Alongside this rose-colored imagery, though, is a growing tide of opinion that aims to ring a death knell for the PC as a gaming platform -- at least in its current shape. Just recently THQ's Michael Fitch railed against the challenges of the PC gaming audience on the heels of Titan Quest developer Iron Lore's closing, while the NPD's grim picture of 2007's PC retail biz is still reverberating.

Lombardi blames the retail-heavy NPD report for the anxiety wave. "That totally ignores the money changing hands, and properties like World of Warcraft with their monthly subscriptions. That totally ignores Steam sales, and any other MMOs and online distribution systems and a host of others... it also ignores things like PopCap games. Peggle's not in that number."

He continues, "If you took Steam, Peggle, PopCap, WoW and mixed it with NPD numbers, the world looks a lot different. All of a sudden, it looks like PC's probably the biggest one, and year over year, the fastest-growing."

We were joined by Valve's business development director, Jason Holtman, who also notes that the infamous NPD story focuses only on North America. And, he notes, Steam distributes worldwide. "Our view of where PC gaming is across the world is very different than someone looking at North America's numbers," says Holtman.
Read more here:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17744

I want to say "In your face console fanboys!", but I'll leave this without comments.

I wont say much... but I will add one statement I have said before... when it comes the PC game market, only one has to worry... Gamestop.

I would have to agree that the PC's main source of sales for video games is downloadable. Heck, you can download WoW and the Burning Crusade and never have to go to a retail store - I wonder how many of those numbers are being recorded.

I would have to agree that the PC's main source of sales for video games is downloadable. Heck, you can download WoW and the Burning Crusade and never have to go to a retail store - I wonder how many of those numbers are being recorded.

OUtside blizzard? Good question.

But I would look more at Steam personally. WoW is an MMO, so people can blow it off as "well you are paying to play online anyway, why not buy it there too?" You cant do that when you see a mass number of downloaded purchases of Doom 3, HalfLife 2, and whatever else people want to buy en-mass....

I had problems with my Warcraft III CD lately so I downloaded it from a torrent, installed it and entered my original CD Key instead of using the crack in it. You can't do that with a PS3 or a 360 game.

You don't have do input CD keys on console games in the first place.

Setting up a PC game is much harder then a console game.

Setting up a PC game is much harder then a console game.

You put the disk in and put a 20 (or so) digit code in then leave it for 5-10 minutes. How is that complicated?

The PC gaming market is easily on the same level as the console market if the Steam sales + All the many many digital download services.

- Hi mate.
- Hi.
- Want to play Halo 3 with me?
- I can't :( My DVD is scratched!
- You could download it from your PC and enter your original CD Key, but you can't do it, because setting up a console game is very easy.
- (Cry, cry)

You put the disk in and put a 20 (or so) digit code in then leave it for 5-10 minutes. How is that complicated?

I'm guessing you don't PC game.

There's driver issues, sometimes the CD Keys are faulty, instal times can easily take the better part of an hour, takes ages to download patches.

PC gaming is still better, but it's a royal bitch to set up.

- Hi mate.
- Hi.
- Want to play Halo 3 with me?
- I can't :( My DVD is scratched!
- You could download it from your PC and enter your original CD Key, but you can't do it, because setting up a console game is very easy.
- (Cry, cry)

That's true, I did that with my Halo PC.

I'm guessing you don't PC game.

There's driver issues, sometimes the CD Keys are faulty, instal times can easily take the better part of an hour, takes ages to download patches.


Well thats where your wrong, As I do quite a lot of PC gaming..

What games have you played which have taken a hour to install?
Im yet to meet a game which has took longer than 20 minutes.

Company of Heroes Gold Edition.

And that;s not even counting the patches.

I'm guessing you don't PC game.

There's driver issues, sometimes the CD Keys are faulty, instal times can easily take the better part of an hour, takes ages to download patches.

PC gaming is still better, but it's a royal bitch to set up.

I have yet to get a bad CD-key, tbh. Ive had bad discs many times, but never the CD key. And since we've left the days of DOS behind, even MINOR setup issues are usually behind me. Occasionally you get a game horrendously written (Im looking at you TimeSHift), but for the most part, Ive found my experience VERY easy.

Hell worst I had so far was playing the OLD Unreal 1.... I had to put it on Win98 compatibility mode so it wouldnt skip around (doesnt like Dual-core much)... and Gears TELLS me it's going to crash one day if I dont upgrade my CPU driver... but Im not sure I buy it... and if so, it just tells me how terrible Games for Windows LIVE is (THAT you are right, is a bitch).

I've only had one bad CD Key too be fair.

But it was a bitch.

Customer service was terrible about it too.

Battlefield 2 had a load of CD key related installing problems for me too.

Company of Heroes Gold Edition.

And that;s not even counting the patches.

Didn't take that long..
It was the same time for both games as it was for Crysis..

I think its just your luck with CD Keys and games buddy. :p

It took atleast half an hour.

Crysis I wouln't know.

And yeah, the PC gaming god hates me.

- Hi mate.
- Hi.
- Want to play Halo 3 with me?
- I can't :( My DVD is scratched!
- You could download it from your PC and enter your original CD Key, but you can't do it, because setting up a console game is very easy.
- (Cry, cry)

thats because the xbox 360 scratched it for him! My mate sneezed and his foot tapped his xbox and GH 3 was ruined because of it, ruined from a tap with his foot. He couldn't play half the songs because the 360 had scratched it to buggery.

So other console users, such as wii and ps3 should never have that problem, and if they do, its because they don't care for their cd's and shouldn't be allowed to go anywhere near a game if they do not care for their hobby.

Also yes putting a cd in and game starting is easier than, putting cd in, writing in a cd key, installing, then playing, updating, playing... :D but im a pc gamer too, so it doesn't really bother me either way! Love my pc LAN parties, and finally we have enough people getting into AOM to have it at our next one, yay! :P

I really dont see the difficulty of a CD key.... or installing... especially with Windows basically telling you how you probably should do it.

I mean, how many of you dont just hit "next" or "continue" 5 times and then let it do it's thing?

thats because the xbox 360 scratched it for him! My mate sneezed and his foot tapped his xbox and GH 3 was ruined because of it, ruined from a tap with his foot. He couldn't play half the songs because the 360 had scratched it to buggery.

So other console users, such as wii and ps3 should never have that problem, and if they do, its because they don't care for their cd's and shouldn't be allowed to go anywhere near a game if they do not care for their hobby.
P

I wish you would stop your silly fanboyism.. God its getting annoying now..

I really dont see the difficulty of a CD key.... or installing... especially with Windows basically telling you how you probably should do it.

I mean, how many of you dont just hit "next" or "continue" 5 times and then let it do it's thing?

Exactly.. Its not exactly hard, You just keep hitting next until it tells you to put the CD key in, then you just click next again and it installs.
Thats not exactly difficult.

CD key isn't a problem, as long as it works, which it doesn't for me a lot.

PC gaming is just a lot more complicated.

Everysingle Valve game for instance, crashes on my atleast once a game, for not apperent reason.

Doesn't happen onto any of my console games.

Still this proves how much better Pc gaming is, even with all it;s problems, I still prefer it to console gaming for online games.

Everysingle Valve game for instance, crashes on my atleast once a game, for not apperent reason.

DO you have a 3.5 disk drive or a CD burner?

If so, download this (http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp) or another RAM tester you can burn/make a disk of and test your RAM. (Extended tests... it will take a while, but it is pretty solid)

It was when portal crashed on me that I did the same... and found I needed one of my gig sticks replaced. (And its one hell of a cheap fix if this finds a problem.... alot better then dealing with said crashes)

Well it doesnt really crash, teh game freezes, it stutters the same sound that was goina and the picute freezes, so I have Alt Tab out, which takes a couple minutes, and the alt tab back in, which takes another couple minutes.

It's not a huge problems, since in single player games teh whole game freezes, but in multiplayer it mean I'm stuck in the middle the playing field for 10 minutes easy to kill.

It only happens on teh Valve games.

So should Is till try what you said?

Well it doesnt really crash, teh game freezes, it stutters the same sound that was goina and the picute freezes, so I have Alt Tab out, which takes a couple minutes, and the alt tab back in, which takes another couple minutes.

It's not a huge problems, since in single player games teh whole game freezes, but in multiplayer it mean I'm stuck in the middle the playing field for 10 minutes easy to kill.

It only happens on teh Valve games.

So should Is till try what you said?

Cant hurt.... just run it overnight or something... when the system would normally be off or idle. If it finds something, you probably just found something very cheap to fix and never have an issue again. If it doesnt, you didnt even lose any real gaming time since you were asleep.

I'll try it.

Still, proves my point, on a console you wouldn't have to worry about stuff like this.

I'll try it.

Still, proves my point, on a console you wouldn't have to worry about stuff like this.

No... if a component went bad, you would lose the whole system. Personally, I like it this modular... I CAN take care of it myself and appreciate that aspect.

I game on the same PC for years now,and never had an expensive or complicated problem with it. cant say the same about most XBOXs.

No... if a component went bad, you would lose the whole system. Personally, I like it this modular... I CAN take care of it myself and appreciate that aspect.

But it only affects games from one company.

It's because Computers are so different that shit like this happens.

In all my years of console gaming, something like this has never happened, while on the PC, I've had tons of compatability problems.

I don't know why I still love it though.

I'm like the wife that always get beat the **** up, but keeps coming back because I love him, him being PC gaming.

But it only affects games from one company.

This is why Im saying it cant hurt. Usually a RAM issue will effect everything... but a freeze outright like that is usually an issue with the game itself... Im just giving you something to play it safe.

Actually, the idea of it just being the game makes ALOT of sense since if you look at the file structure of ANYTHING source (pretty much all Valve makes now), they are all basically mods of Half-life 2. Literally, to play Portal, Steam had to download the core of Half-life 2 with some extra data for Portal and a modified exe file (it even was HL2.exe, I looked).