I’m a Shacknews junkie and was reading about Valve’s announcement of Steam’s growth last year. I was pretty jazzed at the news as it means that the trend to digital is continuing and widespread. Impulse’s growth, not surprisingly due to its relatively smaller size, was much higher than 205% but that’s only because Impulse is still in its early growth phase, it hasn’t reached maturation like Steam – that’s why Steam’s strong growth is such good news – the market isn’t even close to saturation.
I suspect Direct2Drive, GOG, GamersGate and the others have experienced similar levels of growth too. It’s a good time to be a PC gamer. Regular sales, competition. Do they have weekly sales in the console universe?
Nope they don't This is why I prefer PC gaming since I started playing games again. It does have second-hand games which is not (YET) possible in the digital market.
If Wiiware or Virtual Console had a sale, I would assume I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone.
As for physical copies, consoles have them every weak at the traditional retailers and places like Gamespot.
Yes they have, at least XBLA:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/marketplace/dealoftheweek/
PSN has sales now but it's dog shit, all the stuff they can't shift because nobody wants.
when i first saw this thread, i thought it said "preety pissed about steam"
which... considering how annoying it is... makes alot more sense.
Yep, that was my first thought. For some reason, I just can't quite get excited about efforts to kill the secondary market in PC games.
This is what I want to hear!
if its such a good time to be a PC gamer, why are we being subjected to cross-platform titles that reek of consolitis?
because consoles still hold a large portion of the video game market, and that's who the large developers will cater to ATM
ergo, its hardly a "good time to be a PC gamer".
I see your point. We get piss poor ports and heavy handed DRM and they get... market share because we get piss poor ports and heavy handed DRM. However, when a company does it right, makes it for the PC and stops treating their customers like thieves, it's still truly great.
But your one of the 'ELITE'. You can go and make fun of console users, and feel proud.
Seriously though, i think there are better 'games' on PC than possible on console. Now there are definatly good stuff on console now and then (Mass effect, gears etc) which often have some issues with PC design (read: inferior to PC design ) but are still worth buying.
Gears 2 should be on PC but epic wants to punish the PC users after nobody bought UT3 because of thier utter failure to do anything but reskin UT2 for UT3...
*Obligitory mention of Arma 2 the ultimate military simulator because its a great example of PC depth without the mainstream flair*
I would rather hear about impulse phase 5 though
I mean sorting out the auto-patching for other companies would be good - it took me a week to patch hoi3 properly
Because games have become too expensive to develop, so if you can launch it in another platform with minimal cost (compared to the cost of developing the game), you'll probably do it.
But I can't understand the console hate, there are great games in both platforms in all the genres. I was remembering the FPS going downhill thread just to remember that one of the best FPS ever done is Goldeneye in N64 (and surprisingly it was a movie franchise game, pretty weird thing).
I certainly don't hate consoles. I have one and I enjoy playing on it. I am using it as amy secondary gaming device though.
As for expensive to develop. Last I heard Stardock games didn't require a 200 million dollar advertising budget. There are some indie developers who seem to be doing very well and who knows, maybe in the future they'll shift to more mainstream stuff, hopefully not loosing the creativity in their wake. Heck most the games I play aren't considered "mainstream" whichi is not entirely surprising since the mainstream typically could care less if women play their games and hardly make an effort to appeal to them.
Some women should setup some development companies then I guess? I would really be intested to know what a game that appeals to females *actualy* looks like. Since I've heard that said over and over but not actualy been shown one with all the massive diffrences pointed out to me.
/derail btw
I like consoles, I was adicted to Grand Theft Auto Vice City and San Andreas. I eventually turned PC gamer and have been one ever since.
Although I criticized Infinity Ward for screwing up what could have been the best PC game today, Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2, I eventually gave in as I saw my online friends playing it and I was left out. I recently purchased both Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 (pre-order) thru Steam and while Battlefield won't be connected to the Steam client as Modern Warfare 2 is, it was pretty cool to download the BETA version and try it out. I look forward to the game in March, it's cool to know I wont have to worry about losing the CD or key. It's a shame Modern warfare is so tied up on the Steam client that playing it becomes an annoyance just because of Steam. The game itself is great but the inability to create dedicated servers made this game to feel like driving a Ferrari with a VolksWagon Beetle engine in it.
Once I biuld my new PC I plan on getting my son his copies of the Call Of Duty series thru Impulse. Music is digital, movies are digital, and software is digital, it's about time games become more digital.
MW2 was a great game, good fun shooty shooty bang bang single player with some nice coop action for me and my coop friend (although it gets a little too silly near the end to really enjoy).
It was worth the price for the fun I had.
I don't see why people need it to be the 'best game ever'. Its just a console game, just because it says "Call of Duty" on it dosn't mean it SHOULD be amazing. Hell look at Dragon Rising - literaly one of the worst games to be relased in over a decade and it carrys the name Operation Flashpoint. The levels of blashphemy involed in that are beyond 11.
What it comes down to is this: Those games are gone. Those days are gone. Good developers moved on to better titles (Arma 2 in OFP's case) and publishers whore out brands, but they are sometimes still worth the money and its usually men being exploited instead of girls on street corners so its okay.
I don’t know about the rest of you but im tired of ported, washed-out bland textures, horrible control setups and gameplay limits due to either a console’s power or control scheme. I understand the economics behind cross platform design, but I don’t have to like it.
competition in the secondary console game market is expanding though. best buy is really starting to push its brand of pre-owned. gamestaq.com is making headway as well. gamestop wont have to be the only choice for much longer.
the closest thing i can compare it to, is the old and recently renovated games that show up on vendors like impulse. these games have regular sales and people love to snap them up at discounted prices.
that said, i find my self living equally in both worlds. my pc isnt strong enough to play the latest games, but my console is. so i buy up sins expansions and cheap games i always wanted when they hit the bargin bin, and reserve my console purchases to finding the cheapest price on which ever game i want.
net result, i still spend more on pc games than my console.
Well who said it has to be a "massive" difference? And since women are like men in that we don't all have the same tastes, there wouldn't be one change that "fixes" the problem. Impulse reported 4% of their users, who participated in their survey, were women. That is miniscule compared to the fact that women make up roughly at least 40% of the market. About 55% of the Sims players are women (Old CNN article on women in the industry which is a shockingly low 12 percent), and guess what guys, that means 45% aren't women so a lot of people need to stop calling it a chick game. My guess, Steam has a higher percentage but they're just like Impulse, nothing about the UI or even their advertisement makes even a meager attempt to lure in women players.
I can only speak from my own experience, Bioware tends to do an okay job in catering to women in that their RPGs allow you to play a woman and storylines sometimes even acknowledge the fact you are a woman, romances still available, though sadly often scaled down, for female characters too. They're advertisement is still sadly focused on guy centric programming though. MMORPGs do an excellent job as well. I wouldn't be surprised if MMORPGs have a significantly higher perecentage of women playing their games than the other mainstream titles. The Wii, which some people still like to make jokes about, sells to women very well. Not only that, I actually see their advertisements since they purchase spots I would encouter them (not just gaming sites I happen to go to and have to endure to get my gaming news).
Anyway, I love my Wii, got a few series there I've loved since the SNES days of gaming that, happily, are still going strong, but the PC is probably going to be my primary choice for awhile becaose of MMORPGs, RPGs and strategy titles. I'll be playing X-com again tonight... i've purchased the original X-com 4 times so time (original, windows CE, playstation one and now 2 dollar steam). Still love it.
If you plan ahead with care, you can have "easily" a game out on a PC and a XBox (just like if you plan with care, you can have a game out in PC and Mac for example). If it makes sense for the game, and you have the possibility (access to the XDK on the XBox360 and a quality game to pass XBLA QA), why not? You can reach far more people that way.
Even talking about indie developers, going multiplatform makes a lot of sense, check Braid for example, out in PC, Mac, and XBLA. Or check World of Goo, out in PC, Mac, and Wiiware. Why are you going to limit yourself to one platform if your game can work on several ones?
The lead developer of Galactic Civilizations and Elemental is female.
A significant portion of the art in Elemental is done by women.
A near majority of the overall code in Elemental is done by female game developers.
yeah, i don't quite understand how/why "female" games would differ from male ones, other than a few cosmetic differences in character choices etc. surely female gamers enjoy slaying dragons or shooting rocket launchers or racing cars as much as their male counterparts?
Does that means it 'appeals' to female gamers though? That was the point.
I don't even know what the opposite context of appealing to male gamers truely is beyond the stereotype of "boobs, guns and explosions". I love playing good characters, not specifically any gender or species - what am I supposed to like? I always see this topic and think "what do they really want/need?", thus what Nesrie is saying is interesting.
(also, the 'massive' was sarcastic)
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