Your argument has a major flaw, however. This isn't the problem of the games. The games will continue to be made looking better and better and doing all of the neat things--only you're not going to see them on PC. The console side of things is doing great, selling copies, etc. The problem isn't the INDUSTRY not having the AAA games, but the PC. Consoles are seeing more growth which scales well and PC is not and frankly, if it continues like that, the PC will simply be left to the indy devs, so if you want to play Machinarium, World of Goo and Torchlight (all good games) and not BF3, Assassin's Creed, etc., you're in luck.
Oh, as for the what was out then that was good:
LOTS. But with piracy not nearly as big of a problem, they were MERELY competing against each other. You talk about cheap ports or delayed ports but again, you're trying to make a chicken and the egg argument only it was piracy which came before the delayed ports. Previously, games were ported from PC to console, and not the other way around, a large amount of the time. Piracy changed that. Again, the gaming industry isn't in risk of going away, gaming on the PC (again, AAA titles, mostly) is.
~Jason
I'm not disputing that at all, infact, as you may recall, i have been whining and pining over the state of PC games and how they are the wrong kind of games thease days for a long time now
Thing is, i do feel the PC and Console game markets are rather different beasts, and that the current trend of treating them as identical, and releasing the exact same games on both markets is a big mistake, one that definately contributes to the poor sales, and people chosing to game on their Consoles instead of their PC's.
I think the PC does need more exclusives before it will become profitable again, and if you look at the user data Steam has gathered on the average PC's in opperation today, then it should also be obvious that Crysis levels of overcompensatory bling bling graphics are not what the market is geared for at all, things have changed, perhabs people got sick of upgrading because 80% of games where limited to the capabillities of the Consoles anyway, maybe the economy is to blame, whatever it is, there seems to be fewer PC gamers with super beefy highend rigs thease days, so if you want to make money on the PC, you'll want to take that into account, and in turn, it'll also reduce the overhead and cost of development, making it more profitable on a market that is smaller than the Console market, makes some sense, does it not?
But above all, what needs to be satiesfied is the mechanics of supply and demand, the industry just isen't doing much to satiesfy the demand for good PC games (and by that i mean PC exclusives), and very little if anything at all to spark interest in the platform and attract new gamers to it.
Now as you assert, the Console market is doing great, and it's on the PC that there are too many pirates per paying customers, yeah thats true, but have you also wondered why that is? is it just that piracy has exploded out of nowhere? or is it that the market has become lobsided?
Where are the paying customers? well mostly on the Consoles thease days, but why should that suprice anyone? they are marketed to hell and back, its where all the games are beeing released, and instrumental to their success is their lower price of purchase (thease days it's less of an issue, but back when the PS2 and Xbox started to create this market situation, the gap was much wider, and now it lives on as a standard).
And ofcourse, you find most of the pirates on the PC, but again i ask, why is that supricing? where else would they be? the PC is an open platform that is much, much easier to pirate on, so obviously it's going to be the platform of choice for the pirates.
You see what i'm saying? if you only look at the PC market, its damned easy to make claims about piracy having exploded! yeah, but is it really because piracy has run amok? or because today there are more overall gamers than they where 10 years ago, and for the same reason also more pirates, and the problem looks much worse than it is on the PC because more gamers choose to buy Consoles, whilst Pirates are targeting the PC because its better suited for their goals? that there is a lobsided distribution between legit customers and pirates?
I'd say that makes perfect sense, wouldent you?
So by that token, if the industry made the effort to revive the PC, if it once again boasted an attractive catalogue of exclusive titles that where made-for-PC that would attract gamers to the platfom, instead of just getting sloppy seconds from the Console market, then woulden't it stand to reason that a lot more legit customers would flock to the platform and it would do a hell of a lot better, and the buy-to-pirate ratio would be much improved? i'd think so.
Obviously the pirates would still be there, they aren't going to die off, they would still choose the platform because it's easier to pirate on, but they would be there regardless, you know it and i know it.
But, i will have to give you a swift kick in the bum for ignoring my main point:
*Kick*
Which was that the industry is too damned quick to tell us that the problem is 100% the pirates fault, but comon, i call BS, the industry has made some bad choices over the years, that certainly has contributed to the economic situation they find themselves in, they share blame too, and we shoulden't let them sweep that under the rug whilst pointing fingers at everyone else but themselves, that dog wont hunt.
If real solutions are to be found, we cannot allow scapegoating and passing of the buck to muddy the waters, and taint our perceptions of the real situation.