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?

Market

[the computer guy nex]

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

You do know 7 million subscribers is less than the number of copies Blizzard has sold with Diablo2 and with Starcraft right?

PC's are becoming a niche market - for MMORPG's. Everything else to this point seems better fit for a console.

The number of dollars saved from having to test and develop for endless combinations of CPU/GPU/OS/etc is enormous. That extra time/money is spent enhancing the game rather than just making it work.

different focus

[EggyToast]

I think PC games will have to stop focusing on having the most whiz-bang graphics and actually try to be innovative. The recent spat of high quality FPSs have explored new ways of story telling... but are still, very obviously, FPSs.

With the constant push for fancier and fancier graphics, the push for new hardware keeps people from really getting into gaming on PCs. There are PC gamers, and then there's people who play old games and puzzle games. Sure, you can drop your graphics down a notch and play some of the newest games, but even then they don't often work (and often the graphics that are reduced truly affect the gameplay or ambience, making the game no longer all that fun).

We just had a super-cheesy "article" about why consoles are better, but regardless of subjectivity, it's very true that with consoles people only need to buy one thing, and then are free to play any game for that system. People aren't afraid of gaming on consoles. If Microsoft succeeds in making Vista a "stable target" for game development, with any game that's "Vista-approved" playable to high standards, then I think it could come back. But playing with a mouse/kb is limiting as well, and the gamepad market is all but extinct. If nothing major changes, then PC gaming will likely remain a niche for the forseeable future.

Re:Market

[advocate_one]

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.

kindly explain to me then just why it is that shelf space for PC games is shrinking in the shops... you're lucky these days if you have two racks... most of the shops in my city just have the one cabinet and most of that is devoted to budget games and pre-owned.

The entire rest of the shelfspace in the shops is devoted to console games and consoles... just face it, it's far easier to sell console games as you know you won't have hassles with customers coming back moaning that they can't run this or that game or if they could, it crawled even with all the settings turned down.

Re:The PC will always have a faster system.

[SharpFang]

PC offers a wider range of choice.
The problem is that consoles offer better bang for the buck.

You can spend $4000 and get an incredible PC capable of absolutely wonderful graphics. You can spend $200 and get something barely capable of running an average game. Or you spend $800 for an average setup that allows you to play at very nice, acceptable though not incredible level. Or you spend $400 and get a console capable of the same level as your $800 setup. PC is a pretty smooth performance-price curve. The console is a single point - but located quite a bit below that curve.