PC Vs Console Gaming Part 2

Despite these features that clearly help console gaming dominate a large section of the gaming industry PCs hold their own in 2 main departments. Primarily, despite the efforts of Sony to produce a PC like console, PCs have a greater hard drive capacity which many big games rely on, especially MMORPGs like WOW, Age of Conan and Oblivion, and where a console version exists in the case of the latter 2 it tends to be in a watered down version. Secondly, the control abilities with PCs are yet to be matched by a console unit. Aiming (i.e. shooting) and strategy games remain easier and better to play on a PC, giving it a distinct advantage in several fields.
Despite the seemingly short list of advantages for PCs, this is just looking at what might be called "High Street Gaming", i.e. mainstream titles for the average gamer. There are a number of areas within the gaming industry that are as good, if not better or even unavailable, with consoles.

Despite the excellent online options with all 3 consoles, PC gaming remains the method of choice for many serious online gamers. eSports clans surrounding games like Counterstrike are outfits leading the world in professional game playing. At a lower level the numbers logging on and playing with Steam stand at an average of 2,834,131 a month with 15 million Valve users in total. With online and network games remaining such a strong part of PC gaming, it really is hard to justify it as dying. Add in to the online gaming numbers the legions (over a million reportedly) playing WOW and other MMOs on a regular basis and PC gaming looks generally healthy. WOW is particularly important as, at $15 a month, it provides Blizzard with a revenue stream other companies could only dream of and increases the revenue of PC gaming in general massively.

The other end of the scale too, casual gamers (those who like an hour or two at a free arcade site or playing bejewelled) is dominated by the PC. Casual PC gaming put $1.7 billion into the PC gaming industry in 2007 and so cannot be ignored. Though perhaps not exactly casual games, but certainly arguably in the same ball-park, there's also the life-style and life-choice games such as Second Life and Eve that are almost exclusively dominated by PCs. A bourgeoning area of what I will continue to name gaming, although can arguably also be categorised as some kind of web 2.0, socialising, community based activity, is not only a big money maker for PC g
gaming but also a growing one.

While casual gaming, both free and subscription/download, is the domain of PC gaming, so is the gambling and skill gaming market. Online casinos, poker, bingo, skill games, bookies and so on are almost exclusively seen on the PC as opposed to consoles and remain an element of the games market that will be hard if not impossible to be infiltrated.

We have seen relatively recently games available for download on the 360 and PS3 but this remains an amazingly strong element of PC gaming. Metaboli are undoubtedly a market leader in this with a large site of their own and powering various other white label versions. Similarly, Valve sell their games via download to their 15 million users. The game download industry then remains dominated by the PC and with Valve posting growth of 158% on their sales and a PC download market valued at $1.9 billion worldwide it must be seen as a growing and healthy element of PC gaming.

So we can see that while the big chunk of gaming, the middle "High Street Gaming" business is currently being dominated, though of course not exclusively, by consoles PCs remain strong in some areas of traditional gaming as well as dominate serious/clan/eSports gaming, life-style and life-choice gaming as well as casual gaming. Rather than see PC gaming as a dying breed we should see it as evolving into something different with different areas of strength and evolving industries, notably game downloads, skill gaming, eSports, casual gaming, MMOs, life-style/life-choice gaming as well as still being dominant in Indie Games development. What we shouldn't be doing any more is looking to identify the strength of PC gaming simply through unit sales, as the industry is now far too complex for such a blunt tool.