Are quality PC games dying?

Doom 3. August 3.

The PC games market has killed itself. Developers and publishers got too caught up in making impressive games, and spent too little time making good games. The increased focus on high-spec graphics routines and pushing the latest video hardware to the limit meant that the actual nuts and bolts of the games were overlooked. The Internet made them lazy, allowing bugs and problems with games to stay in the shipped version - you can always release a patch or a fix later, right? And all the time minimum system specs were rising at a rate beyond most people's wallets, coinciding with the advent of affordable next-gen consoles.

Is there a difference between a high-end PC running Doom 3 and the Xbox version? Of course - but it's no longer big enough for the mainstream gamer (ie the customer who keeps a format commercially viable) to want the hassle of updating components, downloading new drivers, fixing bugs and patching DLL files just to get the damn game to play, let alone look like it did in all those glowing previews in the press. Faced with the choice between the same game on a PC or a console, they'll pick the Xbox or PS2 version. Doom 3 might be a PC title, but I guarantee they're relying on the Xbox version to make it profitable.

PC games have commited suicide. It's that simple.

Dan speaks the truth, and speaks it well.

Wonderfully said there Dan. Frankly i'm tired of buying a new video card every 1 to 2 years just to play one or 2 games. Hello consoles.

Quality PC games are few and far between at this point but I'm hoping for a comeback.

I don't think you can write-off the PC market and games just yet. City of Heroes is out and is IMHO a fun game with lots of promise. And over 100k others are playing as well. World of Warcraft and EQ2 are coming out w/in the year. Sequels to two of the biggest and best games ever (Doom and Half-Life) are almost out. As for current games, Rise of Nations and Warcraft III were both great games. The Thief and No One Lives Forever games were pretty good.

I agree with everyone that the emphasis on graphics over gameplay sucks. But I hold out hope that the PC Games market will thrive and continue.

I also agree with Dan. While there may be some promising titles on the horizon, there's not a chance that they'll run on my computer, so I'm not breathlessly waiting for them. I love playing games on the PC, but these days it's just getting harder and harder to even run them. Every time I get a new game, it doesn't seem to work well on the first installation, so it becomes a hunt for patches or drivers or some sort of settings that will make the thing work. That makes consoles suddenly more appealing, since there you can just put in a game and play it.

PC games can be saved, I think, but they need to cool it with the high-end requirements to even RUN a game, and test them before release instead of after.

No.

Theres a lot of good discussion here about how people are lazy or don't want to fuck with using a computer to play games, but if that's the question your asking the answer is no. There are still plenty of quality PC games, depending on your taste in genre.

Will more people buy Doom 3 for xbox than PC? Probably. So the hell what? The PC version will still have superior controls, and better graphics for those than can handle it.

- Fate

The PC game industry is dying as a mainstream business. Witness Kotor, Doom, etc. As these games continue to outsell the PC on consoles, more weight will be throw at them and less cash will be available to the PC versions.

I personally can't wait for this to happen. Because then, the small guys who have ALWAYS given us the good stuff (how big was id when doom came out? Blizzard when Diablo appeared?) will continue making the less spectacular but way better efforts that you can still find today if you devote yourself to the search. PC gaming will go back to being a couple of people in a bedroom making an inspired masterpiece they care deeply about, and selling it to the handful of people who can look past the whizbang. Not a lot of copies, but enough to support the 2 guys.

Spiderweb Software will still be around when the PC "industry" dies
So will Troika
So will Blizzard
So will Stardock
So will Strategy First
So will id, hopefully
So will Introversion
So will Nival Interactive
So will Paradox Entertainment

NOTHING would help these peoplo more than the death of the PC *industry*

Dan's just upset because he can't properly install DirectX 9.0b.

Lemme see, in the past few months or so I've bought for my pc - Tron 2.0, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Thief 3, XIII, Gothic II, Call of Duty, No One LIves Forever 2, Far Cry, several detailed rpgs, and others. Is the market less than it once was? Sure. But we've still got plenty of quality games coming out for the pc, and we have titles like Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and STALKER on the near horizon.

I wouldn't sound the death-knell just yet. Gaming is changing, who knows what the marketplace will be like in ten years time...

I agree with you that the big guns (D3, HL2) will have better graphics, but I think the point is that PCs are hitting the wall of diminishing returns.

Sure, my dual-Opteron with an ATI x800 XT will look better than an XBox. But how much better? $2k better? Not likely. The trend toward higher, faster, stronger only goes so far until the slope starts to approach infinity, at which point the consoles take over. (Of course, I say all this as I plan to buy a new nVidia card. And no, my system isn't really a dual-Op with an ATI).

I'm not sure where everyone is coming from, at least from a FPS standpoint the PC is reaching an all time high. Three top notch shooters have been released this year (UT2k4, BFV, and Farcry) and the two big ones haven't even hit yet.

It is true we sadly haven't been seeing many innovations in RPGs and Strategy as of late. I blame the focus on MMORPGs which is really hurt the industry IMO. Too many developers saw the cash cow that is Everquest and wanted a slice which unfortaunately flooded the market in the process. So instead of creating something compelling too many developers attempted to pump out their own repetitive timesink. Now that many of these MMORPGs have flopped, been cancelled, or scaled back I expect to see the developers cool it down a bit.

Right now PC games are looking to explode again. If either Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 bring the kind of innovations to the table that the developers claim they will PC gaming will return to the top.

Fall '04 and 2005 look to be the time period that PCs comeback.

Excluding the two monster engines mentioned above PC gamers have a lot to look forward to within the next year:

Relic's Warhammer 40K RTS looks to rekindle my faith in the genre. Amazing graphics, a lot of customization, and battles that should turn out to be quite cinematic.

Dungeon Siege 2 is shaping up to mop the floor with the original and become everything it wanted to be in the first place. An accesible Action RPG with the right amount of depth and some seemingly killer dungeons and bosses.

The Vampire RPG being built around the Half-Life 2 engine... imagine an RPG with an incredible physics engine, there are so many possibilites for complete immersion.

Brothers in Arms, a squad based tactical shooter cross bred with Call of Duty. Not much else needs to be said.

If F.E.A.R. ends up being more than a gimmick based shooter it has a great chance of being a sleeper hit.

Battlefield 2's modern warfare should make for some seriously compelling gameplay.

There is plenty of of greatness on the horizon for PC games, they just happened to be in a bit of a slump the last year or so. So bitch and moan about upgrading all you want, but PC gaming has ALWAYS been that way and it happens to be a lot cheaper to build a midranged and game ready system now then it ever has been.