al_bundy

I was at a gamestop over the weekend and noticed that the PC game section isn't as big as it used to be. There are a lot more strategy guides on sale and console games are taking up more floor space. Made me think to how DVD's and CD's slowly crept and took up more and more floor space after they were released.

In the last few years I've also noticed that there are less and less PC game releases every year. So are PC games becoming an endangered species on the verge of extinction? It's a good thing that there is so much less junk PC games on the market, but it makes me think that maybe the future is going to be only on consoles.

dgmayor

Dunno about all Gamestops, but my local Gamestop is primarily console games only. Their other stores such as Planet X and obviously Software Etc. is where they primarily sell PC games.

TheMadMonk

A lot of places have switched to those smaller pc game boxes, which would take up less space.

But, IMHO, yes, PC gaming is slowly dying. I used to be mainly a Pc gamer, but now I'm mainly console. Nothing wrong with Pc, and I still prefer mouse + keyboard for FPS, but I got tired of the upgrading, patching, needing new video card junk that goes along with pcs.

Groucho

Don't worry, PC gaming isn't going anywhere. Yes, console gaming is more popular and as such will continue to have more shelf space.

The fact of the matter is that PC games give more bang for the buck. The average PC game is much longer than the average console game. Let's say two gamers have 40 hours this month for gaming. The PC gamer fills that quota nicely with one game. The console gamer might have to play 3 or 4 games to get the same amount of play.

Couple this with user mods. It has come to the point where a game will get poor marks if it doesn't come with a level editor. Downloadable mods give a game even more play. If you wanted, you could buy Neverwinter Nights today and play it every day for the rest of the year without replaying any module.

Naturally, the shorter the games the more the consumer ends up buying. It's not a judgement on my part...there's value to both styles of gameplay. But the very nature of console games means that there will more of them.

Another factor to consider is downloadable games. There are thousands of PC games that are not available to buy on the shelf, but can be downloaded off the internet. Freeware, shareware, etc. If you add these into the equation, PCs have a much larger software selection than all three consoles put together.

RichardW

The PC gaming section may not be big at Gamestop or EB, but it's certainly sizeable at the Best Buys I've been to.

Joshic

I used to be a PC-only gamer for the longest time. Heck, at one point I spent $3600 just to buy a fancy laptop to play games on. But then there came a time where money was tight, and I couldn't afford to buy a PC capable of running the newest games. So to satisfy my gaming needs, I turned to console gaming. And enjoyed it quite a bit. These days I can now once again afford to buy the latest and greatest PC.

Upgrading PC's is a lot cheaper these days than it used to be 10 years ago. A high end PC is like $2500, where it once was $4000-5000. But even $1000 is a lot. I used to think it was worth it, but not anymore.

Young Vito

Oxymoron

al_bundy

If I upgrade my PC this year it's going to cost me like $600 for new mobo, cpu, ram and scsi card. Next year I'll probably upgrade my Geforce 4600 that I bought last year. More than a console, but not too expensive. And you can always write the upgrade off as a tax deduction for school or building a computer to look for work.

RoQuEr

You said it better than I could have. I will be interested to see how the live consoles change this dynamic. If it is true that sport2003 will stop working online after sport 2004 comes out, then I'd be really pissed. Not every newer version is better. I prefer the online gameplay of counterstrike, even though I have more advanced games such as soldier of fortune 2.

On top of user mods (I remember buying a CD full with 7000 doom and doom 2 levels once), I find that I can buy an older pc game off the bargain bin and get hundreds of hours of gameplay out of it. Even more so if the game is online. I bought fallout 1 & 2 for $8, and played nothing but that for 3 months. Long after starcraft became boring, I played UMS games online, just for the sheer fun of seeing how people could adjust a RTS engine to do RPGs, board games, and more. That, and I just can't sit in front of a TV for extended times.....

khai

It's mostly Gamestop. They always had small PC game sections.

Last year was kind of slow for PC. This'll be the year PC smacks it down again. ATI vs Nvidia, and more new GPU's will join the war. Unreal II, Doom III, and Halo come out.

young

i'm sticking to the smaller boxes theory... the pc game section is still bigger than the ps2 section at my gamestop.

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as for bang for the buck, yes and no. some console rpgs are ridiculously long and probably comparable to pc rpgs like morrowind (well, i guess that's on both).

recently, i've been playing more console games b/c i don't have much free time anymore. so it's easier to turn that on than wait for xp to boot...

Mikey

Sometimes it certainly feels like EB World and Gamestop don't really care about PC gamers that much since they always stick their PC inventory in the back, often behind other shelves. However, I have noticed that since the boxes have shrunken in size, there appears to be more PC games in these chains than the console games. Best Buy has always had a good collection of PC games and they seem to have a far better collection of games than the console isle.