So I was listening to the recent podcast and was a little frightened to hear how little the group knew about the PC version of Call of Duty 4 (Among other things related to the PC) .  The most glaring I felt were that CoD maps on the PC are unpaid and the size of the community, it's a fairly simple mistake but when it's heard from Jeff Gerstmann it just sounds legit (99.9% of the time it is) but in this rare instance he's wrong. 
 
The Call of Duty maps, from the CoD4 map pack to the WaW one's are all paid for by sponsors intel and Nvidia understand brand loyalty helps and nothing builds brand loyalty like goodwill (I know people who bought Nvidia cards because of the CoD4 map pack.). The second mistake was the size of the PC Call of Duty community, in short it's massive.  But lets look at numbers here,  Xfire lists World of Warcrafts daily users at 62,389 daily players where CoD4 sports 101,000(this is only Xfire and the entire community does not use Xfire.) Game-Monitor lists 200k.
 
My second gripe about Giant Bomb's PC coverage is just lack of knowledge, if you look at Brads PC build video he mentions the 896mb frame buffer (Memory) several times saying he can't believe how much memory it had. The first issue is that the GTX 260 216 consistently trails the ATI Radeon 4870 and 4890 for more money simple research could have gotten them a faster card for less money! Then looking at 896mbs of memory, it isn't very much anymore. The GTX 295 won't even run most games at 2560*1600 because of the lack of memory, 1gb is the bare minimum for 30 inch monitors. We also have the RE5 PC Quicklook, ignoring how much they wanted to use a controller I noticed that they were running the game at 1280*720, that's 720P! PC's have the ability to run games in real HD! Use it or you've just hamstrung how great some of these multiplats can look on the PC.
 
I love Giantbomb and I'd like for it to become my one stop shop for video game news, it serves my console needs and I love the podcast but I am honestly beginning to think that Giantbomb needs a PC editor who knows the platform and has a passion for it. Right now it just seems like it gets picked on.

" So I was listening to the recent podcast and was a little frightened to hear how little the group knew about the PC version of Call of Duty 4 (Among other things related to the PC) .  The most glaring I felt were that CoD maps on the PC are unpaid and the size of the community, it's a fairly simple mistake but when it's heard from Jeff Gerstmann it just sounds legit (99.9% of the time it is) but in this rare instance he's wrong.

The Call of Duty maps, from the CoD4 map pack to the WaW one's are all paid for by sponsors intel and Nvidia understand brand loyalty helps and nothing builds brand loyalty like goodwill (I know people who bought Nvidia cards because of the CoD4 map pack.).

The second mistake was the size of the PC Call of Duty community, in short it's massive.  But lets look at numbers here,  Xfire lists World of Warcrafts daily users at 62,389 daily players where CoD4 sports 101,000(this is only Xfire and the entire community does not use Xfire.) Game-Monitor lists 200k.

My second gripe about Giant Bomb's PC coverage is just lack of knowledge, if you look at Brads PC build video he mentions the 896mb frame buffer (Memory) several times saying he can't believe how much memory it had. The first issue is that the GTX 260 216 consistently trails the ATI Radeon 4870 and 4890 for more money simple research could have gotten them a faster card for less money!

Then looking at 896mbs of memory, it isn't very much anymore. The GTX 295 won't even run most games at 2560*1600 because of the lack of memory, 1gb is the bare minimum for 30 inch monitors.

We also have the RE5 PC Quicklook, ignoring how much they wanted to use a controller I noticed that they were running the game at 1280*720, that's 720P! PC's have the ability to run games in real HD!

The lack of PC content is the biggest problem i have with Giantbomb, and i hope they'll expand on this in the future. Pretty much everyone i know (that plays games) are heavily into PC games, and no matter what everyone says, the fact remains that the PC is still going strong. Giantbomb would be so much better if us PC gamers wouldn't feel alienated

GTX 260 core 216 was cheaper than a 4870 when I bought it. From most benchmarks I see it is faster too? But better linux drivers is why I went nvidia!  
 
Nothin wrong with using a controller on a PC either! 
 
But if your point is for more PC coverage/awareness, then cool. 

I'm with you.

I agree with the OP on the front that GB needs a dedicated PC editor. None of us uses our console to use GB. I would assume that many of us using our PC's have pretty decent rigs when it comes to gaming. The numbers may not be there monetarily for the GB staff to see, but it still doesn't change the fact that it would be great to have a strong PC presence from the officials of the G to the B.

"The lack of PC content is the biggest problem i have with Giantbomb, and i hope they'll expand on this in the future. Pretty much everyone i know (that plays games) are heavily into PC games, and no matter what everyone says, the fact remains that the PC is still going strong. Giantbomb would be so much better if us PC gamers wouldn't feel alienated "

I know they publish the most popular games on XBL, but do they publish player numbers or just the order?

I pretty much agree.

PC should be covered between Dave, Drew and Vinny (which is the only one that uses his pc to play games from time to time)

@Maniac said:

The second mistake was the size of the PC Call of Duty community, in short it's massive.  But lets look at numbers here,  Xfire lists World of Warcrafts daily users at 62,389 daily players where CoD4 sports 101,000(this is only Xfire and the entire community does not use Xfire.) Game-Monitor lists 200k.

This is more of a case of how much bigger the 360 community is.  100K's of players is big, but the 360 community has over 10 million COD4 players.  PS3 community is something like 5-7 million, but you see how even that gets treated as they talked about the 360 themed MW2 demo.
 

That hundreds of thousands number for the PC is how many people played it in the last 24 hours. The 360 number you mentioned is how many people played in the game's entire lifetime. Players at any given time would likely be around 1 million -- the same as Counter-Strike 1.6.

" @Diamond said:  

@Maniac said:

The second mistake was the size of the PC Call of Duty community, in short it's massive.  But lets look at numbers here,  Xfire lists World of Warcrafts daily users at 62,389 daily players where CoD4 sports 101,000(this is only Xfire and the entire community does not use Xfire.) Game-Monitor lists 200k.

This is more of a case of how much bigger the 360 community is.  100K's of players is big, but the 360 community has over 10 million COD4 players.  PS3 community is something like 5-7 million, but you see how even that gets treated as they talked about the 360 themed MW2 demo.
 

That hundreds of thousands number for the PC is how many people played it in the last 24 hours. The 360 number you mentioned is how many people played in the game's entire lifetime. Players at any given time would likely be around 1 million -- the same as Counter-Strike 1.6. "

~7 million copies of CoD4 sold on 360.  A fraction of those will still be used regularly online.  A fraction of those will be online at any given time.
 
Diamond, where are you getting your COD4 360 (100-300k) and PC (10k-30k) numbers from?

well most people don't give a shit about PC crap.
buy a console already

" ~7 million copies of CoD4 sold on 360.

@Jimbo

Diamond, where are you getting your COD4 360 (100-300k) and PC (10k-30k) numbers from?

" well most people don't give a shit about PC crap. buy a console already "

PC is still the single largest gaming platform in terms of revenue and 'install base', so who are these most people?

" @trophyhunter said:

" well most people don't give a shit about PC crap. buy a console already "

PC is still the single largest gaming platform in terms of revenue and 'install base', so who are these most people? "

I honestly wouldn't care if they never mentioned a PC game again on the site.

" I honestly wouldn't care if they never mentioned a PC game again on the site. "

Edit:  In reply to Diamond, rather than the flailing in between.
 
I doubt it.  All the MMOs in the world add up to a shit ton of revenue.  Keep in mind that the <any single console> market is particularly strong in North America compared to large parts of the rest of the world.  Most English speaking games coverage sites are naturally geared towards the US market and console gaming also has most of the marketing money - I think the perceived lack of popularity in PC gaming is largely a symptom of that, rather than actually being true.  In fact I'd be pretty surprised if there is another single platform which could top PC gaming for revenue by the time you take into account digital distribution, game sales and MMO subs.  If you have a source which says otherwise I'd be happy to see it.
 
^^ That's unique players, not unique copies of the game.  IW now say 13m unique players as of May 09, Acti say 13m sales in total as of May 09.  Chalk the difference up to second hand sales I guess.
 
As you rightly point out, PC sales and PC players are not the same thing, not by a long shot.  I agree that if you exclude pirated copies then the 360 wins easily.  If you include them then I imagine the total number of people that have played and still play the 360 and PC versions worldwide are pretty similar.  It's pretty much impossible to come up with total active PC numbers due to the nature of pc gaming, so I guess we can't know for sure.
 
I can't even remember the context in which this discussion came up during the podcast, so I will say that CoD 4 is plenty popular on the PC, but how many actually paid for it I couldn't say.

Yup. They're PC idiots. So just don't take their advice. This site, as a whole, is for a somewhat niche arena of gaming. There are many genres of games and platforms that Giant Bomb doesn't cover. That just means if you're looking for something in particular, you may have to rely on other sites.

In comparison to the 360 or PS3, the number of players on PC is not NEARLY as high.  I'm a PC player for CoD4, and I can guarantee that the 360 has far more people playing it than PC does.  Then again, there's no consistent way to be able to test that, but seriously, CoD4 and W@W get WAY more users on the consoles than the PC. 
 
Also, you may have missed what Jeff was saying with Modern Warfare 2.  Specifically, those exact words are sitting in my PM inbox from when he and I were talking right after that MW2 stuff went up on the site.  I asked him directly if he knew anything about prestige in MW2, and he told me "they aren't saying much about the PC version".  He then went on to say "I think this will be the time when they'll figure a lot of stuff out, like persistent online stat tracking and even how to make PC users pay for map packs".  Therefore, Jeff was basically just saying "they aren't saying shit about the PC version, but if I had to put money on something, this is what I figure".  To be honest, he's kinda right about that.  I mean, there's no reason why IW wouldn't try to use some form of persistent account like what BF2142 featured.  It would also be its own form of DRM, as you would HAVE to have an account in order to play the game AT ALL on PC.  Personally, I would be fine with that.  You wanna play the game at all on PC?  You HAVE to buy a copy.  I'm sure people will get it pirated, but this should put a serious halt in it. 
 
That's all speculative of course, and you are trying to call people out on their own speculations.  They didn't have community numbers in front of them, but it's been stated in numerous places numerous times since CoD4's release that the console community was larger than the PC community for it.  Same with W@W.  It will probably be the same for MW2.  It happens. 
 
As for the thing about Brad's PC building video...dood, that was a joke.  Don't take anything in the video seriously.  

" well most people don't give a shit about PC crap. buy a console already "

I hate playing games on my PC, but since this is a gaming website I think that there should be a PC presence here and to be honest there is. They just bought a big rig and played games on it, what more do you want an Aion QL?

This is an interesting topic, my friend mentioned largely that GiantBomb covered mostly about console games and lacked PC coverage. This is something I can agree with to an extent. As team members go I find that Dave is the only one who shows that PC presence on the site. 
 
To be fair however, I can't really think of something worth reporting about, Im sure when there is a notable PC release it will be touched upon. With their new computer (regardless of possible flaws in its build) this can only suggest that they plan to cover more on the PC side.

"
 I can't even remember the context in which this discussion came up during the podcast, so I will say that CoD 4 is plenty popular on the PC, but how many actually paid for it I couldn't say. "

" @Jimbo said:

" @trophyhunter said:

" well most people don't give a shit about PC crap. buy a console already "

PC is still the single largest gaming platform in terms of revenue and 'install base', so who are these most people? "

well 99% of that revenue is world of warcraft and just no shit everyone has a computer. but I don't know anyone that really plays real games on there computer and no one that I know, knows anyone that does that either. that's what I hate you PC fanboys your all elitist pricks. "

Put in COD2 in your PC and see how many people are still playing that, last time I checked there was still a large userbase of people playing that game every day. COD4 on PC is lagging behind consoles right now but give it 3 years and you won't be able to find a handfull of servers on the 360 or PS3 for COD4 but I'll garantee plenty of people will be playing it still regulary on the PC.
 
Besides... a keyboard and mouse are the only way to play multiplayer FPSs really... I've tried using a console controller but it's not the same and it never will be. The joystick is just a clumsy tool compared to the lightning-quick pinpoint accuracy of a mouse.

If you check the pc section under reviews theres been quite alot of pc coverage on GB in terms of reviews, alot more than I expected when the site launched, but look at is this way, apart from afew mmo releases there really hasn't been many stand out pc only releases in awhile, alot of the review content on the site over the past 6 months has been multi-format and it makes more sense to review the console versions and check in on the pc release if its a big enough game (eg SF4) im sure when we start getting alot more high profile pc only releases over the next year we'll see alot more pc coverage on GB.

Meh. The duders can't know everything.

" [...] I love Giantbomb and I'd like for it to become my one stop shop for video game news, it serves my console needs and I love the podcast but I am honestly beginning to think that Giantbomb needs a PC editor who knows the platform and has a passion for it. Right now it just seems like it gets picked on. "

I don't know if the staff needs a dedicated PC guy, but Snide seems to have been a PC gamer. On the last podcast he was talking up Freespace 2 and Baldur's Gate.
 
Anyway, snide, REPRESENT!

" well most people don't give a shit about PC crap. buy a console already "

" well I was just saying that's what 90% of PC fanboys act like  they are the smallest group so they have to be the loudest "

The Bombcast crew is wrong about a LOT of stuff.  Not knowing is fine, but when they talk about stuff like they have pages upon pages of factual info in front of them... it kinda bothers me.

Like when they're talking about MMOs/Warcraft... it's almost cringe worthy on how little they know.

While everyone has a PC, much fewer have "gaming" PCs.  Developers have known this for a long time and the lure of cash on the console side means that most games are made for consoles.  That's why you're not seeing much coverage on PC games.  There aren't many new PC games and a lot of what's new came out on the console first.  That being the case, it's not surprising that their PC knowledge has atrophied.

" @Jimbo said:

" @trophyhunter said:

" well most people don't give a shit about PC crap. buy a console already "

PC is still the single largest gaming platform in terms of revenue and 'install base', so who are these most people? "

well 99% of that revenue is world of warcraft and just no shit everyone has a computer. but I don't know anyone that really plays real games on there computer and no one that I know, knows anyone that does that either. that's what I hate you PC fanboys your all elitist pricks. "