[General Discussion] Trend Index: What Americans are Playing

Given that there are over 140 million PS2s in circulation, it's not exactly a surprise that it's the most played console although I imagine a global survey would put the DS on the list and probably near the top.

As far as PC gaming goes, this pretty much shows how PC gaming is dying. Not because people don't play PC games but because a load of people are playing PC games from a few years ago. 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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Not particularly, just repeating comments I had seen elsewhere on the subject that I agreed with. I have nothing against PC gaming, I have quite a few PC games and have enjoyed playing loads over the years but I find it rather frustrating that to play any made in the last year or so would require a massive investment on my part to play them the way they were designed and I feel that by doing this, developers are shooting themselves in the foot somewhat.

There will always be people happy to fork out for a shit hot PC to play these things on but it just seems like a weird marketing decision to alienate a lot of your potential userbase right from the outset. Those figures show that older games are still massively popular which would suggest that there's something wrong with newer games, no?

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Look at the list of most played online games for the 360 in the last year and you'll see that Gears of War 2 has been played more than Gears 1, even though Gears 1 had an 11 month head start. I might be wrong but I'd be amazed if a new, cutting edge version of, say Counter Strike would amass as much netplay in a month as the older version managed in 11, my point being that because you can buy an 360 game, stick it in and know it works, people are more likely to buy the latest thing.

Obviously there's more to it than that, the constant evolution of older PC titles through user generated content and updates being a huge factor for one but I think my argument still stands.

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Heh, I used to play the original Quake with plain white walls. Team mates were blue cubes, enemies were red cubes and the pickups were small, green cubes. I used to get a ping of about 10 on a dial-up modem (And some questions about the non-standard character models I was using, especially on Barry's World, untrusting fucks).

When I look at the side of the boxes for PC games though there's normally a hardcore list of minimum specs that my three year old laptop isn't up to and I figure that with most games being multi-format, I'd rather get the 360 version and have the ease of running it without installing it or fucking about with drivers and shit, the easy access online through Live and a control scheme I'm used to without having to remap everything with the controller. Sure it might not look quite so pretty as on a high-spec PC but it'll work first time and it'll be easy to get online.

The only games that are PC exclusive these days are RTS games (Which I hate anyway) and silly things like World of Warcraft which hold no interest for me whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Pangalin

That's fine, if you'd rather have a bicycle over a car because a bike is more reliable and easy to understand that's a valid perspective but it doesn't mean car driving is dead!!!!

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

Yeah, I was a little overdramatic there I guess. I still think that without WoW propping up the figures then you'd see a dramatic drop in the PC gaming userbase over the years and surely this will only encourage more developers to follow ID's lead and focus on making console titles to shift to PC rather than vice versa, as used to be the status quo.

Whilst the PC has the huge advantage of user generated content, Little Big Planet and Halo 3's Forge map editor has shown that this is, to some extent possible on consoles too and I'm sure the coming years will see more and more of this. The other thing LBP has shown us is that the majority of user generated stuff is bollocks, hence why games and level designers keep their jobs. If the money is all in console game development then increasingly the talent will follow it, leaving a potential talent vacuum at the PC developers' offices.

I never understood why people accused consoles of lacking the depth of PC games though. I mean, sure WoW is a big old game but at the heart of it is a very simple number crunching exercise that differs only from the majority of console rpgs in the amount of different items there are to be found (And the stupid amount of time it takes to find them).

I don't know the game's story but I don't think most people play it for the story do they and I'd be amazed if it was better told than say Suikoden 2. There's a lot of character customisation options, probably more than you'd see in your average console rpg but as with any game, a lot of them are pointless, certainly from reading the WoW thread here there's a "Right" way to build a character and play it. I also don't really see how a Warcraft clan gathering to do some raid or whatever is any different from a bunch of mates getting together for some Halo in terms of social interaction. If anything, Halo (To me at least) is more interesting as you get to fight different people each time rather than just mindlessly farming AI monsters for some stupidly rare item or other.

It's interesting that Rotor cites the PC as a better platform for fighting games as I've never considered the PC as a fighting game option. I've never really considered playing them online though, fighting games for me have always been something to get out when pissed back from the pub for a bit of Tekken or Street Fighter and I have to say the instances of playing anything on a PC when drunk are very few and far between.

Ridiculous as the term is, I'm a casual gamer. I spend a load on games but I like to just jump in and play a bit of this and that every now and then and for those purposes, a console will always be preferable to a PC in my opinion.

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