Consoles vs PC gaming

The battle has long waged between different gamer types. Which is better, console or PC gaming? That’s a question that likely won’t be answered in this generation, but we can all keep trying.

Since 2009, PC game revenues have increased while console game revenues have decreased. 2010 marked the first recent shift in trends where more money was generated through PC game sales than console games. The trend started showing signs of reversing this year as projections for the holidays and into 2012 show a greater increase in console gaming sales over PC.

Hardcore-PC-Gamers often point to processing power as the reason behind their choice. PS3 is the most powerful of the major consoles but weighs in at 550 MHz. While this is plenty for nearly all games, the rise of HD and 3D games is starting to require more juice than to run at peak graphic performance.

Regardless of which side you’re on, one thing is clear: there is no end in sight for either PC or console gaming. The popularity of both is on the rise and there’s enough room for more contenders if necessary.

This infographic by our friends at Ignite breaks down the battle lines and demonstrate why the war will continue, likely for a long, long time.

Click to enlarge.

ignitegt-pc-gaming-vs-console-gaming1-1-1

Is the PC really dying?

When Mark Dean, CTO of IBM Middle East and Africa, declared this morning that we are in the “Post-PC Era”, a tinge of frustration and anger popped up in me. Items that are used daily in millions of households across the world don’t simply die. I was annoyed when IBM CEO Lou Gerstner declared that “The PC is dead” in 1999. I was annoyed when they made the same claim in 2005 when they sold their personal computing division to Lenova. I was annoyed this morning when I read it again.

Then, I realized something: they may be right this time.

The younger generations Y and Z – 10-30 years old or whatever those boundaries may be – do not use PCs in general. Some have them for gaming, an industry that demands more power than most laptops can offer. Most simply don’t. The have laptops. They have smartphones. They have tablets. Their technological world is growing, but the devices are getting smaller.

Could Dean actually be correct? The more I think about it, the more I realize that the people who use PCs that I know of are all older. I haven’t touched one in 2 years. My son has one for gaming, but it’s the lone-PC in a household of 7 laptops, 5 smartphones, and an iPad 2. I don’t jump the gun and declare anything the “next big thing” prematurely, nor do I jump the gun and declare any technology old or obsolete until the signs are clear.

Are the signs clear now? Is the PC replaceable? Are laptops, smartphones, and tablets large enough and powerful enough to make the big box computers unnecessary?

Why they will live

This was much harder to think about than I thought. We already mentioned the gaming aspect, but even as I hit Skype and ask some opinionated tech people what makes the PC sustainable, few had good answers. Here’s what we came up with:

Greater storage
Less expensive
Harder to steal (not a great reason, but valid nonetheless)
Bigger/more monitors
Strong CPU/RAM for certain professions that require heavy-duty programs

That was pretty much it.

Why they will die

The list was relatively large, but it really came down to convenience. People don’t simply sit at their desk all day as much as they used to. The most innovative companies and worklplaces such as Apple, Google, and Facebook encourage laptop and smaller device use. They want their employees to be mobile within and outside of the office.

In a world that is very saturated (and getting more so every day) with WiFi and 3G/4G broadband, having the ability to roam around the house, over to Starbucks, or riding in a vehicle is pushing us away from the PC more often than not.

* * *

When thinking about whether or not the PC is on it’s last leg, I’m leaning towards “yes” but I would like some input. What do you think?

And you were never without internets again

In the market for a new computer? How does 25 bucks fetch ya? Cooked up by game developer David Braben, ‘Raspberry Pi‘ is a PC he’s hoping to market to teaching children the joys (or horrors, depending on which camp you’re in) of programming.

So, what do you get for $25? Well, howsabout a 700MHz ARM11 processor, 128MB of RAM, HDMI Out, and a single USB port, running Ubuntu 9.0.4? Yeah, that’s not much. But it’s pretty impressive once you’re told that this computer IS A USB STICK.

No foolin’. Here, watch Braben wax lyrical about it for a few minutes. No, he doesn’t rap. But as mad fly as this device is, he really doesn’t need to.
What would you do with a $25 PC?

Mac people vs PC people

There is little doubt that the self-perception of “Mac people” and “PC people” are often completely different, just as the way they look at their counterparts differ. Still, it’s surprising to see just how much difference there is in these perceptions.

This graphic by our friends at Hunch breaks down the debate that has been raging for over a decade. Are you a Mac or a PC? Or neither? The debate will go on as long as both computer types dominate the marketplace.

Click to enlarge.

PC World Inadvertently Suggests You Get a Mac

Depending on which side you take in the conflict eternal between PC and Mac, this is either an enormous fail or win. Seems some PC-critical convenience store worker must’ve taken his vehement fanboy-ism to work when he decided to place these magazines.

Yeah, it’s an old photo (a sneak peek at Leopard, lolol), but it’s new to the greater internet, so deal.

Thanks, Failblog!

It Could’ve Been Worse: Intel’s Billion-dollar Blunder

You don’t make it to a billion-dollar blunder without making a few mistakes along the way, or so should be the motto of the day for Intel. The world’s largest chip maker has distributed roughly 8 million faulty Cougar Point chips, and the cost to fix this mess: one billion dollars.

The problem is that the Cougar Point SATA chips (the ones that transfer information back and forth to your hard drives) are faulty — more specifically the 3Gbps controllers are experiencing the issues. There is a slight chance that they could fail, and that is what all the fuss is about. However, it isn’t as bad as it might seem. Anandtech explains in detail:

If you have a desktop system with six SATA ports driven off of P67/H67 chipset, there’s a chance (at least 5%) that during normal use some of the 3Gbps ports will stop working over the course of 3 years. The longer you use the ports, the higher that percentage will be. If you fall into this category, chances are your motherboard manufacturer will set up some sort of an exchange where you get a fixed board. The motherboard manufacturer could simply desolder your 6-series chipset and replace it with a newer stepping if it wanted to be frugal.

If you have a notebook system with only two SATA ports however, the scenario is a little less clear. Notebooks don’t have tons of storage bays and thus they don’t always use all of the ports a chipset offers. If a notebook design only uses ports 0 & 1 off the chipset (the unaffected ports), then the end user would never encounter an issue and the notebook may not even be recalled. In fact, if there are notebook designs currently in the pipeline that only use ports 0 & 1 they may not be delayed by today’s announcement. This is the only source of hope if you’re looking for an unaffected release schedule for your dual-core SNB notebook.

Venture Beat’s interview with Intel’s vice president points out that it could have been worse:

Stephen Smith, an Intel vice president, said in an interview that about 8 million of the flawed chips have already been shipped to PC manufacturer customers and perhaps only 500,000 are in the hands of users. That’s actually less than a day’s worth of PC shipments, in the grand scheme of things.

All things considered, this could have been a financial and public relations nightmare. If it costs Intel only a billion dollars worth of dough to fix it, it is only a tiny slap on the wrist. Close call, Intel.

This Is The Future of the Desktop PC

It’s not every day you get to re-imagine what the desktop computer will look like, especially in an age where mobility is taking over. However, courtesy of some brilliant thinkers at the Media Computing Group at Aachen University in Germany, the desktop computer is looking brand-spanking new and totally awesome. It even has a curve to it. It’s called the BendDesk.

By utilizing two projectors, three cameras, and a few IR-LEDs, the BendDesk can interpret touch and manipulation on a surface that is reminiscent of a touch-based screen on a desktop operating system. But this one appears to work very well, with multi-touch, photo manipulation, video games, and more being thrown at us for our eyes to gaze at. They just need to throw a virtual keyboard on this puppy and a web browser, and all else is pretty much history.

Unfortunately, I don’t see this thing going mass market anytime soon, but it is still nice to see that the desktop computer could have its day to shine in the future again.

Windows XP Still The Most Widespread Windows OS

After the reasonable success of Windows 7, and long after the train wreck that was Windows Vista, PC users are keeping it old school, sticking with Windows XP as their operating system of choice.

If you use a computer for anything other than gaming or to see how many hertz you can eek out of the latest Intel CPU, you know the pain of change. Change means uncertainty, and the one thing people want from a device their business or personal communications rely on is certainty.

As a nerd, Windows 7 is a modern, attractive and capable OS, but depending on the task XP is still more than enough for the majority of users.

Since the release of Windows 7, the install base of Windows XP has dropped only 10%, to 60%.

XP is actually a victim of it’s own circumstance. Microsoft kept XP around for five years before introducing Vista, a largely unsuccessful release that scared most regular users. While Vista floundered, XP gained strength, making it all the way to Service Pack 3.

Microsoft clearly now sees the value in regular and feature-rich updates, keeping users motivated to get to the latest updates. Lets just hope the quality remains.

Civilization 5 and StarCraft 2 Save PC Gaming From Extinction

Cloudy days have befallen the PC as a gaming platform. Yet it wasn’t so long ago when things were different; A-list games were released for the PC on what seemed to be a monthly basis — consoles were second class. But now the world has their Xbox 360s, PS3s, PSPs, Wiis, and DSs. Subsequently, the PC had lost its touch with the gaming community and was in dire need of help. Could it be saved?

Bland, mediocre, unimaginative, stagnant — these are all words that could have been used to describe the PC gaming industry as it stood in the past few years. Ironically, the same technology that helped create a massive community of PC gamers is the same technology that has caused almost everyone to forget about it. The game console had taken over.

Left Behind

The power of game consoles is growing along with the amount of gamers who are switching to them. They offer all-in-one solutions to gaming: it’s a box, a controller, and a disc. It is simple. It is what the consumers want these days. As a result, everyone receives the same experience, and no one has to complain about incompatible hardware, piracy (well, it’s still a bit of a problem), and lack of multiplayer unification. Also, we can’t forget about those gamer trophies!

The growth of the Internet has also proven to be detrimental to the PC gaming industry as well. With troves of free games readily available, today’s younger generations have now turned to the likes of Facebook, Miniclip, and various other free-to-play games and websites. Farmville, anyone? And it makes sense; why would today’s youth pay for complex and expensive games (and with what money?) when they could enjoy simple and free ones instead? (Note: the entire game industry, not just PC gaming, is suffering from these trends.)

Another issue is that purchasing the latest and greatest desktop hardware isn’t as big of a deal as it once was. Times have changed: we all live in an ultra-mobile world, where technology has to keep up with our lifestyle. It’s very difficult to imagine the average consumer going out of their way to upgrade their PC just to play Crysis, let alone purchasing a beefed-up PC rig for bragging rights. Sure, the tech geeks of the world are into it, but the typical consumer doesn’t have a clue.

It gets worse, unfortunately. The only A-list title I can remember being released for the PC platform in the past two years is The Sims 3, which, after a quick search on Google, was released in June of ’09. So, in the past 15 months, I could only recall a single memorable A-list title that was (almost) exclusive to the PC. Oh wait… even The Sims series has games developed for most console and mobile platforms. D’oh!

Of course, the PC has had a few great titles over the past few years, but the problem is that many of them were afterthoughts/ports of console versions. Many were ports from the console to the PC. Few were developed in conjunction with the console. And only a handful were developed exclusively with the PC in mind. But, as we know, the PC and console are two completely different beasts. A game for a console might have to be heavily modified or completely rewritten for a platform like the PC (the keyboard and game controller are, in a word, different). With that in mind, it’s clear that developing and publishing an A-list title exclusively for the PC is a very brave action, indeed.

But, still, it wasn’t enough to restore PC gaming to its former greatness. Those creative and innovative titles that once came so regularly and such astounding quality had all but disappeared.

Fortunately, for those in an a niche that had all but been forgotten, help was on the way. But the surprising part was that it was more than anyone could have bargained for.

Help Has Arrived

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the successor to one of the most memorable PC titles ever developed: StarCraft. Rushing Zerg bases until mere hours before school started in 1999 was a common theme for me (this game also caused me to receive a ‘D’ in a middle school science class, but I don’t regret it). How great it is that the sequel can continue the degradation of student’s grades. It had big expectations to live up to.

Surprisingly, in only two months after being released into the wild, StarCraft II has managed to rack up well over three-million sales, a number that is guaranteed to increase. It has been receiving rave reviews and currently has an astounding 93 (out of 100) rating on Metacritic. It’s been described as “perfect” and “amazing” and even “revolutionary.” In other words, it not only lived up to expectation, but it exceeded them, which couldn’t have come at a better time.

Not to be outdone, Civilization — which is yet another series that kept me up late at night and is nearly 20 years old (almost as old as I am) — also received an overhaul in the form of Civilization V. While the Civ series has never been known for the in-your-face-heart-racing-adrenaline-pumping action that StarCraft procured, it offers gamers an incredibly rich, in-depth empire-building simulation that would make any Grandmaster chess player wet their pants. Players take turns making economic, diplomatic, and strategic decisions all for the sake of creating the ultimate civilization.

Civ 5 — while only being released on September 21, 2010 — has an impressive score of 91 on Metacritic. The latest in the series is noted as being the best experience yet for those who are unfamiliar and veterans to the series. While it does have a few bugs in the system, they will surely be ironed out as time goes on. But it’s great to see that Sid Meier’s Civilization has performed so well; civilization, as we know it, will not come to an end, after all.

It can’t be stressed enough how much PC gaming really needed these two titles deliver, and certainly have delivered beyond expectation.

Never Forget

Together, they have managed to reinvigorate the PC gaming industry. They could open the doors for the bigger development studios to revisit the once-forgotten PC. They could drive more sales to digital distribution services like GamersGate, Direct2Drive, and Steam. They could give indie developers hope that their efforts will still have potential to grow. They could spur on sales of the latest and greatest PC hardware. Essentially, the effects are far reaching and could be felt throughout the entire tech industry.

But, while StarCraft II and Civilization V have all the attention now, you can bet that the industry will also have its eyes on Portal 2 and Crysis 2 in the future, which are expected in early 2011 (granted, these titles will also be released on console platforms, but they are known primarily for their success on the PC). They will continue where SC2 and Civ 5 have left off. So things are looking up, after all.

But this article wasn’t written to simply highlight two great games. It wasn’t written to analyze an industry on the edge. No. Instead, it was written to pay homage to one special group that had long been forgotten: PC gamers. This is a bunch who has always remained loyal to the PC platform; they have no reason to complain. They have no reason to start a typical console war, arguing whether or not the PS3 stands a chance or if the Wii is a kids toy. In fact, they have all the reasons in the world to celebrate — because, at least for this one moment, they can be assured that they now have greatest gaming platform of all.

This is for the players who spend countless hours sniping foes on dedicated servers. This is for the players who get engrossed over a game where the main point is to shoot portals at walls. The is for the players who can’t resist stop pressing that “turn” button just one more time. This is for the players who can’t stop the endless battles with alien intergalactic empires. This is for all of them.

Remember this moment! Remember how great it is that we PC gamers have this moment to ourselves. This is the moment when we can remember what felt like like to be in the golden era of PC gaming. It’s a great feeling; it’s one that I hope never ends.

Why they will live

Why they will die

Left Behind

Help Has Arrived

Never Forget

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