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PC Gaming Isn't Going Anywhere
Grimrod writes "Dave Long, one of the editors of GamerDad, has a unique look at the PC as a game platform and how it gets forgotten among the constant barrage of console gunfire in his latest Long Shot column. From the article, 'It might never be like 1998 again on the computer, the year that PC gaming was probably at its very peak, but it's far better than analysts and even armchair soothsayers would have you believe. I got caught up in the hype myself to a certain extent. I started to believe I didn't need the computer for games. Now that I'm back on the inside with current hardware, I realize again how dumb that idea was.'"
He's right. The computer isn't dead for gaming, and in my opinion, will never be overshadowed by consoles. I've pretty much stopped enjoying console games, excluding the GTA's, n64's goldeneye and smash brothers, and my old SNES and nintendo games. Nothing else new on console is worth playing.
:]
But on the computer I've had tons of games that were tons of fun. starting back with civilization and progressing up through warcraft II, duke nukem, doom, quake, AOE, and then halflife & cs(!)
what makes most PC games so much better than the console games is the amount of personal interactivity with people. I can talk to the people i'm playing with in counter-strike. I can't do that with a console (excluding some horrid voicecom). And it's so much easier to use the mouse / keyboard combination for gaming than a controller (no matter how i try, i can't aim in halo worth a shit with an xbox controller)
but, as of late, i've gone totally retro and dusted off the NES and the atari for some old school fun times
...the independent developer community. Folks like Carmack, Romero, Garriot and many others developed games on the various personal computer platforms of their day on a shoestring. These individuals are the ones that, for the most part, made PC gaming great.
In terms of a lot of indie content not being "AAA" grade these days... a lot of the great indie content people seem to be chained by their balls into mod work. If these guys realized their own talent and struck out on their own with a low-cost engine like Torque, or an open source option like CrystalSpace, Nebula, or Rygax, we would see far more successful indie game companies selling their work.
Console manufacturers make money off of these guys through buyouts or licensing once they get really successful. Eventually many companies become "exclusive partners", get locked into multiple-title deals, or otherwise lose their independence from the Big Publisher model of game business. An exception of course is Id, which we all know has a positively unique management situation. Valve also is regaining some cajones in this department.
So there are always indies, and indies are what make PC gaming greatest- past, present, future.
Performing sanity checks on your own beliefs is vital in avoiding poisoned koolaid.
FTA :
>> Halo 2 especially takes online multiplayer to a
>> new level of fun because of the integrated voice
>> chat of Xbox Live.
Perhaps he actually means: by ripping off ideas that were possible 10 years previously in pc games (i mean i was using roger wilco to play delta force 2 with 50 player servers back before hardware accelerated video cards existed...)
half-life 1 had integrated voice chat 5 years (or more) before halo2 - AND had multiplayer (gameplay & weapons & community) that kicked ass over halo's (the continued popularity of cs proves this)...
I still don't get why people would pay money for xbox live, when you can get all of this and much more on a pc...
then there's the new 'HD' craze that the console manufacturers are trying to promote with the new round of consoles...
yippee-freakin do - my console can now do resolutions that computers do 10 years ago - without hardware acceleration...weee
current-gen consoles can only go as high (resolution-wise) as standard ntsc video resolution, which is the equivalent of what quake1 in software mode could do (320×482 approx)
now, suddenly consoles can do 'hd' resolutions, which are basically what we've had on PC's for the past 7-8 years:
HDTV 1080i 1920×1080 (16:9)
HDTV 720p 1280×720 (16:9)
EDTV 480p 704×480
(source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_resolution )
is this really 'that' interesting? i mean 1920x1080 isn't something to scoff at, but by the time the consoles are out and people actually have tv's that can display this kind of resolution, computers will be running dual & triple display games at 2 to 3 times this resolutions, not to mention SLI video cards, dual core 64 bit processors and other PC-only enhancements that are coming down the pipeline...
(sure some of the consoles will have dual-core processors, but they are still nowhere near the processor speed of what we will be targetting as our lowest-end gaming machine in few years...)
consoles are pure marketing bs...mind you, as a developer they provide a single, stable hardware platform to develop games for, so IN THEORY, we can optimize game performance more for the consoles...
Gekido's Lair
He's right, as most peoples PC's are being continuously upgraded and replaced, the market for PC games continues to stay steady, whereas with consoles only being replaced every 7-8 years, they gradually loose their selling power in the couple of years before they are replaced
PC gaming might not be as strong as it once was, but it will be stable for a long time to come
Business Voyeur
yes, Ion Storm were the developers that ruined DX2, but I think it's the Xbox's limitations that forced them to make the wrong decisions. First off, I don't think DX2 could ever meet the level of uniqueness DX had, since there was already DX, so they were bound for an inferior sequel right off the bat. They did make a pretty interesting story, and the graphics/physics system was ahead of its time.
BUT, Ion Storm was forced to remove the more endearing gameplay mechanics because of the knowledge it was being ported to console. For one, the Xbox's physical memory is quite paltry. There is no way that the Xbox could handle the enormous, wide-open levels of the first game unless they settled for a sub-par graphics presentation. Which of course, no one ever stands for anymore (WoW is about the only other major game than DX1 that put substance and style over power and polygons when it comes to graphics).
The other thing was that the game had to be controller-friendly. So they created a dumbed-down inventory system with none of the depth that made the first game's item manipulation fun. They also dumbed-down the character building. The first DX's character building was so in-depth and varied, and had such a strong influence on how you played the game, that it had really combined the best parts of both FPSes and RPGs. DX2, though, just had some arbitrary skills to improve that did effect the game, but not to the level of the first.
So both the limitations of the hardware, and the limitations of the audience of the consoles put very large restrictions on the development of the second Deus Ex. Yes GTA was done beautifully on all systems, but DX isn't GTA. GTA is nowhere near as complex as the first DX. A great Deus Ex sequel could only have been done for PC.
A PC can do whatever you make it do, not just what Sony and Microsoft thinks you should do with it.
Dear PC user,
Thank you for writing. We at Microsoft are aware of this issue, and you will be relieved to know that we have partnered with several major computing companies to ensure that in the future, your PC will not do what you want it to do.
Thank you for your concern.
Signed,
Microsoft Palladium team