The other day I was looking through some old magazines and old PC Games, most of them from the 90s, I remeber that back in the day consoles and PCs were completly differnet platforms, the PC had a lot of exclusive games and better looking games (sometimes) due to Hardware accelerated graphics, online gaming, internet and many more exclusives. Nowadays it seems like there aren't PC Exclusive games anymore, a lot of modern games that are released on PC are FPS cross platform games and they are usually released after the console versions. It's very sad for me to watch the PC die as an unique platform, but it is true that the amounts of piracy in PC is huge, so I understand the developers about this decision.
I don't think it's because of piracy - there's tons of piracy on consoles too. I think its because well-powered PCs are expensive and therefore not many people can afford them. This means a smaller audience. On the one hand I sort of lament it as well - it was cool when you could be one step ahead of those console jerks. On the other hand, it wasn't that cool having to shell out $2000 every week when your machine became obsolete.
It's both. We've reached a point where a modern consumer isn't WOWed by what the PC can bring now. Crysis on a 3000 dollar machine doesn't look THAT much better than Crysis on PS3. Back in the 90's Quake came out, nothing could compare. Even the Playstation and N64 paled in comparison to Quake. The PC market just moved THAT much faster. It was a huge gap. 3 years after the n64 was released we were on Quake 3. and Quake 3 could NOT be done on the N64. fuck, Quake 3 couldn't even properly be done on the Dreamcast that came out AFTER Quake 3. Now, the gap is SO small that it does NOT seem that big. It's just not worth it to most people. And with less people BUYING the games, and with the ones who are playing, a LOT just pirate the games, the developers are running out of reasons to make them.
If you EVER spend 2000$ on a gaming computer, you are doing it entirely wrong. Hell, you can spend 500$ and have something very, very nice. And Crysis isnt even out on the PS3 Right now, the gap is still there, just the resources to actually SEE that gap is too far at the same time.
I've never spent over 500 but that's because all I play pretty much are HL and Source based games on PC. I was using crysis are just an example. Graphics are what almost always seperated the console and PC guys. But now the gap is not big. It comes down to nit picking at resolutions, frame rates, minor shading differences. If you show average gamer two screen shots one on a 350 dollar xbox 360 of Unreal 3 and Unreal 3 on a more expensive PC. They'd be hard pressed to tell you which looks better
The difference is there. I spent about $800 on a decent gaming rig and even on high(not max) settings Crysis/Crysis Wars blows the PS3s graphical highpoints Uncharted 2 and Killzone right out of the water. The difference to me is ease-of-use. Even though I have a good gaming rig, I still play on console most of the time. It just a pain sometimes to deal with random crashes, drivers, trying to get mods to work, fooling around with settings, DRM, etc.. Most people just want to pop in a disk and get going. Combine that with the higher cost of Pc gaming and its a real turn-off.
Unreal 3 isnt that impressive though, so its not the best benchmark. Crysis looks better, especially examining the details (which admittedly most people don't care about), then any console game, pure pixel-pushing anyway (doesnt mean its a great game though). Let alone a bit of modding...
Aside from the obvious graphical improvements, the biggest thing about PC gaming is the keyboard and mouse.
