PC Games, a Dying Breed? - Blame the Hardware!
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Next let’s point a finger at the PC makers themselves. They are responsible for making the PCs that run the game. The case here is that PC manufacturers are selling cheap computers that aren’t meant for running games. The graphics cards are the main issue. If you walk into Circuit City or Best Buy, you will see computers on the cheap side. You rarely see PCs meant for gaming or that have hardware that can handle all the games out there today.
Over the holiday season last Christmas, I saw computers being sold with GeForce 6150se graphics chips. This is going on three generations old now. And even when it was released, it was still the bottom of the bin for graphics cards. They stopped selling the original Xbox long ago, so why do they still sell PC hardware this old?
When people are buying a PC, they look at price. If you are lucky, you might find someone that knows something about a few computer hardware components. As far as selling a PC, it’s about the GHz speed, the memory amount, and the hard drive space. People will pay for these upgrades, but getting them to shell out more money for a better graphics card isn’t easy. Perhaps if they didn’t charge $300 to go from 2 GB RAM to 3 GB RAM, more people would be interested in what graphics card they have in their computer.
People are tired of trying to figure out whether a game will work on their PC. If it doesn’t, then they are screwed, since they can’t take it back if it’s been opened. If they get the console version of the game, they know it will work. All consoles are created exactly the same for each platform. If you dumb down the game too much for PCs, the game loses its thrill. The battle between state of the art and mass market appeal is hard to win.
Should we blame PC makers? Yes, at least some. Using GeForce 6250se graphics cards in current PCs is terrible and the price gouging of memory and other components is tottering on unethical. I believe that if the hardware is there, the PC gaming demand would rise. Or as a famous movie once said, “If you build it, they will come.”
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