Epic Designer Says PC Gaming in 'Disarray'

Ignoring steam/digital sales, only _1_ of PC game from 2007 would be in the top 10 list in terms of sales. And that game is WoW related.

Lets ignore the top 4 games on each platform as outliers. For CoD4 to be in the top 10 list, it would need to have 80% of the sales be online. As popular as Steam is, this seems highly unlikely.

Lets ignore the 'why' question for now. Can everyone agree that these sales numbers are _bad_ for the PC? Granted, subscription games (ie WoW) are doing wonderfully. Other genres are getting crushed on the PC however, which is making publishers less likely to focus on PC development.

(The info below is from based on NPD data published on http://www.gamasutra.com)

Top 10 Games 2007
1. Halo 3 (Xbox 360, Microsoft) - 4.82 million
2. Wii Play w/remote (Wii, Nintendo) - 4.12 million
3. Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360, Activision) - 3.04 million
4. Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock w/guitar (PlayStation 2, Neversoft/Budcat/Activision) 2.72 million
5. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, Nintendo) - 2.52 million
6. Pokemon Diamond (DS, Nintendo) - 2.48 million
7. Madden NFL 08 (PS2, Electronic Arts) - 1.90 million
8. Guitar Hero II w/guitar (PS2, Activision) - 1.89 million
9. Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360, Ubisoft) - 1.87 million
10. Mario Party 8 (Wii, Nintendo) - 1.82 million

Top 10 PC Games of 2007
1. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade – (Vivendi) – 2.25 million
2. World of Warcraft– (Vivendi) – 914K
3. The Sims 2 – (Electronic Arts) – 534K
4. The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack – (Electronic Arts) – 433K
5. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – (Activision) – 383K
6. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars – (Electronic Arts) – 350K
7. MS Age of Empires III – (Microsoft) – 313K
8. Sim City 4 - (Electronic Arts) – 294K
9. MS Flight Simulator X - (Microsoft) - 280K
10.The Sims 2: Bon Voyage Expansion Pack – (Electronic Arts) – 272K

My two cents...

Keep in mind. I used to be the hardest of hardcore pc gamers. Since the advent of the Wii and 360, I've shifted. Here's some reasons that affect me.


problems with pc gaming:

Good pc gaming rigs cost more than consoles.

PC gaming doesn't have anything as nice as GameFly. You basically can't rent pc games. Maybe steam can help with this issue?

Game piracy is easier/less risky on a pc. For a while that was a boon to pcs and pc gaming. It probably hurt the sales though.

Same house multiplayer became expensive. You have to have another pc rig that can handle that game, and legally, another purchased copy of the game. Or not legally, it requires hacking, which over time becomes tedious and unfun. Most people would rather play split screen console games.

No universal joystick/gamepad. A company developing a racing (or other sutiable controller based) game for pc can design based on the console controllers precisely to match the nuances. Pc controllers are too numerous. The only control advantage pcs have is mouse/keyboard for FPS games, RTS or MMOs. Wii Sports could have come out for PC a long time ago had someone figured out this issue already. We just needed a good controller that everyone would have.

No universal voice comm/headset.

Windows. While it's adaptable and sometimes awesome, it's also a huge pain. For a huge percentage of the population, windows will never be the main source of something fun to do.

---
Pc gaming will probably always be the best source of experimental control and innovation, but to be the king of gaming again, it'll have to change a lot.

PC's too expensive? Come on. Right now is the best time to buy hardware, as you can get amazing stuff for cheap.

Here is a Crytek suggestion:

CPU - Intel Core2Duo E6750
GPU - GeForce 8800GT 512MB
Motherboard - NVIDIA nForce 650i Socket 775
PSU - 600W ATX12V
RAM - 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
HDD - SATA 250GB 7200RPM
DVD - 20x DVD±R Burner
Case - ATX Midi Tower Computer Case
OS - Microsoft Windows XP Home with SP2

You can build this for $800 thanks to Newegg, and get a superior gaming experience.
Keep in mind, most console games are priced at $20 higher, and take longer to go down in price. So, if you buy even 10 games a year, you are saving $200 on the PC.
And with the GFW initiative, you see just about every game support the Xbox 360 controller.

Ok, so piracy. This is the same excuse the music industry is using. The reality is that we don't need producers and distributors anymore. We don't need CD's and we don't need DVD's and we don't need pretty little boxes to wrap them up and make it look like its worth $50. Big producers and large music labels are obsolete and this is their death keel. Of course, when the money stops coming in because the consumer has moved on to better forms of entertainment, Epic runs to the consoles where control means they can still extort the consumer. However, it is only a matter of time people realize the quality of music and games can be just as high when it does not come from huge corporations. They claim to be protecting individual creativity but all they are protecting is the money hats.

"PCs, on the other hand, are capable of running unsigned code."

Ok, so how about this. Have microsoft develope a program that would be kind of another operating system like Vista only simple like the 360 for running games only. Have the 'program' be free and needed to play any future released games (the developers would program the code so as to only work on this program and not on Windows itself) on Windows. The 'program' would 'lock' the system to run only signed code. Then of course any developer that did not want to bother with the hassle of programing a pc game under the new code could do it the old fashioned way running on standard XP or Vista.

If you stop and look around you will notice that consoles can now run games that PC has been enjoying for years already. So now the main stream can enjoy what pc gamers have been enjoying for some time. If you notice the top selling games on 360 are FPS and untill the console hardware could run them not many knew how fun they were. In years to come the console market will be where the pc market is today, meaning tired of the same old thing. At that time pc will be enjoying the next gen stuff and some time after a console will be able to play them and the cycle starts all over again. PC gaming is at a low right now becouse most can enjoy the same on a console. You can't play WOW on a console and look at he numbers. PC gaming will make a comeback simply becouse for tech to move forward it must be done on a PC as consoles don't offer anything new (hardware wise) to allow developers to move forward.

I don't know why it's so hard to stop people from pirating games. If it's so hard to do on a console, why don't they take the same measures with PC? The way I see it is, if you make a PC game that has a strong copy protection method that canot be cracked without much hassle, the only people that will bitch are the ones who pirate. As long as the protection does not kill your rig or effect it's overall use behond gaming, I see no reason why people would complain. For instance, look how hard it is to pirate a steam game, esp if you play online. I would say that Steam is a good example of how pirating can be cut down. Look at COD4, the devs put a simple copy protection on the game and act suprised by the amout of piracy. Um, you make a excellent game with weak protection from copying, and wonder why everyone and their brother is pirating the game. Had this game used steam as copy protection there would have been FAR less piracy.

Catch up with the times people (developers) technology is making it far to easy to pirate PC games. So when you set out to make one, think about how your going to protect it from pirates.

With that Epic never made a game I liked, they all sucked. They should just be in the area of making game engines and let the ones who know how to make great games use it. Bioshock is a perfect example. Though I still dislike the Unreal3 engine for it's poor AA support and though good games have been made on the engine, I still think it's half assed in many ways.

I think it's fairly easy to deduce as much merely from walking into any electronics store that offers video games and see for yourselves how utterly disgraceful & tiny the selection of games for PC is compared to the consoles... besides, not having to mess around with the patches, hardware configurations and what not is the biggest boon for me. So in the end the PC industry is not dead, but it's seriously fucked.

Using that same logic Microsoft could have stated that the PC gaming industry was dying because Halo PC didnt sell as well as Halo Xbox.

Additionally, people are using World of Warcraft or TF2 as examples of the PC gaming trend not dying. It's not really fair to hold them up as examples given that Blizzard and Valve are in a league of their own company-wise. The majority of companies just don't have the resources these guys do, and when you don't you sometimes have to choose where to best spend the resources you DO have, and increasingly that requires favoring console development over PC development.

The main reason console shooters are selling so well is because PC gamers have been there done that for the past decade now. We dont want another unreal rehash, we play shooters like TF2 that are fresh and have new innovations. We play Half Life which is far more immersive and just plain fun than any shooter that gets put on console.

The hardcore pc gamer market is incredibly picky about what games we play because most of us have been doing it since the early 90s and been sitting around waiting for a game to have as much immersion as Duke3D. Yet we get spat on each year with mindless games like Unreal3 that are nothing but lazy attempts at trying to revive DM when cleary team based games are where the market is now.

Where have all the tactical shooters gone? everything is being dumbed down for console ports and devs are wondering why games arent selling?

Create something new, innovate and fresh. Fuck off amazing AAA graphics and production and give us what we want to PLAY. Sins of a Solar empire is the greatest example ever of this, brand new gameplay and genre, graphics are solid but nothing amazing and from what i can tell the game is selling incredibly well.

All the old "big" developers will move to console, make some cash for a few years until console gamers become just as jaded about shooters and game rehashes as the PC crowd.

My issue with PC gaming these days is that I can't go to the store, buy a game on impulse and install it with confidence that it will actually run. The last 3 or so games I bought at the store had DRM that was so "effective" that I had to download a crack to play the game I just bought. Even when it does work, the cracked versions are often much better because you don't have to wait for the CD-ROM to spin up and you don't waste cpu cycles on encryption. Some reports I've seen have cracked versions running 30% faster. Then there's the whole starforce issue that means I have to look up any potential games I might want online to see if they're infected with that digital russian super-aids. I did not buy trackmania sunrise and whatever other sequels because they had that shit and I just can't tolerate it. I didn't pirate it either. I just gave up on it. It's dead.

The bottom line is that piracy is more reliable and a better end experience than actually purchasing PC games. This is the problem.

Steam is the the only exception.

And there it is,

"I think people would rather make a game that sells 4.5 million copies than a million and Gears [of War] is at 4.5 million right now on the 360," he stated."

Thats whats it really about isn't it Cliffy. GREED, not the innovation you can do on a better hardware platform. :\

Enough with the decline in PC sales stuff. PC game sales are not in decline, they are just misunderstood. I know, I've watched it happen from the inside and it's time to break it down for the 'analysts' and game developers who have been persuaded by them (shame on you cliffyB).

The notion that PC game sales are trending down has been popularized by the biz folk at game companies. It's important to identify them as biz folk, you'll see why later. They believe this trend because they look at information collected by stat firms like NPD run by other biz folk. This is a simplification, but essentially what NPD reports is sales figures from store bought games. The game company biz folk use these sales figures to account for what has worked in the past in order to project about the future. In business, it's about predicting the future, not innovating it. If they can predict it, they can make the right investments.

The problem that has occured here is that PC designers are the opposite of PC biz folk. PC designers are (usually) about innovating the future, not predicting it. This is usually not a problem because the innovation is limited to the gameplay. However, 12 years ago they inadvertently innovated a business model. The word inadvertently is important because attention was not drawn to it. When UO (as an example) came out, the talk was about how it enabled people to play together in a persistent world. To a smaller degree people talked about how it curbed piracy. No one paid the right kind of attention to the fact we should track a new kind of sale...subscriptions. The right kind of attention means the right people didn't pay attention. Usually it is business people who innovate business models, but because they didn't do this one they didn't really see it in the right light. I have worked in the industry for a long time and I can personally attest that business people in many major game companies struggle to understand the business of MMOs and other strategies that go beyond simple game sales. If it isn't something they can research via their biz tools (things like NPD), then they can't understand it or work with it.

Flash forward...over time the PC market has innovated a number of new business models that have slipped past NPD for the same reasons as the MMO trend. The major missed business boats in gaming are subscriptions, micropayments, online distro and all the basic longtail business models from social engineering. All of this, has resulted in the NPD sales appearing to decline for PC gaming when in fact all what declined was the sales of PC games from game stores. On the incline was all this other stuff that NPD skipped over.

This miscalculation has been a boon for the smarter developers. For example Blizzard and their publisher have recently cited revenue in excess of 1b per year. It is this kind of announcement that in part finally made NPD decide to track subscriptions. Until this change, NPD was using business models over 10 years old. They still are to some degree...because there are now other new business models in the PC market. For example maybe in another 10 years they will find out the absurd money people are making with micropayment. Keep on being blind though...some of us are making out pretty well.

As for Epic...I don't know what they expected...how can you assert anything to PC gamers about their buying behavior when all you do is ship Unreal DM over and over? It's one thing to ship the same thing over and over...I have no problem with that...but it's quite another thing to have the audacity to complain that people won't buy it as much as they used to. This is off topic, but this gets more points for idsoftware in my book. For a much longer time they shipped the same game. When it declined they never whined about it (as far as I know). Then they made a cell phone rpg and some weird racing game...ie they started making different games. Kudos to them.

Lets see what PC gamers think about epics games as of late using metacritics user scores as a reference.

Gears of war.... 5.5 out of 10 360..... 8.4
Unreal Tournament 3 ... 7.5 out of 10 ps3.... 8.4

The real problem is both of those games were console games that were simply made to run on the PC. The simple truth is that console players like what they've been doing lately and PC players don't.

Epic its your own fault. Your games impressed very few people on the PC because you chose to design them for consoles. If you want to make a game that PC players enjoy you have to show us something new and something that isn't held back by console limitations that don't exist on the PC.

If we wanted console games we would buy a console. Don't give us this simplified kiddie console crap and expect us to like it just because all your console players did.

Most devs evolve their games when they release sequels you did the exact opposite.

You removed game types. You removed adrenaline. You removed mutators. You stupified the UI. You offered significantly less content then you have in the past. You expected us to buy a game that was but a prettified shell of what we had already been playing.

Shame on you Epic. Have fun with your console kiddies, we wont miss you. There are plenty of other devs that understand the wants and needs of the PC audience much better than you.

The more entrenched, old, no longer innovative companies like Epic that leave PC gaming for console shores, the better. It just leaves more room and more money available to small, innovative studios with neat ideas and original gameplay.

Go have fun making tons of money off consoles Cliffy. We'll have plenty of good games without you.

I actually find it kind of entertaining. It's a form of justice. All these PC gamers pirated games and wanted something for free... now they get their karma back in their face by killing the industry producing the games they want to steal. I think it's kind of beautiful in a way. It sucks for people who don't pirate games... but I find it strangely satisfying.

Ignoring sales figures for a moment, here is the reason why I personally spend most of my gaming time on the PC. Ripped from rockpapershotgun.com:

Why make a blog about just PC games?
Lots of reasons. If you want one, let’s go with the idealogical. The PC is the only truly free gaming format.

In the console-war, the only real casualty is the gaming cultural form. If anyone wins, gaming loses. Any kind of console fandom is just choosing who you want to be chained to. They’re all international corporations who are legally obliged to serve their shareholders interests. Older gamers will remember the strong arm tactics used by Nintendo when they were on top, gaining the same sort of hatred which Sony are suffering now. Being upset about the Sega’s failure as a hardware manufacturer is one thing, but - really - if they’d have won, they’d been just as bad. It’s what corporations do.

Imagine if a band had to get permission from Sony to release an album on compact disc. It’s ludicrous, but that’s the position in every single console format in the world.

But not the PC.

We love that and love the PC for it. It’s the most cosmopolitan of formats, including everything from the biggest-budget glorious monstrosities to tiny flashgames to pass a half-hour. It could only happen on the PC. It’ll only ever happen on the PC.

Maybe in the future the PC won't get the multi-million dollar blockbusters like Gears but I can't say that would be a huge loss from my perspective. If I had to choose between a game made for the love of games or a game made for the money it's a pretty easy choice. A big budget doesn't make a good game (two of my favourite games of all time are mods with $0 budgets and released for free) and big sales figures are not indicative of quality. So when Gears of War #4 rolls round and it's console exclusive I'm not really going to be too dismayed.

Why do PC gamers take these things so seriously? I've considered the PC my favorite gaming platform since the late 80s and I could care less if one person or another "sells out". What, is it because you think that since Epic won't focus primarily on PC games anymore, that the platform will fade away without them? No. There will always be other games to play. ALWAYS. PC gaming isn't going anywhere. It won't die. It CAN'T.

Also, it's not wrong for someone to focus on a platform that will make them more money. I don't think CliffyB loves games any less; he just loves money, too. I'm not agreeing with his perspective, I'm just saying that I don't think it's wrong, either.

As a diehard PC gamer, I have to face facts: it's not as popular as it used to be. But what do I care about popularity? The PC will always be the best platform on which to play absolutely any type of game. Can consoles make that claim? Sure they can, but they can't back it up. The PC will always be the gamer's gaming platform. Consoles aren't going anywhere either, but they will always be Robin to the PC's Batman: talented, young, athletic, but lacking the charisma, the experience, and the Batcave filled with quality titles from all genres.

Another fact all PC gamers have to face: the PC is simply not as user-friendly as a console, and that's a big reason why it's getting its ass kicked by consoles (and it is, people; it is). I find it hilarious that uber-nerd PC gamers balk at this type of statement, and puff their chests with pride as they talk about the hours they spend getting a particular setting to work, and getting hardware X and Y to finally communicate with one another. You know what? I can do that shit, too, but it's FUCKING ANNOYING. With a console, you develop for a certain type of hardware. No one has anything too different, and you can just pop in a game and play. That's right, there's no troubleshooting, and any framerate issues that exist, exist for everyone. You don't have to download new drivers, or this or that, to get things to work.

TL;DR: Calm down and act like you've got some sense.

Comments on some arguments that people are putting up against CliffyB's points:

1. "If you make a good PC game, it'll sell."

This is true, but that's not really what's being argued here. The argument is how much money you'll reap from the PC version of a game versus the console version when you have to weigh it against how much money and time you have to spend on the game's development. You'll reap far, far less from the PC version, and you must weigh this against the cost of development. Is the Return on Investment going to be enough to justify the PC version? That answer to that question is increasingly becoming "not really."

2. "It's not as hard to get games running on your PC as people say it is."

For Joe "Wal-Mart Shopper" Average, it very often is. The gaming industry has long surpassed its hardcore, niche demographic; the average user is now far more...well, average. They have a PC they bought from Best Buy that they were told is high-end, and they know little about the inner workings of their system. The specs on graphic cards are a mystery to them, and drivers? What do those drive exactly? So when they buy a game and they put it in their drive, they expect it to work, and when they have to go and configure a bunch of options they're not familiar with just to get the game running -- which happens more frequently than we like to think -- it turns them off of PC gaming. Meanwhile, the Microsoft Money Machine is cranking out ads for the Xbox 360 and he's aware that this is a machine that plays games, and maybe he's got kids already playing games on it that appear to work right out of the box. Far more games are more stable on a console than they are on a PC.

3. "They develop console games on a PC, so wouldn't the PC version be easier to develop than the console version? So just release the PC version you had to make anyway!"

Games may be developed on a PC, but that doesn't mean that the game is developed to the system specs OF that PC. This is why we developers have test kits and dev kits -- we may be writing the code or using a level editor on a PC, but we run the game on the console dev kits because the specs are going to be different.

Which leads to the point that developing for PCs is actually much more difficult than for consoles. If you're working on a multi-platform console game, you might have to worry about making sure your game runs equally well across the 360, the PS3, and the Wii. But if you develop for the PC you have to account for a ton of hardware permutations. Nothing is standard. You also lack the developer support and tools that console developers provide to make games across the entire spectrum of their system, as opposed to say, having to get support from multiple hardware companies for support on individual pieces of hardware.

4. "Yeah, fine, go ahead and piss off the PC audience that made you guys!"

Well, unfortunately times tend to change. PC gamers are becoming a more niche, more hardcore audience. If companies don't adapt to this change in climate, they go out of business. Some newer, smaller companies with less overhead and little to lose can succeed by stepping in to fill the void and cater more specifically to this niche audience, maybe making less money than their bigger console-developing cousins but providing a smaller but more targeted game to that niche. But it would be poor business sense indeed for most companies to hang their bottom line on a dying trend. Unfortunately, that's how business works.

Alright, first of all, I'd like to see any one of these fucking consoles put out graphics that can coem even REMOTELY CLOSE to Crysis at very high settings. I'm a long time gamer and graphics whore, and after my upgrade last night (8800GT, 22" LCD monitor at 1680x1050), I'm thinking to myself.....holy.....fucking.....shit. Holy shit.

Has that wannabe hard-edged, emo douchebag cliffy b even PLAYED Crysis? Has he played Sins of a Solar Empire? I understand the reasoning for making UT cross platform completely (I read some comment on here today that gaming is keeping the economy alive), but cliffy, it's not PC gaming in general that's in disarray, it's developer abandonment/priority. You can go toward the money, or you can go toward innovation.

PC Gaming is FAR from dead. It's not the industry's fault that people need to upgrade their shit and stop going the "easy way out", oh, I'd rather kick back in front of my TV blah blah blah. Fuck that. Go play Crysis and be fucking awestruck.

This is all about to be a moot point. I say by next generation...possibly the one after that...there will be no console vs PC war. With the influx of the digital living room, HTPC's, and cross fucntionality of existing consoles, the line will begin to blur between what is really a PC or a console any more.

(Disclaimer: NOT a fan of Apple)
I say a single company should come along and build an all-in-one type mini PC, ala Mac Mini, iMac, etc, and team with the other big 3 console manufactures for subsidies to build a standardized console/PC they can all use. All dev studios design their games around the minimum specs of the machine, but you have the option to add better graphics cards, more storage, peripherals, etc, allowing you to run the game better or with more options turned on. All of the options would be standardized, with drivers preloaded into the OS and extensively tested for the platform, with auto updates coming from the intartubes.

This way, you don't have to be a millionaire to own a PS3 type device. You don't have to spend shit tons of money on development for multiple platforms. You no longer have to worry about console exclusive titles. Companies don't lose money on Hardware platforms for 3 years straight before turning a profit, as the cost of development and build are spread between the major players. No longer will it be hard to find a game system to purchase. And, perhaps more importantly, no system fanbois.

Don't laugh at that last statement. System fanbois and corporate mudslinging are what cause the Dreamcast--an awesome system way ahead of its time--to die an untimely death. And don't forget the impact the PS3 has had on Blueray...essentially a technology that should have nothing to do with console gaming.

In short, make one console to rule them all. Devs get to spend more time making good games, and we get to spend more time playing them. We all win.

Don't blame the platform, blame shitty games. UT3 was a failure on almost every account. There are plenty of GOOD PC games out there that sell well. If you make a good product, people will buy it.

Lets be blunt.

There are plenty of free/cheap games out there made for fun by a single person. There is also demand for large scale games that require hundreds of man years to create. Both are in demand.

The large scale/commercial games are in a rough spot. Many PC gamers who love them want higher quality visuals, big stories, etc. Thats where the competition is.

Economics (ie dev cost vs number of gamers willing to pay) will dictate what platforms (and genres) exist in the future. Right now, the quality demanded by core gamers is starting to exceed the number willing to pay on the PC. More are willing to pay on the consoles. People are picking with their money.

As the market picks genres and platforms, plenty of devs are going to be frustrated. Games that core gamers love (and that devs love making) become more rare as quality expectations go up without the number of purchasers growing at the same rate.

Aside from the commercial aspect, piracy is frustrating for devs because these are people who obviously like the platform/genre but aren't voting with their money on what they want to support. Devs generally are passionate about the types of games they make. By not buying games, these people are shooting themselves in the foot as the games/platform are less likely to be supported by publishers in the future.

Hey Cliffy, why is The Witcher selling so well if pc gaming is in disarray? Maybe because its FUN! Its not even an AA title but its good enough to make pc gamers buy it. Get a clue! http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/51324

Well I do think it is mostly the piracy with your buddy next door, warez sites and P2P programs. It is also the lack of gamers that want to fork over the funds for a top end playing experience that will not guarantee the top end gaming experience. It's the pop in and play simplicity of consoles vs the annoying day one patch of PCs. It's the 'When it's ready we knew that was messed up bug patch and maybe it'll work when we do make it available, but if it doesn't try our forums for some handy solutions patch...
These are your customers not you customer service.

Remeber you void your console warranty by tampering with the insides to be able to play a pirated console game and may even get booted off of Xbox live. Multiplayer may be why you bought the game in the first place.

The console player is often a casual player and does not want the headache of Windows loading, disabling Anti-virus software, port forwarding, non-dedicated and dedicated server issues, automatch not working, driver and OS incompatiblities, players with different game versions, 3-10 patches to get the game balanced and ready for release after it has already been released. Maybe even the infamous trial and error of purchasing a game and it just doesn't work. For $39.99 - $49.99 + tax you can kiss my a$$ if you think I will trust you with my money without careful research in the future. Even if a console game sucks it will more than likely play when you put it in you console. 'Uh dude sorry you can't get a refund cause you may have burned a copy.' Why would I burn a copy of a game I can't get to work? Don't raise you hand, pirate!

It's too easy to burn copies of games on the PC. The majority of the users on this forum and that most people who own PCs in general have CD/DVD burners, Why? So they can back up data and copy homemade movies...Come on! The Companies that make burners available know that they are primarily being used to burn illegal copies of copyrighted material, be it music or software. With a quick google search even the least computer savy can pirate a copy protected video game, music CD or movie DVD. Not so easy on a console. In this discussion the PC is too forgiving and no real hardware tampering necessary beyond building it to get one to work with illegally obtained or copied data.

Somebody tell Cliffy B that Unreal 3 wasn't up to par with Gears of War.

This whole subject is pissing me the hell off.

Console games NEED the PC in order to advance. It's the PC gamers buying the latest graphics cards that are making it possible for console gamers to even play their watered-down games in the first place.

You NEED us. You should be drooling at are feet because we're the ones that make your gaming possible, dammit.

he's right in that pc gaming is on the decline, you only have to look at the platform sales numbers by solid titles and its a no brainer.

as for piracy, its alive and well on the consoles as well, its just that there's bigger hurdles to make it happen and potential consequences are a bit more intimidating (like getting your console blocked from online multiplayer or even bricking the whole thing).

but not to worry, where there's a will there's a way.

the same as people thinking mac are virus proof :) they're in for a surprise soon, the more of an installed base there is for them the more interested wankers will get in infecting them as well...

They're only saying that because PC players realize there is much better shit than a crappy UT game. That shit wasn't good when times were good for it. They had a big hit with Gears of War and are running with it.. good for them. PC's are always going to be a valid option because they are useful for lots of things other than games, and the cutting edge developers are going to be making the coolest stuff available for PC. That isn't going to change.

They should have moved to a platform like Steam. Nuff said.

Any of Epics problems could have been sorted out by either buying into or creating their own digital distribution system which effectively requires activation even to play offline games. This cuts into a large amount of the piracy problem.

Epic forgot that they don't just have to make great games, they have to deliver them via a platform that has matured with the times. That means a robust digital delivery platform in addition to any hard disc sales they may produce.

PC Gaming is not in dissaray any more than it hasn't already been before. It's always in a state of dissaray and that will always be the nature of the PC & PC gaming industry.

Kudos to Epic for delivering on multiple platforms like the 360, as well as always having had a reputation for delivering massive quantities of post release content to the gaming community for free- but they obviously have some cultural repulsion to also changing with the times when it comes to how they deliver their products.

Another good example of a company other than Valve who understands how to deliver a product that encourages people to buy into the process is Sins of a Solar Empire. There is almost no copy protection that I know of or have read of, and if you want to play online you essentially have to purchase a copy with a valid serial code to register an account, you also need to do this to legitimately download and apply patches for the game. This is a very smart way to encourage legitimate purchases.

cliffyb perceives the disarray because his goals as a game designer are clearly more in line with the console experience, and his expertise there tends to sell a lot of games. therefore, cliffy makes more money and it better developing for console.

i bet sid meier's strategy games sell way better on pc than on console.

I like how they say piracy is what's killing PC gaming despite the number of quality titles available. (maybe not EPIC titles, but still...)

Anyway, last time I checked consoles are not immune to piracy. A quick google tells me that games for the following consoles were pretty easy to pirate:

NES
SNES
DC
PS
PS2
XBOX

...and apparenty X360 and PS3 have also been successfully hacked.

I also find it interesting that console games can be rented for a couple bucks, thus avoiding the purchase price of console titles. If I buy a game (PC or console) I'm technically and legally prohibited from loaning it to somebody, presumably because I'm ruining a potential sale but is it ok if I charge my friend $2 to borrow it for a few days?

I guess I don't buy into the whole "piracy is killing us" argument. I wouldn't say it helps either, but I highly doubt it accounts for the lackluster sales of lackluster PC titles.

Isn't it ironic that MS is basically removing one of the main draws to their Windows platform? They are essentially shooting themselves in the foot insofar gamings appeal on computers.

If consumers have no reason to game exclusively on Windows OS's within the PC sphere, they have less barriers to switch to other OS's.

Funny stuff.

Pissing off hard-core PC gamers will have long term consequences for sellouts like Cliffy or Red Storm. Once you've deserted your base, you will have short-term success followed by long-term reduction in cred. Just like Metallica.

I like how Ubisoft and Epic games release their anticipated titles on consoles first then wait to release buggy ports on PC, and then they point at sales figures to justify why consoles are their top priority. I wonder how Gears of War would have done had it been released on PC first and the on the 360 a year later. I bet the 4.5 / 1 ration would narrow quite a bit.

But that's not the point. Speaking from a purely self-interested economic standpoint, there's no reason to snub your PC audience. Great PC games make money, whether or not it's more profitable to focus on console games, expanding your dev teams to release simultaneous, quality PC products would provide even greater returns. Whatever, I've got a nasty cold that's put me in a zombie-like stupor.

In other words, PC gamers are tired of seeing Unreal Tournament rehashed over and over with the same gameplay. Also, his statement on Gears is misleading. It would have sold much better on the PC if it hadn't come out so much later. Not to mention it's full of issues on the PC, I haven't even been able to get it to run yet.

"It killed us to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, but Epic had to do it."

You know what? I would've been happier to not see UT3 come out on the PC if I had known that it was going to be a mediocre mess, as was demonstrated by the demo. If they really feel this way about the PC platform, for all I care they can abandon it.

It's sort of interesting seeing both these articles coming out around the time of NPD releasing the January 2008 numbers. They probably saw UT3 PC selling under 30K copies again.

Go ahead, Epic. Start making only Gears sequels for console platforms. We've had our fun with Unreal, UT, and UT2004. If you're smart, you'll see that most of us are burned out from the adventures of Gristle McThornGears and Brock McLiandriCrush, and actually consider cultivating some new IP, and growing a game with substance, instead of another rehash of old properties.

I can blame Epic. They rehashed their original 4 times before they realized they needed to make more money. That's not a problem with getting a market for their game, that's a problem with their game design. People just don't want to play the same damn game over and over again, it's boring and it doesn't' bring anything new to the table. Look back at when Epic first announced they were going to re-brand the UT "franchise" and make it into like a sports game thing and repackaged every year. That kind of thinking is idiotic and insulting to the idea of creativity and originality -- core things that drive fun and interesting games. Epic dug their own hole in the PC gaming market, by being inflexible and unwilling to change or adapt by creating anything original anymore. Now they're bashing the PC market for being inflexible as well? Sorry I'm just calling them out on that.

This is easy.

Unreal Tournament games aren't selling as well as they used to because people are tired of buying them and getting nothing new except vehicles and gametypes.

So therefore, the PC game world is in disarray.

Oh and, whats that? Gears of War, a port of a year old console game, didn't sell as well on the PC? FOR SHAME. PC IS DYING OH GOD SAVE US