The ultimate thread!! ..well atleast it touches on some of the major topics within gaming forums :)

Something struck me as interesting the other day when i was browsing these forums, and i thought id share it with you and see what you make of it. First off we got the threads such as 'Which console should i buy' & ' 'Which console have the best Exclusives' - which both tend to receive a farily common argument that the 360 dosent have any big title exclusives and that one should go with a PS3 since most 360 exclusives are on the PC aswell. But wait, before you skip the rest of this text and go straight to the reply to write 'Well, very few have PCs that can handle the top tier games that are console exclusives to the Xbox so its a moot argument', bare with me just a little longer.

PC gaming, only for WoW and RTS games. Very few can even run any other games on their PCs, as stated above but also due to the hassle of hardware upgrades, downloading patches and the constant threat of viruses. PC gaming is practically dead. Its expensive, you need know-how and not a whole lot of people have all of the above to run or buy a super gaming rig. And thats the beauty of Console gaming, you just have to plug it in and your good to go. But for the PC its always a gamble to see if games are compatible with newly released games. Each game basicly requires a new hardware upgrade.

And finally there's Piracy, bad business for PC gaming. Some claim that PC gaming is on the verge of extinction and all roads points to PC piracy. This massive 'industry' of pirates are single handedly killing the gaming industry and shutting down studios because they're stealing the studios profits to such a degree that they have to fire all of their employees and file for bankruptcy. Its hard out there.

But then i thought.. which one is it? In some arguments, the PC is trash and no one has the money to upgrade their hardware to a super mega gaming rig. But later on, these same PC owners are downloading the same games they previously couldn't play and are the sole reason to why the gaming industry is falling apart.

And thats my line of thought. Any thoughts on it? 

To make it clear. Isnt it strange that no one has a gaming PC that can handle.. lets say Mass Effect 2. Yet PC pirates are downloading the same game to such a degree that its hurting the business.

This article: http://www.videogamer.com/features/article/18-12-2007-223.html - even touches on all of what ive said. PC gaming is in trouble because A) No one has the Tech, and goes on to says B) PC gaming is dying becayse of Piracy. If no one got the tech, why would they download a game that their hardware cant support.. to such a degree that it suffers from millions i lost copies sold?

No one?

The PC will probably never die as a videogame platform. The day the PS360 actually have a solution for MMOs and RTSs to perform better than on the PC, then I might think so. And most Indie Studios start on the PC... I'll consider an exception Hello Games (developers of Joe Danger)
What the PC might get is less support from developers due to piracy, at least until they find a good way to don't get hacked.

In my personal point of view, consoles are and always will be more fun than PCs because I give alot of value to the offline multyplayer. Consoles have more exclusives due to the existance of First Party studios, they're more fun (at least for me)... plus I'm a poor n00b when it comes to upgrade my PC lol

PC games can sell well (see Dragon Age approx~1.3 millon PC sales). Mass Effect 2 is adding content to help combat piracy. As more content is added, more people want the extra content. I do like this approach from EA of adding content for people buying the game. WoW is just the extreme example of this. PC gaming is in decline but it is not dead yet.

^ Both great inputs.. but i was thinking more in the lines of why people claim that no one has über gaming rig that can play top tier games, yet pirates download these titles in the millions.. seems like a strange thing to do if they dont have the tech to support the games they download.

But nvm.. seems as if i was the only one that found it funny. Atleast now i got a refrence thread to copy paste everytime the subject comes up. Good day.

Obviously there are quite a number of people who have quality gaming rigs. Gaming rigs just aren't as popular as consoles.

And just because a game has plenty of downloads doesn't mean that the gamers have the specs to play the game at a respectable framerate. A lot of people who downloaded Crysis when it came out were surprised to find that it ran like shit (very slow framerate) on their PC. Minimum spec requirements don't mean shit. You can't always know if your PC will be able to run the game at a respectable framerate or not before playing it. And even if I have my doubts whether my computer would be able to run a game at a good frame rate, I'll download it anyway to see for myself.