This post is by guest blogger Jamie.
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Categories: Business, Commentary
Tags: pc
Being as I am, in the field of PC gaming, I think that the entire concept of this is going out of style. That being said, my market isn’t exactly dying. It’s more like the go-to-a-store and buy-real-software-in-a-box sort of thing, and trust me, that sales field is dying.
You have to take into account, of course, the two basic types of gamers: the casual gamers and the hardcore gamers. For the casual gamers, the PC and the Wii are both ideal. For hardcore gamers, the thought of spending thousands on consoles and accessories seems remarkably backwards. Keep in mind that casual games are beyond the scope of this editorial. Most casual games are either played online (Flash, vNES) or downloaded for free (PopCap, Free Lunch Design, Real).
1. You’re not getting anything from Japan.
Sad as that fact may be, thanks to Japanese culture, the chances of getting a big Japanese game (for example, Sonic The Hedgehog) are remarkably slim. Since Sega is no longer in the hardware field, you’d think that the PC would be a logical extension to their publishing platforms. It really isn’t. In Japan, computer games are associated with a genre of games known as Dating Simulators (Dating Sims). “Playing a computer game” in Japan is almost completely associated with those games now.
2. The cost of consoles are killing the market.
Given that this generation of consoles and handhelds (sans PSP) all contain hardware that conventional PCs do not, it seems like a rather counterintuitive idea to publish a game for a system that is starting to lose the purpose it once had. Computers are now headed towards becoming systems that only deal with the internet. With Google Office and Windows Live Office, it seems more and more that the conventional wisdom of storing a program on a computer is no longer feasible.
3. Software piracy is becoming an issue.
Windows makes it very easy to copy a CD and give it to a friend. Doing that is arguably easier than doing the same for a console game. Digital Rights Management is alienating the users, and there is a real lack of a smart way to keep software piracy from happening while keeping users from getting angry.
4. Keyboards are the only inherent value of PCs.
There are a distinct few genres that are good for PCs. Communication Games (The Sims), First Person Shooters, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (generally RPGs, think Everquest) and Casual Games. Most other games can be accomplished more efficiently without dealing with keyboards. Back when I used to design Casual Games for Playground Media (poorly thought out business plan, more on that later) the keyboard and all of the keys seemed superfluous. Most games can be implemented in a more intuitive way with a controller than with a keyboard.
5. The idea of selling computer software is becoming dated.
With this global economy and excessively fast network of computers, the thought of putting on pants, walking to the car, driving to some software store, wasting gas money, dealing with a bored and often incompetent clerk (dealing with people in general), dodging lines, checking out, driving back home, and installing it no longer seems to be a logical operation. Why buy a piece of software at a store and take up 45 minutes when you can just download it in 5? At the risk of circular reasoning, the lack of ability to do this (despite becoming less of an issue now) may have something to do with the rampant software piracy issue facing the industry today.