I think that it will definitely help consoles sell better! But what is true I think is that people would play on the platform they prefer...

Like I prefer to us a consoles for gaming and us a PC for most other things and then tablet and phones obviously for portable things. But the point I want to make is everyone of those things has there uses. It is really going to be up to each user what they can life and life without...

*cough* Activision.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/119977/Kotick_70_Of_Activision_Operating_Profit_Comes_From_NonConsoleBased_Games.php

70% of Activisions Operating Profit comes outside of the console market.

Publishers like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Valve, CD Projekt Red... Do NOT have to pay the Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo Tax on PC.
You think releasing on a console is free? It's not, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo take a chunk of cash for each game sold.

Of course platform owners have special deals for Indies and such which can make it a good decision, which makes your example an exception rather than the vast majority rule.


And here you go. Although I was unsure on the exact profit margins... Seems I was right anyway.
And I quote: "On Steam publishers earn a gross margin of 70 per cent, compared to the 30 per cent offered at retail stores. "

http://www.techspot.com/news/42447-valve-were-more-profitable-per-employee-than-google-apple.html
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0228/technology-gabe-newell-videogames-valve-online-mayhem.html
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/02/14/valve-more-profitable-per-head-than-google/

It was an example... So here is another.

Let's take Minecraft.
It has sold more copies on PC than any single console platform. (Excluding the dumbed-down PE edition for mobile.)
With 21,290,468 copies sold.

This may interest you: http://www.dsogaming.com/news/report-a-vast-number-of-multi-platform-games-sell-better-on-the-pc-than-on-xbox-one/

And this: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/companies/2014/04/28/pc-games-are-now-outselling-console-games-worldwide-says-report

And here is this: http://kotaku.com/5479698/what-your-60-really-buys
Remove the $7 Royalty, $7 returns and in many cases the $15 retailer margin... And there is a 50% profit advantage for a PC sale over a console sale for many publishers/developers.

This also might help explain and put things into perspective for you: http://www.thegamersblog.com/understanding-the-numbers-pc-vs-console-sales-figures/


Star citizen has had modules released. 

Indeed.  But if you are implying that all PC gamers are chinese... And thus all our games are Chinese... Then you would be sadly mistaken.
You should really buy a high-end PC, whack Steam onto it and find out for yourself. You just may walk away pleasently surprised, heck you might even learn something new.

PC gaming companies still make the bulk of their sales in the Western world.

We have exclusives like Civilization, The Settlers, Heroes of Might and Magic, StarCraft, Company of Heroes, Arma, Men of War, Red Orchestra, Sim City, The Sims, X3 and many many more.
Some of the best games of all time actually... And I havent even mentioned games like League of Legends, Dota 2, StarWars the old republic, Mechwarrior Online and many many more.

I appreciate your optimistic and well research but there will be no way consoles can ever get bigger than PC, especially this genaration. Even if you add OUYA and Steam machine in it (lol).

Mainly becuz both Sony and Microsoft are trying to get rig of the console market, heck even way back in 2013 when Microsoft first announced the Xbox One, Sony too ofc.

Reasons ? You will soon find out in 2017, im gurantee :).

I thought Europe didn't allow those type of contracts so most people over there have to purchase their phones outright and can use them on all the networks.

OT:I highly doubt mobile market share will shrink any or slow down much in growth. I do think consoles will have a better go at the European market though...don't forget about China as well.

Well that's of course bullshit that pc's woudn't exist without consoles but it's the same the other way around consoles would still exist even without pc's the market is big enough for that.

the best recent example I can think of is that:

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Witcher-3-Wouldn-t-Exist-Consoles-72064.html

http://www.gamezone.com/news/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-wouldn-t-exist-as-it-is-today-without-consoles-3416705

Well let us imagine a world without pc's or gaming pc's would sony stop producing consoles? would sony stop producing first party games? would nintendo stop with producing games and consoles? I don't agree with that, why should they stop? They make so much money with that and not one cent comes from pc's for both of them.

so what would change for sony and nintendo? microsoft is a bit outside of that with the opening up to the pc market.

Bolded: Case in point the witcher 3 (the witcher 1 a pc exclusive and witcher 2 xbox console exclusive) sold more on ps4 than pc.

I don't think or rather believe that the hit would not be that big for consoles the producing cost woudn't be that much bigger but I can't really say something about that.

Let's just agree that both platforms can be happy the other one exist^^

Is there a upcoming ps4 slim? I really can't believe they can make the ps4 even skinnier.

1. You might want to check your Activision data again for 2014. PC - 13%vs. console - 49%.

2. Steam margin means nothing if the value itself is low, as demonstrated by the example that I gave. High numbers but low revenue.

3. Minecraft was released on PC for how many years before it was released on console again?

4. You put up a link about mutiplatform games selling better on PC than the X1 but says that the PS4 outsells both.

5. You also put up a link about PC games revenue, which includes social network games, MMOs from Asian, etc. And as I said, 1.4B people in China is a big market. Yes, China makes up 1 out 3 PC gamers.

6. None of those games that you listed interest me. If hey did, I might have gotten a PC. Honestly MOBAs and RTS or city building sims are boring to me.

Life is always easier in hindsight.

But the answer is... Maybe.

What if... Nintendo and Sony's partnership played out and Sony never enetered the market?
What-if, consoles never existed, which meant Nintendo never existed, which meant that Sony never had any need/want/desire to enter the console market?

But I'll bite.

No. Sony wouldn't stop producing consoles. Why should they? They make money. They are a business. They like money. They want money. They will try to earn money.
Same with their first party games, if it's profitable, why not?

I am not suggesting that consoles should cease to exist, just saying a PC from a technical standpoint doesn't need consoles to exist, they don't fund the hardware development. The reverse isn't true however.


Now you ask the *real* question. What would change?

Well. Let's remove all PC technology from the equation.

That means, no Jaguar CPU, that means no GDDR5 Ram, That means no Radeon or Geforce GPU.

So what would you use to build a Playstation 4? Well. You would likely go Rambus like with the Playstation 3. The CPU? PowerPC hands down, just like the Playstation 3.
GPU? Adreno? Qualcom bought that from AMD/ATI. "Adreno" is a play on the word "Radeon" (Letters mixed up.) So that would need the PC market to exist.
PowerVR? Likely wouldn't exist, they used to be PC.
Mali?
Tegra wouldn't happen. That is PC.
So let's go with Mali.

The fastest Mali GPU back in 2013 when the consoles launched was the Mali T604. Which could have up to "8" GPU compute cores, with each core being rouhgly 17Gflop. Aka. At most 136Gflop.

Essentially... Your consoles today might have been a little faster in terms of CPU power, possibly a little more Ram. (Rambus loves to fleece users with high pricing, that would hamper things.) and a significantly inferior GPU which would mean lower quality textures, shadows, Anti-Aliasing, resolution, framerates, cats' etc' compared to the last generation. Not ideal is it?

And I haven't touched on other things like Operating Systems. API's. PS3/PS4 use a PC OS. - Linux and PC API's. - OpenGL or a derivative.
Converesly, most of the worlds internet infrustructure exists because of the PC, it's what runs business's/internet, it is what brought things like Facebook and Email to the world.
It's what is used as the technology for your servers that you play your console games on.

What would happen to PC's from a technical perspective if consoles never existed? Nothing. Literally. Nothing.

Games are a little different and a little more difficult to quantify.

For one, PC games have legs. Legs that carry them for years.

Let's take the original Fable for instance... That was released on the PC back in 2005, 10 years ago.
It had moderate success.
However, years later it was released on Steam, no added work, no overhaul, no patches, nothing, just released on Steam where it sold a fairly substantual amount of copies, maybe even more than it's original PC release.
Then every now and then, maybe a couple times a year... It goes on sale where it shoots up to the top of the sales charts, shifting more and more copies.

Over time, I wouldn't be surprised if the PC version of the game outsells the Xbox version of the game.

The Original StarCraft for instance sold reasonably well on it's release... But 10 years later, it had shifted almost 10 million copies as it was on sale for that entire period.

And you are right about The Witcher 3.
However, you failed to tell the entire story.

CD Projekt Red has higher profit margins on the PC. And the majority of PC's sales are digital.
In the end... Despite digital only being 25% of sales, it ended up being 50% of revenue, bulk of which was PC.

Regardless, it's common knowledge that some games will always sell better on PC some better on console. Always been that way, always will be that way, fact of the matter is... Less copies need to be sold on PC to be successful, that has always been that way.

It's clear in black and white in the context that I originally conveyed.

One example of a poorly received, not very popular indie game. Sure. I can see how that is a blanketed example for the entire industry. (That is sarcasm.)

There are plenty of Steam success stories.
Cthulhu saves the world. Outsold the console version 10 to 1.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/02/indie-game-developers-look-tosteam-on-the-pc-instead-of-xbox-live-for-commercial-success/

This guy made $2 million bucks thanks to Steam, beating out all other paltforms.
http://www.coldbeamgames.com/blog/november-26th-2012

Uh. That is always going to be a "thing". - PC games can continue to be sold indefinitely. A console game can only be on sale for the life of the device.

Still. Minecraft PC has still outsold any console version and continues to do so.
I'll ask again. Want more examples? Or are we done here?

Only for those games listed. You are missing the point that they (And I.) are trying to convey however.

Well. Consoles are sold in Asian countries too. Apples to Apples you see. World wide vs World wide. Or do you want Western (PC) vs Worldwide (Consoles.) as you believe that is a fairer comparison point?

Prove it.

Personal opinion. Not relevent to the topic at hand.