DICE: death of PC claim is ‘bullshit’

[SnesTea]

MikeB said:

Speaking as a PC only gamer last gen, I can easily say PC gaming has declined a lot like it or not. There are many reasons for this.

- Mass piracy on especially the PC platform.

Yeah, I torrented to Halo 2 to see if I could run it on my laptop. I couldn't. So I deleted it.

- Consoles being more comfortable / tidy for most people regarding from the couch gaming in the living room. Consoles becoming more all-in-one multi-media capable (for example Blu-Ray / Blu-Ray 3D playback) and powerful wireless controllers.

Idk man. My friend sits on a pretty posh computer chair that you could fall asleep in. And with the right monitor and computer, you can play Blu-Ray and 3D content.

- Consoles having become far more capable with regard to online gaming and gaming in general, for example LittleBigPlanet user created content or lag free mass online gaming. Consoles having some of the most pretty and impressive games like Gran Turismo, God of War, Killzone, Uncharted, etc. The emergence of HDTVs and surround audio setups.

Once again, I know some guys whose monitors are running 1600x1200 resolution and higher. Plus my brother has surround sound on his computer. All he has to do is hit two buttons and boom, surround sound. As for lag, you win there.

- Microsoft shifting focuss from Windows gaming towards XBox gaming. For example many Microsoft titles are XBox (timed) exclusive, like Halo, Gears of War and Fable series.

Yes, but all we have to do is wait (in the case of Halo, we have to wait for a new OS)

- Many people not wanting to constantly upgrade to play the latest and greatest while knowing a top title a year onwards may crawl or look unimpressive on just upgraded system. Consoles are seeing ever more optimised games released each year (sometimes combined with entry pricing reductions) while PC gamers know that apart from higher resolutions (often played on smaller screen than most HDTVs) at higher framerates there isn't much of an advantage to PC gaming. In any case no PC game can be fully optimised for all those possible different configurations. Actually games which are designed to run well enough on common minimal specs sell much better than those games which are developed to require top level setups.

Enter the Source Engine. Games look and play great, even on a crappy ATi Radeon X1000 series graphics card. A lot of PC gamers don't even run their games at max settings unless they can. I play Left 4 Dead at 720x480 with all graphics settings on their lowest and I still have a blast.

- Laptops having become much more popular than desktop than in the past (recently also iPads etc). They aren't that good for many type of hardcore games.

See previous post.

- Social gaming having become popular, like Wii, PS Move and Kinect.

Read: Bejeweled, Dungeon Master Online, Anarachy Online...Runescape... >.<

There are plenty more reasons, IMO this dev just wants to spread propaganda to mobilize the PC gaming loyalists to buy their game, IMO noting more than that. PC gaming has become far less significant commercially and will probably continue to decline significantly due to many different reasons.

Steam says hi.