OK, I admit I'm no expert, but I bought my PC with XP because it was cheaper! Also 4Gb of RAM is not necessary even in the most recent of games!

Assassins Creed was apparently going to recommend 3Gb, but I'm sure I read a box somewhere which said 2Gb!

Games/Software are running quite a way behind software ATM it would seem!

I play Quake still because it's a fun good game, and you dont need hundreds of people to make original content, so there is STILL original content coming out for it! The gameplay will never get old! It's fast and arcadey - a good challenge, good for the adrenaline! Kind to system specs etc etc

I love it! 

 

i think the home computer (PC and mac) is still the best platform for people making and sharing free/independant games and game mods. 

 

Casual gaming ftw! 

Casual gaming on the PC is a stop gap. Eventually that will all move to consoles as well via XBox LIve Arcade and the Sony equivalent.

The ship's going down, boys. Don't wait until the last minute to grab a life boat. :)

PC's will devolve into a hobbyist platform and a great place to learn about game creation and collaboration with others. But it's not a place to make money anymore, by and large. 

is PC gaming being dead the reason it has been enjoying double digit growth year over year for god knows how long? Because that doesn't make much sense for a "dead" platform. Not to mention there are genres like MMO, RTS and flight sims that plain don't work on consoles at all. 

It is quite obvious that the PC gaming market is changing. You can no longer get away with releasing FPS games with ridiculous hardware requirements and expect to drive a whole generation of users to upgrade their hardware just for one game all of a sudden (see: Crysis). And it is also quite obvious that buying PC games in retail in dying out and digital distribution is the future (see: the enormous popularity and growth of Steam). 

PC gaming is showing good numbers because of World of Warcraft. Remove Blizzard from the equation and you'll have a very different picture. 

There are 2 or 3 franchises propping up the corpse. As more and more big name developers move away from the PC, they will be replaced by little indie guys making color matching puzzle games. That won't fill the void. I give the PC 5 years before you'll be lucky to see a handful of releases on it each year.

People defended the old 8-bit computers to the death as well - it didn't stop them from dying.

Developers aren't interested in chasing the hardcore gamers anymore with the latest video card of the week. Those days are going away and that was what spurned on most of the growth over the last X years. Hardware sales driving software sales and vice versa. That's essentially over now. 

because console games were stupid. And of course nobody I knew even had a console. C64 games were stupid too but I was a little kid back then.

Nowadays I don't play anything.

Is the question that we are skirting around piracy? 

There's no denying it, all current events/global situations spell inevitable doom!

Either that or in 20 years we'll all be walking around with digital contact lenses, and "computer games" will be a thing of the past, replaced by "virtual reality fantasy", about 1/2 a step from becoming Borg.

I am looking forwards to

Fallout 3
Aliens - Colonial Marine
Gears of War 2
Far Cry 2
STALKER Clear Skies (or whatever its called)
Duke Nukem Forever (lol!)
Half Life 2: Episode 3
Doom 4 (in the very distant future ?)
Rage (possibly - a bit sceptical - me likes foliage) 

Developers using piracy as an excuse for dumping the PC platform for consoles should look in the mirror and consider making games which people are interested in paying for instead of taking the easy route of only developing for a platform where piracy is harder. The huge irony about anti-piracy DRM is that in a lot of cases, pirates get a better product than the people actually paying for their purchase, because pirates don't have to deal with SecuROM, online activations or keep their game DVD in the drive during play.

Both The Sims and Oblivion had no piracy protection whatsoever and while the latter sold pretty well, the former is/was a licence to print money, on a platform that's supposedly being killed by pirates. Or is it perhaps that someone managed to make a game that is fun to play for a large audience and doesn't require a monstrous PC to run?

Now, from a business POV, I get it, it makes more business sense to develop for consoles because you can get away with releasing shit games and people will buy them anyway, because pirating a console game is much harder than it is to do on the PC, but at least have the decency to admit that you are doing it purely because you want to swim in money despite releasing shit games instead of taking the time and effort to create a title that appeals to a wide audience. 

"Developers using piracy as an excuse for dumping the PC platform for consoles should look in the mirror and consider making games which people are interested in paying for instead of taking the easy route of only developing for a platform where piracy is harder."

I'm sorry? Pirates don't care about the quality of the game. They crack and distribute everything and put it up on easy to search torrent sites. Good or bad doesn't matter. All PC games are cracked and distributed.

"The huge irony about anti-piracy DRM is that in a lot of cases, pirates get a better product than the people actually paying for their purchase, because pirates don't have to deal with SecuROM, online activations or keep their game DVD in the drive during play. "

Know what the cure for that is? Consoles. Every gets the exact same experience.

"Or is it perhaps that someone managed to make a game that is fun to play for a large audience and doesn't require a monstrous PC to run?"

Talk to the Crysis guys about piracy numbers.

PC gaming is dying. And calling developers names or calling them lazy or whatever isn't going to prolong it's life. It's dead, Jim. 

I have the 3xCDROM version

I was surprised to discover that you require no disk!
Pirates are shit. Ruin everything for PCGamers
I bought my copy of Quake from the ID website!
Best value game for �10 you can buy IMHO - weeks and weeks of downloadable original content! :D
The problem is with Steam that you need an internet connection to use it!
Whereas with consoles you dont.
But I like using a keyboard and mouse for gaming... 

Im pretty sure casual MMOs will keep the pc onfloat. wont die completely even in 5 years. MMOs arent games tho (Warren Spector told so!) - they are more of a social thing, like a chat.
And they still keep on releasing PC versions of many games, I guess its still worth it. Who knows when/if this trend stops as more and more people switch to consoles 

"I'm sorry? Pirates don't care about the quality of the game. They crack and distribute everything and put it up on easy to search torrent sites. Good or bad doesn't matter. All PC games are cracked and distributed."

Yet, there are still PC games that sell TRUCKLOADS, some of them are copy-protected while some have no DRM whatsoever. The only conclusion we can make is that DRM does not affect sales in a positive way on the PC platform, while the quality of the game does.

"Talk to the Crysis guys about piracy numbers."

Is it really such a shock that Crysis is pirated so much, when you take into consideration that looking at VALVE's most recent hardware charts, less than 20% of gaming PCs are capable of running it even on moderate settings? Everyone is interested in taking a look at the jawdropping nextgen graphics, but noone is going to pay for a game that runs at 20fps. 

I'm still enjoying PC gaming more than Console gaming (which I also enjoy, just less, as FPS are still better on PC), so I really don't see why I'd jump ship or whatever. If things change, fine, so be it, it's not a reason to rush to console only gaming right away.

Omg piracy discussion! Yeah it's bad. I'm not one to predict the future and how things will evolve, but I know quite a few people who pirate all their console games too, so I'm not yet convinced consoles is the real solution to piracy. 

PC game sales numbers any1??? I think we dont have those, cause PC games ony sell well in EU and there are no solid numbers for overall EU sales.
And withought any sales proof its empty talk.
And USA sales for PC games are abysmal.

Jago: you are right, you need to make a good game to get good sales. Except PC sales will still be smaller than console sales by 2-3 times. And you cant make much money with a shit title on a console either, cause the competition is very strong. Conclusion - ... ? 

"I'm not one to predict the future and how things will evolve, but I know quite a few people who pirate all their console games too, so I'm not yet convinced consoles is the real solution to piracy."

Of course it is. You can't play online with a pirated game and if caught, you'll lose your Live account. There's zero incentive to pirate console games unless you intend to play solely offline and in single player.

Even then, console piracy is very much in the hardcore realm. It isn't a matter of downloading an EXE and running it. You have to mod your console and/or create special boot CDs, burn the game to a disc, etc. And then you can't play with your friends over the internet.

"Jago: you are right, you need to make a good game to get good sales. Except PC sales will still be smaller than console sales by 2-3 times. And you cant make much money with a shit title on a console either, cause the competition is very strong. Conclusion - ... ?"

Right. A developer is going to work their ass off and create a killer game - they want to see some sales for their efforts. That means consoles. Look at the first week sales for Halo 3 and GTA4. Notice how those games weren't released on PC? There's a reason.

Sure, they might do a PC port in a year or so once the primary selling window has passed and they've made their money. At that point, it's a token gesture to the PC guys who just can't let go. 

How many "10+ million sold" titles can you count on the consoles and on the PC? I know of 2 on the PC, WoW and The Sims, but I have trouble coming up with even a single 10+ million seller on the consoles. PC games CAN sell VERY well, it's just that it seems to require a rather special type of game. Now the developers can adapt to the new PC market and thrive in it or they can take the easy route of doing what they've been doing for the past 10 years, but only on the consoles this time, since for the console gamers the whole FPS shooter business is still relatively new. 

Im not arsed about Halo3.
I'll probably play GTA4 on the console. It wouldnt feel right on a PC.
I wouldnt mind some of those PS3 only shooters, like Haze and that other one, er, I forget... 

we already got over your precious WoW with its fenomenal success - its eating up the large chunk of a market.

btw Sims release date? 2004

and these two are the prime examples of what PC gaming has become = MMOs and casual games with low requirements and wide appeal.

And 10mln of wow subscribers is a bad thing - its 10mln of gamers playing WoW and only it. for how-many-years... These are the negative numbers, numbers of the consumers you arent going to get. So it PC market -minus 10mln WoW players. WoW is the heroin that contributes to the killing of the PC gaming, cause it kills the competition. Its the Wallmart of gamedev (in the same sense as Wallmart killed the smaller shops in every town it had come to)

but back to the mumbers: 2007

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock 7.5M (miltiplatform)
Super Mario Galaxy (Wii Exclusive) 4.1M
Halo 3 8M (x360 exclusive)
CoD4 8.3M (miltiplatform - apparently ~6 mln on x360/ps3, cant find numbers by platform)

PC best 2007 I could find:
Burnin Crusade (wow expansion) ~3,5 mln
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (1.65 million)

conclusion ...? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty_4:_Modern_Warfare#Sales
(not very reliable, but still)

2007 top100 combined
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9639&Itemid=2&limit=1&limitstart=1 

One reason why there are so many MMO's being developed these days is that you simply cannot pirate them, warez them, or whatever you want to call it them.

It is a very successful form of DRM, lol :)

Personally, I would not mind paying a subscription to a download service (say steam) and then being able to download any game I wanted at any time and being able to play it there and then.