It seems like barely a month goes by without someone making an apocalyptic prediction about the state of gaming in some form or another. Sometimes its to do with the death of a genre, sometimes its more to do with the lack of innovation in the games market. Today; the death of PC gaming as a whole.
At the Nvidia GeForce LAN 4 Event in California at the moment, spokespersons from Nvidia, Microsoft, EA and Crytek are discussing the future of PC gaming and trying to ensure market growth.
In recent years consoles have taken up a massive part of the gaming market thanks to the ability to appeal to casual and hardcore gamers whilst also retaining a fixed price and a more secure shelf-life. PC gaming meanwhile has been in decline, with NPD statistics showing the total sales in the market falling significantly from $1.5 Billion to $970 Million between 2001 and 2006. Even Bill Gates would notice dropping that much change.
Roy Taylor, VP of content relations at Nvidia and to whom we chatted not long ago, told Next-Gen.biz that the industry has so far combated next-gen consoles by focusing on the PC's ability to create increasingly hi-tech games like Crysis.
However, this could backfire on the market in the end. Roy noted how even top-end PCs can struggle with Crysis at the moment, forcing more users to upgrade.
"Something needs to be done so a person buying a PC at Wal-Mart could be a PC gamer too," said Randy Stude, director of Intel's gaming platform office. Unsurprisingly, he thinks Intel has the answer though and suggested that more support for Intel's integrated graphics chipsets could be one way to overcome the problem.
What do you think? Is PC gaming dying out or are we just having a bit of a slump? Let us know what you think in the forums.
At the Nvidia GeForce LAN 4 Event in California at the moment, spokespersons from Nvidia, Microsoft, EA and Crytek are discussing the future of PC gaming and trying to ensure market growth.
In recent years consoles have taken up a massive part of the gaming market thanks to the ability to appeal to casual and hardcore gamers whilst also retaining a fixed price and a more secure shelf-life. PC gaming meanwhile has been in decline, with NPD statistics showing the total sales in the market falling significantly from $1.5 Billion to $970 Million between 2001 and 2006. Even Bill Gates would notice dropping that much change.
Roy Taylor, VP of content relations at Nvidia and to whom we chatted not long ago, told Next-Gen.biz that the industry has so far combated next-gen consoles by focusing on the PC's ability to create increasingly hi-tech games like Crysis.
However, this could backfire on the market in the end. Roy noted how even top-end PCs can struggle with Crysis at the moment, forcing more users to upgrade.
"Something needs to be done so a person buying a PC at Wal-Mart could be a PC gamer too," said Randy Stude, director of Intel's gaming platform office. Unsurprisingly, he thinks Intel has the answer though and suggested that more support for Intel's integrated graphics chipsets could be one way to overcome the problem.
What do you think? Is PC gaming dying out or are we just having a bit of a slump? Let us know what you think in the forums.
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