When one hears the name Cliffy B, the words Gears of War are most likely to follow it up -- and you really can't fault anyone for that association. After all, Gears was the first game that truly showed us that we had finally reached the next-generation. It sent message boards afire, and to say that it had each of us in awe is a gross understatement.
However, even as popular as Gears still is to this very day, both Epic and Cliffy B have been forever cemented in the minds of many gamers as PC developers first and foremost -- thanks to Unreal Tournament. That's why Cliffy may have caused some ire among dedicated PC gamers during an interview with MTV's multiplayer blog:
"I think people would rather make a game that sells 4.5 million copies than a million and Gears is at 4.5 million right now on the 360. I think the PC is just in disarray... What's driving the PC right now is Sims-type games and WoW and a lot of stuff that's in a web-based interface. You just click on it and play it. That's the direction PC is evolving into. So for me, the PC is kind of the secondary part of what we're doing. It's important for us, but right now making AAA games on consoles is where we're at."
Take a long, hard look at the state of PC gaming today, and tell me if you agree with him. When was the last time you were really excited about a game that didn't fit the mold that Cliffy just described? Fault him if you may for commenting about the numbers, but at the end of the day, Epic is first and foremost a business. Is PC gaming dead? Obviously not, but you cannot ignore the fact that consoles have streamlined the whole process, making it arguably a more enjoyable experience. So trace it back and tell us, fellow Destructoids...what exactly went wrong along the way?
[Via
CVG -- Thanks, Adam!]
Contest:
8:21 AM on 02.14.2008
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I still wonder what sales figures Valve has for the Orange box on PC, seeing as how they don't release sales figures but Id be willing to bet it outsold gears.
So companies like Bioware and Bethesda who were loyal to PCs are now jumping ship because like most companies they just follow the money trail. PC gaming is as great as it ever was, its capitalism thats ruining the games for it.
Why PC developers insists on ALWAYS embracing the newest hardware to make their games run the best is beyond me. They should make them work the best at a standard set a year earlier and then if your rig is beyond that strength, that kudos to you, you get to enjoy it, too.
The graphics chip makers don't help, either, as they roll out $800 chipsets that become the new "standard" every couple months.
Disarray isn't even strong enough of a word to describe PC gaming. Ruin is more like it.
oooo snap!
Customization of PC hardware is its biggest strength and its biggest downfall. How come my PC that i bought at the same time the 360 came out is scaling so much worse than the console? Because of all the different hardware combinations you have to take into account on the PC and the mess of drivers. Standardization is key for consoles.
The whole "Mouse vs controller" debate is fruitless. What is best is what is most fun. There is really no "superior" controller, the controller that is best is something that you enjoy using, whatever that may be.
That is EXACTLY what happened. Vanguard (lol), Crysis, Oblivion, all of it required the highest spec possible at the time to be enjoyable. Even going back to SimCity 4, it chugged a bit even on the high end machines of the day.
I play WoW on a computer that's nearly five years old now, and probably will continue to for at least one more. My wife plays the Sims2 on a PC that's as old as mine, and only now, at the 6th or 7th expansion pack, is she really concerned about not being able to run the new content, and that's only for lack of RAM/HD space.
The titles that rule the day right now run on damn near anything, and that's built into the business model. Considering consoles come ready to go, don't have hardware specs that you may need to tweak on an individual basis and are not plagued by external factors like OS and driver updates, its easier for people to get in and just play.
I love my PC for gaming, but most people are better off with a console.
The draw of PC gaming IS the fact that the tech upgrades every 6 months. The best games usually are highly scalable. You can't expect to play the new games on old hardware and still want the shiney new tech. Scalability, modability, and overall community will always keep PC gaming alive.
If PC ports weren't so damn shoddy, maybe they would do better and that includes Gears of War. If a new 360 game can run on a console that came out almost 3 years ago, why can new PCs often hardly run them. Often these PC games are produced as an after thought "better get some money out of it, even if little, than none at all"
I predict Mass Effect will be a lag fest on most machines.
For me it came down to the almighty $$$$. I played PC games until the Xbox came out and that was the first console I seriously got involved in. Plus I didn't have the money to continue to upgrade my PC to the necessary specs to play the games I wanted, and I'm not talking top of the line either. Also there wasn't a lot of games on the PC that interested me.
Keep in mind too, that playing a console game with a friend is as simple as having them come over and pick up a controller or just logging onto Live. Can't do that with a PC. And sometimes getting all the crap to work just so you can play with a friend online is frustrating.
PC gaming is not dead by any means, WoW proves this. But the type of game on the PC that is popular is different from popular console games. RTS's, RPG's(western mostly), certain FPS's and Simulations will all be better on the PC, without a doubt.
X3 and B-radicate both have good points. But the simple truth is this, consoles are easy for everyone. For the devs, for the consumers, for the manufacturers, it's just easier. And there is obviously more money in making games for consoles first and then PC's.
Unless you are Blizzard.
I'm glad someone else said it! M+KB is so superior to this day it just boggles my mind. If PC game makers would focus on remembering that there strengths are in optimization, user content and control (and not just slightly better graphics as Radicate pointed out) PC gaming would take off again no problem.
Also, Spore.... yeah, that'll probably sell a few copies. (and I can't even IMAGINE trying to play something like that on a console controlling a pointer with analog sticks.)
And calling Cliff a twit that doesn't know anthing is rather stupid.
I have a 360. Ind i'm more thant happy playing my games wireless in my couch on the big screen than upstaire tied to a 19in screen.
I have at least 10 games i bought on my 360 sin the launch. The last game i bought on PC was WoW. My computer is working fine and I don't feel like upgrading my 6600gt and my puny athlon XP to play TF2. Yes it does run but at aroun 20-30 fps. Which is barely ok for a FPS.
The level design was horrible, so repetitive it hurt. Everything but the reload system was just watered down FPS with a new camera. The cover system was interesting, but being forced to use it or die got very boring fast.
As if the uninspired single player wasn't enough, then they slapped Live for Windows on it. Why should I pay an extra fee to be able to find any decent on-line games? If Games for Windows taped Valve's play calling they would be much more successful.
If digital PC game sales were added in they would beat the 360 sales no problem. As it is I haven't bought a PC game from a physical store in a couple of years.
That's not true, because the biggest gaming franchise is to this day still on the PC and that is World of Warcraft.
Just think about it, 10 million suscribers paying an average of $10 a month (adjusted for asian market pay as you go) that is 100 million dollars of income right there. Subtract from that the upkeep required to keep the employees happy and servers running and you still have a huge profit margin. This is the type of profit that even Rockstar could only dream to achieve with their GTA franchise.
As Tubatic already mentioned, I think the successful PC games of the future will go the way of the Wii - you won't need the best hardware to run them, but they will use the unique capabilities of the system to make it attractive (see MMOs for example).
First Person shooters generally play better on PC, in my opinion. Also, RTS is a genre unique to PC that when ported, comes out horrible on the consoles. MMORPGs aren't necessarily a bad exclusive but I mean the state of PC gaming is by no means the sims.
Some examples
Orange Box
Spore
Crysis.
Starcraft 2
Consoles will always make more money because of casual gamers. Frat boys and racist young teens everywhere love gears and halo 3. They don't necessarily have a PC that can play even low end PC games, and they probably wouldn't buy them.
Just because you can sell the Gears of war to everyone in the world doesn't mean PC gaming is dead.
There's no secret EA mandate demanding you to play Crysis at very high or not at all.
I'm sorry but, your statment is flawed, gears has sold millions of copys and tons of people still play it on live.
I agree that cysis will hit consoles unaltered too, and if not this genaration then it will the next one with crysis 2.
and im sorry but PC market slaes are screwed, unless torrenting is eraesed from the world, its always going to be.
To those saying it's a temporary phenomenon, there's a key difference this time: consoles can hit high resolutions at steady framerates. Sure, in a couple years there will be some graphics whore game come out, but by then new consoles will be on the way.
But that is still a lot of money.
A) Buy a new GPU
B) Buy a Wii or add $100 and buy an Xbox
In theory the PC is a cash cow. We talk about the console wars here a lot - Wii vs Xbox360 vs PS3, but look at the distribution of the PC. Even people that don't have a Wii have a computer! The saturation of PCs in the population is much higher than that of any console.
Companies like Blizzard got it right, because they optimize their games, spent a lot of time on art direction over polygon count and make game that almost anyone can play on any machine and still look attractive. Look at SC2, it looks like something that could have been made over a year ago. Does it still look good? Yeah. Will I still buy it? Of course! And a legit copy too because the multiplayer is so damn good.
I'm sure that there are as much PC gamers as console gamers, the difference is that a lot more PC games are downloaded rather than paid for.
The policy of CD protection has been useless for years, there should be someone taking risk and trying new solutions, maybe hardware checks on special chips, or maybe one-computer activation licenses, Windows style.
Also about M&K control vs Dual Stick for FPS: Let's stop arguing about this since it's really preference and it also depends on the game. Personally, I prefer the controller since I value analog movement over pixel perfect aim. Aim assist doesn't make the game any less fun for me so that's not a big deal to me at all. But if a game is not optimized for the controller, then I 'd rather play it on PC. Orange box for example controls kind of shitty on the consoles because it wasn't optimized for the controller.
People here are exaggerating the cost of PC gaming. I have a 3 years old PC and the only thing I upgraded was the graphics card and that cost me less than $150. And I can still play current games. Not at very high resolutions but you don't need that to enjoy a game.
About the piracy, it's not a recent phenomenon and it didn't hinder PC gaming in past very much so I don't see why it will now. Look at things like The Sims that sell like hot cakes even when you can find them easily on the likes of TPB. If a game is good people will buy it.
The Sims is exactly what Cliffy B is talking about though. It's a game that's extremely casual friendly and runs on most machines easily. Casual game players don't pirate nearly as much (either because they don't have the know-how or don't even think to) so casual games will sell better.
The PC market will move more and more into models where piracy won't be an issue such as subscription based services, or free-to-play games with microtransactions like Battlefield Heroes.
it's not supposed to only be about sales numbers, it's about making fun games. i'm (hopefully) going to make games as a career, and while paying the bill is nice, repeatedly churning out crap for sales numbers isn't good for anyone.
and saying they're "first and foremost PC devs" is stupid. if pc's were their focus, gears, and unreal would be optimized for pc, and would have come out first for pc and been ported, instead of building the game around multiplatform playability
(this is me just ranting because a book i have to read for one of my game history classes plays him out to be a hero in the game industry during the post columbine era, which is fucking stupid)
and have people noticed that as we approach a more user friendly and application capable console, the price has slowly been approaching that of pc's? (with the exception of the wii)
ps3's cost just under a thousand dollars to make! put that same amount of money into a pc, and you can play all the same games and have them look identical, if not the pc looking better.
this whole pc vs console crap is played out. we don't know if one will go under. stop predicting otherwise. just let the market fucking play itself out, instead of bickering incessantly about things that don't even matter that much.
Piracy has always been an issue with PC gaming but it's especially bad now with the proliferation of torrent sites, broadband access, and a more networked community across the internet.
i buy a game for the 360 it will work on any 360
(unless theres a damn RROD)
I buy a game for the WII it will work on any WII
I buy a game for the PC, I gotta have the right setup, processors, graphic cards etc. i gotta download drivers for stuff. Since most game makers are spending so much to develop their games they seem to be trying to attract a large number of gamers to the product to up their numbers. the pc market isn't dead its just for more hardcore gamers and your gonna have a hard time generating the kind of numbers necessary if you stick with the PC. Thus game makers are going more for multi platform releases nowadays
Plus, system requirements can get blood confusing. "Recommended: 128MB graphics card" - okay, mine's 256MB, that should be a problem, until I install it and it still won't run...an hour of going through forums looking for answer later, I find out it's because I'm missing something called Shader 3.0 Support...even though it's not mentioned in the system requirements anywhere.
At least I know if I get a PS3 game, all I need to play it is a PS3.
That and it bugs me that this compy I bought a year ago, Intel dual core, 2GB of RAM, and 256MB video can't run anything besides the Orange Box. Gimme a break...