Who's winning: consoles or PCs?

by Justin Murray on Nov 26th 2006 9:45PM

When talking games, consoles always take the forefront of the conversation. However, this wasn't always true. PC games did have their own heyday. However, console games seem to be pushing PC gaming into obscurity.

After hitting a high point in 1999 of $1.9 billion in sales, the PC market has been steadily declining. During this time, the overall gaming industry has grown considerably. One could conclude that the console market -- which is slowly pushing itself to match the PC in terms of variety and graphics -- is making the PC an obsolete machine for entertainment.

The data is showing the console as the favored platform for our gaming desires. However, we may not actually see the death of the PC, but the death of the console. With the PS3, Xbox 360, and even the Nintendo Wii on the market, we're finding the console is quickly becoming a multi-purpose machine; quite PC-like. If anything, console manufacturers are beginning to produce proprietary computers ala Apple. Does the future of gaming hold the current PC and console differentiation, one winning over the other, or some strange hybrid?

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Tags: 360, PC, PlayStation 3, Playstation3, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360, Xbox-360, Xbox360

Reader Comments (53)

All of these comments (justifiably) are coming from harcore gamers, people who know the cost of a high end machine and can compare consoles to PCs. The days of the PC being solely the domain of hardcore gamer is over.

First off, NPD, in an article posted at GameDaily some months ago, stated that PC sales were declining...but then admitted that they didn't take into account subscription games, downloadable content, or even casual games that your mom plays. When those factors were taken into account, the PC as a gaming platform (not just as a hardcore gaming platform) was amazingly healthy.

Because most MMOs don't give out subscriber stats (unless it's WoW patting itself on the back), it's difficult to determine what percentage these titles are adding to the PC gamer pie. Online sales (a la Steam and Stardock's system, as well as others like Direct2Drive), are totally left out because there are so many, and it would be a statistician's nightmare to try and boil it all down to effective metrics. These items are casually swept under the rug in these "Death of the PC" diatribes.

In addition, it's far easier for Soccer Mom to boot up MSN Zone or Yahoo! Games during the day to play some Bejeweled then get her to learn about the consoles out there, and then commit a huge wad of cash to buying one, when the PC meets her needs 100%. It's these people, not the harcore audience, which is keeping the PC as a platform afloat...and I'd assume a LOT of casual players having jumped on the WoW bandwagon, but play nothing else to consider them "hardcore".

It is NOT "necessary" to spend hugh cash on a super high end PC to play games. If you think so, then you obviously think that overkill is the only way to go, and that's fine. That's the hardcore gamer mentality, but it's no longer the mentality of the PC gaming world.

Thank you.

As has been said before: this subject comes up every time a new console is launched - and every single time PC gaming is completely unaffected by console launches. No death of PC gaming, nothing.

As for the NPD sales statistics:
They do not take subscriber incomes (from the dozens of MMO games for the PC) into account.
They do not take online game sales (through Steam and the like) into account
They focus solely on American sale statistics, ignoring the largest consumer markets for PC gaming: Asia and Europe.

Granted, it wouldn't be surprising if PC game sales had indeed dropped since 1999. The years 1998-1999 were the greatest in all of PC gaming history after all...
There were more truly classic titles released in those two years than in the seven subsequent years. Think of such titles as: Age of Empires 2, Alpha Centauri, Freespace 2, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Unreal, Half Life, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Counter Strike, Outcast, C&C Tiberian Sun, etc.
It's hard to think of the PC game-development scene nowadays as anything more than pathetic, after you've had two years like that. PC game quality has actually decreased over the years and classic PC game genres have disappeared nearly entirely (Adventure, Space-Combat, Space-Simulation, Turn-Based Strategy). Still, PC games rake in more awards than games for any other platform at any game show (like the E3).

Anyway, time to get to the point I'm trying to make: I don't see PC gaming dieing out, at the very least not in this decade.

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