I'm thinking it will, or close to it anyway. After reading this forum, i see there are very few real pc gamers left, so whats the point. Reading here and other forums, It looks like entitlement console generation has fully taken over. I know if I was a game developer and read this type of stuff, i wouldn't waste my time anymore. I'd do stupid and simple little console games, and call it a day. Hell, that's where the money is anyway. So thanks guys, it's been a fun ride. Guess I'm getting a playstation soon. I have built my last gaming computer and I'm not wasting my time anymore. What's the point. All we get is console ports anyway, and when someone finally steps up to make a real pc game, no one going to buy it because it's not all they thought it should be. Good for them How quickly they have forgotten.

Virtual life. Don't talk to me about virtual life.

The resale bins are gone, the PC (rebranded "games for windows" and almost entirely ports with the occasional "casual") shelves are shrinking, this is the end my friends.

It is interesting - I stopped buying games before they stopped stocking them (after all, the days of wing commander, earth siege, Alpha Centauri, Lion and flight simulators lining store shelves were long gone).

However, BIstudios, IPL, Frictional and a few others will definitely keep releasing for PC - as will indie developers through places like Battlefront (eg. for the strategy games). For most purposes though - we are extinct or endangered, far from gamers and living lost in memories of the 90s...

Depression? Not really, just reality. I think we have seen the end of real pc gaming. Console ports all the way. Why waste money on hi end pc parts when the games are just console ports? And when we do see a real pc game coming out, this forum is typical of the kind of reaction it gets. I see a bunch of guys who have never played the game, and have not even seen it first hand, but already know it's a failure and will not meet the expectations they feel entitled to for the cost of a decent lunch.. Clairvoyance is a good thing, don;t you think?

A bit soon to start burying the body I think. The PC market has indeed changed but it's not dead. Three counter-points:

- Steam online service revenue reached $1 billion in 2010 alone. Bricks & mortar games shops are suffering though, but then they make a lot of money on the 2nd hand market that fits poorly with PC's - http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Steam-pc-gaming-digital-distribution-FADE-Call-of-Duty,12138.html

- StarCraft 2 - PC exclusive. 3 million sales in 3 months is the low estimate.

- World of Warcraft Cataclysm (an expansion pack!) - PC exclusive. Reached 5 million sales last week.

You could make an argument that economically the PC games market has never been better off than today. I do know that's not what you meant though, in that the sim niche is evolving differently. The new reality is that we have specialized titles with smaller audiences, i.e. specialization of markets (high detail, requiring things consoles can't do) and longer development cycles. The old days are gone where sims were equal partners in the video game store but they are settling down into something else - a niche market that might survive healthily in its own right.

PS Sorry about that image earlier, it was far bigger than I intended and not familiar enough with this board to resize it etc.

Also titles like Total War and Call of Duty have huge PC sales. The 90s WAS a golden age as this was before gaming took over from television as entertainment. It was also before people started making an absolute killing on certain titles (Myst is the first one I can remember everyone owning). When the huge profit margins started being realised was when you got the big Pac Men companies devouring the smaller ones. Which is what happened to EAW shortly after release. What a shame it wasn't modernised and developed further (officially). They really hit several nails on the head and the same team could produce something astounding with today's technology.

Clairvoyants make a living out of dispensing the placebo of false hope or prediction, but if they bring a degree of spiritual relief, why not indeed? Us? We will remain here for the foreseeable future.

FearlessFrog, you may well have a point. However, I still miss the day when PC was king. At that time side-scrollers, the rare rail-shooter & racing games were some of the only genres on consols (only later came FPS and true 3d action games). Twitch shooters took over alongside RTS and then the modern era of 3rd person gaming and consol ports took over.

When PC software was common the entire trajectory of game development was different. Games had manuals. Games required more than five keys to play. Games weren't focused only on fancy rendering techniques (with one minor modification to tired gameplay). The industry wasn't swarming with "generation of the thumb" Gen-Z gamers.

Just try picking up a copy of Thief I or Thief II or one of the other titles I listed and you'll see what engineering existed. Compare Xwing vs. TieFighter (or even Dark Forces) to any more recent Lucasarts releases...

Even try a good guess the parser text adventure (or one of the SCUMM engined games) and compare it to Oblivion/Fallout. Which do you get a deeper feeling from?

Oh, I too miss those days. One thing to considers though is that it isn't a zero-sum game, in that in terms of people who love complex/deep gaming is probably as big as it ever was. What's happened is that other areas have grown rather than PC's really shrinking. Kids used to watch a lot of TV, while now they console game or youtube - the 'interactive entertainment' genre (uggh) has grown along-side things like sims/strategies rather than replace them or take their numbers. I do concede a lot of economically driven developers have followed the cash, but then ultimately if that's what they wanted to do then flight sims was never a good area to get into anyway (i.e. cost of dev vs return, title length, details marketing etc). (shakes virtual fist at Janes/EA in frustration)

I could take all of the things I loved about dial-up MUDs, BBS's and arcade games (cabinets) and apply that here too, i.e. the personality of things tends to get commoditized out, which is a shame but reality.

Like I said earlier in the thread, it's not dead but just different. When I first went into games dev about 15 years ago, if you'd have told me that today regularly over 1 million people play concurrently in a tolkein-est online 3d world on their PC's, or that people compete professionally in custom-built RTS cafe tournaments then I would have called you mad. PC's won't be the most popular platforms but they will remain to be one of the most interesting ones and it's not so bleak. We get to see better graphics way before any 8th generation consoles dare appear, we get to online MP in ways that far surpass anything else and we still get the most detailed (and interesting) set of new software each year. We also get a bunch of generic shooters, but then it's easy not to buy them

I do know I'd never, ever produce a flight sim.

Child pornographers get fewer insults and far more respect than flight sim developers.

lol Dart

Prisoner 1: 'What you in for?'

Prisoner 2: 'flightsim, 10 to 15 2nd offence, including time-served on the beta'

Prisoner 1: 'You people make me sick...'

For once we see completely eye to eye.

That is the most disgusting defense that I've ever heard. Oleg is a grown man and takes the abuse like a man, don't diminish that. He is nobody's fool, and he knows very well the hand he is dealt. To compare him with an abused child is completely outrageous.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Why does nobody understand irony around here?

Ahem....ever hear of Rise of Flight? PC Only.

Jason