The Decline of PC Gaming

*Originally published on 9/24/09


Back in the day, computer games were all the rage. You still had great console games, but the computer seemed to reign supreme. You had greats like the Sim games and Doom. Nowadays though, you don't see as many games released on the PC. Ok, a lot of games get put out, but they are vastly overshadowed by their console counterparts.

If you go on Amazon and look through the video game library, the Xbox, PS3, and Wii games will greatly outnumber the PC games available.

This surprises me a bit. I know consoles have improved drastically in the past few years, but so have computers. Computers also have the added advantage of portability. If you're stuck on a long flight or going on a long drive across the country, you can bring your laptop with you. Some people do bring consoles with them on trips, but that doesn't really help you at the airport, on a plane, or in a carseat. Unless you have either a roomy, or tricked out car, a laptop computer is going to be your primary means of gaming while traveling.

I'd been considering starting to play Fallout 3. It looks like a good game and it would hold me over until the release of either DCUO or The Old Republic. My roommate bought the Xbox 360 version, but if it has the same effect on me that it did on him, I would never leave my room. Having it available on my laptop seems like a good way to bring the game out.

While we're on the topic of MMO's, World of Warcraft has been helpful in keeping PC gaming alive. Most people who play games on their PC's mostly play World of Warcraft.

The controls would be more complicated on PC's. With a console game, you have only so many buttons to work with, whereas with PC games you have a whole keyboard and mouse to handle. In some ways I could see that being an advantage, giving you more options for game play, but it could also get confusing and even overwhelming if every button has a different function.

Gaming seems to be the primary advantage PC's have over Macs, you would think that they would try to push that harder and release games to let gamers take advantage. I tried to load some of my older games on to my computer and that didn't fare so well. Maybe it's just that Vista is hard to code games for. If that is the case, hopefully Windows 7 is more game friendly. I wouldn't mind getting back into PC gaming as I have fond memories of gaming on my computer back in the day.