PC Gaming: Still Dying?
Based on recent statistics that show PC platform games accounting for only 14% of the total game sales in 2007, the alarmists are back at the oft-heard panic button, ringing in the doom of PC gaming in the face of the uber-advanced technology now present in consoles. It used to be that PC processors slaughtered the capabilities and in-game performance of any and all console challengers, but with things like PS3 “The Cell” processor and graphics ships rivalling top of the line PC products…is the PC a dying gaming beast?
If you take the figures at face value than sure, PCs are in a whole whack of trouble, but there are a couple of points that have to be considered before last rites are read and the critics, so eager for a major doomsday to dissect and moan about, get their bitter ending.
The big one, of course, is digital distribution. This, in cases where the gaming publishers have their own portals, takes the sales power out of the hands of the major retailers and cuts the middle man from the transaction between publisher and consumer. NPD Group, the analysis firm that has been spitting out all of these numbers has, in fact, acknowledged that the pitiful percentage for PC gaming can be partially attributed to the growth of digital distribution (DD) as a sales vector. While highly networked consoles like the 360 and PS3 might claim further sales because of DD, their use of micro-transactions, and slow acceptance of large scale downloading has meant that they have lagged behind the PC in taking advantage of this channel. Eventually, I think that they’ll catch up, and potentially over-take the PC in this area, making alarm bells a little more appropriate of a reaction.
Casual games, portal sites, and the lumbering behemoth of MMOs all keep the PC scene alive, kicking, and innovating, in my opinion, at an exponentially greater rate than consoles that are, at their core, hardware dependent and somewhat shackled by ties to the developers of the systems rather than being a free-wheeling design sphere capable of reaching hundreds of millions of people largely without regard for computer hardware concerns (unless you’re Crysis…bloody PC-soul leeching game).
So is it that PC gaming is dying, or that it’s exploring other channels for profitability that the number crunchers just aren’t cool enough to track properly yet? Hard to say, but I’d like to know what you folks think…
Img via the BBC
Tags: PC GamingRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Musings
0 opinions for PC Gaming: Still Dying?
No one has left a comment yet. You know what this means, right? You could be first!
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: