On Jan 13, 5:42 pm, "Tom" <no...@nothere.com> wrote:
> "The alMIGHTY N" <natle...@yahoo.com> wrote in messagenews:fda5adaf-e28b-4524-82d7-5caeb2367fe0@t6g2000vbr.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
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> > On Jan 12, 4:04 pm, Doug Jacobs <djac...@rawbw.com> wrote:
> >> The King of Gaming <king.of.gam...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> > PC games are not only dead, they've been dead for five years. No
> >> > important games come out for PC that anyone can name off the top of
> >> > their head. If the situation is right, a high profile 360/PS3 game
> >> > will get a port with (hopefully) higher resolution textures. That's
> >> > hardly what I'd call life. Go to EBGames.com (Electronics Boutique
> >> > used to sell ONLY PC games)... do you see ANY PC games advertised on
> >> > the front page? Dead.
>
> >> You're kidding, right? What about WoW? GalCiv2? Civ IV? Peggle?!?
>
> >> I'll grant you that retail versions of PC games have been dying off left
> >> and right, and have been for the past 15 years or so, but they're not
> >> entirely extinct. At least, not yet.
>
> >> I see plenty of PC games advertised on GameStop/EB's frontpage - both as
> >> retail games, and through Gamestop's digital download store.
>
> > LOL
>
> > The only PC games on those homepages are the PC versions of games that
> > are also available for the consoles... and the "PC" link is always
> > last.
>
> >> Digital download is the area that PC games have started to re-emerge
> >> from. Steam, Impulse, Direct2Drive, to name a few, are offering both new
> >> and older titles at discount prices.
>
> > So you're saying it's good that these consumers are only buying games
> > once they're so old they can only be sold for discounted prices? I
> > know *you* like to shop like that but that can't be good for the
> > industry.
>
> >> This is also opening the market to
> >> smaller, independent developers who would never have a chance of getting
> >> the attention of a retail publisher, like EA.
>
> > Smaller, independent developers who tend to make *casual* games. We're
> > not seeing full blown games that could ever be interesting enough to
> > be sold at retail for $40-50 alongside games like Crysis, Modern
> > Warfare, Left4Dead, Mass Effect, etc.
>
> >> If anything, we're seeing PC gaming return to the time of the early 90s
> >> when shareware was all the rage until a certain shareware title called
> >> DOOM showed up and literally reshaped the whole industry.
>
> > Which is *bad.* Back then, it was okay because there wasn't as big a
> > differential between the two sides of the gaming industry. There were
> > many types of games that you *had* to have a PC to play since the
> > consoles weren't capable of those kinds of games.
>
> > Now, the only real advantage of PC games is the higher resolutions
> > which Blu-ray has shown is really not important to the typical
> > consumer.
>
> That's not the only real advantage. Controls layouts are typically better,
> more developed with easier (and sometimes with more) command usage; Mass
> Effect, Oblivion and especially Dragon Age are good examples of a few
> mentionable games (compare Dragon Age or Mass Effect commands to that of the
> 360, and it is night and day).
That really depends on the gamer themselves. Most gamers have never
played anything more than a Solitaire or Bejeweled on the PC. They
didn't play all those classic FPS games, they didn't play Baldur's
Gate or Neverwinter Nights, they didn't spend hours online duking it
out in Warcraft or Starcraft.
Mouse and keyboard *is* a more accurate, more precise control scheme
but you can't ignore years of experience only with gaming controllers
that most gamers have. Most console gamers would never want to use a
keyboard and a mouse regardless of whether it is the truly better
control scheme.
On the other hand, higher resolutions can benefit everyone (although
some may not notice or care).
> You also are much less likely to experience
> long load times and frame-rate problems on the PC as well.
True.
> Count in the
> modding community that can enhance graphics and character development in
> many RPGs.
Good for the relatively small niche of players who play western RPGs.
> Though I loved the RPGs on the Xbox (KOTOR, Fable, etc) and the
> 360 (Oblivion, ME, Fallout 3, etc), I always felt left behind, but that
> genre group is pretty small. Most consolers like platform games, shooters,
> fighting/racing games and that's where most of the money is.
And really only the graphics are going to be of any true benefit to
most console gamers.
> My hope is, that next gen the hardware and storage capabilities will be good
> enough to provide the abilties PC games offer. I would even hope that in the
> future, modding would be allowed on console games.
It is available on one of them but it's equally up to the developers
to allow for it. Even if Microsoft acquiesced to this demand, most
companies wouldn't bother with it mainly because modding has
traditionally only been aligned with a few genres.
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