Because some people really don't care about marginally better graphics and would rather have the convenience of not having DRM?

I've seen two games where there's been a significant difference between PS3 and PC - Bioshock Infinite and Sleeping Dogs. Everything else has basically been a shift from 720p to higher resolutions. Any other improvements are usually only noticeable if you actually pause the game and peer over the image.

And given that films run at 24fps, most people don't care if a game runs at 30fps or 60fps. I know I don't.

Films are pre-rendered and so can utilise all sorts of advanced frame blending techniques to make the transition between each frame appear very smooth. Games can't do that sort of thing in real time. A game at 24 FPS simply isn't perceived as being as smooth as a 24 FPS film.

Films also only use 24 FPS because of technical limitations in the past and this continues due to tradition rather than necessity. There's no reason why a film can't have a higher frame rate, and indeed some newer ones do.

We're talking about when both versions are available to you, not a generic PC vs. console which is better argument.
If DRM is the reason that's fine. I disagree with it because PC DRM is largely irrelevant, but okay, that's a reason.

Not for much longer though, and not for DLC or downloaded games even today :)

Obviously everyone is different. Some people can't tell a Bluray from a DVD. If you sincerely think most games look the same cranked up on a PC versus a PS3, well... that's crazy to me, but everyone is different.

The framerate thing is frankly bollocks though. Film and games are not the same thing, and a difference between 24fps and 60fps is massive.

And I so much hoped I would have been just joking... As said, there is nothing stopping from Steam retroactively changing that later as well, even to the same "once every 24h". That's what DRM is about, changing the terms afterwards how you can install and play "your" games.

Then again, being able to keep Steam games offline "forever" or even six months (without any 3rd party installation caps or such) was maybe too good to be true anyway. But that also explains why they are so vague of any such triggers and timers, so that they can change them at will without informing anyone.

Anyway, this just increases my preference to buying my games from GOG. Maybe I'll skip Steam summer sales altogether, fortunately I don't have much of in my wishlist from Steam at the moment anyway. Mostly just the missing DLCs for Serious Sam HD and Serious Sam 3, and maybe the expansion pack for Titan Quest. Unless those games appear in GOG in the meantime, which would of course be preferable.

No it isn't, because console gamers also have much less to choose from (in number of titles), so of course if you look at the sales of one game on different platforms, it sells much better on those which don't have thousands of indie games, lots of pay-2-win games etc. coming to the market all the time.

The only sensible way to compare the size of PC and e.g. XBox360 gaming market would be to compare how much money both PC gamers and XBox360 gamers use in buying games overall, regardless of how many titles that amount of money is spread on. Good luck trying to figure that one out (including games where you pay monthly or with micropayments, and kickstarters etc.), and even then you should figure out whether the second-hand used console game sales should be deducted from those numbers etc.

When one publisher makes an exclusivity deal with MS or Sony to bring their game only on one console platform (where MS or Sony might even dictate when games get released so that not too many similar games are released at the same time), naturally that is more lucrative to that one publisher than bringing the game to PC platform where they are competing with much more many games at the same time. So console is probably preferable for the few "chosen ones", while not as good for the rest of them.

As for publishers "repeatedly saying they don't care about PC market", the proof is in the pudding. How come they are still making also PC games, if they don't care about it? Or are you putting the comments of few to mouths of all?

I wonder how e.g. Mojang sees the PC market? Or Blizzard?

I also claim that PC gaming market is where the innovation is now, thanks to much bigger and more free indie market. Minecraft (nor its predecessors) would have never been published originally on consoles (it was ported only later when it had done tremendously well on PC, where it was born).

None that I've found. But that's also a matter of personal preference.
For one thing because all other things are not equal. And all the PS3 games I have are either 720p or 720/1080p, and look just fine. Besides, I wasn't talking about you.

Because there is less competition (= number of titles) on the platform, competing from the buying dollars.

As said, the only sensible way to track the size of the market was to calculate how much money _in all_ is used all over the world on PC gaming or XBox360, including buying (unused) games, paying for micropayments or monthly fees if some games have that, kickstarters etc. But that might be near impossible to find out extensively.

I still sometimes see "the best selling games" lists on some magazines here, and naturally they are pretty much console-only as those lists (at least here) are tracking only retail sales, which IMHO are pretty much dead on PC.

And even if they got the figures directly from the publishers (including Steam sales etc.), it wouldn't still be a straight comparison on how much money is used on PC gaming vs console gaming annually.

Well... if you say so.

Anyway you seem pissy on the issue so I will let it drop, I just genuinely wasn't getting an answer that made sense to me so I pressed for more info. Didn't mean to annoy you. Play your games on whatever you want, of course.

I think only people who have never tried this themselves claim this. This may have been true in the times of simple (non-Starforce) CD check times, like 15 years ago.

Just to test it, I earlier tried to set Portal (the Steam game) into permanent offline mode, to see if it is really as easy as some claim. With googling I found some instructions on that, but it was a far cry from merely "downloading a crack and using it". So complicated in fact that in the end I decided to drop it. This is a Steam game which doesn't even have any third-party DRM to complicate things even further.

But I guess the point was proved that at least it is apparently possible (on PC). The "easy" part is debatable.

Also, I don't really like the idea of using cracks from unknown sources. Ever wondered how all those millions (billions?) of PCs all over the world got infected with malware, keyloggers and trojans, making them part of the bot armies? There are lots of documented cases of malware being delivered as part of pirated material. I mean, after all, how can you get someone to let you install something on their machine?

Virus scanners don't catch even near everything, so they are not the answer either.

It's hard to tell exactly, but I think that AAA title sales are pretty indicative of overall spending, and the actual price difference is higher than the numbers, so if that's your criterion, consoles are probably even more successful.

PC game prices are a lot lower on average, even for AAA titles. The PC has much bigger sales and higher discounts, and more free games and mods. The short of it, PC players can pay a lot less for the same number of gaming hours. If they care to, they can get 100 times the gaming time for the same price. If they don't it's still several times more.

Well, I agree I haven't tried cracking a game in a very long time, so I'm not sure just how easy it might be these days.

But even if you're unable to find an easy crack on a reliable site, you can still find a pirated version which will do the same thing, torrenting it will just take longer and use more bandwidth.

I don't know how cracking consoles is done these days, but the last time I tried it (with a PS 2 to get rid of the region lock) you had to pay about $100 to a specialist so he would install a chip inside the console. That's a much harder process than just going to TPB for PC games.

There's hundred maybe thousands of titles on a console typically, I doubt competition is the cause...

So... two days in. Anyone thought of anything positive to say yet?

Well I'll say this for the next generation: at least PC ports shouldn't be subjected to blurry textures on everything anymore. Although we now seem to be getting ports of hendheld games. So maybe I'm speaking too soon on htat one.

Generally speaking, with the consoles being much closer to PCs hopefully more games will be ported to PC. And also we'll be able to laugh about how comparatively unrestricted our games are. That's got to count for something.

Yes, this time around there is no excuse for any platform having an excessively weak version. The PC had its share of poorly optimised ports last time but there were also quite a few on the PS3 (including some extreme cases like the Mafia II port having no grass).

The focus on multi-platform development will also have been one of the many strong reasons for both consoles opting for x86-based hardware. Developers are increasingly working from a central version that all versions are built from rather than building the game for just the one platform first and then porting the results to the other platforms. This approach can even apply to mobile/handheld games as with Resident Evil: Revelations; Capcom's MT Framework development starts with a PC build (even if a PC version isn't happening) making it that much easier to port those games upwards to PC/consoles later on if they want to do so. Crytek's CryEngine 3 goes one step further, running the in-development code in real time on the real hardware of each target console, simultaneously.

I disagree. If a game is good enough and manages to become popular it will sell a lot despite of how many games compete with it. Just look at Skyrim and COD sales, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 sold many more units than the PC, and these games were born as PC games.

Also there are tons of games for both the PS3 and the Xbox 360. On the PS3 you can even buy PS1 and PS2 games from the PSN, not to mention that the first PS3 models have backwards compability with PS2 games, which means you can play everything from all 3 generations of PS consoles. That's a lot.

Your argument really doesn't make sense. The competition on the console market is just as fierce as the PC market. Also, there are many gamers who have more than just one gaming platform.

The F2P games are targeted at a different market. We're talking about traditional "buy to play" games, not MMOs. Skyrim does not compete with WOW, they're different games targeted at different markets. The MMO and the F2P markets are indeed bigger on the PC, but the traditional retail market isn't.

They do make games for it, but it doesn't mean that they care that much about the PC. Most games are just ports from the console versions, and some of these ports fucking suck on the PC. Consoles are always the main platform when they are designing games. Why do you think this happens? Back in the old days it used to be the opposite, there were PC versions first and then they made console ports (Doom, Quake, Descent, Forsaken, and the list goes on).

Blizzard and Mojang are exceptions, not the rule.

This is not true. Most of the successful indie titles started as XBLA games, such as Super Meat Boy, Braid, Limbo, Castle Crashers, Joe Danger (thus one was actually released first on PSN), Trials, and the list goes on. In fact, there are many Desura titles that are ports from XBLIG games. Not to mention some indies that are still exclusive to consoles, such as Journey.

Both Sony and Nintendo allow self-publishing in their platforms. It's not as "free" as the PC market, of course, but consoles are almost as much indie-friendly as PCs. This is why so many Kickstarter funded games will get a Wii U version.