28th May 2004, 10:54 AM
PC gamers by far outnumber console gamers. Most gamers don't give a rat's ass about console games because they feel they mostly suck compared to PC games - suckier graphics, mouse and keyboard combo supplemented by joystick/joypad do much better, better internet play, easier accessability given everyone has a PC simply for productivity reasons and the cheapest PCs on the market for productivity can offer good gameplay capabilities. Hence there are more PC owners and potentially PC gamers than there will ever be console gamers. PC games also offer a much wider variety of selection than all consoles put together. Hence, no one particular game sells extraordinarily well unless its something VERY VERY extraordinarily good.
There will also always be more producers for the PC market, hence diluting the PC market across way too many games, because there are a whole lot less complications involved, such as this lisencing crap we're discussing, not to mention its straight up PC tools as opposed to specialized console tools, and of course the publishing system is a whole lot simpler and cheaper.
If you watch the trackers on some of these bittorrent sites, popular games like recently Splinter Cell 2, can easily make a couple hundred thousand downloads. And its being shared on many sites, not just one, so they add to be enough for you to figure that the number of sales are terribly diminished. I was kind of dismayed... hell, I bought SC2 for PC for $40. I know for a fact I will buy any game thats on the console for PC instead because the console version will most likely suck ass in comparison with the exceptions of console to PC ports. Splinter Cell 2 is exceedingly superior on the PC than it is on Xbox, PS2 and especially for the Gamecube.
Overall, the PC market looks like this: more gamers, way too many games, a whole lot of piracy, everyone looses something over this matrix of above considerations.
There will also always be more producers for the PC market, hence diluting the PC market across way too many games, because there are a whole lot less complications involved, such as this lisencing crap we're discussing, not to mention its straight up PC tools as opposed to specialized console tools, and of course the publishing system is a whole lot simpler and cheaper.
If you watch the trackers on some of these bittorrent sites, popular games like recently Splinter Cell 2, can easily make a couple hundred thousand downloads. And its being shared on many sites, not just one, so they add to be enough for you to figure that the number of sales are terribly diminished. I was kind of dismayed... hell, I bought SC2 for PC for $40. I know for a fact I will buy any game thats on the console for PC instead because the console version will most likely suck ass in comparison with the exceptions of console to PC ports. Splinter Cell 2 is exceedingly superior on the PC than it is on Xbox, PS2 and especially for the Gamecube.
Overall, the PC market looks like this: more gamers, way too many games, a whole lot of piracy, everyone looses something over this matrix of above considerations.