Quote:
Originally Posted by psicodude
I agree with yoru post, but I am not sure what WoW has to do with it. I mean, you can play WoW quite well on a 3 year old computer. The only thing hurting PC gaming is the ease of consoles. For average Joe, it's completely no brainer.
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Yeah, sorry. Kinda mixed two arguments there.
WoW has had a big impact on the PC Games market in two distinct ways:
- You can play it for 3 years straight and still experience new content. Other games are designed to last for a set number actual play hours (20-80). This allows room in most peoples lives to buy new games every now and then. WoW on the other hand is addictive and is constantly updated with new stuff. Most people don't have time to play anything but WoW.
- I think it was the president of EA who once claimed that it would take about 1 billion dollars to develop a contender to WoW. That's how much of a lock on the market it has (partially due to being able to be played on the average home PC/Mac). That's a huge initial investment in what is essentially a big gambit. Not exactly a fun thing to try to compete against.
The gaming industry is likely going to shift away from big 30+ hour games and start to deliver more episodic content. If this model takes off, I think Valve probably has the best PC method to handle it currently (Steam). Otherwise, Xbox Live and the PS3 online service are built for it and will become the de-facto distribution method for future game developers.