Is the desktop gaming PC on decline?
Earlier today I was contemplating buying a console so I could play Uncharted, Dark Souls, Gears of War, etc. But what if the next generation of console's are right around the corner? Buy a console now when it will be outdated in a few years?
And what if the next console generation is a power hungry beast of a machine? Do I buy that console or upgrade my PC? I guess the console, if it wasn't for games I wouldn't need to upgrade. Might as well get the console and enjoy the titles I miss out on each year.
And AMDs recent moves only confirm my suspicions. The profits lie with APUs for laptops (Fusion, Llano, Trinity, etc) and multi-threaded server chips (Bulldozer), and not high end graphics cards (hence visionaries Rick Bergman and Carrel Killebrew no longer with AMD) and enthusiast/gaming CPUs.
Interesting question. I bought my desktop 2 or 3 years ago, and at that time it was toppish notch, though I still could have bought a much better processor. So that's around the time of PS3 coming out, maybe a bit after. My PC did and does absolutely rip the utter piss out of the PS3, and I've actually saved the difference in cash from the amount of games I've bought. In fact, with over 250 legitimately bought games in that time, there is no way I could get close to that amount on a console. Of course, I don't necessarily play them all so to an extent it's false economy, but nevertheless the £600 or so difference between my PC and a PS3 at the time I bought it would still have been made up after 60 games, less then that even with Steam sales.
There will remain a place for PC most likely because it's so important as a driver of technologies. Something doesn't always have to be the most profitable thing to stay viable. Those high-end GFX cards might not be where the profit's at, but there's still a profit, and it's those cards which also carry a lot of sway in terms of image among the most important market of all for any type of technology - the more money than sense (or too much money to care) early adopter crowd.
Then at the more realistic end, when the next gen consoles come out all I'll have to do is add a bit more ram and twin-up my existing graphics card and I'll still be able to beat the piss out of them in terms of hardware for what has been vastly less money over that whole lifetime of games. Plus I'll still be able to play ALL my old games. Oh, and do all the other things a PC can do that a console can't.
If anything, what I could see happening is something like that Onlive really taking over, but if it does that's the 'death' of both gaming PCs AND consoles, because you'll just stream games through your HDTV instead.
There's also my own personal tastes of course - I wouldn't swap all of those games you mentioned for the Witcher games, or having Skyrim on the PC, or the new X game that'll be coming out next year, or for many people Starcraft 2. Consoles aren't the only platform with exclusive titles, and most of those titles are ones I'm not interested in, meanwhile nearly every game that's cross-platform that's been ported with some respect is better on a PC.
Oh, and mods.
So no, I don't think gaming PCs will die just yet!