While Console are considered the Gaming item of choice, it is agreed that PC’s are already a generation ahead of the consoles in terms of hard core numbers. If a desktop computer can run at a higher resolution, have more frames per second and look better, why it is that games are held back and also on the decline in the pc market? There is many reasons why this is the case and there is shouts of Piracy, sales, floor space and multi platform. If you look back over time, the tables have turned many times, first the PC was the gaming machine of choice and then there was a whole bunch of new consoles and finally the PC came back to fame – so what is holding the PC back?
Multiplatform
The first issue is the game makers, they have a team in-house and they need to write the latest blockbuster. This is not a 5 minute process and some games can take five year to get out of the door and onto the shelves. Quite often they write a core game and ‘port’ it across to every single console and of course the PC. What happens here is you end of with a game that is not fine tuned to say the PS3 and it will not get the full advantage of the PC hardware.
Piracy
This has been chucked about many times – if a game only sells a very small number due to everybody downloading the game then of course the publisher is not going to invest heavily in the next game and instead focus on what is bringing the money in. In most cases this is Console – this not only sells by the bucket load but also re-sell’s time and time again. I remember the death of the Dreamcast been put down to the sheer number of people that pirated the games instead of paying for them.
Hardware
Inside every single XBOX360 and PS3 is the same hardware as the next one, this means If you one set of goals to aim for and with this you can get every last drop out of the console as you know what your up against. Once we get to the PC, there is a whole range of different hardware out there and even software can cause a game not to run properly. To compare, when I shove a game into my PS3, it checks for any updates, puts them on my machine and I am good to go. On the PC, I have to normally find the update, apply it and repeat until up to date.
Floor Space
Any Store Selling games only has so much floor space, the two big guns (PS3 & XBOX) will get the most space along with a whole range of accessories such as Rock band 3 Guitars and whatever. The PC by comparison is a tiny corner of the shop and most titles get reduced quite quickly due to lack of people buying them. It makes business sense to stock what is making money and PC Gaming and especially peripherals do not sell much at all.
Cost of Hardware
To the average person on the street, let us compare and contrast. The console itself will cost about £200 ($199 USA I think) and this works out of the box, no OS to buy, no tweaking to do – it is off the shelf and ready to go. We need to add to this maybe the cost of some games, there is a Lot of cheap one’s out there (older titles) and you are now good to go. If you wanted to play ‘decent’ games on a PC, you need to make sure you bought one that could actually handle games along with a screen that has a good enough resolution and some decent speakers. I would estimate that the PC would cost 4x more and it will get obsolete after a few years.
Bottom Line
The people making the games do not care that your monster rig can run Crysis at 120FPS running at super high resolution, they will write the games for the console as this makes money. This is not the death of PC Gaming but it will slow it down a lot. Expect titles that only come out on Consoles – my view is buy a console for gaming and get a cheaper PC for the rest.
