When was the last time id released a game? I dont think people care much what they do.

I wouldn't say it's a sad day for id, they're just realizing that the console market's much more vast, I support id and I've been playing Doom since it was shareware.

@Rez23: sound's like someone's bitter :p

I mentioned this to a buddy about a year and a half ago and he completely brushed it off like yeah right the pc market will never be second to the consoles. How wrong he was. Just the fact that you have to upgrade every year/other year is a turn off to people that spend good money on something they feel is the beeznees.

@SkutSkut: No, you're just getting around to hearing about it ;) When they announced id-tech5, it showed they've been thinking about it for a while. In fact, they've been dabbling in different platforms for a while now.

You also have to consider that as broadband becomes ubiquitous, PC game piracy actually becomes easier than going to a brick & mortar store to purchase a game.

I completely agree. Even though PC's can run games at higher specs, the constant upgrading and tinkering with settings brought me to call it quits. I think another thing they should mention is how most kids who grew up playing PC games, a lot of them have families now, which means less money and more likely to go console instead of PC.

The last thing I read about Mr. Carmack he was expressing great interest in cell phones as a platform. Granted, that was a few years ago...did nothing ever come of that?

id Know Where The Money's To Be Made?

Who Know How To Correct When The Title's Broken?

I moved over to consoles as the experience was less hassle and the graphics (on the ps3 at least) were better than my pc could manage without a serious upgrade. Also, had a few experiences were games didnt run on the pc that should have due to driver conflicts.

Thing is, im sure ive been through this cycle before. I will go through it again whenever i get a new PC. At that point i will be extolling the virtues of cheaper games, better graphics and better fpses over the middle aged consoles.I will alternate between these two postions for the rest of my days.

*rocks in chair, smokes pipe, looks out at prarie.

The less support the PC is given, the more people use it less for gaming. The more people jump ship... well, it's a vicious cycle.

Ex-PC gamer myself. Upgrading and trying to keep up with the latest hardware every 2 years was just a straight up pain in the ass. You know what im talking about when you're glad that a games released on consoles are 100% compatible. There's no need to worry about specs or video settings.

The PC market itself needs to pull a Nintendo and slow itself down. Nobody's interested in investing so much money in tech thats only going to last a few years.

@Zegridathes: He released two pretty good phone games: Doom RPG as well as Orcs & Elves.

wasted effort on Doom 3 (wake up ID)

Meh....I've never been an id fan anyway. (Or an Epic one)

Unfortunately, id began ignoring market realities long, long ago - just after Quakeworld lost their support. You see, John, gamers like games that are _fun_.

@Rubix42:
Same reason I quit playing on the PC.

The reason that I stopped gaming on my PC is because I couldn't afford the time or money, plain and simple. I have had an Xbox 360 since launch and will have it until the next generation, and it will end up saving me a good amount of money and time because I don't have to worry about graphics card upgrades, reboots, controller configuration, memory upgrades, minimum specifications and all of the rest of the crap that makes PC gaming a freaking chore.

As long as they make good shit, I don't care.

Unfortunately...they don't really make much good shit anymore...just shit.

Another ex PC gamer here. It's just not worth it. The moment I got a job and my free time was limited I kind of lost the desire to spend any installing, patching, upgrading and so on. Console gaming gives me more time to actually play.

It's worked out OK - my laptop still runs Starcraft just fine and the consoles have everything else :)

Well i just wish id would tell us a little more about they're new game. it kind of looked like Mad Max or something. what was it called again? as for the whole Consoles vs PC's i just say shut up and play the damn game!

Confirmed: Vista Kills PC Gaming.

I don't think he's saying they're done with PC gaming, just that the focus is going to be on consoles. Is anyone really surprised by this?

I feel bad about how poorly Quake Wars sold. It really was a good game that got overlooked by being released in the holiday rush and bad word of mouth from the Beta. It really is a good game, just not many players :(

Yeah, it's a hard fact of life. I have plenty of other shit to do with my PC anyway.

Id just dont make something lke Doom 3 again and Ill buy another one of your guys games.

@Kyle81: I really WANTED QW but my PC at the time just could not handle it. So I only could envy all the awesome footage that I could find on the net. D:::

@EgoMonk: nothing on the post or the linked article mentions less PC support.

@Lateralus63: games released on consoles are not 100% compatible. blockbuster titles, thanks to rushed releases and porting hiccups, are more commonly getting to gamers plagued with bugs, glitches, and even poor/slow performance.

though id will be paying more attention to other devices for their game releases i doubt TOO MANY gamers outside the pc folks will care. also, the problems of consoles are mounting and will eventually number those of the PC. we are seeing every so often the high profile release with required install or the need of a patch to fix severe brokenness. oh yeah, the constant price of upgrading every too years? thats the same excuse we hear alot, granted it's mostly true but some people enjoy doing that more than buying a slogg of accessories and HDTV, i have never seen prices not even out in the end between the two.

I still perfer pc games over console games. However I really dislike the OS I'm forced to use to play PC games. So now I buy less PC games. (Linux user for 10 years)

Honestly, I'd rather use my hard drive space for apps that can only be found on PCs. Why install Crysis onto my hard drive when there are comparable games on the PS3? You can't install photoshop, Avid, etc. on a game console (at least not yet).

Computers = creative/work apps.

Consoles = games.

You don't have to upgrade every year. The mainstream PC games market might be driven by hardware (mostly GCards) manufactureurs, but there's a lot of games out there that can still play on older hardware. The most successful PC games (in terms of revenue) being WoW and The Sims (series), these games don't ask you to upgrade your PC for the next instalment.

When games are being made as a harware showcase, they should know that they only target a limited number of PC gamers. If you take the hardware statistics on the steam pages, you'll see the number of users that have top of the notch PCs vs the number of users that have older graphics cards. The question is... who are you targeting, and what percentage of these users do you expect to reach with your product? There's an interesting view by Stardock's Brad Wardell on the whole non-issue. It's not that PC gaming is failing, it's more some editors are missing the point by proposing games that make you buy new hardware to enjoy it.

As long as they still develop for PC, I'll be happy.

I have never played a game on a PC for longer than 1 hour, I just don't like playing games at a desk. I grew up gaming on a tv with friends, I just can't do it any other way. I love how PC gamers were the first to game online together, but now that Microsoft incorporated that experience with a console, me & my gaming friends will never be on a PC.

Can't wait for the next id project..

@Witzbold: Quake Wars is great, many were turned off because it was so complex. The game has alot to it compared to most of the games of its kind and really its not user friendly. Sad that it took a recent patch for them to introduce help hints and such for noobs to get guides on how to play the game.

Too many grab the game and think its battlefield when it plays nothing like those games, its very objective/mission based.

@Fonzy: That would be Rage, my good chump.

It was over after Quake 4 launched. What a turd. Doom III was nice though but it didn't have the impact it should have had because of Serious Sam. Personally, I just got sick of the hassles of installing, patching, updating, upgrading for games every 6th month. Consoles is strictly a plug and play affair...or at least it was until this generation. It's still not as bad as the PC though.

Giving credit where credit is due, Id should have released a true sequel to Quake 3:Arena which is still one of the greatest twitch FPS games every made. It's one of the only FPS games that can even be mentioned in the same sentence as UT2k4. It's a shame really. Id just isn't the company it used to be. I do have to say though, if Quake Wars comes to PS3 with m/kb support and a robust online component then I'd spend money on that. Go nicely with my UTIII.

@Lateralus63: That's a huge problem. PC Technology is advancing at breakneck speeds. I bought a nice new $1200 computer only 3 or 4 months ago, and I'm already becoming concerned it may not run some games coming out this year as well as I'd like it to. Meanwhile, games coming out for my Wii I got last summer just keep looking better and better.

The industry needs to realize that they don't have to be top of the line to be good. Granted, lots of developers are starting to do this already, but there's a negative image (that may not necessarily be true) being built up around PC gaming that you need to spend a few thousand bucks every couple years just to keep up. Compare this to the price of a console every few years, and they're a great deal, especially considering their other uses.

I really, really don't want to see PC Gaming die. It's been a hobby of mine since I was very little. But there needs to be a few key turnarounds to help revitalize it.

PC is facing a lot of problems right now.

a) Piracy. Not as big a deal as people would like to make it out to be, in most cases, as Sins of a Solar Empire demonstrated. People won't pirate games if they don't have a reason to-- or if they have a reason not to. Good games that are supported by the developer long after release will be purchases; developers have just gotten used to consoles where this type of long-term support is not expected, so now they don't feel like providing it.

b) Windows Vista- the OS that was pimped as excellent for gaming, and undoubtedly tricked a lot of gamers into buying it. Now it causes nothing but lower performance, BSODs, crashes, bad driver support-- all of the crap that makes PC gaming frustrating if you don't know what you're doing. The DX10 shenanigans made things needlessly more complicated as well.

c) Ridiculous system requirements- not every PC gamer runs top of the line. If you made a game that could run all the way back to Intel integrated graphics, it would have the potential for the largest installed base in existence. Of course, that isn't possible. But developers can try harder to get their games to scale backwards to older videocards, processors, etc. Many don't even bother-- and then wonder why their game only got purchased by a percentage of people who own Geforce 8 graphics cards.

d) Evil companies charging more than it is worth- if you build yourself your own gaming PC, a mid-range one should cost the same as a ps3 did at launch, and will last you through a console generation. But if Alienware does it for you, it will cost a few grand, and brick-and-mortar stores can be almost as bad. Prices need to come down so the installed base can increase-- but unlike consoles, PC-makers have no reason to sell at a loss or make less profit in order to sell games, since they don't get a cut of the profit.

e) Developers forgetting what system they are developing for- we've all heard people complain about consolization. What's sad is consolization isn't the BIG things-- usually gameplay is fine, graphics are fine... it's the little things. We want to be able to tweak all of our graphical settings, perhaps adjust our FOV, scale our HUD/crosshairs, have a functioning way to adjust our frigging mouse sensitivity. When games get ported to PC, they often leave out basic PC features, and this frustrates a lot of users.

But PC gaming isn't going to die. Sony and Microsoft both have it in their best interests to make this generation last as long as they can. As this generation nears a close, a gaming PC many times more powerful than either console will cost around the same price. It happens every console generation.

What can be learned from this generation, however, is basically that developers need to stop skimping on basic PC-features, ensure that their game runs on as wide a range of PCs as possible, and, perhaps, find some form of copy-protection that doesn't infuriate more people than it sells copies. Then it will sell fine, regardless of PC gaming going through a recession =)

"We love PC gaming and we will continue to support PC gaming"

Why the hell would this make me mad?... And Plunkett could you atleast try to be profesional? Your fanboism shines through like gamma rays.

@Kyle81: Ya thats what I heard from folks who have the game. Sounded real good, since I miss proper team based games. Granted now that TF2 is out its helps a bit but yeah always wanted to play QW once again.

Even with my PC slightly fixed I still dont think it will run at a level that I would be able to enjoy playing at. :x

@Harmatia:
" We want to be able to tweak all of our graphical settings, perhaps adjust our FOV, scale our HUD/crosshairs" This is one of the things that annoyed me about PC games.

Maybe its just my personality, but after configuring my windows system to run the game optimally, dealing with sound conflicts etc - configuring the games own options seemd like another chore. I think i'm maybe a bit obsessive, but playing for twenty minutes just to test out and constantly change draw distance, AA, resonlution, shadows etc was just plain hard work. Then i'd always be playing games with the thought "maybe if i tweaked the detail level a bit i could get this to look better" in the back of my mind.

I welcome the lack of configurability of the console. Back when i could be bothered, the logic mini-games of configuration were a pleasant challenge. Now, i just want to play the game and not think about how i could be polishing my experience further and further towards "perfection"

And when was the last time Id released a good game?

@Xshinobi: 1994

@uninterested gamer: Didn't id show a fly-through demo at the last E3 (maybe ut was 2 years ago) of a canyon area with some canyon dwellings.. was that Rage? What the F am I thinking of?

@Rez23: ID makes game engines. Doom 3 was a tech demo dressed up as a game. I'd reckon they make as much or more from the engines as they do the games. They are one of the premier engine makers (the other one being Epic). They do all the technical tinkering so some company like 2k can spend more time tinkering the gameplay vs tinkering the game.

@GMC: I know your pain.

I've got Crysis running on my new computer. It plays pretty well, too. But as soon as I enabled the framerate display, I kept wondering "So, what do I need to do different to get that number higher?" instead of realizing that even at relatively low framerates it still plays extraordinarily well.

I want some options. I want to be able to change some graphics up and tweak it a bit to make it run better. I DONT want so much that I wonder what I could cut back on without missing so that the game will run at optimum performance.

Slow news day, eh? Not even hard to detect the fanboyism in this post.

PC Gaming died for me a long time ago... I just didn't realize it. Sadly I bought a new gaming PC right before I came to this ephiphany.

I still enjoy a few select games on the PC, but mostly my 360 has made me a console convert. Once my PC reaches the point where upgrade is required (which won't be too far off, I'm still on DX9 cards), It'll just be a really bitchin' office PC methinks.

At least I'm relatively sure it'll be powerful enough to enjoy StarCraft II.

Personally, I think one of the major reasons for game developers to go to consoles is piracy these days. Yes, it's possible to pirate games on consoles, but the bar is that much higher for normal folks, so you'll probably end up selling more on the console then you will on PC. Since a console is a (mostly) unified platform as well, this will allow you to spend less time troubleshooting various platforms and more time on actual game development.

@GMC: I think game makers should get on the ball and have a "Unified profile system" or something like that. Most folks like their layout a certain way, so why not have game A save the layout in My Documents/Game Configs/3DShooter.cfg, and then Game B will automatically find it and load it for you after you install it?

Also, automated patching and graphics configuration should be required on all computer games these days, IMHO. Sure, let folks pick "Better performance" or "Better graphics" as preferences before configuring the graphics system, but give folks a good baseline and let them get to playing the game.

@Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.: Quake 4 was more Raven then ID, wasn't it?

Do I need to link the Brad Wardell article again?

That's my only response to things like this.

It's not that consoles is where everyone moved to, it's that game companies lack common sense. They need to concentrate less on making the fanciest game, and more on making good games that make a profit.

If most people don't have high-spec comps, why make games for high-spec comps? Make them for mid-speced comps- like Sins did.

In 2 years PC gaming will be coming back, and we'll be having this argument about consoles.

@Harmatia:
a) it can be a significant issues. You need the capital to build a "battlenet" like infrastructure to encourage people to get the real version. Because most of your potential audience is high on technical skill, low on cash, and hooked up to pirate bay. So you really need to value add to get people to buy. For consoles it's less of an issue because modding your machine is a pain in the ass and deters many pirates but downloading bit torrent is easy.
b) I agree it made all of the wrost aspects of PC gaming even worse.
c) Blame microsoft. Consoles have inherent advantages that offset the tech disparity between consoles and PCS. The huge memory band width compared to standard PC architectures and various other advantages consoles have make it harder to port a game as the mind set needs to change. Most lazy developers just raise the requirements instead of optimizing. Mostly because any optimizations could be wasted as the PC guys will buy a new comp/video card anyways.
d) This ain't alienwares/mom and pops/dells problem. A console uses strip down parts with a single purpose in mind. The PPC cores in the PS3 and 360 don't even hold a candle to the Core 2 duo or even PowerPC 970(G5's CPU) or P4 for general purpose computing but they do very specific things very fast. Many OS's deal with constant context switching between 3-10 different programs and the OS. Neither the Cell nor the Xenon could run full speed given such an environment. You're over paying but not because you are being massively ripped off, you are just buying flexibility you may or may not need. Some people do need it (at work my core 2 quad switches between 5-14 memory intensive and performance hungry apps and I'm just a web developer).
d) Compare successful PC games to successful console games. Aside from blizzard a "successful" PC game like supreme commander sold 700k copies. A mediocre brawler for a 3rd place console with a really small install base sold 840k (heavenly sword). So when a PC success is equal to a mediocre console titles sales then it's time to put up the white flag and join the rest of the industry (note how SC is going to the 360). The only ones you can count on to stay PC is blizzard as they moves console numbers on the PC due to their polish and value added service for legit copies. Instead of draconian DRM they just add lots of can't live without online features. But they are an exception.

@Mr Elusive: Someday, someone will teach you the difference between a newssite and a blog.

@Unknown-User:
the framerate counter - death knell to fun! I too foolishly enabled this on games. It's like constantly thinking "should i use a fountain pen or a biro, is this paper creamy enough" while playing tic tac toe. It completely takes you out of the experience. I like the fact that console games take care of the obsessiveness for me. Plus, i may be tootling along with one bunch of settings, unaware that a massive open environment is about to take a dump on my plans, forcing me to rethink my carefully balanced customizations. Game designers should have weighed all of this ahead of time on console games.

@NateN: that idea is a step towards a hybrid Mac/Console world. This may be a very good idea, but on an open platform, hardware has to compete on function and it wouldnt be long before a "high settings" profile was swiftly superceded by NVIDIA coming out with a card that could do "very high settings", then ATI coming out with a card that could do "very high settings" at the same time as "pretty fast settings 2.0". That 11 isn't going to crank itself. We'd be back to square one in a matter of months.

Darwinia is probably the most graphically advanced game I play on my computer. I don't really use it for gaming, for the reasons posted by many other people. Consoles are just easier. Under $600 for a system that blows me away on my enormous TV is worlds better than throwing thousands into a PC that can't keep up with developers. With consoles, you have much more money to spend on the games.

While I've