>ps3 bust >microsoft steps in >shaped like a dildo
thats how america got their foot in the console door and jammed japan out the way. now they the captain.....better or worse.....huh>! its not retro. its the xbox 360. the roots begin when microsoft courts those guys on xbox like a tubbie scopes out the burger king. blame bioware.
Aren’t there a bunch of pc exclusives today? I can’t tell if this thread is a psyop. Yeah there’s a lot of multiplats but there’s still plenty of pc exclusives on steam
Tomb Raider: On PS1 and even the fricking Saturn.
Test Drive 4: On PS1
The Sims: On PS2, Xbox and Gamecube
GTA 1: On PS1
C&C: On PS1, N64, and even the fricking Saturn
Driver: On PS1
Quake: On N64 and even the fricking Saturn.
Quake 3: On Dreamcast and PS2
Hexen: On PS1, N64, and even the fricking Saturn
Theme Hospital: On PS1
Sim City 2000: On PS1, N64, Saturn, and even the fricking SNES
Civ 2: On PS1
Red Alert: On PS1
Lots of console games' boxes.
They all started out as PC games and then got downgraded ports for morons who bought them for console.
The only game on there that got a descent console port is tomb raider. Do you think that game could run on a console when it released? I think not.
>Also no one in the realm of PC users have ever cared if the game is exclusive to PC or not
I care because PC games that are also on console often suffer because of it
For example, most modern shooters are unplayable on PC because you're forced to play against console players with built-in aimbot, and the games are also balanced around console
You can't on many games. They know 99% of people would just turn it off immediately and then little timmy playing on his xbox would have to wait 2 hours in queue to get into a game with his friend on PC.
>no one in the realm of PC users have ever cared if the game is exclusive to PC
Of course they did, a console port was always seen as inferior by the PC only and forever crowd. Now that crowd is just Gabe's cheer squad, they don't give a shit if all they're playing is console ports
Because "don't you guys have phones". The genres that are intolerable without keyboard and mouse have died out, and the rest simply bows down to fickle winds of returns on investment. This is the root of the problem, not its consequences like lack of exclusivity or rising costs.
In a way, PC gaming has become niche again like it was at the dawn of home computer era. Small enthusiast teams can make decent games that, unlike in the past, have the potential to run exceptionally well on contemporary hardware. Yes, a lot of it is mediocre or worse, the ratio of signal to noise feels like it was better in the past, but there are zero technical obstacles to good video games being born out of passion projects.
>the PC only and forever crowd
The average constituent of that was never a zealot and actually went on to poke fun at them. You would generally see the majority type something like "consoles are inherently weaker hardware so that's why I only want games on PC". This can and often was nitpicked, but overall it is and always will be as correct as notebooks being inherently weaker than desktops, and various glowing touchscreens being inherently weaker than notebooks in turn. Miniaturisation can only go so far unless materials science makes a leap into what is effectively magic territory.
>The average constituent of that was never a zealot
Disagree. For the simple fact that back in the day those people played PC genres only and gave zero fricks about console genres. Now it became exactly what you're describing, people arguing about the hardware limitations of consoles. Back then the games on PC and consoles were different enough that you had a crowd of PC only gamers who simply did not play console style games, much like console gamers to this day have no desire to play PC style games like Total War or Starcraft.
>Disagree. For the simple fact that back in the day those people played PC genres only and gave zero fricks about console genres.
This does not a zealot make. Ignorant of other platforms? Yes. But there is zero passion behind this. Indifference is not zealotry. It's the opposite, in fact. >Now it became exactly what you're describing, people arguing about the hardware limitations of consoles.
The average PC player eventually came to the "if a game released on a console is good and is ported well to PC I'll play it, but that barely ever happens" in those arguments. That's not "PC only and forever". Actually, this is why what that post of yours has implied to having been a largely monolithic crowd has fractured so much and so easily in reality. That now only those who mostly play games that work poorly on consoles remain. And possibly those not willing to put any effort into changing their gaming hardware. I suppose actual zealots might too, if any of them are still alive. >Back then the games on PC and consoles were different enough that you had a crowd of PC only gamers who simply did not play console style games, much like console gamers to this day have no desire to play PC style games like Total War or Starcraft.
Of course. But the rejection of console games wasn't born out of principle. The usually curt and cold responses by "the crowd" were born out of fatigue caused by repetition, not hatred. Were you a primarily console gamer back then? I can see such interactions forming a lasting negative impression eventually.
>no one in the realm of PC users have ever cared if the game is exclusive to PC or not
I literally knew one guy back in 2012 who insisted that all games exclusive on SNES and Genesis were shit because they were consoles. Like, if Super Metroid got released on Steam it would somehow magically be better. He also browsed r/pcmasterrace and was obsessed with Dark Souls. Every self professed PC gamer I've ever met has been cancer incarnate.
The truth is that games became harder to make and more expensive as console gens went by. The most obvious culprit is better graphics but, it's more complicated than that.
In any case, the 90's and maybe early 2000s were great times to be a pc gamer if you could upgrade whenever you wanted.
And as for the trend I said above, the 360 sealed the deal. By the 360, developmental costs exploded and even a lot of console developers went bust and the industry realized more and more games needed DLC. The gaming industry has never recovered since.
>And as for the trend I said above, the 360 sealed the deal. By the 360, developmental costs exploded and even a lot of console developers went bust and the industry realized more and more games needed DLC. The gaming industry has never recovered since.
modern consoles from 7th gen onward are basically PCs albeit scaled down + you make more money on multiplatformers than sticking to ONE console or platform. it's why barring console manufacturers throwing money around third party console exclusives are effectively being phased out if not already.
nothing really to run down. the rise of DLC & microtransactions and the push towards GaaS initially started from the prevalence of used games sales which some companies like EA saw as worse than piracy (after all why pay $50 or $60 for a new game why you can buy it used from gamestop for half that?) and as for why it escalated to GaaS you get more money & miles out of an multiplayer/online game than a singleplayer game + their easier to make (why do you think so many FPS TCs were multiplayer focused?)
the final form of something like this is a subscription service like game pass or whatever Amazon is trying to do with the luna and what google failed to do with the stadia.
When PC lost its identity and unique genres in the late 2000s. Why was because PC just became an alternative for console games and no longer a unique platform for the types of games that were born on and flourished on the platform.
>PC lost its identity and unique genres
And now PC gaming just means buying console games on steam and playing them with a controller. Zoomers don't even comprehend that PC gaming used to be as different to console gaming as, say, gaming in arcades. It was almost a different hobby entirely with its own magazines and a sense of community.
People stopped making games that only really work control-wise with a mouse and keyboard
>PC lost its identity and unique genres
And now PC gaming just means buying console games on steam and playing them with a controller. Zoomers don't even comprehend that PC gaming used to be as different to console gaming as, say, gaming in arcades. It was almost a different hobby entirely with its own magazines and a sense of community.
>shitty mobile game tier "art" that looks like a sketch made on a tablet by a purple haired homosexual >ultra generic character designs >le 80s neon >black character >women
yup, it's a zoomer PC game alright
>le 80s neon
Somewhat unrelated but I always wonder how that whole oversaturated neon shit got associated with the 80's to begin with. Everyone looks at that aesthetic at calls it "typical 80's" but what's so typical about it? You look at actual games and movies from the 80's and none of them look like that. Is it all just Miami Vice? But not even Miami Vice looked like that. Vice City looked the part but none of these games look like Vice City, I just don't understand what exactly is the source material they're imitating.
Many PC games needlessly overcomplicated gameplay just because you have a keyboard and mouse at your disposal. Besides it's far more expensive to sort out bugs for a myriad of different PC builds than for one console design that won't change much until the next one releases.
Half of those games aren't even exclusive to PC.
But, seriously. Consoles have a fairly large market share with static hardware, so they're easier to develop with minimal quality assurance.
the only real answer is: X360.
PC was plagued by piracy and driver / spec discrepancy, all while console games generally sold way better. meanwhile, development costs were steadily rising, and the better the graphics, the higher they got; it was no longer feasible to dump $10-100 mln into a game that would reach only 10% of players, especially on a platform that prioritized graphics. you had to target every platform to maximize profits.
at first, PC genres and Western devs couldn't easily get a foot in console market. but then XB happened and demonstrated how a multiplayer shooter on a console could be the biggest game of the generation. Halo 2 sold on the level of GTA and Pokemon (despite being mostly an American thing), and singlehandedly established XBL as a thing.
then X360 came and sealed the deal. it became clear there was a huge demand for console shooters. soon enough, Oblivion and Fallout 3 became the blueprint of how you take a PC RPG series "for nerds" and turn them into huge cash cow franchises. Gears and Mass Effect followed, and the rest was history.
so FPS and RPG went the way of consoles because that's where the money was (and still is). they got a huge reach that wasn't limited to PC. but rest of the genres? many of them couldn't get adapted to consoles and slowly withered away. to repeat, it became clear you couldn't make a AAA quality game for cheap. some adapted to the reality of microtransactions, like MOBA, CSGO, etc.. ones that didn't, like traditional strategy, either died or went low budget like all those historical European games. alternatively, they just went indie, unable to invest millions into AAA graphics.
I don't know if you can blame all that on 360, it played a role for sure but Oblivion and Fallout 3 would've been what they are even without the 360. Pretty sure Bethesda knew nothing about 360 as they were starting to make Oblivion.
And before Gears there was RE4 so console TPS games were already on their way to become a big thing, 360 or not.
There was a general trend of losing the nerd audience and catering to normies and so everything was naturally turning into action blockbusters that worked perfectly on 360.
>Pretty sure Bethesda knew nothing about 360 as they were starting to make Oblivion.
maybe that's me, but back when it released every mag around complained it felt like a console game.
regardless, it paved the way for many huge games to come. I mean, ever heard of Western RPG making it big on SNES? maybe on PS1 or PS2? then comes Oblivion, paves the way for things to come, and then Skyrim releases and basically becomes as big as Halo and GTA.
compare this to, say, Vampire: The Masquerade, SW:KotOR or Dungeon Siege 2. they released barely 1-2 years before Oblivion, on PC. >And before Gears there was RE4 so console TPS games were already on their way to become a big thing, 360 or not.
my point wasn't specifically about TPS. RE4 was really its own thing, it's RE after all.
but I think I missed the elephant in the room: CoD. this was by far the biggest selling series on X360.
I recall in 2003 or so, CoD was just a promising newcomer game that tried to go against Battlefield, MoH, and other multiplayer shooters like UT / CS. several years later, it made all of them history and became the shooter of the generation. again—this is the difference that X360 made, making those PC shooters look like games for old farts. it started from Halo, but ended with CoD. >There was a general trend of losing the nerd audience and catering to normies and so everything was naturally turning into action blockbusters that worked perfectly on 360.
and consoles always had more reach because they were cheaper. plus, no one wanted a platform where piracy was crazy high.
The author of the CRPG book had a great article about the quest compass awhile back. Oblivion was the game that set that trend on course (and game design far back). What happened is that PC players were comfortable in Morrowind, they navigated towns and world by talking to NPCs and jotting down notes, paying attention as they went along. Console players? They couldn't find the first character in the first town during the first quest. They would get lost and frustrated doing minor things. Oblivion was made specifically to target those players and bring the game design to a minimum. The quest compass accentuated those goals - and dealt the final blow to the classic style of computer games.
interesting. frankly, the trend of dumbing down RPGs started even before that—for example, just playing FF6 feels like the game plays itself. it happened for same reasons really: I read there was a big shift in JRPGs where the genre was losing the mainstream appeal. similar complaints—"too hard", "too complex", etc.. so a lot of companies started to really target the lowest common denominator with their games: simplify fights and dungeons, cut exploration so that a player wouldn't get lost, put story and cutscenes first, and so on. which resulted in your stereotypical JRPG that feels like a DVD player game where you press A to win.
in a way, JRPGs were the precursors of AAA games. ironic that to this day stuff like Ultima 7 feels like it has never been topped, simply because most people didn't care for it and played much simpler games.
>They couldn't find the first character in the first town during the first quest
To be fair that was my first experience playing Morrowind on PC as a kid. It's more of a newcomer thing than a console thing, if you're not familiar with how those games play, Morrowind is pretty overwhelming, and console gamers weren't familiar. Now that they are you'd think games would start getting more complex...
>went low budget like all those historical European games.
Paradox Development Studio games aren't that low-budget and have gotten higher budget since early 2000s if anything. PDS itself has like 5 or 6 different divisions each working on different games now. Whether that has actually resulted in higher quality games is debatable, but it's undisputable that they aren't indie devs any more.
Many others have said it, the 360. But I haven't seen anyone mention Cliffy B, he was the herald of the "PC gaming dead" that happened back then.
I remember one interview he said something like (extreme paraprhasing), why spend so many years developing and then see all sales die because of piracy, meanwhile I work on Gears of War and sell like 100x times on a device that allows near zero piracy.
For a while every publication was talking about the death of pc gaming and the new consoles being the future, but PC gaming never died, it stayed semi dormant in the form games that just weren't possible in console, like sim games with lots of menus and those kind of games, until the big wave of gaming happened with Starcraft, Dota>League of Legends, and Steam becoming a monster store.
Nowadays the realm of PC gaming (besides ports) is turn based/strategy games that remain niche, indies and the big hitters like those esports games, LoL, Valorant, Dota2, Apex.
PC's are still really popular for gaming here in Europe. In fact it's mostly dirty casuals mere FIFA players owning consoles and young people I guess.
Autism in general too. For example CK3 is on consoles (in a vastly inferior form) but HOI4 and EU4 aren’t, it’s just too click intensive to translate to a controller
Basically a combination of these. Consoles are much more lucrative in first world markets where people actually pay for games. PC will always be favored in poorgay markets with rampant piracy.
Yes, plus formerly staunch European PC supporters like CD Projekt Red realizing it was much more lucrative to put The Witcher on consoles.
Last gen you had Xbox 360 on PowerPC, and PS3 alone had a 3.2 GHz PowerPC-based "Power Processing Element" (PPE) and six accessible Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). Both running at 3.2GHZ on powerPC architecture, which at the time was ahead of x86. It took years before the CPU's on PC were able to catch up.
As soon as Sony adopted the x86 platform, it was over. Mark Cerny did 15 presentations convincing Sony to use x86 for PS4. PS4 in particular is just BSD on AMD64, its fricking piss easy to write and optimize code for. PS4/PS5 are essentially x86 amd pcs running a OpenGL/Vulcan compatible GPU on top of a BSD based OS. couple that with numerous games using ue4x and its pretty easy and economical to put games on more machines.
PC gaming is "thriving" today only because porting from consoles costs nothing, they're all glorified PCs. they lose nothing if they just release a console game on PC. even if 90% of people pirate the game, they still make some buck.
This. PC multiplat releases only truly reached parity with consoles in Gen 8 and even now you have major developers like Rockstar releasing games on consoles first and then porting to PC up to a year later.
Because there's less money in PC gaming and devs are still scared of the piracy bogeyman.
6 months ago
Anonymous
Because there's less money in PC gaming and devs are still scared of the piracy bogeyman.
I guess it's similar to how movies get a home release way after theatrical release. to ensure you go to the cinema first.
6 months ago
Anonymous
PC support is still a QA quagmire.
Do it wrong and you'll get heckled for shit like limited graphical options, crashing when alt-tabbing, and someone still getting pissed cuz his ancient but web capable toaster can't run the game while his similarly spec-ed console can. Doing it right takes a lot of time, esp. when you have to redesign the whole thing for KB+M, which is generally unsuited for anything that isn't a point & click such as 3rd person character action games.
6 months ago
Anonymous
>keyboard mouse le bad
This is what happens when you buy into console manufacturer's memes. There's nothing wrong with keyboard and mouse.
Unironically, the best-selling games on PCs are not ports. The only ports that sold well were GTA (it's gta), and MH World. The other games are PC only games or genres that were already popular on the platform.
here's a chart of most downloaded steam games of all time. it's hard to define "ports" now as most games are multiplats. though there are few AAA games there that are PC exclusive
>which at the time was ahead of x86.
No it wasn't. It was shit. Per-clock efficiency worse than a fricking Pentium 4 at a time when Core 2 Duo was just around the corner in case of Xbox 360 or already released in case of PS3. The real reason they picked PowerPC instead of x86 at the time was because it was marketed to them as more secure.
>powerPC architecture, which at the time was ahead of x86
x86 was already a decade ahead of PowerPC when the Xbox 360 and PS3 happened. PowerPC underperforming ties directly into why PowerPC was used in consoles.
>which at the time was ahead of x86.
No it wasn't. It was shit. Per-clock efficiency worse than a fricking Pentium 4 at a time when Core 2 Duo was just around the corner in case of Xbox 360 or already released in case of PS3. The real reason they picked PowerPC instead of x86 at the time was because it was marketed to them as more secure.
>because PowerPC was marketed to them as more secure
It's actually because IBM gave them massive discount on the fact that Apple, their ONLY customer, told them to frick off and Apple was going to use x86. IBM realized they got factories pumping out chips with no customers.
Doesn't make that much sense to make big budget exclusives in general now, unless a hardware manufacturer throws a load of money at you.
The value of PC these days is lower end indie games that would struggle to even get a PC release, mudding, and just a general greater freedom of choice. Plus access to emulators.
Autism in general too. For example CK3 is on consoles (in a vastly inferior form) but HOI4 and EU4 aren’t, it’s just too click intensive to translate to a controller
Is this really all PC has? I see like the same 10 games talked about for all time. I thought there would be more variety, but PC gaming seems like a cope to me.
Modern PC gaming is all about the indie scene and stuff that PC specializes in like autistic simulators, Eurojank RPGs, RTS, online shooters and MOBAs.
2000s when the piracy bogeyman was in full swing and devs got tired of dealing with idiots b***hing on their support line about how thei games wouldn't work on some Packard bell toaster
There are probably more good PC exclusives being made nowadays than there ever have been in history because tools for developing games have never been as easy to use. Yes, I know that indies that get popular enough release on consoles too, but many good ones never do one reason or another.
They died off when kids who had consoles grew up and got laptops, at which point the console and PC markets began to merge. Back in the day console ports of PC games were mostly only mild successes at best, and PC ports of console games were blasted as being "console trash" with rare exceptions, that was because the PC and console markets were two different playerbases with wildly different tastes. That is not the case anymore, no matter how much some people might still meme about "PC master race" or whatever the truth is that both PC and console players largely play the same games these days, some niche genres aside the markets are now fully merged.
Too expensive to develop games for a single platform and consoles being glorified pc's under the hood
>ps3 bust
>microsoft steps in
>shaped like a dildo
thats how america got their foot in the console door and jammed japan out the way. now they the captain.....better or worse.....huh>! its not retro. its the xbox 360. the roots begin when microsoft courts those guys on xbox like a tubbie scopes out the burger king. blame bioware.
I didn't understand a word of that
Aren’t there a bunch of pc exclusives today? I can’t tell if this thread is a psyop. Yeah there’s a lot of multiplats but there’s still plenty of pc exclusives on steam
Did you even look at OP's picture?
Tomb Raider: On PS1 and even the fricking Saturn.
Test Drive 4: On PS1
The Sims: On PS2, Xbox and Gamecube
GTA 1: On PS1
C&C: On PS1, N64, and even the fricking Saturn
Driver: On PS1
Quake: On N64 and even the fricking Saturn.
Quake 3: On Dreamcast and PS2
Hexen: On PS1, N64, and even the fricking Saturn
Theme Hospital: On PS1
Sim City 2000: On PS1, N64, Saturn, and even the fricking SNES
Civ 2: On PS1
Red Alert: On PS1
Lots of console games' boxes.
They all started out as PC games and then got downgraded ports for morons who bought them for console.
The only game on there that got a descent console port is tomb raider. Do you think that game could run on a console when it released? I think not.
Tomb Raider was a console game first moron.
Most modern consoles for the last few generations have been locked down, scaled down, PCs.
Also no one in the realm of PC users have ever cared if the game is exclusive to PC or not. It is more important if the game is simply good or not.
Games made exclusively for pc has UI and controls optimized for keyboard+mouse
>Also no one in the realm of PC users have ever cared if the game is exclusive to PC or not
I care because PC games that are also on console often suffer because of it
For example, most modern shooters are unplayable on PC because you're forced to play against console players with built-in aimbot, and the games are also balanced around console
Turn off cross-platform.
You can't on many games. They know 99% of people would just turn it off immediately and then little timmy playing on his xbox would have to wait 2 hours in queue to get into a game with his friend on PC.
Deus ex iw and thief 3 suffered because of present gen consoles not having enough ram
>no one in the realm of PC users have ever cared if the game is exclusive to PC
Of course they did, a console port was always seen as inferior by the PC only and forever crowd. Now that crowd is just Gabe's cheer squad, they don't give a shit if all they're playing is console ports
Because "don't you guys have phones". The genres that are intolerable without keyboard and mouse have died out, and the rest simply bows down to fickle winds of returns on investment. This is the root of the problem, not its consequences like lack of exclusivity or rising costs.
In a way, PC gaming has become niche again like it was at the dawn of home computer era. Small enthusiast teams can make decent games that, unlike in the past, have the potential to run exceptionally well on contemporary hardware. Yes, a lot of it is mediocre or worse, the ratio of signal to noise feels like it was better in the past, but there are zero technical obstacles to good video games being born out of passion projects.
>the PC only and forever crowd
The average constituent of that was never a zealot and actually went on to poke fun at them. You would generally see the majority type something like "consoles are inherently weaker hardware so that's why I only want games on PC". This can and often was nitpicked, but overall it is and always will be as correct as notebooks being inherently weaker than desktops, and various glowing touchscreens being inherently weaker than notebooks in turn. Miniaturisation can only go so far unless materials science makes a leap into what is effectively magic territory.
Like Legends of Might and Magic?
>The average constituent of that was never a zealot
Disagree. For the simple fact that back in the day those people played PC genres only and gave zero fricks about console genres. Now it became exactly what you're describing, people arguing about the hardware limitations of consoles. Back then the games on PC and consoles were different enough that you had a crowd of PC only gamers who simply did not play console style games, much like console gamers to this day have no desire to play PC style games like Total War or Starcraft.
>Disagree. For the simple fact that back in the day those people played PC genres only and gave zero fricks about console genres.
This does not a zealot make. Ignorant of other platforms? Yes. But there is zero passion behind this. Indifference is not zealotry. It's the opposite, in fact.
>Now it became exactly what you're describing, people arguing about the hardware limitations of consoles.
The average PC player eventually came to the "if a game released on a console is good and is ported well to PC I'll play it, but that barely ever happens" in those arguments. That's not "PC only and forever". Actually, this is why what that post of yours has implied to having been a largely monolithic crowd has fractured so much and so easily in reality. That now only those who mostly play games that work poorly on consoles remain. And possibly those not willing to put any effort into changing their gaming hardware. I suppose actual zealots might too, if any of them are still alive.
>Back then the games on PC and consoles were different enough that you had a crowd of PC only gamers who simply did not play console style games, much like console gamers to this day have no desire to play PC style games like Total War or Starcraft.
Of course. But the rejection of console games wasn't born out of principle. The usually curt and cold responses by "the crowd" were born out of fatigue caused by repetition, not hatred. Were you a primarily console gamer back then? I can see such interactions forming a lasting negative impression eventually.
>no one in the realm of PC users have ever cared if the game is exclusive to PC or not
I literally knew one guy back in 2012 who insisted that all games exclusive on SNES and Genesis were shit because they were consoles. Like, if Super Metroid got released on Steam it would somehow magically be better. He also browsed r/pcmasterrace and was obsessed with Dark Souls. Every self professed PC gamer I've ever met has been cancer incarnate.
low sales due to rampant piracy
LMAO This moron wasn't even alive for the C64.
The truth is that games became harder to make and more expensive as console gens went by. The most obvious culprit is better graphics but, it's more complicated than that.
In any case, the 90's and maybe early 2000s were great times to be a pc gamer if you could upgrade whenever you wanted.
And as for the trend I said above, the 360 sealed the deal. By the 360, developmental costs exploded and even a lot of console developers went bust and the industry realized more and more games needed DLC. The gaming industry has never recovered since.
>And as for the trend I said above, the 360 sealed the deal. By the 360, developmental costs exploded and even a lot of console developers went bust and the industry realized more and more games needed DLC. The gaming industry has never recovered since.
QRD on 360?
modern consoles from 7th gen onward are basically PCs albeit scaled down + you make more money on multiplatformers than sticking to ONE console or platform. it's why barring console manufacturers throwing money around third party console exclusives are effectively being phased out if not already.
nothing really to run down. the rise of DLC & microtransactions and the push towards GaaS initially started from the prevalence of used games sales which some companies like EA saw as worse than piracy (after all why pay $50 or $60 for a new game why you can buy it used from gamestop for half that?) and as for why it escalated to GaaS you get more money & miles out of an multiplayer/online game than a singleplayer game + their easier to make (why do you think so many FPS TCs were multiplayer focused?)
the final form of something like this is a subscription service like game pass or whatever Amazon is trying to do with the luna and what google failed to do with the stadia.
Valve turned the entire PC platform into nothing but a high spec console experience
When PC lost its identity and unique genres in the late 2000s. Why was because PC just became an alternative for console games and no longer a unique platform for the types of games that were born on and flourished on the platform.
>PC lost its identity and unique genres
And now PC gaming just means buying console games on steam and playing them with a controller. Zoomers don't even comprehend that PC gaming used to be as different to console gaming as, say, gaming in arcades. It was almost a different hobby entirely with its own magazines and a sense of community.
not retro
And what the frick even is that
I'm not even retroposting I haven't a fricking clue what that zoomie slop is
Counter strike with magic abilities
>shitty mobile game tier "art" that looks like a sketch made on a tablet by a purple haired homosexual
>ultra generic character designs
>le 80s neon
>black character
>women
yup, it's a zoomer PC game alright
>le 80s neon
Somewhat unrelated but I always wonder how that whole oversaturated neon shit got associated with the 80's to begin with. Everyone looks at that aesthetic at calls it "typical 80's" but what's so typical about it? You look at actual games and movies from the 80's and none of them look like that. Is it all just Miami Vice? But not even Miami Vice looked like that. Vice City looked the part but none of these games look like Vice City, I just don't understand what exactly is the source material they're imitating.
I guess stuff like Tron
>I just don't understand what exactly is the source material they're imitating.
The lighting on live music performances on chat shows, and the carpet in bowling alleys
?si=P0VRrk67stT9QxuI&t=435
*skip to 7:40
Many PC games needlessly overcomplicated gameplay just because you have a keyboard and mouse at your disposal. Besides it's far more expensive to sort out bugs for a myriad of different PC builds than for one console design that won't change much until the next one releases.
People stopped making games that only really work control-wise with a mouse and keyboard
Any game works with mouse and keyboard t. emulating for more than 25 years
>that only really work
Half of those games aren't even exclusive to PC.
But, seriously. Consoles have a fairly large market share with static hardware, so they're easier to develop with minimal quality assurance.
Gamepads for the PC were a mistake.
Anything but keyboard, mouse, and flight stick doesn't belong on a pc.
What about a steering wheel + pedals?
the only real answer is: X360.
PC was plagued by piracy and driver / spec discrepancy, all while console games generally sold way better. meanwhile, development costs were steadily rising, and the better the graphics, the higher they got; it was no longer feasible to dump $10-100 mln into a game that would reach only 10% of players, especially on a platform that prioritized graphics. you had to target every platform to maximize profits.
at first, PC genres and Western devs couldn't easily get a foot in console market. but then XB happened and demonstrated how a multiplayer shooter on a console could be the biggest game of the generation. Halo 2 sold on the level of GTA and Pokemon (despite being mostly an American thing), and singlehandedly established XBL as a thing.
then X360 came and sealed the deal. it became clear there was a huge demand for console shooters. soon enough, Oblivion and Fallout 3 became the blueprint of how you take a PC RPG series "for nerds" and turn them into huge cash cow franchises. Gears and Mass Effect followed, and the rest was history.
so FPS and RPG went the way of consoles because that's where the money was (and still is). they got a huge reach that wasn't limited to PC. but rest of the genres? many of them couldn't get adapted to consoles and slowly withered away. to repeat, it became clear you couldn't make a AAA quality game for cheap. some adapted to the reality of microtransactions, like MOBA, CSGO, etc.. ones that didn't, like traditional strategy, either died or went low budget like all those historical European games. alternatively, they just went indie, unable to invest millions into AAA graphics.
I don't know if you can blame all that on 360, it played a role for sure but Oblivion and Fallout 3 would've been what they are even without the 360. Pretty sure Bethesda knew nothing about 360 as they were starting to make Oblivion.
And before Gears there was RE4 so console TPS games were already on their way to become a big thing, 360 or not.
There was a general trend of losing the nerd audience and catering to normies and so everything was naturally turning into action blockbusters that worked perfectly on 360.
>Pretty sure Bethesda knew nothing about 360 as they were starting to make Oblivion.
maybe that's me, but back when it released every mag around complained it felt like a console game.
regardless, it paved the way for many huge games to come. I mean, ever heard of Western RPG making it big on SNES? maybe on PS1 or PS2? then comes Oblivion, paves the way for things to come, and then Skyrim releases and basically becomes as big as Halo and GTA.
compare this to, say, Vampire: The Masquerade, SW:KotOR or Dungeon Siege 2. they released barely 1-2 years before Oblivion, on PC.
>And before Gears there was RE4 so console TPS games were already on their way to become a big thing, 360 or not.
my point wasn't specifically about TPS. RE4 was really its own thing, it's RE after all.
but I think I missed the elephant in the room: CoD. this was by far the biggest selling series on X360.
I recall in 2003 or so, CoD was just a promising newcomer game that tried to go against Battlefield, MoH, and other multiplayer shooters like UT / CS. several years later, it made all of them history and became the shooter of the generation. again—this is the difference that X360 made, making those PC shooters look like games for old farts. it started from Halo, but ended with CoD.
>There was a general trend of losing the nerd audience and catering to normies and so everything was naturally turning into action blockbusters that worked perfectly on 360.
and consoles always had more reach because they were cheaper. plus, no one wanted a platform where piracy was crazy high.
>but I think I missed the elephant in the room: CoD. this was by far the biggest selling series on X360.
How did CoD go from PC, to 360, to PS4?
Modern Warfare 2 in 2007.
Oops, sorry I mean the original Modern Warfare which was CoD 4.
The author of the CRPG book had a great article about the quest compass awhile back. Oblivion was the game that set that trend on course (and game design far back). What happened is that PC players were comfortable in Morrowind, they navigated towns and world by talking to NPCs and jotting down notes, paying attention as they went along. Console players? They couldn't find the first character in the first town during the first quest. They would get lost and frustrated doing minor things. Oblivion was made specifically to target those players and bring the game design to a minimum. The quest compass accentuated those goals - and dealt the final blow to the classic style of computer games.
interesting. frankly, the trend of dumbing down RPGs started even before that—for example, just playing FF6 feels like the game plays itself. it happened for same reasons really: I read there was a big shift in JRPGs where the genre was losing the mainstream appeal. similar complaints—"too hard", "too complex", etc.. so a lot of companies started to really target the lowest common denominator with their games: simplify fights and dungeons, cut exploration so that a player wouldn't get lost, put story and cutscenes first, and so on. which resulted in your stereotypical JRPG that feels like a DVD player game where you press A to win.
in a way, JRPGs were the precursors of AAA games. ironic that to this day stuff like Ultima 7 feels like it has never been topped, simply because most people didn't care for it and played much simpler games.
>They couldn't find the first character in the first town during the first quest
To be fair that was my first experience playing Morrowind on PC as a kid. It's more of a newcomer thing than a console thing, if you're not familiar with how those games play, Morrowind is pretty overwhelming, and console gamers weren't familiar. Now that they are you'd think games would start getting more complex...
>went low budget like all those historical European games.
Paradox Development Studio games aren't that low-budget and have gotten higher budget since early 2000s if anything. PDS itself has like 5 or 6 different divisions each working on different games now. Whether that has actually resulted in higher quality games is debatable, but it's undisputable that they aren't indie devs any more.
True, but they are one of the few last "big" strategy companies and had to go a long way to get there. hard to imagine a big newcomer in this genre.
Many others have said it, the 360. But I haven't seen anyone mention Cliffy B, he was the herald of the "PC gaming dead" that happened back then.
I remember one interview he said something like (extreme paraprhasing), why spend so many years developing and then see all sales die because of piracy, meanwhile I work on Gears of War and sell like 100x times on a device that allows near zero piracy.
For a while every publication was talking about the death of pc gaming and the new consoles being the future, but PC gaming never died, it stayed semi dormant in the form games that just weren't possible in console, like sim games with lots of menus and those kind of games, until the big wave of gaming happened with Starcraft, Dota>League of Legends, and Steam becoming a monster store.
Nowadays the realm of PC gaming (besides ports) is turn based/strategy games that remain niche, indies and the big hitters like those esports games, LoL, Valorant, Dota2, Apex.
no single developer killed pc. however the shift of epic, bioware, bethesda opened the floodgates.
Yes, plus formerly staunch European PC supporters like CD Projekt Red realizing it was much more lucrative to put The Witcher on consoles.
Piracy
Basically a combination of these. Consoles are much more lucrative in first world markets where people actually pay for games. PC will always be favored in poorgay markets with rampant piracy.
Last gen you had Xbox 360 on PowerPC, and PS3 alone had a 3.2 GHz PowerPC-based "Power Processing Element" (PPE) and six accessible Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). Both running at 3.2GHZ on powerPC architecture, which at the time was ahead of x86. It took years before the CPU's on PC were able to catch up.
As soon as Sony adopted the x86 platform, it was over. Mark Cerny did 15 presentations convincing Sony to use x86 for PS4. PS4 in particular is just BSD on AMD64, its fricking piss easy to write and optimize code for. PS4/PS5 are essentially x86 amd pcs running a OpenGL/Vulcan compatible GPU on top of a BSD based OS. couple that with numerous games using ue4x and its pretty easy and economical to put games on more machines.
They've been making PC games all along.
Pretty much sums it up. Sony was forced to give up on their weird custom architectures after the PS3.
PC gaming is "thriving" today only because porting from consoles costs nothing, they're all glorified PCs. they lose nothing if they just release a console game on PC. even if 90% of people pirate the game, they still make some buck.
This. PC multiplat releases only truly reached parity with consoles in Gen 8 and even now you have major developers like Rockstar releasing games on consoles first and then porting to PC up to a year later.
Why do PC ports come later?
Because there's less money in PC gaming and devs are still scared of the piracy bogeyman.
I guess it's similar to how movies get a home release way after theatrical release. to ensure you go to the cinema first.
PC support is still a QA quagmire.
Do it wrong and you'll get heckled for shit like limited graphical options, crashing when alt-tabbing, and someone still getting pissed cuz his ancient but web capable toaster can't run the game while his similarly spec-ed console can. Doing it right takes a lot of time, esp. when you have to redesign the whole thing for KB+M, which is generally unsuited for anything that isn't a point & click such as 3rd person character action games.
>keyboard mouse le bad
This is what happens when you buy into console manufacturer's memes. There's nothing wrong with keyboard and mouse.
Unironically, the best-selling games on PCs are not ports. The only ports that sold well were GTA (it's gta), and MH World. The other games are PC only games or genres that were already popular on the platform.
here's a chart of most downloaded steam games of all time. it's hard to define "ports" now as most games are multiplats. though there are few AAA games there that are PC exclusive
>which at the time was ahead of x86.
No it wasn't. It was shit. Per-clock efficiency worse than a fricking Pentium 4 at a time when Core 2 Duo was just around the corner in case of Xbox 360 or already released in case of PS3. The real reason they picked PowerPC instead of x86 at the time was because it was marketed to them as more secure.
>powerPC architecture, which at the time was ahead of x86
x86 was already a decade ahead of PowerPC when the Xbox 360 and PS3 happened. PowerPC underperforming ties directly into why PowerPC was used in consoles.
>because PowerPC was marketed to them as more secure
It's actually because IBM gave them massive discount on the fact that Apple, their ONLY customer, told them to frick off and Apple was going to use x86. IBM realized they got factories pumping out chips with no customers.
PC's are still really popular for gaming here in Europe. In fact it's mostly dirty casuals mere FIFA players owning consoles and young people I guess.
Doesn't make that much sense to make big budget exclusives in general now, unless a hardware manufacturer throws a load of money at you.
The value of PC these days is lower end indie games that would struggle to even get a PC release, mudding, and just a general greater freedom of choice. Plus access to emulators.
Autism in general too. For example CK3 is on consoles (in a vastly inferior form) but HOI4 and EU4 aren’t, it’s just too click intensive to translate to a controller
I do miss the big boxes that PC games came in before GabeN killed physical media.
Is this really all PC has? I see like the same 10 games talked about for all time. I thought there would be more variety, but PC gaming seems like a cope to me.
Modern PC gaming is all about the indie scene and stuff that PC specializes in like autistic simulators, Eurojank RPGs, RTS, online shooters and MOBAs.
There's a frickton of PC exclusives, but actual timeless classics are rare.
PC has a frickton of games. Platformers? Shooters? Strategy games? What do you want?
2000s when the piracy bogeyman was in full swing and devs got tired of dealing with idiots b***hing on their support line about how thei games wouldn't work on some Packard bell toaster
>PC exclusives die off?
xbox
It died with Xbox. The Xbox was a late 90's gaming pc in a console. Look at the ports it got. It changed everything.
There are probably more good PC exclusives being made nowadays than there ever have been in history because tools for developing games have never been as easy to use. Yes, I know that indies that get popular enough release on consoles too, but many good ones never do one reason or another.
They died off when kids who had consoles grew up and got laptops, at which point the console and PC markets began to merge. Back in the day console ports of PC games were mostly only mild successes at best, and PC ports of console games were blasted as being "console trash" with rare exceptions, that was because the PC and console markets were two different playerbases with wildly different tastes. That is not the case anymore, no matter how much some people might still meme about "PC master race" or whatever the truth is that both PC and console players largely play the same games these days, some niche genres aside the markets are now fully merged.
the only PC exclusive games that PC have these days is MMO Garbage Simulators and Visual Novels
If you're talking about games in general, no, it's not dead yet. But if it's AAA, it's kind of dead
There's shit tons of them on Steam but the big generic companies only make big generic games suitable for the largest number of platforms these days.