Valve: PC Gaming Not Dying

Look anywhere on the net, like here, and you will undoubtedly find people ranting about how PC gaming is dead and that consoles are the future. While it is unfortunate that many developers are making games for console, and then simply porting the game to the PC to make some of the worst PC games possible, there is still hope in PC Gaming with developers like Valve who see value in the community rather than an easy dollar in consoles.

If you look properly you'll find that PC game sales are even, if not bigger, than all of the next-gen consoles. "We sort of laugh at it," says Valve's Doug Lombardi. "Because we've been wildly successful--we're very fortunate, you know. Our games have all done really, really well, Steam has taken off and become this whole other business for us, Valve has never been in better shape--and yet everybody is talking about how in the PC world, the sky is falling."

For me, console gaming will be nothing more than clumsy joystick controls, toned down graphics at 25 frames per second, and 13 year old kids playing Call of Duty 4 on their xbox live screaming at the top of their lungs. These reasons are why I will always stick to PC gaming, and I will consider the console a red headed step child.

PC Gamers Hate Vista

Possibly Vista's biggest selling point to the PC Gaming market is the fact that Vista is the only way for users to get DirectX 10, and to play games in their beautiful DX10 glory. Its abundantly clear that games such as Crysis and many Next-Gen games coming out will benefit from the DX 10 upgrade. However, current statistics show that this graphical upgrade hasn't been enough to shift the PC Gamers towards Vista.

Currently there is no way to play DirectX 10 on Windows XP, and the only way to get the best possible gaming experience would be to upgrade to Vista If you are unfamiliar with the differences between DX9 and DX10, see here for a video comparing the two. However, this difference hasn't been a big enough to push many gamers into upgrading to Vista. The statistics from Valve show that less than 15% of users are using Windows Vista, with over 80% of users running Windows XP.

Another poll shows the exact same information, that many users don't see the need to upgrade to Vista right now. Perhaps once a truly great game comes out that is compatible with DX10, we will see the market shift towards Vista.