Kotaku 
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Denver, 8:20 AM
Wed Nov 25
53 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/19/08
Piracy... idiots.
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11/19/08
I have a Dell XPS 710. I use it for net surfing, video editing, media archival, and communication. Then I game on my consoles. It has about a dozen games on it, but I haven't launched any this season.
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11/19/08
Let's face it, ever since the razor-blade we know that it does not matter how well the hardware sells but how well the add ons sell. As companies can attest, the software sold is shrinking.
11/19/08
Also, you leave out digital distribution. Do you know how many games they sell on Steam and Direct2Drive and others for the PC? Neither does anyone else, so why assume the software sales are shrinking? Companies wouldn't shift to digital distribution at this rate if it caused them to "shrink" their software sales!
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11/19/08
Also, Steam could be selling Counterstrike Source a million times a week and we wouldn't know.
11/19/08
Lie.
"The study, which tracks the sales of three different classes of gaming PCs."
Oh wait. Maybe not. See, this is why we need hard numbers. What are they considering a gaming PC? Is it anything close to what we as gamers consider gaming PCs? And if so(and this might seem like a strange question) how many of those machines are being used to actually play games? My Aunt's PC is pretty banging actually, does she play anything on it? No. But they might very well consider her computer a game PC.
11/19/08
For example, my 6 year old Athlon 2000? I consider that a gaming rig because I still play a heckuva lot of games on it. I'm sure their study wouldnt factor that in, though
11/19/08
You are correct; your six year old Athalon 2000 would not be included since the study was conducted from 05 to 08.
11/19/08
Sorry I am an ex-PC Gamer. and even my still PC gaming friends are jealous about all the titles consoles gamers have.
Anyone believing PC Gaming is on the rise is stoned or stupid.
11/19/08
Oh, and calling people "stoned or stupid" usually indicates the pot is calling the kettle black.
11/19/08
What do you mean exclusives don't count? Exclusives are everything in context of what I said.
GAMES THAT MAKE MY PC GAMING BUDDIES JEALOUS.
Just in the last 6-8 months off the top of my head...
Fable II
GOW
MGS4
LBP
Saints Row 2
Now name some good games that would make me want to buy a good gaming rig (if i didn't have one already)
Spore?
So which is it? Are you stoned or stupid??
11/19/08
That's why it's rediculous to include exlusives, because the PC is not the only thing not getting that game, it's everybody but the console with that exlusive.
Saint's Row 2? [www.joystiq.com]
The rest are exlusives and,
Gears 1 is on the PC and you can bet 2 will be there too.
I have a PS3, so those games I have covered anyway.
Back to the pot calling the kettle black are we.
11/19/08
[kotaku.com]
[www.bit-tech.net]
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11/19/08
but yeah, more support for multiplatform releases would be massively appreciated.
11/19/08
You'd think this would prevent them from relegating their PC games to a dusty corner. It kind of almost makes you think the study was flawed?
...found that 196 million [gaming PCs] have been sold between then and Q3 2008, compared to a worldwide total of 74.7 million consoles.
Well sure, since you have to buy a new gaming PC every year to keep up, that period of time represents three buys per consumer. I'm only half kidding here. :)
11/19/08
Haha you had to buy a gaming PC ever year to keep up? Wow who sold you that line?
11/19/08
Also Amazon and Gamestop sell PC games just fine? I've bought quite a few PC games from both of them. Fallout 3 I just bought from Gamestop and they had an entire wall more of PC games there, and I've bought countless PCs games from Amazon. So...I don't know where you get the idea that they stuff them in some dusty old corner or something.
I don't know about Target or Walmart, because I don't go there, but I'd assume they do as well.
11/19/08
To begin with, I was making a half joke about the effort it takes to keep up with PC gaming. It's not something a lot people care to do. I know you don't need a new rig every year, but the technology changes extremely fast.
You can't honestly tell me that a significant number of PC gamers didn't buy a new rig more than once between 05 and 08.
And I never said you couldn't buy PC games from Amazon, Gamestop, or other B&Ms. What I was saying is they don't get the prime spaces. Gamestop varies store to store, of course, but in the many I've been to in my metro area, only a couple even carry PC games and they are on a small rack in the back of the store.
Regarding Amazon, clear your cache and recently viewed items and log out. Then go the video games page. What do you see? All consoles, save for the new World of Warcraft expansion.
All I'm saying is that if PC games were selling as well as this article indicates, these major retailers would handle them completely differently.
11/19/08
I bet they counted my 112.
11/19/08
I've no doubt that there's a huge market for PC gaming, and I've no doubt that MMOs are a big part of that, but revenue generated by the machines themselves tells us less than actual numbers of machines...
From a software sales perspective, 10 PC owners spending £20,000 on their combined rigs is surely less enticing than 80 people buying PS3s for the same combined price.
11/19/08
Haha what? 8 PS3s? That's a bit overstating. 8 PS3s would count to about (if you bought the 80 GB new priced ones), 3200. My gaming PC I built about 2-3 years ago and still plays every new PC game at max graphics and no slow down (well except Crysis, but who can), cost about 1100 dollars. And that was to build it from SCRATCH. My last PC before that was about 600 dollars (the same price as what the PS3 marketed it as first), and ran PC games at max quality for years fine.
If I want to update it, it'll do better than PS3 graphics (because PC game technology scales rather than jumps from generation to generation), and it'll only cost probably half the price of a new console.
11/19/08
Likewise, I could have gone for a more expensive model PC...
For a specialist gaming PC, £2000 is not THAT extreme a price... so just roll with my hypothesis!
I also mentioned you could get a 360 for cheaper, so even with your lower point of entry priced PCs, my argument still holds some water...
its worth noting that PC equipment in the UK is significantly more expensive than the USA, and building a rig from scratch is more often than not cheaper than buying an inflated priced desktop off the shelf.
so yeah, in most cases you're still looking at PCs being more expensive than consoles, thus generating a larger combined income (which was more my point than "hey, look what you could be getting for your money!"), and why I said that actual sales numbers rather than financial figures would be a far more meaningful statistic...
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11/19/08
The remaining time until the next console gets released: "OMG, pc gaming > you!"
I can't believe how few people have caught on to this obvious cycle.
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