Aren't making any money and aren't making any money developing six million dollar graphics engines for doom rehashes aren't the same thing. Look at the returns. When a game costs a million bucks to produce and sells a million copies, they've made an obscene amount of money off it. They've made enough money that if they were an oil company, people would be rioting in the street and calling for their heads. EA sold 50 million copies of The Sims. Do you have any idea how big the margins on that project were?

Capcom spent 40 million bucks making and marketing Lost Planet:Extreme Condition. It's a 40 million dollar paper weight that looks nice. The game is a piece of shit by pretty much all accounts. It looks nice, and plays like a dog. Stupidity is what loses them money, not the PC platform.

Good points.

Unfortunately, consumer expectations help drive the production of games like Lost Planet. Too many are way too obsessed with looks and great tech and then they're all surprised when they get games that look great, but as you put it, plays like dogs.

The Sims is interesting. It caters mainly to women who don't giving a flying **** about polygons. They just want nice stuff to play with--and they can has it. Other areas of the market gets the same old Doom rehashes over and over again, whether they're called "Crysis 6: More palmtrees - now without gameplay", "Doom 15: Still pitch black" or "Half-Life 6: The story is great (we promise)".

In some sense, consumers get the games they deserve.

Man, I'm a tired, old fart. I must play some Sins now.

World of Warcraft (PC): 10M subscribers
The Sims (PC): 100M copies sold by April 2008
Solitare, Minesweeper, or FreeCell: I don't know, but it's gotta be huge . . .



-Look at how different strategy games play on the console vs the PC. In order to make them playable on the console, they have to invent a whole new system of control in order to make the concept work at all without a mouse.

-A flight simulator style game also would be difficult to port to the console due to the extremely complex controls. Granted, that style of game is largely dying even on the PC, but it's one of the few styles of games that it is doubtful will ever be seen on a console other than in a very arcade style.

-MMORPGs are still largely PC territory.

-Basically, consoles are best suited for games with simple controls. For more complex games, the PC will be the best choice for years to some. Anything with a complex control system will need to be simplified to play on the console. Keep in mind the average keyboard has well over 100 buttons - and some games use them.

-The PC is constantly evolving, while consoles are static. You can already build a PC that will outperform the Xbox 360 no matter what way you measure it. In fact, you can build one that outperforms it and is quieter as well if you pay careful attention to your cooling system. So if you're the kind of person who counts triangles, takes a close look at the resolution of textures, and counts the number of shaders being used, then you'll want a PC.

-If you want to mod a game, PC is the only choice. Consoles are generally harshly locked down, preventing games from being modded.

Of course that does lead to some shallow games built just to show off the graphics (Crysis). However, there are still some good innovators in the market. Take a look at Portal or the upcoming Spore. There are also a lot of great games made by smaller companies such as Audiosurf and Sins of a Solar Empire. With procedural generation getting a lot of attention, I expect to see a lot more large games created by small developers in the near future.

And if you want to talk about rehashes of old games - the console is every bit as guilty as the PC. Mario? Halo? Metroid? Sonic? Soul Caliber? Final Fantasy! Every console is pretty much guaranteed many of its games, especially its "core" games, are going to get a new release when a new console comes out.

Rehashing games is part of the business, frankly. Doesn't matter if its console or PC, there's a big demand for keeping old franchises. I'd say all platforms are guilty as charged.

Yes, there has been attempts at strategy games on the console, and they where all more or less festivals of fail. I 'm not sure it only comes down to the control. I think it has to do also with the kind of situation in which you play. Strategy games require concentration and effort, and seems better suited for sitting down by your desk, the same way as Super Monkey Ball is best played in the couch with friends and beers. Titles on both platforms are at their very best when they play to their platforms strengths.



Hm. I'm not on some kind of crusade for consoles against PCs. I just wanted to point to the fact that the console market generates a whole lot of more cash. And that is why I think PC developers needs to create games that play to the platforms strengths, as opposed to games that could as well be played on consoles. The really big PC success stories are just those types of games--such as The Sims and WoW.

I'm not opposed to sequels as such, it was rather just the FPS market on PC I was thinking of. Sequels in general is good in computer games. Opposite to movies, game franchises get better over time. At least until they hit a certain point and start losing their cool, like the Tomb Raider franchise did (altough it's somewhat managed to get back again).

Procedural generation and modding are interesting fields, and ways the PC market could further distinguish itself, as well as cut down on production costs. In many ways content for games are already being produced outside of the development studio through various outsourcing solutions, and there is really no reason why this could not be extended to involve some kind of prosumer model earlier in the process. Flying Labs did something like this with Pirates of the Burning Sea, where most of the ships in the game was built by the community while in development. But that's all in the beautiful future.

This is always the way things go.

Casualties:
Westwood
Black Isle
Sierra (Exists in name only)
Bullfrog
CaveDog
Accolade
Team Ninja (just to show consoles are not immune)
many many more...

The benefit?
These developers get to join companies with huge budgets and get to make one lack luster game clone after another. They learn the ins and outs of creating the impressive game engines and then they break off to form new development groups as t they tire of all the oversight.

The new companies make or break all based on one title and its awesome. They lose all rights to there previous creations forcing them to go out into new directions. This is never new and will never end.

The difference now is that most peoples computers can't even run the latest OS, much less the latest games. So Consoles will beat out PC's in the long run as a dedicated gaming platform. The only thing that has kept this from happening is Microsoft and Sony. They are so worried about losing the proprietary rights that they snuff many games being developed or allowing them the freedom that PC's enjoy. Forcing crappy UI's to support controllers that haven't changed in over a decade.

The first company that opens their console up to the same freedom as a PC will probably end the PC as a gaming platform. Thankfully the monopolistic tenancies of large corps will keep this from becoming a problem any time soon. If IBM could go back and do to the PC what MS and Sony have done with the consoles we would never have made as much progress as we have. Capitalism will always dominate Socialism and Monopolies are by definition socialist.