richardhutnik said:
Not dead, but Microsoft closing down PC development studios should be a tip-off to something going on regarding them and PC gaming. |
Yes, they are shifting all their support to the Xbox, where it makes them the most money (though they have still lost money with the xbox 360)
greenmedic88 said:
People do seem to be pulling numbers out of assumptions at this point. But it's pretty hard to deny that retail PC gaming is on the decline (even if just off anecdotal observations of shrinking retail space for games). More PC gamers are buying their games through DD services. And unfortunately, even more are simply stealing their games online for free. I'm not even sure why anyone is touting Onlive as the future of PC gaming at this point, even if it does work EXACTLY as advertised on the weakest Atom powered netbook in existence as well as 10 year old PCs held together with bubble gum and duct tape. Onlive has a huge amount of logistical issues to address before their business model is viable. No one should count on it "replacing consoles." But if they get everything up and running and are able to convince all the major software publishers to partner up, it's not going to be limited to old games obviously. Any new PC release should be made shortly avalable for play, no different than Steam or other DD services. |
Onlive already has the support of EA and Blizzard Activision and a few others, so they only need to make Onlive work properly.
richardhutnik said:
shio comes on a videogame fan forum (mostly console owners) and needs to feel ballsy about the PC's standings for gaming, so anything that undermines this would cause shio's world to fall apart. He can't bear to think that consoles still remain relevant, and for a multitude of reasons, more developers would rather create games for consoles than the PC. |
Huh? I have nothing against consoles except the fact that it's awful to play a FPS with a gamepad, and a gamepad gives nowhere near the possibilities a Keyboard+Mouse does in terms of gameplay. And actually there are more developers working on PC games than in all consoles combined.
richardhutnik said:
So the electronic gaming industry is bigger in these other PC-centric countries by a factor of what? Can you list that number? Please state how much more video/computer games sell in Eastern Europe and Asian then the markets mentioned. Can you even do this? Or, do you like to lurk behind fog, with the belief in this fog is a monster that will devower all the console peons that refuse to bow to the glory of your PC master race. And if these markets are so huge, as you hint at, and digital downloads as large as you are making them out to be, why doesn't Acitivision list them? Are they hiding these revenues offshore in accounts, to avoid paying taxes? Isn't there laws against this, and there could be a class-action lawsuit by shareholders for underreporting revenue? Or, is it that the money from digital downloads and unreported countries are unknown by Activision, and it shows up in unmarked bills in their corporate headquarters when they aren't looking? In other words, they accounting flat out SUCKS that they are unable to track revenue. Or is it that you count PIRATING of games as actual digital distribution of games? And how much bigger is digital downloads over the entire videogame industry? You make it out like Steam is bigger than World of Warcraft. |
Eastern european and asian markets are the fastest growing markets in the videogame industry. Sure, they're not big, but in them PC gaming is so big and because they are becoming more relevant it is only a good thing for PC gaming. As for China, it increased 75% last year, and very soon it will become bigger than the Japanese market.
Activision didn't list those countries because they took from NPD Group, Chart Track, and GfK Group, and those three don't track the eastern european markets, nor asian markets.
| PS3beats360 said: It is understandable the PC version of the game may be canceled due to widespread PC game piracy which severely reduces PC game sales. |
Was that the reason they said they cancelled Alan Wake for PC? Infact, they blamed Microsoft, not piracy.
Stan85 said:
True,the Pc porting cost will be higher than the profit,so it was a good move. Pc piracy is another reason. But the true reason is that MS needs a true 360 exclusive. With minimum costs,it has one. What more could they want? If they do release it on Pc,the high system demands and piracy will kill the profit of the port and everyone will say,as they always do, "it`s on Pc also,so it`s not exclusive"...then comes the talk "it`s console exclusive because the ps3 doesn`t get it and Pc is not a console,etc etc..." Alan Wake is a 360 exclusive sponsored and published by MS...the end. |
The game was being developed on PC, not Xbox 360. Remedy PR specifically blamed the publisher(which is Microsoft) for denying the release of the PC version, not piracy.
This piracy arugment is blown out of proportion. Piracy is bad but when even small developers can make million sellers on PC without any advertisement, when there are more developers on PC than ever, more PC games than ever and dozens of niche markets flourish on PC...
