PC Gaming Set to Spin You Right Round
You can say anything for free, it doesn't cost you a single penny. Ergo politics and it's twisted sister, public relations, two facets of a three-sided coin (did you forget the press?) in the race to persuade you that what someone says, is.
Case in point: PC gaming is dead. Or it's thriving. Or it's been permanently upstaged by consoles. Or it's actually growing faster than consoles in software sales. It all depends who you talk to in this information shell game, where now you see it, now you don't.
The one thing everyone's quietly in accord about: the lack of a unifying set of sales figures to put the argument to bed, one way or another.
Where are they? Private online "e-tailers" like Steam and Direct2Drive along with data miners like NPD have yet to figure out how to aggregate and accurately represent the online PC games market (that, or they're not ready to share the data with us). That's a hugely important point. When you see those monthly NPD reports, you're only getting a slice of the total sales picture.
What's more, when people claim PC games are all boom or bust, they're clear as mud about whether they mean "diehard," "enthusiast," "mainstream," or "casual" buyers.
Just last week, the senior global director of Windows gaming for Microsoft, Kevin Unangst, told Venture Beat:
There have been a lot of trend pieces about how PC gaming is dying when that is absolutely not happening. It’s growing exponentially, thanks to online games, and even faster than the rest of the market.
Faster than the rest of the market? Which one? You certainly can't tell from a sound bite like this, or the rest of the story for that matter, which offers an array of claims without so much as a single statistical qualification. That's fine if you want to know what various industry movers and shakers are saying, but don't mistake any of it as necessarily accurate or actionable.
With all the misinformation about PC gaming circulating, what should you do?
Start by ignoring all the unqualified talk about PC games trending, whether it's coming from me, your best friend, your best friend's favorite blog insider, or a source like Microsoft. We have enough wild opinion masquerading as analysis in our lives, and I'm sure you're as weary as I am of unverified claims that read less like disclosures than dares.
Play the PC games you like. Follow the ones that float your boat. Don't worry whether there's going to be a Gears of War 3 or a Crysis 2. Buy what looks interesting, and if your store takes returns, return the stuff that isn't. You owe the PC games industry nothing beyond your wallet vote.
And remember, the idea that we'll sink or save PC gaming by graffitiing up comment fields and message boards or running splashy headline-grabbing save-the-PC feature stories is just dumb. We're all going to do what we're going to do, and it's up to Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, etc. to convince us with ideas -- not generalized claims or polished statements -- to stick around.
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i started getting into PC gaming 2 years ago, becoming more and more involved with the latest trends, hardware/software, and news. its not dead, its spreading.
I've been an avid PC gamer virtually all my life, from the MS-DOS days forward, and I was never more excited for the industry then in the last couple of years with Crysis, Bioshock, COD4, The Orange Box and so many other great games being released. Sure, there are console versions to most of the PC titles now, the days of "PC-Exclusive" being pretty much over, but no one can argue that consoles have better graphics (they don't), or better controls (keyboard mouse vs gamepad not a contest).
Unless it is a sports game, PC kills consoles every day of the week.