I never understood these arguments and complaints. The PC isn't neglected, it's not dying, it's not going the way of the dodo bird, if anything it's stronger today then it has been in the past ten years, and it's because the video game industry as a whole has recently burst out of it's shell and gone completly mainstream. More money, more devs, more competition,and more game as we have seen over the years.
Consoles are always going to be the top dog though, they are more accesiable to the general public, much more cost effective to the common gamer, eaiser to setup, maintain and use, and eaiser to play. Yes, almost everyone has a PC at home, but a vast majoirty of them are PC illiterate. They know how to conntect to the internet and surf the web, use a few programs, and thats about it.
As for all these game site, this new "award show" on Spike I guess, and everything else that is there to make cash, will do what it needs to do to make cash. Like someone above me has said, it isn't really the ratings they are looking for, it's the cash payouts they get for showcasing these companies platforms and games. There is no owner to the PC, no company controls is completly, can make an argument for Dell I guess but why bother. No one is showering these people with cash to get the PC some solo air time, so why would they. And for the developers, showcase your products to the mass market, more then likely they have a PC version around sure but as I said mass market. That's not the PC, thats the 360 and PS3, thats the Wii and PSP. Shows and review sites are kept alive for the almighty dollar so they're going to consume as much as they can.
For exclusives, they really don't exsist anymore in gaming. There are actually far more PC exclusives then there are console exclusives in this day and age. It's bad business sense really and with the exception of a few genres which CAN'T be done on certain platforms without over complicating things I don't undersatnd why it's done at all, why restrict yourself to one market when you can expand to three, four, five different, strong markets. Now I don't condone cheap, shoddy ports weather its from a console to the PC or vise versa. But in reality we can just as many games as the consoles and alot of times even more.
And now for the quality of games. I've been a gamer for a while now, but am I the only one who really remembers all the crappy and poorly built games that came out back in the day, sure there were some real gems back then but for every gem that came out we had about fifty rocks. For every Baulders gate you got about a dozen Superman 64s. As the games themselves becoming less unqiue and ingenieus, I don't think so. I think the creative well really is starting to dry up, not because developers and writers are getting lazy but because of money, technology, money, money, and risk. We can do some much more with games now then we could ten years ago but fiscally we can really only do so little. And even then in the last few years we have had a great amount of truly unique games come out. The STALKER series, Mount and Blade, WoW, Sins of a Solar Empire, SPORE and these are just the ones that jump at me right away.
Could go one forever, but I'm tired of typing and you're tired of reading. Honestly I don't think the status of PC gaming has changed at all in the past 10-15 years, if anything it's gotten bigger and stronger then it was back then. It's the consoles which have changed largely. They have just spiked up through the roof in recent years and in terms of business and profit have blown past the PC. But at the end of the day, I still believe PC is king. We were the first major player and I think we will die last. Look at WoW, 11.5 million subscribers. Look at The Sims the best selling video game franchise ever. Look at the CoD series, a game put on all platforms for doing it's best on the PC. Millions and millions of people purchase and play just these three titles. So tell me, why are we dying again? Exactly how are we being neglected. If developers truly believed we were a niche market, if publishers really felt selling PC games didn't bring enough return. Then why are we all still here?
I say this and will always strongly support that the PC platform has by far the largest potential in regards to Social Networking, Graphics, Audio, Community ect. I noticed daily PC gamers admires sophistication in videogaming examples Deus EX, Starcraft, System Shock, Half Life and the list goes on. From observation it appears that the PC platform is indeed shifting but too only greater matter imo where you see the Gamer makes the platform. One of the key services that's involve in this shift is the Steam service which is the epitome among PC gaming where not just the developers has involvement but the Gamer whom evokes communites, mods and user created content. However are we really missing out on what's available on the other platforms? This is just preference but lets just involve the one system that really ran with a PC architecture model and desirement Microsoft's Xbox platform. According to Metacritic 11 out of 20 All-Time High Score Xbox 360 titles are available on PC platform and I'll name a few Gta IV, Bioshock, Orange Box, Gears of War and Elders Scroll Oblivion. It appears many publishers/developers are angry that many of their games simply just can't penetrate our platform EA, Ubisoft, Epic Games so instead ther'es really little talk about our Platform in the media other then PC gaming piracy. Gaming as a whole imo has really disgusted me quite a bit over the years with the industry adopting pop cultural as the forefront of Gaming and if that's where the other platforms are heading then I say this good riddance. Feel free to comment...
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