The changing face of gaming is transforming the PC into a casual gaming platform
Gaming has driven the high-end PC hardware market for over a decade, but the gaming landscape is evolving at break-neck speed and the PC, once considered the apotheosis of gaming power, is fast becoming a casual gaming platform.
Gaming has driven the high-end PC hardware market for over a decade, but the gaming landscape is evolving at break-neck speed and the PC, once considered the apotheosis of gaming power, is fast becoming a casual gaming platform.
I used to have a saying - new game, new graphics card. I remember a time when hardware could barely keep up with the demands being placed on it by games, and I was buying new graphics cards almost as fast as I was buying games simply to keep at the cutting edge. This furious pressure on hardware came to a head with the hit first-person shooter Crysis. Here was a game that you could throw all the available high-end hardware at it, and it would still laugh at you. If memory serves me right, it took about a year before there as a graphics card powerful enough to allow you to play the game on a large screen with all the dials and sliders turned up to the max.
But ...
[poll id="574"]
As you can imagine, creating and releasing a game that no PC could play to the max (and that many PCs - even quite powerful mainstream systems couldn't play at all) isn't a recipe for commercial success. Hardcore gamers loved it because, well, we like tinkering ad spending money on hardware, but regular gamers found it frustrating.
Then everything changed. Nintendo's Wii games console, which was released about a year before Crysis hit the shelves but had been kept in check by constant shortages, really started to gain traction and capture the market. The Wii was unlike any console we'd seen before. Not only as the wire-free Wii Remote unique, it also turned gaming on its head. Rather than appealing to the hardcore gaming fans who wanted ever more realistic explosions and blood splatter in their games, the Wii opened up gaming to a whole new audience that had never previously thought of themselves as gamers. Casual gamers who might have previously played a few hands of Solitaire or Freecell now had a console specifically aimed at them.
Casual gaming became even more casual ... and cheaper. Flash-based games on social network sites such as Facebook not only changed the landscape yet again, and introduced a whole new raft of people to gaming, but also changed the pricing model. People could while away the hours tending to farms and fish tanks in virtual worlds without having to part with any cash at all (well, there's usually and option to do so ...). Why spend $50 on a game when you can get access to games for free, which have the added benefit of the element of friendly competition between friends and family? Big games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 need big budgets to make them a reality, but Flash-based games such as Farmville can be created on a shoestring budget while at the same time having access to an enormous audience.
The PC was suddenly transformed into a casual gaming platform.
Things are changing again ...
Notice how casual gaming has infiltrated the iPhone and iPad platforms. Ask for a list of top apps, and you'll be deluged with games such as "Angry Birds" and "Plants vs Zombies" and dozes of other smaller, lesser known, games (I know, every time I ask people for their top apps, games always dominate the list). Again, you can pick up a game like Angry Birds for under a dollar, and this game can give you just as much gaming pleasure, if not more, than a $50 blockbuster title.
And things aren't standing still ...
Microsoft has launched the Kinect for the Xbox 360. Basically this is he company's stab at grabbing some of the Wii market (much as Sony tried to do with the PS3 Move motion controller). Will Kinect be a success? It's too early to tell. It's certainly offers some novelty, but it's novelty ultimately designed to appeal to people who already have a Wii, and that's the problem - these folks have already invested in a console. Kinect is also a gateway device. Microsoft's hope is that people will be lured to the platform by Kinect and the Wii-esque games it offers, and stick around long enough to buy big-name titles such as Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Basically, we've entered an era where gaming has spread to many devices and platforms, where the casual gaming market has exploded, and cutting-edge hardware is coming to consoles rather than PCs. And since most games are developed with consoles in mind, they no longer exert the same pressure on PC hardware in terms of graphics and processing power.
I can't help but feel that PC gaming is dying. Thoughts?
