Please don't say people are dumb or lazy , just because they like consoles or don't build their own PC.

I used to build my own PC, but now I value my time a lot more. I ordered a game rig, pre-built for me with components I chose (with the recommendations of the company). Making a good rig is more complex than people think.

Cooling is critical
Sound insulation
Graphics Card/ChipSet/Firmware/Motherboard/BIOS Combinations
What hard disks you chose for performance. Noise/Heat generated by said components.
Overclocking, risks/benefits
Right OS choice XP Home Pro/Media Centre/Vista?
Burn in stability tests
3D Mark tests

I am currently using an 18month old rig, and it still rocks most people's PCs. The company also ran brun in tests/IO test/3D mark tests etc. and sent me Harcopy/PDF reports of all the tests, along with the testing software so that I could check the veracity of these tests. I can further upgrade it to quad CPU, and also SLI with the latest Nvida card should I chose so. The reason for this is with the assistance of the company I chose a good combo of parts.

This was all done for me, and has saved me a heap of time and hassle, researching, building testing etc etc.

I also own a 360 which I think is a great machine that provides hassle free gaming whith a consistent high level of audio/graphical performance out of the box. It's easy to connect to a 50ich display and my 5.1 audio, it's great to play casualy with friends as well. Console owners are in no way "dumbed down" or lazy, it's simply a consumer choice people make.

PC gaming dead ? Never happen for the simple reason that where there is a user base of 500million+ there will always be someone or something that will innovate to tap into it. The nature of the market segment may change, the economics and dynamics will change, for sure, but never write off an empty market segment of 500million, not going to happen.

The driver for the mainstream part of the gaming industry is always how to get the best return on investment made. Use the latest graphics etc and you create a higher perceived value, so the headline price is higher, despite the fact that the amount of effort needed to raise the Game from mundane to superb is far lower than the price hike in relative terms, because the Tools available are ever more efficient.

The margins on the higher end games are far higher because of this. Shifting 2 million units at $45 on a $20 profit margin, bringing in $40m, is a far greater return on investment than shifting 8 million units at $20 on a $5 profit margin also bringing in $40m. The former takes far less effort, smaller infrastructure, lower distribution cost base etc.

PC gaming is a huge market segment serving many different needs and desires in that segment. "One Size doesnt fit all". No Gaming house can meet all of them, each will therefore target a specific segment to get the best return on their investment in their particular circumstances.

Argue until your blue in the face on technology grounds etc, wrong driver, the industry works on getting the best return within the segment it targets. As that segments needs change, or even evaporate, so will the gaming houses shift their strategy or product. In the latter, technology finally comes into it - but only in the guise of how to service the targeted market segment. Technology is not the first and overiding factor, its often the last consideration because technology is a means to an end - not the end in itself, and will only be used to fill the need of the Gaming House to meet its Marget Segment strategy.

A world Wide User base of 500million+ thats not targeted to provide what they need ?? In the Long Term that will Never Happen. When Gaming Houses hit a market segment, it happens because of the Prime Driver Return on Investment, not Technology. The latter enables that Return on Investment, it does not in itself drive it.

Regards
Zy

There may be 500+ million PCs, but that doesn't mean there are 500+ million PCs that someone will be willing to play a game on. You can't count userbase that way. You can on consoles, because people buy consoles to play games (90% of the time). But most PCs never see anything more than Minesweeper or Solitaire.



That's a flat-out falsehood. Making high-end graphics is more expensive nowadays than it was 5 years ago. It's harder, due to diminished returns on hardware performance and the ever-present danger of falling into the Uncanny Valley. And the cost of graphics is very dependent on the kind of game you're making.

If your game is set in space, with ships and such, then your costs are pretty low. Space is dark, with generally one very bright light source that produces very strong, sharp shadows. And the emptiness of space means that one ship shadowing another is unlikely enough so that you shouldn't bother with it. These all combine to make space-based graphics relatively cheap.

Compare this to a modern FPS game. You need people, and people need animations. You just doubled your art staff right there, because now you need people who can not only model humans in reasonable detail, but animate their motions. Terrain needs to be textured, have appropriate dressing (detritus in cities, etc), and so forth. The more terrain you have, the more art staff/time you need.

I'd love to see a single fact to back up this idiotic statement. Everything I've seen suggests that while Crysis's initial sales weren't that high, they exceeded sales expectations.

Neither the publisher, NOR the developer expected it to fly off store shelves. They expect it to sale continuously as people upgrade their computers eventually, ie: "Well I finally got a 9800, guess I'll go try Crysis".

Honestly, the stupid things people say.

In fact, here's a link you stupid ignoramuses: http://kotaku.com/351661/crysis-comeback-moves-1-million-copies

Pardon my insults, but stupidity deserves to be insulted.

The best analogy with 'console vs. pc' is comparing someone who likes racing to someone who doesn't.

I have a Hyundai Sonata. It doesn't go very fast. It's reliable, but I also don't drive around at 180mph, revving my engine at red lights, or tell people that I do.

Consoles are basically people who go buy a Honda Civic with a big spoiler on the back, drive around letting off the gas and then flooring it so it seems like they have a manual, and then tell people how fast they drive.

Someone who has a serious interest in racing is going to need a good car, and therefore, should have the know-how about maintaining, building, and customizing a car to do so.

As far as racing goes, I'm an idiot. But I also don't PRETEND to be a racer. That is the difference between consoles and PC.

Main reasons:

1.) It gets more and more common that you can take 1 - 2 days off just to install and patch a game. (Greatings to Relic!)

2.) Loading times can get longer than used in Amiga times. (Greatings to Relic!)

3.) "Release time = Start of beta phase" seems to apply for most game developers (except maybe Blizzard)

4.) Graphics overshadow gameplay too much (Greatings to Bethesda and Gas powered Games!)

5.) Too many bugs that occur on all machines and not just on 'excentric' hardware. (Greatings to Jowood and Obsidian!)

6.) Too many bugs that never get fixed although they are known and happen on all machines. (Greatings to Jowood)

7.) Game developers seem to love to 'decorate' their homepages with support E-Mail adresses which are directly linked to the trashcan. Usually you never get an answer regardless of what you are asking. (Even if they forgot to add the serial number in the game package) (Greatings to Black Hole, ProFantasy, etc.)

8.) Copy protections with "Kill the OS" side effects. (Greatings to starforce)

9.) Games are released too often in unfinished state. (Developers often blame the producer. However, no producer ever seems to get punished for that. I wonder... do producers stand above the law?!)

Okay, those are just the main reasons...

Way to read emotion-laden ad hominem attacks into a post that didn't actually have any.

Consoles are awesome because they're for people who love videogames and don't love computers. It's a pretty large set of people. There is no rational reason why somebody who doesn't really care about computers beyond the minimum needed to web surf, read email, and use MS Office should be barred from playing videogames, and thanks to consoles, there is no practical reason for it either. If all you want to do is play games, then a console is a great choice. Gaming PC's are only better if you enjoy working with computers in its own right. There is no valid cause for derision on either side of this great divide.

Modern operating systems, mostly starting with MacOS I believe (could be wrong) have lowered the barriers to entry for basic computer use to the point where just about anybody can use them for the bare essentials with very little understanding required of their internal workings. In other words, for things like email and web browsing, they are appliances. Consoles do the same for gaming.

Gaming is not, and there is no legitimate reason why it should be, the exclusive domain of computer lovers. Things like pc component selection, high performance cooling options, and overclocking are the exclusive domain of computer lovers. The skill sets required to excel at gaming are almost completely disjoint from the skill sets required to excel at pc optimization. It strikes me as surreal that anybody would think that there needs to be a correlation.

In other words, not sharing your particular interests doesn't make console gamers stupid, any more than your not sharing their particular interests makes *YOU* stupid.

They sold a million after 4 months. Halo 3 eclipsed that on preorders alone. They both cost approximately the same to make. Which is the better return on investment?



You're mingling my words with yours.

You are the one saying that there are "smart people" (ie: PC gamers) and there are "stupid people" (ie: console gamers). My rebuttal is that people are not "stupid" for taking the path of least resistance. I'm not putting people on a continuum of "smart" and "stupid".

Furthermore, knowledge of computers and the ridiculous rain dance necessary to make many PC games work does not make one smart. It makes one knowledgeable. And it only makes them knowledgeable in a specific field. People who know how to do whatever nonsense is necessary to make a PC game work aren't smart; they're just determined.



It's simple; they're not interested in a specific game here. This isn't a person who says, "I'm going to play Crysis no matter what." This is a person who says, "I want to play some entertaining videogames." That might include Crysis, but if Crysis is too high maintenance for them, they'll move on to something else. That is, for them, Crysis is not significantly better than Halo 3. So if it takes 10x the effort to play Crysis than Halo 3, why would it ever be reasonable to play Crysis over Halo 3? And after they're done with Halo 3, it'll be some other console game that they'd prefer over the 10x effort needed to play Crysis.

It doesn't make you stupid because not being obsessed with one specific game to the point where you will expend huge efforts to play it is not stupidity. It's simply an alternate set of priorities.



You only say that because you don't like them. You have no objective defense of that statement.



How can they be punished for it? What crime did the Producer commit? Releasing a movie with 10 minutes obviously cut out of it isn't a crime; it's just releasing a bad movie. The problem is that people will pay for it anyway.



That analogy is broken. The first problem with the analogy is that it's not even true for regular people. Maybe 20% of the population fits into your analogy. The rest are just people who want to get from place to place. It's a false dichotomy.

Further, people with an interest in racing don't necessarily have, or even want, cars that are good at racing. Their interest can easily be in watching racing, not participating in it.

Lastly, it doesn't even fit gaming because it suggests that PC gaming is more serious than console gaming because it is harder. Which is rather ludicrous.

Comparing Halo3 to Crysis doesn’t make much sense. First of all Halo3 is huge IP, it’s not like any developer can expect their games to sell like Halo3 does, it just doesn’t happen often. Second while they both costed the same amount of money to make(and Crytek still built it cheap, I mean... Stranglehold and Lost Planet aren’t anywhere near as graphically impressive as Crysis, they’re also much shorter and yet they costed as much as Crysis, even Halo3 isn’t anywhere near as detailed graphically as Crysis and yet it costed about the same to make)( Halo3 costed many times more to advertise. While almost all Crysis advertising was done by Nvidia, EA and Crytek hardly spend money on it. Also.. Halo3 is just a game and that’s all, Crysis isn’t just a game for Crytek, it’s also a huge showcase of their engine power, it makes sense on PC, because it offers something beyond capabilities of other engines, on console hardware all Crytek could truly introduce is new version of UE3.0, why learn how to work on new engine if it doesn’t really offer much of an advantage over UE3.0. Also.. you’re forgetting that Halo is a MS’ owned IP, first party games are quite different from 3rd party ones.
And last thing, while Halo3’s budget is pretty much standart on console market, Crysis’ budget is a huge rarity in PCgaming. Sure PCgames might not sell as good as console games on average, but they also cost a lot less to make and many many times less to advertise than console games. Currently on consoles without at least $12-15million dev budget and another $10mln on advertising you can forget about having a decent sucecess. More and more often console game has to sell at least 1mln copies just to make any profit

FYI "QFT" stands for "quote for truth". You didn't quote anything.

People have been complaining about the death of PC gamers for over a decade. It won't happen.

PC gaming has nothing to do with enthusiasts and wanting to tweak your machine. Plenty of people game on sub-optimal, old machines. PC games tend to "just work" too - they just take a minutiae of effort other than "durp i put disk in machine". I can't see someone that would prefer a console to a PC based on not wanting to run an installation wizard as anything but lazy/stupid.

I will have to agree that computer gaming is dying slowly. It just cost to much money to keep a computer at peak performance. Also much more difficult to write software for the thousands of combinations of comuputer hardware. I built a computer when AGP 8x was first introduced. It cost me 2500 now time to spend another 2500.....nah I can get All 3 consoles for half the price and console games for the most part work. But I really miss computer gaming.

Wel, you don't have much choice. I mean there aren't many console devs left that would accept your money. Indepednent developers (I don't mean indie, just ones that are owned by their employees instead of being owned by pig publisher or other company) are quickly going extinct in console market. They either die or get bought out by publishers.
There are literaly hundreds of independent pc developers around and most of them make profit (they're independent afterall, if they don't make money they go bancrupt,they don't have plushy publisher to soak the damage for the). You rarely see pc studios closing down,