Topic: PC gaming, about to die or experience a revival?

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

When I say PC I mean just that, Personal Computer, so interpret it how you will. For me I exclude mobile devices, especially phones and tablets. Which is the heart of my question. With the rise of mobile and the console gamers becoming more loyal to their machine is there a chance that dedicated PC gaming will die, for real this time? Things like Steam Machine don't really count as proper PC gaming to me either, I consider that more of a console type gaming situation but I don't know maybe the real question is will gaming on Windows/Mac(ha) and even Lin...I couldn't finish that one. Seriously is PC gaming as a whole on the decline? I hear talk that PC's, desktop and laptop, are being replaced by tablets. I think for the masses this is true but I wonder, will the enthusiasts stop buying dedicated hardware?

Think about it like this. Back in the 80's and early 90's "PC" literally meant IBM PC, computer was a generic term because well there were just too many to chose from but computing was a very niche hobby that mostly appealed to professionals, hobbyists, and gamers. In the late 90's until now PC has become a little easier to define, basically all non-Windows PC's disappeared from the market with Mac being the only odd exception and even those are not the same as Apple's back in those old days.

Anyways then in the 90's to 2000's computers became multimedia machines, powerful super computers that did the internet, DVD's, music, streaming, gaming, poker, porn, publications, publishing, desktop productivity, web design, etc. Then computer became mainstream but it also didn't. Tablets are technically computers but not in the traditional sense. But most people aren't even buying tablets for their needs, they get a smart phone and a smart TV and that handles their media side, then if they need to do work they get a tablet but only those in dedicated fields that rely on powerful machines use traditional PC's anymore.


If we consider the media consumers who used multimedia computers have switched to media devices and smart devices, Roku, Playstation, Smart TV, etc, then we can remove them from the PC market. Then we remove the "family budget" types who use their computers for doing their taxes and little else. Many of them have switched to tablets or laptops and laptops are shrinking in terms of capabilities for gaming.

Then we have the Productivity people. I am not sure if you can get a real inDesign, Photoshop, or any of those programs, or apps if you will, on a tablet but I do know you can do web design on a tablet, you can do photo editing, you can do video editing, so for the non-professional there is no longer a need to have a dedicated computer either. The pros are either going to stick to the hardware or find professional tools on a tablet.


So that leaves the office workers, dedicated gamers, and enthusiasts. Office, Cloud computing, Open office, things of that sort, are available on mobile machines now too so that market is shrinking. All that is left is the enthusiasts who still do everything on a PC because an all-in-one machine appeals more than having multiple devices, but even many of them/us, are also getting these devices for convenience sake and doing less and less on our dedicated computers.

All that leaves are the gamers, and they know have Steam Machines, Xbox, Playstation, and well not Wii U because honestly the games PC gamers buy just are not on Wii U stop lying no they are not, not really. Okay some of the steam and mobile stuff, I said stop it Wii U is not an option, quit. Fine throw Wii U in there for good measure. With all these choices the PC gamer no longer needs a dedicated Windows or mac (sorry trying not to laugh) machine to play their PC video games on. Sure there are always going to be those nuts who think a keyboard is better than a proper controller or the rest of us who use our controller ON our PC because that actually makes real sense.


*crickets* 


Well I thought it was an interesting discussion... Fine be that way.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

Whatever dude, you forgot that real gamers will always buy PC's because the games will always come to PC first, then they will get their console release, then their "mobile" release, and finally a late port/remix for the, whatever it is Nintendo is doing, then if the Nintendo version even gets made, and doesn't totally flop, somewhere down the lines a Mac port might get put into the works.


PC gaming is going to live forever right. Sorry I got a little weird in my last post, it has now been 20 days since I have had a day off and I am working tonight too so my brain is about to burn out. Well technically I was off yesterday but I did goto a Super Bowl party and wrote a story about the game so that doesn't really count.

[Wah]

The Pc will never die, it keeps growing and getting better at a much constant rate then Consoles.

[Evan_B]

I don't know, Mikey. I have found that my close gaming friends, who were raised on consoles, are actually abandoning them because "Steam plays everything".

I definitely think that Steam has its fair share of issues and its not a perfect service, but I also think console gaming might burn out more quickly than PC.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

But what about Steam Machine, that was my point if Steam is providing an alternative to "proper" or at least traditional PC gaming, does that mean it is dying?

[TOPHATANT123]

I believe PC overtook consoles in terms of revenue a while ago.

[Evan_B]

No, it means they're trying to capitalize on an audience who likes gaming on larger screens.

And failing, mind you, since the performance is garbage. But whatever.

[Triforce Hermit]

PC won't die (not anytime soon anyways),but damn I hate that Steam is the industry leader there and I would much prefer GoG if they got more games.

[UncleBob]

PCs themselves are dying.  Folks in their late teens, 20s and early 30s pretty much grew up with a PC in the home - so we're gung-ho on  PC gaming.  Shopping and communication (and porn) are the main reasons everyone had PCs in their homes.

With tablets, smart phones, and streaming TV devices, homes are starting to trend away from a PC.  Why do I want a device tethered to my house to check Facebook and shop Amazon?  I can do all that from my phone.

Hell, I often find myself checking various internet sites on my phone at home because it's more convenient than doing it on my PC.

Some homes will still need a dedicated "computer" (For work, for play, whatever), but I think as phones and tablets improve (I'd be interested in comparing the specs of my cell phone to my first computer... a high school friend of mine had this old hard drive he kept around for kicks - roughly the size and weight of a red clay brick and was a whopping 512MB...), we'll see fewer homes with a dedicated computer - which will create a generation of people who just don't see PC gaming as something they care about.

Remember when we all made fun of WebTV?  How many of you have internet-connected SmartTVs?  Yeah...

[nickmitch]

To UncleBob's point, I think gaming is going to be what drives the PC industry in the future.  I think the future of desktops, even for work, are going to be dockable tablets that still give you your three giant monitors and wireless keyboard and mouse, basically the way laptops are now.  But I think there will still be the novelty of having a "supercomputer" for games.  So, while for most practical purposes, tablets and smart phones and TVs will be fine, some people will want a PC for games, as long as they can be more powerful than tablets.

[Wah]

18 and hard-core PC gamer, sure bob whatever you say.

[Wah]

oh and over 25 friends on steam (that I know) around my age.

[Ian Sane]

Anyone that thinks that tablets will replace PCs obviously never uses a computer to do anything resembling real work.  At the very least a work "tablet" would have all the functionality of a proper computer with mouse and keyboards and multiple monitors and the whole shebang.  At that point is there any real difference between a tablet and a PC?  The OS certainly would need the flexibility of a proper OS.  There's a reason Windows 8 wasn't just Metro.  When people talk about tablets replacing PCs they make it sound like everyone is using that phone/tablet style interface where you can only see one program at a time and all interaction is with the touchscreen.  That's ridiculous.  You couldn't do **** in the real business world if you were restricted in that manner.  If anything the differentiation between tablet and PC will blur.  Windows 8 being both a tablet OS and a PC OS is probably more what the future will hold.

As for PC games, I don't think PC gaming will completely die.  If there is a piece of electronics people will create games for it.  Now how big that market will be is unknown.  Of course PCs have been well past the point where whatever PC you buy at Best Buy will play the current games.  Since the 90s you've needed a half-decent video card for example.  A work PC does not need a powerful graphics card unless you're doing something with graphics specifically so it has been normal for quite a while for run-of-the-mill PCs to not be worth a damn for games.  So those playing PC games are enthusiasts and have been willing for decades to upgrade their hardware beyond what an average mainstream user would have.

I think the threat is that PC gaming is losing it's uniqueness in comparison to consoles.  The two formats were quite segregated in the past.  But now developers tend to make multiplatform games that include the PC.  In that case the PC gaming scene and the console gaming scene are one in the same.  It's just a videogames scene.  The way things have gone in the future someone identifying themselves as a "PC gamer" is going to sound silly as their experience is no different from console gamers.

With the rise of smartphones and the "games" that pollute them any threat of PC gaming dying equally applies to console or handheld gaming.  In such a hypothetical scenario the casual users will have enough buying influence to make the interests of dedicated gamers too niche to be worth investing in.  If tablets truly take over to the point where PCs are niche for any use then I figure dedicated videogame consoles and handhelds would be even more niche.

[UncleBob]

18 and hard-core PC gamer, sure bob whatever you say.

PCs themselves are dying.  Folks in their late teens, 20s and early 30s pretty much grew up with a PC in the home - so we're gung-ho on  PC gaming.

Reading is FUNdamental.

Anyone that thinks that tablets will replace PCs obviously never uses a computer to do anything resembling real work.

Agreed.  I can't see doing my job on a tablet.  But, I feel the number of people who would need a computer at home for work (and be able to let the kids install/play games on it) is not going to be significant over the next few years.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

That was pretty much the point I was making Ian, if the only people buying PC's are professionals that use them at work and enthusiasts is the enthusiast market left enough to maintain support? I am talking about if those hard core PC gamers start buying into not just Steam Machine but whatever else comes along to further fragment that market.

Out of everyone in my family two of us have traditional PC's, me with my laptop and my mom with her desktop. Mom is a business woman, she needs Windows she needs the productivity Windows provides but she also has a tablet for all of her non-work related stuff. If Tablets get to a point where someone who uses their desktop or laptop for that other stuff is equal then will those people just shift to tablets?


I am sort of with Uncle Bob, I think work is a different market than home. I know that professionals will continue using some sort of personal computer for a while but how many people soup up their work computer for pc gaming? I am betting pretty close to zero.

Console gaming and PC gaming have blurred and now with Steam Machines, sure the current crop might suck or they might not live up to expectations but with as much effort as Valve has put into them I doubt they will walk away, I mean Windows is the corner stone of Microsoft's empire yet they constantly jeopardize that part of the business to grow their mobile and gaming divisions. I guess what I am wondering is will we see a future, like ten years or even less, where "PC gaming' just disappears because the person who normally would have purchased the dedicated gaming computer no longer has the need to do so.

Hell the reason PC gaming existed in the first place was because PC's were in their home anyways and they wanted to soup them up for gaming but also used them for other things, the young generation is not going to see the need to buy a computer for gaming when they can get a console or a steam machine or something equal and get all their other non-gaming computing done elsewhere.


Kind of like how in the early days of computers an enthusiast would buy a computer for the hell of it and gaming was all they did to justify buying a machine. In the 90's they became multipurpose and people outside the niche market found a need but if you take away all the other needs do you still have enough of a benefit owning a dedicated PC or does it make more sense for the average person to stick with a tablet and smart TV device and get their gaming on the console?

The reason PC gaming worked was because in addition to the enthusiasts who had to have powerful machines to keep up with the current games were offset but the masses buying computers to keep costs down. Even if you bought an off the shelf computer for home office stuff you could still play some games with very little effort and get semi-current games on low to mid settings with some fiddling, for most people that was always good enough. But if that segment of the market is gone or shrinking then the costs of a dedicated PC especially a gaming or even mulitmedia rig, increase then that market shrinks further.

Hell it has been six years since I have owned a desktop and I don't know when I will ever buy another one again since laptops tend to meet my needs. I used to be more of a PC gamer back when it was worth it to spend money on an all in one entertainment device that I could also game on, browse the internet, stream videos, listen to music, and even type a word document. Now I do my word documents and productivity on my laptop, I get my music on my iPod and smart phone, I get most of my gaming between my PS3/PS4 and Wii U, my PS3/PS4 have taken the mantle for all of my media needs outside of my ipod/Smartphone with pandora and spotify handling my music on the go needs.

Even if I didn't have all those other devices taking the gaming off my laptop I still cannot see a reason to buy a desktop and I grew up on them. I use a desktop at work sure, but it's a ten year old mac mini that we will use until it dies and then find some refurbished 8 year old mac mini to dust off and take it's place. I imagine I am not alone in this and I am the PC gaming market, I just don't game on the PC as much, Ian be honest with yourself DO YOU? Based on your fondness for the past I see you personally maybe keeping a desktop PC around for nostalgia but be honest man, do you really have a need in your house for a desktop machine that serves as your primary gaming rig? does anyone?

If you can get steam on a relatively cheap dedicated gaming rig wouldn't it make more sense to buy that than buy an off the shelf box and soup it up? Let me be clear here, I was not referring to the enthusiast who builds their own machine, I already included them in the market that will keep buying those machines, but if you remove every other segment does that leave enough market left to make traditional PC business model sustainable?

I guess the heart of the question is, is there a future without dedicated Windows desktops? If everyone stops making desktop machines for gamers to soup up then they have to go back to the build your own route, those people have always done so but there are millions of "PC" gamers that are not the typical PC gamer enthusiast but more the typical PC user who happened to game on their machine, are there going to be enough of them left in five years to sustain that segment of the market and keep costs down?


I know PC gamers who spend upwards to $5000 every five years to get a new gaming machine, are those same people, or people like them, going to do so if the cost for a medium grade gaming rig becomes $12,000 entry level? I doubt it.

[ThePerm]

I can see businesses switching to tablets. Why? I used to work at a company that was totally incompetent. Not everything that changes, changes for the better. Tablets are trendy.

I think in the near future PC will be pretty niche. It will make a comeback though, eventually.

At my house I used to use Wii U as my netflix player, but when they changed the design I switched to one of my PCs hooked up to a 1080p display. I use a wireless mouse, and keyboard. Ideally though I would just use a tablet and it would just mirror control my pc. Right now I use tablets to look **** up while I do media stuff on my pc.

I have another computer in another room hooked up to a smaller monitor for gaming and "art". I wrote a novel, made a metroid clone demo. I could never do that on a tablet. I would just get annoyed and give up.

[nickmitch]

Anyone that thinks that tablets will replace PCs obviously never uses a computer to do anything resembling real work.

Agreed.  I can't see doing my job on a tablet.  But, I feel the number of people who would need a computer at home for work (and be able to let the kids install/play games on it) is not going to be significant over the next few years.

The way I work now, I have two (or three) monitors, a keyboard, a mouse, and a handful of other things plugged into my laptop, which sits on a dock.  I rarely interact with the laptop physically, unless I'm on the go.  I think, if a tablet can become that powerful and have the OS, then I can replace the laptop.  If I need to work on the road, an attachable keyboard and trackpad will suffice.

Now, if you need 32 GB of RAM and 16 TB of hard drive, then that's gonna be a different story.

[lolmonade]

I work in a large, large company.  We're just starting to make options for tablets to connect to our internet & remote VPN.  Smaller companies might start using tablets (one of our suppliers actually does this, makes it easy for them to mark up a print with changes they want to a product they're quoting with us), but the size of the ship will largely depend on how quickly they can turn.  My company is largely moving to smaller laptops, not touchscreens.




For gaming, I'm actually working selecting parts for my first PC build, but this is borne out of necessity at this point.  My last couple of computers I bought from Best Buy, but the last one was in 2006.  If you go into one now, they have maybe 2-3 desktops that are woefully underpowered for anything serious.  Everything else in their computer section are laptops, tablets, and Apple products. 


It's a weird transition period we're in.  I think a lot of people are seeing tablets as a tool for casual computer tasks (check email, facebook, twitter, etc), laptops for mid-tier work (think Microsoft Office), and desktops for dedicated functions that require heavy processing. 


To answer the OP's initial question - I think PC gaming is growing, but the growth pace is slowing.  A lot of people jumped on board for PC gaming when Steam started doing their huge sales a couple times a year, but I think that growth has to cap as people who see value in PC gaming intersect with people who see more value in a "plug-and-play" experience that consoles historically have provided.  But while I think the population of PC gamers will cap-off, I think that traditionally console developers are making a greater effort to port their games to PC when they now see that PC is actually another viable revenue stream.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

I want to buy a dedicated desktop PC just for gaming purposes but I think it might be more worth my money to just pick up an Xbox One or wait and see what the NX ends up being/doing.

I am also kind of tempted to start setting back money for Sony VR not sure when it launches or what it will be like but I watched Hackers a couple of weeks ago and my interest in VR is starting to rise again.

[oohhboy]

One word: Steam.

[adolfo9]

Second word: Sale!!

[lesavit7]

Why would PC gaming die when you need a PC to make a game?

[ThePerm]

a few years from now computers with the power of ps4 will be really cheap and really small.

[Lemonade]

PC gaming is definitely not dead. Its only getting more and more popular.

I was into PC gaming from about 2007-2012. At the time my gaming PC was pretty high end and I was doing regular upgrades. I got the best of everything I could until my mainboard couldnt handle anything better.

But after Skyrim and Max Payne 3 and a bit of Path of Exile, I kind of lost interest. It doesnt help being a computer technician either. The last thing I want to do when I get home is sit at another computer. Its much more enjoyable sitting on my sofa and playing consoles.

The only PC game I have bought since Max Payne 3 is Fallout 4, which I bought at launch day. Even though my computer is 6 or 7 years old now, it still managed to run it pretty well. You can thank the mighty GTX 480 for that.

[oohhboy]

Why are we even discussing this, we all know we need PCs/macs to create games. That single fact is all you need to remember.

Not really. When they make the games in an SDK, the game doesn't run on the hardware they develop on, it is run through the actual and very different hardware it is suppose to run on.

While the question asked in this thread is asinine now, it was a relevant question from 2000 ~ 2008. During that time, the PC space was exceptionally thin and consoles the superior choice. PC hardware was moving too fast especially with the then fairly new 3D accelerator cards where hardware had a lifetime measured in months before the next game kicked it to the curb.

Genres available had near imploded. Anything that wasn't an FPS, RTS and the odd RPG just wasn't a thing. Flight simulators died, space sims died, Sim City stalled out killing sims in that direction. Platformers? hell no. Turn based strategy had disappeared. Point and click? HAHAHaha. It was dire.

You still had to go to physical stores for games and more often than not the console games would be cheaper and if you were willing to go second hand, even more so while this wasn't an option for PC. Patches was dicey as network infrastructure wasn't great and visibility of problems low.

Like the hardware, software libraries was in constant flux and immature making it hard to do anything. OS stability was dicey and had less protection than now to prevent hardlocks. Throw unbelievably bad DRM on top of that Jenga tower.

Now we have broadband, Steam, workshops, intentionally modable games, more games than one can imagine or play in genres that no one had though of or were too niche, good prices and sales. Good visibility so if things go bad the company gets slammed for it.

Hardware lasts for years or a decade if you are willing to make some sacrifices and even then the odd upgrade of the GFX is what you need these days. If you can afford the up front cost, the prices you can get for games put you ahead by massive amounts and you get to take those games with you when the next console generation comes out.