Is PC gaming Being Done Away With?

[RitualJman]

Hey there,

is PC gaming fading away? In my opinion PC gaming is slowly fading away, my thinking behind that is that its becoming harder to find any stores that sell many PC games anymore. Although I was speaking with a guy at Eb Games/game stop, he was telling me that they aren't getting many PC titles in anymore that a lot of games just aren't being made for the PC anymore. In my opinion on that is the PC still remains the ultimate gaming platform because its the only system out there that is customizable, even if you are can play better with a controller you can buy many different types of game controllers for the PC. Let me know what you think about PC gaming slowly dying off.

Thanks
RitualJman

 

[boogieboy]

Whoever say PC gaming is fading away is wrong. The reason that it's hard to find PC titles in stores might be coz the majority of PC Gamers are now more into buying the Digital Version of PC titles like from Steam, Direct2Drive, Origin etc. rather than buying the Retail Disc version of the games but it depends on country to country. Maybe it's hard for you in your area but that must be not the case everywhere also the variety of titles on PC is no less than the consoles and most of what's available for Xbox 360 + Xlive is available on PC already. Yes you're right PC is the best and most powerful platform when it comes to real gaming. I have Xbox 360 too but really i hardly play any games on it and if i play so i only preffer those titles which are exclusive for it like Red Dead Redemption or Forza and a couple of more. PC gaming can never ever fade away and the Companies like Nvidia and AMD and so many more which manufacture hundreds of different products for PC gamers are'nt fools and i personally love buying games off Steam and there are so many Free 2 Play Multiplayers and there always on going deals are just amazing that literally beats PSN and Xlive to the ground. I love PC gaming and there's simply no match for it. It can never ever over

 

[M1GU31]

Yeah they been saying pc gaming is dying since 1985 LOL So all in all no,just not as booming as the casual consoles,we are very much alive.

 

[RitualJman]

I still like to have a hard copy of my games

 

[pparks1]

PC games aren't dying ,but they are being sold digitally these days.

 

[smarteyeball]

There may be less exclusives, and more ports but the PC will remain a large market for a while.

 

[Solarstarshines]

You can find hard copies at select Pc stores
But for the most part the Cloud has become Dominant over digital downloading

which i find it easier then having a stock pile of game cases everywhere

PC gaming will never die due to the fact they are always revising new GPU's every 6 months so whoever told you this is full of it and probally has no experience with anything you asked them about

Which is the reason to do your own research then to trust some sales person at any store most of the time they only know what the product has listed on the box meaning it isn't hard for them to read off the box and pretend they know about it

 

[M1GU31]

For me hard copies are easy to find,see a whole bunch of them usually at Target or best buy

 

[Zepher]

I still like to have a hard copy of my games

I personally like digital versions since you don't have to worry about the disc and the keys.
With Steam, you can download and install your game anytime you want.
And it auto updates pretty much every game for.

Origin is similar but not as polished as Steam.

And it's hard to resell hard copies of games since most are tied to an account you setup when you install it.

 

[HAVOC]

I still like to have a hard copy of my games

This + infinity

Lets say you need to reinstall Windows or a game itself. Now lets say your internet is slow or not working at the time you are doing a reinstall, kinda screwed aren't you?
If you also have alot of games this downloading can take forever. You may have your game files backed up but I always find with downloaded game files it always downloads more files and alot of times they dont make it through install (errors) so you have to redownload the entire game again.

Having a physical copy on hand is so much better, install Windows, install games, done.

Steam, Origin and other "services" aren't that helpful.
When did PC gamers start need hand holding with installs, backups and installing patches?

 

[Squid]

I personally like digital versions since you don't have to worry about the disc and the keys.
With Steam, you can download and install your game anytime you want.
And it auto updates pretty much every game for.

Origin is similar but not as polished as Steam.

And it's hard to resell hard copies of games since most are tied to an account you setup when you install it.

I also prefer digital. So much easier and I don't have to explain to the wife what is in the bag when I get home

I backup my steamapps folder on my external a few times a year just in case. This saved my a** one time when I had a hard drive failure.

Length of time to re-install over 90+ games on Steam with a backup = under 1/2 hour

Length of time to re-install over 90+ games with physical copies not to mention the patches = I don't even want to know

 

[sygnus21]

I still like to have a hard copy of my games

This + infinity

Lets say you need to reinstall Windows or a game itself. Now lets say your internet is slow or not working at the time you are doing a reinstall, kinda screwed aren't you?
If you also have alot of games this downloading can take forever. You may have your game files backed up but I always find with downloaded game files it always downloads more files and alot of times they dont make it through install (errors) so you have to redownload the entire game again.

Having a physical copy on hand is so much better, install Windows, install games, done.

Steam, Origin and other "services" aren't that helpful.
When did PC gamers start need hand holding with installs, backups and installing patches?

There's always going to be the "what if" factor in life so that equals all things out in the end.

Anyway my opposite argument to yours is this (which I actually use).... if you do partitions like most people do, you can have your Steam directory installed on a different partition. Than say you need to reinstall Windows, which is on a different drive/partition… Well, once Windows is reinstalled, all you need to do is reinstall the Steam App (a 1.5 meg 30 second install file) and wholla... all your Steam games are there and accessible.... NO re-downloading, just ready to play!

You don't necessarily have this option with "hard copy" games, which usually require reinstalling because of missing registry strings due to an OS reinstall.

Anyway there’s always a pro and con to everything so….

And I too like my hard copies but for a different reason as I like to collect things. And yes, it is easier to install a hard copy than depend on a server’s speed to get your game files.

On the other hand cloud/server based systems like Steam can save tons of download time if used like I discussed above.

As to the original question... Is PC Gaming being done away with? No, it just becoming part of the universal port... games are made with consoles in mind, then ported to PC.

My two cents.

 

[boogieboy]

Yeah they been saying pc gaming is dying since 1985 LOL So all in all no,just not as booming as the casual consoles,we are very much alive.

:roflmao::roflmao::roflmao: Since I was born!

 

[AstaLaVista]

I don't think they are dying but I do think they are changing and for the worse... instead of First Person we are now getting Third Person, instead of making us use our head and think, we are now taken by the hand and told when to press our buttons so we can get out of the chokepoints with our limbs intact. Instead of having a fun Campaign with some plot, we got a bunch of cut scenes to make the game seem awesome.

Oh and make sure you revise your PC every 6 months,buy the latest GPU and CPU onlly to find out that your card is not even supported because it is TO NEW or just play with the same graphics that used to WOW you back in 2002 because we are porting the game from the Xbox.

We are told that 95% of PC gamers pirate the games and that is illegal but, it is ok for them to give us mediocre or even unfinished games and still pay full price for them... sad thing is people think this is OK and normal!

In a way, YES, I do believe they are being done away with and Yes, you are correct... I am a little hurt by it.

Then again, I only play Shooters and Campaigns so I don't know anything about the other genres.

 

[theveterans]

PC gaming market is on the rise, IMO, but the gameplay quality (not the visuals as they are slowly improving on that area) is gradually becoming worse as more and more games are released with more bugs and invasive anti-cheating/piracy activation software known as DRM.

 

[Layback Bear]

Torrents and the like lower the quality of games. The more games or programs people steal the less money the company that make those games or programs has to keep the quality standards that everybody wants.

 

[sygnus21]

PC gaming market is on the rise, IMO, but the gameplay quality (not the visuals as they are slowly improving on that area) is gradually becoming worse as more and more games are released with more bugs and invasive anti-cheating/piracy activation software known as DRM.

While you have a point in that we the consumers are often getting broken, unpolished games from game companies, the DRM issue is dead as far as I'm concerned. Really when was the last time you (general) had a DRM issue? I can't even remember the last time I had one and I've bought a great deal of games.

Personally I feel the only anti-DRM voices out there now are the pirates who find it increasingly harder to get "free" software. I'm not saying you're one of them I'm just making a point.

Anyway the unfinished, unpolished games that are heaped upon us is what irks me. We really have become paying beta testers.

 

[theveterans]

In many older pc games, you can just load the disc to be able to launch the game, but today's games like battlefield 3, you must install and run background services that hamper user experience and performance such as PunkBuster, and the dreaded Origin. And then after installing all that, you must install a friggin browser plugin to lauch the game. And as you say that we become paying beta testers, that is very true and I agree since after installing all of that plugins, origin, punkbuster, you have to download a massive patch for the game and keep updating all those anti-cheating, DRM software. If these torrent users not sharing these games for free, we wouldn't have to deal with those additional bloatware/nag-ware that new games require to play.

 

[Zepher]

In many older pc games, you can just load the disc to be able to launch the game, but today's games like battlefield 3, you must install and run background services that hamper user experience and performance such as PunkBuster, and the dreaded Origin. And then after installing all that, you must install a friggin browser plugin to lauch the game. And as you say that we become paying beta testers, that is very true and I agree since after installing all of that plugins, origin, punkbuster, you have to download a massive patch for the game and keep updating all those anti-cheating, DRM software. If these torrent users not sharing these games for free, we wouldn't have to deal with those additional bloatware/nag-ware that new games require to play.

How are the torrent users playing bf3 on origin?

 

[M1GU31]

PC gaming market is on the rise, IMO, but the gameplay quality (not the visuals as they are slowly improving on that area) is gradually becoming worse as more and more games are released with more bugs and invasive anti-cheating/piracy activation software known as DRM.

While you have a point in that we the consumers are often getting broken, unpolished games from game companies, the DRM issue is dead as far as I'm concerned. Really when was the last time you (general) had a DRM issue? I can't even remember the last time I had one and I've bought a great deal of games.

Personally I feel the only anti-DRM voices out there now are the pirates who find it increasingly harder to get "free" software. I'm not saying you're one of them I'm just making a point.

Anyway the unfinished, unpolished games that are heaped upon us is what irks me. We really have become paying beta testers.

Not true i had trouble with drm when installing gta iv and borderlands and had to go through a bunch of steps from there website to get the secure rom crap to work how it should :huh:

How are the torrent users playing bf3 on origin?

They can't you need a legit key to even connect and a orgin acount that has that key registered,idk what this guy is talking about unless its some way that they play with each other but not with legit users.