Consoles and PC's have been fighting over the game real estate since the beginning of console gaming. PC's still have games, and they are still quite abundant, if anything, way more than 20 years ago. The demand for console gaming is much larger, but PC is far from "legacy". It is the flagship of gaming...
As soon as I hop on my PS3, I cringe at the crappyness of the graphics...
How about development of hardware? Look at all the hardware available out there. 15 years ago, there was a Voodoo 3 vs a TNT Riva 2. Now, there are a full series of cards for every price point, an entire industry around power supplies, a couple dozen models of ram...
Of course Intel will discard the GPU race.
What can be said for sure, the huge systems in the past 10 years increased in size and PSUs more and more. Now we indeed created endless amount of parts (of which many of those got same basic ingridients, but another brand), unfortunately the usual user doesnt need it anymore, and the PC gamers are getting shorter than ever before. Finally we will soon have a change in market behaviour, we are already inside.
Intel doesnt focus on creating a desktop GPU, to much competition already, they are trying to implement the stuff into the CPU for Notbooks and will aswell focus on Smartphones and such.
15 years ago, we kinda was at the stone age of consumer PCs for gaming. It took at least 10 year of development to barely create a mature environment. PCs was way to expensive at those point and every few years the stuff was just to weak to barely tackle a new game. So i needed new PC every few years. Ofc i didnt have the money because i was a
Teeny (without rich parents) and then i simply had a very weak PC (which was a present from someone who wanted to upgrade) and was barely able to play online with others because i had like 2-3 FPS and then i was to shy to tell that my *censored* PC just was a weak junk container... new PC was totaly unaffordable, but i was able to afford a console... and thats where the console gaming started, kinda. I had lot of fun on console (and a very old TV)... for maybe 200$ (i was saving up cash for like a year to get that one) because i got me a old used console... more affordable. Those days, even the Windows OS was more expensive than that... seriously. Not everyone is rich on this world and console is cheaper if you are only getting a few games and the game will work for the next 10 years... no upgrade needed. Nowdays i simply got enough of being poor and thats why i act like rich... I just want to see the other side of the cookie. 15 years ago, a PC was considered for rich people and a OS was like the most expensive part of the PC. Everytime i got me a game (usualy a bargain, wasnt able to pay full price), i had to check out the minimum spec... and then i saw that this games minimum spec is possible on my PC. However, that doesnt mean that it will run well, some stuff was nearly unplayable.
The price for sufficient computer hardware surely did decrease a lot and finally more and more people was able to afford it, its not anymore for rich people only. But we finally are entering a new era, in which we have very small devices to be very powerful and for most casual users totaly sufficient. And even if we got the best infrastructure ever, we kinda have loss in market share for desktop PC, because simply.. we are finally at the timeline where desktop hardware isnt anymore the real limitation, its rather the ineffective and bad coding.
The crappyness of the PS3 graphic is mostly a TV issue. On a new Panasonic Plasma, i am surprised about the potency of only "720P", the TV or monitor does matter a lot. Ofc the PC is much better (1080P at max graphic is like goddess) but that hardware is several times the price and the support for those games is sadly soon very low (cheap ports is becoming very popular). An example of a game i cant play without PC is "Civ 5", that one just rules on PC, but usualy i only got a bunch
because im annoyed at the endless DRM methods, its close to cracking down my PC. Mostly i use my PC as a media center. And i like to use my PC for DRM free classic games
who got the original taste of a non castrated unleashed game.
Tell 3D animation techs / TV programmers, graphic designers, Engineers, scientists, PC gamers, that they will get those in exchange for their current machines, they will laugh at you.
If anything, PC will simply transition into smaller solutions, with more computational power with smaller footprints.
Maybe in the next few generations.. New form factor or something.
Ofc, im already doing the first steps, i can see the changes.
Google search Graph is nonsense, because you will need the same graph for economics... the world is only focused on economics, you should know that by now.
Thats why we lose PC devs on a daily rate. Another issue is, its simply much cheaper to develop a crap game with crap graphics and the mainstream is asking for... they do not want a unleashed game freshly made from a alien, all they want is a primitive junk of software perfectly tuned according to theyr brainstate, totaly castrated and hopefully able to fit inside a smartphone. They do not even understand why to use a big machine for and whats HD anyway? The inventor of "Unreal Tournament"
Michael Schmalz was recently telling us that games on PC could be so much more enhanced but its simply to expensive to develop for PC only. He is sad about and he certainly hope that there will be a more powerful console soon. 512 MB RAM isnt anymore "up to date", he said (biggest issue he have to tackle). Nowadays they have to develop for several systems at once, which is usualy including consoles. The one getting the hard hit... is the PC system, who could handle so much more. But finally, its reality... nothing different. PC Games, cant be sold to other people anymore, so the market for "retro stuff" is close to zero. Therefore PC games is close to no real value for collectors, another weak spot. When i want to sell a old PC game, i get nothing for, could just trash it (people do not value DRM and all that stuff). On Steam they are aswell account bound, if you lose the account you lose all the games. The issues goes petty deep... and isnt described any easy.
**Even my Mom knew who Dell was, and how to get there. (she liked to keep presents a secret, even from other siblings).
I wish i would not know "Dell"; its mainstream ... *grabs a mistle tea... in a jittery manner*
One somewhat radical idea is that ISP's will start providing cloud processing power, scalable to users needs, along with internet access. I don't see this happening for at least another 5-10 years though; we kind of have the networking, however the infrastructure is not yet in place.
We will need fibre connection, we are still far away from the condition, even the richest countrys only got it at big cities, but half of the people are still living outside city. And finally WE ALL do need it, not only a city hog. So for the next 20+ years its not real to make good clouding. Broadband over copper isnt only much slower, its aswell pretty unstable in many cases, its NOT a adequate way to massively deliver high amount of picture data. Its just not stable enough, quality is worse. But there is others issues too, you will have to pay monthly fee to a ISP or server station, and not every station will be on the same level and cost. It can even be forbidden to get a server outside a particullar country, i know many server hoster who doesnt allow foreign people to rent them, so they are stick to probably very worse offers bound to own country. Finally some people have to pay a fortune and get weak servers while others have to pay few and get strong servers. We simply never can act equal and we never will, because we are simply humans. The only thing we can actively affect is the own machine.. thats why we enjoy that one that much. Other stuff is usualy being lead by a "higher might". Either the goverment and the industry is awesome or it isnt... and people are close to powerless. Much easyer to buy a strong PC... you can even use a "power" PC in the middle of a desert. All you gonna need is a power generator, monitor, a PC and a game which doesnt require Steam.
So im not sure if the PC... will be dying out, but the
classical PC...
in the current shape... without taking care at efficiency...will be dying i guess because the demand is getting lower and lower. Its just not affordable anymore. Maybe it does still exist but, at a special price, that expensive that only a few can afford it. We can not develop for only a few people.. unless they pay same for theyr games such as the industry is doing it for theyr Adobe Photoshop.
There is lot of factors why classical desktop PCs are decreasing, but some of them can be gotten in my statement. Can only hope that it will be stabilized at some point, and not cause even lesser dev support.