The PC is the top gaming platform #2

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The bad news continues to pour in for PC gaming.

  • Woe be the PC game developer these days, as various reports put piracy rates in the U.S. at approximately 70-85%. It’s no wonder that Epic Games is dumping PC games for the greener pastures of console gaming: piracy rates for the U.S. market alone are hovering around 80%.
  • Rampant piracy threatens PC games. Rampant piracy is threatening the future of the PC games industry, Todd Hollenshead, head of Doom 3 creator Id software has said. He warned that unless the problem was tackled some companies could relegate the PC to a second tier platform. “Some developers are taking that approach,” he told the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
  • Game piracy runs rampant on the Internet. Why pay for software when you don’t have to — particularly with retail prices edging up to $60 a pop? “Because it’s stealing,” says Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. “If you’re unwilling to shoplift in a store, you shouldn’t be downloading illegally pirated versions of games.”
  • Crytek To Abandon PC Exclusive Titles. Crytek president Cevat Yerli has indicated that the company will no longer produce any PC exclusive game titles – following relatively disappointing sales of the critically acclaimed Crysis. “We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis,” said Yerli. “We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC gaming, piracy. To the degree PC gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more,” he added. “It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in the future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusively anymore.”

Quite simply most people will steal when there is no chance of getting caught. The good news is that there are still some good people out there with morals. Who refuse to steal and who believe in paying for the work of others. However this isn’t enough to sustain a market for boxed PC games.

The good news is that Valve have released Steamworks now with free to use copy protection that any PC developer can implement. I can see this becoming very popular.

So back to why the PC is the top gaming platform. The big reason is because there is no platform holder. No Nintendo, no Sony and no Microsoft. So game developers can do anything they want and there is nobody there to tell them not to. And they do. PC gaming is where all the innovation in the games industry comes from. You can make any game you want, anywhere you want, any time you want, with others or on your own. You can distribute it in any way you want and you don’t have to pay massive fees to a console manufacturer.

The next big PC advantage is the tools. Current generation console platforms have only been out for a few short years and, compared with PCs, there are very few of them in the world. So the engines and tools that you need to make games are not that good. In comparison the PC has been round for decades and all sorts of software is developed to run on it. So there is an amazing myriad of proven, powerful engines and tools available that allow you to do anything you want. A massive advantage.

The third big advantage of the PC is that it is not a fixed standard, it evolves. Whereas consoles are fixed standards that are stuck in old technology. This means that PCs can have more powerful graphics, stronger processing, incredible sound and massive, cheap hard disk storage. There is a price to pay for this, of course, but if you want to be at the forefront of gaming the PC is the place to be.

The fourth advantage is that most PCs are connected to the internet whilst most consoles aren’t. So the PC leads in social gaming, in co-ops, in clans, in mod groups and in every way you can think of where gaming involves more than one person. Consoles now are seeking to emulate this but they are still miles behind.

These fundemental advantages will see the PC continue to prosper despite the adversity forced on the industry by software thieves. 

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13 Comments


  1. PC gaming will never die as long as we have short, boring lunch breaks we have to fill in without having the time to do anything else particularly exciting.

    Go PC!


  2. ” This means that PCs can have more powerful graphics, stronger processing, incredible sound and massive, cheap hard disk storage. There is a price to pay for this, of course, but if you want to be at the forefront of gaming the PC is the place to be.”

    Bruce my man, I remember you not too long ago trumpeting the shift in gaming from a niche market to a mainstream phenomenen via WiiFit, and bemoaning people who fail to see the shift and pour their finite resources to continue catering for the niche market via Space Marine action-infused AAA games.
    So why complain about that and then go onto promoting the PC as a platform numero uno because of features that would only appeal to the most niche of niche markets like ‘groundbreaking graphics and sound’ and online clans/death matches etc etc?
    Also, to say ‘PC gaming is where all the innovation in the games industry comes from’ after harping on about the change in the industry caused by Nintendo on this very blog just strikes me as, well, a little inconsistant.

    I’m not having a personal pop, nor am I a fanboy of either the wii or the pc, its just that with most blogs I’ve read over time there is always a certain tone, a consistancy to them that carries on through their lifetime.

    You write some interesting views and have brought my attention to some things I’d never know existed, but recently with the inconsistancy it makes me question whether some of the stuff you write, you write because that’s simply ‘the mood you’re in’ or because you’ve given it some solid consideration and thought.

    Regards,
    Lloyd


  3. Copy protection like StarForce and Securom (the copy protection in Mass Effect is going to be one big disaster) did a lot of damage as well.. even people who picked up legit copies of PC games were put off. I personally think Steam is the future, the fact that you have an online backup of the games you own is fantastic.


  4. Right up until 1 of two things happens.

    1- You move house and don’t have the internet straight away.

    2 – Steam eventually shuts down and you lose the games you’ve paid for over the last decade.


  5. @ Dudley: The average console life span is what? 5-7 years, right? If your assumption then is that Steam will only last a decade, how is that any different? I’ve had a steam account since HL2 shipped back in 2004… so I’ve already had it for four years, with no problems. If I can use it 4 more years without issue, it will have outlived the Xbox’s lifecycle.

    By way of comparison, I’ve had an Xbox 360 for 2 years and already had to replace it once. Steam certainly offers the superior experience from a reliability standpoint.

    *sigh* I just wish there were better games available. The PC may be where the innovation happens, but sadly, it’s not where the blockbusters appear, now a days. Don’t get me wrong, I love gaming on my PC, but it’s stuff from Steam or MMOs that I play because there’s nothing else out there that suits my tastes. Consoles > PC in that regard. Maybe that’s due to piracy and maybe not, but either way, you can’t deny it.


  6. If games were cheaper it would not have so much piracy and I am sure it would be more profitable for developers. There are many people who would prefer to have the original game, but not at the current price.


  7. PC games are generally a lot cheaper because they don’t have to pay the licence for having it on a console. £25-£30 is pretty reasonable when you could be paying £45-£50 on a next gen machine. These prices drop too so you could even be patient.

    What would be a reasonable price? I’d say several pounds for a DVD film is a reasonable price (£12 if you want it as soon as it’s out) and you can even rent too, but they get massively pirated.


  8. The statement that the PC is where all the innovation happens is a bit of a stretch! (Not to mention the social gaming call – how about consoles and a couch, which was happening before online in any form outside of universities or a lab even existed!) I recently played HL2 on the PS3, which was touted heavily for it’s innovation and story when it was released on PC, and was dissappointed as it’s storytelling was at the standard of the original Playstation (granted, a good playstation game), and while it’s physics puzzles were good, for 2004 they wouldn’t have turned heads on the PS2 the way they did on PC. If you move beyond PC-centric genres such as the FPS, then the innovation is even clearer – motion controls (Wii), vision-based games (Eyetoy), Puzzlers (echochrome), Platformers (Super Mario Galaxy) and RPGs (Fable 2) are all being pushed forward at least as much (and in most cases more) by consoles than the PC. The only genre the PC still dominates in is strategy, and even this is under threat. This is the second article of yours I’ve read that’s been pretty average Bruce – playing one perspective is all well and good, but pushing it this far is just plain make-believe.


  9. PC games are cheaper, but for every good game that comes out, you not only buy the game, you often buy the hardware needed to play it (Crysis), is like buying a new console for each new game.

    On the other hand, you can get pirated copies of nearly all WII and X360 games as in PC, thus the problem is not as simple as just prevent piracy.


  10. Come on, don’t make me laugh.

    Michael Fitch, who broke his own game by using a DRM that would hinder performance and crash the game with no explanation, says

    “I didn’t believe [the data] at first. It seemed way too high. Then I saw that Bioshock was selling 5 to 1 on console vs. PC. And Call of Duty 4 was selling 10 to 1. These are hardcore games, shooters, classic PC audience stuff. Given the difference in install base, I can’t believe that there’s that big of a difference in who played these games, but I guess there can be in who actually payed for them”

    and automatically piracy rates in the US are 75-80%?. Come on, that is completely bogus.

    CoD4 sells 10 times more in consoles than in PC because consoles are more mainstream, plus you are comparing ALL the consoles versus the PC.

    If you want to speak about piracy rates, use a serious study, not the word from a burned man from a bankrupt development studio.

    BTW, stupidities like EA’s with the new DRM for Mass Effect and Spore are the kind of thing that don’t do anything against piracy and make paying customers get fed up and start pirating.

    The industry needs to stop crying foul and start taking a real hard look at itself and at valid business models. Like making really interesting games. Like not treating your customers as thieves.

    Exactly what Stardock is doing.


  11. It’s not the copyright protection that Mass Effect wants that’s the problem. The concept is sound in my option …it’s the inevitability that it will screw up that bugs me. There are too many games over the years I have bought, and then downloaded the crack for, to count.


  13. @ Dudley: The average console life span is what? 5-7 years, right? If your assumption then is that Steam will only last a decade, how is that any different? I’ve had a steam account since HL2 shipped back in 2004… so I’ve already had it for four years, with no problems. If I can use it 4 more years without issue, it will have outlived the Xbox’s lifecycle.

    Except, if MS abandons the Xbox, the games still work. I can still put a cartridge in my Sega Master System and play the game. My right to play anything I “buy” (rent) on steam is at the whim of Value, or whomever buys Valve.

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