Path: ...!local-4.nntp.ord.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-2.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 15:40:50 +0000 From: Spalls Hurgenson Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Subject: Not bad for a dead platform... Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2025 10:40:51 -0500 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 44 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-kIclCnGWKn/7j12QD6EX7JPYVu13xn2VRzjrphmDOLV2Kbb4taB2y224D0SexADytB9FdTZD4lNikjI!JQDJaDA6tkDMucDCH2K9ff8/qC6NlSDuPHK7puSqDyWsQ15NWxOAqpP+l+iwOhj2yfej1BaO X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 2888 A GDC survey* now indicates that 80% of developers are now making games for PC. That's twice the total working on PS5 or XBox games. (no indications on how many are working on mobile, though). PC is now, according to GDC, "the dominant platform" Whether the survey is actually indicative of the actual state of game development or not (I've no reason to doubt the numbers, but I'm not sure of the conclusions), it does cast a favorable light on PC gaming. Just ten years ago, many publishers, publications and gamers were sneering at the PC. It was a dying platform, they said. It was buggy, expensive, rampant with piracy and generally unable to provide games what they wanted or needed. We were told it probably would soon go the way of the Amiga. If a developer wanted to make a living, they needed to abandon the PC and focus on consoles. It was, of course, a ridiculous argument (so long as people need a PC for work, they're going to also want to play games on the system) but that was a commonly held belief. Yet here we are; the 'dominant platform'. Pretty good for something on its (reported) deathbed just a few years back. In fact, now it's the XBox and other consoles which are on the backfoot. Their libraries are increasingly dependent on the munificence of Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo, and its debatable how long that can last (Microsoft increasingly is backing away from that sort of funding). Maybe it's consoles that are dying? They aren't, of course, not anymore than the PC was. Nor should the news of PC being on top be taken for granted. Today the PC is most popular; tomorrow it might be something else. But I get a smile at this turn-around. Suck it, Cliff Bleszinski; we're still here! ;-) * Don't you like links? I like links: https://gdconf.com/news/gdc-2025-state-game-industry-devs-weigh-layoffs-ai-and-more