PC's have long been the choice of platform for the discerning gamer, the games industry was born on such a platform, and many people see it as the be all and end all of gaming entertainment. However in recent years we have witnessed a mass exodus of PC gamers in favor of dedicated games consoles, and that has caused some people to classify the PC games industry as "on the way out".
Such a view can be supported by looking at sales figures. The sales charts for the US, UK and Japan are all dominated by console and hand held games sales, with only the biggest games, such as World of Warcraft and The Sims expansions, making the number one spot. On occasions where games are released on both the PC and a console on the same day, the console version can make its way to the number one spot, without the PC's offering even making it into the top ten. Such an example is Bioshock, a game which came out on both the PC and the Xbox 360 on the same day, and yet only the 360 version has been seen anywhere in sales charts.
Such a trend is telling, however not universal. The incomparably lucrative MMORPG market is currently bound to the PC. While this too is not exclusive, with games such as Final Fantasy XI making the move, vaguely successfully to consoles, it means that the PC is still managing to attract some new gamers. World of Warcraft, the market leader in the MMORPG sector of the games industry, currently has over 9 million members, an impressive figure for any game, but even more so when those members are all paying £8.99 a month.
Such a PC based success story surely shows that there is still interest the classic games platform, however this boost for PC gaming may soon be lost, as consoles become more and more like their PC cousins. The addition of a hard-drive and network connectivity to consoles (starting with the Xbox and now common in the current generation of consoles), puts developing an MMORPG for consoles, that is on par with the PC offerings, not only possible, but inevitable. While there is the issue of adapting a game as complex as an MMORPG for use with a portable controller, many companies have managed to make several complex game engines feel natural with them, so it is likely that a sturdy system could be found.
Another boost for the PC offensive, is the re-launch of Microsoft's Games for Windows line, which aims to bring PCs a console like consistency to their operation and installation, with some of them even connecting to the, up until now Xbox exclusive, LIVE service. Similarly the PC based Steam system, which runs, in some ways, very much like Games for windows and Xbox Live, is providing unified friends lists, an online store, and automated updates for the games that support it. Could these services, which are echoed in the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 be the savior of PC gaming? If so, are there really that many benefits to one platform over the other?
If you ask me, there is life in the old dog yet.
