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[c0Zm1c]

Since the user base numbers in the hundreds of millions then I think the masses are embracing PC gaming. It just doesn't have the limelight that the consoles have.

I don't want PC gaming to become too plug and play like the consoles because that would limit options. It is one of its strengths, even if it's seen as a weakness by some.

 

[Kinthalis]

And if PC gaming was in a golden age, the masses would be embracing it. And they just aren't.

Lol, the masses. Yes, theya re the true indicators of awesomeness.... Just look at what other things the masses really like:

Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump.

Yeah, no thanks. I'm glad I don't live my life by what the "masses" like. I have better taste.

 

[Tagyhag]

This. I used to play all sorts of strategy, simulation, adventure, and RPG games on my PC and with the exception of the the latest releases from Firaxis, Creative Assembly, Paradox, Larian, Obsidian, inXile, Frontier, and Red Thread Games and obviously further discounting all of the smaller indie productions that have recently popped up, there literally isn't a single game to play in any of the genres on PC. It's just a tormented wasteland out there.

Blows me away that people could say such things with a straight face right?

 

[Krappadizzle]

This. I used to play all sorts of strategy, simulation, adventure, and RPG games on my PC and with the exception of the the latest releases from Firaxis, Creative Assembly, Paradox, Larian, Obsidian, inXile, Frontier, and Red Thread Games and obviously further discounting all of the smaller indie productions that have recently popped up, there literally isn't a single game to play in any of the genres on PC. It's just a tormented wasteland out there.

I can't tell if you're serious. With the exception of all the developers making the exact genre I'm complaining about there being a lack of, there are no games. What?

 

[SneakyStephan]

You seem to be giving Crytek a lot more credit than they warrant about the downfall of the pc at the start of the HDtwins generation.

Nearly all of the traditional pc devs were saying irresponsible shit about piracy and viability of the pc as a gaming platform back during the dark days of early last gen. I would go as far as saying Epic are more responsible for those times than Crytek were.

Agreed

A lot of the bigger (AAA I guess) pc devs saw that console money and immediately turned their back on the audience that had helped them grow to where they were.
Especially epic as you said, cliffy B with his big mouth.

And now he is crawling back ofc because he has a new game to peddle to us. A free2play game ofc because like the fairweather guy he is he's always chasing the next big thing.
I just laughed when I read about it, sure cliffy I'll support your game for old time's sake
http://i.imgur.com/vlEk8uO.gif

Observing that little exodus to consoles by formerly pc exclusive devs and their arrogance and disdain towards their old fanbase taught me some valuable lessons.
-devs are not your friends(big part gaf loves to think they are), they don't do the things they do for you (the audience), they are not the digital equivalent of artist who live to please the crowds
-your fandom is expendable to them and any loyalty you have to them is misguided
-the idea that your support will see a return in the form of more of that output that you enjoy from them is naive
-you cannot reinforce positive behavior using your wallet, you can only collectively veto through a lack of support (people threw money at epic over the UT years because they loved modding, dedicated servers and high skillcapped arena gameplay)
-as cynical as this may sound to you, it's not half as cynical as the behavior of studios like epic in 2008

PC gaming often aint cheap but the constant upgrade rhetoric is just so got danged dumb for lots of reasons not the least being that it's debunked over and over again in like every second PC thread on this site

Yeah the upgrade rhetoric is stupid.
I was playing on a 6 year old cpu (that only cost 130 euros when I bought it) and a 4 year old (160 euro) gpu till last month and it was still good enough to match xbox one performance.

which ofc is not great, but it's playable and it's still better than playing on an xbox one.
that gpu would've still been fine too with my new cpu, gave it a whole new life.
But meh, technology moved on, I bought a 970 because I could and because 60fps 1440p is awesome, not because I had to.

The main issue atm with pc hardware is performance/dollar stagnation, making it shittier for people who want to upgrade.
But buying an entry level pc is still pretty cheap. If you bought an i5 4 years ago though there's no significant upgrade path that'll give you more performance/dollar then you could get back then.

PC gaming is great, but I still have a lot of problems with it. (Yes, my personal problems are just anecdotal evidence and don't mean anything, I know.) The Witcher 3 stays in borderless window mode and will not enter fullscreen mode no matter what I do. Metal Gear 5 always starts in a very low resolution and won't let me change resolutions unless I go into windowed mode and then back to fullscreen mode every time I start the game. And I have a million other examples of stuff like this. It gets exhausting.

Be glad you can actually fix your problems (virtue of gaming on pc)
I WISH I could have fixed those shitty black borders or done something about that framerate in dragon's dogma on my ps3 (my favorite game last gen), but I couldn't.

That's always the inconsistency with people complaining about pc 'fiddling'
You're on pc, you immediately have ten times higher standards for what is acceptable and what you want to deal with, but you also immediately take them for granted.
"Oh I have to unlock the framerate in this one shitty port to play at 60fps"
"oh I was able to turn off shitty chromatic abberation but had to go into an ini file to do it"
"oh my game is stuck in borderless window and I didn't want vsync so I have to tab in and out"

When you're on consoles you're defaulted to just dealing with this shit like 30 fps, forced vsync, post process crap etc etc.

It's twisting a huuuuuuuuuuuuge advantage of the PC into a negative...

I had to tab in and out of MGS5 once every time I boot up MGSV because of a bug in DSR (downsampling) (which seems fixed now) that made it mess up the resolution in this game (and only in this game).
So am I supposed to be upset that I'm able to downsample my games to pristine image quality and that in this particular game I have to jump through a hoop to do it?
I can be annoyed at nvidia for the bug, but twisting this into my pc being somehow lesser than a console is just stupid.

You don't complain about the xbox one's new backwards compatibility feature not working 100 percent in every game either and that it would be better not to have it, because that would be equally stupid. You just appreciate that you now have this amazing feature. (and I really think the xbone getting BC is awesome)

 

[Unbound By Death]

Lol, the masses. Yes, theya re the true indicators of awesomeness.... Just look at what other things the masses really like:

Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump.

Yeah, no thanks. I'm glad I don't live my life by what the "masses" like. I have better taste.

Taste is subjective , you don't have better taste you have different taste.

A person that listens to Bieber and a person that listens to Akira Yamaoka have no difference whatsoever and both of them appreciate and enjoy their choice.

Spoiler

Sike, plebeians will never reach our level.

 

[Buggy Loop]

https://youtu.be/ybqE8FlLrqg

This game alone has me so excited. Planescape Torment is the very definition of CRPG classic.

 

[Momentary]

Eh...I don't think so. PC Gaming still has a bunch a problems, and year-in, year-out there's always one BIG stinker of a version of a game that sticks out and makes everything look terrible. Last year it was AC Unity. This year it's Batman AC. If I had to guess next year's game? Probably Street Fighter 5, as much as I hate to say it.

QLOC make a shitty port? You're high.

 

[Omega]

I can't tell if you're serious. With the exception of all the developers making the exact genre I'm complaining about there being a lack of, there are no games. What?

It's too obvious to be a serious post.

 

[Kilrathi]

Not yet, there still a ways to go. Crpg, adventure, and indie (replace mail order with digital stores) are on the way back.

There is one thing I don't miss from the 16 bit real mode of 90s golden age pc gaming, is setting up jumpers for irq and dma settings, along with everything else that goes with it and hope everything plays nice.

Pc gaming is plug and play now.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Agreed

A lot of the bigger (AAA I guess) pc devs saw that console money and immediately turned their back on the audience that had helped them grow to where they were.
Especially epic as you said, cliffy B with his big mouth.

And now he is crawling back ofc because he has a new game to peddle to us. A free2play game ofc because like the fairweather guy he is he's always chasing the next big thing.
I just laughed when I read about it, sure cliffy I'll support your game for old time's sake
http://i.imgur.com/vlEk8uO.gif

Observing that little exodus to consoles by formerly pc exclusive devs and their arrogance and disdain towards their old fanbase taught me some valuable lessons.
-devs are not your friends(big part gaf loves to think they are), they don't do the things they do for you (the audience), they are not the digital equivalent of artist who live to please the crowds
-your fandom is expendable to them and any loyalty you have to them is misguided
-the idea that your support will see a return in the form of more of that output that you enjoy from them is naive
-you cannot reinforce positive behavior using your wallet, you can only collectively veto through a lack of support (people threw money at epic over the UT years because they loved modding, dedicated servers and high skillcapped arena gameplay)
-as cynical as this may sound to you, it's not half as cynical as the behavior of studios like epic in 2008

Well, the industry as a whole was descending into some Mad Maxian hellhole of superstion and Dogma during that era. Can't really be too hard on any one person; there was dysfunction everywhere.

 

[Octavia]

Eh, I dono.

I guess so? I mean, things are definitely pretty good right now sans the rather shitty, unoptimized, rushed AAA games we've been getting recently.

Other than that, there's a lot to play and the lines between console and PC are more blurred than ever, in a good way. We're also seeing more ports than ever as well.

Overall, it's a good time to be using the platform. It's the most user friendly it's ever been and the most accessible.

 

[Sir Abacus]

There's plenty of awesome games to play, they're instantly available on Steam, developers have more freedom that ever on console platforms, ridiculously powerful mobile platforms, we have developers pushing themes and concepts that amaze us, and we have a steady march towards ever staggering amounts of performance at our disposable.

But let's face it...

Entering a golden age? I don't think we've ever left one. Things just keep getting better and better, year after year. The passage of time doesn't devalue anything to do with gaming to those who love it and the collective pool of joy and entertainment that the industry can bring to people only gets exponentially larger. You can jump into gaming at any point in history and have giant libraries of fun shit to play. And isn't that what gaming's really about? Just having fun and playing shit?

 

[LurkerPrime]

This is very easy to notice if you spend any time at all going back to 80's/90's PC games. Even in subgenres that have properly returned, this major element is mostly absent.

Compare Realms of Arkania, with boots wearing down from simply walking in them a lot, to the permanent Bag of Holding you get in Pillars of Eternity. Even Shadowrun, with a consciously Pen and Paper style combat system, limits interaction and simulation severely; it plays more like Descent (the dungeon delving boardgame) than Shadowrun 5e.

This isn't really a problem; good games are good games. But it is the clear difference between the previous "golden age" and this one. Games are more game-y, even when they're follow-ups to games that were more simulation-y. I guess it's just where game designers' heads are right now. Perhaps too many GDC panels poison the mind?

IIRC, Pillars had camp-only inventory at one point but they abandoned they idea because of widespread complaints. It's why money seems so trivial in the release version, because selling loot is far easier than ever anticipated. They were trying for an Avernum, Diablo, or, heck, Baldur's Gate style of looting where inventory size decides your haul, but ended up with a Torchlight sort of system where everything and the kitchen sink is sold. It wasn't really the best choice, but people have certain expectations nowadays.

As far as this 'simulation' thing goes, PC will always have Dwarf Fortress. At some point dwarves in a fortress will be making their own Star Citizens and Kickstarters and Human Strongholds. It will be a glorious future. (Keep in mind they already make poetry. They're halfway there.)

 

[Tenck]

I got introduced to cRGPs these past two years, so to me yes it's a gaming golden age.

Playing all these cRPGs made me realize I'm missing out on a ton of amazing games. I need more of games like Divinity Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, and Wasteland 2

 

[ramoisdead]

No, we already entered the current PC gaming golden age around the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014

Pretty much. Ever since the PS3 and Xbox 360 bowed out, more people weren't feeling what the PS4 and Xbox One can bring. I am one of those people and I'm pretty much an only console person. Building my first PC last year was the best thing I ever did in regards to gaming. Not only are you getting some great indie games, you also have AAA publishers noticing how ppl are adopting PC much faster and old game genres are resurfacing back thanks to stuff like Kickstarter and other donation venues.

 

[mugurumakensei]

Eh, I dono.

I guess so? I mean, things are definitely pretty good right now sans the rather shitty, unoptimized, rushed AAA games we've been getting recently.

Other than that, there's a lot to play and the lines between console and PC are more blurred than ever, in a good way. We're also seeing more ports than ever as well.

Overall, it's a good time to be using the platform. It's the most user friendly it's ever been and the most accessible.

Other than WB and Koei-Tecmo, what publisher/devs have been putting out unoptimized pc games?

 

[Omega]

Other than WB and Koei-Tecmo, what publisher/devs have been putting out unoptimized pc games?

Square Enix games tend to not be the best from what I've heard.

 

[Brashnir]

I got introduced to cRGPs these past two years, so to me yes it's a gaming golden age.

Playing all these cRPGs made me realize I'm missing out on a ton of amazing games. I need more of games like Divinity Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, and Wasteland 2

Play Lords of Xulima.

http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...pments-dropped-13-in-q12015-from-last-quarter

"Overall GPU shipments dropped 13% in Q1’2015 from last quarter
AMD slipped 17%, Nvidia fell 13.5%, and Intel saw a 12% slip"

MOBA, CS:GO, casual type gamers with low hardware requirements? Always had been thriving.

PC gaming master race AAA graphic chasers? Dying market.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that Graphics cards are lasting longer than ever. I bought mine in 2009 (roughly the 21.87 peak on the chart as it turns out) and I'm just now getting to the point where it seems like it makes sense to upgrade. I used to upgrade every two years because stuff was flat-out unplayable. More and more games these days aren't bleeding edge, and the ones that are are more and more budget-strapped to a certain level of model detail.

 

[MutFox]

Yep, it's also never been cheaper to get in.
It's cheaper than consoles by far now.

Also consider, that you don't have to rebuy your games every gen.
Couple that with much cheaper games. (For a lot of the same console games)

I've had my PC since 2008, no upgrades and I can still play all the new games.
Next upgrade will probably be a Video Card, but I haven't upgraded since 2008.
That's LONGER than an average console cycle.
Only reason I'd upgrade would be for Star Citizen.
Still would be able to play it though, just with lower graphic details.

People that don't understand PC gaming just need to open their minds a bit.

 

[Omega]

Yep, it's also never been cheaper to get in.
It's cheaper than consoles by far now.

Also consider, that you don't have to rebuy your games every gen.
Couple that with much cheaper games. (For a lot of the same console games)

I've had my PC since 2008, no upgrades and I can still play all the new games.
Next upgrade will probably be a Video Card, but I haven't upgraded since 2008.
That's LONGER than an average console cycle.
Only reason I'd upgrade would be for Star Citizen.
Still would be able to play it though, just with lower graphic details.

People that don't understand PC gaming just need to open their minds a bit.

but mutfox, some GAFers have told me that I need $300 cards every year.

Spoiler

also we should play cs again sometime. one of these days we'll win a match together lol

 

[RedSwirl]

From my perspective everything about PC gaming is objectively better TODAY except for the developers working in it. In that aspect it's probably subjective.

I see this thread has already gone over how the biggest AAA PC developers have all chased after the consoles, and there's really no one left to push the absolute bleeding edge on PC. Star Citizen is pretty much it.

When I look back I see games that at the time where trying to push levels of scale and interactivity you just couldn't get on consoles. Recently we haven't seen really anything on PC that feels like what Thief or the original Deus Ex felt like at the time. We're getting some things that sort of revisit what all those games were, but not much that's trying to push things forward from where they left off. This happened for obvious economic reasons. Other than Cloud Imperium Games the only PC developer I can think of that's doing this today is Bohemia Interactive with ArmA 3 and DayZ.

On the flipside, I feel like today we have gotten a resurgence of developers pushing new envelopes in terms of innovative gameplay styles. Minecraft has become the most popular example, but there's also really the whole procedurally generated survival genre it sparked. Now it seems there are frequently new games popping up on Steam Early Access that get word of mouth based on outside-the-box concepts. They aren't pushing the bleeding edge, but they feel new and creative. The explosion of MOBAs is a part of this.

I feel like we've lost out on certain elements of PC-driven game design, however. The RTS still sucks. Simulation-driven game design is more associated with Metal Gear than the PC right now. Sure, we're getting Battletech back, but instead of the simulation-driven Mechwarrior series, it's turning into yet another turn-based board game.

Julian Gollop said once that the new XCOM was more like a board game than the simulation-driven game he would have made, and I think he's right. I think there's an entire element of computer gaming that's more or less dead, and nobody's even paid attention, because that design methodology is something we never really fully expressed in a way that could be considered as an established design philosophy, yet the vast majority of computer games used it as a guideline.

It's hard to explain in the limited time I have, but it's a conversation I really want to carry on with people some time.

This is very easy to notice if you spend any time at all going back to 80's/90's PC games. Even in subgenres that have properly returned, this major element is mostly absent.

Compare Realms of Arkania, with boots wearing down from simply walking in them a lot, to the permanent Bag of Holding you get in Pillars of Eternity. Even Shadowrun, with a consciously Pen and Paper style combat system, limits interaction and simulation severely; it plays more like Descent (the dungeon delving boardgame) than Shadowrun 5e.

This isn't really a problem; good games are good games. But it is the clear difference between the previous "golden age" and this one. Games are more game-y, even when they're follow-ups to games that were more simulation-y. I guess it's just where game designers' heads are right now. Perhaps too many GDC panels poison the mind?

This is definitely true too. The sequels to almost all the simulation-driven PC games of the past have become more game-like, mostly in the transition to consoles. I feel like designers did this to make the games work more smoothly on controllers. Bethseda seems to be the only old PC developer that has almost completely maintained its simulation-driven design style... while still making games that sell 20+ million copies.

I guess you also have all the actual Simulator games coming out too though. Star Citizen and ArmA count as well. Maybe they could be considered a new breed of simulation-driven game that has arrived on PC to take the place of the old developers and franchises that moved to consoles.

 

[Chance Hale]

I don't understand why Unity gets so much shit. It ran ten times better than the console versions and with the more powerful hardware available now it's the best looking game available on the platform. Incredible lighting and general texture quality.

I mean sure, it never got the promised tessellation patch and could run better but it's a grand "port" in comparison to the console versions.

 

[Bubba_Sparks]

http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...pments-dropped-13-in-q12015-from-last-quarter

"Overall GPU shipments dropped 13% in Q1’2015 from last quarter
AMD slipped 17%, Nvidia fell 13.5%, and Intel saw a 12% slip"

MOBA, CS:GO, casual type gamers with low hardware requirements? Always had been thriving.

PC gaming master race AAA graphic chasers? Dying market.

This is an excellent graph, and not at all what I expected to see! If I could hazard a guess as to why we are seeing these declines, I would bet on maturing silicon manufacturing process. As we get closer to the limit of Moore's Law, introducing large performance gains has become increasingly more difficult, a factor that is reflected in home consoles. This has lead to hardware becoming viable for a longer period of time, thus driving down the need to replace graphics cards regularly.

 

[Vaporak]

This is an excellent graph, and not at all what I expected to see! If I could hazard a guess as to why we are seeing these declines, I would bet on maturing silicon manufacturing process. As we get closer to the limit of Moore's Law, introducing large performance gains has become increasingly more difficult, a factor that is reflected in home consoles. This has lead to hardware becoming viable for a longer period of time, thus driving down the need to replace graphics cards regularly.

You are making the fundamental mistake of seeing a graph of all graphics cards, but only thinking about graphics cards you'd use. A much more likely explanation is that you are seeing the disappearance of dedicated low end graphics cards, which have been getting phased out and replaced by APU's for some time now. This explanation is more consistent with other pieces of news, such as the reports of the continued expansion of the pc gaming hardware market.

 

[CertifiedFP]

Not pictured: Nvidia GPU failure rates.

I used to buy GPUs a lot more often than I do now, not because games were outpacing my cards, but because of inevitable GPU heat death due to how hot Nvidia cards used to run.

 

[Palladium]

This is an excellent graph, and not at all what I expected to see! If I could hazard a guess as to why we are seeing these declines, I would bet on maturing silicon manufacturing process. As we get closer to the limit of Moore's Law, introducing large performance gains has become increasingly more difficult, a factor that is reflected in home consoles. This has lead to hardware becoming viable for a longer period of time, thus driving down the need to replace graphics cards regularly.

It goes for the software side too. AAA game development costs are getting so high which means graphics will no longer be pushed as hard as a selling point and that they have to maximize the potential audience by going multiplaform, and anybody who is making games to be designed to on low end PC hardware will have little reason not to port it to consoles either.

 

[SmartBase]

I always thought PC gaming has been fairly steady with waves of innovative games releasing every now and then, like mid-late 90s, mid 00s and our current phase.

http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...pments-dropped-13-in-q12015-from-last-quarter

"Overall GPU shipments dropped 13% in Q1’2015 from last quarter
AMD slipped 17%, Nvidia fell 13.5%, and Intel saw a 12% slip"

MOBA, CS:GO, casual type gamers with low hardware requirements? Always had been thriving.

PC gaming master race AAA graphic chasers? Dying market.

Longer lifetimes for GPUs tend to slow down sales of new GPUs, who'd have thought?

Also from your link:

The Gaming PC segment, where higher-end GPUs are used, was a bright spot in the market in the quarter. Nvidia’s Maxwell-based AIBs continued to do well and the company even managed to boost its market share in desktop. AMD on the other hand saw an improvement in its market share for discrete GPUs in notebooks even though the overall notebook segment dropped.

Kind of contradicts the end of your post there.

 

[Palladium]

I always thought PC gaming has been fairly steady with waves of innovative games releasing every now and then, like mid-late 90s, mid 00s and our current phase.



Longer lifetimes for GPUs tend to slow down sales of new GPUs, who'd have thought?

Also from your link:



Kind of contradicts the end of your post there.

"Overall GPU shipments dropped 13% in Q1’2015 from last quarter
AMD slipped 17%, Nvidia fell 13.5%, and Intel saw a 12% slip"

Nope, NV is winning the discrete marketshare battle, but losing the shipments war.

http://jonpeddie.com/publications/market_watch/

For Q2 2015: "Nvidia’s desktop discrete shipments were down -12.03% from last quarter; and the company’s notebook discrete shipments decreased -21.6%. The company’s overall PC graphics shipment decreased -16.2% from last quarter."

Not exactly what I'll call healthy. Of course, AMD is even deeper shit at -33.33%. If you read the article both are losing shipments in percentage terms faster than Intel is losing CPU sales (-7.4%).

 

[LUFTRAUSER]

I think we might actually be exiting it, and entering the nascent age of VR gaming.

 

[SmartBase]

"Overall GPU shipments dropped 13% in Q1’2015 from last quarter
AMD slipped 17%, Nvidia fell 13.5%, and Intel saw a 12% slip"

Nope, NV is winning the discrete marketshare battle, but losing the shipments war.

http://jonpeddie.com/publications/market_watch/

For Q2 2015: "Nvidia’s desktop discrete shipments were down -12.03% from last quarter; and the company’s notebook discrete shipments decreased -21.6%. The company’s overall PC graphics shipment decreased -16.2% from last quarter."

Not exactly what I'll call healthy. Of course, AMD is even deeper shit at -33.33%. If you read the article both are losing shipments in percentage terms faster than Intel is losing CPU sales (-7.4%).

Overall GPU shipments are down but the higher-end market segment, about which you made that silly "AAA graphic chasers" quip, is still very healthy.

 

[Krejlooc]

From my perspective everything about PC gaming is objectively better TODAY except for the developers working in it.

I am primarily a PC developer. What the PC market has evolved into is what I, as a developer, have always dreamed of. I was programming back in the early 90's. Current PC development is amazing compared to what I cut my teeth working with.

 

[Krejlooc]

Overall GPU shipments are down but the higher-end market segment, about which you made that silly "AAA graphic chasers" quip, is still very healthy.

More specifically, you can use steam hardware monitor statistics to estimate about 10 million GTX 970 and 980 or AMD equivalent video cards out there.

That's a huge number of new users considering it's just the tip top of the PC gaming market and only about 2 years old. Relax your standards a bit and start including the AMD 7900 series or the GTX 680 and better and those numbers become even bigger - almost 16 million users. And those aren't integrated or budget video cards, they are several hundred dollar cards that are meant to play the same type of games you play on the PS4 and Xbox One with good results.

Also, keep in mind that my Steam Machine has an Iris 5200 Pro inside it's 4770r. It performs comparably to full fledged PC and console experiences. Integrated graphics cards aren't awful anymore. They are actually pretty great these days. What you see in these graphs is the low end graphics card market falling out - you don't need to buy a low end graphics card because the integrated graphics card you have is already decent enough.

 

[Makareu]

You are making the fundamental mistake of seeing a graph of all graphics cards, but only thinking about graphics cards you'd use. A much more likely explanation is that you are seeing the disappearance of dedicated low end graphics cards, which have been getting phased out and replaced by APU's for some time now. This explanation is more consistent with other pieces of news, such as the reports of the continued expansion of the pc gaming hardware market.

This is a very good point.

 

[AESplusF]

For people with money. We have to be clear about that. As long as you need a new 300 euros GPU every 2 years to play medium-high settings(console settings in other words), then it's a no-go for millions of people.

You don't, I still have my gtx660 and it still works fine

 

[Red Blaster]

Yep, it's also never been cheaper to get in.
It's cheaper than consoles by far now.

Also consider, that you don't have to rebuy your games every gen.
Couple that with much cheaper games. (For a lot of the same console games)

I've had my PC since 2008, no upgrades and I can still play all the new games.
Next upgrade will probably be a Video Card, but I haven't upgraded since 2008.
That's LONGER than an average console cycle.
Only reason I'd upgrade would be for Star Citizen.
Still would be able to play it though, just with lower graphic details.

People that don't understand PC gaming just need to open their minds a bit.

what are your specs cause I honestly find this hard to believe, my gtx 570 started to feel aged by late 2013 due to its low vram

 

[MesserWolf]

Can there be a new PC golden age when the desktop PC themselves are more and more in decline?

Most of the games are either produced with console also in mind or are indie / kickstarter projects (which, to a certain degree, signals that publishers are not willing to invest in the platform).

More and more dev will be looking at programming games for mobile platforms, thus reducing the effort left for the PC.

It is not a case that the hardware now last significantly longer. Fewer and fewer games push its boundaries (for the good and bad of it)

PC gaming will remain strong on niche games and on the so called "competitive gaming" (DOTA and such). Steam, Indie, humble bundle and the ever cheaper hardware (because it is difficult to sell it or to push for a new updates these days!) created the conditions for a good period, but we are far from the '90. I can hardly see this period as its golden age.

 

[DocSeuss]

This is very easy to notice if you spend any time at all going back to 80's/90's PC games. Even in subgenres that have properly returned, this major element is mostly absent.

Compare Realms of Arkania, with boots wearing down from simply walking in them a lot, to the permanent Bag of Holding you get in Pillars of Eternity. Even Shadowrun, with a consciously Pen and Paper style combat system, limits interaction and simulation severely; it plays more like Descent (the dungeon delving boardgame) than Shadowrun 5e.

This isn't really a problem; good games are good games. But it is the clear difference between the previous "golden age" and this one. Games are more game-y, even when they're follow-ups to games that were more simulation-y. I guess it's just where game designers' heads are right now. Perhaps too many GDC panels poison the mind?

Right. It's not a problem at all, just... y'know, the games I fell in love with not really being made or anything. To me that's kind of a problem.

I think the whole gamification trend is part of the reason behind all this.

Anywho, I'm kinda addressing it in my Kotaku article, and I'll do some more work on it later.

Can there be a new PC golden age when the desktop PC themselves are more and more in decline?

Most of the games are either produced with console also in mind or are indie / kickstarter projects.

More and more dev will be looking at programming games for mobile platforms, thus reducing the effort left for the PC.

It is not a case that the hardware now last significantly longer. Fewer and fewer games push its boundaries (for the good and bad of it)

PC gaming will remain strong on niche games and on the so called "competitive gaming" (DOTA and such). Steam, Indie, humble bundle and the ever cheaper hardware (because it is difficult to sell it or to push for a new updates these days!) created the conditions for a good period, but we are far from the '90. I can hardly see this period as its golden age.

Yo, it's not that PCs are in decline so much as it's that everyone was buying a desktop back in the day, and now more people are buying laptops. Most everyone has a desktop, so the number of people who don't have but want desktops is much smaller than it used to be, which is why sales are slowing down year over year. We're going from constant growth to an ebb and flow cycle, and a lot of people are struggling with that.

 

[Alej]

Lol, the masses. Yes, theya re the true indicators of awesomeness.... Just look at what other things the masses really like:

Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump.

Yeah, no thanks. I'm glad I don't live my life by what the "masses" like. I have better taste.

Classic School of Frankfurt behaviour. Everything not adopted by the masses is high culture, am I right?

Even if the masses are somewhat irrational and dumb as a whole, this doesn't say that universal critical acclaim doesn't exist. You don't have better taste than the masses, you are in the masses but you just think you are superior. I am a big fan of LedZep, Pink Floyd (bam, universal acclaim and some of the best sellers of all time) and really don't like garbage you cited, I am from the masses too though. You should really rethink what is awesomeness (subjective, massive amount of subjectives are not objective) and what popular or universal means.

PC are popular and very adopted by the masses by the way. PC gaming too. But what is PC gaming really? The only golden age out there for PC gaming are MOBAs, MMOs and Free to Play (and Facebook!), that's it. But yeah enthusiast PC gaming can be awesome to you and your better tastes.

 

[Sloane]

Nowhere near Golden Age. If you had lived through 90's PC gaming, where there were TONS of unique amazing games filling HALF of games retail stores in the U.S., and practically every PC game was doing stuff no console game could do. That was a golden age.

Companies like Origin, id, Epic Megagames, Maxis, LucasArts, etc at their absolute PEAK.

Agreed, I don't think anything will ever beat the 90s for me. Probably some (or lots of) nostalgia talking but to me there was more variety, more innovation, and more "soul" in those games then than ever before or after.

Still, it's a great time for PC gaming again. I'm just missing a few genres and games with "bigger ideas". There's no real replacement for Looking Glass, LucasArts, Bullfrog, etc.

 

[bj00rn_]

http://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/jpr_aib_q2_2015.png[IMG]

[url]http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases/details/overall-gpu-shipments-dropped-13-in-q12015-from-last-quarter[/url]

"Overall GPU shipments dropped 13% in Q1’2015 from last quarter
AMD slipped 17%, Nvidia fell 13.5%, and Intel saw a 12% slip"

MOBA, CS:GO, casual type gamers with low hardware requirements? Always had been thriving.

PC gaming master race AAA graphic chasers? Dying market.[/QUOTE]

Why is it necessary in every similar thread to have to explain the difference between the overall PC market and the PC gaming market..

The same JPR has shown us that the number of enthusiast PC gamers (with gaming PCs costing more than 1000 dollars) have gone up for many years. So, what [I]are[/I] the actual GPU numbers in the PC gamer market?

 

[MesserWolf]

Why is it necessary in every similar thread to have to explain the difference between the overall PC market and the PC gaming market..

So, what are the actual GPU numbers in the PC gamer market?

there is also the so called "potential market", which instead of growing is decreasing.
It is hard to make somebody buy a PC game if he does not even own/use a PC anymore ....

So sure the competitive gaming is moving hardware and is healthy, but that's it.

Moreover, each of us sees that nowadays gamers do not have to update anymore every couple of years the graphic card.

 

[Leb]

Classic School of Frankfurt behaviour. Everything not adopted by the masses is high culture, am I right?

Even if the masses are somewhat irrational and dumb as a whole, this doesn't say that universal critical acclaim doesn't exist. You don't have better taste than the masses, you are in the masses but you just think you are superior. I am a big fan of LedZep, Pink Floyd (bam, universal acclaim and some of the best sellers of all time) and really don't like garbage you cited, I am from the masses too though. You should really rethink what is awesomeness (subjective, massive amount of subjectives are not objective) and what popular or universal means.

PC are popular and very adopted by the masses by the way. PC gaming too. But what is PC gaming really? The only golden age out there for PC gaming are MOBAs, MMOs and Free to Play (and Facebook!), that's it. But yeah enthusiast PC gaming can be awesome to you and your better tastes.

Finally, a sensible opinion on PC gaming. There can be no real question, in the minds of serious scholars, that the only viable genres on the PC today are MOBAs, MMOs, and F2P games.

I mean, seriously, it's like disputing the fact that the Berlin Wall was built to discourage aggression from the Western powers and to halt the flow of Western agents into the GDR -- these are just such self-evidently true statements that they don't really warrant any further examination.

 

[cripterion]

No. I love pc gaming but if you want quality components and a decent build, it's still far too expensive.

 

[Ikuu]

.

 

[TheRealJakoozie]

Yeah, I think you could say we're in a golden age. But maybe more a renaissance, a return to form from the 90s and early 2000s. And as others have pointed out, it's probably been going on for a while.

 

[longdi]

http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases...pments-dropped-13-in-q12015-from-last-quarter

"Overall GPU shipments dropped 13% in Q1’2015 from last quarter
AMD slipped 17%, Nvidia fell 13.5%, and Intel saw a 12% slip"

MOBA, CS:GO, casual type gamers with low hardware requirements? Always had been thriving.

PC gaming master race AAA graphic chasers? Dying market.

Wonder what happened in 2007 to have such a spike in gpu sold?

 

[Momentary]

Wonder what happened in 2007 to have such a spike in gpu sold?

That 8800 series for nvidia. The leap in performance was astounding.

 

[Self_Destructive]

Wonder what happened in 2007 to have such a spike in gpu sold?

lol, serious?

Crysis happened.

 

[Renekton]

lol, serious?

Crysis happened.

I always wondered why Crysis 3 didn't quite have the same effect despite being another benchmarking powerhouse.