Is the PC dying as a gaming platform???

[triggersix]

No one has yet mentioned MMO's as a potential cause of PC gaming slumps. World of Warcraft is a behemoth in the PC gaming industry. That game has probably reduced other PC game sales by at least 10% alone. Not because 10 million people play it today, but because probably 50 million have *at some time* played it for a good long time.

Personally I found it took at least a few years (after I quit wow) to get back into PC gaming because its such an all encompassing game that nothing else was attractive on the platform. RPG are mostly dull and shallow by comparison and no other game genre has that 'addiction quota' that WoW tends to induce. This isn't a commercial for WoW though, just the opposite, DON'T play that game, it will ruin you! 🙁

People playing an MMO wont buy other games because they generally want to play the MMO at every moment of the day. This means they wont go out and buy other games. In fact they wont even LOOK for other games. Plus they're spending money (however little it might be) and so there is the niggling feeling at the back of their brains that tells them they have to get the most 'value' out of the game that they can.

I think ignoring WoW as an ingredient in the downward slump of PC games sales is like ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room.

 

[wh3resmycar]

Power hungry multi-core systems? Are you kidding me?
I doubt anyone plays 18 hours a day on a PC, so power consumption is cut by half (more or less) on idle.
However, I will agree that SLI/CF is a waste of money.

try me 😀

 

[pogsnet]

PC games are more stunning and much more complex than gaming consoles. Specially in command and conquer type of games where gaming consoles are not good.

 

[haydox]

Wow, mad discussion. Lol at the ppl comparing human brains to processors and saying a cpu is better...seriously! (ill leave that there, no point in reiterating previous arguments).

Also, i personally doubt PC gaming will ever die, until something comes out to totally replace a PC (not sure if anything exists that could!). I believe it was someone else that said as long as people have PCs, people will play games on them (at work etc 😀). You cant deny though, that some consoles do have an advantage in certain games over a PC, take a Wii for example, endless fun beating people up with the controllers on the Godfather!

Oh, and i cant wait until software has the capability to fully make use of multi cores. As soon as a game comes out that can use all 4 of my cores and make full use of both gpus in my X2 im getting it, bad game or not!

 

[JackNaylorPE]

as much as quoted by companies I have yet to see a 'gaming laptop' that can handle high graphic settings above 15fps. even the high end ones. As with PC gaming which he asked about Modern day gaming rigs require a decient cpu; minimum 1gig ram, 2gigs ideal, and atleast one 8700 geforce card running on them.

You're not looking in the right places :

http://www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=productdetail&model=9194

You want ....

One 8800 GTX in or two of them in SLI ?
Core 2 or Core 2 Extreme ?
RAID 0, 7200 rpm HD's or maybe RAID 5 ?
1920 x 1200 resolution ?
How about dual bootWindows Vista Ultimate 64 bits and XP Professional 32 bits ?

 

[cosmicc]

Bah! They've been saying PC gaming is a dying industry for 20 years, and they're still saying it even today. Apparently PC gaming is always dying. 2007 was a great year for PCs, I bought half a dozen really good games for my collection...

 

[bash007]

by power requirements increasing, you will notice that during the days when the 5200 was considered s high end card you could get away with a 250watt psu and run everything fine, try doing that with a modern pc with 8800

LOL!
When was the 5200 ever considered high end?!

PS the last pc I built had 2 8800 GT's in SLI

the powersupply was a 750 watt by corsair

when idle everest showed 12.17 V on the 12V rail
then when i launched the fog in a box demo by nvidia and prime 95

the 12V readings will hover between 11.95 and 12.02V

and the powersupply has very good reviews (this has 100% no effect on stability but it is annoying to see that 11.95V)

the pc was using the onboard sound and 1 500GB sata drive and 2 dvd burners and 1 floppy drive

Again, just because you are using a 750W PSU for that setup doesn't mean you actually need it.
Your setup can easily run on a good 500W-550W PSU (such as the Corsair 550VX), with NO problems whatsoever.
The voltage drop on the +12V rail is normal for most PSUs as long it is within spec, and it does not necessarily mean the rail is overloaded. Heck, mine drops a bit even when I only have the CPU on load, and it's not even consuming 10A on the rail.


Anyway, check this out... as it might give you a little perspective:
http://www.overclockers.com/articles1452/

This guy ran an 8800GTX with an overclocked E6600 on a 380W Earthwatts PSU that did not use more than 84% of its capacity.
Your 2 8800GTs only consume ~50W more than a single 8800GTX at load, so do the math.

 

[Heyyou27]

This is an oversimplification and also wrong. You are comparing a rock to an aardvark I'm afraid. A computer is a binary counting and arithmetic machine and nothing more. Now it is very VERY good at it, but it is not even comparable to a brain.

If you must call the brain a processor then it would more accurately be called an intuitive processor. The reason you get different results when you monitor brain activity when performing the same task repeatedly is because you are improving how you do it each time. For instance you ask a brain what the answer to 12 times 10 is. The first time it might actually calculate it if you have never done that operation before. Another time you may have noticed the trend that multiplying things by 10 results in the first number with an extra 0 at the end so it does a simpler operation to find the result. Another time you will simply remember that the answer to that was 120 and not do any calculations at all.

Computers don't do this. They reinvent the wheel every time a wheel is needed. There are a few technologies that try to optimize the process but it is just not as good at it.

Another thing to look at. How much work would a computer need to do to calculate where a ball will be once it is thrown? Now consider that it does not have accurate range finders and radar guns but only two crude optical sensors, though high resolution. It might not even have enough data to form a starting point for calculations depending on how it was programmed. Your brain on the other hand short cuts all that. It guesses and it does so with sufficient accuracy to catch the ball more often than not. Intuitive processing is powerful for vague situations where all the numbers and mathematical details are just not available.

Finally, when was the last time a computer invented something that changed the world? Computers are tools, used to help invent things, but they are incapable of creativity and creation. Once again that requires an intuitive processor such as a brain.

Brains > computers.
period.

Sorry, seriously tangental, but this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

How people still don't understand this concept is beyond me. Sadly, you're probably wasting your breath as I'm sure he'll be convinced that the brain isn't as complex as a CPU because he can't calculate 1 million decimals of pi but his CPU can do it in less than a minute. :lol:

LOL!
When was the 5200 ever considered high end?!

At Best Buy when they started selling them in 2003?

 

[imnotageek]

No one has yet mentioned MMO's as a potential cause of PC gaming slumps. World of Warcraft is a behemoth in the PC gaming industry. That game has probably reduced other PC game sales by at least 10% alone. Not because 10 million people play it today, but because probably 50 million have *at some time* played it for a good long time.

Personally I found it took at least a few years (after I quit wow) to get back into PC gaming because its such an all encompassing game that nothing else was attractive on the platform. RPG are mostly dull and shallow by comparison and no other game genre has that 'addiction quota' that WoW tends to induce. This isn't a commercial for WoW though, just the opposite, DON'T play that game, it will ruin you! 🙁

People playing an MMO wont buy other games because they generally want to play the MMO at every moment of the day. This means they wont go out and buy other games. In fact they wont even LOOK for other games. Plus they're spending money (however little it might be) and so there is the niggling feeling at the back of their brains that tells them they have to get the most 'value' out of the game that they can.

I think ignoring WoW as an ingredient in the downward slump of PC games sales is like ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room.

Strange to say, I am 99% with you on this. I thought I was the only one. (1% disagreement on WoW destroys people and people should stay away from the game to save the industry)

I was used to buy and play 2 PC games a month on average. Ever since I started playing WoW couple of years ago, I seldom buy any other games and I too find other games dull and shallow and non-fulfilling. I don't spend that much time with WoW these days. Still, I am not playing other PC game titles the same rate as I was before.

Very strange.

 

[imnotageek]

I am a PC gamer and my son has an XBOX 360. Both are good at what they do although I prefer my PC purely because of the type of games I play such as Flight Simulator X. However there is an interesting article discussing the possibility of the PC dying as a gaming platform.

Let me know your thoughts!

(See Link)

http://pc.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=15517

Back to the OP, I think PC will be a dying gaming platform when one day no one will use PC at all. Perhaps Bill Gate has seen it comiing so he started the XBOX movement.

NOT!

Each platform has its merit and there are always different segment of people who prefer a certain platform. I certainly happen to have a pretty ok computer because I do lots of video / audio editing as my hobby and using my computer for gaming is only natural. I may get a PS3 because I want to use it as a Blu-ray player as well. Wii would be fun as I have always enjoyed Nintendo's gameplay (still have my SNES and N64). I can't think of any reason to buy XBox ... perhaps for Dead or Alive because the girls in the game look so ... okay, let's not go there.

If I have enough $$, I would get all the platforms. My current preference would be PC > PS3 > Wii > XBox and I suspect I am not the only person who own or think of owning more than one platform.