PC's In The Toilet... An Opportunity??
by Jeff Tunnell · in General Discussion · 12/06/2000 (12:22 pm) · 42 replies
Currently, the PC market is in the toilet. Gateway and Apple have both reported that growth over last year, which everyone expected to be in the +15% range, is actually negative. So, less new PC's will be going into homes this year than last year. In Apple's case, they will actually sell 30% less than last year. Yowza!
This data is backed up by the financial results of Best Buy and Circuit City, which have both warned that sales will be well below expectations, mostly due to lack of interest in PC buying.
PC game sales have been affected by these and other trends, such as the availability of all the free games you can play on the Internet. As a result, traditional PC publishers have not met unrealistic expectations causing some high profile failures, consolidations, and strategy shifts.
Gores bought out Mattel Interactive for pennies on the dollar, Hasbro is falling to Infogrames, GTI folded tent and gave it up to Infogrames, Cendant gave away Sierra/Blizzard/Dynamix to Havas, EA has trimmed many product lines, and so on. It doesn;t look like it is over yet, with rumors of additional layoffs from other publishers.
Those publishers that haven't given it up have announed major plans to get into the video game business, which appears to be the current holy grail of profitablility. It will be for some, but many will find they don't know exactly how to do this, causing further consolidation.
What does this mean for you, the independent developer?? Well, IMHO, the best time to get into something is when everybody else is bailing out. It takes 12-24 months to create a game, so think about where we will be then.
- PS2 will have been on the market two years, and the graphics will be looking dated.
- XBox will be a year old, and the graphics will still look good, but it will still have the problem of all content being controlled by Microsoft.
- Nintendo Game Cube will still be aimed at 8-12 year olds and tightly controlled.
In contrast, the average PC will be 1GHz, the video card will be 100 times better than a G-Force, it will have a fast Ethernet Web connection, a keyboard, a mouse, and a spectacular high resolution screen. Even better, nobody tells you what game you can or can't do, there is a lot of available technology, and distribution is available (that's where we come in).
Mcu more on this later, but for now... stay the course, make innovative games, and the world will come back to us.
Jeff
This data is backed up by the financial results of Best Buy and Circuit City, which have both warned that sales will be well below expectations, mostly due to lack of interest in PC buying.
PC game sales have been affected by these and other trends, such as the availability of all the free games you can play on the Internet. As a result, traditional PC publishers have not met unrealistic expectations causing some high profile failures, consolidations, and strategy shifts.
Gores bought out Mattel Interactive for pennies on the dollar, Hasbro is falling to Infogrames, GTI folded tent and gave it up to Infogrames, Cendant gave away Sierra/Blizzard/Dynamix to Havas, EA has trimmed many product lines, and so on. It doesn;t look like it is over yet, with rumors of additional layoffs from other publishers.
Those publishers that haven't given it up have announed major plans to get into the video game business, which appears to be the current holy grail of profitablility. It will be for some, but many will find they don't know exactly how to do this, causing further consolidation.
What does this mean for you, the independent developer?? Well, IMHO, the best time to get into something is when everybody else is bailing out. It takes 12-24 months to create a game, so think about where we will be then.
- PS2 will have been on the market two years, and the graphics will be looking dated.
- XBox will be a year old, and the graphics will still look good, but it will still have the problem of all content being controlled by Microsoft.
- Nintendo Game Cube will still be aimed at 8-12 year olds and tightly controlled.
In contrast, the average PC will be 1GHz, the video card will be 100 times better than a G-Force, it will have a fast Ethernet Web connection, a keyboard, a mouse, and a spectacular high resolution screen. Even better, nobody tells you what game you can or can't do, there is a lot of available technology, and distribution is available (that's where we come in).
Mcu more on this later, but for now... stay the course, make innovative games, and the world will come back to us.
Jeff
About the author
#42
And what if all these freedoms not only come to next-gen consoles, but next-gen consoles do them better?
Xbox 360 will have an add-on harddrive (and who knows what else), and you will be able to switch in/out faceplates.
There have been several this gen, and its looking like there will be MANY next-gen.
I don't see how this is EVER a good thing.
I think this has more to do that the consoles only finally "came of age" this generation. Without online connectivity and the advancements of the Xbox, there was no real reason to create something on the console first, then porting to the PC. It'll likely be the other way around next-gen, with devs creating stuff using XNA on the Xbox 2, then porting to PC.
Consoles have grown up. I think next-gen especially you'll see them take a huge bite out of what gaming PCs have always done. I mean, when you compare the Xbox of 2001 to PCs, and the Xbox 2 of 2005 to PCs, its apparent that the gap has lessened.
Xbox - 733 mhz
good PC 2001 - 2 gig
Xbox RAM - 64 mb
PC RAM 2001 - 512 gig to 1 gig
Xbox graphics - GForce 2.5 (essentially)
PC graphics 2001 - GeForce 4
Xbox 2 - 3 ghz triple core processor
PC 2001 - 1 core 3 ghz processor
Xbox 2 RAM - 512 MB
PC RAM - 512 to 1 gig
Xbox 2 graphics - next generation of Radeon
PC graphics 2005 - won't get same Radeon till 2006
Basically, where as the Xbox of 2001 was vastly overpowered (and yet still puts out Doom 3, Half-Life 2 today), the Xbox 2 is actually more powerful than any of its PC counter-parts. So consoles have finally caught up in the tech department.
Add to that the countinued advancement of online options (Xbox beats the PC here), HDTV support, etc, etc, PC functions such as broswers....and consoles are really cutting into that space that PCs have always had, and they do many things better.
04/29/2005 (4:40 pm)
Quote:This all may sound bad to the PC market, but it actually has a very worthy bonus, which is the creativity and innovation freedoms. Don't take them for granted, but the freedom that PC games present -
And what if all these freedoms not only come to next-gen consoles, but next-gen consoles do them better?
Quote:the customization,
Xbox 360 will have an add-on harddrive (and who knows what else), and you will be able to switch in/out faceplates.
Quote:the MMOGs,
There have been several this gen, and its looking like there will be MANY next-gen.
Quote:even the freedom to cheat and more,
I don't see how this is EVER a good thing.
Quote:like the fact that most games start as PC games - all this factors into the flexability that consoles will never have the way they are
I think this has more to do that the consoles only finally "came of age" this generation. Without online connectivity and the advancements of the Xbox, there was no real reason to create something on the console first, then porting to the PC. It'll likely be the other way around next-gen, with devs creating stuff using XNA on the Xbox 2, then porting to PC.
Quote:In fact, I see this as the same opposite - how PC games threaten the console market - because of the limitations of consoles. And the fact that they require licensing just to develop for makes it even more questionable.
Consoles have grown up. I think next-gen especially you'll see them take a huge bite out of what gaming PCs have always done. I mean, when you compare the Xbox of 2001 to PCs, and the Xbox 2 of 2005 to PCs, its apparent that the gap has lessened.
Xbox - 733 mhz
good PC 2001 - 2 gig
Xbox RAM - 64 mb
PC RAM 2001 - 512 gig to 1 gig
Xbox graphics - GForce 2.5 (essentially)
PC graphics 2001 - GeForce 4
Xbox 2 - 3 ghz triple core processor
PC 2001 - 1 core 3 ghz processor
Xbox 2 RAM - 512 MB
PC RAM - 512 to 1 gig
Xbox 2 graphics - next generation of Radeon
PC graphics 2005 - won't get same Radeon till 2006
Basically, where as the Xbox of 2001 was vastly overpowered (and yet still puts out Doom 3, Half-Life 2 today), the Xbox 2 is actually more powerful than any of its PC counter-parts. So consoles have finally caught up in the tech department.
Add to that the countinued advancement of online options (Xbox beats the PC here), HDTV support, etc, etc, PC functions such as broswers....and consoles are really cutting into that space that PCs have always had, and they do many things better.
Torque Owner Christopher Dapo
This all may sound bad to the PC market, but it actually has a very worthy bonus, which is the creativity and innovation freedoms. Don't take them for granted, but the freedom that PC games present - the customization, the MMOGs, even the freedom to cheat and more, like the fact that most games start as PC games - all this factors into the flexability that consoles will never have the way they are (and for that to change, well, I don't see Sony and Nintendo coming to terms on a universal media format anytime soon, do you?). In fact, I see this as the same opposite - how PC games threaten the console market - because of the limitations of consoles. And the fact that they require licensing just to develop for makes it even more questionable.
People will buy consoles - they're cheaper and more centralized around gaming compared to a PC. But people will buy PCs just so they can play games as well. Who here has played multiplayer Halo on their XBox and wished it had been a seperate, more personal PC screen instead of the 'mini-quad' screen you were looking at? Again, it's all about how flexible it is, for both the developer and the consumer.
Neither is dead, by far. Both could use some help staying alive though! ;)
- Ronixus