Why did the home computer die out?

[Ross PK]

Consoles must have stole a lot of sales from the computer market.

 

They didn't stop the popularity of home computers in the mid 80's though, I'd never even heard of consoles when I was a kid, but anyone I knew who played video games played them on a home computer, as did I.

[kisrael]

Interesting topic. I think before asking the question "why did" you need to know your answer to "when did".

 

People's perceptions of the Great Crash and what came after will always be influenced by how old they were at the time, and what hardware they and their friends were lucky enough to have. It's extremely difficult to have a truly objective view.

 

Being the kid of ministers, we didn't have much money, but thanks to a lucky donation I had an Atari 800XL. Later I jonesed for and got a C=64 (better game piracy :-) that was a hand-me-down from my Uncle who was moving into IBM (w/ those weird mostly compatible Tandy clones)... that was late for the computer, like '87 or so.

 

So I think most people will see the Apple II/C=64/Atari 800XL (and maybe TI and CoCo) as the main generation of home computers in the USA.

 

So what happened then? I knew exactly one guy who was lucky enough to get an Amiga. No one with an Atari ST, and maybe I saw an Apple III in a school once. BUT, PCs weren't really in big use either, they were still dull and boring business machines. If you're lucky maybe you'd find one that played Ancient Art of War or Big Blue Disk or something.

 

So I don't know if people call the Amiga/ST generation home computers, or how well that generation did relative to the 8-bits. (Note: Amiga was a brilliant machine for its time, but that greatness came through series of hacks and optimizations. Read up on how that machine did its palette stuff and what not to get an idea of how crazy it was... one of the reasons it started lagging after a bit, despite the PCs being built to sell faster processors and damn the idea of specialized chips...'til sound blasters and later video cards started making waves)

 

So for me it was:

Atari 2600 gen, with a touch of Intellivision or Colecovision

Home computers

NES (I knew the C=64 was more powerful, but wasn't no one making Metroid for the C=64...)

386-486 PCs (ah, Wing Commander)

and then consoles, starting for me with the N64... after I spotted the PC hardware treadmill thanks to Duke Nukem 3D

 

Anyway, I guess my point is, there's kind of a gap between the dominance of home computers and the dominance of PCs. For most people, the weren't competing, in terms of being a head to head choice, Home Computers died out when the Amigas and STs didn't really catch on at good prices, and NES started becoming a new standard.

[Ross PK]

I'd definatley class the Amiga and ST as home computers, even the Atari Falcon I guess (for some reason it does seem to have more of a PC feel to it. I've never actually been on one though, just seen them in magazines.

[Math You]

even the Atari Falcon I guess (for some reason it does seem to have more of a PC feel to it. I've never actually been on one though, just seen them in magazines.

Here's your chance to try one (it's not mine)

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...A:IT&ih=017

[kevin242]

I can tell you what killed the classic home computers: DOOM. It's that simple, Amiga's and ST's couldn't do FPS's and PC's could. That and the lack of Microsoft Office made those computers seem useless except for specialized tasks.

[Video]

I think that built in hard drives changed to shape of computers, from the one box type to the desktop computers that most of us use today. I suppose laptop computers are the closest thing we have to a one box home computer. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody made one without the screen so it could be used with a plasma screen or external monitor.

 

Actually, to my knowledge, most laptops have hookups for external monitors. The one i'm useing currently for example. But I hear what you are saying. I mean, the expense in a laptop is the screen after all. You want anything else for a laptop, you'll pay through the nose, but if the screen goes bad, it's simply not worth getting it replaced as it costs as much as the computer almost.

 

I don't think Windows had much to do with killing gameing computers though. After all, the OS doesn't mean dick if you have to worry about 30 different possible sound cards, and 30 different possible video cards, and 30 possible mother boards and 30 possible processors....etc. The combinations are endless and this is actually the reason i don't use any computer as a game machine, except in the emulation area, which gets around this by going on processor specs alone and ignoring the other crap. But when you do that, the computer all of a sudden is a lot weaker than it would be if you could use all it sstuff.

 

What I want, is a true game computer again. I don't mind the cost to much, a good com puter is under $500 anyways. What I want is standardization. Give me a computer that's just like the neighbors, and have games programmed from the ground up to use that, and only that machines specs. Bring back the gameing computer.

[lord_mike]

I'm getting in late...

 

The idea that Jack Tramiel killed the home computer is partially right, but partially wrong as well... his price war made home computers not only affordable, but ubiquitous. It is because of him that the home computer idea boomed... but, it did come at a cost... the lack of respect that cheap "home computers" garnished made the Amiga and the ST dead on arrival when they came out... affordable all but disappeared for 15 years... why?

 

Enter the real villains... IBM and Apple

 

IBM "Standardized" the market with computers that cost $3,000 not $300... Apples had always been overpriced, but the new Mac raised the bar at $2500. These computers took the world by storm, and there was no longer a place for a $300 computer in the world of "personal computing".

 

Development on "home systems" took a dive, sales continued for awhile, but they would never be taken seriously again... for more than a decade, a "real" computer was one that cost a fortune... anything else was considered a joke...

 

And so it was... I can never forgive IBM for destroying the home computer industry... their product was quite crappy for the outrageous price, and it took almost a decade for the PC to catch up to the graphics and sound of even my old Atari 8-bit.

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

[mos6507]

There is more than one niche for computing. There is no one-size-fits-all device. The factors that contributed to the "home computer" of the late 70s and early 80s was no longer viable by the 90s. Technology moved too fast to have a fixed hardware platform like the original home computers had. Today computers are fast enough that people don't feel the need to upgrade as often as they used to. There is more interest in integrated peripherals. These days motherboards usually have integrated sound, ethernet, and other stuff that used to always require a dedicated card. As more stuff gets integrated onto the board, PCs actually become more like consoles.

 

As for the decline in PC gaming, besides what has already been said, I think the XBox has been a big contributor. Microsoft needed to encourage developers to make XBox exclusives. This sucked enthusiasm away from the PC platform. I also think the strict DRM in today's consoles make them a safer target than the PC.

[accousticguitar]

When you want to play a game, you need 2 things: Dependability and a decent controller. With a PC, you have niether.

 

Dependability

 

Who plays video games? 10 year old kids. You can't expect them to be able to make a software program work on a stubborn computer. Then whose problem is it? The parents. They don't want to mess with it. If a Nintendo doesn't work, they take it back to the store and get a new one.

 

Controllers

 

Keyboard controllers suck, and I can't ever seem to get my joystick to work. That is one reason I don't play PC games.

 

Another issue

 

Perhaps the parents want to use the computer to answer email or buy stuff on ebay. If the kid is playing Nintendo, they don't have to compete for the PC.

[kisrael]

I think that built in hard drives changed to shape of computers, from the one box type to the desktop computers that most of us use today. I suppose laptop computers are the closest thing we have to a one box home computer. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody made one without the screen so it could be used with a plasma screen or external monitor.

 

Actually, to my knowledge, most laptops have hookups for external monitors. The one i'm useing currently for example. But I hear what you are saying. I mean, the expense in a laptop is the screen after all. You want anything else for a laptop, you'll pay through the nose, but if the screen goes bad, it's simply not worth getting it replaced as it costs as much as the computer almost.

 

In one trade mag I did see what MRB described... it was a computer, w/ cd rom and all, tucked under a keyboard. In practice it looked a lot like a C=64! Not much in sales though, I think it was mostly meant for certain retail settings.

 

You also see the idea with Media PCs, ones kind of meant to be plugged into a big HD TV, but without the integrated keyboard. I don't think its been setting the world on fire either.

 

Actually I think there's a stronger trend toward tucking the PC stuff behind the screen in a desktop setting... Apples done this 3 different ways w/ the iMac, and I've seen some PCs following the lead. (I remember seeing one w/ a super crappy laptopish screen back in the late 90s)

 

That said... laptops are a lot more fun.

 

 

 

What I want, is a true game computer again. I don't mind the cost to much, a good com puter is under $500 anyways. What I want is standardization. Give me a computer that's just like the neighbors, and have games programmed from the ground up to use that, and only that machines specs. Bring back the gameing computer.

Eh. That's kind of what PS3 and Xbox 360 want to be. But I think, say web-browsing and console style game playing will never really meet.

[spacecadet]

Ah, but you're forgetting the "bad old days" of DOS when you had to create a separate boot disk for each game just to meet the minimum memory requirements.

 

I'm not forgetting it, it just wasn't a factor at that time. The IBM PC was just launched in 1981 and was only starting to gain traction as a business machine in 1983-84. Clones had only just launched and prices for all of these machines were very high. Games for the PC did not even really exist - maybe Lemonade Stand, possibly the first Flight Simulator.

 

I'm thinking of computers like the C64, A8, TRS-80 and Apple II. (I'm pretty sure that's what the question "what ever happened to the home computer?" is all about.) Yeah, all of these used some form of text-based disk operating system as well, but all of them also allowed you to just stick a cartridge (or disk) in, turn on the machine and play. Luddites didn't need to mess with the OS at all to play a game.

 

DOS and the like were the start of the downfall of PC gaming.

 

Game consoles have always been a better value. When IBM-compatible computers were $2,000, the Nintendo was $99. When 486s were $1,800, the SuperNES was $199.

 

Why do you seem to think computer gaming began with the IBM PC?

 

The C64 was $199 in 1984. The A8 was around that level. The Apple II was a bit more expensive when I got mine in 1983 - about $600, but it had *thousands* of games available for it so it seemed like a good deal given all you could do with it. But if you wanted to spend $200 and your choice was a C64 or an Atari 5200, which were you going to buy?

 

Your history seems to begin in 1985. The question isn't why PC gaming isn't as popular as it used to be. The question is why x86-based PC gaming has never been as popular as computer gaming was before it. (Read the original post again.)

[jbanes]

I'm not forgetting it, it just wasn't a factor at that time. The IBM PC was just launched in 1981 and was only starting to gain traction as a business machine in 1983-84. Clones had only just launched and prices for all of these machines were very high. Games for the PC did not even really exist - maybe Lemonade Stand, possibly the first Flight Simulator.

The period you're talking about was barely even a blip on the PC gaming radar. The DOS gaming heyday was from around 1990-1995. In those five years the PC gaming industry as we know it today sprung up. 3D technologies and all.

 

I'm thinking of computers like the C64, A8, TRS-80 and Apple II. (I'm pretty sure that's what the question "what ever happened to the home computer?" is all about.)

Yeah, I understand that. But those computers were replaced by PC gaming. For about 5 years, consumers built boot disks and payed for massive upgrades just so they could play PC games.

 

(Not that it was that easy with the C64 and Ataris. Despite the ability to plug in cartridges, the majority of games still shipped on floppy disks or tapes that had to be booted through the command prompt. Not quite as bad as boot-disk building, but not the super-simple gaming experience you're touting, either.)

 

DOS and the like were the start of the downfall of PC gaming.

Nonsense. As you said yourself, DOS existed through the entire period of the home microcomputer. The IBM PC still displaced it once VGA and the Sound Blaster showed up.

 

Game consoles have always been a better value. When IBM-compatible computers were $2,000, the Nintendo was $99. When 486s were $1,800, the SuperNES was $199.

Why do you seem to think computer gaming began with the IBM PC?

I don't. I'm refering specifically to the value of the IBM PC in playing games. In the history of PC gaming, consoles have always been a better value than the IBM system. Yet PC gaming was extremely popular from ~1990-2000. 5 years of DOS and 5 years of Windows.

 

But if you wanted to spend $200 and your choice was a C64 or an Atari 5200, which were you going to buy?

That was kind of what I was getting at in the post where I talked about the video game crash. Tramiel's price war sealed the fate of the 80's game consoles. Of course, Commodore was the only company that could (barely) afford to compete at that price, but it definitely completed all of Tramiel's plans in one fell swoop.

 

Your history seems to begin in 1985. The question isn't why PC gaming isn't as popular as it used to be. The question is why x86-based PC gaming has never been as popular as computer gaming was before it.

I outright disagree with that statement. IBM PC gaming was incredibly popular during the 90's. Games like Wing Commander and Quake had far larger budgets and audiences than Space Taxi or Pirates! ever did.

 

For example, the Commodore 64 sold 17 million units in its lifetime. In 1992, the PC sold more units than that in one year. Don't believe me? Take a look:

 

http://www.wowdailynews.com/pegasus/total_share.html

 

That link shows exactly how many computers were sold from 1975-2002. The C64, Apple II, and Atari 8-bits are all included. If you combine all their market shares together, you won't even scratch the surface of the sales that the PC experienced in the 90's.

Edited June 21, 2007 by jbanes

[Shannon]

I remember my first game related PC upgrade. It was an extra 4 megs of RAM so that I could play Ultima 7. That was the one with voodoo technology right? Too bad the game sucked. Ultima Underworlds was so much better.

[MCHufnagel]

Controllers

 

Keyboard controllers suck, and I can't ever seem to get my joystick to work. That is one reason I don't play PC games.

You've never played any RTS or FPS games on a PC then. Keyboard/Mouse controls are the way to go on those games. I even use them on platformers such as Beyond Good and Evil and Rayman 2 on the PC. As far as using a joystick/gamepad on a PC, USB pads have always worked for me.

[Video]

When you want to play a game, you need 2 things: Dependability and a decent controller. With a PC, you have niether.

 

Dependability

 

Who plays video games? 10 year old kids. You can't expect them to be able to make a software program work on a stubborn computer. Then whose problem is it? The parents. They don't want to mess with it. If a Nintendo doesn't work, they take it back to the store and get a new one.

 

Controllers

 

Keyboard controllers suck, and I can't ever seem to get my joystick to work. That is one reason I don't play PC games.

 

Another issue

 

Perhaps the parents want to use the computer to answer email or buy stuff on ebay. If the kid is playing Nintendo, they don't have to compete for the PC.

 

I think you hit another point. At 8 years old, it was easy for me to type load and run on the C64, I didn'thave to know what it did, or why it did it. It just worked. Dos, on ibm compats was what? Swithc to drive A: Type in long ass command A:/load game name here and it had to be friggin perfect. Way to complicated for an average kid. I hobbled through it, but in comparrison to the C64, I friggin hated IBM type computers.

 

Your also right that most parrents just buy computers for email and ebay. Heck, thanks to it's next to uselessness in the gameing field, that's all I use the computer for anymore.

 

 

I think that built in hard drives changed to shape of computers, from the one box type to the desktop computers that most of us use today. I suppose laptop computers are the closest thing we have to a one box home computer. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody made one without the screen so it could be used with a plasma screen or external monitor.

 

Actually, to my knowledge, most laptops have hookups for external monitors. The one i'm useing currently for example. But I hear what you are saying. I mean, the expense in a laptop is the screen after all. You want anything else for a laptop, you'll pay through the nose, but if the screen goes bad, it's simply not worth getting it replaced as it costs as much as the computer almost.

 

In one trade mag I did see what MRB described... it was a computer, w/ cd rom and all, tucked under a keyboard. In practice it looked a lot like a C=64! Not much in sales though, I think it was mostly meant for certain retail settings.

 

You also see the idea with Media PCs, ones kind of meant to be plugged into a big HD TV, but without the integrated keyboard. I don't think its been setting the world on fire either.

 

Actually I think there's a stronger trend toward tucking the PC stuff behind the screen in a desktop setting... Apples done this 3 different ways w/ the iMac, and I've seen some PCs following the lead. (I remember seeing one w/ a super crappy laptopish screen back in the late 90s)

 

That said... laptops are a lot more fun.

 

 

 

What I want, is a true game computer again. I don't mind the cost to much, a good com puter is under $500 anyways. What I want is standardization. Give me a computer that's just like the neighbors, and have games programmed from the ground up to use that, and only that machines specs. Bring back the gameing computer.

Eh. That's kind of what PS3 and Xbox 360 want to be. But I think, say web-browsing and console style game playing will never really meet.

 

Cool, I'd have to look for one of those. And that one you described (with the crappy LCD) perhaps that was E machine, or MSN Companion (I actually have one of those, to bad it was useless when the service was canned, I unfortunately got one of the non modable ones or I'd probably still use it)

 

That link shows exactly how many computers were sold from 1975-2002. The C64, Apple II, and Atari 8-bits are all included. If you combine all their market shares together, you won't even scratch the surface of the sales that the PC experienced in the 90's.

 

Try looking at Game Systems if you really think that's a factor. The NES alone probably sold more consoles in it's life than all previous consoles combined. It's not that the things ere less fun or anything. It's just that the market was a lot newer, and there simply wasn't as many people into it yet.

 

Controllers

 

Keyboard controllers suck, and I can't ever seem to get my joystick to work. That is one reason I don't play PC games.

You've never played any RTS or FPS games on a PC then. Keyboard/Mouse controls are the way to go on those games. I even use them on platformers such as Beyond Good and Evil and Rayman 2 on the PC. As far as using a joystick/gamepad on a PC, USB pads have always worked for me.

 

Actually, everybody has their own preferences in playing. I'll take controllers over a keyboard in FPS any time. RTS...I can go either way, but controllers are slightly prefered as it has all the keys you use easily accessable. But what I don't like, is not a single computer game makes good use of the perfect console style controllers that are available. Morrowind could use a controller, but you still were fucked into useing the keyboard and mouse due to how faulty it was (you couldn'te even fully controll your charactures walking with two analog sticks...WTF) I even got Halo, and what was done prefectly on X-box (with the same number of buttons) isn't possible on a controller on the computer. Not because it can't be done (x-box already proved that years earlier) but because the controll set up was set up half assed. Example, you cannot have 'enter vehicle' and 'load weapon' set to the same key, a perfect working setup on the console, but impossible (without a patch, that as far as I know, doesn't exist) on the computer.

 

I don't mind people like their keyboard and mouse. I mind that I'm fucked into useing it becuase game makers make the asumption that that is the best (or only) way to play the game.

 

Other than mass problems with incompatible (put part here) this is one of the major reasons I don't play computer games.

 

Oh, and what the FUCK is with a computer haveing to have 2 or 10 times the specs of my console, to half ass a game? (I don't mean run it at it's best, I mean to run it at all, look at the specks for Halo 2 on PC or Oblivion for examples)

[MCHufnagel]

Oblivion looks and feels so much better on a high end PC than on the Xbox 360. I will agree with you on Halo 2 though. MS just wants to use it to help push Vista as a gaming OS. If the original Halo can run on a slower Pentium 4, Halo 2 could have also. They weren't that much different.

 

Everyone has their preference in controls. I feel right at home using the Gamecube and Xbox style controllers for FPS. But to me the Keyboard/Mouse controls feel more precise.

[Video]

Oblivion looks and feels so much better on a high end PC than on the Xbox 360. I will agree with you on Halo 2 though. MS just wants to use it to help push Vista as a gaming OS. If the original Halo can run on a slower Pentium 4, Halo 2 could have also. They weren't that much different.

 

Everyone has their preference in controls. I feel right at home using the Gamecube and Xbox style controllers for FPS. But to me the Keyboard/Mouse controls feel more precise.

 

Yeah, what I mean is, to get it to run at all, you have to have so much more spec wise than the consoles. But they do have the advantage of being able to look better (once you get the bugs ironed out) If nothing else, just due to the higher resolutino monitors.

 

I still wonder why nobody has made a PS style pad with a thumb ball in one of the stick positions. Seems to me that might bee a good span between the accuracy of a mouse, and convienance of a controller to me. Now watch the links come

[rockman_x_2002]

I think there are two computer eras. First, the 8-bits (including the C64, TRS-80, etc.). Then we have computers as we know them today, the traditional PC (and I include Macs here).

 

The first flourish was never exactly killed off. It simply died a natural death due to various circumstances involving the Crash, Tramiel, Commodore, price wars, and the rise in popularity of the NES and gaming consoles in general, among other events that have been mentioned previously.

 

PC gaming as we know it today was slow to pick up. By the time Apogee, Epic Megagames, and other Shareware publishers came out we started seeing PC games that could actually do things that consoles were doing (or fairly close). When Doom came out, PC gaming eclipsed consoles and we saw a gradual rise in popularity in PCs for games that consoles just couldn't do (mainly because the SNES just couldn't do FPSes the way PCs could). Console gaming remained popular, too, of course. Console and PC gaming grew together and evolved.

 

Today, though, I think the reason that current PC gaming has waned a bit is because computers are complex, expensive creatures that need feeding from time to time, while game consoles don't. Earlier PCs avoided the problem. Occasionally one might need to buy additional RAM. Sometimes an upgrade in your CPU (if yours wasn't welded to the motherboard like mine was). A sound card, modem, or an upgrade in your video card perhaps. But nothing too major. Most games would run happily enough and weren't too terribly picky about the particular hardware used. They would just run better on some hardware than others.

 

Today's PCs however are quite different. Games being released now pretty much require top-of-the-line, piggy-bank-busting hardware and OSes (which I would say around here, 97% of typical computer users do not have, have little interest in buying, and if they were interested they probably couldn't afford it). Upgrading video cards, sound cards, hard drives, and optical drives relatively easy, but there is no guarantee that a game will work even with the new hardware. If critical parts require an upgrade (CPU, RAM, etc.), then it becomes an ordeal. If you need to upgrade a CPU today, you have to choose your brand (Intel or AMD). Then you have to choose the type of CPU you want (single-core, dual-core, quad-core, etc.), and its speed (which may or may not be easily discerned anymore since you can't go by straight processing speed in GHz). After picking a CPU, you then need to check to see if that CPU will fit your motherboard (and more likely than not, it will not). This means potentially (and probably) buying a whole new motherboard. After that, the RAM from your old motherboard may or may not fit in the new one. And even if it does, you might need more. So then you have the task of figuring out what type of RAM your motherboard can support (DDR? DDR2? SDRAM? Dual channel? How fast? etc.) Oh and now that "Vista Only" games are out, if you have XP, it's time to shell out $150 for Vista too.

 

Pretty much, if you need to upgrade your CPU, you're going to be buying a new motherboard and RAM. The cost will typically be so high then that you might just as well buy a whole new PC anyway (which indirectly, you're doing).

 

Or, you could buy a console and be guaranteed the games you buy will work out-of-the-box.

 

This scenario is what the average gaming consumer will weigh. Once they see the complexity in always keeping a PC up to date and gaming-capable (which a lot of casual computer users aren't going to fully understand), most of the time they're going to buy a console because they simply don't want to fool with something that complex, even if it does mean better graphics.

 

So that's my gripe with PC gaming these days though. It requires top of the line stuff. It's a lot to keep up with, confusing if you go about buying and putting together your own rig, not exactly easy to fully understand (and I'm a computer science student, for goodness' sake!), and exponentially more expensive to keep up a decent gaming rig. Plus, by "next month", it's already outdated. It's a fight you can simply not win in the PC world thanks to hardware advances and the software that requires them. But with a console, you're guaranteed at least five to seven years of compatible software that won't fuss at you or give you funny error messages. It'll just simply work.

 

PC gaming isn't dead today. It's just locked away in the closet in favor of something easier to manage.

Edited June 24, 2007 by rockman_x_2002

[kisrael]

Decent post there rockman!

 

Thinking about the early shareware reminds me of that history of DOOM book, and how excited they were simply to be able to get Super Mario like scrolling...

 

http://rome.ro/games_ddici.htm

 

Also, consoles have been hooking up to TVs, and it can be more comfortable to play on a couch, especially split screen games. Plus console games tend to be reliably polished.

[Shannon]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Vista will probably finish off PC gaming. With the specs requires just to even run Vista and the added cost of Vista itself it just wont be worth it.

 

There are still alot of XP and older machines out there and alot of people are not gonna wanna have to be bothered with upgrading their machines. In addition to having to turn around and buy upgraded Apps to get their older software working, etc.

[ninjarabbit]

Rockman hit the nail on the head

 

 

What I think is going to happen is the near death of hardcore gaming on the PC, especially now that consoles have the hard drives that match a low end computer. Casual gaming will still exist on it thanks to women in their 40's and 50's (like my mom) who like to play parlor games. However though I feel that the hardcore market will go towards the consoles for the reasons Rockman has stated with the occasional spikes from the FPS-of-the-month or RTS-of-the-month like Starcraft 2.

[kisrael]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Vista will probably finish off PC gaming. With the specs requires just to even run Vista and the added cost of Vista itself it just wont be worth it.

 

The other side of that is, could it be that Vista is what urges some people to upgrade their hardware?

 

Eh, the # of people who need Vista and the hardcore segment probably don't overlap too much, so maybe not. I mean, I'm sure Vista will become the default standard as the years wear on, and the hardware will continue to improve, but still.

[jbanes]

Try looking at Game Systems if you really think that's a factor. The NES alone probably sold more consoles in it's life than all previous consoles combined.

It's actually pretty close to a tie. 40 million for the 2600 + 6 million Colecovisions + 11 million Intellivisions (IIRC) + a few more million for consoles I don't have figures for.

 

In any case, it's irrelevent to my point. The PC absolutely creamed the sales of previous microcomputers once gaming hardware like VGA and soundblaster became readily available. This is in direct opposition to spacecadet's point that the lack of a simple cart slot was hurting it.

 

 

Console and PC gaming grew together and evolved.

I agree.

 

Today, though, I think the reason that current PC gaming has waned a bit is because computers are complex, expensive creatures that need feeding from time to time, while game consoles don't. Earlier PCs avoided the problem. Occasionally one might need to buy additional RAM. Sometimes an upgrade in your CPU (if yours wasn't welded to the motherboard like mine was). A sound card, modem, or an upgrade in your video card perhaps. But nothing too major. Most games would run happily enough and weren't too terribly picky about the particular hardware used. They would just run better on some hardware than others.

 

Today's PCs however are quite different. Games being released now pretty much require top-of-the-line, piggy-bank-busting hardware and OSes (which I would say around here, 97% of typical computer users do not have, have little interest in buying, and if they were interested they probably couldn't afford it). Upgrading video cards, sound cards, hard drives, and optical drives relatively easy, but there is no guarantee that a game will work even with the new hardware. If critical parts require an upgrade (CPU, RAM, etc.), then it becomes an ordeal. If you need to upgrade a CPU today, you have to choose your brand (Intel or AMD). Then you have to choose the type of CPU you want (single-core, dual-core, quad-core, etc.), and its speed (which may or may not be easily discerned anymore since you can't go by straight processing speed in GHz). After picking a CPU, you then need to check to see if that CPU will fit your motherboard (and more likely than not, it will not). This means potentially (and probably) buying a whole new motherboard. After that, the RAM from your old motherboard may or may not fit in the new one. And even if it does, you might need more. So then you have the task of figuring out what type of RAM your motherboard can support (DDR? DDR2? SDRAM? Dual channel? How fast? etc.) Oh and now that "Vista Only" games are out, if you have XP, it's time to shell out $150 for Vista too.

This, however, is pretty much the exact opposite of reality. PC games in the 90's required constant upgrades. Want to play Wing Commander? Oh, you need a new PC. Want to hear the digital speech packs in your favorite game? Need a Sound Blaster. Want to play Want to play Doom? Need more RAM. Want to play WC3? Need a faster processor. Want to play C&C with friends? Need a faster modem.

 

It's just not the same anymore. The GeForce 2 line was well supported for 6 or 7 years. I know, because I gamed on it for about that long using a simple PIII 733MHz machine with 512MB of RAM. I only replaced my PC because it died for reasons unknown. The trend I noticed in the market was that the game producers were looking to catch the largest market possible and were thus squemish about updating to engines that would exclude a large portion of the market. You could often get better graphics with an update, but it's not like a game became unplayable. Witness the 8 year lifespan of the Quake III engine.

 

The only reason why it might seem like there's a sudden need to upgrade is because all the game studios are moving to the Doom 3/UT3 engines. The embracement of these engines coincides with the next upgrade cycle for PCs; only about 2 to 3 years after the "normal" 3-year upgrade cycle experienced between 1990 and 2000.

 

Pretty much, if you need to upgrade your CPU, you're going to be buying a new motherboard and RAM. The cost will typically be so high then that you might just as well buy a whole new PC anyway (which indirectly, you're doing).

This has always been true. The people who upgraded with Cyrix and AMD CPUs were getting ripped off. The performance difference was not so great as to be worth the hundreds of dollars they spent on the upgrade. In most cases they ended up sinking hundreds of dollars more into upgrading the memory/video card/modem/CPU/hard drive/sound card/etc. in an old machine than they would have spent if they had simply saved up and bought a new machine when it was needed.

Edited June 25, 2007 by jbanes

[Shannon]

My memory may be a bit fuzzy but for a while there my PC gaming rig lasted a bit with just a P2 350mhz and voodoo blaster card.

[Flojomojo]

Great topic.

 

Short answer: PC games have become hit-driven, to the point where no one bothers with a Windows release unless it's a safe bet: either cheap to produce (Soduku) or a sure thing (World of Warcraft).

 

Long answer:

 

I think everyone's story will be a little different -- I didn't have a proper home computer until college, when I had a Mac (which had its share of games, just not flashy arcade titles). When I got out and got a real job in the early/mid 1990s, I wanted Doom, Wing Commander, and X-Wing, none of which were on the Mac at that time. It was an exciting time -- the SoundBlaster was becoming the standard sound card, and CDs were just taking off. I loved buying PC Gamer magazines for their coverdiscs full of interesting demos, many of which didn't work right the first time and needed lots of tweaking.

 

On the PC side:

Soundblaster made the PC the platform of choice

3DFX cards made it pretty

Windows made it easy to use, handling installations and drivers

the Internet made it connected to the rest of the world, and made computers more useful for everyone.

The machines we use today aren't too different from a state-of-the-art desktop PC in 1995 used by most office workers.

 

On the console side, the software train really got rolling, with console titles outnumbering PC releases by a large number:

the SNES and Genesis were fading away

the Playstation was cheap, 3D, and accessible --- and had hundreds of unique software titles

the N64 was the price of a Voodoo card and had one-of-a-kind games

the Saturn was a high-end arcade at home, though many good titles stayed in Japan

the Dreamcast was even better

the PS2 added a DVD drive and lots more Japanese games

the XBOX added online community and Microsoft's muscle (thereby hurting some Windows games)

the latest generation is more online than ever, and the steady stream of releases on all platforms (including powerful portables) makes importing largely unnecessary.

 

The PC gaming scene in 1995 was so dynamic -- 3D, full-motion video, simulations, interactive movies, adventure games, puzzles, more. Now I flip through this rag I get for free called "Games for Windows" that always has some army guy on the cover, and everything inside is multi-million-dollar photorealistic military-type stuff. They talk about the online games like WoW a little, but everyone knows that there's no money to be made in that space. The whole thing has about 30 pages of content, and nothing of interest to a casual player.

 

The console scene, in contrast, has never looked better. There's the same hyper-realistic shooty stuff that I don't want, but there's also a strong Japanese influence, music games, casual games (wii and XBLA are my faves!), portable games that anyone can play, demos, and more.