Why do you guys bother with PC gaming?

[RussianSensation]

Market saturation.. I have yet to see a card that justifies upgrading my GTX260 and keep in mind that those older cards do not poof out of existance. Even a shrinking market (lower amount of sales) in reusable non perishables is an indication of growth as each sale that isn't meant to replace a broken unit is a slight increase in the percentage of the population who owns such a non perishable.

If 100 new consumers buy 18 desktop PCs, 44 buy laptops and the rest buy smartphones and tablets, that's a decrease in growth of desktop PC that used to sell 45 new desktop PCs to 100 new consumers just 3 years ago. Using your definition of growth, you can never have negative growth. Declining growth means that less desktop PCs are going to be purchased than last year. Even if this forecast by Forrester research is way off, the social trends all point to less and less people caring about desktop PCs.

As new people are born, the share of desktop PCs over the entire market will dwindle until it reaches single digits. Unless desktop PCs reinvent themselves, 100 new people born this hour and the next hour and the next hour will buy less and less desktop PCs when they grow up, making this market segment primarily a workstation/server/heavy computation-based/hardcore gamer platform only.

The glamour behind desktop PCs has faded.

Owning a desktop today means:

- Higher power consumption in a world where everyone is trying to become more eco-friendly;
- Buying a device that no longer fits the world's lifestyle changes. Students can't take desktops to school. Being tied to your desk, house, in a world where people travel more, telecommute, and employers allow employees to work anywhere.
- Buying a device that is no longer trendy: Ask kids today what devices they want: laptops, tablets, smartphones, consoles. Almost none of them want a desktop.

You no longer represent the new generation of consumers that drives market trends. Most of us desktop PC gamers are stuck in the past, in an era where performance was the most important factor. The new generation of consumers wants trendy mobile devices. Even if you and I prefer gaming on the PC is irrelevant since we now represent a shrinking market niche that I spoke earlier about. Over time, unless the trend is reversed, the desktop PC is going to become more and more specialized for people who really need/want the extra processing power. For everyone else, laptops, tablets, smartphones will be fast enough and good enough to perform 99% of all their tasks.

For most people in 5-10 years from now (and even today), it already doesn't make any sense to buy a desktop PC. They'd much rather get a laptop/tablet/smartphone + console for games. This is because if you buy a desktop, you can't work anywhere outside your house. In today's global economy, with laptops powerful enough for everything but heavy computation and games, the importance of desktop PCs is diminishing greatly. PCs are like "trains/trucks" of the global economy while the majority of the world will soon be driving cars (laptops/tablets/smartphones).

The reason this transition didn't happen sooner was because most mobile devices even 3-5 years ago were simply not good enough. We are going to see an accelerated transition to mobile devices, which means if people who own a desktop today are going to buy a laptop, they are never going to bother with a desktop again. Once that consumer gets a laptop, chances are they'll find out it's good enough for 99% of everything they do, while giving them an unbeatable advantage of convenience and portability.

If by 2020, we'll be able to purchase 85 inch 33 megapixel TVs and have consoles fast enough to drive those, then the desktop PC will have even less and less advantages over consoles. Right now, I wish we could buy a 2560x1600 24 inch PC monitor for $199-299. But even now, to get an amazing PC desktop experience, it costs $1200+ to get a 2560x1600 30 inch LCD......that's not helping.

On the other hand, consumers today can easily get a 59-60 inch plasma TV for $1000 and be easily immersed in a screen 2x the size! What most PC gamers haven't realized is that for a lot of people, gaming on a 1080P 60 inch TV is more satisfying than gaming on a 30 inch 2560x1600 LCD monitor. And yet, that same 30 inch PC screen now costs more than a 60 inch plasma. Now imagine going out and buying a 60 inch plasma for $1000 and a $1000+ 30 inch PC monitor. Most people aren't going to do that.

The current generation of console gamers are going to replace their 360/ps3 and wii with next generation of consoles and continue to game on larger TV screens. As each new generation of kids are born and are drawn towards smartphones/tablets/laptops and consoles, the importance of desktop PCs will continue to dwindle, even if the desktop PC market grows slightly. I am not saying that PC gaming is going to die. I am saying that for most developers, the mobile gaming market segment is going to grow exponentially; and that's where development $$ will go.

Less than a month away from 2012, I can't think of any "big" exclusive PC gams to come out next year outside of Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 expansion. Already now, the year 2012 on the PC doesn't look very promising. You said it yourself, you see no reason to upgrade your GTX260.

 

[taltamir]

If 100 new consumers buy 18 desktop PCs, 44 buy laptops and the rest buy smartphones and tablets

You are making the mistaken assumptions that:
1. The percentages of units shipped match that of new consumers.
2. That people buy only one device type.

that's a decrease in growth of desktop PC that used to sell 45 new desktop PCs to 100 newborn people just 3 years ago.

You are incorrectly assuming that the total sold is the same (100 in this case).

Maybe if I use rounder numbers you will finally understand what percentages actually mean.
If 50 people bought a PC and 50 people bought a laptop total. You have a 50% desktop purchase.
If next year 100 people bought a PC and 900 people bought a laptop, then the desktop share went from 50% to 10%, while sales doubled (100 vs 50), and units in the field tripled (150 vs 50).

Your utter failure at understanding percentages is appalling. Although exacerbated by forrester's grossly inappropriate tweaking of data.
What their data shows (on another chart which actually provides useful data) is a 4.4% decline in desktop Q3 sales over a year. While garter shows 11% decline.
However, you are misunderstanding their horrible chart that lumps everything together (including tech that didn't exist before and showing PC going from 45% to 18%, which is a 60% decline. The yearly sales rate could be growing or going down and you couldn't tell with such a stupid chart. Market penetration is still growing despite that 4.4 to 11% decline in yearly sales. You are not correct on this because this was not your claim, every single one of your "facts" is false and many come from misunderstanding charts and percentages.

Anyways, I have debunked all of these 3 assumptions before yet you refuse to drop these strawmen.

PS. that decline is not due to the loss of allure of a PC, but the fact that for the first time ever people have an alternative... One which most get in addition rather as a replacement.

 

[RussianSensation]

The PC can have all the controllers a console has and vice-versa. Buiding a PC to hook into the TV to get 30 FPS at console IQ isn't that expensive. Won't be too big or too noisy either.

Ya, the PC is way more capable than a console. And like many have said in this thread, all it takes is a $200-300 GPU to upgrade a modern desktop to get it to outperform consoles. The reason console gaming will continue to be popular for a long time is because is provides for a social gaming environment. Even now, you can easily build a cheap $400-500 gaming PC with Phenom II X4 CPU and HD6870. But you won't have a social gaming scene with beers and all. For this reason, the PC can never replace consoles for a lot of people. I game on the PC because for single-player experience, it blows consoles out of the water. But for social multi-player gaming, it's not a solution that works easily.

 

[RussianSensation]

You are incorrectly assuming that the total sold is the same (100 in this case).

No I did not. I previously used an example where I assumed the market at 100% in 2008 and then I even grew it to show you that based on projected % market share, the desktop PC will shrink.

I then used 100 because you clearly didn't understand the market growth.

For example, if today's market size is 100 people (100%) and desktop PC sales comprise 45% of that market, then total PC sales for that year are 45 units.

If by 2015, the market size grows to 160 people and desktop PC sales comprise 18% of that market, the total PC sales for that year are only 28.8 units.

There are only 2 possibilities if desktop PC sales to grow based on Forrester research data:

1) Overall market growth is far greater than 18.5% annually until 2015
2) Forrester research projections for desktop PC sales are too pessimistic for the PC, while being too optimistic for other devices.

So no, your argument doesn't work at all since % market share is related to new sales.

You are making the mistaken assumptions that:
1. The percentages of units shipped match that of new consumers.
2. That people buy only one device type.

.

You can represent the market as anything you want. 100 is just an arbitrary number. It can be 100 people, 100 million people, 100%. The projected decline of market share from 45% to 18% is constant.

Therefore, it doesn't matter at all how many devices each consumer buys, or how many people are in the market because the % will be constant. So if you have 100 people, desktop PCs only sold 18 units, if you have 100 million people, desktop PCs will only sell 18 million units, and if you have 100% market, then new desktop PC sales will still only be 18%. All of these show the exact same information - that PC desktop sales are shrinking.

You clearly misinterpreted all the information presented. Nothing is being assumed about anyone buying only 1 device. I am not even sure you understand how to read graphs.

The market shares are ONLY for new sales vs. previous year's sales. Market share % for existing devices is NOT relevant. Your argument only makes sense when looking at the overall market share of all existing PC devices, new and old. That's not even what anyone here is arguing about. The whole point is Year-over-Year desktop PC sales are declining as a % of NEW sales in the segment of personal computing devices.

However, you are misunderstanding their horrible chart that lumps everything together (including tech that didn't exist before and showing PC going from 45% to 18%, which is a 60% decline. The yearly sales rate could be growing or going down and you couldn't tell with such a stupid chart.

I am not misunderstanding their chart. You can easily tell if you expect desktop PC sales to decline or not by simply looking at the entire market's growth rate on an annual basis.

Because if 2011's market is 100% as a base, then PC sales are 27%.
If by 2015, the market size is 200% vs. today, then PC sales would be 200% x 18% = 36% (which is way more than in 2011).
If by 2015, the market size is 150% vs. today, then PC sales would be 150% x 18% = 27% (which is flat vs. 2011).

Looking at that entire chart, if we assume that 2010 is 100% (base year), where desktop PC sales = 32%. Then by 2015, the new sales would need to be at least the size of 178% of the market size in 2010 for PC desktop sales to be flat (because 178% x 18% = 32%).

For the new sales to grow from 100 to 178% from 2010 to 2015, that assumes an annual compounded growth rate of (178 / 100) ^ (1/5 years) - 1 = 12.2%

We know that market growth rate is less than 12.2% per year at the moment, which means PC desktop sales are projected to decline (at least based on their research).

As GaiaHunter showed other studies show that desktop PC sales are expected to grow. I am not saying that Forrester has the most accurate information, but their study shows declining PC sales. It may very well be wrong, but their #s clearly show declining desktop PC growth, which they even specify in units as a decline from 20 million to 18.5 or so.

Unfortunately, in today's economy, real world market data isn't great:

First quarter 2011 shipments of desktop and laptop PCs fell about 0.4 percent compared to the same period last year.
http://www.crn.com/news/client-devi...;jsessionid=wpeJ+X7ydflTRn+k3D7QuA**.ecappj01

I already showed these declines continues into Q3 2011 in Europe.

We'll just have to revisit this discussion in 3-5 years and see if the desktop PC continues to decline in importance vs. the rest of the market, if next generation consoles will sell well, or if PC gaming actually does experience significant growth and we get more PC exclusives.

 

[blastingcap]

Business perspective on why PC-only games are on the wane, and why you should get used to consolification of games:

1. It is the fiduciary duty of corporate directors and officers to serve shareholders by maximizing profit. Read it again: by law, corporations' top priority is making money for shareholders.

2. Profit = revenue - cost.

3. The lowest-end machines are mobile: smartphones, tablets, and then DS/PSP. Low-end PCs and Wii's are the lowest common denominator when it comes to current-generation non-mobile gaming. A step above that is XBox360/PS3/lower-midrange PCs.

4. Roughly half the population is female, and males 16 to 25 are a small minority of the population. The average IQ is somewhere around 100.

5. New, daring projects are riskier than tried-and-true formulaic games and sequels.

6. The volatility associated with new, innovative, daring projects may lead to smash hits, but it can also bankrupt your company, and in any case, a high risk strategy might not be any more lucrative than a low risk strategy, in the long run.

7. It is human nature to be risk averse. It's also very painful for companies to go into bankruptcy, for everyone involved.

8. Thus a prudent CEO will balance profit-seeking motive with risk control.

9. An extremely risk averse strategy, then, is to fund low-budget games with very broad demographic appeal (male and female, young and old, user-friendly and intuitive interface), for a pre-existing and large audience (e.g., a sequel to a large, established game franchise like Final Fantasy), that can run on the lowest common denominator of hardware, and then to port that to every other hardware platform above it. Write for one platform, sell on all of them. The reverse might not work as well, particularly for PCs since there are so many permutations of hardware, whereas there is exactly one spec for a Wii or XBOX360 or PS3--no surprises, so it's easier to write for these non-moving targets. I will call the above strategy the Paragraph 9 strategy or Paragraph 9 business model: Find a big audience, program to the limitations of the lowest acceptable hardware common denominator, crank out sequels (micropayments for microsequels, or subscriptions for occasional game content updates, count as sequels in my book), and profit.


10. Small deviations from the Paragraph 9 strategy may still be very profitable. Some games don't scale up so well (playing tower defense on a phone might be good enough to pass the time in an airport, but does anyone want to play it on a big screen TV? Similarly, a complex FPS or RPG or RTS is going to be difficult to control and play at acceptable framerates and resolutions, if you're trying to cram it into a smartphone's hardware limits), and there are control issues between keyboard/mice vs. joypad vs. cell phone vs. DS/PSP, so the above strategy is hard to follow strictly. Small deviations are fine, though. E.g., Call of Duty appeals to only a fraction of the gaming population and has minimum hardware requirements at the PS3/XB360/lower-midrange PC level, which deviate from Paragraph 9. But it's an established franchise with low-risk sequels, the audience for the game is still pretty big (it's cross-platform), and the hardware requirements are modest, so it continues to be profitable enough to develop CoD sequels.

11. Larger deviations from Paragraph 9 may be less profitable unless the game developer is exploiting a strong niche. For instance, instead of cranking out mass-market sequels coded for low-spec machines, Crytek was bold enough to make a PC-exclusive game (albeit one translated worldwide to maximize the size of that market) that could run well only on highest-end PCs, with a storyline and audience that limited its appeal to young males. In doing so, Crytek carved a niche for Crysis as the prettiest and hardest-benchmarking game that some people bought just because it had stunning graphics and was the biggest and baddest PC-killer out there.

12. People may rail against Paragraph 9 and cite to specific counterexamples, but a) I am not arguing that you can't make *some* money without following Paragraph 9 business models, just that Paragraph 9 is the idealized business model for profit-maximizing, risk-averse game companies to take; and b) those counterexamples are no longer the counterexamples they used to be.

13. Example: Crytek. After Crysis, Crytek subsequently retreated and is now cross-platform, with their CEO publicly grumbling about PC software piracy and how Crysis should have made more money. They seem to have gotten some military simulation contracts out of their design experience with Crysis, though, so don't cry too hard for Crytek.

14. Example: Blizzard. Did Blizzard *really* stray from Paragraph 9? Blizzard limited itself to PC-exclusives, true, but back when PC by itself was a more viable platform, that wasn't so bad. Blizzard also tends to make games that run well even on low-spec machines--keep in mind that StarCraft was VGA, and WoW has always lagged far behind the latest and greatest graphics throughout its history. And Blizzard markets worldwide, and with WoW, to females as well. Blizzard also strongly follows Paragraph 9 when it comes to following well-worn roads: it pretty much only makes sequels now, and in a way, WoW is just a series of microsequels with regular payments (monthly subscriptions). Most damning is how Blizzard recently merged with Activision; they may say they are equals, but ultimately Blizzard answers to Activision's CEO. And we all know Activision is definitely NOT a PC-only company.

15. Valve. Valve was formed by Microsoft millionaires who wanted to get out of the rat race and make the best damn games possible, hence their super-long development times rivaled only by Blizzard. It's a PRIVATE corporation, so it doesn't face the same kinds of pressures as publicly-traded rivals. Its game development is somewhat more risk-embracing than Blizzard--Portal was new, and so was Left 4 Dead, though the latter was acquired more than developed internally. Yet Valve does follow Paragraph 9 conventions: Valve makes its games Mac-compatible now, and many of its games have been ported to consoles. Moreoever, Valve games typically do not push hardware much beyond what consoles are capable of. It's simply not true that Valve is a PC-only game developer anymore. Lastly, Valve's cash cow isn't gaming at this point, it's games distribution via Steam, so I'm not even sure if its proper to call Valve primarily a PC games developer or primarily a game distributor.

16. iD. Now part of ZeniMax/Bethesda, this venerable company is definitely no longer PC-only, not with the release of Rage cross-platform and coding done to within console specs, as they publicly acknowledged.

17. BioWare. Founded by medical doctors who wanted to make good games, they are now part of EA, which is definitely not cross-platform. Their old classics may be PC-exclusives, but Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc. are all cross-platform.

18. Firaxis, Creative Assembly, StarDock, etc. These strategy/RTS game companies are kind of forced into being mostly-PC by virtue of the mouse's precision vs. the agony of using a console joypad, though I suspect these companies would love to be more cross-platform. They attempt to be so from time to time, as evidenced by Firaxis's Civilization Revolution and CA's occasional forays into consoles, like with Spartan: Total Warrior. Note that CA is part of Sega, Firaxis is part of Take Two, and StarDock's games division is an offshoot of an office software company. To what extent those larger companies are subsidizing their subsidiaries, I don't know. Note, by the way, that StarDock's CEO pointed out that his customers tend to be older and less piraty, so he's less worried about games like GalCiv getting pirated.

19. Relic. Relic may be a relic soon enough, since its parent company THQ is in financial trouble. They were the hardest core PC-only company up until they went cross-platform with their latest Warhammer 40k game "Space Marine." They are a subsidiary of THQ so once again, I don't know what kind of subsidization is happening there.

20. GSC's STALKER series was PC-only, but STALKER 2 will be cross-platform.

21. CD Projekt, known for Witcher, went cross-platform with Witcher 2.

22. The bottom line is that independent PC-only game studios are hard to find these days. Paragraph 9 may suck from a user perspective ("ANOTHER CoD sequel? ANOTHER bad port to PC?"), but it makes business sense. People noticed the success of the graphically-challenged Wii and companies like Zynga and Farmville. The latest and greatest graphics don't necessarily sell games, just like expensive-to-make, special-effects-laden films can do poorly at the box office. It can be more profitable to make simple physics games in the form of slingshotting low-resolution, irate avians and selling it to everybody and their mom, rather than cater to a much smaller potential user base (whether due to demographics, interests, ages, or installed base of hardware capable of running the software).

23. It may amuse some of you to know that even console makers are feeling the heat from mobile games. Nintendo's new 3D-capable DS didn't sell as well as they had hoped, and some console execs have publicly complained about trying to sell $60 console games compared to freemium or very low-cost mobile games. They even make some of the same arguments that PC gamers use--oh, our hardware is SO much more capable, don't waste your time on that dumbed-down stuff--but Zynga will continue to rake in the profit in the meantime.

24. Frankly, I don't mind if PC gamers are shackled to console graphics. Things like gameplay, storyline, UI, etc. matter, too. So long as companies don't stop porting games over to PC, I will suffer the occasional consolitis. And just as nobody ever buys a bunch of joypads to plug into a PC to play MarioKart, and a Wii experience is hard to mimic on a PC, PCs dominate strategy/RTS due to the almighty mouse and are much more mod-friendly.

25. If you don't like this state of affairs, feel free to start your own game company. Many have done so before you and ultimate failed or went cross-platform anyway. At best, you can hope to code for PC first and port to consoles rather than the other way around, but it's generally easier to develop for a fixed hardware target and scale it up than sort out the mess of PC hardware differences that you have to take into account, which DirectX did not fully disentangle. (Why do you think hardware PhysX is still pretty much dead after all these years, and why most games still aren't DirectX 11 and even if they are, they don't use tessellation in ways that would greatly impact gameplay?) Good luck even getting funding, given the current economic climate.

26. In the meantime, be grateful that the PC market is still big enough that game developers port console games over to PC at all. Yeah the graphics and simplicity of console-ified games can suck, but frankly there are some very good cross-platform games out there, anyway.

 

[Magic Carpet]

blastingcap,

Best post of this thread. Period.

 

[GaiaHunter]

26. In the meantime, be grateful that the PC market is still big enough that game developers port console games over to PC at all.

All that talk and then you finish with this.

We don't need to be grateful, they port the games because they can profit from it.

And if the ports are bad, they will profit less.

Piracy exists on consoles as well.

The reason I bought GalCiv2 was because I downloaded a pirate version, installed it gave it a try and bought it. Otherwise I wouldn't have bought it.

Same with pretty much all the games I buy that aren't from a developer and/or people that I equate with quality, like Blizzard.

 

[blastingcap]

All that talk and then you finish with this.

We don't need to be grateful, they port the games because they can profit from it.

And if the ports are bad, they will profit less.

Piracy exists on consoles as well.

The reason I bought GalCiv2 was because I downloaded a pirate version, installed it gave it a try and bought it. Otherwise I wouldn't have bought it.

Same with pretty much all the games I buy that aren't from a developer and/or people that I equate with quality, like Blizzard.

No need to shoot the messenger. I'm just telling you that the business case is weak for PC-first or PC-only games, and that at this point the best we can hope for is game developers to develop first for PC and THEN port to other platforms. Gamedevs have thrown in the towel as well; you know it's bad when even RTS devs like Relic and Creative Assembly are flirting with consoles. Talk about fishes out of water.

Piracy exists on all platforms, and based on arguments I've heard, it's either no big deal (StarDock) or a really big deal (Crytek). Hard numbers do not exist for obvious reasons, and people can debate endlessly about what a lost sale really means if someone wouldn't have bought something otherwise; or because unlike shoplifting, the software remains available to sell to legit users. Consider this though: one game dev claims that their tech support department got 10 times more calls from piraters asking for help than purchasers, for the pc version of a popular game. Tech support is a real cost.

Even if piracy weren't real, gamedevs belief it is real, and it is their perception that matters, not yours. Even if piracy were equal among all platforms, the business case of Paragraph 9 remains. The mobile gaming threat that has gotten big enough that even console makers are sweating, let alone PC game makers.

In a previous post, I covered the consumer perspective towards gaming. PC gaming used to be cheap relative to the cost of desktops which were sunk costs, similar to how consoles cost a fraction of what a good TV costs, and with cheaper software. But these days desktops aren't the necessities they used to be, so some people do not view them as sunk costs anymore--not when capable laptops and tablets exist and are increasingly displacing desktops. Even if they don't displace desktops outright, they make desktop+monitor seem more of a luxury. TV + laptop + console is cheaper than TV + desktop + good graphics card + monitor + laptop + console. PC gaming no longer has a clear cost advantage, for most people. (But it still does to those weirdos like me who don't have TVs.) To say nothing of social games, Wii/Kinect/Move games, etc. and ease of use of consoles vs. PC games and all the bugs and drivers.

PC gaming will persist even if it loses its mouse/control advantage, but maybe not in the form you would prefer. Expect fewer games like Crysis and more games to be developed with consoles in mind first, then ported to PC. That is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if game developers share the cost savings derived from cross-platform coding, by lowering their prices for PC games. As a PC gamer I suspect I already benefit from non-PC gamers putting money into the common development pot, due to the absurdly low prices for older PC games that were brand new just a couple of years ago. You get less (than if devs coded for PC first, or PC-only), but you pay less, too. I mean, I got STALKER for $2.50, Mass Effect for $5... even new prices for PC games tend to be $10 cheaper than their console equivalents. Let me repeat that: used or new, PC games almost always cost lower than the same game in console format.

Yeah I know, I know, some people would rather pay more and get more, especially those who spend $$$ on powerful rigs and want to justify those costs by getting heavyweight games like Crysis. I used to be that way, but over time I changed my mind. Graphics are not everything, and my all-time favorite games have rarely been the technological innovators. And I save a bundle on game prices. Besides, if you are a graphics nut you can still make console-grade graphics look even better, with triple 120Hz panels or something like that, if that helps justify your graphics card purchases.

P.S. A side benefit of the relative complexity of setting up a PC gaming rig vs. a console is that it requires more of a brain than console gaming. Therefore you can expect fewer morons and immature kiddies online. Yeah, sometimes some idiot will mic-spam or do some other griefing or whatever, but imagine how much worse it would be on the PSN or XBox live.

blastingcap,

Best post of this thread. Period.

Given the length of this thread, I will take that as a hearty compliment! :biggrin:

 

[RussianSensation]

26. In the meantime, be grateful that the PC market is still big enough that game developers port console games over to PC at all. Yeah the graphics and simplicity of console-ified games can suck, but frankly there are some very good cross-platform games out there, anyway.

:thumbsup: Excellent post. :thumbsup:

Regarding your last point, in the past if you wanted to play gems like Far Cry, Crysis, Half-Life 1 or 2 or Portal 1, it had to be done on the PC. Portal 2 went cross-platform. Oblivion and SKYRIM went cross-platform. Dragon Age and Witcher went cross-platform, etc. If more and more games go cross-platform and PC exclusives become almost entirely concentrated in the RTS and MMO genres, will the PC's superior graphics and controls be enough to get people to still spend $800 on new desktops to play those cross-platform ports on the PC?

OR, as laptops continue to get even more powerful, will more and more gamers abandon the desktop to laptops to play MMOs and RTS PC games, while playing other genres on consoles and tablets?

Here is an eye-opener.

The poll for the best PC game of 2011:

1. Assassin's Creed: Revelations (console port)
2. Batman: Arkham City (console port, with horribly unoptimized DX11 performance codepath)
3. Battlefield 3 (made for the PC, pushed PC graphics)
4. Bulletstorm (console port)
5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (console port)
6. Crysis 2 (cross-platform, with months delayed DX11 and high-rez texture pack, not made to take advantage of PCs from the get-go)
7. Dead Island (cross-platform, nothing special in terms of graphics)
8. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (cross-platform with graphics that don't push the PC)
9. DiRT 3 (cross-platform, but barely pushed the graphics beyond Dirt 2)
10. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (cross-platform with graphics that don't push the PC, but its saving grace is mods).
11. Portal 2 (cross-platform, optimized for lowest common hardware = consoles and low-end PCs)
12. Rage (cross-platform, optimized for lowest common hardware = consoles)
13. Shift 2: Unleashed (console port)
14. The Witcher 2 (A PC game, pushed PC hardware/graphics, but will be ported to 360)

Now, I am not saying these games are not amazing just because they are cross-platform, as I believe some of them are excellent. However, outside of BF3 & Witcher 2 and SKYRIM development kit, not a single game on that list was made with the PC in mind. SKYRIM is borderline console port but I still would say it's worth playing on the PC first by virtue of amazing PC modding community.

In 11 other games, your gaming experience would be nearly identical whether you played it on a console or the PC. I realize people have their preferences such as keyboard vs. controller, anti-aliasing or not, etc. But let's say you are now 12-15 year olds, getting heavily into gaming as a teenager. You look at that list and you ask yourself: "Do I build an $800 desktop PC just for the sake of playing 3 amazing games that push the PC? Or do I get a $200 console and spend $600 on games?" :hmm:

The reality is that unless you were a PC gamer before, the current state of PC gaming isn't going to get a lot of new people into PC gaming, because almost all of these games are already available on consoles, which are cheaper to buy and easier to use for the majority of the population.

So what you end up with is that you can play almost all of these games on consoles + you get all the console exclusives + social multi-player gaming = for less $. That makes for a strong case for not getting a PC for gaming for most people. Obviously, if you play MMOs and strategy games, then that's a different story.

Until PC gets 4-5 outstanding exclusives per year (outside of MMOs and RTS games), it's not going to regain its popularity from the 90-2000s period. What we want is for a new generation of kids growing up to say" "I want a desktop PC because these games are the best and I can't play them anywhere else but on the PC; and these graphics are the best!". Instead, they are saying: "I am not going to spend $800+ on a desktop + $200 on a monitor, when I can get slightly worse graphics to play the same games on consoles, but only have to spend $200, and never have to upgrade for 6-7 years. Also, why would I play on a tiny 22-24 inch monitor when I can game on a 37 to 60 inch TV?"

When next generation of consoles rolls around in 2012-2013, the new generation of kids and current generation of gamers will always have the option to build a PC for games or buy a console. What does the PC currently offer in terms of exclusives outside of MMOs and strategy games that will make them want to build a new $800 PC?

A lot of people didn't like Crysis. Maybe so, but it showed that the PC was by far the premium platform. In 2011, perhaps only BF3 made a huge splash that reinvigorated PC gaming once again. But was it enough to get non-PC gamers to build a brand new gaming rig? I don't think it was. PC gaming continues to be healthy because guys like us keep playing PC games, but imho there isn't enough exclusive content for non-PC gamers to entice them to convert.

PC gaming used to be cheap relative to the cost of desktops which were sunk costs, similar to how consoles cost a fraction of what a good TV costs, and with cheaper software. But these days desktops aren't the necessities they used to be, so some people do not view them as sunk costs anymore--not when capable laptops and tablets exist and are increasingly displacing desktops. Even if they don't displace desktops outright, they make desktop+monitor seem more of a luxury.

Exactly! I don't know how this keeps getting ignored.

10 years ago, laptops were very expensive and significantly slower than desktops (think 4200 rpm hard drives, no GPU hardware acceleration for 1080P content, horrible battery life, heavy, etc.). Back then when I was still in school, it was so much cheaper to simply build a desktop. Ever since, I just keep upgrading the desktop and reusing parts. Nowdays, you can pick up a laptop for $500-600, throw a $100 SSD, and you are all set for everything except gaming. Once this generation of kids leaves college/university, they have no desktops to upgrade later in life.

Eventually, these kids grow up, get jobs, their own house/condo, etc. Then they might get a TV (for news, sports, movies, etc.), but they still don't have a desktop. To get them into desktop PC gaming, they'd need to go out of their way and build a $700-800 tower + $200 monitor or they can just buy a console for $200-300 that can also stream video content and play BluRay. This transition away from the desktop is going to accelerate unless younger kids get back into desktop PC gaming.

For instance, since 2008, 3 of my friends have purchased laptops and haven't upgraded them. In that time, I purchased an HD4890, GTX470 and HD6950. So on paper, it looks like PC gaming is doing well. If I keep upgrading at the current pace, in the next 5 years, I'll prob. buy another 3 graphics cards, while my friends will all prob. upgrade their laptops.

If we tally this up, what do we have?

6 laptops vs. 6 desktop GPUs. Looks like PC gaming is doing well. But if I were to stop buying GPUs, leave PC gaming or die, the discrete GPU market will lose at least 15-20 videocard purchases from me in the next 30-40 years, but if one of those people stops upgrading their laptops every 5 years, that's only going to reduce laptop unit sales by 6-8 units in the same period of time.

Basically, in this simple example, every time a desktop PC gamer leaves the market, it's detrimental to the industry. As long as we keep buying GPUs every 12 months, the market looks great. Slowly, we are being outnumbered

 

[GaiaHunter]

:thumbsup: Excellent post. :thumbsup:

Regarding your last point, in the past if you wanted to play gems like Far Cry, Crysis, Half-Life 1 or 2 or Portal 1, it had to be done on the PC. Portal 2 went cross-platform. Oblivion and SKYRIM went cross-platform. Dragon Age and Witcher went cross-platform, etc. If more and more games go cross-platform and PC exclusives become almost entirely concentrated in the RTS and MMO genres, will the PC's superior graphics and controls be enough to get people to still spend $800 on new desktops to play those cross-platform ports on the PC?

OR, as laptops continue to get even more powerful, will more and more gamers abandon the desktop to laptops to play MMOs and RTS PC games, while playing other genres on consoles and tablets?

Here is an eye-opener.

The poll for the best PC game of 2011:

1. Assassin's Creed: Revelations (console port)
2. Batman: Arkham City (console port, with horribly unoptimized DX11 performance codepath)
3. Battlefield 3 (made for the PC, pushed PC graphics)
4. Bulletstorm (console port)
5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (console port)
6. Crysis 2 (cross-platform, with months delayed DX11 and high-rez texture pack, not made to take advantage of PCs from the get-go)
7. Dead Island (cross-platform, nothing special in terms of graphics)
8. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (cross-platform with graphics that don't push the PC)
9. DiRT 3 (cross-platform, but barely pushed the graphics beyond Dirt 2)
10. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (cross-platform with graphics that don't push the PC, but its saving grace is mods).
11. Portal 2 (cross-platform, optimized for lowest common hardware = consoles and low-end PCs)
12. Rage (cross-platform, optimized for lowest common hardware = consoles)
13. Shift 2: Unleashed (console port)
14. The Witcher 2 (A PC game, pushed PC hardware/graphics, but will be ported to 360)

Now, I am not saying these games are not amazing just because they are cross-platform, as I believe some of them are excellent. However, outside of BF3 & Witcher 2 and SKYRIM development kit, not a single game on that list was made with the PC in mind. SKYRIM is borderline console port but I still would say it's worth playing on the PC first by virtue of amazing PC modding community.

In 11 other games, your gaming experience would be nearly identical whether you played it on a console or the PC. I realize people have their preferences such as keyboard vs. controller, anti-aliasing or not, etc. But let's say you are now 12-15 year olds, getting heavily into gaming as a teenager. You look at that list and you ask yourself: "Do I build an $800 desktop PC just for the sake of playing 3 amazing games that push the PC? Or do I get a $200 console and spend $600 on games?" :hmm:

The reality is that unless you were a PC gamer before, the current state of PC gaming isn't going to get a lot of new people into PC gaming, because almost all of these games are already available on consoles, which are cheaper to buy and easier to use for the majority of the population.

So what you end up with is that you can play almost all of these games on consoles + you get all the console exclusives + social multi-player gaming = for less $. That makes for a strong case for not getting a PC for gaming for most people. Obviously, if you play MMOs and strategy games, then that's a different story.

Until PC gets 4-5 outstanding exclusives per year (outside of MMOs and RTS games), it's not going to regain its popularity from the 90-2000s period. What we want is for a new generation of kids growing up to say" "I want a desktop PC because these games are the best! or these graphics are the best!". Instead, they are saying: "I am not going to spend $800+ on a desktop + $200 on a monitor, when I can get slightly worse graphics on consoles, but only have to spend $200, and never have to upgrade for 6-7 years. Also, why would I play on a tiny 22-24 inch monitor when I can game on a 37 to 60 inch TV?"

When next generation of consoles rolls around in 2012-2013, the new generation of kids and current generation of gamers will always have the option to build a PC for games or buy a console. What does the PC currently offer in terms of exclusives outside of MMOs and strategy games that will make them want to build a new $800 PC?

A few things I don't understand.

1) Why is multi platform a bad thing? After all PC is a myriad of platforms.

2) How many of the best selling games/most waited games are exclusive to a single console?

3) Why isn't a laptop a pc?

4) Why is the PC option spend xxx amount+monitor to have superior graphics instead of spending less to match console IQ and hook it to the TV?

5) Are people gonna stop using PCs at all?

6) 2 entire genres are pretty much exclusive to the PC and that isn't enough? What genre is exclusive to a single console? Or even to all consoles?

7) Why are consoles becoming more and more like PCs?

8) What happens when the CPU+GPU rivals a console, especially if that package comes in a mobile piece of hardware that you can take everywhere and play/work/surf the web and you can still arrive home drop it in front of the TV and use it as a console? 7 years is a long time, look at what you had as an iGP 7 years ago.

9) Again why are MMORPGs and Strategy games being excluded from the exclusive list? Because they are exclusive to the PC?

 

[blastingcap]

:thumbsup: Excellent post. :thumbsup:

Regarding your last point, in the past if you wanted to play gems like Far Cry, Crysis, Half-Life 1 or 2 or Portal 1, it had to be done on the PC. Portal 2 went cross-platform. Oblivion and SKYRIM went cross-platform. Dragon Age and Witcher went cross-platform, etc. If more and more games go cross-platform and PC exclusives become almost entirely concentrated in the RTS and MMO genres, will the PC's superior graphics and controls be enough to get people to still spend $800 on new desktops to play those cross-platform ports on the PC?

OR, as laptops continue to get even more powerful, will more and more gamers abandon the desktop to laptops to play MMOs and RTS PC games, while playing other genres on consoles and tablets?

Here is an eye-opener.

The poll for the best PC game of 2011:

1. Assassin's Creed: Revelations (console port)
2. Batman: Arkham City (console port, with horribly unoptimized DX11 performance codepath)
3. Battlefield 3 (made for the PC, pushed PC graphics)
4. Bulletstorm (console port)
5. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (console port)
6. Crysis 2 (cross-platform, with months delayed DX11 and high-rez texture pack, not made to take advantage of PCs from the get-go)
7. Dead Island (cross-platform, nothing special in terms of graphics)
8. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (cross-platform with graphics that don't push the PC)
9. DiRT 3 (cross-platform, but barely pushed the graphics beyond Dirt 2)
10. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (cross-platform with graphics that don't push the PC, but its saving grace is mods).
11. Portal 2 (cross-platform, optimized for lowest common hardware = consoles and low-end PCs)
12. Rage (cross-platform, optimized for lowest common hardware = consoles)
13. Shift 2: Unleashed (console port)
14. The Witcher 2 (A PC game, pushed PC hardware/graphics, but will be ported to 360)

Now, I am not saying these games are not amazing just because they are cross-platform, as I believe some of them are excellent. However, outside of BF3 & Witcher 2 and SKYRIM development kit, not a single game on that list was made with the PC in mind. SKYRIM is borderline console port but I still would say it's worth playing on the PC first by virtue of amazing PC modding community.

In 11 other games, your gaming experience would be nearly identical whether you played it on a console or the PC. I realize people have their preferences such as keyboard vs. controller, anti-aliasing or not, etc. But let's say you are now 12-15 year olds, getting heavily into gaming as a teenager. You look at that list and you ask yourself: "Do I build an $800 desktop PC just for the sake of playing 3 amazing games that push the PC? Or do I get a $200 console and spend $600 on games?" :hmm:

The reality is that unless you were a PC gamer before, the current state of PC gaming isn't going to get a lot of new people into PC gaming, because almost all of these games are already available on consoles, which are cheaper to buy and easier to use for the majority of the population.

So what you end up with is that you can play almost all of these games on consoles + you get all the console exclusives + social multi-player gaming = for less $. That makes for a strong case for not getting a PC for gaming for most people. Obviously, if you play MMOs and strategy games, then that's a different story.

Until PC gets 4-5 outstanding exclusives per year (outside of MMOs and RTS games), it's not going to regain its popularity from the 90-2000s period. What we want is for a new generation of kids growing up to say" "I want a desktop PC because these games are the best and I can't play them anywhere else but on the PC; and these graphics are the best!". Instead, they are saying: "I am not going to spend $800+ on a desktop + $200 on a monitor, when I can get slightly worse graphics to play the same games on consoles, but only have to spend $200, and never have to upgrade for 6-7 years. Also, why would I play on a tiny 22-24 inch monitor when I can game on a 37 to 60 inch TV?"

When next generation of consoles rolls around in 2012-2013, the new generation of kids and current generation of gamers will always have the option to build a PC for games or buy a console. What does the PC currently offer in terms of exclusives outside of MMOs and strategy games that will make them want to build a new $800 PC?

A lot of people didn't like Crysis. Maybe so, but it showed that the PC was by far the premium platform. In 2011, perhaps only BF3 made a huge splash that reinvigorated PC gaming once again. But was it enough to get non-PC gamers to build a brand new gaming rig? I don't think it was. PC gaming continues to be healthy because guys like us keep playing PC games, but imho there isn't enough exclusive content for non-PC gamers to entice them to convert.




Exactly! I don't know how this keeps getting ignored.

10 years ago, laptops were extremely expensive and significantly slower than desktops (think 4200 rpm hard drives, no GPU hardware acceleration for 1080P content, horrible battery life, heavy, etc.). Back then when I was still in school, it was so much cheaper to simply build a desktop. Ever since, I just keep upgrading the desktop and reusing parts. Nowdays, you can pick up a laptop for $500-600, throw a $100 SSD, and you are all set for everything except gaming. Once this generation of kids leaves college/university, they have no desktop to upgrade.

Eventually, these kids grow up, get jobs, their own house/condo, etc. Then they might get a TV (for news, sports, movies, etc.), but they still don't have a desktop. To get them into desktop PC gaming, they'd need to go out of their way and build a $700-800 tower + $200 monitor or a console for $200-300.

Although I mostly agree with you, I don't like the artificial distinctions you are making. We don't have a killer app, an exclusive like Halo when it first game out, but having such a killer app is not necessary for PC gaming to survive and even thrive. It just won't exceed the console experience much, except for things like Starcraft 2 or WoW. As APUs become more widespread, it lifts the bottom rung of PCs higher and may actually expand the PC gaming market in the process, if even the lamest new CPUs are graphically competent.

Further, desktops are on the wane but won't just disappear, even if by "desktop" I mean everything up to and including HTPCs. It's still cheaper to build a HTPC and stick a bunch of hard drives in it than rely on a tablet or laptop to do the same, for cost and thermal reasons. And you can plug a HTPC into a TV and game on it, already. If software made it easier to do, maybe more people would do that rather than get a console. An XBox or PS3 is already kind of close to being a PC as it is. (However, Apple and Google and others may try to consolify or even cloudify the HTPC, and TiVo/Boxee/Roku/etc. already exist. So a HTPC-centric future is not assured.)

Also, some kids will grow up in households with kickass gaming PCs and remember that, even after they grow up, particularly if it was a multi-monitor setup that nothing--not TV, not laptops, not tablets--can rival.

Why should we care if PC games lose their graphical advantage over consoles, unless we have personal financial or emotional interests in the GPU industry? Even NVDA and AMD are not necessarily negatively impacted by consoles and mobile gaming, if they get a piece of the action. AMD has contracts for the next XBox, and NVDA is pushing Tegra hard.

In any case, the new console generation is set to kick off sometime in 2013 or thereabouts, so we won't have TOO much longer to wait for our existing cards to become obsolete.

 

[BladeVenom]

Here is an eye-opener.

The poll for the best PC game of 2011:

That poll that left off two of the most highly rated games of 2011:

Total War: Shogun 2
Minecraft

 

[blastingcap]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/09/wuh-oh-gsc-stalker-2-dead/

Coincidental timing, but you know how I mentioned GSC made the PC-only STALKER series but was turning to cross-platform development with STALKER 2? It appears that they shut down before they could go cross-platform. One blogger says that he thinks it's because GSC could not negotiate a deal for console licenses, so the CEO of GSC pulled the plug.

I am not terribly surprised by their demise, given that they were so PC-centric. They should have gone cross-platform sooner. Paragraph 9 makes too much business sense. Develop it for the weakest acceptable platform, then port it up. You pay the programmers more, licensing fees may go up a little, and marketing/distribution costs go up a little, but otherwise it's pure profit.

In economic terms, software has high fixed costs and low variable costs, so the more units you sell, the better, as variable revenue rises many times faster than variable costs.

Example for those who still don't understand (These numbers are obviously made up, and in fact console license fees are higher, but this is just a basic example):

Say for sake of argument that the target market for STALKER is about 25 million people split among PC, XBox360, and PS3. Some people own PC and consoles, or multiple consoles, etc. so let's say that the PC-only market is 10 million people.

Say it costs $10 million in fixed costs to develop STALKER for PC. Say it would cost another $2 million to port it over to XBox360 and PS3 (gotta do some re-coding but don't have to start from scratch, and you only have to pay non-programmers once; note that if you started from a console and then ported to PC, it might have cost less, maybe only an additional $1 million). Say that GSC's share of each copy of STALKER sold is $1 on average for PC or console, after accounting for variable costs (making DVDs and boxes, or paying Valve for distribution fees for the PC version; and distribution and console licensing fees for the console version).

If STALKER goes PC-only and sells to all 10 million people in the target market, it makes $10 million and barely recovers its fixed costs of $10 million.

If STALKER sells to the entire target market, it makes $25 million against a total, cross-platform development cost of $12 million.

Given that the PC, XB360, and PS3 markets are comparable in size, and assuming that there aren't huge discrepancies between them as far as interest in games like STALKER, you would be a fool to NOT go cross-platform.

NVIDIA does the same thing with their cross-market GPU R&D. They spend a fortune for GPU R&D, and it hopefully gets spread among mobile, gaming (GeForce), professional (Tesla), console GPU, and HPC markets. You, the gamer, benefit from the fact that you pay for only a share of the R&D costs. If you think graphics cards are expensive now, imagine how much they would cost if gamers had to finance GPU R&D all by themselves.

Therefore, I feel that if the game industry needs to go cross-platform to finance good games and to keep costs down (by spreading their costs among PS3/XBox/Wii/portable consoles/PC/Mac), then so be it. Gameplay matters more to me than graphics, after a certain point. Like everyone else I can't wait for the next-gen consoles to boost graphics for everybody, but DX9 wasn't broken and is good enough for now. A good game is a good game, regardless of platform, so long as the user interface doesn't get botched with the porting process.

 

[taltamir]

@blastingcap: Tons of ifs... and games don't sell for 1$...

Take skyrim for example:
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/elder-scrolls-v/1212625p1.html
450 million dollars... divided by 60 thats 7.5 million units shipped.
From http://www.dailytech.com/The+Elder+...Retail+Sales+in+First+2+Days/article23293.htm
it might seem like PC sales are poor, however

3.4 million Skyrim copies sold at retail
59 percent of Skyrim copies were sold for the Xbox 360, 27 percent for the PS3 and 14 percent for PC.

This is RETAIL ONLY and does NOT include digitial sales like steam.
3.4 million units is far far fewer then 450 million dollars would suggest.

14% * 3.4M + (7.5M - 3.4M) = 4.576M PC sales * 60$ = 274.56 M
27% * 3.4M = 0.918M PS3 sales * 60$ = 55.08 M
59% * 3.4M = 2.006M xbox sales * 60$ = 120.36 M

And not shown above, xbox and PS3 sales have to pay MS and Sony a cut. As well as retailing costs being higher then digital distribution.

Now, as awesomely ahead as PC sales were... "making up the cost" is not in any way an issue.
Even the worst selling platform (the PS3) more then makes up the cost...
Although they might have to deal with a class action lawsuit on that since the PS3 is so crappy the game cannot run on that horrible platform.
http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/mza05/skyrim_ps3_framerate_fallout_new_vegas_developer/

 

[blastingcap]

@blastingcap: I fail at reading comprehension regarding your disclaimer that you were using fake numbers to make the point clearer; and fail again to see that you already noted that real life cost numbers are higher for consoles

NONE of what you say changes the Paragraph 9 strategy, and in fact Skyrim is a sequel. On multiple platforms. Appealing to a sizable fantasy-RPG audience. Anyway, singling out a smash hit is disingenuous when for every smash hit there are dozens or hundreds of flops. Games are like films: few hits, many flops. Skyrim will go to subsidize the rest of the company during lean times, and of course the owners of the company want to make a profit. I would also add that the cut that game devs get is surprisingly small by the time it makes its way to places like Gamestop. It's better for digital distribution, but their cut still isn't that big. Sort of like how artists get a fraction of a dollar for CD albums.

 

[nsavop]

@blastingcap: Tons of ifs... and games don't sell for 1$...

Take skyrim for example:
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/elder-scrolls-v/1212625p1.html
450 million dollars... divided by 60 thats 7.5 million units shipped.
From http://www.dailytech.com/The+Elder+...Retail+Sales+in+First+2+Days/article23293.htm
it might seem like PC sales are poor, however

This is RETAIL ONLY and does NOT include digitial sales like steam.
3.4 million units is far far fewer then 450 million dollars would suggest.

14% * 3.4M + (7.5M - 3.4M) = 4.576M PC sales * 60$ = 274.56 M
27% * 3.4M = 0.918M PS3 sales * 60$ = 55.08 M
59% * 3.4M = 2.006M xbox sales * 60$ = 120.36 M

And not shown above, xbox and PS3 sales have to pay MS and Sony a cut. As well as retailing costs being higher then digital distribution.

Now, as awesomely ahead as PC sales were... "making up the cost" is not in any way an issue.
Even the worst selling platform (the PS3) more then makes up the cost...
Although they might have to deal with a class action lawsuit on that since the PS3 is so crappy the game cannot run on that horrible platform.
http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/mza05/skyrim_ps3_framerate_fallout_new_vegas_developer/

Lets see unit sales of some of the other cross platform smash hits of 2011:

Modern Warfare 3-xbox 9.21 million, ps3 7.11 million, PC 684,651

Batman AC-xbox 1.65 million, ps3 1.83 million, PC 139,904

Assassin's Creed: Revelations-xbox 1.85 million, ps3 1.49 million, PC 130,699

These figures for pc sales dont include digital download but even if you double the pc sales its still far off.

There's a reason most developers are going cross platform and there's less and less pc exclusives its because that's were the $ is, if the pc had more hits like Skyrim things might be different but Skyrim type sales are few and far between on the pc.

Don't get me wrong i love gaming on my pc and that wont change but i'm also not oblivious to the trends of the gaming market.

 

[taltamir]

Originally Posted by taltamir
@blastingcap: I fail at reading comprehension regarding your disclaimer that you were using fake numbers to make the point clearer; and fail again to see that you already noted that real life cost numbers are higher for consoles

NONE of what you say changes the Paragraph 9 strategy, and in fact Skyrim is a sequel. On multiple platforms. Appealing to a sizable fantasy-RPG audience. Anyway, singling out a smash hit is disingenuous when for every smash hit there are dozens or hundreds of flops. Games are like films: few hits, many flops. Skyrim will go to subsidize the rest of the company during lean times, and of course the owners of the company want to make a profit. I would also add that the cut that game devs get is surprisingly small by the time it makes its way to places like Gamestop. It's better for digital distribution, but their cut still isn't that big. Sort of like how artists get a fraction of a dollar for CD albums.

Condenscending BS. I saw where you explicitly say those are made up numbers. My point was that the made up numbers you used "just for example" were so ridiculously off mark (easily by 2 orders of magnitude) as to be irrelevant.

Lets see unit sales of some of the other cross platform smash hits of 2011:

Modern Warfare 3-xbox 9.21 million, ps3 7.11 million, PC 684,651

Batman AC-xbox 1.65 million, ps3 1.83 million, PC 139,904

Assassin's Creed: Revelations-xbox 1.85 million, ps3 1.49 million, PC 130,699

These figures for pc sales dont include digital download but even if you double the pc sales its still far off.

In skyrim, based on my simple math in the post you quoted, the digital downloads for the PC were 8.61x (rounded DOWN) as many as the retail sales. 9.61x total sold (since you need to add up the retail sales to online sales)

If the above games display the same ratio as skyrim of retail to digitial download sales then the numbers would actually be
Modern Warfare 3-xbox 9.21 million, ps3 7.11 million, PC 684,651*9.61= 6.58 million
Batman AC-xbox 1.65 million, ps3 1.83 million, PC 139,904*9.61= 1.34 million
Assassin's Creed: Revelations-xbox 1.85 million, ps3 1.49 million, PC 130,699*9.61= 1.26 million

Clearly the PC is lagging behind on those games, unlike in skyrim where it is just dominated by the PC. But its a fairly close loss.

There's a reason most developers are going cross platform and there's less and less pc exclusives its because that's were the $ is, if the pc had more hits like Skyrim things might be different but Skyrim type sales are few and far between on the pc.

Whoa there, I was saying that any exclusivity, console OR PC, is throwing money away. As a good game sales orders of magnitude more then its development costs. Including porting costs. The above games for example sold MILLIONS in EACH platform... at 60$ a pop that is a minimum of 60 million in revenue per platform...

That being said, the PC technical advantages make it possible to make better games, so why not make them? Why not let the PC version truely shine and maximize profit from the PC sales. Skyrim is heavily consolized (heavily, it really damages the PC version to be so consolized), yet its simply too much of a game for consoles and it breaks down on the PS3 entirely making it neigh ubplayable and if the developer who spoke out is to be believed (I believe him) then it is unfixable. But its not just skyrim, PC sales bring so much money, especially when done right, that investing an extra million to make sure the PC port is done right will pay for itself AND bring in massive profit. But even if it doesn't, you risked a very small amount of the income that the game will garner.

 

[blastingcap]

Condenscending BS. I saw where you explicitly say those are made up numbers. My point was that the made up numbers you used "just for example" were so ridiculously off mark (easily by 2 orders of magnitude) as to be irrelevant.

In skyrim, based on my simple math in the post you quoted, the digital downloads for the PC were 8.61x (rounded DOWN) as many as the retail sales. 9.61x total sold (since you need to add up the retail sales to online sales)

If the above games display the same ratio as skyrim of retail to digitial download sales then the numbers would actually be
Modern Warfare 3-xbox 9.21 million, ps3 7.11 million, PC 684,651*9.61= 6.58 million
Batman AC-xbox 1.65 million, ps3 1.83 million, PC 139,904*9.61= 1.34 million
Assassin's Creed: Revelations-xbox 1.85 million, ps3 1.49 million, PC 130,699*9.61= 1.26 million

Clearly the PC is lagging behind on those games, unlike in skyrim where it is just dominated by the PC. But its a fairly close loss.


Whoa there, I was saying that any exclusivity, console OR PC, is throwing money away. As a good game sales orders of magnitude more then its development costs. Including porting costs. The above games for example sold MILLIONS in EACH platform... at 60$ a pop that is a minimum of 60 million in revenue per platform...

That being said, the PC technical advantages make it possible to make more popular games. Skyrim is heavily consolized (heavily, it really damages the PC version to be so consolized), yet its simply too much of a game for consoles and it breaks down on the PS3 entirely making it neigh ubplayable and if the developer who spoke out is to be believed (I believe him) then it is unfixable.

My numbers were for illustrative purposes. The point--which your made-up revenue numbers do not refute--is that it should be fairly easily to recover porting costs once a game is developed, especially upscaling it to PC where one doesn't have to worry about hardware limitations as much, so why NOT port a game if it opens up significant chunks of potential revenue? It does not matter how far off the numbers--FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES--are, so long as porting can cover its cost. Everything after that is profit.

Further, as I already stated, you are dreaming if you think game devs get most of that $60 per game. First of all, many people don't pay full price, even before launch day (pre-orders are at a discount). Second, take game developer claims of sales with a grain of salt; they have an incentive to puff themselves up, and in the past some have gone so far as to count bundled games as part of their sales. E.g., they would count that DiRT 3 coupon code with your new graphics card as a sale, whether at full price or not, I don't know. Third, most importantly, the retailer takes a big cut, so does everyone up the chain all the way back to the publisher. If I may analogize, what you are doing is looking at a $5 box of Kellogg's corn flakes on sale for $4, and thinking that the farmer who grew the corn somehow gets $5 of revenue from each sale of each box. In reality, the farmer counts his or her revenue in cents, to say nothing of profits.

Also, talking about bestsellers is disingenuous as I already stated. See this list for a somewhat more representative sample of the PC game market (it is still not representative because some small, indie games might not make the list): http://pc.ign.com/index/upcoming.html

Even if you believe that PC-only is enough for profits for the rare blockbuster game, there are even MORE profits if you expand to other platforms. You can then use those profits to plow back into making even better games to beat your competition. If instead you just take the profits without reinvesting, your competition may be able to steal market share from you and force you into either lowering prices or reinvesting, anyway.

I think we can agree in principle that cross-platform is the future; hell, it's the present and past. It makes business sense, and it doesn't necessarily harm PC gamers if ports are done properly (you get less, but you potentially pay less), except those who insist on pushing the bleeding edge of technology. While I sympathize with them, they are too few in number to move the market by themselves. We need console-makers to spec up their consoles if we are to see game devs, as a group, raise the bar in software. Thankfully that seems likely to occur in 2013 or so.

 

[HeXen]

I haven't kept up on the thread.
So has anyone figured out why any of this crap matters in day to day reality yet? or is bickering about numbers still of top importance?

i'm gonna go enjoy a game now while i wait on an answer.

 

[taltamir]

My numbers were for illustrative purposes. The point--which your made-up revenue numbers do not refute--is that it should be fairly easily to recover porting costs once a game is developed, especially upscaling it to PC where one doesn't have to worry about hardware limitations as much, so why NOT port a game if it opens up significant chunks of potential revenue? It does not matter how far off the numbers--FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES--are, so long as porting can cover its cost. Everything after that is profit.

It seemed to me like you were arguing against porting. By making the revenue per sale so damn low as to require so many millions of sales just to break.

Further, as I already stated, you are dreaming if you think game devs get most of that $60 per game.

For steam, I read that its about 30% to steam (which covers 100% of all distribution costs, marketing, packaging, etc)
70% to publisher/developers (indie titles are self published via steam typically. Bigger titles typically have a publisher FINANCE the development of the game which means they are entitled to such profits... and they are also the ones who PAY those millions to make the game in the first place

First of all, many people don't pay full price, even before launch day (pre-orders are at a discount). Second, the retailer takes a big cut, so does everyone up the chain all the way back to the publisher.

Very good reason to make it for the PC first, where digital distribution is key.
And again, publishers are the ones who PAY those 1-10 million dollars it costs to develop the game in the first place.

If I may analogize, what you are doing is looking at a $5 box of Kellogg's corn flakes on sale for $4, and thinking that the farmer who grew the corn somehow gets $5 of revenue from each sale of each box. In reality, the farmer counts his or her revenue in cents, to say nothing of profits.

Not at all. I am looking at a 5$ box of kellogs and saying that at 5$ a pop they can afford a 10 cent increase to quality that would enable them to sell twice as many. It just so happens that I actually know the EXACT costs involved and haven't explained them all to the person I spoke to, but the difference is magnitude (nearly 2 orders of magnitude) between the cost and the final price means that all can easily reason that even with paying different people their cut they are still making a massive profit.

But since it bothered you I outright stated the figures. 30% steam 70% developer (and publisher if exists, with the publisher financing the development in the first place).

Also, talking about bestsellers is disingenuous as I already stated. See this list for a somewhat more representative sample of the PC game market (it is still not representative because some small, indie games might not make the list): http://pc.ign.com/index/upcoming.html

So you ignore the MMOs which are the best selling games of all (which I personally hate but I do not ignore them because of it)
You ignore the indie (which personally I see as the best games around)
Ignore the mainstream high budget that are a runaway PC success...
And want to look only at the one specific segment that appeals to console gamers more (which I personally have lukewarm feeling about... it is definitely superior to MMOs in my awesome opinion but inferior to many other game types)

Even if you believe that PC-only is enough

I am not arguing for PC-only games. I am arguing for making the PC port actually a PC game.
That means a redesigned interface and allow higher resolutions and aspect ratios (I don't care if they don't bother enhancing the graphics beyond that above basic step... but it would be nice).

If I made a game I would concurrently develop it if there was a budget. Release on consoles first. Then release a much better version for the PC.
Better being:
1. Totally redesigned from scratch interface built for the PC
2. Save everywhere rather then checkpoints only
3. Allow higher resolutions.
4. Slight (cheap) graphical improvements

If I couldn't afford concurrent development... well that is a lot more complex. MANY things need to be taken into account in such a case. Such as, for example, outside financiers (console makers literally pay you money to make an exclusive)

I think we can agree in principle that cross-platform is the future; hell, it's the present and past. It makes business sense, and it doesn't necessarily harm PC gamers if ports are done properly (you get less, but you potentially pay less), except those who insist on pushing the bleeding edge of technology. While I sympathize with them, they are too few in number to move the market by themselves. We need console-makers to spec up their consoles if we are to see game devs, as a group, raise the bar in software. Thankfully that seems likely to occur in 2013 or so.

I agree entirely... the problem is that for some reason no developer seems to listen...
Skyrim interface for example was written in Adobe Flash 10.1
Days after the game came out with its HORRIBLE console port interface some modders threw together an interface that is 10 times better in a matter of hours. This is not a million dollar investment here.
They could have build a from scratch interface for the PC that would have significantly increased sales in under 500$... heck they could have gotten it for FREE just by letting enthusiants write it FOR them (either modders or actual develops who DO actually care about the game)... management though, for some reason, shut down such ideas and refuses to allow it. That is the only possible way to prevent any of the dozens of people who worked on the game for years from spending a non paid weekend making a not shittastic interface.

Often you see "mods" which are stealth fixes from actual developers who were not allowed to make it as a proper patch by instruction of the butthead publishers (ex: Atari, Ubisoft, EA... etc)

Even if you believe that PC-only is enough

I am not arguing for PC-only games. I am arguing for making the PC port actually a PC game.

Ok I am ALSO arguing (but not in the last few posts) that a console is such a crappy device that it shouldn't exist, but exists only because people have misconceptions about PCs... namely:
1. The false belief PCs are more expensive
2. The false belief you cannot plug a PC to a TV (or have it look good in living room)
3. The false belief you cannot use a controller on a PC
etc...

Those are all reasons why you, the customer, should buy a PC version instead of a console version of a multi-platform game.
They are NOT arguments against multi-platform development (only sensible thing to do)
They are NOT arguments against buying console exclusives (only way to play the game)

I personally own controllers for the PC (which I rarely use since they are generally inferior to mouse/keyboard... but I do use them on occasion on the few games that have terrible botched mouse/keyboard support when ported to PC)
I personally own console exclusive games.
I personally built (in a previous residence) a home theater where I ran wires for a full surround and set up a 150 inch screen for using with a projector... To which I plugged a PC... it was the awesomest way to watch movies (DVR always) and the awesomest way to play games (with my choice of wireless mouse/keyboard or wireless controller)... You haven't played starcraft until you played it on a 150 inch screen with surround sound.

 

[exdeath]

Desktops will not go away. Touch screen and portable devices are only good for consuming content. They are absolutely terrible for creating it.

 

[blastingcap]

snip

No! I was NOT arguing against porting! I thought I was clear but apparently not. Heck I could have subbed in a much smaller target market number or much higher dev costs if I was trying to make it look like porting was a necessity. But arguing AGAINST porting? No. I did choose the numbers to approximate what may have been GSC's situation where they were breaking even on PC sales but with almost no profit, hence the need to go cross-platform.

I also totally agree about how some companies don't go about porting in a reasonable way. BioWare in particular has impressed me with how well thought out they ported Dragon Age Origins (which I am just finishing now for the first time)... but then again I am not sure they coded for PC first or not, so maybe they coded for PC to begin with and I am praising them for nothing. Then there is Bethesda which is slowly getting better at porting. Oblivion's UI was just sloppy as hell, but Fallout NV was somewhat better. Valve and Blizzard of course almost always get things done right for PC, but they code for it first (and pretty much ONLY for it, in the case of Blizzard) so what do you expect? Infinity Ward of course earns my wrath: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/11/pc-modern-warfare-2-its-much-worse-than-you-thought.ars

I agree with the vast majority of your post. I also don't see the point in arguing about specific numbers. The specific numbers don't matter that much so long as the principles remain.

I think it is possible to develop on PC first and then scale DOWN, but you have to be careful in doing so because if you overshoot, you end up with performance problems where the console may not handle the game as well as you intended. If you do it the other way around, you have a lot more margin for error since PC hardware is not fixed. So it is less risky to develop up. Also the consoles tend to have more well-documented hardware quirks to try to squeeze extra performance out of.

I'm a PC gamer. Period. I hardly ever play mobile games on my phone, and I haven't owned a console since 8-bit NES. Out of self interest, I want PC game developers to do well. Despite this, I do not see a need to bash consoles. They can help co-fund stuff. Certainly that's better than mobile games which can't co-fund the kinds of games I am most interested in. Cross-platform development can be a win-win for console and PC gamers if ports are done properly.

There was too much doom and gloom in this thread and also a lot of self-centered console-bashing. So I just tossed in my 2 cents. I could be mistaken, but I am calling things as I see them.

 

[-Slacker-]

Wow, the anandtech's average user willingness to debate even the smallest thing to death as long as someone else, anyone, replies back whenever ....... is impressive to say the least. Especially in a thread started by a troll...

 

[exdeath]

You haven't played starcraft until you played it on a 150 inch screen with surround sound.

Ugh... I've done this... it's a novelty but near impossible to actually *play* a PC game like this unless you are a mile away. It's overwhelming, too much sensory excitement. Too much to take in and too much movement to take it in.

Much more efficient to play on a 21" monitor. Leave the projectors to movies and single player console games where you don't have to pan your neck 120 degrees and scan your eyeballs 15 feet to hunt for and absorb critical data.

There is a reason the HUD of a fighter jet isn't 6 feet wide and wrapping around the pilot.

Besides running 640x480x8 to a 1080p HD video grade projector should be illegal.

 

[HeXen]

Carmack says consoles are easier, so maybe the role of why things are the way they are is more likely rooted from the development end.

"It is extremely frustrating knowing that the hardware we've got on the PC is often ten times as powerful as the consoles but it has honestly been a struggle in many cases to get the game running at 60 frames per second on the PC like it does on a 360," said Carmack.

He detailed - with liberal use of technical jargon - how the relatively simple process of updating code on the PS3 and 360 could drive a programmer insane trying to do the same on PC.