It's a statistical false negative.
First of all, the overall share of the market is dropping, but sales volume and income for PC game publishers is steadily rising.
Secondly, the PC controls more of the market than it's two actual competitors. Because over 60% of the console market is the Wii, which is not a competitor.
People who don't know how to read statistics preach doom and gloom, yet PC gaming is still on top of the world and growing.
People who dont know the backgrounds preach sugar and spice.
Major publishers took a hammering in 2009, many lost their jobs, and im not talking a few im talking hundreds.
The only publisher to have made a profit at the end of the year on the PC market, after a terrible start, was EA for Dragon Age: Origins.
Their income from that exceeded Sims 3 and Spore put together.
Dunno what sales volume and income for the PC market you were looking at, because it was not pretty last year for a lot of companies.
How many companies went bankrupt or were bought by rivals due to poor sales etc? Time to do some homework.
Ive said this and I will always say this, when they made broadband cheap the kids came to play, and the kids think everything on the net should be free. But woe-be-tide the people who ask them for something for free! The blasphemy of it all!
What you don't get sir, is that not every pirated copy is a lost sale.
Quite the opposite. If a game has no demo or a demo with the quality of a pre-release alpha, some may download a game and try it out before buying. If it's worth buying, it is purchased by anyone with a shred of integrity. If not, it's not like they would get a sale out of that person anyway.
I trust Dhampy's word on it not only because he's well learned, but because he has the nerve to post while drunk and still look smart while doing it. Plus he does actual research.
The ONLY reason Piracy is ever blamed for the fall of PC gaming is because it gives developers an excuse to shaft PC gamers and develop more console-centric games with less than half the effort put into story, gameplay, and overall quality. It takes a LOT of work to optimize a game for PC, scale the graphics settings, add in the menus, integrate mouse+Keyboard support, etc.
They'd rather use an excuse not to make PC titles and focus on the easier path to making money, as all the graphics and controls are limited and capped on consoles.
I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more PC centric titles and good ports in late 2010 and 2011.
Let me explain something, you may consider what I know about this subject. Has yourself or Dhampy ever used a ring-0 debugger to dump an executable by forcing a protection to unwrap a binary completely, find the original OEP, fix the header and rebuilt so a cd-check can be removed?
And lets not use one of the age old excuses for warez users, sure the publisher/developer didnt gain money from hardcore warez users, but they lost a potential sale in them and not to mention they are stealing. No matter how many excuses are used. I have heard them all since the 80's.
And I wish people would stop calling warez users pirates, they are not pirates, Piracy is the act of selling illegally gained software not the downloading of it. Something that people are quick to forget for the past 20+ yrs. I guess pirates sounds more fun than warez user.
And please dont try to tell me whats involved in game development, I have knowledge of DirectX API programming that would send you spinning on the spot which would make you feel like you were 5 year old when you stopped spinning.
And news flash, Console games are developed on PC systems under a different kernel. Just so you know. Yes consoles are specific hardware, this does not mean its easier for game development on consoles than PC. That is a myth.
Because over 60% of the console market is the Wii, which is not a competitor.
Then why are Sony and Microsoft so dead set on adding more motion control gimmicks to their games?
It's because they're trying to cash in on the casual market that Nintendo has dominated with the Wii.