Two open gaming platform efforts

Posted Jan 23, 2007 16:30 UTC (Tue) by quintesse (guest, #14569)
Parent article: Two open gaming platform efforts

Open Game Console: "However, over the past decade most gamers have actively decided to stop using their PCs for gaming and simply play on consoles."

I wonder if there is any factual data to support this statement?

to post comments

Two open gaming platform efforts

Posted Jan 23, 2007 17:55 UTC (Tue) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

To claim that they "actively decided" seems to be a stretch. Gathering this data would be difficult at this time. Perhaps you could try polling a large number of people who play games and ask about their views at different times and so on. I'm certainly no expert on statistics and surveys but I think such data seeking for retroactive view information would be hard to generate in a reliable way.

If you simply read that as I do, though, it can be readily agreed with. I view it as a sloppy way of phrasing "the pc gaming market has been steadily shrinking while the console gaming market has been more rapidly growing." This can be borne out with relatively easy-to-acquire sales figures. I leave the acquisition of such figures as an exercise to the doubting reader.

Two open gaming platform efforts

Posted Jan 23, 2007 18:07 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (3 responses)

Don't know about "most," but I certainly have. PCs are too much of a pain in the ass to deal with and are far too expensive if you want to game. It's still way cheaper to just buy a PS3 at $600 than to buy a PC capable of playing newly released games throughout the life-span of the PS3.

Combine that with long boot-up time, installation hassle, manual patching, OS instabilities, hardware incompatibilities, and tons of other painful components of PC gaming. Why put up with that when you can just stick a disc in your console, turn it on, and be playing a very stable game in under a minute?

Two open gaming platform efforts

Posted Jan 23, 2007 19:42 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

Why put up with that when you can just stick a disc in your console, turn it on, and be playing a very stable game in under a minute?

Because Civilization is not released for PlayStation :-)

Bye,NAR

Two open gaming platform efforts

Posted Jan 24, 2007 9:34 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] (1 responses)

"Why put up with that when you can just stick a disc in your console, turn it on, and be playing a very stable game in under a minute?"

Because consoles absolutely, positively suck for certain types of games?

Two open gaming platform efforts

Posted Jan 25, 2007 0:23 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Add a keyboard and mouse to consoles.. Now they don't suck for those types of games.

Realy, it's not that difficult.

To put it into perspective:
Computer game sales peaked in 1999 with about 1.9billion dollars worth of sales. Since then you had a gradual and consistant decline in sales to were it's now down below 1994 levels with 2006 sales of about 970 million dollars. (this is US sales)

The top 10 games, in terms of sales for the PC are:
1. World Of Warcraft, Vivendi
2. The Sims 2, EA
3. The Sims 2: Open For Business Expansion Pack, EA
4. Star Wars: Empire At War, LucasArts
5. The Sims 2 Pets Expansion Pack, EA
6. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Take-Two Interactive Software
7. Age Of Empires III, Microsoft
8. The Sims 2 Family Fun Stuff Expansion Pack, EA
9. Civilization IV, Take-Two
10. The Sims 2 Nightlife Expansion Pack, EA

It's pretty bad when one game gets 2, 3, 5, 8, AND 10 spots in all the same year.

Now for computer games, world wide, it's slightly over 1.1 billion dollars. For console/portable games it's around 12Billion dollars worth of sales.

http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/40/retail-pc-game-sales-off...

game divided up by sales and usage:
http://theesa.com/facts/sales_genre_data.php

For online stuff you have over 60% of people's time spent on puzzles and browser-based mini games.