PC Gaming- Possibly Complete Gaming?

For the past several years, gaming “experts” have been debating over whether or not PC gaming is done for, will be done for soon, or if it will stay around forever. It’s my turn to weigh in on the issue.

I’ll start with the upper hands consoles have over the PC for gaming. The biggest advantage console gaming has over PC gaming is compatibility. With the PC you need to make sure you have compatible graphics cards, sound cards, processors, flux capacitors, and so on. In order to keep up with all the games coming out you’re going to be dumping an extra $300-$600 into your computer every 6-12 months. With the consoles, you pay $250-$600 for the console and you can buy games for it for the next 6 years without any problems. On top of that, on the PC you have to spend 20+ minutes installing your game, with the consoles you just pop the disk in and you’re playing. And yet more on top of that is when you need to install the games to your PC it takes up more memory and you’re limited to how many games you can have on there where as on consoles they theoretically can never fill up.

Now for PC’s side of the story.

Up until the late 90s, almost unanimously gamers believed that First Person Shooters belonged on the PC. That was because up until the release of Xbox, there were really no successful FPSs (other than Goldeneye for the N64.) The reason there was no successful console FPS and gamers believed that the PC was the only place an FPS could live in peace was because nobody had figured out a working control scheme for the consoles. The move with WASD and aim with mouse control scheme was what worked and the only thing that worked. But when the Xbox came out, game developers were able to figure out a FPS control scheme that worked, and now FPS makes up the second largest chunk of console video games (behind adventure games.)

Now that PC gaming enthusiasts can’t use that argument to try to defend their desktop machines, the PC starts to fade from the gaming scene more. But I think the biggest thing that is keeping PC gaming alive is Real Time Strategy games. Games like Warcraft, World in Conflict, Rise of Nations, Rollercoaster Tycoon and Civilization will keep the PC alive because it is in the same situation that FPS games were in 10 years ago. There have not been any RTS games on a console that have been successful because there has never been a working control scheme for it. That’s why so many people are up in arms about Halo Wars being only for the 360 and not the PC, because the console control scheme could ruin the game. But that’s getting off topic.

The last thing I can think of that PC gaming has over console gaming is that anyone can make a PC game without having to buy a license or rights. If a developer wants to make a console game they need to go to the console’s respective owner (Sony, Microsoft, and/or Nintendo) to buy the rights to make a game for their system while on the PC you just program the game. So by cutting that cost out of the budget it means more can be spent on the actual production and quality of the game, but that’s really a minor thing.

Basically, my prediction is that as soon as someone figures out a successful control scheme for Real Time Strategy games for the consoles, we will start to see PC gaming fade forever. I don’t think simply making a mouse and keyboard attachment for a console would do the trick though, it would need to be a regular controller based control scheme. Who knows, maybe it'll be as soon as Halo Wars, or maybe it'll never come at all and PC gaming will still be fighting to stay in the picture forever.