Cameron

I agree completely. Tribes Ascend is a blast and they handle the free-to-play aspects really well. It's definitely the best free-to-play game I've ever played. I don't even like most multiplayer shooters, but Tribes is different enough from most shooters that it really hooked me.

I paid $2.50 for both, which I thought was fine for Dear Esther even though I didn't really like it, but too much for TFoL.

I'm not sure how much of a difference this will make. It will depend on how similar the APUs in the next consoles are to stand alone AMD GPUs. I went with Nvidia last time because their cards run quieter. Unless there is a massive performance difference compared to the price, I'm going to stick with quieter cards.

I don't get the love some people have for Thirty Flights of Loving at all. It's not a good game. If it was free, then sure, who cares, but it's $5 for a fifteen minute experience of pressing W. I didn't like Dear Esther either, so I guess these games just aren't for me. I like games that have a good story and are simple, like To The Moon, but I didn't think TFoL even had a good story. I guess I like some gameplay in my games.

The trouble with those machines is that they almost never have very much upgrade potential. They will often only have one PCE slot, or none in some cases. That means you'd have to swap out the motherboard to do any real upgrade, and if you're going to do that, then you might as well just do that with your current system. I'm not saying it's 100% not a good choice, but be careful about what you are buying.

The best bang-for-your-buck GPUs right now are the Nvidia GTX660 and the Radeon 7850. The 7850 is a little bit better price wise, but I thought I'd list both since some people (myself included) have a preference for Nvidia. Don't go any lower than those or you'll start getting into cards that aren't meant for gaming. You can go higher if you want, but the price to performance starts going down.

Fallout 2 is definitely the game I've put the most time into and it's my favorite, but I'm not sure if it's the best.

Go to a website dedicated to PC building (like Maximum PC) and look over one of their budget builds. That should give you a good starting point.

Right now, about $299 straight out. I'm not willing to mess with any subsidy crap. I can't see buying one before it hits that price. I have a gaming PC, so I'm covered for anything 3rd party, and no one has shown many 1st party games yet (and the ones they have shown do nothing for me). Maybe there will be some awesome exclusive I just can't miss out on, but that probably won't happen until at least next Fall.

I was reading a story earlier today (sorry I can't remember where, it was through Flipboard) and it mentioned that the iOS app store accounts for 70+% of app revenue, even though Google Play has recently surpassed it in terms of download numbers. That's a pretty good indication that Android users just don't pay for stuff as much as iOS users. I have a GS3 and I buy way more stuff for my iPad just because there are usually better sales on iOS and games tend to come our first there.

I'm not sure what Google can do to make that situation better. Certainly being more selective in what they show on the store would help. There's just so much noise compared to good apps. There is some great stuff worth paying for that you just can't do on iOS (not games so much as cool apps), but good luck finding it without looking on tech sites.