The market doesn't "believe" anything. It is college students who can afford a used XBox and dad's who don't have the know how to manage a gaming rig. It is the weekend gamer and the 10 year old with technologically illiterate grandparents. Console can reach those people. PCs are for hobbyists.
Video Game News and Miscellany
- Thread starter figmentPez
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GasBandit
Staff member
Markets can be manipulated, because consumers are people. It's a myth that console gaming is cheaper, as I've posted links about before, and frankly most people who would be console gamers already have a PC that could be turned into a gaming PC for $200 or less (and still have better hardware).
Imagine the disappointment among the wine-drinking "hobbyists" if vineyards shrugged their shoulders and claimed they couldn't afford to ignore the huge market of under-21s, so their products had to be cross-demographic, and thus, alcohol free.
If you have the know-how, sure. How about you start educating the masses on how to cut the wireless controller and see how many will take the plunge into PC modding instead of the other option.
GasBandit
Staff member
All present for debate in this thread have the mental capability to put in a GPU card. We're not really talking about the 10 year old and his grandparents, here, as they - by definition - are statistical outliers.
Seriously, I taught Pauline how to replace GPUs/NICs, and she was not exactly what you'd call a PC enthusiast by any stretch of the word.
I think the operative phrase here is "who don't game." I know people who have laptops only as well... but they don't have XBones or PS4s (or WiiUs) either. Laptops are much more popular among non gamers, but desktops are still half the market - and more often than not, in the hands of the half for whom gaming is a potential pastime.[DOUBLEPOST=1432696616,1432696379][/DOUBLEPOST]
Really, it doesn't matter. If you're starting from absolute scratch, you can buy a $250 dell (they go on sale for that amount about once a month), stick a $130 video card in it, and have a "gaming" pc that already outperforms consoles.
You don't have to worry about sound cards, everything has one built in already, though if you're a real niche audiophile, upgrade options are of course available. But it's not like it's a real worry that you're going to buy a PC without sound any more.
Intel's better than AMD though, I will say that. But even if you have an AMD, it's fine.
Of course, if you WANT to play the "build a rig game," you can get a lot more enjoyment and bang for your buck, but if the only threshold is "better than console," the barrier to entry is very low.
Even the 10 year old has the capacity to do it. How many of them know how? If your position relied on educating the masses to be savvy enough to maintain a gaming quality rig, then I think your position is untenable.
GasBandit
Staff member
If a video game developer is trying to develop a single game for both for the 10 year old console gamer and for the PC market, I'd say his business plan is also pretty untenable. And the numbers seem to agree with me, pretty often.
Maybe we'll get a Steambox release date at E3 and then everyone can be happy.
I'll be over here eagerly awaiting the Nintendo Digital Event.
I'll be over here eagerly awaiting the Nintendo Digital Event.
I dunno; It might work if you had some kind of governmental regulatory body, or perhaps a gestapo to ensure the purity of the master race. GB seems like the kind of guy to go for those things.
GasBandit
Staff member
Call of Duty 1 got a console port. It just wasn't called Call of Duty 1... it was Call of Duty: Finest Hour I think.
Not for much longer... quite a few big name modders quit the scene once it became apparent people weren't going to pay for their work... work they had been enjoying for years. This isn't to say that some of them weren't complete scumbags about it (pay for SkyUI? That's basic functionality. Fuck you.) but we're at the point were modders want to get paid and it's going to be hard to say no if the developers won't fix their shit.
And they will be replaced.
Right after WWDC.
It's like convention season coming up for technology folks.
This is why people like me chime in on the "Build me a thing!" threads.
Someone in your family will almost always "know a guy who..."
--Patrick
And that is great for those who want to go through that trouble and that you are willing to help out.
This is video games, nobody is ever happy.
...you guys do realize that the rise of PC gaming revenue globally is primarily from Asia, right? It's not the rise of the indie market or the fall of the AAA publisher or any of that, it's 10-20 F2P games making billions in China/APAC (and practically half of them are owned and/or published by Tencent).
Locally (meaning here in the US), shitty publisher politics and stupid platform restrictions are helping give rise to a swell of indie titles, and creatively-speaking that is wonderful for the industry long-term, and has gotten the PC the respect it deserves, but it's such a local NA/W-EU-only consequence. PC gaming is dominated by macro-publishers outside of our geographic bubble, and Mobile is catching up really, really fast.
Locally (meaning here in the US), shitty publisher politics and stupid platform restrictions are helping give rise to a swell of indie titles, and creatively-speaking that is wonderful for the industry long-term, and has gotten the PC the respect it deserves, but it's such a local NA/W-EU-only consequence. PC gaming is dominated by macro-publishers outside of our geographic bubble, and Mobile is catching up really, really fast.
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While it doesn't really matter since paid mods are no longer a thing, for the record, only the new crafting menus for SkyUI were going to go behind the paywall. The current version that all the other mods were built on was staying free and any changes made to the core infrastructure like MCM were going to be rolled out into the free version as well. Literally the only thing you had to pay for was brand new functionality that they weren't planning on doing at all before they thought they'd be able to sell it.
Because it's work the DEVELOPERS should have done in the first place. It brought Skyrim up to the standards of it's predecessors and imitators, as the game's menus and map had previously been dumbed down in order to make it more controller friendly for the console folks. This isn't a fun extra or more quests or a visual change... it fixes a fundamental problem with the design of the game.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that Bethesda/Zenimax should be paying the mod makers for that one, not the fans, because it's only necessary because of their own fuck-ups and engine limitations. Same with the unofficial patch mods and SKSE. It's not that the people who made these don't deserve money, it's that they shouldn't be asking the player base to pay for the dev's mistakes.
As if the Amiibo craze couldn't get crazier--in the UK, the truck carrying GAME's entire supply of Splatoon Amiibos was hijacked. Thousands of Amiibos. Someone out there is fucking nuts.
Maybe we'll get a release date for Star Fox and Zelda. [emoji14]
There was a guy buying every single Rosalina Amiibo he could find. Not because he wanted them, but because he hated her as a character so much he didn't want anyone else to have them.
That's no longer the weirdest Amiibo-related story I know, apparently.
In other news, WildStar is officially going f2p.
I'm glad. I bought a box copy for 15 bucks to see how things had changed, and honestly had fun with the game. f2p has done wonders for Old Republic, Tera and Rift, which were all struggling pretty hard under the subscription model. Some were worried the game's plug might get pulled, but this could bring some fresh blood in and give it the population boost it desperately needs at low-mid level content.
I'm glad. I bought a box copy for 15 bucks to see how things had changed, and honestly had fun with the game. f2p has done wonders for Old Republic, Tera and Rift, which were all struggling pretty hard under the subscription model. Some were worried the game's plug might get pulled, but this could bring some fresh blood in and give it the population boost it desperately needs at low-mid level content.
I may give Wildstar a go now... probably not all that seriously, but it could be fun for a few days.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/need-for-speed-will-require-an-online-connection/1100-6427672/
Not that I'm a fan of the series, but the new, upcoming Need for Speed will require an online connection to play.
In other words, EA didn't learn their lesson from Sim City.
Not that I'm a fan of the series, but the new, upcoming Need for Speed will require an online connection to play.
In other words, EA didn't learn their lesson from Sim City.
EA never learns anything.
http://www.pcgamer.com/steam-summer-sale-to-start-june-11/
June 11, by the looks of it, will be the start of the Steam Summer Sale. That about lines up with other years they've done this, so it's possible. We knew it was coming soon, anyway.
June 11, by the looks of it, will be the start of the Steam Summer Sale. That about lines up with other years they've done this, so it's possible. We knew it was coming soon, anyway.
So yeah, this looks like a lot of fun.
Wife went to pick up Splatoon, not realizing today is some Amiibo craziness all over the place. Look what she found:
