I would even go so far as to argue that a $400 PC is more gaming friendly to 'non-gamers' (Kids, Mums, Elderly) than modern consoles are.
The Sims franchise turned a whole generation of mothers and daughters into 'casual gaming' (100m+ units sold) and how many console owners play FarmVille etc? It's those kind of games, not Crysis, that make PCs a more friendly system. The games that don't need the latest video cards (or any video cards come to that).
Should be interesting because I've heard (mostly from Fudzilla so make of that what you will) that the new nVidia cards are pretty much like their last generation relative to their ATI counterparts.
They're about 20% faster, but use more power (and thus get hotter) but are about the same physical size. Prices will be a bit higher than ATI (though theirs should be comming down now that supply has been increased)
Of course all of this is heresay until the benchmarks d...
Well deserved imho.
Anyone who can take on, and beat News Corp (D2D) and Microsoft (GFWL) in digital distribution, and come out not just on top but by a large margin, deserves congratulating.
Plus I hear Valve has even made some games? ;) (/s)
Whilst onlive sounds interesting, I don't think it's that much of a threat to current PC gaming. I'll explain why.
Arguably one of the greatest strengths of PC gaming is the potential for graphical excellence. 1600 resolutions etc. Whilst Onlive has the computers to render our favourite games in such a style, they can't send them down the internet tubes at anything like that resolution (unless I'm mistaken 2MB will get you 540 resolution, 5MB will get you 720). I'm not sure a...
I haven't bought a PC game instore for ages now, don't plan to either.
DD is great (especially around sale time) but I still get the majority of my games from Play/Amazon/Game online and posted. High street stores simply can't compete on price, stock or variety with online stores.
Retail can't make as much profit on most PC games compared to consoles because the typical price of a PC game is that much lower anyway.
Ok, seriously, am I the only one who liked this game? ;)
Would love to be able to make movies and share them on xbl!
Yeah, I'm not sure how much DLC gets for the Guitar Hero series, but most of these other games also have DLC too?
Sims being the best example I would have thought, but even WoW has expansions and buy-in items/services. GTAIV had the two expansion packs/DLC.
Guitar Hero even beats the CoD series?
I would have had it lower down the list, surely?
Sims sold over 100m before Sims3 ever came out.
WoW makes insane money every month.
Halo and GT series have sold more on their respective consoles.
Even the GTA series broke many records for sales.
Am I missing something?
Is it me, but the 'exclusive items' usually always vaguely useless? Especially by the end of the game.
DA:Origins - 'exclusive items' were only useful until you got past the first few hours and to a shop. Nearly always better/more powerful items available ingame.
Empire Total War - 'exclusive units' didn't make much of a difference in battle.
DX11 only works on ATI 5xxx series or (when it comes out) the nVidia GT300 series (Except the 310 apparently, which is just a rebadge)
I think the point of bringing in Sledgehammer is so that it won't be the same as IW.
IW did a good job of MW and even MW2 has its fans (though probably not on the PC), but they are rather similar games. You can't do that a 3rd time and ask for another $60. Every series has to have innovation otherwise it slowly dies, even Activision know this. MW3 will face a lot more competition next time around with MoH, they need it to be something different in order to sell well.
Most of the specs do seem like they're from home/office/entertainment PCs rather than gaming rigs, but since Steam also do a lot of 'casual' games then I guess they don't need anything too powerful.
I think the other 2% either use a Blu-ray as their primary optical drive or use ultra-portable laptops/netbooks (those really thin ones which don't come with an internal dvd drive).
Edit: Though looking at the survey, it says 0.69% are still using CD-Roms.
Whilst those specs aren't exactly uncommon, I agree they've managed to make Alyx look uglier than the original.
Still got nothing on that Korean (I think) guy who played either WoW or Starcraft until he died at his computer...
That's hardcore ;)
Apple products aren't priced so much on what the tech costs to produce, but rather what people are willing to pay for the end item.
People pay a premium for a new gadget - check.
People pay a premium for what they consider a 'cool' brand - check.
After a while, the price will come down, depending on the markets reaction to the toy/gadget. They can't/aren't willing to beat netbooks on price so they're going to try on design and utility it looks like.
The closest PC gaming gets to uniformity is using windows OS. But for the rest, it does vary game by game.
OnLive will be an interesting case and I look forward to seeing it for myself. I think it will struggle in the area where the PC is strongest, namely graphical resolution and image quality. Trying to get 60 fps @ 1200/1600 resolutions down an internet connection may not always be possible in many parts of the world.
Technically true.
For all the great machines you can make or buy, there's always warehouses or PCworlds full of crap, ancient machinery that struggles to play solitaire.
Hence the problem in defining pc 'generations'.
For every Ati 5970 or nVidia 295, there are a hundred Intel Integrated Graphics chips.
Yes and no imho.
Cost is dependant on how many games you buy etc over the life of the machine etc...
The main drawback I find of pc gaming is compatibility or technical issues. I know if I put a console disc in a console it will work. Not always true of pc games.
In related news, the population of South Korea has not been heard from since the release of this game. Experts are concerned. More at 11.