The Rise and Fall of PC Gaming: Part One
By dr3day 18 Comments
I'm a PC. And I pay for it, both figuratively, and literally.
What I'm not, however, is a blind PC.
There was a time, way back when, when the PC was a viable gaming platform. Game developers used to covet the PC for it's versatility, market dominance, and later in it's stages, online play. PC gaming started on a platform much like consoles. Early PC gaming used to run on PC's that were sold as one unit. There was no video card to purchase, no cpu or ram to update. The Commodore 64, for example, was one complete system, and would even plug into your television set, much like consoles of today.
Fast forward a bit, to the beginning of pre-modern PC's to the Intel 386 processor which was to become the granddaddy of all modern x86 chips, including the 486, and Pentium series. During this long lifespan, roughly from 1985 to 1995, most pc games would run great on any available system on the market, because everything was integrated and a large number of games ran on DOS, which is a more stable platform than Windows.
The beginning of the end came about with the rise of 3d graphics cards. It was inevitable, to say the least, that we would move in that direction.
Windows 95 was brand on the scene in 1995. Replacing the older Windows 3.1, Microsoft wanted to solidify their new baby as a true gaming platform. Thus the DirectX API was born. PC manufacturers wanted to keep prices low to push their products out of the market, and so baseline PC's were no longer viewed as viable for gaming. Instead, 3rd party manufacturers such as ATI, Diamond, and Voodoo threw their hats into the ring as 3D GPU manufacturers. Around the same time, Creative Labs launched their Sound Blaster 32/AWE64 lineup, nullifying the use of built-in PC speakers for audio. PC manufacturers wanted to keep prices low to push their products out of the market, and so they did not include excess hardware with affordable baseline PC's. With the launch of DirectX, and the hardware that followed, gaming really started disassociating itself from normal PC's, and became it's own independent niche "brand". This, in my opinion, marked the beginning of the end of PC gaming.
While the PC gaming market evolved, the console market was picking up speed in a dramatic fashion. People all around the world were migrating from the Arcades to their living rooms. Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo were available, with blockbuster hits like Super Mario Brothers, Zelda, Sonic, and others. However, although PC gaming had now complicated itself with excess hardware, making it less user friendly than the consoles, the PC would ultimately usher in the next era of gaming: online games.
Next up: From point-and-click adventures to "BOOM! HEADSHOT!"
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