Ghost
28th December 2006, 10:16
Hello people,
Well as the topic states, "Is the PC loosing ground?" or perhaps better said "Is the PC loosing grounds when it comes to gaming?"
Back during the home computer wars the PC alwys seemed to pull the short straw when it came with computers, older machines such as the Commodore 64, the Spectrum, and then current machines such as the Amiga and Atari ST seemed to receive much better support when it came to actions, adventure, RPGs, sports, movie tie ins, with the occasional conversion to the PC.
Around the nineties I think this started to change, lots more games started to develop for the PC, and where converted to other machines, as the graphics quality started to improve and the fact that a hard drive became more important if you wanted to make more 'larger' games.
However these days long after the home computer wars, and now in the next gen console wars which contenders how long since caught up with the PC's hardware capabilities, we see a shift from PC to these.
There are probably many reasons but I think the biggest issue might be the software pirating that also plagued the home computers and might have led to their demise.
But the fact is that most developers and publishers rather these days work with the big consoles such as the X360, the upcoming PS3 and to a smaller degree the Wii (I still have to see more software coming for it).
Abandoning the PC market and its users, or publishing lesser.
Perhaps also because most small developers are part of the big publishers, and the costs of developing new software plays a role, in general the costs of a console and a PC game are the same, but console games reach the buying public easier than PC games as a lot of people don't have a PC or not a state of the art one that can run these games.
I am not saying that the PC market is dying but will this shift continue, making it so in the end that PC releases are usually conversions of existing console games or games that were developed at the same time as their console counter parts (which often leads to control related problems).
What do you all think?
Well as the topic states, "Is the PC loosing ground?" or perhaps better said "Is the PC loosing grounds when it comes to gaming?"
Back during the home computer wars the PC alwys seemed to pull the short straw when it came with computers, older machines such as the Commodore 64, the Spectrum, and then current machines such as the Amiga and Atari ST seemed to receive much better support when it came to actions, adventure, RPGs, sports, movie tie ins, with the occasional conversion to the PC.
Around the nineties I think this started to change, lots more games started to develop for the PC, and where converted to other machines, as the graphics quality started to improve and the fact that a hard drive became more important if you wanted to make more 'larger' games.
However these days long after the home computer wars, and now in the next gen console wars which contenders how long since caught up with the PC's hardware capabilities, we see a shift from PC to these.
There are probably many reasons but I think the biggest issue might be the software pirating that also plagued the home computers and might have led to their demise.
But the fact is that most developers and publishers rather these days work with the big consoles such as the X360, the upcoming PS3 and to a smaller degree the Wii (I still have to see more software coming for it).
Abandoning the PC market and its users, or publishing lesser.
Perhaps also because most small developers are part of the big publishers, and the costs of developing new software plays a role, in general the costs of a console and a PC game are the same, but console games reach the buying public easier than PC games as a lot of people don't have a PC or not a state of the art one that can run these games.
I am not saying that the PC market is dying but will this shift continue, making it so in the end that PC releases are usually conversions of existing console games or games that were developed at the same time as their console counter parts (which often leads to control related problems).
What do you all think?