I think that the opposite may eventually occur, the console may replace the budget pc. If you look at what you can do with modified Xbox or the PS2 Linux kit and other accessories, its not that far of a jump to believe the the next generation of consoles could replace low end pcs.

And from a price standpoint, I don''t think you can find a budget PC that comes close to what you can do with a modded Xbox for the price. If this does happen, then the price of the consoles may go up, as the makers stop taking loses on hardware sales. But console prices have creeping up over the years anyways.

I see this happening in the next couple of years as the next generation of consoles enter the market.

We''re getting a home theatre at my house soon... 32 inch TV. I''m going to buy a cheap 1GHz or so PC off ebay, hook it into the TV, and run emulators like SNES, Genesis, and N64. It''ll also be good for DDR parties.

With the current trends in production, PC will never compete with the console market. When I buy a console game I know I can go home, put it in my console and play it. No patches and it will work perfectly. I can only think of one console game that's had an official patch.

When I buy a PC game I anticipate going home and hoping that the site for the game has a fast internet connection as I download the most recent multi-megabyte patch. Some games are impossible to play without a patch on some hardware. Some games have such hard ass anti-piracy techniques that I'm lucky if my CD drive reads the CD as authentic. A very large minority of games actually update "save versions" so that game saves from version 1.0 of the game will not be playable after you patch the game to 1.1.

I used to buy mainly PC games since that was where the good RPG's were. Lately, however, games on the PC have been becoming less and less focused on anything besides graphics. I'm looking if I can find an RPG with more interesting gameplay than click-click-triple click-diabloesque, and I ( as well as a number of others I know ) have been slowly turning more and more into console players. They simply have better games.

On topic though, I don't think there will ever be a distinction between computers. I actually think that the PC gaming market will slowly turn its focus away from the "gamer" demographic and more onto the casual user. Gamers might be loyal purchasers, but if the PC game market could start producing games attractive to the "common user" their market demographic size would increase dramatically. I picture more games with small system requirements and a broad appeal ( like the Sims ) becoming the trend. As opposed to blooded up, 10ghz processor with a $2000 video card system and 10 gigs of ram requirement eye candy games.

I think we're nearing the end of the graphics age. Games like Doom 3 and Half Life 2 are no where near 'real life' graphics or even reasonably accurate simulations of them. But I wouldn't really be suprised to see a Doom 4 with 'graphics' that look photo-realistic. It wouldn't be anything revolutionary, just evolutionary. The market will soon become even more flooded with games taking advantage of the latest graphics, but not for long. Soon users are going to tire of having nothing better than to run around killing photorealistic humans and other monsters and start demanding new ideas. This is when the market may definitely begin to become open to more the mainstream, and I can't wait for it.

I can't wait until I can look on the back of the box and the first "Feature" of the game listed is something besides some irrelevant piece of information about their amazing graphics engine. Really, I couldn't really care less about graphics. I still enjoy Quake 1 Rocket Arena just because its damned fun. There's a reason Quake 2 and Quake 3 didn't do anywhere near as well. They add nothing new, just more eye candy.

Ok - end extremely long rant -. Point: I don't think the term 'gamer' will exist in 20 years, so proposing 'gamer' machines will begin to evolve would be silly. If anything the console market will begin to take over the PC market. Its already taken me over.

[edited by - haro on July 18, 2003 12:25:30 AM]

Wait, did you say Doom 3 and Half Life 2 ?
You meant Doom3 and Half-life...

Because Half Life 2 is not released yet and Half Life 2 will > Doom 4

Consoles won''t take over PCs. Consoles are good for games because they are meant specifically for games. That is all they do. PCs are used for much more, like e-mail, word processing, minesweeper, solitaire, etc.

The only way it could happen is if everyone chose a "standard" of hardware and everyone absolutly had to use hardware abiding to this standard and ran programs designed for it''s card(s).

The real problem is getting people to give up their crappy, badly supported cards and get them wanting to use better cards. Unfortunatly the average Playstation2 gamer would probably not know what a good card is, how to install it, or what drivers to get. He will be frustrated if he encounters a problem, and most likely go buy an Xbox in disgust..

It''s a whole lot easier for console developers in relation to PC developers. For every outdated card, different manufacturer, and different driver version, there can be (at least) one corrisponding bug, which is one bug more than the console developer needs to concern himself with.

It''s not a matter of price. The PC is still more complicated and buggy than a console. In a PC you have to install the OS, download drivers, install the game etc. In the console you just insert the rom and play.

He''s got a point. When the PC becomes this easy to configure and use, everyone will use it. Until then, consoles will unfortunatly dominate the gaming scene.

The PC will never be that simple/stable because it is a PC - its an open platform that no one controls. Anyone can create an add-on to go in it and no one can ever be sure that all these different add-on cards will all work together. That means that no one can be sure that software will work on all the different possible configurations of "PC" that can exist.

Consoles on the other hand are closed systems controlled by their manufacturer. They will always be more reliable than PCs simply because they are less flexible.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant

Maybe if Mycrostof adds a big red, blue and green button for "GAMES", "PC", "TV" into the XBox you''ll have your easy multimierda plattaform for dummies.