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Old 03-14-2007, 05:20 AM   #21
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To broaden my comment on this from thread post # 19, I would say that people that else wouldn't be gamers were drawn into gaming by the release of Xbox 360, the PS2, and the Wii as well as the Nintendo DS (lite).

I think many people have a vision of a PC gamer as a nerd that sits in his dark room all night, playing hardcore PnP games on the computer. (this image is not true, but nonetheless this is the image the average media and person has of the typical pc player).

The console games are probably made more accessible to the general public to catch gamers who else won't be gaming. It is thus an expansion of the gaming market overall, and not so much a decline in pc gaming, imo.
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Old 03-14-2007, 07:23 AM   #22
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Imagine if every XBox 360 exclusive game was instead a Vista exclusive game. Imagine if "XBox Vista" was sold, bundled with the hardware I mentioned above.
Your wishes have been heard: http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US...aboutLive.aspx

Microsoft are going to make it possible to play a game on xbox vs a PC user.
 
Old 03-14-2007, 10:28 AM   #23
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Your wishes have been heard: http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US...aboutLive.aspx
Microsoft are going to make it possible to play a game on xbox vs a PC user.
Wasnt really what I meant though. What I meant was a piece of Vista-exclusive PC hardware that made it possible to play real XBox games on your PC.
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Old 03-14-2007, 05:41 PM   #24
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In a number of released games, maybe, but not necessarily in sales or profits.

I stand by my assessment that PlayStation was the beginning of the decline (at least in the eyes of mainstream - like Phantom said, the PC market isn't really doing that bad). It was the first time people could get a cheap CD-ROM based console with graphical capabilities far surpassing anything available on the PC at that time (3DFX Voodoo appeared only a year, year and a half later and the cards based on it were almost as expensive as the whole PlayStation console, which by that point had quite a library of games). Couple that with Sony's aggressive marketing and you can clearly see the makings of the third console gaming revolution.

You are not quite right about that, I think it was just the marketing, nothing else. Saturn's hardware was far superior to Playstation's but Sega's poor marketing made it disapear quite fast (what a shame).
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Old 03-14-2007, 11:53 PM   #25
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You are not quite right about that, I think it was just the marketing, nothing else. Saturn's hardware was far superior to Playstation's but Sega's poor marketing made it disapear quite fast (what a shame).
Saturn's hardware wasn't really fit for 3D calculations (it lacked hardware support for some operations, used quads instead of triangles and so on), even though certain teams had been able to achieve wonders with it. It was also a lot harder to program for and $100 more expensive at launch.

I managed to dig out a quote from an interview with one of the developers who worked with both Saturn and PlayStation hardware:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ezra Dreisbach
The most striking thing about the PSX port was how much faster the graphics hardware was than the Saturn. The initial scene after you just start the game is pretty complex. I think it ran 20 fps on the Saturn version. On the PSX it ran 30,but the actual rendering part could have been going 60 if the CPU calculations weren't holding it up. I don't know if it would have ever been possible to get it to really run 60, but at least there was the potential.

Other than that, it would have looked identical to the Saturn version. Except for some reason the PSX video output has better color than the Saturn's.

So I know something about the PSX. And really, if you couldn't tell from the games, the PSX is way better than the Saturn. It's way simpler and way faster. There are a lot of things about the Saturn that are totally dumb. Chief among these is that you can't draw triangles, only quadrilaterals.
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Old 03-15-2007, 12:02 AM   #26
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Btw, haven't video game consoles always been much more popular for playing games than home computers ever since Atari and then later Nintendo in Northern America? And how do things look like in your country now anyway? The PC was surely on top of the game in Germany, and it's still going strong, perhaps more so than in any other country. What about the rest of Europe? And Asia? They're really crazy about online gaming, MMORPGs and Blizzard games in particular it seems. At least in Korea and China. Just curious, cause local differences in gaming culture are always an interesting topic.
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Old 03-15-2007, 12:03 AM   #27
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What do they mean by triangles?
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Old 03-15-2007, 12:14 AM   #28
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Wasnt really what I meant though. What I meant was a piece of Vista-exclusive PC hardware that made it possible to play real XBox games on your PC.
That's kind of a dumb idea, though. Why would Microsoft threaten the market share of one of its very best products, namely the Xbox360?
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Old 03-15-2007, 12:20 AM   #29
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That's kind of a dumb idea, though. Why would Microsoft threaten the market share of one of its very best products, namely the Xbox360?
Who said that it was an idea of Microsoft, though? Or an idea approved by Microsoft? Just saying! Never heard about this, though. A couple of years from now emulators will do the trick.
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Old 03-15-2007, 12:21 AM   #30
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Well, unless someone is actually trying to do something like that, why even bring it up, even rhetorically, samsie? Let's keep it real.

Oh, and emulators represent a VERY tiny market, one that most hardware and software companies shouldn't worry much about. After all, how many soccer moms (and 30-something gamers, for that matter) actually know and even HAVE the time to make an emu?
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Old 03-15-2007, 12:41 AM   #31
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And how do things look like in your country now anyway?
Up until the arrival of PlayStation there were hardly any consoles in Croatia, it was all about microcomputers, home computers and PCs. PC is still the king here, but consoles are closing in fast.
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Old 03-15-2007, 12:56 AM   #32
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Well, unless someone is actually trying to do something like that, why even bring it up, even rhetorically, samsie? Let's keep it real.
Hey, we're on an adventure game forum here. I thought we'd all be gaming like it's 1991! Keeping it REAL?

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Up until the arrival of PlayStation there were hardly any consoles in Croatia, it was all about microcomputers, home computers and PCs. PC is still the king here, but consoles are closing in fast.
So PC's still definite king? I think that in all the countries that had many users who started gaming on computers the PC is still much more common than everywhere else. As a gaming machine, of course. I still remember the console vs. Amiga/Atari/IBM Compatibles wars back then. Lets not forget the wars between each one of these computer platforms, either, but they don't really matter here. Heck, Commodore tried to sell its machines by making video game machines look inferior, even.
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Old 03-15-2007, 01:35 AM   #33
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Who said that it was an idea of Microsoft, though? Or an idea approved by Microsoft? Just saying! Never heard about this, though. A couple of years from now emulators will do the trick.
I think Microsoft's point is to get Vista and Xbox 360 hardware to work together in say MMO games or LAN parties or online play. This means that
the PC can do what the PC does best --- strategic thinking and that the
Xbox 360 can do what it does best - action. It is, imo, the whole point of Vista and DX10 to have this inter-activitu between the PC and the Xbox.

This means that a guy on the PC playing say Halo, GRAW 2, or Gears of War, with his buddies on the net can act like a commander or a general out in the (real) field, giving orders to the people who play the game on Xbox 360.

I don't know if this will be a succes or not, though
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Old 03-15-2007, 02:41 AM   #34
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Speaking of which, have you seen the new Commodore-branded line of gaming PCs?
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Old 03-15-2007, 02:54 AM   #35
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And how do things look like in your country now anyway?

I don't know about the rest of Asia, but in Japan people usually use consoles for playing games.
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Old 03-15-2007, 03:45 AM   #36
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here in Norway it is a bit hard to say. In the stores, console games are taking over. Most shops that sells PC and console games spend less and less space in the shop for PC games. Last time I went in to a shop to buy a PC game, they had only one tiny shelf. Last time they had an entire wall(with the top 10 games). That was just back when I bought Dreamfall.

But it's still easy to find a lot of PC games, even though only the top sellers can be found in most stores. Online I find still plenty of PC games, from norwegian net shops.
 
Old 03-15-2007, 04:21 PM   #37
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Aww, come on! I'm 46 in a couple of months, and hardly feeling too old to play games. The only problem I've got is lack of free time, mostly stemming from my career choice (freelance = long hours).

Look on the bright side: When you're in your 40s, you're likely to have more disposable income to spend on your toys of choice.
well, then maybe it's just me I am 23 and at least the last 6 years I have played quite few games, mostly just a few that was heavily recommended by friends or sequels to other games I already loved in the past. I think the last time I really played a lot of games was back when I was 15/16. I still play games, but I don't like most new games these days. It's mostely just the sequels to classics or re-releases of classics I buy. I don't really like the style of most new games. It just ain't as fun playing them as the classics, me thinks. I miss the days when story was more important than graphics These days it's all about the money. The room for cool and original niches are getting smaller and smaller, and unforunately for me it was the niches that became big hits that I loved the most

I think I will always buy adventure games, though, even though I see a "dumbening down" of the audience there too. The adventure games get easier and easier with less story these days. But then again, the budgets they have to deal with gets slimer and slimer too. I also enjoy some RPG games. But some of the same dumbening down happens there. Like Oblivion, it was smaller than Morrowind(which I loved and still love), you could fast travel so people wouldn't get bored from walking or something like that, the cities looked more similar and the skills upgrading system was made even more automatic. Even though I've bought and played through Oblivion and ordered the expansion pack as well(hey, one has to support those who made great stuff in the past, and Oblivion is still a wonderful and beautifully made game, so it's well worth supporting), it was no morrowind.

Also, I am an "old" PC gamer. I haven't owned a console since the nintendo 8-bit, so just the thought of playing a game on console makes my back shiver. I don't really like the control. I prefer sitting with a keyboard and a mouse instead when playing a game. In my head, a keyboard feels much more natural than a joystick or gamepad, since it's what I love and know. And last, to generalize a bit more. Most of the games released for consoles are a different style than what I like in a game. So yeah, I would probably have stoped playing games if I had to buy them on a console.

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Old 03-15-2007, 05:27 PM   #38
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well, then maybe it's just me I am 23 and at least the last 6 years I have played quite few games, mostly just a few that was heavily recommended by friends or sequels to other games I already loved in the past. I think the last time I really played a lot of games was back when I was 15/16. I still play games, but I don't like most new games these days. It's mostely just the sequels to classics or re-releases of classics I buy. I don't really like the style of most new games. It just ain't as fun playing them as the classics, me thinks. I miss the days when story was more important than graphics These days it's all about the money. The room for cool and original niches are getting smaller and smaller, and unforunately for me it was the niches that became big hits that I loved the most

I think I will always buy adventure games, though, even though I see a "dumbening down" of the audience there too. The adventure games get easier and easier with less story these days. But then again, the budgets they have to deal with gets slimer and slimer too. I also enjoy some RPG games. But some of the same dumbening down happens there. Like Oblivion, it was smaller than Morrowind(which I loved and still love), you could fast travel so people wouldn't get bored from walking or something like that, the cities looked more similar and the skills upgrading system was made even more automatic. Even though I've bought and played through Oblivion and ordered the expansion pack as well(hey, one has to support those who made great stuff in the past, and Oblivion is still a wonderful and beautifully made game, so it's well worth supporting), it was no morrowind.

Also, I am an "old" PC gamer. I haven't owned a console since the nintendo 8-bit, so just the thought of playing a game on console makes my back shiver. I don't really like the control. I prefer sitting with a keyboard and a mouse instead when playing a game. In my head, a keyboard feels much more natural than a joystick or gamepad, since it's what I love and know. And last, to generalize a bit more. Most of the games released for consoles are a different style than what I like in a game. So yeah, I would probably have stoped playing games if I had to buy them on a console.


This is what I always say. It's like you would read my mind...

You are right even with Oblivion. I liked Morrowing much more, it has even much better music. And Arena was the best of the series.

I don't like playing console games much either, but I bought for example Dreamcast just because of Shenmue, Biohazard: Code Veronica and Soul Calibur. And Gamecube just because of Biohazard 1 and Soul Calibur 2 You don't see many adventure games for console. It is eiter some action game or some sport, I am sick of action games. And unfortunately, this happened also in PC industry. In couple of last years, all complanies make just shooters, where they don't have to think about any story. Story is usually about planet being destroyed by someone, so you have to go, shoot everyone in your way and save the planet by killing the boss. Only graphics and environment are different in each game. And what is really sad, that not many people like adventure games. If there is not enough blood in the game, they don't play it.
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Old 03-16-2007, 12:18 AM   #39
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Speaking of which, have you seen the new Commodore-branded line of gaming PCs?
Now I have. These seem to be for the hardcore gamers in mind. The design's nothing that appeals to me... who owns the brand now anyway? The year Commodore went bust I sold my Amiga and bought my first PC. Evil, that. Later the label was bought by ESCOM, and then I lost track.


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I don't know about the rest of Asia, but in Japan people usually use consoles for playing games.
A no-brainer, obviously. Ah, if only the PC market was stronger in Japan, maybe PC gamers would have gotten a decent port of RE4. =/ Hm, thinking about the numbers I brought up in the link above, German revenues in 2006 and all:

Total revenue across all platforms: 1.13 billion.
Handheld: 190 million.
Console: 652.6 million.
PC: 473.4 million. So.. yeah, if you want to look at it like that, the PC is likely still the single most profitable platform to develop for in Germany. In theory. PS: To me it seems there are waaay too many games being made anyway. But that could very well just be me. Market demands and all.
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Old 03-16-2007, 03:13 AM   #40
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who owns the brand now anyway? The year Commodore went bust I sold my Amiga and bought my first PC. Evil, that. Later the label was bought by ESCOM, and then I lost track.
It's... Complicated.


Quote:
Total revenue across all platforms: 1.13 billion.
Handheld: 190 million.
Console: 652.6 million.
PC: 473.4 million. So.. yeah, if you want to look at it like that, the PC is likely still the single most profitable platform to develop for in Germany. In theory.
Ah, but those are revenues, not profits.
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