Do you agree with this statement?

Other Games
41

[quote=“Team Andromeda”]Both SONY and MS offer clouds saves for their consoles and I’ve had a number of 360’s and its not really that much of an issue seeing as the Gard Drive with in both the 360 and PS3 were removable and unlike Nintendo the content you bought on-line not tide to that console.

Is the desktop PC that suffering that and that’s reflected in development and retail support for PC games . Consoles on the other hand are enjoying great sales , already both the PS4 and XBox have sold millions with Sony more than most enjoying amazing sales of 4 million plus .l[/quote]

The comment that PC game sales are in decline is jut plain fabrication. Google PC market share and you will see that even without tracking Steam #'s, the PC gaming industry has continued to grow year over year. Kickstarter just reached 1 billion US dollars in funding, most due to PC gaming. Steam posted that they have some huge number of users in recent weeks, something like 75 million active users. This is well above any consoles installed base short of the handhelds. If you look at traditional retail where consoles dominate, that industry is struggling. Just like the CD and DVD industry are struggling. PC gamers have in large numbers embrace digital distribution that is more difficult to track. The users and money are still there. Just because PC’s themselves are reaching a saturation point doesn’t mean that PC games are declining. This just hasn’t been true at any point in time. Sure retail packages are gone, but that is because Steam, GOG, Amazon, etc have been so successful with digital distribution. Retail sales just don’t matter anymore. Eventually the consoles will see this occur also with MS and Sony joining the digital distribution model.

As for cloud saves, I wasn’t stating that the consoles didn’t have it, I was arguing the point about losing saves and content when a PC crashes somehow being worse than on a console. The consoles have no real benefit regarding this since many of the new console games need to be installed on the console to be fully enjoyed also along with any of the digital content being tied to one single console with a convoluted scheme of rights transfer that just doesn’t exist on the PC.

42

Walk into any retail store and see PC games take a massive back seat , now go back to the late 90’s and that wasn’t the case and its the same for On-Line retailers. You know the market has changed when even the likes of id , Epic and Cretech now focus on consoles more than they do on the PC .

Hardly given that both the XBox 360 and PS3 can match that and when you conbine the 2 consoles sales it way above that of steam .

That nothing to do with consoles at all and just the way people now shop online more than go to retail .

You install the game . One saved game data is kept separate and that’s overlooking that the HD in the PS3, XBox 360 and PS4 is removable and changeable and with the next XBox 1 update users will be allowed to use their external Hard Drives to back data up. Only Nintendo tied data to a single console btw

43

So you slam PC games as taking a massive backseat at retail and then…

defend slowing retail console games sales by stating that more people shop online now than at retail. Now you are just being ridiculous and arguing for the sake of arguing.

Current #'s on wikipedia state ~101 million PS3’s were sold and ~85million Xbox 360’s were sold. Steam just announced that they have ~75 million active users. That doesn’t count people who purchase on GOG, Origin, or at retail. I would argue that it is the consoles that have to worry, and I am not alone.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/09/console-crisis/

Looking at year over year numbers, console sales have dropped dramatically. I think the article is slightly flawed as they are looking at two different places in the consoles life cycle, but what is not disputed is they are dropping. A huge chunk of this being from Nintendo losing their “casual” audience with the flop of the WiiU.

You are right, currently there are more consoles sold than there are active Steam users. Steam isn’t the entire PC market by a long shot, but lets look at another data point. The Xbox 360 has a higher software attach rate at ~9 games per user. Steam’s attach rate has been estimated to be closer to the 40’s per user. Sure this is due to all the sales, but who is going to argue that having a larger selection at a lower price isn’t better.

Dude, you do know you can put your PC HD in another PC and it works? Where do you think these console HD’s come from. PC’s also have the benefit of limitless online storage alternatives, usb flash drives, and a zillion other means of backing up your saves and data that is infinitely easier and cheaper than any of the gaming consoles. I can’t comment on the PS3 as I didn’t own one, but transfering content from my crapped out launch 360 to the new one sucked. It required that you were online and that you logged into Xbox Live and had to go through a convoluted process of releasing your content license from the first system and then logging in on the new one to recover it. That was anything other than as easy as it should have been. This is because MS would love nothing other than to make it impossible for you to transfer content, all in the name of copyright protection.

44

Retail and On-Line are just the same; in that all the shops be that on the High Street or OnLine, focus more on the consoles than PC games for all the major retailers

Lets no go on what Wikipedia says thanks . The real figures are more like just under 80 million for both the 360 and PS3 that more that what Steam can boast for starters and combine the two and it ways over in front All the biggest selling games in the past few years have been on the consoles .

Oh please, that happens at the end of every console cycle. It’s nothing new after 7 years of being on sale for the old consoles, I would expect the consoles to see a drop off in sales

[quote]A huge chunk of this being from Nintendo losing their “casual” audience with the flop of the WiiU.
[/quote]

That’s Nintendo for you .

Yes and you do know can change and swap the HD in the PS3 and 360 . So your data isn’t tied to 1 console at all .

Consoles offer online storage and you can use your zip drive to back up date on the PS3 and 360. So again almost evebrything you can do with the PC to back up data (other than ripping it to a DVD) you can do on the 360 and PS3

Steam and Origin need you to go on-line , that’s just a fact of life . And I’ve had some 5 360’s and other had no major issues in swapping my data over.

45

[quote=“Team Andromeda”]

Retail and On-Line are just the same; in that all the shops be that on the High Street or OnLine, focus more on the consoles than PC games for all the major retailers [/quote]

You still didn’t address the fact that you bashed PC gaming for not having a large storefront presence. All you did was quote a portion of what I said and replied that online or ‘high street’ are the same. What does that mean regarding what we are debating? You cut and paste quotes and make random statements that don’t do anything to actually back up your argument that consoles are the better choice because they have a larger retail presence. My point was PC gaming has a smaller retail footprint because PC gamers have embraced digital distribution and that sales have not suffered because of this. I don’t care that consoles are embracing it also. What I do dispute is your argument that PC game sales are in decline because they have less presence in retail stores. I would love to actually debate this with you but you keep resorting to straw man arguments where you take something that was said and redirect the discussion to something that isn’t relevant to what you were originally debating.

[quote=“Team Andromeda”]

Lets no go on what Wikipedia says thanks . The real figures are more like just under 80 million for both the 360 and PS3 that more that what Steam can boast for starters and combine the two and it ways over in front All the biggest selling games in the past few years have been on the consoles .[/quote]

Why not quote Wikipedia? It utilizes a standard of review that is similar to other published media. The articles have sources and state what facts have yet to be corroborated. It is at least as accurate as any other news source these days.

[quote=“Team Andromeda”]

Oh please, that happens at the end of every console cycle. It’s nothing new after 7 years of being on sale for the old consoles, I would expect the consoles to see a drop off in sales [/quote]

Hence why I say that this isn’t a fair comparison. Again you cut part of my quote. The fact is that as a percentage of global sales including PC, mobile, handheld, etc gaming, console gaming IS in decline. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want consoles to disappear. I want them to return more to their roots, as cheaper standardized gaming machines, not as expensive media center PC’s. They don’t do as good a job of that as an actual PC.

[quote=“Team Andromeda”]

Yes and you do know can change and swap the HD in the PS3 and 360 . So your data isn’t tied to 1 console at all . [/quote]

Actually, anything that requires a license transfer process is locked down. Just because you can copy your content from a console to a USB drive doesn’t mean you can just pop it in another and use that content on any console without having your Live profile saved to the USB drive also. That is by definition locked down. These aren’t the consoles of the past where you could easily play any of your stuff on your friends system.

[quote=“Team Andromeda”]

Consoles offer online storage and you can use your zip drive to back up date on the PS3 and 360. So again almost evebrything you can do with the PC to back up data (other than ripping it to a DVD) you can do on the 360 and PS3 [/quote]

See above. I can easily re-install Steam on any of my PC’s, log in, and download my games. As for my GOG collection, all I need is my portable hard drive with my game backups. I don’t even need internet for that. That was what used to be so great about console gaming. My system died, I repair, mod, or buy another and my games just worked.

[quote=“Team Andromeda”]

Steam and Origin need you to go on-line , that’s just a fact of life . And I’ve had some 5 360’s and other had no major issues in swapping my data over.[/quote]

This is the only point I can concede to you. When you want to install your Steam games back on your PC, you need the internet to do so. The process is still much easier than the license transfer process for the Xbox that actually requires you to also have a PC to log in to also so that you can manage the process. That is laughable to me.

46

It hasn’t . The major retails like Game, Tesco’s, Asda’s Ect all go for the console at the expense of their PC range , even the likes of PC World seem to have more console games on their prime retail space than games for PC.

Go online and its just repeated all over again.

They have a smaller footprint because of issues like piracy and the fact that families go for consoles games .

Sales back that up , even digital sales can’t compare to what consoels games or the likes of I-Pad sales can boast . There’s a reason why games for Windows is fast being drop and why the likes of Cryteck, id, Epic now look to consoles far more than they do for PC games .

Because anyone can edit it and for starters real world sales are around 80 million for the likes of the PS3.

At the end of every console cycle sales dip; one saw a massive sales dip in the 16 bit era only to see the PS go on to be one of the best ever selling consoles . Consoles aren’t going anywhere are they, SONY alone as sold more than 4 million PS4 in just a few months .

You can also copy your gamer tag over (license intact) . Yes there’s the odd game like GT that you can’t copy . Well MS and SONY both offer the ability to completely copy one’s Harddrive to another new Hard Drive . I’ve done it my self when I went to the old 360 to the new Slime and when I bought a new PS3 just the other month and copied the entire HD from mu old launch PS3 to the new one .

Its Nintendo with the Wii and Wii U that doesn’t allow this .

Same goes for MS - Everything is locked to your live Account .

Its modern life , hell even my phone and Samsung TV needs to be logged into Samsungs accounts