BC Gaming presents Multiplayer Chat, our live radio show on BlogTalkRadio. Be sure to stop by and participate in the chat room, 9:30 p.m. EST Tuesdays. The live show is scheduled for an hour, however if we pass the hour mark, the remainder of the show can be heard in the archive — and podcast feed.

Multiplayer Chat is hosted by Ken Edwards, Blogcritics Gaming Editor, and co-hosted by Blogcritics Assistant Gaming Editors Brian Szabelski and Toni Dimayuga, and Mike Prince, Blogcritics Writer. Tonight our special guest is Jason "Njiska" Westhaver, another one of our regular BC Gaming writers.

Show 32 - PC Gaming Discussion
Total Running Time: 1:49:82

A special thanks to Mike Prince for preparing the discussion on PC Gaming!

Part 1 - Good times, good times

2001 - Consoles had approx. 8 billion in sales PC games 1.42 billion
Top 10 games 7 of 10 were Sims and Diablo 2 variants

2004 - Consoles had approx. 9.9 billion in sales PC games 1.2 billion
Top ten games 7 of 10 were World of Warcraft , StarCraft and Sims variants

2007 - Consoles had approx. 17.85 billion and PC games 910 million
Of that percentage 7 of the top ten games were World of Warcraft and Sims variations

Consoles back in the late '90s were not the home of the true hardcore gamers. Generally you had your action games and RPG's on the platform, but strategy games, MMO's, flight/space sims and especially FPS were at home on the PC and thrived there. As technology, connectivity and stability changed the hardcore audience has moved to the consoles.

Part 2 - This is no Fun

Wing Commander 3, Diablo 2, Quake 3, Half Life 2, Neverwinter Nights, what do these games have in common? They were all games I had to spend large amounts upgrading my PC to play. One of the main reasons I am frustrated with PC gaming is the constant question of can my PC handle this in a playable way? I spent weeks tweaking my system to play Half Life 2 and Doom 3 because I couldn't afford an upgrade — that is just not fun; games like Assassins Creed needs insane system specs including a staggering 12GB of HDD space and 3GB RAM to run in recommended mode. Who here has 3GB of RAM? John Carmack famously said once that video cards for the PC are never used to 100% of their potential (generally 50%).

Part 3 - I can change if you can!

As consoles matured, advanced and evolved with better physics, stability true connectivity and matchmaking (thank you Xbox Live) it became the home for the hardcore and mass-market audience. Yes everyone has a PC, but not everyone has a killer gaming machine, far more people who WANT to play games have consoles and the developers know it:

"We're big PC fans, but we definitely see, when you go to the computer store, that little rack of PC games," says Sid Meier, creator of the Civilization series. "It's definitely a big change from five years ago, when there was a whole wall of PC games."