[PC] Decline of PC Gaming?

Money talks, everything else walks...

First: If you take a look at pricing, often multi-platform games are released at a lower price than their console counterparts. Second: These games drop in price much faster than their console counterparts. For example, I picked up Psychonauts for PC for $30 while it was still $50 for PS2. For non multi-platform titles, this still usually holds true, except for the truly grade-A hits like HL2, etc. Third: The PC game section in the game stores around here has dwindled to next to nothing. It's half what is what when I was an undergrad. Stores will devote more shelf space to their profitable wares, end of story. We all know sales do not necessarily equate to quality... but developers migrate to where the $ is so this does have an effect.

On a related note, before the Saturn and PSX came around, everyone was playing PC games, or even putting a few quarters into the arcade, rather than Genesis or SNES... It seemed like there were a ton of cool PC titles. Nowadays, everyone just plays HL2 on their 24" lcd monitor. There are great titles, but a lack of variety. Just my observations...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Omni - good point on the first two parts, except I'm not sure that Valve spent less money on HL2 than MS did on Halo 2, for example?

And as for variety, I'm just talking amongst my own personal preference, which includes RPG's (besides Oblivion, I'm not sure I can even name a title that came out this year that I'm interested in, and Oblivion is frankly a flaming pile of p00 that won't run on 20% or greater of systems that exceed recommended specs, including mine, apparently), sci-fi/fantasy FPS (there are so many war FPS games it's getting ridiculous, but where are the new Unreals and Half-Lifes?) So, for that part it's just based on my own personal preference - some may find a good deal to like in the PC platform's recent line-up.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

This forum (the PC Gaming forum) has been dead for quite some time I feel. I look at major titles coming out and all I'm really interested in is Bioshock and UT2k7. Those games don't come out until the fall. Maybe, maybe we'll get HL2 Episode 2 at the very end of this year. Stalker might be good, maybe, we'll see. It seems like oftentimes there are more good console releases in certain months than there are good PC releases the entire year.

If there were still as many good PC games coming out consistently as there were 4-5 years ago, I would have already upgraded my PC. Now, I'm actually holding off as there's no need. My rig plays all the games I have an there's no need to buy any until 2008 at this point...

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Thread back from the dead!

I couldn't recall the last time I had seen any serious number of PC gaming threads in the gaming forum. There are some threads about multi-platform games like Crysis and UT2k7, but other than that, nada. I've decided to not upgrade my computer because of the current dry spell, but I've gone back and played a few PC titles lately like Dawn of War and really hope that the PC side of things springs back to life in 2008. Unfortunately, there's no reason for it to what with consoles being so successful. Maybe we will start seeing some PC-like titles (besides FPS ) on consoles eventually?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

That's a good point about K&M support. Funny enough, I used to play Quake 3 for Dreamcast quite a bit using the Dreamcast keyboard & mouse. After that I was spoiled and haven't played a true FPS on consoles since. (Metroid Prime 3 is closer because of the Wii-mote, but with lock-on it's still not there yet.)

I was speaking idiomatically.