PC as a game console

Some people may have noticed that I did not mention the PC as a game console. The PC has quite a number of games for it, but suffers from one major problem: too much hardware variation. When you are developing a game for a console, you know exactly what hardware is available and what the limits of the system are. With a PC, every single model has different specs and their are many new models every month. If you add custom built machines to that mix, well, it is a nightmare. Sure, theirs the minimum hardware requirements stickers on the boxes, but only geeks (like me) can understand those.

The worst part of PC gaming is the simple fact that most machines do not come with adequate video cards for handling high end games. In order to play the latest and greatest games on your new PC, you either have to buy a premium model or upgrade your video card. A high end video card will set you back the same amount as it would cost you to buy an entire game console.

Another major factor going against the PC as a game platform is the piracy issue. While it is possible to pirate games on any of the consoles out there, it is non-trivial. PC game piracy, on the other hand, just requires knowledge of where to download the cracked versions of games from. As a result, piracy is very high so a lot of game developers are moving away from PC development. With consoles starting to let more independent developers develop for their systems, even indies will start to move away from the PC platform since people even pirate indie games.

Gatekeepers

The big problem with game consoles is that there are too many of them. While I have heard many people say that there should only be one game console, this is not likely to ever happen, and people who keep touting this idea are obviously too young to remember 3D0. The 3D0 was a game console that would be licensed to other manufacturers. In other words, anybody who wanted to make the console could do so as long as they paid their licensing fees, sort of like Blu-ray. The problem is that the game console makers made their money off of licensing the rights to make games so were willing to take a per-unit loss on manufacturing their machines so the cost of the 3D0 machine was significantly higher then it's competitors. It failed in the marketplace.

The thing is that money isn't made off of the machines themselves, the money in the game console industry is made by being the gatekeeper. In order for me to make a game for the XBox 360, PS3, or Wii I have to pay a fee to Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo. In other words, the company controlling the console acts like a gatekeeper. The same thing applies to many other industries. For instance, the Java vs Flash/Flex vs .net/Silverlight battle is about controlling the format used for the future of interactive web content. Thankfully, in this war there is no per unit licensing fees (otherwise Blazing Games would not exist) but is about the sale of tools for working with that format.

The point being that as long as there is a lot of money to be made by being the gatekeeper, companies are going to be willing to take a loss as the potential long term gains outweigh the short-term losses. Consumers make this problem worse because they don't care about standards so choose to purchase the gatekeeper's offerings.