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The PC developer boom was only big when comparing it to previous state: almost nothing. The mobile has order of magnitude more users (basically everybody on ear

by yoz-y 10y ago

The PC developer boom was only big when comparing it to previous state: almost nothing. The mobile has order of magnitude more users (basically everybody on earth) and also developers. Also, no, not everybody could ship a product on a CD or a floppy, distribution of software had huge costs. Unless you consider that giving floppys to your friends as distribution.

venomsnake 10y ago
Yep. Candy Crush > Baldur's Gate and Deus Ex. It is not only the number of users but who those users are. PC gamers were always rooted in the geek/it community. And that is why we had the higher quality games there.
pjc50 10y ago
It wasn't literally everybody, but there were a surprising number of software companies that got started by mailing out floppy disks or even tapes from the developer's house. I believe Sierra is the one that grew into a big distributor.
thenomad 10y ago
DooM sold 3 million copies and was played by 20 million people. And it was shareware. That's not nothing.
- yoz-y 10y ago
  I may have worded that poorly, my logic is: 1. First there was almost nothing, software was confined to labs and huge entreprises, nobody had a computer at home 2. Then the PC boom came and it was big-ish (software had tens of millions to maybe a few hundreds of millions of customers) 3. Mobile "revolution" came and now everybody has a computer (counted in billions) 20 million clients is peanuts compared to the current scale. Which is why the software prices went downhill. There is just too much choice.
izacus 10y ago
What? The whole growth of a home-computer personal market happened without any huge corporation telling others what to build and how to ship their software. The market that is still significantly bigger than the closed garden mobile computers. Do check on history and actual numbers next time please :/
- yoz-y 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste... PC sales are declining for years and there are easily twice as much mobile users than desktop/laptop users. This trend is not going away anytime soon. Things get even worse if you discount entreprise clients (I assume that VR applications will be mostly user focused).

by yoz-y 10y ago

venomsnake 10y ago

Yep. Candy Crush > Baldur's Gate and Deus Ex. It is not only the number of users but who those users are. PC gamers were always rooted in the geek/it community. And that is why we had the higher quality games there.

pjc50 10y ago

It wasn't literally everybody, but there were a surprising number of software companies that got started by mailing out floppy disks or even tapes from the developer's house. I believe Sierra is the one that grew into a big distributor.

thenomad 10y ago

DooM sold 3 million copies and was played by 20 million people. And it was shareware. That's not nothing.

yoz-y 10y ago
I may have worded that poorly, my logic is: 1. First there was almost nothing, software was confined to labs and huge entreprises, nobody had a computer at home 2. Then the PC boom came and it was big-ish (software had tens of millions to maybe a few hundreds of millions of customers) 3. Mobile "revolution" came and now everybody has a computer (counted in billions) 20 million clients is peanuts compared to the current scale. Which is why the software prices went downhill. There is just too much choice.

izacus 10y ago

What? The whole growth of a home-computer personal market happened without any huge corporation telling others what to build and how to ship their software. The market that is still significantly bigger than the closed garden mobile computers. Do check on history and actual numbers next time please :/

yoz-y 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste... PC sales are declining for years and there are easily twice as much mobile users than desktop/laptop users. This trend is not going away anytime soon. Things get even worse if you discount entreprise clients (I assume that VR applications will be mostly user focused).