Is PC gaming in trouble

I have a few thoughts on this, and I'm glad there is a thread for this.

Firstly:
Forget about the PC Master Race versus Console peasant battles; the fact of the matter is that the majority of gamers out in the world are not on Reddit of forums all the time, so they could not care less for any of this master race bullshit. The bulk of paying gamers are people that buy games to play them on a platform that is the most cost effective for them. Most people don't care about shiny graphics and buy games because of either hype, marketing or word of mouth. This is the reason why games spend half of their production budget on marketing and PR. It's not to satisfy the hardcore gamer group, it's to entice the biggest market share of gamers, because there is where the biggest profit margins lie. It seems that most of these types of gamers are more prolific on console platforms like the Xbox One and Playstation 4. Just look at the number of consoles sold to date of both; they easily match if not surpass the number of active Steam accounts in the world.

So, gaming companies has to worry about their bottom line, otherwise they will go out of business, and the smartest and best business decision is to focus all your attention to the biggest group of your target market. It's called market segmentation, and every single business worth it's salt will be extremely aware of these numbers. This is why, no matter what, console gaming will always be first priority from a business perspective, as it is where the most money is.

Secondly:
To optimize a game for console platforms are much easier than it is for PC; you only have one system to optimize for, where PC game development must encompass all possible types of PC configurations. Also, look at the Steam average gaming PC. Are these the type of PC's you'd expect to run games at super-ultra-maximun graphic settings? No, it's not. So why spend millions of dollars developing a game that not only a small amount of gamers can enjoy fully, but only a smaller still amount to enjoy to the fullest? When business decisions are made to ensure costs are minimal and profits are greatest, you will have to make sure you develop for the biggest share of people. Not everyone is sporting a 980X or equivalent card, and they are more than aware of this fact, and is more than happy of playing a game at much lower settings. So as a developer you make sure you optimize your game that the average gamer can still enjoy as much graphical fidelity as possible, This always leads to cutting edge graphics being "downgraded" to ensure the game can run on as many PC's as possible.
 
I reckon the bulk of the Redditters who have lost their panties over this, are those guys who have spent a ridonkulous amount of money getting their dual-i7, 128GB RAM, quad-SLI-Titan-X, SSD Only, 8k resolution machines setup, with the expectation that they will play any game they want at the highest possible setting and it will run like butter.

i know that if i spent that amoutn of cash I would expect this. And when this expectation is not met, they lash out. But the simple truth is that economies of scale to not make it viable for game devs to only cater for the top 1% of rigs.
 
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Good responses. What is the incentive for AMD/Nvidia to develop high end cards which may not be utilized by the majority of games. Frankly there is no reason for a guy like me to upgrade on as regular a basis as I would if games were not pushing me to.
 
I guess when we see star citizen finally released, this entire debate would be null and void. Poor whoever made this will pretend their comments neva happened. They do have a point, eg. poor elite dangerous, would have failed if they didn't port to console.
 
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DieGrootHammer said:
I have a few thoughts on this, and I'm glad there is a thread for this.

Firstly:
Forget about the PC Master Race versus Console peasant battles; the fact of the matter is that the majority of gamers out in the world are not on Reddit of forums all the time, so they could not care less for any of this master race bullshit. The bulk of paying gamers are people that buy games to play them on a platform that is the most cost effective for them. Most people don't care about shiny graphics and buy games because of either hype, marketing or word of mouth. This is the reason why games spend half of their production budget on marketing and PR. It's not to satisfy the hardcore gamer group, it's to entice the biggest market share of gamers, because there is where the biggest profit margins lie. It seems that most of these types of gamers are more prolific on console platforms like the Xbox One and Playstation 4. Just look at the number of consoles sold to date of both; they easily match if not surpass the number of active Steam accounts in the world.

So, gaming companies has to worry about their bottom line, otherwise they will go out of business, and the smartest and best business decision is to focus all your attention to the biggest group of your target market. It's called market segmentation, and every single business worth it's salt will be extremely aware of these numbers. This is why, no matter what, console gaming will always be first priority from a business perspective, as it is where the most money is.

Secondly:
To optimize a game for console platforms are much easier than it is for PC; you only have one system to optimize for, where PC game development must encompass all possible types of PC configurations. Also, look at the Steam average gaming PC. Are these the type of PC's you'd expect to run games at super-ultra-maximun graphic settings? No, it's not. So why spend millions of dollars developing a game that not only a small amount of gamers can enjoy fully, but only a smaller still amount to enjoy to the fullest? When business decisions are made to ensure costs are minimal and profits are greatest, you will have to make sure you develop for the biggest share of people. Not everyone is sporting a 980X or equivalent card, and they are more than aware of this fact, and is more than happy of playing a game at much lower settings. So as a developer you make sure you optimize your game that the average gamer can still enjoy as much graphical fidelity as possible, This always leads to cutting edge graphics being "downgraded" to ensure the game can run on as many PC's as possible.
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Very very true!

I am upgrading my PC currently to get back into some PC gaming from console and I see the price that one has to pay for Ultra-awesome-graphics and it is too damn high.

Companies see that and they know that not all gamer will have the budget to pay for "gaming rigs" so they design and market the games for the average joe.

I love games and I seldome get butthurt about mediocure graphics because the game is so damn lekker to play. Case in point Black Ops 2 on PS3/ Loved the game and put insane amounts of hours in it and recently I fired up Battlefield 3 on my PC and ran it on "high". The game is pretty but most of the eyecandy gets lost in all the action and frantic killing.

The masses dictate where the gaming market will go and what developers will do in future installments.

Lastly, face it, many of the games coming out now is berry purdy indeed and The Witcher 3 is still a really beautiful game on console and PC. (The recent PC patches will enable the bling so the issue is moot. :)) and the coming AA titles will blow us away.

If a game looks pretty and you enjoy it, why spend R15 000 on a graphics card just to play on Ultra, unless you can that is? :)

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Hiro said:
I reckon the bulk of the Redditters who have lost their panties over this, are those guys who have spent a ridonkulous amount of money getting their dual-i7, 128GB RAM, quad-SLI-Titan-X, SSD Only, 8k resolution machines setup, with the expectation that they will play any game they want at the highest possible setting and it will run like butter.

i know that if i spent that amoutn of cash I would expect this. And when this expectation is not met, they lash out. But the simple truth is that economies of scale to not make it viable for game devs to only cater for the top 1% of rigs.
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True Hiro. Most of these peeps have Beast rigs like that that most of us mere mortals would only be able to dream of.

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Fivel said:
Good responses. What is the incentive for AMD/Nvidia to develop high end cards which may not be utilized by the majority of games. Frankly there is no reason for a guy like me to upgrade on as regular a basis as I would if games were not pushing me to.
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I'm sitting with that dilemma now. Should I get an Nvidia 960 or 970. One is cheaper but the other is "better". lol
 
Fivel said:
Instead of derailing the Witcher 3 thread, perhaps we need to discuss this is a separate thread based on http://www.pcgamer.com/cd-projekt-addresses-witcher-3-graphical-downgrade-complaints/ .

If you look through what CDPR are saying, we wouldn't have a game without the console versions. Does this by implication mean that developing games for PC only is not profitable and PC gamers will be stuck with this approach going forward?
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Correction, they couldn't develop a game on this scale if they were to only rely on PC game sales, meaning that we wouldn't have gotten 200 hours worth of content but probably something closer to the size of the Witcher 2.

I wouldn't really think that it would be very profitable to develop games for PC only. The only reason why someone would perhaps do that might be due to technical limitations on consoles. PCs are not a platform like XBox or PS where there are incentives to create exclusives for a particular brand.

For me personally, PC gaming is about convenience. I already have a decent PC that can play the games, I'm not forced to play with a controller, MUCH shorter loading times and no swapping discs between games. If the graphics quality is at least slightly better than on console, that's just a bonus. That fact that PC games are cheaper also doesn't hurt.
 
Let me tell you about a game called League of Legends if you don't already know :D It has about 27 million active subscribers and increasing daily. Of all gaming companies last year, Riot(Who makes League of Legends) made the most amount of money. 1 Billion dollars IIRC. (http://www.capitalotc.com/league-of...-billion-revenue-in-2014-to-riot-games/23998/)

This game cannot be played on console because of POV, etc. I also read somewhere that Star Citizen will be a PC exclusive. Don't think PC gaming is in trouble but I have to admit that porting sucks. I've bought a few games that were ported from console to PC and did not even spend 1 hour. Waste of money those are IMHO.
 
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Hiro said:
I reckon the bulk of the Redditters who have lost their panties over this, are those guys who have spent a ridonkulous amount of money getting their dual-i7, 128GB RAM, quad-SLI-Titan-X, SSD Only, 8k resolution machines setup, with the expectation that they will play any game they want at the highest possible setting and it will run like butter.

i know that if i spent that amoutn of cash I would expect this. And when this expectation is not met, they lash out. But the simple truth is that economies of scale to not make it viable for game devs to only cater for the top 1% of rigs.
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My issue with this is that CDProjekt misled people into believing they would need those rigs with their trailers and inflated system requirements, and didn't bother to say anything until very shortly before release. There are many who upgraded specifically for this game, believing all those things to be true. While not technically CDPR's fault, it was a shitty move on their part.
 
Graal said:
My issue with this is that CDProjekt misled people into believing they would need those rigs with their trailers and inflated system requirements, and didn't bother to say anything until very shortly before release. There are many who upgraded specifically for this game, believing all those things to be true. While not technically CDPR's fault, it was a shitty move on their part.
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Spot on, you've summed it up really well!
 
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