That stupid invisible hand of the market is trying to squash PC games? I hate consoles so much. When are we going to just figure out that the TV, game console, PC, Star Trek style Skyping, ordering dinner, and Demolition style sex all belong in one large entertainment module? Maybe having it all on one machine would increase the level of protection while decreasing the annoyance of DRM. 

Give or take 20 years and it will happen.

 

Already has, been screwing my Sega Genesis for years.  

I hope it never happens.  You want to see video games stagnate?  Put everything on the same device.  Different platforms breed variety which breeds innovation.  If we were all on the same system right now we'd either have to sacrifice The Legend of Zelda - Skyward Sword or Skyrim (as one example of many).  

Sure, you could code the new Zelda for an XBox or PC (probably), but you never would because you wouldn't be looking for creative ways around the current hardware limitations of the Wii.  And Skyrim on the Wii is impossible.  

Multiple platform choices, as long as it isn't rampant, is a great thing.

In a few decades the megabox will make it so that there is no such concept as hardware limitations. Games will have to compete against all other without the safety of a Wii only title. As long as a game is fun, people will buy it. But the megabox means all console companies would have to change over to only making games. There will always be competition. 

The notion of pirates' eyes lighting up at a game without DRM is pretty naive. Pirates crack everything. The only question is whether it's everywhere the day of release or just the week of release.

Also I don't know that 5:1 is really all that bad.

 

Skyrim on the PC is possible though, and better than elsewhere. Skyward Sword could happen easily on the PC. You wouldn't need to work around hardware limitations, but if you think nothing creative happens on the PC you clearly haven't paid much attention to PC gaming. The only advantage of consoles for a consumer is price, and in a world where everyone needs a PC anyway, even that advantage is gone. Publishers like consoles because piracy is non-trivial on them, so people have no real recourse against bad business practices except not playing the game, and people can't easily discern whether a game is worth buying or not until they've already paid. That explains why consoles still exist. But for the consumer? I'd rather the extra cash went into PC games. The experience is always better on the PC anyway, if the industry went the last mile the experience could be much better.

CD Projekt got back at the PC pirates with the interface of The Witcher 2. It was the worst punishment imaginable.

Boy, those are some shady calculations going on in that article. "estimates" "assume" and even better "There are no stats available"

 

 

I imagine anyone posting regularly on an indie studio website, especially from their fantasy TBS website, probably pays at least a little attention to the PC games market, no?  So the whole "you clearly haven't paid much attention.." shtick is pretty much nonsense in a conversation with the regular posters here.   

You're "the only advantage of consoles" reasoning leaves off one giant argument in favor of consoles that has nothing to do with price and piracy.  Hardware standardization.  If you're spending $10M developing for the XBOX all $10M goes into the game itself.  If you're spending $10M developing a PC game at least some of that money has to go into hardware compatibility QA.  On the consumer side consoles avoid (or drastically minimize) the problems that were rampant with Skyrim on the PC.  Consumers having to tweak to no end to get the best possible play experience.  And consumers know it, and mostly expect it from PC games (for better or worse).  Hardware standardization, or the ability of a person to come home with a disc, throw it in the drive of a console, and be playing their game 3 minutes later, is a huge advantage for consoles.  It's also a huge reason for the explosion of the video game industry as a whole over the last 15 years.  Without consoles you don't see nearly as many AAA titles because you don't have the accessibility for the average user that leads to $300M and $400M opening weeks that we see for blockbuster titles now which in turn means you don't see the massive development budgets that lead to games like Skyrim.  

My preferred platform is the PC.  I like the ability to tweak, the potentially superior control options, and the ability to upgrade when I want for the best possible experience.  But for the average consumer not interested in these things, the experience is rarely better on the PC than on the console.  And unless all you play is strategy games and MMOs, you need those average console loving consumers because they're purchases create better games for all of us.  

Having an AGP video card at the end of 2011, I completely understand how much a little standardization of hardware could improve the overall stability of PC Games. Or at least having drivers that won't on occasion melt your card. I remember when I first got Amnesia Dark Descent, it wouldn't run because of a comparability oversight. Or with DeathSpank, when the specs AMD gave them about some older cards were just plain wrong, causing the game to not function on said cards, until a fix was implemented. Standardization would also mean less innovation, but it would  probably avoid problems like AMD's new FX chip not being able to function at full potential on current OSs. It is a bit ironic that you should use Skyrim as an example, because it runs well on that AGP card of mine, yet it doesn't on the PS3, regardless of standardization.

And while the argument that you can just pop in the disk and play was valid a while ago, when games have a length that go over 100 hours, 5 minutes instead of 3 when starting up won't make much of a difference. Heck, I've seen what kind of loading times the Wii has, they're downright dreadful, and yet it's still the best selling console of this generations. People don't mind waiting a bit to get in the game. But they would rather do it on a console, than on a PC, because that's how it's portrayed everywhere, that's how "it's done". We'll soon reach a point where convenience won't be a point of argument anymore, yet people will still see consoles as the more natural solution, since they're being marketed as such. 

Anyone happen to see the Colbert Report last week? He payed some attention to this subject; apparently an FBI report claimed that american business lost 200 to 250 billion dollars in income due to piracy. But not much further in the report they also stated that they had no way to actually measure or even make a rough estimation of piracy to back this number up. To be fair, I believe it was about more than just digital piracy, but it still seems like more of a big number made up by someone to gain support for new legislation (like SOPA).

Have to put part of game up on server. Distribute client free. Charge to register for game. Problem solved if done right. Guild Wars does this. Go pirate the GW client. You can get a free copy of it right from the guild wars game site. And what you have is nothing unless you pays your money. Doesn't have to be an mmo. Any game can split itself into a client server model. No offline, but tough beans.

 

Plenty of people end up playing GuildWars and other games of this nature on 'pirated' servers. You put up a challenge, for whatever their various reasons are, pirates will pirate it.

CA's Total War games use Steam, and so cannot be counted among those publishers who don't have restrictive DRM. 

 

 

I was talking about devs that focus on PC since most are going to consoles because of piracy.