PC market already twice as big as consoles

[Forest Dweller]

I'm all for letting people enjoy whatever the fuck they want but I personally don't understand how some people are so in love with Nintendo games, most of that shit looks so boring that if all video games in the world were made by Nintendo I'd probably just find a new hobby.

The Metroid Prime games are the best action-adventures ever made.

 

[Azdul]

Hopefully all the lizard people from Big Vidya will see those numbers and increase budgets of future PC ports from a hot lentil soup a day for the 3 Chinese interns responsible for a port to a slightly bigger soup and a bottle of sake every Christmas.

All Xbox and 90% of Playstation games will be ported to PC - and it has little to do with actual size of PC market.

We're quickly approaching end of current console business model. We already have console hardware iterations, console backward compatibility, game passes, consoles resembling generic PCs, streaming, cross-play. In few short years you'll have your games connected to your online account - but not connected to specific hardware.

"Call of Duty 20" will be able to run on generic PC hardware in cloud data center and be streamed to the PC or smartphone, or directly on generic PC hardware that customer already have. It no longer makes economic sense to create 400$ box of PC parts with Microsoft or Sony logo, when most customers cannot see a difference between old generation console graphics, new generation console graphics, or graphics streamed to their device from the cloud.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Hopefully all the lizard people from Big Vidya will see those numbers and increase budgets of future PC ports from a hot lentil soup a day for the 3 Chinese interns responsible for a port to a slightly bigger soup and a bottle of sake every Christmas.

Those numbers don't seem to be for individual game sales though. They look like they're from microtransactions from Fortnite and probably other stuff like GTA Online. If all that money is being made in microtransactions in a handful of games then putting more money into PC ports doesn't really do anything for them unless they also have a plan to milk you with microtransactions.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Which is precisely why so many games that attempt to copy it(and similar online games e.g., look at the fads) keep failing. As an additional point: generally people don't play more than one of these at a time because they're designed to be "replayed" heavily.

For every success story there are dozens of 'big' failures and hundreds of failures that fly under the radar. Bigger companies have recently tried to cash in on this and most of them did pretty poorly.

This is true, but for every success you get you are rewarded much more than with a singleplayer hit. I'm not an accountant with access to their books so I can't say how it all balances out, but I'm sure Ubisoft can handle a few Ghost Recon Breakpoints in exchange for massive hits like Rainbow Six Siege that offer large and continuous revenue streams.

Can they? Did Rainbox Six Siege really get them that much more than say, Assassin's Creed Odyssey?
Division 2 is also doing well under expectations. For a GaaS game to be a hit it seems to need to be far and away better than not only the competition but also its predecessor, which becomes increasingly more difficult each year.
Single player games seem like a much safer bet, especially if companies plan on releasing regular sequels to said games. A mediocre Assassin's Creed game still sells well, a mediocre GaaS game shuts down in a few months.

it's not the game per se which makes big money these days, it's the progressively more criminal and exploitative monetization schemes.

 

[DalekFlay]

It no longer makes economic sense to create 400$ box of PC parts with Microsoft or Sony logo, when most customers cannot see a difference between old generation console graphics, new generation console graphics, or graphics streamed to their device from the cloud.

I agree a lot with your general sentiment and fisted ya, but this part I'm not so sure about. I think Xbox and Playstation are slowly transitioning to being seen as services rather than hardware, as you say, but the supposed "complexity" of PC gaming for the mainstream tells me there will always be some kind of console hardware. The PS4 sold what, 80 million units? The demand is there for a simple way to locally play games. Microsoft's announcement that the Series X will play the same games as the Xbox One shows that the concept of console generations are ending, just like the PC where they never really existed, but I think they will always periodically release new console hardware for people who want an easy local experience. It'll be more like the iPhone though, a new model here and there with a number at the end that does the same shit only a little better, with new software eventually not supporting much older models.

At least until streaming is so "good" that the vast majority of mainstream gamers are fine with it, then I could see consoles dying and PC being the main alternative to streaming.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

I'm all for letting people enjoy whatever the fuck they want but I personally don't understand how some people are so in love with Nintendo games, most of that shit looks so boring that if all video games in the world were made by Nintendo I'd probably just find a new hobby.

You're shocked that there's lard-lad losers out there acting elitist and snobbish over random x product from z company? PC Gaymers do this shit all the time despite 90 percent of the shit they're playing being console ports.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Nintendo isn't a console manufacturer, it's a religion. Won't matter what shit they release, it will automatically sell. Like Star Wars.

 

[Azdul]

Nintendo isn't a console manufacturer, it's a religion. Won't matter what shit they release, it will automatically sell. Like Star Wars.

It has cult following among 30-40 year olds that loved NES and keep buying their kids Nintendo stuff, while kids themselves would rather play Fortnite.

I honestly do not get nostalgia for the company which was among the most ruthless and predatory enterprises on the market.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The largest portion of this "PC market" are are fukcing laptops which are only marginally better than consoles. only a tiny fraction still owns a high end PC.

 

[DalekFlay]

It has cult following among 30-40 year olds that loved NES and keep buying their kids Nintendo stuff, while kids themselves would rather play Fortnite.

Nah, the cult is way bigger than that. Watch GDQ or random Youtube gaming channels. Tons of 20-somethings are in the Nintendo cult, either because they grew up on more recent consoles like the Gamecube or because their parents pushed it on them. I'd assume the same will be true in 10 years, for the same reasons, just change Gamecube to Switch. Morgoth was right to reference Star Wars, a franchise people love so much they introduce it to their kids as important. Same with Nintendo.

The largest portion of this "PC market" are are fukcing laptops which are only marginally better than consoles. only a tiny fraction still owns a high end PC.

And yet for many genres the "high-end" PC versions make up like a third of the total sales. It's not like it's some crazy small niche like Vinyl.

 

[Azdul]

The largest portion of this "PC market" are are fukcing laptops which are only marginally better than consoles. only a tiny fraction still owns a high end PC.

Those people with crappy laptops are new frontier of gaming industry.

Geforce Now just launched recently, and you can stream your games from Steam / Uplay / Origin / EGS for 5$ a month, or even for free, rendered on RTX hardware in 1080P, with latency often below 10 ms (Europe, Korea and Japan). Microsoft will soon match that offer with streaming the games from your Xbox account. In both cases you can either launch the game locally on your PC, or stream it if your hardware is not good enough.

In few years the potential market for a game will be few billions of people, because the barrier to entry will get smaller and smaller. That's why Phil Spencer recently said that Sony and Nintendo are no longer a competition that Microsoft should worry about.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Anyone who reads this thread title knows immediately that it's a lie. Console gamers are WAY fatter than PC users.

 

[Rev]

The PS4 sold what, 80 million units?

It actually sold more than 100 million units, IIRC. Even Xbox One, with MS failing so hard in this gen, has managed to sold more than 50 million units.

 

[DalekFlay]

Those people with crappy laptops are new frontier of gaming industry.

Geforce Now just launched recently, and you can stream your games from Steam / Uplay / Origin / EGS for 5$ a month, or even for free, rendered on RTX hardware in 1080P, with latency often below 10 ms (Europe, Korea and Japan). Microsoft will soon match that offer with streaming the games from your Xbox account. In both cases you can either launch the game locally on your PC, or stream it if your hardware is not good enough.

It's absolutely the future for casual gamers and such, but they won't be able to force it with exclusives and whatnot until a sizeable majority switch over and I think that'll take a long time. I know it happened super fast with music and shows, but movies are dragging on longer due to a solid enthusiast base who care more about quality. Considering the latency issue (and the number of people who use mice on PC, where it will be more obvious), I think that enthusiast core will drag on even longer. However yes, obviously streaming is the future of everything, eventually.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Which is precisely why so many games that attempt to copy it(and similar online games e.g., look at the fads) keep failing. As an additional point: generally people don't play more than one of these at a time because they're designed to be "replayed" heavily.

For every success story there are dozens of 'big' failures and hundreds of failures that fly under the radar. Bigger companies have recently tried to cash in on this and most of them did pretty poorly.

This is true, but for every success you get you are rewarded much more than with a singleplayer hit. I'm not an accountant with access to their books so I can't say how it all balances out, but I'm sure Ubisoft can handle a few Ghost Recon Breakpoints in exchange for massive hits like Rainbow Six Siege that offer large and continuous revenue streams.

Can they? Did Rainbox Six Siege really get them that much more than say, Assassin's Creed Odyssey?
Division 2 is also doing well under expectations. For a GaaS game to be a hit it seems to need to be far and away better than not only the competition but also its predecessor, which becomes increasingly more difficult each year.
Single player games seem like a much safer bet, especially if companies plan on releasing regular sequels to said games. A mediocre Assassin's Creed game still sells well, a mediocre GaaS game shuts down in a few months.

it's not the game per se which makes big money these days, it's the progressively more criminal and exploitative monetization schemes.

Consoles have the same monetization schemes though.

 

[passerby]

Next generation of consoles after upcoming one will be just streaming terminals, it's when it'll take over.