7790/7850 GFX card & custom OS. Then there's Mantle - wasn't that supposed to be coming out in December? Did I miss it?

Tablets are way overhyped as "replacements" for anything. Most people buy them as 2nd / 3rd devices, not to sell their computer / console for. Phones typically have 4" screens, whilst "Phablets" look dorky trying to use them as phones. Mobile's have had video streaming capability for a while now yet once the novelty has worn off, no-one's selling their 40" TV's & Blu-Ray players for it.

I tried 3D and found it mostly a gimmick. All it did for me was increase eyestrain after 2hrs of use. Despite the marketing, it's also really not that comfortable if you wear spectacles on pretty much any system. 4k doesn't bother me personally, I find 1080p on a 24" enjoyable enough. "HD audio" (96-192khz) in games is utterly pointless and pure marketing as like most of the human race, I do not possess bat-like sonar-echo-location frequencies needed to hear them. (There's a good reason why SACD and DVD-Audio both epicly flopped).

My replacement for Windows 7 is going to be... Windows 7 for as long as possible. As BrightCandle said - PC's are hardly dead, the new sales market has just becoming saturated and as common as DVD players that no-one thinks of them as the new "must have" marketing-hyped Xmas present or something to buy on an impulse for a reason other than replacing a broken one.

My greatest concern is the quality of the actual games themselves (software rather than hardware), and I'm becoming less and less impressed as each month goes by (in terms of using Day One purchasers as unpaid patch Beta Testers (BF4 in a nutshell) or horrific ports (30fps locked NFS:Rivals), etc). Look at all the user scores on Metacritic for the AAA's : 6.1 BF4 / 1.9 CoD Ghosts / 2.9 NFS:Rivals. Something is going to give somewhere with the huge backlash against badly made games. Developers moan about "finicky PC elitists" yet they have every reason to be "finicky". I just hope this is just a temporary laziness phase they're going through and not a trend of modern next-gen games becoming so complex they've become impossible to properly code & test on time & on budget...

10 years down the line I can honestly see me playing more Indie & older games for as long as the the bad port + dumbing down + "released with more bugs than an ant's nest" trends continue. If you'd have gone back in time 5-20 years to 1993-2008, shown me screenshots of BF4 "future gaming" and told me that despite a massive jump in hardware capability, I'd still spend half my time in 2013 replaying Bioshock, Oblivion, Dragon Age Origins, Portal, Deus Ex and even Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Age of Empires & Doom years later, out of sheer boredom & disillusionment with newer overly-scripted "interactive movie" railroad games, I probably wouldn't have believed it.

 

[nOd3N1AL]

true, there seems to have been a decline in both quality and innovation recently - and some horrible ports for PC. I think it's probably down to the generation change - publishers want to milk franchises at any cost. Arkham Origins, NFS, BF4, CoD etc.

 

[Wardawg1001]

My prediction:

PC's will continue to be made and bought
Games will continue to be made and bought

 

[lilrayray69]

I don't see the Occulus Rift taking over a large share of games any time soon. A lot of people simply don't care about it - kind of like the Kinect. For others, it just seems silly or is too expensive or would make us sick (that's me!).

I don't see desktop PCs going anywhere any time soon, though maybe eventually they'll start to downsize and lower prices instead of having gigantic $1,000 Titan GPUs ? idk

 

[futurefields]

PC gaming isn't going anywhere. It had a really dark era when the Xbox 360 came out. Developers stopped giving shit about PC ports. But if you notice, since about 2010-2011 and on PC ports have slowly become more full featured. There are still some bad examples that require patches and stuff (AC4, BF4) but even the console versions of those games are suffering.

The one area that really needs to pick up the pace is sports games. There is just nothing on PC except for management sims.

 

[Veliko]

Honestly? I just don't know anymore. It could go any different direction. In my opinion the new generation consoles are horrible. They did away with 90%+ of anything that made consoles unique. They now act like pc's, priced like pc's, have to install, update, do checks, pretty much all those things that people said for years they didn't like about PCs. Suddenly people are ok with that (even though they all still do it slower than the average midrange PC). People always talk about price, but do not figure in that PC's can do infinitely more than gaming.

I just recently bought a PS3 and I tell you...for the most part I don't like it. Not only is it doing what my PC does, it does it 10x slower. No more, pop a game in and play just play it. It is constantly advertising to me as well. How about put less utilization towards marketing to me and more towards what it is for..games.

What are you doing with your PS3 that makes it throw adverts up at you all the time?

I don't get anything like that, I just put the game in and play as I've always done with a console.

 

[imaheadcase]

I think the PC will remain the same sort of, the thing that will change is how we interact with games. Immersion tech will be something to look out for. Putting on some glasses that "transport" you into a gaming world is something that anyone can get behind. I'm not talking 3d mind you.

Can you picture getting first person view in Skyrim by moving head around and the sounds move around you positional as you do? You know those helmets that jet fighters wear for situation awareness? I see those in the future coming to PC.

 

[Skott]

I predict in the future there will be many more threads like this /chuckle

 

[Blitzvogel]

PC gaming isn't going anywhere as long as their are common OS + hardware platforms to support x86, of which x86 isn't going to die anytime soon.

 

[sandorski]

It has always been the superior platform and will continue to be so. Even if Microsoft doesn't care to support PC Gaming, it will continue to be the platform to beat.

 

[Sheep221]

It seems that new consoles using AMD APUs are x86 too, which means they are PC.
Objectively, I won't go to console vs PC gaming, but it went pretty crap overall, lately.

Every shitty game company now has own distro network, you have to first create account, than browse through endless menu panels to find where to activate your game and than download 10 gigs of patches because the 2 DVDs included in the package where not enough. Than you have to watch trailers and demos for at least 10 mins since they cannot be skipped and then you can start to play your game, if it ofc does not crash shortly afterwards requiring more updates. So if you don't have computer strong enough that will withstand pointless CPU overload of distro clients or fast internet connection, you are fucked whether you are on console or PC. It just sucks and is not fun anymore, rather something like addiction or refill of boring times.

 

[Raduque]

The future of PC gaming? More Online. More Monetization. More Add-in content.

I also wouldn't be terribly surprised to see Battlefield 5 and the next Call of Duty to go to a subscription cost for multiplayer, due to lackluster sales on 4 and Ghosts.

 

[HeXen]

Streaming similar to Onlive. It will happen eventually though not for a long time. Play on any device with a screen essentially. It's too beneficial for both companies and consumers for it not to happen, no need for powerful hardware, freedom to use any device, buy games from your TV or Iphone and stream to play immediately using several standard methods of control, touch,gamepad or kinect like motion, maybe even eye movement. Sony is going to try the streaming thing for PS3 games soon. We'll all have super internet speeds eventually.
I also suspect that eventually, developers will no longer need publishers and platform owners but can simply stream it directly, available from all competing clients. PC's and consoles will be a thing of the past but no traditional gamer will want to believe that.

 

[Blitzvogel]

You know what else is safe to say? If the PC gaming ecosystem was to crash RIGHT NOW, it wouldn't be so bad because the backlog of games from years recent and past is so good, I don't think I need anything new. Now that's assuming all my Steam and Origin games are downloaded, unlocked from the net, and backed up

But seriously, there is so much good stuff out there, it's hard to complain. Even if everything came to a halt, people would build game network work-arounds, etc. That's why any plausible move to ARM across all computing fronts really doesn't concern me, and why software platforms and cross-compatibility translation is realistically just as important, if not more so than the individual hardware platforms themselves.

What I fear more than anything is the takeover of cheap commodity computing making it expensive and difficult to build one's own systems (as long as servers exist though, this shouldn't be too much of a problem), and moreso I fear the rise of dependence on cloud computing, and threat it is to user data ownership. God help me if the future is not personal computers, but personal terminals, which is sorta what some devices realistically are.