TheOGVandalvideo

This is totally not cool. I don't understand why system requirements are going up as fast as they are. I mean, here I am playing Crysis on medium-high at comperable performances, and I'm only going to be able to play Dragon Age and other upcomming games at minimum? It makes me wonder why developers aren't taking their time to optimize for my rig. Oh well, one less consumer they have to worry about I guess.

Dissapointed by Alan Wake. Looks like this horror gamer is going to be keeping himself up at night with decades old games for another yaer.

This game shows that Square has a wide range of art styles up their sleeve. They can range their style from androgynous, spikey haired youth to slightly less androgynous, spikey haired old guy. I'm really impressed with this showing.



Nah, I'm more interested in Bayonetta.

What I said was that while PC gaming might  have big sales numbers when you put everything in one giant statistical pot, that doesn't mean it's doing OK as an industry. You say that, according to the PCGA, PC games are worth 3 bn a year. But if you take out JUST WoW (1 - 1.5 bn/yr) and casual games that make very little money individually but are worth over $2 bn/yr, you're left with a very, very small (apparently negative) slice of the pie in the "other" category, and that includes all other MMOs and games like Proctologist Tycoon that used to be what gamers called "casual."

Really, this isn't even arguable. It's self-evident. Any PC gamer (and I just bought my first console in 7 years) can see that comparatively few games that aren't MMOs or BigFish-esque minigames come out for the PC when compared to consoles, and extremely few if you take out the ports and still fewer if you disregard the "simultaneous releases" that have blocky, unoptimized console interfaces.

I mean, if that's the experience you're looking for and you think it's unfair to remove those numbers, then fine. But I think most people who self-identify as "gamers" would disagree that those are the games they mean when they say "this platform has a lot of great games coming out.""

""Those games were clearly rebuilt for console gamers in mind especially in gameplay (complexity, depth, etc.). They were recrafted to capture the bigger more casual console audience."

And why did they do that? Because there's more profit to be made on the consoles. It wasn't always like that.
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"TheOGVandalvideo said: Thank you for judging the value of my computer without knowing anything about it. Its a laptop...just fyi and I don't know of anything better than an Alienware in that segment. I look forward to your criticism of buying a gaming laptop next.

On with the topic, the price gap between the consoles and the PC is closing but the graphic quality is also closing at a faster rate. The only difference is that you actually need to put in more money every year to keep up with the hardware requirements of these games on the PC. Crysis looks like any good looking game on the consoles (like UT) if you run it with a 7900 GS. It only starts to shine when you run it with a top end DX10 card which again is very expensive, thus invalidating your point about PC games offering better visual quality with a 600 dollar rig. Compare this to how good MGS4 looks with the standard PS3 hardware right now - and games will only look better by the time PS3 nears the end of its lifecycle. BUT as I said earlier, I honestly don't want to discuss graphical quality of games - there is almost nothing to choose between console and PC games in general and depends a lot on the hardware you run it on. Its pointless to keep bringing this up. I concede the point on prices though...apparently graphic cards are a lot cheaper now than they were 5 years ago.

Demographic decides what kind of games are released on a platform. It affects everything. You are being obtuse if you think demographics don't matter. And no thanks, I'm not a sales analyst who saves sales reports in the bookmark list to shoot them out in a snappy forum discussion. From memory, in 2007  - WoW and casual games did make up 2/3rd of the revenue on the PC. Take it with a grain of salt if you don't want to believe me.

BTW..whats with the so called "facts" about piracy? What you are saying are opinions, not facts. Companies are losing business to pirated games and its more rampant on the PC. The game being good or bad is not a fact - thats an opinion. And your conclusion that they are using it as excuses is also an opinion.Every single illegal game download on the PC is 40-50 dollars lost for that company. By the way, id software is a solid developer and John Carmack is complaining about piracy on the PC. You should disregard him too ? I'm stating opinions as well but I'm not masking them under the term "fact".

Your viewpoints are established based on your interpretation of facts. But the argument is not about raw facts, its about the state of PC gaming atm and what kind of games can we expect on the platform in the future. And I think that PC is losing priority as a gaming platform due to things like piracy and demographics.

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"TheOGVandalvideo said: Good for you! Unfortunately, my Alienware was a little bit more expensive than yours.:( In my experience, consoles still turn out to be cheaper when compared to PC after i include the TV and the speakers. True that not all games run at 1080p but I thought we are talking about the best visual quality on either platform. Take console games like UT3 for example. They are really really close to their PC counterparts. UT3 actually looks better on my TV than it does on my computer (I do admit I have an "old" computer). Graphic quality is really subjective and depends a lot on what you're running tbh so opinions really vary. I'm not here to insult your judgement on what looks better and I'll leave it at that.

Demographic is important when you talk about PC as a fledging gaming platform. You see, my point wasn't that the PC is dead but its losing priority as a gaming platform and most developers just release ports on the PC. The revenue generated on the PC is mainly through casual games and WoW (these two accounted for 2/3rds of the revenue generated on the PC in 2007).You keep bringing up the fact that its the highest grossing platform but you fail to acknowledge what games make up these revenues. Honestly, I don't really enjoy discussing talks of revenues becuase it makes me feel like a sales analyst, rather than a gamer.

I have to disagree with your viewpoint on piracy. Even when a mediocre game is being pirated, the developer has every right to complain about it. Every single pirated game is a potential sales lost. Its completely justifiable for them to express their views on piracy and it doesn't make them any less valid. They are losing money by making games for the PC and they would rather go make the same game for a console and actually make a profit out of it. And would you say that id software is also using piracy to hide their failure as game developers ? (Even Carmack recently hit out at piracy in PC gaming)

All my viewpoints are established by talking to avid gamers I know. Most of them find gaming on their consoles a lot more fun than their PCs. These aren't people with just one console either - most of my friends (and I) have multiple consoles and a decent PC. But more often than not, we find ourselves playing on the consoles. That to me says something about the state of the PC.
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