It's crashing! It's crashing! Not again! http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/766-may-video-game-sales-worst-in-five-years This sucks because now companies are going to be convinced that you have to introduce new hardware after 3 or 4 years. That means they'll probably build them to last 2.
We're in a freakin' Recession! What the heck do they expect? Video games are still potentially a great value for the entertainment $, but only if played over a long period of time. And with many new games priced at a whopping $60, it's not exactly a cheap thrill on the short-term level.
The problem is consoles clogging up the market with their shit. Its all about flogging all the idiots new 'boxes' and platforms, its not about game sales. I wish consoles had never taken off, the games industry was sooooo much better when it was primarily PC based.
Next you know we'll be burying thousands of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial ATARI 2600 cartridges in the New Mexico desert, and then Nintendo will release a console in the US that will set the standard for console gaming for twenty years!
Just curious--maybe someone in the industry can clue me in... Setting aside legal concerns, marketing agreements, etc... If a game development company creates a game for a given platform, how much additional effort is it to modify that game for a different platform? Ballpark it for me... Is it an additional 10% effort? 25%? 50%? More...?
There's no way that the "games industry" was "primarily PC based" in the early 1980's in ANY market, and if it were, it's hard to see how that was a good thing.
At the time of the NES, it never really took off over here. I can remember a time when only one person I knew had a console (a NES) and everyone else had some form of computer. And it was a good thing because PC games were often so much better, and still are.
Your personal anecdotes are really meaningless. The numbers proved that the PC was never the dominant games platform.
I'll say it again, my mom paid over $200 for our Atari 2600. Given that a freakin Atari 2600 cost 200 bucks how many people do you think were rolling around with personal computers?
I think the NPD numbers are skewed a bit. First of all, Steam does not share it's sales data with them. I'm still not sure if they are capturing DLC and other downloadable games in their reports either. Lastly, what about games sold on smartphones and the such? Could it be that the money is going different places and that the ok'd model no linger tells the full picture?
I'm not in the industry, but I've made games in the past. The amount of work necessary varies, depending on how the developers made the game engine and what sort of technology they used. A person who develops a game using the Microsoft XNA library, for example, can port a game between Windows, XBox and Windows Phone relatively easily (say 10% extra effort, if that), but won't be able to run it on a PS3 without translating all the game code. Big-name game engines (such as Unreal or Source) have built-in deployment options for different platforms, so games can be ported from one platform to another with relatively minor effort (handling input from different controller types, etc.) So it all comes down to whether the team making the game put in the effort up-front to make their game portable or not.
I think Dan is wrong about the PC dominating the gaming market. But the PC is definitely the best gaming platform, particularly for FPS and RPG. Consoles suck. I had a Vic-20 in 1982. My first home computer.
A computer game by the name of Wing Commander started the whole triple AAA games it was first game to cost 1,000,000 dollars PC games are always setting the standards PCs started triple aaa games.
That would be the word Dan was looking for... home computer... vic-20, C64, Atari, MSX, Amiga... All home computers, not PCs... Remember Lemmings?!?
OK. I've been needling Dan a bit here, so I'll back him a bit: Technically, "pc" is an acronym for "Personal Computer." IBM just chose to call their pc a PC.
My first retail sales job was selling computer games. Yes, the PC market dominated back in the early days. And yes, PC means 'personal computer', which was a broad spectrum of different manufacturers back then. Now, I concur it's a better experience because of added value - modding allows you to customize your game in ways that you never could on a console. However, it's easier for game companies to develop for one set of specs for a specific console, and of course there's a hell of a lot less problems with pirating. So we are probably going that route over the long haul.
I'm a lot more inclined to download a well made level pack for Portal or [insert PC shooter here] or even download a cute little freeware game (like Cave Story or Frozzed) than I am to actually buy something nowadays. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
With consoles? Not even close. In fact, it's a lot easier to pirate with a console because unlike today's PC games, an internet connection is not required to activate a console game. Cracking a PC game these days requires a bit more work because the hacker has to patch the game so it doesn't look for the internet connection. If you know where to look, there are tons of places on the 'net where you can download Xbox, PS3 or Wii games. And it's very easy to mod your console to play cloned games.
