I agree with him overall, but why wouldn't Portal run great on a three year old machine ? I still uses the 6-7 (?) year old Source Engine. The surprise would be if it didn't run great.

There's one thing I don't agree with him and it's a major one. If it wasn't for games like Crysis, which was certainly one of the games he targeted with his remarks, we would still be at the GeForce 2 MX days. So, Valve, please do understand this simple fact and stop being so self-righteous.

So gamestop releases some numbers today up 61% year over year this quarter. This when the economy is bad. They for the most part dont sell PC games, unless you look at bottom shelf in one corner behind the trash can.

Valve is doing great because PC gamers are being forced to get games from them, or Walmart. Even at Best buy the PC game section is nothing compared to the rows of console games.

PC gaming is not dead, its just stuck at about 900million a year in sales which is great from where I sit, but it pales in comparison to the 17 billion in console game sales.

What is Valve going to say "Well its not really growing over all and its nothing compared to console game sales. However we are getting more cash because its harder to find PC games on store shelves".

No they are going to spin what positive there is in the PC gaming environment. All the time wishing they had the just half the sales of GTA, GHIII, COD4 and Halo on consoles.

Greetings!

PC gaming, as an activity, is alive and well.
Whats is lacking, in comparison to consoles, is the PC games sales.

The piracy rate in the PC platform is brutal and is scaring developers to more profitable platforms, consoles.
Or, in the case of Mass Effect and Spore, to ineffective and draconian DRM measures. Online verifications and, particularly, limited installs make me not buy games I otherwise would.

Why would I buy a game that is only good for three installs?
A game that prevents me from upgrading my system at will without being worried on it detecting the upgraded PC as a new machine and equate it to a new install?

I like to refer back to historical PC death references.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.programmer/browse_thread/t...

The "great" debate has always been a hot topic. Hey, as far as we know, the PC's best years are yet to come. These guys didn't know what was coming, that's for sure.

Damm, the flames are strong here.

Valve is just playing it smart to keep afloat for now. Notice how Source engine isn't exactly the most demanding engine nor Value's games depend heavily on eye candy and other gimmicks to sale? They are using an ingredient that other PC publishers seemed to have forgotten about. It is called "gameplay".

BTW, there is a huge distinction between dying and being marginalized. Outside of Valve and MMORPGs, PC gaming isn't looking that sharp.

In response to #28: You're missing out. Ep2 was awesome compared to Ep1. Almost HL2 awesome.

I hope PC gaming doesn't go away. I absolutely love Steam and PC gaming. However, I've sworn off PC gaming for now because I have two young kids and simply don't have time to keep up with updating hardware, tweaking, installing drivers, etc. I have a Xbox 360 and a PS3. For the first time I truly believe consoles are on an equal playing field with PC's in terms of functionality (Media related) and graphics. I don't miss PC gaming at all. I got the Orange Box for the Xbox 360 and I've played through Half Life 2 twice now and the experience was just as good as it was on the PC.

But, I do believe when my kids get older and I more time on my hands (read: when I am not waking up 3 times a night to be with crying babies!) I'll build another gaming PC. But really that's probably 5 years off, maybe more.

I still fire up Steam on my Macbook through Boot Camp to play some older PC games like Quake, Doom, etc.

The most vociferous here seem blinded by or inextricably attached to extant tech paradigms. Gaming platforms will continue to evolve and skillful devs/pubs will adapt or die. I think Valve are capable of changing with the times.

Lombardi is proselytizing and nothing more — just like Newell and other industry bigwigs (Bleszinski, Wardell, Miyamoto, Moore, Molyneux, etc come to mind as folk who have ranted about various platform schisms).

I see no point in discussing this stuff from a consumer-centric PoV. In the short term nothing changes, and in the long term we all buy new hardware anyway. Welcome to the 21st century.

Where it is interesting is when looking at the issues developers see as a result of tech shifts, but managers & corporate officers never talk about such pertinent, pithy issues in anything but extremely low-level terms because they generally know jack-sh*t about the nuts & bolts of development. It's never, "so how has the devkit transition or development environment alteration affected your work?" It's always, "yeah, here are some NPD numbers taken out of context to support my flimsy and unimportant assertions."

Ho-hum.

BTW, there is a huge distinction between dying and being marginalized. Outside of Valve and MMORPGs, PC gaming isn't looking that sharp.

Huh?

It's still the most widely-used platform. Just because Crysis didn't outsell The Sims doesn't mean PC gaming is passe.

I haven't been able to upload my statistics for a while now ..

Also, PC gaming isn't dead. It's dead to companies that only make a single player game, because that is easy to torrent. If you put effort into a multiplayer game (and thus extend playability), CD-key authentication can thwart piracy due to having a limit number of valid keys, and then you get people buying your game.

Single player only games will suffer from pirates, through and through.

I hope Valve abandons HL for a while. The episodes, while nice, pretty much exhausted me on the HL universe [permanently?]

PC Gaming! Dying since 198x!!!

*waits for Krogoth or the like to come in and spin this into a 'PC gaming is STILL dying...its just taking a while...' rant*

I must say... i do find Valves hardware statistics to be fascinating. Kinda neat to see what other people are running in their computers. At least to me anyways.