A misconception. It's not dead (or close), it's just changed a bit. There are still plenty of devs, a lot of them up and comming, that release some really quality titles on PC. It's also the best place to play the best indie titles; PSN, Wii ware and Live Arcade just can't compare. And all the devs you mentioned are still developing and publishing for PC as well as consoles, so I don't see how it's nearing death. All devs have to start somewhere and that's always been on PC (in the West at least). Today's up and comming PC devs are tommorrow's multiplatform devs.

Blizzard don't make good games... they make the best games...

But I have to agree with Shio's argument that the PC is seeing much more console games comming.... However, I believe that this is due in part to the fact that the X360 is an easy jump to the PC.... similarly, it's also why all these publishers came to consoles.... look at Epic and Valve that stay axed on the X360 rather than supporting all HD.... the 360/PC is a good combo for them as the increase of costs isn't significant.

Basically the publishers shifting one way or an other is a moot point due to consoles being much closer to PCs than they ever were in development terms.


About the sales... well yes it is impressive to see these boosts, though numbers sure would help. One this is sure though is that the ME1 poping back up is damn impressive.

Well, I don't really see the fuss about PC being better than consoles, for me I play both as console controller makes it more chanlleging and trains your response time faster.

wait what?

controlers make response times faster? umh??

Japanese developers putting games on PC just makes sense. In fact, it's ridiculous that they basically ignored it for ages. But that is due to trying to reach the western market more, and also because the 360 is so similar to PC. Those titles sell a fraction of what they sell on 360/PS3, at least on retail.

My point wasn't that PC gaming is dying or some like that, but rather that there are strong PC titles and companies, but gaming as a whole has moved to console in a big way, you can easily see that in traditional PC developers who have moved to attack the console space.

VGChartz doesn't track PC numbers, but you can see from sales tables that PC ports of multiplats are much lower in the pecking order. Alot of them are also released much later, akin to the "PS3 release of former 360 exclusives", and you know how badly some of those sell.

You also have to take into account that X number of units sold isn't an accurate reflection of a game's success, PC games are discounted much more heavily than consoles titles, Steam does insane sales (like Mass Effect for $3 last december), etc, overall, even if ME1 had 2 million on both platforms, the 360 version would have been much more profitable. PC also has heavy piracy issues, as well as configuration issues, and the fact a lot of people want to play in their big screen living room TV, not on their desk in front of a monitor. Heck, you even see PC games nowadays that have "less features" than they used to because they are "consolized".

There's lots of reasons for PC nowadays selling less copies, and only one that can be said for the reverse - that the PC userbase is huge. Well, if that translated into sales, consoles wouldn't be as big as they are now.

I consider myself a hardcore PC gamer first and foremost, but I have no illusions about the current state of the market. Out of all my friends, i'm the only one that still buys retail PC titles or even Steam titles, all my friends pirate PC games unless it's an MMO, and have bought consoles because they can't afford a good gaming rig.

I prefer to play on mouse and keyboard while wearing boxing gloves...

Unless you have figures for both retail and digital distribution, these sort of statements are meaningless. If you want a glimpse at the sort of sales that PC games achieve, have a look at http://dev.zr40.nl/steam/games. These are achievement figures from just 40% of the Steam userbase (the 10 million or so that have set up community profiles), the actual figures will be much higher.

Also, take a look at http://www.pcgamingalliance.org/ - PC gaming revenue approached $13 billion in 2008, a healthy rise over 2007- given Steam's astonishing increase in sales last year (>200%), I'd expect 2009 to be very healthy as well. PC gaming isn't dying, it's just not subject to the sort of facile quantification that consoles are.

That just made my day.

Most wonderful post in a month!!!

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

On topic, I'm really happy that it sells well on PC but I would be astonishingly surprised if it coud sell half the copies than in 360.

I assume something between 1/3-1/2

Isn't that what you just did? Made up some sales figures.

To be fair, he did pull them out of his ass with a nice flourish.