Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Minka Kelly and Derek Jeter breaking up, hurricanes, or NY bagels, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.
I hate the question, “Is PC gaming dead?” Of course it’s not. As long as people are using PCs, they will also use them to goof off, and one of the best ways to do that is gaming. I was reminded of this stupid question when Razer took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal that proclaimed PC gaming is not dead. It’s just a teaser for a product announcement later today, but it plays on the whole PC-gaming-is-dead thing.
Just to make sure we’re clear on this issue — PC gaming is not dead! Don’t believe me? Well, ask John Carmack. He’s exponentially smarter than either of us. He recently told Gamasutra:
When you look at all the MMO money on there, there’s still a lot. And when you include Facebook games and stuff like that, and all the web games.
It’s just, I think people regret the migration of the hardcore action game, which clearly has taken a move towards the consoles. But gaming on the PC, there’s probably more hours of PC games going on now than there were five years ago.
While there might not be as many “enthusiast” games on PC as there used to be, there are more people spending more hours gaming on a PC than ever before. The market has changed and the audience has evolved. There are casual-game publishers that are being valuated in billions of dollars (USD). With all the people participating and all the money to be made, I don’t see how anyone can think that the PC market is “dead”.
Normally, I would ask for your thoughts on the question of, “Is PC gaming dead?”, but Carmack just owned the question. Of course I must end today’s column with this: And that’s the bottom line, because John Carmack said so!!!
I agree. In fact I ran some numbers on my PC gaming costs for 2 games.
WoW:
Client Purchases: $170 (50+40+40+40)
Sub fees: $885 ((15*12)*5)-15
Server Change: $45 (15*3)
Total: $1100
League of Legends: Free 2 Play
Riot Points: $50
That's quite a bit considering only 2 games. Especially a free one.
Seeing a really odd glitch in Firefox for Windows 7. New articles aren't showing up, even after I cleared the cache. It's fine in Chrome and IE though. I'm guessing that Google Page Speed service isn't playing nice with FF, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
Fixed it. It was a stupid W3 Total Cache error. Phew!
Hope everyone was safe during the hurricane.
In the almost 2 years I have been on steam, I have logged over 260 hours of game time. This excludes non steam games, but does include Portal 2 for the PS3.
Sim City and Warcraft 1 & 2 were the only games I played on a pc and that was many moons ago. Growing up my dad was a console junkie and we had them all except the 3D0 and Sega CD.
Sim City and Warcraft 1 & 2 were the only games I played on a pc and that was many moons ago. Growing up my dad was a console junkie and we had them all except the 3D0 and Sega CD.