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MOC
join:2003-05-27
Ridley Park, PA
| Valve: Why the PC is the future
"If you look into the future, there's an important transition that's about to happen, and it's going to happen on the PC first," says Newell.
»www.eurogamer.net/article.php?ar···6&page=1 | |
Dooby
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The Boonies | Interesting reading. Thanks.
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JIGA
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Ahhh! Paste and quote it in here. The website is blocked...  | |
Edge1
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| said by JIGA  :Ahhh! Paste and quote it in here. The website is blocked... Yes, please. This sounds like a good read. | |
Swingerhead
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Richmond, VA | me too | |
cool_coda
join:2004-09-08
Brownsburg, IN
| reply to MOC
Valve: Why the PC is the future
Article by Oli Welsh
27 June, 2008
Page 1 of 3. Page 2
When Valve summoned a handful of US and UK journalists to its Seattle headquarters at the end of last month, it promised to talk about the future of Steam, its digital distribution system. That it did, revealing the ambitious Steam Cloud service for remote storage of game data, and boasting that it would soon be making more money selling games digitally, all the while remaining untroubled by piracy.
Valve mastermind Gabe Newell and his cohorts had an ulterior motive for bringing reporters together, however, and unusually for an ulterior motive, it wasn't a wholly self-interested one. It was this: to evangelise the PC as the games platform of the future.
"This really should be done by a company like Intel or Microsoft, somebody who's a lot more central to the PC," says Newell, pointing out that companies like Blizzard, PopCap and GameTap would have just as much to say as Valve about how PC gaming is leading innovation in technology, business models, and community-building. But, notwithstanding Microsoft's occasional promotion of Games For Windows - an initiative Newell refrains from attacking directly, but exudes disdain for - that support has not been forthcoming.
Where console platforms have merciless and well-funded PR armies poised to combat any criticism, negative stories about the PC - mostly publishers, or developers like Crtyek, complaining of rampant piracy and flat sales - run unimpeded. Sales data that focuses solely on boxed copies sold at retail appear to back them up. Valve has had enough. "There's a perception problem," says Newell. "The stories that are getting written are not reflecting what is really going on."
You want figures? There are 260 million online PC gamers, a market that dwarfs the install base of any console platform, online or offline. Each year, 255 million new PCs are made; not all of them for gaming, it's true, but Newell argues that the enormous capital investment and economies of scale involved in this huge market ensure that PCs remain at the cutting edge of hardware development, and consoles their "stepchildren", in connectivity and graphics technology especially. Meanwhile, Valve's business development guru, Jason Holtman, notes that without the pressure of cyclical hardware cycles, PC gaming projects - he points to Steam as an example - can grow organically, over long periods of time, and with no ceiling whatsoever to their potential audiences.
More pertinent, perhaps, are the figures directly relating to games revenue that the retail charts - admittedly a stale procession of Sims expansions and under-performing console ports - don't pick up. "If you look into the future, there's an important transition that's about to happen, and it's going to happen on the PC first," says Newell.
At its heart, he explains, is a shift from viewing games as a physical product, to viewing them as a service - something that is also happening in other entertainment media. Digital distribution is part of that; more fluid and varied forms of game development, with games that change and engage their communities of players over time, are another; as is, naturally, the persistence and subscription (or otherwise) revenues of MMO games. None of this is reflected in the sales charts analysts, executives - and gamers - obsess over.
Valve sees 200 per cent growth in these alternative channels - not just Steam, but including the likes of cyber-cafes as well - versus less than 10 per cent in bricks-and-mortar shop sales. Steam has a 15 million-strong player-base with 1.25 million peak concurrent users, and 191 per cent annual growth; none too far off a console platform in itself. The PC casual games market, driven by the likes of PopCap, has gone from next to nothing to USD 1.5 billion dollar industry in under ten years, and has doubled in size in just three. Perhaps most surprisingly, Valve has found that digital distribution doesn't cannibalise retail sales - in fact, a free Day of Defeat weekend on Steam created more new retail sales than online ones.
And then there is the game that many claim has been the death of PC gaming, but that Valve sees as its greatest success story, and its future. "Until recently, the fact that World of Warcraft was generating 120 million dollars in gross revenue on a monthly basis was completely off the books," Newell says. "Essentially, [Blizzard is] creating a new Iron Man every month, in terms of the gross revenue they're generating as a studio. Any movie studio would be shouting about that from the rooftops. But it was essentially invisible."
Newell thinks that WOW is "arguably the most valuable entertainment franchise in any media right now", and also believes, rightly, that it could only ever have happened on the PC. He also tips his hat to South Korea's Nexxon for its enormous success with free-to-play, microtransaction-driven games like Kart Rider and Maple Story, soon to be aped by EA's Battlefield Heroes.
There is another reason for the gulf between the perception and the reality of the games market, Valve thinks, and it's a geographical and linguistic one. The dominance of the English language gives the US and UK games markets, where the PC is weakest, undue prominence. In several major Western markets - notably Germany and the Nordic countries - the PC performs much better. What's more, in the emerging markets of China, Korea and Russia, where gaming is seeing unprecedented, explosive growth, console install bases are negligible, and the PC is king. Valve thinks that there's a silent majority of global gamers who are skipping the console era entirely, the way these developing nations already skipped dial-up internet.
Steam is available in 21 languages for this reason, and Valve reckons that its speedy localisation and lack of physical distribution is an effective counter to the piracy common in these markets. It's also allowing Valve to get games to players in regions traditional channels don't support. "PC's are everywhere in the world," says Holtman simply. "PC's are the same all over the world. All of sudden, if you can open up emerging markets and go somewhere like Russia or South East Asia, you've gone way further than you can go with a closed console. There are 17 million PC gaming customers in Russia alone."
A key shift in this brave new world of games as services rather than products - and one that runs contrary to the traditional image of PC gaming - is a move away from graphical fidelity being the yardstick of progress. "As a company that's really proud of the job we do with graphics it's funny to say this," Newell says, "but we get a better return right now by focusing on those features and technologies that are about community, about connecting people together."
He cites easy uploading of gameplay videos to YouTube as a bigger source of entertainment value than marginal improvements in graphics. "I think that people thinking about how to generate web hits on their servers are a lot closer to the right mentality for what's going to be successful in entertainment going forward, than somebody that's used to having conversations about how to get end caps at Best Buy."
The revolution in distribution and business models also offers a major new opportunity for smaller games - and smaller games developers - to thrive. The demands of retail - the logistical problems of getting boxes to shops, and the budgetary drain of huge marketing campaigns - mean that bigger is necessarily better in the traditional games market.
Not so on Steam and its equivalents, says Valve, pointing to the huge success of indie darling Audiosurf, as well as its own Portal. "As you move away from that huge first weekend, big blockbuster mentality," says Newell, "you're getting back to an area where smaller and smaller groups can connect with customers. I think you're going to find that the enjoyment of being in the game industry as a developer on the PC is a lot greater than outside of it."
He's backed up by an actual indie, Audiosurf creator Dylan Fitterer. This one-man development, created without financial backing - impossible on consoles, due to the cost of development kits - was the best-selling game on Steam full-stop at its release, outclassing many big-budget titles. "I didn't have to ask anybody if I could release it, except for my wife," Fitterer says. "It took a few years, and I was pretty darn tired by the time it was ready. Something like certifications? No thanks." He also points out the tight limitations of console servers versus PC servers for online gaming; Audiosurf's scoreboard for every song ever recorded would be out of the question on a closed platform.
Holtman argues that Steam and Steamworks - the suite of free tools it offers - revolutionise the environment for developers and publishers. The auto-updating system means that a game can be developed right up to release and beyond. It eases painful crunch times, and allows game makers to respond to their audiences, publishers to develop their titles as continuously evolving franchises rather than finite products.
"All of a sudden, PC games become this thing that's reliable and up-to-date," says Holtman. Team Fortress 2 designer Robin Walker weighs in, noting that the PC version of the shooter has had no less than 53 updates since its release last year - something that certification cost and time have prohibited for on console - and that this "ship continuously" ethos is a key component to the success of the best multiplayer titles. Steam, he says, makes that process fast and transparent.
"I don't want anyone between me and my customers," says Walker. "I want to write code today and I want all my customers running it tomorrow." Possible on the PC - Steam in particular, naturally. Not possible on consoles. For his part, Fitterer added achievements to Audiosurf in a total of two days. This constant iteration creates a feedback loop between developer and customer that, reckons Walker, can only improve the quality of the game. "The more I talk to my customers, the better my decisions will be. Without a system of talking to my customers, I will make bad decisions."
The implication is a striking one: sporadic, excessively controlled updating means that console multiplayer games will never reach the heights of their PC counterparts. There is a counter-argument - that PC games descend into a poorly-defined, indistinct mess of constant patching - but it is effectively squashed by the fact that, if you look for a multiplayer game with the longevity and massive popularity of a WOW or a Counter-Strike on console, you won't find one (with the very arguable exception of Halo).
Auto-updating is the reason Valve created Steam in the first place. It's the reason it now finds itself in an odd position for a developer: semi-publisher, leading distributor, market analyst, agony uncle and technocrat - not to mention defender of a platform that's still being proclaimed dead, when all signs point to the very opposite.
At the end of the day, PC gaming's health - and its trickiest challenge - comes down to a bottom line that even the format's detractors can't refute: there are just so many of the damn things. "We think the number of connected PC gamers we are selling our products to dwarf the current generation of consoles put together," states Newell. "There are tremendous opportunities in figuring out how to reach out to those customers." | |
Somnam
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excellent article! | |
footballdude
join:2002-08-13
Imperial, MO
| reply to MOC
Skimmed the article and didn't see this addressed.
Another reason consoles aren't the future: Sony and Microsoft cannot continue to absorb huge losses just to push their game machines into people's homes. If they charged enough to break even, no one would buy them.
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randomuser83
join:2008-06-30
Sunnyvale, CA
| said by footballdude :Skimmed the article and didn't see this addressed. Another reason consoles aren't the future: Sony and Microsoft cannot continue to absorb huge losses just to push their game machines into people's homes. If they charged enough to break even, no one would buy them. QFT and also, the PC gaming industry does not require these new systems everytime the technology comes out. This last wave of consoles was a bit early and that hurt all three big names. Shoot, Sony STILL is reporting losses on the PS3 and should barely start seeing that change now due to the BluRay/HDDVD battle finally being won. I also think that PC has a big advantage because little things like improvements in graphics or play can be made by an upgrade of a single component in your system. You will probably never see that in the console world. | |
justin
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I object to their statistic of 260 million online gamers. I'm sure they included me, because I have a steam account and bought a few games ages ago. But I've not bothered with it for ages. I'm sure a large LARGE chunk of 260 million online gamers are also spending their gaming time elsewhere especially more recently.
Even the name "online gamers" is too wide. Another huge set in this 260 million is wow addicts. They are not online gamers, they are wow addicts. If wow dies, there is no telling what they'll move on to and even if it will be pc based again.
The number of true online gamers - those who keep their PC constantly leading edge, always clean and well connected, and actually regularly spend money on online PC titles - is a much smaller group and much less diverse as well. Males. College aged. With disposable income almost all of which goes into tech. Readers of penny arcade. | |
Dooby
Premium
join:2001-05-08
The Boonies
| said by justin :I object to their statistic of 260 million online gamers. I agree. Highly unlikely. "Online gamer" could mean anything from someone with a dialup connection who plays solitaire, to cable and WoW.
Nevertheless, the true figure is extremely high, but impossible to determine.
said by justin :The number of true online gamers - those who keep their PC constantly leading edge, always clean and well connected, and actually regularly spend money on online PC titles - is a much smaller group and much less diverse as well. Seems right, but you've only described the "true" gamer, not the average gamer, which is the larger and broader demographic. As an example, the average player buys their crap PC's (usually) from big brand stores and gets their connection from whomever the store recommends.. welcome to AOL. They have no interest in the inside of the computer, and just want it to work when they turn it on. These are the people that hardware and software companies love the most and helpdesks hate the most.
said by justin :Males. College aged. With disposable income.. ..who started playing on a computer when they were kids and haven't stopped, nor will they, through most of their life. Add brothers and sisters, plus friends and the number adds up.
The problem with the older generation, myself included, is that we remember how it used to be. Poorly made computers, buggy crashing software and the general irritation of simply running something. I'm talking modern PC here, not the old computers where to load a game you had to play a tape  . To be able to do that, you had to have a broader understanding of computers and so in turn the number of people that actually used a computer for anything but office work were a very small, elite group.
It is a common mistake to determine the current status with how it was back then. This is one of the reasons that PC's aren't more popular than they should be, AND something the console marketers are using as strategy against PC's. Everything is much easier now however, and more stable. PC software is now sharing compatibility, something that used to be the worst part of PC's, the sheer incompatibility of programs and computer and the abundance of differences of each.
The average office computer now is more than capable of playing all but the latest of games. The number of people in current generations that are very fluent with computers is vast and this ability is not lost now when turning to games. It's the same, and in no small part thanks to the evolution of windows.
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JIGA
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| reply to MOC
I started playing console games on the NES when it was first released. From there I had a wide assortment of consoles all the way up to the PS2 and Xbox. I didn't get into PC gaming until 1998 and once I did I was hooked. My PS2 and Xbox ended up collecting dust and eventually I sold them.
said by justin : Another huge set in this 260 million is wow addicts. They are not online gamers, they are wow addicts. If wow dies, there is no telling what they'll move on to and even if it will be pc based again. Hmmm... this comment seems a bit biased. WoW is a video game, and a damn good one at that (if you have the taste for MMO's). Gamers of WoW are online gamers. I guess by your thinking people who only play Counter Strike are CS addicts and not considered online gamers. It just doesn't make any sense why you stated that... only if you hate the WoW community and despise the game then I can understand where you are coming from.
WoW will not die, not until a long long time from now. Just look at EQ, it is still going to this day. I am a WoW gamer myself, been to and from that game 3 times now with 3 accounts. I also play a wide variety of other games from CSS/DODS, Star Wars:Empire at War, NeverWinter Nights, NavyField, and even PokerStars. Just to show the variety I enjoy in my games. Hell, just the other night I reinstalled FreeSpace 2 for the upteenth time! 
PC gaming is where it is at for me. And, IMHO, any person who is playing games on a PC online, is an online gamer. | |
ken225
join:2003-11-22
Brunswick, OH
edit:
July 3rd, @09:56AM
| reply to justin
"The number of true online gamers - those who keep their PC constantly leading edge, always clean and well connected, and actually regularly spend money on online PC titles - is a much smaller group and much less diverse as well."
There's just as many casual console gamers as casual PC gamers. I know many people who've bought the Wii, played it for a few months and now it sits on the shelf waiting for a party. Also, it's widely known that the best BlueRay player is the PS3. The Extremetech HDTV guy even recommends it as the player to buy, regardless of whether you use it as a gaming machine or not. I'm sure if you categorized console gamers as "true gamers" by only including those who've purchased a game in the last few months, you'd have a lot less of those as well. Both PC and consoles have many, many people who are not "hardcore" gamers included in their numbers. | |
Forlin
join:2007-11-21
Anchorage, AK
edit:
July 8th, @08:13PM
| reply to MOC
*shrug*
Downloading games is as easy on a console as it is on a PC these days, some would say easier as its so dumbed down. You're pretty much taken straight to the download/purchase area on each of the 3 major console manufacturer's websites by default.
The argument over how many console gamers and PC gamers there are, how many online gamers for each platform, etc is pointless. 260 million? Maybe, and even if it were 130 million with accounts for 2 games, or whatever, these are still good numbers for the gaming industry.
Thing is over the life of any given generation of consoles, after a few price drops many gamers end up with all 3, and often a PC too. Their choice of online game and for what platform usually just falls to whatever is the latest and greatest, with old game's accounts being canceled as they move onto the new. There's pretty much nothing more retarded than being fanboyz of these major corporations. I guarantee you'll get no loyalty from them in return for your own, just more threats of imprisonment at the start of every legally purchased game, and more price hikes as they move from one media to the next.
'We're moving to [insert media here] because it'll be cheaper to produce, more difficult to pirate and therefore cheaper for the consumer.'
Followed shortly by..
'Yes I know we said we'd charge less for games on [insert media here], but the capacity means we can fill them up with shit no one wants, call that premium content, and therefore justify our argument that these games should cost more than they used to. Oh and I know I said they couldn't be pirated, but we were wrong again and feel paying customers should bare the cost of what we think we should get for every pirated copy, regardless of the fact that if there was no piracy that would never translate into an equivalent legally purchased unit.'
For myself I've finally got all 3 consoles because I have absolutely no loyalty to any particular manufacturer and want the choice of playing whatever games I feel like. I also own a PC, have Age of Conan and WoW accounts. I admit most of my console gaming is single player, but I do download games and demos for them and avoid physical media as much as possible. They all let you re-download if you need to re-install, which is so much more convenient to me than trying to get a replacement DVD or Blu-ray disk.
I agree that eventually all content will be delivered this way, but as far as I'm concerned, the difference between console and PC gaming is so blurred now, and so many gamers do both, that saying one or the other has more customers is as old a way of thinking as floppy disk based gaming. | |
wings10
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| reply to footballdude
said by footballdude :Skimmed the article and didn't see this addressed. Another reason consoles aren't the future: Sony and Microsoft cannot continue to absorb huge losses just to push their game machines into people's homes. If they charged enough to break even, no one would buy them. Agree.
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Nightfall
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| reply to MOC
Manufacturers of consoles have been taking a loss on the console itself for years now. They made their money off of the games in the past. Sure, other companies came out with the games, but they paid Atari, Nintendo, etc for the rights to make it. Each copy of the game that sold gave a small kickback to the console maker.
Today, its easier to break even on the console or make a profit. Especially if the games sell. The PS3 is having a problem because their games aren't selling. The Xbox360 is doing much much better.
Here is an old article I dug up on this very issue.
»www.businessweek.com/technology/···0710.htm
Console gaming isn't going anywhere but up. More and more people are buying consoles because they are easy to just drop and disk in and play. No spyware crap. No viruses to worry about. No driver updates. No upgrades to worry about. Just drop the disk in and go.
The game makers are happier making a game for a console because they make one copy and it works in millions of consoles. The Xbox360 has sold 12 million consoles. To make a game that works in all those machines is a boon for game creators. Its not like the PC market where there are hundreds of thousands of different hardware combinations and driver revisions to worry about. Then you have people calling tech support because their games don't work because the PC is slow because of spyware or something along those lines.
Yes, I am a PC gamer. Yes, I love to play games on my PC. However, I see the drawbacks and why PC Gaming has been declining over the years.
The good thing is that PC Gaming is still a 2 billion dollar a year industry. Games will continue to come out for the PC and thats awesome. Taking advantage of the better graphics on the PCs that can handle it, the bigger games, and more processor intensive ones is key.
However, down the road, I expect consoles to be the standard for gaming....for better or worse. Consoles are already making almost 7x what PC gaming is making. Thats HUGE money.
Is the PC the future? Time will tell, but I think not. The consoles will rule the gaming world in another 5 years IMHO. I hope I am wrong though.
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ken225
join:2003-11-22
Brunswick, OH
edit:
July 9th, @12:01PM
| Well, the XBox360 didn't make any profits until just this year, so I wouldn't say it's doing "much better". Note that the one billion dollars that Microsoft had to shell out for the "red ring of death" isn't even accounted for yet.
»www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/b···-in-2008
There are some other facts about PC vs Console gaming that I'd like to point out. First of all, it's hardly fair to compare the PC sales to an aggregate of all of the consoles together. If you compare the PC to individual consoles, PC games sell just about as well as they do.
»www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2···9,00.asp
Another point that people rarely make is that, when quoting gaming sales numbers, consoles add the price of hardware into their total sales. For instance, when people quote that the gaming industry made over 18 billion last year, but only 9.5% came from PC gaming, it seems like PC gaming is a tiny percentage of the whole. However, of the 18 billion, half of that was attributed to console hardware.
»arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20···sic.html
When someone buys a PS3, a memory stick or a controller, it's counted as console gaming numbers. But, when people buy computer hardware, it's not. Now, I'm not going to presuppose that everyone who buys a computer is a gamer, but don't you think that people buying high-end video cards, fancy glowing keyboards with macro functions or $100 gaming mice should count? I wonder what those figures would look like if they counted those, let alone the sales of Voodoo, Falcon and other gaming machines.
Then there's the online component. NPD doesn't list any online or downloaded games. Do you really believe that more people purchase console games online than PC games? I believe that STEAM alone is making money hand over fist. They won't share their statistics with the public, but I'd love to see how much they're making off of downloaded games. There was an interview with the creator of Sins of the Solar Empire recently on the PC Gamer podcast. He claimed that they make over twice the profit when they sell a downloaded game then when they sell one at retail because they don't have to make a box, ship it to the store or pay stocking fees. I'll bet that more and more PC games are going to be sold this way. Since those won't count as NPD numbers, it might look like PC gaming is getting worse, when the reality might be quite different.
I'm not saying that PC gaming will ever replace console gaming. However, I don't think it's even close to dying. You might argue that PC gaming is the healthiest it's ever been. It's gone from a relatively niche market to an industry worth billions. Just think about the money being made, not only with the games themselves, but also with the products designed especially for gaming. It's gamers who support the high and mid range video card market. It's gamers who buy a lot of the sound cards, expensive mice, customizable keyboards and boutique computers. Many of those companies are doing just fine. So is PC gaming.
Oh, and by the way, the whole "just put the game in and play" ease of use for the console is not what it used to be. I'm in no way saying that consoles are as difficult to operate as a PC, but one look at the Console Tech forum of this site shows people having problems with connecting them to the internet, hooking them up to their HDTVs, getting their wireless adapters to work, etc. This isn't even mentioning the millions of people who have had their XBox 360 brick on them. If that isn't as bad as any PC gaming problem, I don't know what is. As consoles try to become more like PCs, they're going to be more difficult to use. | |
Nightfall
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| All the articles you posted are very good information. Thanks for posting them.
In comparison to the PS3, the Xbox360 is doing "much better" thats for sure. Which is where you got my "much better" quote from anyway was when I was talking about the PS3.
As for sales numbers, it sounds like someone independent needs to do them. Here you have Valve saying that Steam is the way of the PC gaming future. Well, I don't subscribe to the rosy numbers they are showing when it comes to PC gaming. The numbers just don't add up if you get my drift.
No industry that makes billions of dollars a year is going to die right away. Is PC Gaming healthy? I don't think it is as healthy as console games ATM. Otherwise, top games that are coming out on Consoles would be hitting the PC Market at the same time ALL the time. You aren't getting that right now. Look at GTA IV for instance. Huge game on the Xbox and PS3. However, no PC love. I know, it doesn't show that PC gaming isn't a money maker. However, it does show that PC gaming isn't a priority for a number of reasons.
I will have to agree with you on the consoles though. They are trying to mimic PCs too much by giving them browsers and web capabilities. They are giving them folding @ home clients too. However, no matter how easy you make something, someone isn't going to know how to use it properly.
You talk about people having problems getting them hooked up to the internet, hooking them to their TVs, getting wireless to work, and so on. Well, when VCRs came out, people had problems hooking them up. Same with CD players and hooking them up to their stereos. Even the first game systems were considered a problem to hook up by some people.
To compare those things, which are routine, to knowing what parts you have in your system and seeking out driver updates is another thing. Then you have spyware and other addon software that can affect your framerate. Its a list that goes on an on and on. | |
ken225
join:2003-11-22
Brunswick, OH
| Thanks Nightfall. However, I still wish you wouldn't say "die right away" when it comes to PC games.
I realize that PC games don't get all of the console games right away, but there are plenty of PC-first games that consoles either have to wait for or never get the chance to play. (Stuff from Blizzard and Valve, for example.)
When it comes to spyware and viruses, you're right of course in saying that they effect PC gaming. However, once consoles start allowing people to surf the Web and download content, it's only a matter of time before someone writes a virus or spyware program for them. I'm convinced that, before long, the only real difference between a console and a PC is going to be where they're located. (A computer room vs your living room.) Consoles will continue to grow in complexity, and that will make them harder to use. This isn't like the early days of DVD and VHS players. Those things didn't really get more complex, they just took getting used to. You've already got some people using their Xbox 360 or PS3 to stream movies and music to their entertainment centers, acting as media servers to their homes. This kind of thing is only going to get more popular. At some point, there isn't going to be a whole lot of difference between a console and PC, IMO. | |
Mustang
Premium
join:2005-06-27
Fort Lauderdale, FL
| reply to MOC
Two things on this topic.....
Just in the last two weeks I've had a PS3 and Xbox owner complain about their units (not very old) just dying on them. Over the fourteen years I've been a PC gamer I can count on one finger the number of times my computer has died to where I couldn't play. For all the extra work a PC game may require, the payback in smart good-looking games as well as reliability is a huge payback.
Second, just look to the game manufacturers themsleves for the reasons for less games. The costs for developing a game and money spent on advertising has gone far beyond what was spent for some of the classics that made PC Gaming what it was. | |
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