PC Game Market 'Becoming A Niche'?

simoniker writes "Gamasutra has quizzed game analysts from Wedbush Morgan, Screen Digest and DFC Intelligence on the state of the PC game biz, with thought-provoking results. From Michael Pachter's comments: 'The PC games market is becoming a niche, substantial in size, but a niche nonetheless.' David Cole also notes: 'When I first started covering the game industry back in 1994, the general consensus was PC games would dominate the market and console systems were doomed.' What changed?" How do you think Microsoft's recent push to treat the PC as the 'fourth console' will affect things?

You're kidding, right?

[popeguilty]

In the gaming industry, the platform that hosts World of Warcraft and its seven million subscribers is a niche market?

Re:The PC will always have a faster system.

[MustardMan]

That's the point though... the top end is almost always a niche market. Ferarris cater to a niche market of people want the highest-end sports car, 65" plasma HDTVs cater to the niche high-end home theater market, and PC games cater to the niche high-end hardcore gamer market.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[interiot]

I've got two friends who spend almost all their free time gaming. Both of them recently gave up PC gaming, citing HD, surround sound, and the ability to plop down on their couch while gaming as benefits of consoles, and having to spend $500+ every year to keep up with the latest games (and be competitive in multiplayer games) as downsides of PC gaming.

Personally, I've moved my PC to my living room, and I think PC's will always be where the most innovative games come out, so I'm sticking with the PC. But I'm not really any good at multiplayer games either, so...

Re:The PC will always have a faster system.

[PrescriptionWarning]

Consoles only seem ahead for most games. But take a look at Oblivion, which clearly looks better on PC than the 360, even though it still looks pretty good on the 360.

The main difference here, thus my preference for the PC version, is the modding. There's so many worthwhile mods out there now that there is no way i could play the vanilla game ever again. If more games were to value the aftermarket effect of moddable games, they'd certainly see sales a year or more after the game first came out. Just look at CounterStrike!

Re:You're kidding, right?

[twistedsymphony]

Yeah, I don't think it's so much a niche market as it's a SILENT market. Meaning a whole lot of the people who game on PC don't really consider themselves gamers, they don't camp out at Best Buy for the latest releases, they don't bombard message boards about their hobby. They'll pickup something that looks fun while they're out shopping for other things, or download something and play it in their spare time.

You can't track sales of PCs that get used for gaming like you can consoles that get used for gaming... and the number of games available for the PC dilutes the market so you don't get clear winners like you do on a console with only a fraction of the library. PC games have a lot more staying power too. PC gamers are likely to buy WoW or EVE and be good for the next 6 months to a year, unlike console gamers who buy a gamer or two every month (because that's about how long most of them last). Not to mention the mod community adds to the longevity of a PC game's life.

I wouldn't call PC games a niche market... PC gamers are just a DIFFERENT market, the gamers who play there have different tastes and attitudes towards gaming and the machines are good at running different types of games. The back and forth is pretty pointless because neither platform is going anywhere anytime soon.

Re:Market

[Aladrin]

You are assuming that # of subs = # of copies sold. This is not true.

I don't know the numbers, but I'm guessing there were a LOT more copies sold than current subscriptions.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[badboy_tw2002]

So you're saying its a different, smaller market that you can't make as many sales to and you need customize how you make your product because the gamers have different tastes and attitudes. ...

Yep, not a niche!

Re:You're kidding, right?

[richdun]

HD? Surround sound? Do you friends realize PC gaming has been pushing high res and surround sound for years? Sure, poly counts aren't always enough to make things look like real life, but my two year old machine can still crank out just about anything on my 20" wide monitor (1680 x 1050...so 10 lines short of HD, whatever) and optically connected DTS/Dolby Digital surround sound.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

I've got to say that if your friends have to spend $500+ (I'm assuming CAD) per year just to stay competitive in multiplayer games they are either doing something wrong or aren't very good at them. I spent $1500 a year ago and I can still compete in all the latest games, and will still be able to (as I ramp details down) compete probably for the next 2 years atleast. My last machine before this one was a PIII 450mhz machine, and had only missed out on a year or two of PC games with only about $400 worth of upgrades (that's since I got it in around '98).
If you can live without having 90xAA (exageration) then you can probably go a few years, some key strategic upgrades and they'll last a lot longer.
I've moved my PC into my living room aswell, and it seems to have worked out nicely for me. I do have to say though that I still consider myself a console gamer too, I just think comparing PC to console is apples to oranges. PC games do things that console games can't, and vice versa. I mean, there's nothing like sharing a couch with a few other people and blasting the crap out of each other, all in the same room.

People are just bad at math.

[Kirin Fenrir]

What I find funny is that every time I hear a report that "PC is a smaller gaming market than consoles", they are comparing the PC gaming market to all the current-gen consoles combined. That's hardly fair, since consoles are completely incompatable with each other and shouldn't be lumped into the same market.

Now, compare the PC market to just the XBox 360 market, or to just the PS2 market...and suddenly it's not a niche at all. It's an alternative.

Re:Market

[rwven]

The funny thing about your statement is that you fail to realize that 99% of all top-end, ground-breaking First/Third Person Shooters are released on the PC long before they make it to any consoles...

Same with RTS games...and adventure games...and flight simulators...(and MMORPG's)...I could go on and on.

It seems to me like Consoles are a just niche for sports, fighting and racing games...and a lot of those are even released at the same time or slightly earlier on the PC...

There was an article on /. on the recent past talking about how all the "PC's are dying" doomsdayers were all wrong and how PC gaming is making a large comeback.

You like this. I like that.

[kafka47]

Which pretty much sums up the console versus PC debate. But that's not what this article was about.

They asked three industry analysts, three questions:

• Is the PC Game industry being marginalized?
• Are consoles an alternative to Piracy?
• Will Microsoft help PC Gaming? Will Vista help PC gaming?

They all seem to agree that spending on PC games will experience decline. Yet none of them seem to reliably explain why. One of them completely fudged all three of the questions.

The Realities of Online Digital Media

iTunes. People were "obtaining" mp3's back in 1996. But it wasn't until last year that a storefront was erected, with the necessary legal and contractual agreements, to actually go and purchase a piece of digital music online. Media organizations are among the most stolidly conservative entities in the business world, the reason is because they are shit-scared. Why? Well, it's like how Esther Dyson put it : "The gatekeepers...which are dependant on putting content into inefficient containers...are going to lose."

Big game companies are no different than other big media, having built their entire businesses around the processes and tools that made their products yesterday. New stuff (ie innovation), makes them nervous. Which is why we don't see a lot of radical entertainment coming into mainstream gaming.

Contrary to doomsayers, I've noticed that there is a literal explosion in gaming (particularly online), in which the PC is the central delivery platform. MMOGs. Simple, easy-to-run downloadable casual games. Browser-based games. Digital distribution (from Game Tunnel to Manifesto to Steam and everything in between). The consoles can not do any of these things (they will one day, but right now they're not stealing anyones cake when speaking about online games).

Even WoW has greatly expanded the online gaming market to include people who have literally never played a game online before in their lives. The trend is now unstoppable. Where are they going to go when the lustre of Epic grinding has faded away? They'll try new games. What about the casual gamers (meaning, your grandma)? Is the ad revenue generated by casual gaming portal sites added into the spreadsheets of the PC gaming industry?

Note that not one of the above examples spells monetary goodness for retail stores. But that's the nature of digital media - the suppliers who put stuff on shelves are eventually going to lose and will smartly move to service-based and value-added outlets.

Not Piracy, it's Standardization

Yes modded consoles really stop piracy. Prepare for DEATH when the latest consoles get hacked.

Consoles are less about piracy than they are about a standardized implementation base, which reduces the headaches of supporting a divergent hardware base. This is where the console is vastly superior to the PC. This is where costs are lowered in the release phase of a game (meaning, technical support and patching), and filtered back into the development phase of the game.

Vista

Perhaps, Microsoft will help PC gaming. A greater emphasis on the OS-level can do nothing but achieve this. I don't think the XNA-XBLA route will be particularly significant for AAA, but the casual space should benefit.

A good reason that Microsoft just recently pushed XBLA + XNA for indies is because they control the tools, the media and the channel. They can afford to grab the mindshare because they'll profit from it any way you slice it up. More developers mean more games. More games mean more consoles. It's win-win for them.

Six years ago people were ringing the bell for the PC's demise. Three years ago, yet again. Two...One...oh whoops, the PC is still here. It's all about the games, and how we want to play them. Right now, consoles and PCs seem to make their respective audiences very happy.

Re:Market

[Austerity Empowers]

Consoles are for games that have been tried out and refined on a PC first. PCs are for anything new and inventive comes out first for a really simple, obvious, reason: there's no financial barrier. Way back in 94 when PCs were dominating, was about the time consoles were in a rut because there wasn't enough innovation, but PCs had some pretty different, entertaining games. 3D graphics were just being demonstrated as viable in real time (although computers had been doing it a while, it really lept forward around then). Unfortunately because PCs have such problems with wide component variance, they are niche, because only a small audience has the ability to make them work.

Ultimately, some of what PCs did well in that era, drove for new console architectures that put them where they are today. Not all genre's made it, and unfortunately we're still lacking in adventure games and straight up RPGs.

I wouldn't expect PC gaming will disappear, except from EB stores. It will likely shift to primarily online sales, and that sure as hell beats camping out best buy.

Re:You're kidding, right?

[grammar fascist]

've got to say that if your friends have to spend $500+ (I'm assuming CAD) per year just to stay competitive in multiplayer games they are either doing something wrong or aren't very good at them. I spent $1500 a year ago and I can still compete in all the latest games, and will still be able to (as I ramp details down) compete probably for the next 2 years atleast.

Let's see. $1500, and you're set for 3 years. $1500 / 3 = $500, which is what the GP claimed.

Fascinating.

Re:I agree with the article

[mrsbrisby]

Like others have mentionned, PC gaming USED TO be easy to install and play. Doom, for example, didn't require huge computers when it was released.

Absurd. PC gaming used to involve expert prowess at freeing base memory, isolating interrupt line settings, and manually finding optimial use for the upper memory block. PC gaming was never easy.

Now, if you're really suggesting for a moment that PC gaming is more complicated than it used to be, I might give you that. My gamecube hasn't managed to confuse me too much, so I really don't play PC games any more...

In the mid-90s, you had numerous RPGs coming for PC, as well as numerous FPS, RTS, adventure games, sim games, racing games, flight sims and even the occasional beat 'em up...
Nowadays, we get tons of The Sims copy cats, RTS are fewer in number every year, racing and sports games are on the decline, adventure games become rarer, flight sims are now almost inexistant beside the few surviving franchises. Only the almighty FPS seems to still exist as it was on PC.

I think you're confused. Games are getting worse across the board. The barrier for entry into "the games market" used to be a few days of BASIC instruction, and some creativity. Now it requires a few hundred-thousand dollars and an expert team, and some of the biggest most successful games these days have budgets that are millions of dollars.

I think we're finding that when it costs so much to even try to make a game, most studios simply put their money where it's already been proven- where they know exactly what kind of return they're going to get.

Really: with less people are trying than ever, did you really expect games to get better?

I didn't get the memo

[rabbot]

I must of been too busy playing FPS, RTS, and MMO's to realize that PC gaming is now a niche market.

Re:Market

[npsimons]

kindly explain to me then just why it is that shelf space for PC games is shrinking in the shops

Since I'm all out of mod points, and you're a friend of mine, I'll "kindly" explain it to you: PC games have moved on. They've already hit the next generation of distribution and are leading the way with online games and online content like Valve's Steam. Heck, I buy all my Linux games online! Who needs shelf space when you can skip the long line of losers waiting outside Best Buy at 3AM and order your game from the comfort of your own home and have it in mere minutes? And where are the consoles in this? They're finally catching up with online multiplayer games and almost getting to the point that you could have a real LAN party with them. Call me when you have more than four people in the same room playing Dawn of War or Quake III Arena on their XBox 360s. Oh, and not getting their asses handed to them by those who are using mouse+keyboard for control.