I think you all know why I’ve called you all here. I can finally reveal who committed the murder. 

The facts are quite clear. One Friday night in 2014 PC gaming was found starved, stabbed and poisoned at the base of the grand stairway of Gaming Hall. 360 and PS3 were also attacked. I will now tell you who committed those acts.

This topic again? Really? Oh OK, one last time. Where is gaming going? Three years isn’t a long time in gaming, but I believe that the steps are already in motion. So let’s look at who in 2014 have motive at killing the PC. And the PS3 and 360 are looking a bit peaky too now that you mention it.

Microsoft certainly had motive, the PC was a neglecting gaming child for the last decade of its life. Ignored for its younger sister Xbox, it’s hard to believe that a parent could ignore the achievements of PC gaming, but as with all things it’s a case of money. Xbox made money for Microsoft where as normal game sales just sold a copy of Windows at best, and even then gamers didn’t upgrade from their earlier versions of Windows until it came bundled with a new PC. PC Gamers gave money to Microsoft once every three years, Xbox gamers sometimes did it weekly. But was Microsoft the killer? Disinterest isn’t a convincing motive and games never stopped being released for the PC.

So is it the games that killed the PC? Facebook. Casual games. Social games. Some bloggers talk of them with such bile and while it’s true that when you combine them with MMOs you have most of the money being made on PC you can’t ignore the fact that market forces drive what gets made. People were given what they wanted: games that they could play when they wanted and how they wanted. It turns out that they wanted to pay micro transactions because they valued their time to be worth more than the money and more people were introduced to gaming through Facebook than ever were through MMOs and so it’s hard to lay the blame at people playing the games that they wanted. If people wanted to play what we laughably call “PC games” (as if they were different) then they would play them.

So was it the players themselves? Did them moving to MMOs kill the diversity of PC gaming by making it so that they only gave money to one company for years on end? It’s hard to argue that less money went to the other developers even if spending was up overall because of monthly fees and, after they died finally in 2012, transaction based gaming. Did the bandwagon jumping onto MMOs of the mid to late 2000s cause money to be wasted that could never be recovered by making clone games with only minor stylistic and gameplay changes? I think not because Valve keeps telling us that the PC is healthy.

Even now in, um, 2014, as the body of PC gaming sits where it fell at the bottom of the stairs Valve are still insisting that PC gaming is fine and they have the numbers to back it up. They also still insist that proving it by releasing some sales numbers wouldn’t help anybody and so all that we know is that the single digit percentage of PC sales numbers on the charts actually means nothing. But why do they do that? We are getting warmer. We are a step closer to the killer.

What of the Microsoft golden child Xbox? PC gaming was neglected for so many years because of it, can it be that everybody went to Xbox? Well we can’t consider that question without looking at PS3 as well as they are two sides to the same coin. But look at them in 2014, they were once attractive young things, but now their age has caught up with them. The Xbox is 9, the PS3 is 8 and in console years they are ancient. In years gone by PC gaming would have kept them young and sprightly by pushing them to need better and greater graphics, but Sony declared this console generation to be ten years and the PC never called them on that because the graphically intensive games arms race went away for the PC, what with casual games, independent games and MMOs. Graphics aren’t the most important thing you know, sometimes gameplay means more. Could it be a three way suicide pact? But where is the logic in that? Why did people let it get this way? Where are they playing games?

What about Apple? Smug little apple who accidentally created a large gaming market for phones when the company has never managed to get gaming right before in its history. This is the company that let Halo get away don’t forget. Well by 2014 the iPhone and the iPad are more powerful than the 360 and the PS3 and that hurts badly. The games are cheaper as well and fit better into how more people wanted to play than the traditional console model ever did. Want a five minute game while you wait for your bus? Or five hours of gorgeous graphics in an RPG? Even the casual games from PC gaming are played on phones now, it’s no wonder that PC gaming died. Your phone is more powerful and cheaper than your PC because, well, you were buying a phone anyway.

So now we have all of the players and their motives and it’s clear that nobody in the room wanted to kill PC gaming, they just did it by accident. Microsoft and Sony were too caught up in their own battles to notice that they were becoming obsolete. The PlayStation Vita is a perfect example of this: Nobody wants a handheld console because they have a phone already. Microsoft took the eye off of PC gaming to fight Sony, who in turn decided it wasn’t going to fight back and in doing so both sides signed their death warrants.

So why did PC not survive through independent games? Because the paid market was too difficult to get into because Valve had a monopoly with Steam. The big casual game portals are very hit and miss, and getting your game on Steam is really hard, unlike on iPhone or Android which anybody can do. With Steam being the de facto place to go for new games where impulse purchases are made, and by spending so long pointing out how restricted their rivals are as a smokescreen for their own restrictions the rise of Apple was a certainty. But this has been the plan for Steam all along and Valve doesn’t mind. They don’t need the PC brand as they want their own and so with that Steam branded hardware running Android starts to be announced around the time that Microsoft and Sony finally admit that they need a new console generation. By then it’s too late and the phone has won.

But what of the TV? The large screen? The keyboard, mouse and controller? They are all still around, but since 2011 when Apple made it so that you could play your iPad games on your TV with a press of a button the games console and PC are increasingly obsolete. You carry your games with you on your phone or tablet and send them to a larger screen if you need it. Your nice Steam powered tablet or phone allows you to use keyboards, mice and gamepads to play all of your old games under emulation, much like Good Old Games did back in the day of Windows and the sort of games you like are still being released for the new platform. There is nothing that one of these new platforms can’t do that your current PC can gaming wise.

I mean, who uses a PC any more anyway? Didn’t they die when Windows 8 was released and it was mainly for tablets? PCs are for work, tablets and phones are for the home.

PC gaming didn’t die. The home PC died and took it with it.

OK, all that sounds far fetched, but is it? It’s getting painfully obvious through the work of companies like Epic that the iPad is getting to be a very powerful beast and it will indeed be more powerful than this generation of games consoles before the end of the bizarrely long PS3 lifecycle. Sony are actually playing that up at the moment saying that the Vita is nearly as powerful as the PS3 (while conveniently forgetting that it has to drive far fewer pixels because of resolution) which is just insane marketing if you want people to keep thinking your main console is cutting edge. Don’t forget that the PS3 and 360 can’t even drive full 1080p graphics for most games. If we don’t get a new Xbox announced next year then I’m calling it now: console gaming has been left behind. Being able to play your iPad games on your Apple TV isn’t fiction, it comes with the next OS release in a few weeks or so. I’ve been running the betas for months.

Over the last few months the constant cries of Valve saying that platform X is more open than others, or that Y is too locked down and needs to be opened up just screams smokescreen to me. Looking at them from the other end and they are just as bad as all of the others, they are just managing reputation. In the end I think it is them who will win because they will open up, but not on PC. A mobile store for Android that you can pay an annual fee to publish on it, just like Apple have, is a no-brainer for them, as is making sure that people can play whatever types of games they want on their platform. When your phone is more powerful than your PC and can send the pictures to your TV or monitor on your desk with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse or controller and have exactly the same games experiences as you get now will you really miss your PC for gaming? How many of your already use the iPad for a lot of email, web browsing and things that you used to use your PC for now? Valve are gamers, they can do it right in a way that the corporate attitude of Apple will never allow. They also understand DRM, which will allow larger companies to release larger games on Android without as much fear of piracy. Think of it as a Steam console with phone that can be a portable or normal console, probably using any compatible hardware device. If they aren’t planning that then I want a cut when they do decide it’s a good idea.

The truly depressing prospect of Windows 8 from what I’ve seen as a developer only reinforces this. Microsoft doesn’t care about the desktop for the next 4 years as it thinks the home PC is finished and sees tablets as the future, and the new tablet UI does not support games without flipping back to old windows mode. That all important one-click marketplace that Apple used to conquer the phone only exists for these crippled applications so we’re not going to be selling games on it. If I want to make money as an independent game developer I certainly wouldn’t touch the PC at the moment as the money is on the phones. Think about that for a moment as it’s the independents who are always touted as being one of the key strengths of the PC. In fact the idea of what an independent has even changed as now you have those who truly are, and those who have a publisher like Valve. We need a new term. Either way Microsoft are ignoring their needs and in fact even being openly hostile about runtimes like flash that most independent games actually use. On the other hand watch companies like Epic closely. The Unreal engine supports PC, Mac and iOS now and the release of Epic Citadel, followed by Infinity Blade really made people take notice of the power of iPad. To put it another way I can write a game using it that targets all three using that engine and sell on all three platforms. Valve aren’t going to touch me as a developer and nobody cares at Games For Windows, EAs Origin, or any of the other main publishers either. Odds are I will make the most money on iOS, some on MacOS and have to handle the sales and distribution for the PC myself.

Ironically I think that Mac gaming will become healthier still (it couldn’t actually get much worse) as it’s easier to maintain Mac and iOS builds of a game and Apple have a one-click store available on both platforms. In fact I wouldn’t be shocked if the next revision of the Apple TV wasn’t actually technically a games console in its own right and yes, in a few years it will be more powerful than an Xbox or PS3 as it shares hardware with the phones and tablets but avoids having the expensive battery and screen that pushes their prices up.

This all depends on people being stupid though. Everybody knows what they are doing and Microsoft will have to announce a new Xbox next year to stay in the game and the Sony 10 year plan idea has of course always been part bluff as the PS3 will live on long into the life of the PS4 just as the PS2 did with the PS3 so we will see the PS4 announced a year later. Valve will play nice with truly independents, or Microsoft will relent and do the same as those 25% cuts that Apple take on every sale sure are tempting. The next Xbox might even make homebrew games be more than a forgotten corner of the console now that a game has actually sold a decent amount, even if it hasn’t made Microsoft much with their cut on such a low price on a single good selling game.

The only thing I know for sure is that it was Apple in the Library with a platform that allowed easy monetisation for anybody who wanted to release on it without an awful lot of that pesky publisher interference and approval, and that’s even taking into account the restrictions that Apple have. It was probably only manslaughter as well as Apple didn’t mean to kill anybody, it was all sort of an accident. I think they are actually quite embarrassed about the whole thing. It’s hard to argue with a platform that you are going to carry around with you everywhere anyway though. I bet you have your phone next to you now don’t you?

Join me next time for “Who killed the games publishers” and “Who killed the big games developers.” Oh, OK it was the same thing. Games got cheaper to make and smaller and didn’t require traditional publishers any more to get them onto shelves while the big developers died out because they weren’t profitable at that size unless they made one of the couple of games per year that are big. See the news stories about whichever studios were shut down this week for evidence of that. We are back in the good old days of smaller teams trying more ideas while the big guys still churn out blockbusters. It’s a cycle I expect, but this time with better middleware. Seriously, you could churn out a damn good fantasy RPG with Unreal Development Kit, a couple of bedroom content creators and the sense to not go overboard and out scope yourself. It’s barely even programming at that stage, mostly content.

The future is bright, but different. But not too different as to be scary. The fact is that our phones are just getting more and more powerful and that big lump under your desk is obsolete because of it.