incal11:

Eggo:
Yeah, all those World of Warcraft subscriptions and Steam users are going to leave it a marginalized market.

one more reason to hate steam.

Darn that Steam and their digital distribution.

Jonathan Hexley:

Phantom2595:

Jonathan Hexley:
As it was said, it probably won't die. The PC is quite a good method of gaming, as the demos are free. Aaah, free demos. I love you.
I'm rather sad that the Mac isn't in on much of this action. I was once told that Macs were a playing computer.
Playing my arse, there's like two Mac games I'd consider playing.

Free demos? I thought all demos were free, what do they cost money on XBL?

I wouldn't know since I bought a PS3 instead to play Final Fantasy >.>

I... Have no idea. I don't own Xbox Live, making Rock Band rather bland after a while. Not yet of course, I've still got a year to go.
But yeah, not sure if they're free, I don't have the online capabilites to check.

They are indeed free.

ElArabDeMagnifico:

shadow skill:
It won't die but I feel that it may beome increasingly marginalized, I know I would be more inclined to upgrade my machine for gaming if there was a way for me to rent pc games like I can with the consoles.

I have a gut feeling that we won't be able to rent games anymore with all these game companies complaining about rentals and second-hand sales. Console DRM maybe?

I'd love to see them try and take out Gamefly/Gamestop. Their endless bitching is not going to make secondhand or rentals go away when it comes to consoles. Not when the internet makes renting so much easier to do, it would be like movie studios whining that rentals cut into their profits. Everyone would just look at them and laugh in their face for even daring to complain.

The second hand market is a bit of a different issue. If they can somehow get rid of Gamestop they have a chance of pretty much crushing the used game market. (This is unlikely because I highly doubt Gamestop would allow a lucrative part of their own business to be destroyed by the content manufacturers.) If however Gamestop's dominance is broken by the consumer (The most likely scenario in my mind.) I doubt he or she will stand for that kind of bullshit from the game makers and just start pirating the games. (The reason the PS3 is not hacked yet has more to do with the lack of drive to do it more than anything else. Blu-ray media and burners will eventually fall in price along with the media.)

Nimbus: I never really paid much attention to Gametap I'll have to look into it a bit more sounds like a nice service.

I much perfer PC gaming to console, The games generally seem to have larger more dedicated communities and mods make everything better. I would buy evey game on pc if I could run them but from the looks of it Left 4 Dead and hopefully Fallout 3 will be the last pc game for a while.

the only reason pc gaming would be dead is that people don't have the money to get good hardware

is there an "it won't" option. Because I have all three game systems and a gaming PC I built myself, and the PC out performs any of the game systems, and has more games!

Also, seeing as you can buy game controllers for computers, you can use whatever scheme meets your fancy. So I must say the it is not PC gaming that is dying, it is console gaming.

PC gaming will never die, but I really don't like that pretty much only FPS, WRPG, MMORPG, and RTS games come out on it.

naftali1:

Jonathan Hexley:

Phantom2595:

Jonathan Hexley:
As it was said, it probably won't die. The PC is quite a good method of gaming, as the demos are free. Aaah, free demos. I love you.
I'm rather sad that the Mac isn't in on much of this action. I was once told that Macs were a playing computer.
Playing my arse, there's like two Mac games I'd consider playing.

Free demos? I thought all demos were free, what do they cost money on XBL?

I wouldn't know since I bought a PS3 instead to play Final Fantasy >.>

I... Have no idea. I don't own Xbox Live, making Rock Band rather bland after a while. Not yet of course, I've still got a year to go.
But yeah, not sure if they're free, I don't have the online capabilites to check.

They are indeed free.

Ah, thank you. Either way, demos for PC games are easier to get, and you simply need to download it and play.

Heres the thing its not.

PCs biggest unique feature is the mouse, it gave it an advantage in RTS,FPS RPG and adventure games

adventure games are dead
consoles now have analogue sticks that make FPS playable on them
most RTS nowadays suck (im looking at you ensemble studios, what happened to you?)
And lets face it, PC RPGs aren't what they used to be (RIP BG2, i loved you despite your 1500 bugs)
The only PC games i have are starcraft / warcraft 3 + dota / wow and a couple of emulators

personally i don't like shooters so the only PC game im looking forward to in 2009 is Starcraft 2

I'd rather have FUN playing FF13 and god of war 3 in 2009