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

On Fri, 24 Jan 2025 10:40:51 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>But I get a smile at this turn-around. Suck it, Cliff Bleszinski;
>we're still here! ;-)

I haven't really heard that the PC was dying as a gaming platform for
some time now but I do remember when it was a thing. I also know that
some people are now concerned for the future of XBox.

Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Jan 2025 10:40:51 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
> <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

> >But I get a smile at this turn-around. Suck it, Cliff Bleszinski;
> >we're still here! ;-)

> I haven't really heard that the PC was dying as a gaming platform for
> some time now but I do remember when it was a thing. I also know that
> some people are now concerned for the future of XBox.

PCs FTW!
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On 24/01/2025 18:39, Mike S. wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Jan 2025 10:40:51 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
> <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> But I get a smile at this turn-around. Suck it, Cliff Bleszinski;
>> we're still here! ;-)
>
> I haven't really heard that the PC was dying as a gaming platform for
> some time now but I do remember when it was a thing. I also know that
> some people are now concerned for the future of XBox.

It's come and gone over the years and the last time I remember it being
a thing was when the price of GPU's became somewhat silly*, well even
more silly than now, several years ago. That seemed a bit overblown as
yes the prices were frankly stupid but how many games, to the nearest
zero, do I need a £2,000 GPU for. Thankfully the era, if it ever really
existed, of you need a high performance PC to be a 'real' gamer seems to
have died. What will happen in the future, I'm really not sure but the
good thing about confidently predicting it is if you get it right you
can bring it up and say how brilliant you are. If you get it wrong then
just ignore that you ever said it!

As for the XBox, I really don't follow console news but yes there do
seem to be some rumblings that MS are reconsidering the strategy to
focus more on software than hardware.

I was slightly fortunate as I missed the worse of it and bought a
relative cheap and cheerful 1050 OC 4GB for my last system refresh. I
checked after about a year or two just wondering what price it had gone
down to, oh it had gone up in price over something like %60.

On Mon, 27 Jan 2025 08:33:13 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

>As for the XBox, I really don't follow console news but yes there do
>seem to be some rumblings that MS are reconsidering the strategy to
>focus more on software than hardware.
>
All indicators are that, yes, Microsoft is strongly considering giving
up on its console-uber-alles strategy for games. Console sales overall
are dropping, and XBox is doing the worst of them all. Their recent
advertising push has been pushing the idea that "everything is an
Xbox" thanks to its online streaming service. Its not certain if
Microsoft will back out entirely from the console market -its possible
they'll keep the device as a 'premium product' but it seems likely it
won't dominate future strategies like it used to.