More Death for PC Gaming

GamingBolt has a BlogPost on the once-again death of PC gaming. It's selective hivemind hyperbole like this, sprinkled with single-minded facts, that perpetrate this nonsense. Let's take a closer look at the FUD shall we?

"the PC gaming market has thrived over the past few years, and showing no signs of letting up. However, it has come to the attention of many that the naysayers may finally be right."

Can we pick a side here? If the PC Gaming market is thriving, the naysayers can't be right.

"it is cheaper and easier for them if they focus on the masses; console owners."

The console owners are not the masses. There are more PC's in use around the world than the 3 leading consoles combined. Old, new, schools, offices, government facilities, the list goes on. Companies gravitate toward the consoles for two reasons: fixed hardware and less piracy.

"PC games require mod support, dedicated servers and both off-the-shelf hard copies and downloads."

No, these are pluses in the PC Gaming court. They don't require mod support, they allow mod support - free community created and supported mods. Even games that don't support mods get modded due to the PC Gamer's generally more adept technical skills. Dedicated servers are also a plus; no PC gamer wants strictly vanilla server access, we rent, mod and serve custom games that are too varied for a single entity to encompass. Finally the distribution model, specifically digital distribution, is the future. PC Games (and console games for that matter) will be available less and less in retail boxes - it's cheaper and more secure (a.k.a. less piracy) to distribute through a download service.

"Is anyone else beginning to realise how games are coming out unfinished and buggy as hell these days? It’s almost like there is no point buying a game on the day of release, because there is bound to be some major issue or hardware compatibility error."

Are you kidding me? Console games are patched constantly and it's a closed and fixed hardware platform, how could you overlook a compatibility issue? Also you will find that the issues that PC Game Developers face most is on-board hardware. Crap video card and/or sound card chips that were cheap to include don't do the job that hard core (a.k.a. not casual) games demand. Simply not supporting this garbage and adding a single line "Requires Dedicated Hardware - See Back for Details" on the box would go far to eliminate patching.

"Of course, it’s not all bad. We still have Valve, who have created (and are still creating) some of the best PC games ever. And Blizzard. And BioWare. But how long will they stay as loyal PC developers?"

I'll vote forever. Console games are still developed on a PC and I'll lay good money that these developers don't go home and play around on their consoles. The PC is a breeding ground for budding developers to jump into coding through Modding, Flash, ClickTeam and even RPG Maker. Many will one day make the jump to the commercial scene and what platform do you think will be close to their heart? The same one that thrives in the developers of the above companies.

What this article completely ignores and what will truly place the PC into serious running with even the next generation of consoles is services like OnLive. When the owners of those laptops and outdated desktops can simply log in to a service to play the latest games without having to spend a dime on hardware, the tides will change dramatically - both on the developer and consumer side.

Until that time, I'll give you a very simple measuring stick for the death of PC Gaming: Steam recommends you backup your purchases due to their eminent termination of service.