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Well, I'm specifically talking about games that push the limits of graphics hardware, and that require a $500 video card to run. The market is very tiny there, but the increase in development costs is - I think - nontrivially larger than the cost of entry into the retail box console market. As a rough estimate, look at the budget for a Pixar movie: Up had a budget of $175M. The quality of art assets and graphics engine programming is going to be a bit lower running on a GeForce GTX580, but not that much lower, and instead of voice acting and writing you have longer runtime (so more assets), game design, and the requirement to do more art "in the round" since you don't have as much camera control as you do in a movie. So... $175M seems kind of reasonable to me as a rough estimate for pushing modern GPUs to the limit in a PC game.

AAA console game budgets are not quite that high yet with a few notable exceptions like Grand Theft Auto 4. So... I agree that the smaller market is a big concern (especially when you restrict it to "people who spent $500 on their video card"), and a reason that console development is more attractive (indie games, strategy games that don't translate well to console, and MMOs seem like the main exceptions here). However, I disagree that the budgets would be similar for a major console title (something getting close to a sales record, pushing the envelope of what the consoles can display, etc.) and a major PC title that tried to push the limit of a modern high-end graphics card.

I would like to know the last time one of those online petitions actually worked.

Hmm... it appears never.

On a more upbeat note, slacktivism is our word of the day!

Never worked... I swore i signed onto this petition and was able to buy a copy of Bioshock Collectors Edition: http://www.petitiononline.com/bioshock/petition.html http://www.planetxbox360.com/article_1644/Bioshock_Collectors_Edition

I wrote up an editorial on the specific details of the Xbox 360's power consumption. You can check it out here: http://www.planetxbox360.com/index.php/articledeta ils/show/1288

I know (sure think I did at least) see this somewhere like arstechnica.com or something but cannot find it right now. However, here and here are some links at least referencing it. The first is an interview with Todd Holmdahl, Corporate Vice President of the Xbox Product Group at Microsoft so is solid, not sure about the second.

I've got an even better, faster, and cheaper way to get XBox games to run - buy an XBox, which you can now purchase for less than half the price of the core system of the 360! This miraculous solution will even let you play *hundreds* of games that you won't get to on the 360!

Yeah, yeah, emulate an XBox on the PC you've already got, right...

They didnt make out they were first with it - the first line of their news post links back to the site that did post them first - http://www.planetxbox360.com/