Happened to be in town last weekend looking for a birthday present for my brother who's a difficult person to buy stuff for. He does like PC games but only simple single FPS shooters, or shooting games like House of the Dead; he also needs something that fits his hardware (typically 1-2 years behind the typical).
Anyway I thought I'd have a look to see if there was anything that might fit the bill in Game, what did surprise me is that PC games have almost vanished from the shop entirely. There's no PC game chart, almost no new PC titles on display and obviously no marketing push on them, heck the PSP budget games have a more display space than all the PC games put together.
What happened? This only confirms what I've been thinking for a while which is that the mainstream PC gaming market, as we knew it, is dissapearing and it's only a matter of time before it's completely unrecogniseable from 12 months ago. Seriously if the retailers are pulling out I think it says that the bottom is finally due to drop out.
If PC gaming is going to survive the industry needs to start responding to customers requirements. Cheaper prices, lower hardware requirements, less REQUIRED updates, LESS often. It also needs to answer the question "Why bother with PC Gaming?" and also "What's going to happen when the next generation consoles come out?", because I think when the next gen consoles do hit the market it will be the killing blow. At the moment PC gaming is too expensive, too risky, too boring and "Spore" ain't gonna save it.
Darkheart
Anyway I thought I'd have a look to see if there was anything that might fit the bill in Game, what did surprise me is that PC games have almost vanished from the shop entirely. There's no PC game chart, almost no new PC titles on display and obviously no marketing push on them, heck the PSP budget games have a more display space than all the PC games put together.
What happened? This only confirms what I've been thinking for a while which is that the mainstream PC gaming market, as we knew it, is dissapearing and it's only a matter of time before it's completely unrecogniseable from 12 months ago. Seriously if the retailers are pulling out I think it says that the bottom is finally due to drop out.
If PC gaming is going to survive the industry needs to start responding to customers requirements. Cheaper prices, lower hardware requirements, less REQUIRED updates, LESS often. It also needs to answer the question "Why bother with PC Gaming?" and also "What's going to happen when the next generation consoles come out?", because I think when the next gen consoles do hit the market it will be the killing blow. At the moment PC gaming is too expensive, too risky, too boring and "Spore" ain't gonna save it.
Darkheart