[General Discussion] Trend Index: What Americans are Playing

Originally Posted by Pangalin

You really do have a particular axe to grind there, don't you Shin.

He may well do, but he sort of has a point. I still think there's scope for great PC gaming experiences, I know if I still had a PC I would definitely have grabbed Left 4 Dead already, and would be looking forward to stuff like Empire: Total War, but I much prefer knowing that games I buy for my consoles will just run.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Pangalin

PCs are "dying" in the same way Nintendo has been "dying" since the N64: By doing just fine, thanks.

I wasn't agreeing with that element of Shin's argument, I was talking about the "Developers need to realise that releasing games that only someone with a brand new, high-spec PC can play properly is not the way to garner high sales" bit. I don't think PC gaming is dying, it never will, not least of all because there are certain types of games which are just always going to work on a PC and not really elsewhere. Like anything the PC games market goes through peaks and dips in interest, and with DRM nonsense and a bit of a console gaming boom, it's currently going through a dip. Like I said, if I had a gaming PC there's a few things I'd be quite interested in right now. But, I did find the issue with PC gaming, when I did so, was that quite often the latest games wouldn't run all that well, or at all (even with settings turned down), unless you had some stupidly expensive hyper-computer.

I don't think that's the fault of PC gaming as such, but developers who keep trying to push the bounds, but beyond what most PC gamers will ever be able to run. Valve have always been very good in that respect, and it's one of the things I like about their development practice.

There's nowhere I can't reach.