the dark age of gaming

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Started by Riviera Kid May 18, 2005 08:35 AM

65 comments, last by Eelco 18 years, 12 months ago

494

May 18, 2005 10:36 PM

Quote:Original post by pink_daisy
The PC business has been declining for years. Awhile back i compiled sales data in the US for PC and console platforms (data from NPD funworld and the ESA):
| year | total | PC  | Console |  GDP  |-----------------------------------------------------------  1995   3.2B  1996   3.7B   1.70B   2.0B	  3.7  1997   5.1B   1.80B   3.3B      4.5         1998   5.5B   1.80B   3.7B      4.2        1999   6.1B   1.90B   4.2B	  4.5  2000   6.0B   1.78B   4.1B	  3.7  2001   6.3B   1.75B   4.6B      0.8  2002   6.9B   1.40B   5.5B	  1.9  2003   7.0B   1.20B   5.8B*     3.0       *0.9B reported on mobile platforms  2004   7.3B   1.10B   6.2B*     4.4       *1.0B reported on mobile platforms 
[edit: for those visual peeps i made a graph]

As you can see the console business continues strong growth. The PC game business, on the otherhand, has been in substantial decline since 2000. The question becomes will the PC business ever recover.

Some things missing from your data:
*Games released on multiple platforms
*Development costs
*Profit margin
*a legend of the graph, sales in dollars or in quantity sold

HxRender | Cornerstone SDL TutorialsCurrently picking on: Hedos, Programmer One

pink_daisy

200

May 18, 2005 10:58 PM

Quote:Original post by PnP Bios
Quote:Original post by pink_daisy
The PC business has been declining for years. Awhile back i compiled sales data in the US for PC and console platforms (data from NPD funworld and the ESA):
| year | total | PC  | Console |  GDP  |-----------------------------------------------------------  1995   3.2B  1996   3.7B   1.70B   2.0B	  3.7  1997   5.1B   1.80B   3.3B      4.5         1998   5.5B   1.80B   3.7B      4.2        1999   6.1B   1.90B   4.2B	  4.5  2000   6.0B   1.78B   4.1B	  3.7  2001   6.3B   1.75B   4.6B      0.8  2002   6.9B   1.40B   5.5B	  1.9  2003   7.0B   1.20B   5.8B*     3.0       *0.9B reported on mobile platforms  2004   7.3B   1.10B   6.2B*     4.4       *1.0B reported on mobile platforms 
[edit: for those visual peeps i made a graph]

As you can see the console business continues strong growth. The PC game business, on the otherhand, has been in substantial decline since 2000. The question becomes will the PC business ever recover.
Some things missing from your data:
*Games released on multiple platforms
*Development costs
*Profit margin
*a legend of the graph, sales in dollars or in quantity sold

*The point of the data was to show where dollars are being spent on PC and console-based video games.
*This isn't a cost/benefit analysis of developing games for PCs v.s Consoles just a snapshot of where the dollars are flowing.
*Again, this isn't an analysis of whether a particular market segment is profitable for developers, just where consumers are spending their money.
*there is a legend. The graph area colors are coded for PC and consoles. The bottom of the graph is stated as years and the range given. The vertical axis is labeled in billions USD -- i thought USD would be clear enough for US dollars; I guess not. The graph is also titled AND the sources for the data were also credited. Exactly how much more of a "legend" do you need?

Three facts can be ascertained from the graph: overall the the sales (as measured in USD) of video game software in the US is growing. The sales of console-based video game software in the US is growing at a faster rate than the industry as a whole. The sales of PC-based software in the US is declining. I drew no other inferences or causal relationships from the data. There would be something "missing" if i was reaching conclusions not supported by the data. Fortunately i was not.

PD

www.ChippedDagger.com"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither." -- Benjamin Franklin"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." -- Milton Berle

Hakiko

211

May 19, 2005 12:30 AM

I think indie game development for the consoles is just seeing its beginning.
You can't create them from the ground up yet but the two RPG makers, the new FPSs that allow you to make and upload levels, and the possibility of downloadable content for the new Nintendo system look like steps in this direction.

Nintendo has really been working at being different. It is not impossible that you might be able to program games that would run on a NES, SNES, or N64 emulator and download them to this new console. From what I read from E3 coverage you will be able to download and play old games for it.

No if anything I think the prospects of indie console development are higher now than ever (though still not great). There was like zero chance of making your own NES game.

Maega

707

May 19, 2005 12:39 AM

Quote:Original post by Hakiko
Nintendo has really been working at being different. It is not impossible that you might be able to program games that would run on a NES, SNES, or N64 emulator and download them to this new console. From what I read from E3 coverage you will be able to download and play old games for it.

Yes.. from their own system and servers. Chances of you getting your game on those servers are nil.

It will still take some modification to the console itself.

Hakiko

211

May 19, 2005 01:19 AM

Quote:Original post by Maega

Yes.. from their own system and servers. Chances of you getting your game on those servers are nil.

It will still take some modification to the console itself.

Yes, I am almost certain that you are right. However it is not impossible, especially if the system allows any kind of browsing (they didn't give any real details). And even if you can only do it with modification its still more than we have really had before.

My point is that we are moving more in the direction of being able to express our own creativity (there was a time when this was limited to Mario Paint) on consoles than away from it.

superpig

1,826

May 19, 2005 03:09 AM

Quote:Original post by Eelco
i agree PC's will have some time to catch up on the consoles. but these starting positions are quite unprecendent. add to that the scalability of the cell architecture (PS3.x?), and the ceiling in x86 architecture i dont see disappearing anytime soon, and i doubt that even in six years PC's will have caught on to what will be possible on the cell then.

I'd be very careful not to overestimate the Cell. At the moment we don't have anything to go on beyond what Sony Marketing have told us; there's an unbiased source if I ever heard one [grin] Likewise for Xbox360. You might be right, but I won't agree until we see the full range of games for the systems (or even better, devkits with fully accurate technical details).

Also, who says x86 is going to be around for the next six years?

Quote:Original post by Extrarius
Quote:Original post by Eelco
Quote:Original post by Extrarius
Quote:Original post by Eelco
[...]less bugs[...]
It seems to me that console developers no longer have a good reason to deliver games with fewer bugs. Once upon a time, console games were set in stone once released and could only be patched by releasing a new disc/cart/etc but that is no longer the case since consoles have online connectivity and writable storage. Thus, they can patch the games nearly as easily as PC developers can, so they can release the game 6 months before it is truly finished and deliver patches as they get things fixed. Such a methodology would kill the main appeal of console for me (not that I'm at all a console person - the only consoles I've had were various ataris, NES, and SNES).

that decision is luckly in the hands of the more long term interested console producer than the short term aiming publisher. i dont think it will be all that bad.
Why not? When internet and then broadband became commonplace on PCs, I definitely noticed games being released more buggy and getting patched for years (when you're lucky - some games just get released full of bugs and left that way).

Sure, they can patch games more easily, from a technical point of view. But from a sociological point of view? Console gamers don't tolerate bugs in the same way PC gamers do, and I don't think that's about to change. If they've heard bad things about a game, they have the option of renting it to see if that's true, which does not generate you very much revenue; but when there are so many other high-quality games around on the platform, why bother wasting time with your buggy one? Plus, Eelco's right, the console producers have no interest in releasing buggy games because consumers blame the console rather than the game. They don't make a loss if a game doesn't come out, they just miss out on some profit - so it's not really a big deal for them to prevent a game being released (unlike the developer/publisher who can be in it to the tune of several million dollars).

Richard "Superpig" Fine - saving pigs from untimely fates - Microsoft DirectX MVP 2006/2007/2008/2009
"Shaders are not meant to do everything. Of course you can try to use it for everything, but it's like playing football using cabbage." - MickeyMouse

Eelco

301

May 19, 2005 03:31 AM

Quote:Original post by superpig
Quote:Original post by Eelco
i agree PC's will have some time to catch up on the consoles. but these starting positions are quite unprecendent. add to that the scalability of the cell architecture (PS3.x?), and the ceiling in x86 architecture i dont see disappearing anytime soon, and i doubt that even in six years PC's will have caught on to what will be possible on the cell then.

I'd be very careful not to overestimate the Cell. At the moment we don't have anything to go on beyond what Sony Marketing have told us; there's an unbiased source if I ever heard one [grin] Likewise for Xbox360. You might be right, but I won't agree until we see the full range of games for the systems (or even better, devkits with fully accurate technical details).

well, the realtime videos (proven to be so by interactive usage) are quite convincing imo. all marketing hype aside: i truely do believe the PS3 is able to carry physics in games to a whole new level. that water demo is more thasn friggin impressive. ive done quite some tinkering with the subject, and wasnt really impressed when i saw the first bit. but when this guy started picking up water and tossing it around with his VR gloves, my jaw did hit the floor. i wasnt even aware there were decent algorithms for that yet, all id seen so far with that regard were ten second movies computed very much NOT in realtime, and looking less convincing than what was happening on that screen there. not only are this applications where the cell can throw its full power at because of parralelism, sony has also managed to get some awesome researchers onboard. if they have this sort of stuff all packed up into a physics lib for the PS3 that comes with the devkit by the time it comes out...

Quote:
Also, who says x86 is going to be around for the next six years?

6 years is a long time, but there doesnt seem to be anything spectacular on the horizon for the next three years atleast. and why would there be in case the driving force of PC development moves to other platforms? my word processor has ran fine for years, and thats still the main intended and applied use of PC's: office applications. and this sector would only get hugely fucked over by switching to a radically different architecture. i dont see it happening in the near future.

the dark age of gaming

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