PC is PC, not console. People need to get over that.

I hooked my PC up to the 52" DLP in our living room once. That was the most entertaining round of Counter-Strike I've played in years. Unfortunately, my videocard wasn't quite up to outputting at 1080i consistently, so I had a few hitches.
I imagine the reason why Gaming PCs haven't caught on this way is because you can't cheap out the way you can when you build a DVR/Mediabox. A rinkydink Shuttle won't do for something like Crysis.

I agree with the thrust of the argument. Walk into any big lecture hall in a University and the folks with laptops are just as likely to be playing solitaire, pool, poker or other flash-possible game as they are likely to be taking notes or text messaging. My mother purchased a laptop for herself a year ago and she's grown to have a positive opinion of PC timewasting. But before that, she'd assume I was playing video games on the machine instead of studying or doing homework. The idea of the PC as a game gateway is pretty big, I'd say.

However the one caveat I'd throw in would be that game authoring on the PC is quite a different deal than it is on a console. A trip to the library, a buddy with tons of warez, a little trial and error later and just about anyone with a stable PC can churn out a Tower Defense clone. The console environment just doesn't allow someone to be that creative. A customer sees a $5 game and assumes it's shovelware. We'll see if the XNA Club or Sims Carnival opens up the console the same way that Flash/browser games have for the PC.

I really like the idea that PC gaming will be more like independent cinema. You might get your super-hyped standards (Age of Conan/a David Lynch piece), but the joy will come in finding the little gems that no-one saw coming (Fl0w/Little Miss Sunshine). Also, the money. If you create something like Maple Leaf Story that ropes in tons of casuals but charges them for in-game bonuses, you don't need to commit too much cash to development cycles. I don't know when PC gaming became so focused on cash returns, when you've got long-lived series' (Flight Sims, for instance) that have huge fanbases attached to their releases.

The unconventional thinking in Elysium's article is exactly the kind of thinking the PC industry needs to explore.

There are several long-term issues I have with PC gaming.

1) There is some indication that the PC may be a temporary appliance for some of its uses. It won't be too long before phones and other small devices will replace the PC for things like email and websurfing. In some places, like Japan, the PC has never really caught on and there are new devices every day that fill its functions.

2) The constant hardware/OS upgrade/improvement cycle creates a moving target that is hard for software creators to hit. Big budget AAA titles on or near the cutting edge will always face a difficulty in finding enough people with the hardware to run their stuff. As larger alternative markets take over (the consoles) the PC gamer will increasingly be left with ports that generally aren't designed to push the edge. That leads to fewer games that justify the cutting edge tech and eventually that leads to shakeouts in the PC hardware markets. I just replaced my 3 year old PC with a new one that cost $750. I have one game, Crysis, that really justified the move.

3) The above doesn't matter if the user is interested in casual games, as Elysium points out. But that market only satisfies part of my gaming needs.

4) Elysium points to the digital distribution advantage, but how long will that last? Microsoft isn't fooling anyone - XBox Live is the foundation for offering more than just small games in the future. Truthfully, they could probably start offering major titles via Live right now and people would take advantage of it. And it's not like Sony and Nintendo don't see the future. I don't know whether they will go all the way this generation, but don't be shocked if the next-generation of consoles all have digital purchase options for everything.

The PC's saving grace is the smaller, niche stuff it continues to produce. As long as that continues it will be a major gaming platform for me, but it wouldn't surprise me if in ten years the landscape of electronic gaming looks a whole lot different.

I'm with you, Mr. Sands. The last five PC games I've played, in order from newest to oldest, are:

Sins Of A Solar Empire
Peggle
Space Quest 2
Sam and Max Season 1
Evil Genius

None of those particularly tax my laptop in any way (SOASE comes closest, but I have all the details turned way down and the game mostly runs smooth as glass). I'd much rather have a smooth, playable experience than a graphically advanced flashterpiece that requires four Crossfire cards and a liquid cooling unit to run.

In other words, JUST MAKE GOOD GAMES DAGNABBIT!

If big budget games can be compared to big budget Hollywood movies, then low budget casual games are akin to your Wednesday evening sitcom. If you think about it, how many people actually go to movie theatres on a regular basis? But everybody stares at the tube if for just an hour every few days. And a lot more of them than for even the biggest of the blockbuster movies. Perhaps its time to stop calling them movies, sitcoms, games, timewasters, etc. and start calling them non-interactive entertainment (where you just passively sit and watch) and interactive entertainmnet (where you actively participate).

Now the interactive entertainment has for the longest time been the sole domain of classical games. Board games. Card games. Playing with toys. But let's not forget that, until 60 years ago, non-interactive entertainment consisted of theatre plays, music, and folk tales. In other words, interactive entertainment seems to be finally embracing all of its forms through their electronic alter egos. We need big budget AAA productions, as well as the "Friends" and "Gray's Anatomies" of the gaming world.

As much as we already have our Stephen Spielbergs and Ridley Scotts in the gaming world (see one of the recent articles around here), we will soon have our Sinfields, too.

Don't forget that even consoles are beginning to suffer with the burden of the game install now :S

Something I'm hoping the success of the DS will bring to the PC world is the concept of exploring the various bits of hardware we have plumbed into our PC's that use standard API's such as microphones and pretty much any HID compliant device.

Just imagine games where you can blow into your mic to interact with things ingame, the ability to release a mobile game client and tap into bluetooth or wifi in order to transfer a chunk of your gamesave data to your mobile or portable games console in order to enjoy minigames that add extra abilities to your main game save once completed. Think of the little memory card you could get for your dreamcast that allowed for almost tamagotchi style break out play as an example.

Time to start really exploring the PC as a platform instead of sticking to exploring only genres.

The biggest problem is still lack of any decent integrated graphics solution that can actually play games. I know a lot of the casual games don't require completely beefy machines, but I wish there was some very cost effective way to put in a middle of the road graphics chipset that wouldn't choke the system.

PC gaming is far from dead. Outside of our little nerd huddle, there's an absolutely staggering amount of people that play games on their PCs - maybe not the AAA titles we salivate over, but they are still gaming nonetheless.

I know. Even I bought a copy-- back when my only computer was a candy-apple red iMac (I was young, and... well, I'm not proud of everything I've done.) I had to buy a RAM upgrade for it, because the game specs called out how much RAM was needed after the OS had taken it's share, which I didn't realize at the time.

Never got into the game proper. Just used the simoleons cheat and built lavish houses which my sims promptly set on fire because none of them knew how to cook.

You'd think the game developers would learn from the successes of games like The Sims and other more casual titles. Then again, "learning from their customers" doesn't seem to be their strong suit.

At least the PC is easier to develop for than other platforms. I know enough VB that I could put together a simple graphical point-and-click adventure game if I really wanted to, which I really don't. The point is it's easier for small developers to put something out there, hence you get wonderful sites like orisinal.com, which have some very clever little casual games that you can easily kill a whole day playing. (Lost Vectors is another great site. I've lost hours to Bowmaster Prelude). The niche title will be the meat and potatoes of PC gaming. Big name, AAA titles will be desert.

Budget titles like Extreme Paintbrawl will be the lima beans.

So the PC gaming industry can then be likened to a The Cheesecake Factory-- they have food, but they advertise their deserts. The food is edible, if not all that memorable, and the deserts are generally decent, albeit over-hyped (except when they're just a port of another platform's desert, in which case everyone complains about how Friendlies' "this-brownie-might-kill-you" sundae was out a year ago).

Yes, I'm hungry. I think I'll go have lunch now.

One big reason why I think PC games don't seem to sell all that well is that were all still playing all the other games we have bought over the years. I mean look at how many people are play starcraft, Counter Strike 1.6, Diablo 2, the many MMORPG's and so many others. Can anybody tell of some Console games that are that old that still have people playing them after that many years. I can't think of any but I could be wrong. Console games you put in anywhere from 5 - 50 hrs then you move on to the next game. Most PC games you stick with for hundreds of hrs. We don't have to run out and buy every new release that comes out to keep ourselves entertained.

don't forget that PC games also get far more life in them due to the community modding them into new experiences - total annihilation in the original UT engine for example.

Console gaming is quite analogious to the music and movie industries in the way that they tend to remain pretty static once they have been released. Some people will try to wave DLC at me, but that merely adds dialogue, it doesn't change the game itself too much.

This is the most valid point in this thread. The PC games I play on a regular basis, with the exception of TF2 that I just purchased, are at least two years old. I usually play games with my pc for about an hour a day. My consoles only get used if I have friends over to play party games. In fact, when the current gen of consoles became available I passed them entirely. I just wasn't using my consoles enough to justify the purchase. Don't get me wrong, at one time I was a huge console user. However, I can get the same amount of gaming fun from one pc purchase than I could from buying a xbox or ps title a week for six months. I don't even have to pay sixty bucks a year to play them on line, an evil I will never forgive microsoft for. You do occasionally need to know what's going on under the hood of your machine to get the games to work. However, as a side effect of this I know more about how computers work.

Because it's not. At least not yet. Though, you could certainly make the argument that the real gaming platform is the internet.

Yay!

Only true if you limit your analysis of top-of-the-line to $50 million + budget games. Seriously, top of the line like GTA? Like Madden? Like Metal Gear Solid and God of War and Mass Effect? Well, those games are better on the console anyway. If those are the games you're looking for, then you know where to call home. Why does PC have to chase after that market when they've already got an install base in the hundreds of millions and can deliver a different experience?

Well that's my whole point. Companies are so locked into the console model, the technology pushing model, that they're making PC games wrong. There is no risk in the potential reward of creating PC games. NONE! You just have to restrain yourself to making games that work on every system and that don't require super expensive programming tools.

Let's also not forget that the sins of PC gaming past is Console gaming's future. When I hear about the complaints of DLC and X-Box Live players with the implication that the PC is somehow absolved of ever having either of those problems I think some people may be forgetting about what was done with "expansion packs" or what some companies did with the mod community as well as how your average Counter-Strike player behaved.

Then again, it's no different than how people treated Nintendo when Sony and Microsoft entered the console market. Suddenly Nintendo was the little guy and everyone ignored how they used to act like a monopoly and used their market dominance to make everyone dance to their tune.

The players keep changing but everyone is still dancing to the same song.