Is PC Gaming Mainstream Finally?

Is PC gaming mainstream finally? That's what a recent article* by PC
Gamer** postulates. They point to the cameo of a Steam Deck on some
cartoon a while back as proof as their thesis. "Look, this black wedge
a side character is holding in the background for a few seconds on a
second-rate TV show almost nobody watches is clearly maybe perhaps a
Steam Deck, therefore PC Games are all the rage now!"

I didn't say it was a /good/ article.

But PC gaming has definitely become more popular over the years. Or
has it? Sure, we can all point back to the late 80s and comment on
Nintendo's dominance of the gaming market back then. And, sure, in the
late 90s all the kids were talking about was Playstation versus N64
versus Dreamcast, and sneered at people who dared suggest, "But on the
PC...". And there was a notable flight of publishers to consoles in
the late 2000s, with numerous doomsayers claiming (for perhaps the
hundredth time) that The End Of The PC Was Nigh.

But you know what kept chugging along, constantly pumping out hits and
gaining an ever larger audience? That's right, the PC. Sure, the
consoles got a lot of coverage in the news, but that's because it had
major corporations pushing out a lot of marketing copy promoting the
platforms. The PC, on the other hand, far more diversified, never had
the same unified support from its manufacturers promoting it as a
gaming machine.

But it had an audience. Since the mid 90s, roughly 200 million PCs are
sold in /per year/. Compare that to the 155 million Playstation 2
consoles sold worldwide over its entire lifespan. And yes, many of
those PCs were sold to businesses... but a lot of them end up in homes
too. And I'd wager a lot of them get used for video games at one point
or another.***

PC gaming only /now/ becoming mainstream? It's been mainstream
FOREVER, biatch! It's been the platform so ubiquitous that you just
don't notice it's there.

Oh, sure, consoles got the limelight. But for decades, everyone I knew
played games on the PC. After all, you needed a PC anyway (for school,
for work, for taxes, whatever), so why not install a few games on it
while you're at it? Sure, they might also play games on XBox or
Nintendo or Playstation. They might even use those platforms MORE. But
for over a generation, the PC was the old faithful standby, ready to
offer a different experience when necessary.

I suspect that it's lack of appearance in the 'mainstream' media had
more to do with the writers of said media than the omnipresence of the
platform. After all, most writers of TV shows came of age when
Nintendo undeniably /was/ the king of the playground (if only because
the computer market was still fragmented between Commodore, PC, and
Apple). It's sort of like how all high schools on TV still look like
they're stuck in the 80s and 90s. "Kids play video games, right? It
must be on the newest console; what is that, Atari? Anyway, stick one
of those in the protagonist's living room to show he's cool." It's
only now that these shows are getting writers who actually grew up
with PCs that they're starting to get the recognition they deserve.

Then again, I'm writing this on a PC gaming-focused newsgroup, so
obviously I have a bias -and blindness?- that makes me pedestal my
platform of choice.

Do you think the PC is more mainstream now? Less? Or was it always
just as cool -and uncool- as it is today?




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* Read here: https://www.pcgamer.com/pc-gaming-is-mainstream/
** Remember them? They used to be a notable publication -by video game
journalism standards anyway- and apparently they're still lingering on
as digital media
*** Even the ones in the office. Just don't tell the boss.