New Lord of the Rings game: But will PC gaming survive?

The release of the new

Lord of the Rings

title,

Conquest,

on PC as well as consoles is a good sign that PC gamers are still active and playing - but new sales figures have raised renewed chatter about the future of PC gaming.

Can PC gaming survive the console wars as well as a recession?

The answer should be - yes it can, and so it will.

The latest US PC game sales figures just out from the tracking firm NPD claim that last year they totalled US701m, which is a 14 per cent drop on the previous year.

But those jumping to claim this proves gamers have moved from PC gaming to consoles should check exactly what is being tracked here.

The sales figures are the only publicly released ones for PC games. But they cover retail sales only, not online.

And not even all retailers are included. Amazon, which does a fair chunk of US game sales, isn't part of that data.

And what about the growing number of games sold through online services such as Valve's Steam and then there's the MMORPG genre, with

World of Warcraft

at its helm.

It's more popular than ever. In the Christmas week, online subscribers hit a record 11.5m after Blizzard released its second expansion,

Wrath of the Lich King

.

That expansion sold more then 2.8 million copies in the first 24 hours which was itself a record for a PC title (previously held by the first WOW expansion) and has now sold more than four million.

Role players will soon also be able to indulge in

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

and sometime this year,

Starcraft II

and

Diablo III

.

Valve's Steam says it's also seeing growth but has not revealed publicly how many people have bought games through Steam but it's safe to say the figures will also be impressive for PC games purchased and downloaded online as well as the online subscriptions and micro transactions like ‘Games for Windows Live' downloadable content.

For all the grumbles over Steam, why wouldn't we see more gamers downloading games directly? Gaming forums are littered with diatribe over downloaded expansions and installations.

Trying to get

Fallout 3

on PC DVD before Christmas was the usual frustrating exercise in visiting certain physical gaming stores and finding PC gamers treated like niche freaks as the PC games are right at the back of the store, poorly displayed and badly stocked. (I'm glad I did find

Fallout 3

though, as it is indeed an absolutely awesome, almost flawless game).

Lower prices is the way of the future (by buying digitally) and the portability of something like the Steam account/subscription as well as growing social networking functions for those who want to use Facebook or Twitter to discuss the game. I mean has anyone not had the frustration of scouring though endless forums or Google searches to find that there's some issue with an aspect of a game they are playing? The newer, more direct ways to communicate online should be woven into online game play.

PC game distributors will also have to get over an obsession about DRM - highlighted recently when Spore got widely pirated because of its rigid DRM. It has become tempting for PC gamers to download a pirated copy of a game already physically purchased when DRM such as Securom inhibits your gaming.

Digital distribution will also increase the range of smaller games - such as Valve's excellent

Half-Life 2

episodes and

Portal

rather than developers always thinking up inflated and expensive epics.

So PC gaming will continue to survive and grow if the development companies can weather the economic storm. One recession-triggered consequence already is last week's announcement that Microsoft is shutting Aces, the studio behind the well-crafted

Flight Simulator

series, much to the distress of some of my peers.

Of course some gamers have shifted to consoles rather than have to continually fork out money to upgrade their PC. Over Christmas, I updated my mainboard, CPU and RAM all to anticipate the next wave of PC games. For some gamers, this is not a financial option and the fact most games are available on 360 or PS3 makes the latest gen console a cheaper and safer longer-term bet.

So back to the latest release, EA's

Lord Of The Rings: Conquest

(versions also available on 360, PS3 and DS). See the trailer here:

It's a third-person action game developed by Pandemic Studios which made

Star Wars: Battlefront

, a fact evident in the big battles and four basic character classes such as warrior and scout with a hero thrown in for good measure.

View screenshot gallery

here

.

The cool thing is the twin campaigns of good and evil. Playing good pretty much follows Jackson's movies while playing bad (once you beat the game in Good Heroic mode) and controlling the forces of evil, including Sauron, assumes that little hobbit Frodo has not destroyed the One Ring already.

You may finish up yearning for more from the game especially more depth and cinematic environments as they are heavily detailed rather than an adopted cousin to repetitive hack-and-slash Star Wars Battlefield, but there's enough here for quite a few hours of fun especially once you move into the online arena -which is where the game really mounts the multiplayer tensions. After all it's still

LOTR

and it's still hard not to love this stuff despite being just a little short.

MadGamer's rating: 7.5 / 10

View screenshot gallery

here

.

Do you think PC gaming will survive?