Originally posted by loulaki well the future of gaming it seems to go for Linux OS, so Windows are making a strife for tablets it sounds logic ... i miss something ?
I had long been thinking that mobile/tablets were the next big gaming space, and they are growing very fast. There is a lot of contradicting sales data, but the most consistent numbers I could find were Mobile game sales for 2013 around $13B, vs PC game sales for the same year of around $21B (consoles were $15B for comparison, but that was generally a "bad" year for them).
Mobile gaming growth as been double digit since it basically hit the charts in 2008. PC growth has been slow and incremental for a long time now, however it has surged in the last couple of years.
There is also the matter of installed user base. The PS4 and Xbox both are crowing over having sold around single-digit M units world wide for each to date. The Wii U is around 4M. The PS3 and 360 are both just north of 75M units. The original Wii over 100M units.
Those numbers sound impressive. There are lot more PCs in the world, but when you have to take into account hardware diversity - most of those PCs are not "gaming" nor do they have GPUs. Microsoft reportedly sells around 20M windows licenses per ~month~, and has seen incremental growth over several years now (up from around 8M per month in the early days of XP). That doesn't account pirated use - Microsoft estimates that it sells one copy of Windows for every 2 PCs sold, despite Windows running on ~90% of all PCs.
There are a lot of PCs out there. It's estimated around 1.5B PCs are in use around the world.
Now, there aren't quite that many smartphones and tablets out there... yet. But it's growing rapidly whereas the PC is fairly stagnant. These articles estimate that around now, the two installed users bases to be roughly equal, and for mobile devices to explode past PCs by the end of this year.
User base doesn't translate to sales (as console sales numbers show), however it does present opportunity.
That being said, as of late I'm shifting away from my "Mobile is going to be King" stance.
I think the latest generation of consoles has reminded publishers of something - that PC hardware can be much better and is evolving rapidly, and that diversity isn't such a bad thing because competition invariably drives advancement. That PC sales can be significant; piracy is not the boogyman, PCs don't demand licensing fees, and PCs don't inherently take a percentage cut of your revenue. PCs don't delay your releases or patches to undergo a lengthy and expensive validation process, each time you patch. There are a lot of PCs out there, and there are some genres which are absolutely huge right now on the PC that don't exist anywhere else (MOBA, MMO to a lesser extent). PC gamers are willing to put money up front for unfinished titles (Kickstarter, Early Release, Preorders) (I don't really like this trend, but it's definitely there), and that's something that just can't exist on any other platform because of curating/quality control/validation.
We may be due for a PC gaming renaissance. I hope that's true, and not another saturation point and repeat of the 1980's crash. And I also hope this renaissance is not all pixelated "retro" titles (as much as I love indies, 80's-90's sprite graphics sucked and we can do better...).
Originally posted by Rusque This could a nice way to get a small windows tablet and then hook it to a monitor/TV. Obviously not for gaming, but a nice cheap alternative.
This^.
Hopefully we can stream steam games from our PC to the tablet that is connected to the big tv :P.
My opinion is that MS should make a separate OS for portable devices.
To me win8 felt like a multiplatform game, one that makes compromises to work on several platform but feels perfect on none.
I guess I will stay on W7 for a long time...
I think a lot of people are of the same view, myself included. I did try Win 8, back when they were practically giving it away to XP users to get them to 'upgrade' i did buy a copy of it, and gave it a go, but after about 4 months, i went back to using XP again until i managed to get hold of a copy of Win 7/64, and tbh, it is a far superior OS than 8, easier to use, less steps involved in doing the things that you want to do, and for gaming, it is far more stable than 8. So unless MS brings out an OS that actually improves on 7, then i don't see me buying it, and 8 is most definitely not an improvement on 7, on the plus side, because the copy of 7 i have is an OEM version, i don't have to worry about buying new licences etc if i upgrade my current system with a new mobo etc, i think the benefits of building your own systems far outweighs any positives from buying pre-built ones with the software already installed - they always seem to try and foist macafee or norton on you, neither of which are permitted to exist on any system i build
Comments
I had long been thinking that mobile/tablets were the next big gaming space, and they are growing very fast. There is a lot of contradicting sales data, but the most consistent numbers I could find were Mobile game sales for 2013 around $13B, vs PC game sales for the same year of around $21B (consoles were $15B for comparison, but that was generally a "bad" year for them).
Mobile gaming growth as been double digit since it basically hit the charts in 2008. PC growth has been slow and incremental for a long time now, however it has surged in the last couple of years.
There is also the matter of installed user base. The PS4 and Xbox both are crowing over having sold around single-digit M units world wide for each to date. The Wii U is around 4M.
The PS3 and 360 are both just north of 75M units. The original Wii over 100M units.
Those numbers sound impressive. There are lot more PCs in the world, but when you have to take into account hardware diversity - most of those PCs are not "gaming" nor do they have GPUs. Microsoft reportedly sells around 20M windows licenses per ~month~, and has seen incremental growth over several years now (up from around 8M per month in the early days of XP). That doesn't account pirated use - Microsoft estimates that it sells one copy of Windows for every 2 PCs sold, despite Windows running on ~90% of all PCs.
There are a lot of PCs out there. It's estimated around 1.5B PCs are in use around the world.
Now, there aren't quite that many smartphones and tablets out there... yet. But it's growing rapidly whereas the PC is fairly stagnant. These articles estimate that around now, the two installed users bases to be roughly equal, and for mobile devices to explode past PCs by the end of this year.
http://www.businessinsider.com/number-of-smartphones-tablets-pcs-2013-12
http://www.businessinsider.com/smartphone-and-tablet-penetration-2013-10
User base doesn't translate to sales (as console sales numbers show), however it does present opportunity.
That being said, as of late I'm shifting away from my "Mobile is going to be King" stance.
I think the latest generation of consoles has reminded publishers of something - that PC hardware can be much better and is evolving rapidly, and that diversity isn't such a bad thing because competition invariably drives advancement. That PC sales can be significant; piracy is not the boogyman, PCs don't demand licensing fees, and PCs don't inherently take a percentage cut of your revenue. PCs don't delay your releases or patches to undergo a lengthy and expensive validation process, each time you patch. There are a lot of PCs out there, and there are some genres which are absolutely huge right now on the PC that don't exist anywhere else (MOBA, MMO to a lesser extent). PC gamers are willing to put money up front for unfinished titles (Kickstarter, Early Release, Preorders) (I don't really like this trend, but it's definitely there), and that's something that just can't exist on any other platform because of curating/quality control/validation.
We may be due for a PC gaming renaissance. I hope that's true, and not another saturation point and repeat of the 1980's crash. And I also hope this renaissance is not all pixelated "retro" titles (as much as I love indies, 80's-90's sprite graphics sucked and we can do better...).
This^.
Hopefully we can stream steam games from our PC to the tablet that is connected to the big tv :P.
Pardon my English as it is not my 1st language
I think a lot of people are of the same view, myself included. I did try Win 8, back when they were practically giving it away to XP users to get them to 'upgrade' i did buy a copy of it, and gave it a go, but after about 4 months, i went back to using XP again until i managed to get hold of a copy of Win 7/64, and tbh, it is a far superior OS than 8, easier to use, less steps involved in doing the things that you want to do, and for gaming, it is far more stable than 8. So unless MS brings out an OS that actually improves on 7, then i don't see me buying it, and 8 is most definitely not an improvement on 7, on the plus side, because the copy of 7 i have is an OEM version, i don't have to worry about buying new licences etc if i upgrade my current system with a new mobo etc, i think the benefits of building your own systems far outweighs any positives from buying pre-built ones with the software already installed - they always seem to try and foist macafee or norton on you, neither of which are permitted to exist on any system i build