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[krzy123]

ummm... the $600 video card market is quite small .. so that doesnt seem to make alot of sense, most of market is mid-range.

For me its awesome to be a PC gamer, tons of cheap games (or games that go cheap quite quickly even on online downloadables (see Steam)).

To me the only thing roadblock may be the Vista/DX10 jump ... which so far not to many devs are jumping totally over (ie. having no DX9 versions)

 

[tedtropy]

"Death" maybe too strong of and adjective but sentiment of my last post stands. The OP hates PC devs new focus on consoles and feels betrayed because of it? Blame PC gamers.

Epic's Michael Capps: "PC gaming is really falling apart. It killed us to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, but Epic had to do it [...] the market that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works." id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead is also concerned about piracy and stated that "piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform."

From the horses mouth.

I love how he says "had to do it" versus "wanting" to do it. If the project a developer is working on is pretty much a guaranteed seller in a popular series, why wouldn't they want to take the effort necessary to release it on as many platforms and, therein, make as much profit as possible?

 

[sk3tch]

Not to mention they designed UT3 so they could sell an engine. Having that engine running well on all major platforms - what better way to advertise?

 

[DrXym]

Not to mention they designed UT3 so they could sell an engine. Having that engine running well on all major platforms - what better way to advertise?

Exactly. At one time the game was probably made for its own sake. These days it more falls out of Epic's desire to sell an engine. What better way to do it than produce a game to show it off?

 

[Wiktor]

"Death" maybe too strong of and adjective but sentiment of my last post stands. The OP hates PC devs new focus on consoles and feels betrayed because of it? Blame PC gamers.

Epic's Michael Capps: "PC gaming is really falling apart. It killed us to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, but Epic had to do it [...] the market that would buy a $600 video card knows how Bittorrent works." id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead is also concerned about piracy and stated that "piracy has pushed id as being multiplatform."

From the horses mouth.

riiight THey're just looking for scape goats. Epic makes MP games, so piracy is hardly an issue. And ID has been multiplatform since Doom.

But bring on the dev quotes, afterall Blizzard said consoles are dying

 

[Borys]

Somebody mentioned that I am in a feeling of betrayal when it comes to former PC developers.

I kinda agree with it. It's not quite anger or sadness, it's like somebody cheated me, I feel betrayed. I always wanted console games like Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo etc. to stay on consoles and PC games like C&C, Doom, Quake etc. to stay on PCs. Then came Xbox and stole 75% of PC library. I didn't see the opposite effect, I didn't see 75% of Xbox games to get ported to the PC. That is the moment when I started hating on it, when I felt something *really* bad happened to PC gaming.

And it sucks

Oh well, back to Typhoon Mountain in GoW2.

 

[Pseudo judo]

Hmmm...not sure if I should try again but here goes...

If some of you are ever looking to become US Press Secretary I think you'd handle the job without breaking a sweat. While Ignoring the focus of my rebuttle you attacked Epic, quite adeptly I have to say, and *POOF* my point was lost in misdirected logic.

While I agree Epic is peddling it's engine, and the same can go for Id as well for that matter, does this make the point of piracy forcing pc devs to turn to console null and void? Is it all just smoke and mirrors as devs attempt to use piracy as a justification to go multiplatform in hopes that they don't alienate their loyal fanbase? At least that's the impression I got from the responding posters.

Sneaky bunch around here.

 

[Jenga]

The way I see it, as soon as more and more DX10 games trickle in next year, we'll get more exclusive games. Or at least enjoy the DX10 side while consoles are stuck with DX9 (Alan Wake is an example I guess)

 

[Fragamemnon]

Huge development budgets play a much, much bigger role in games going away from PC exclusive than any other reason. Literally, the PC market just isn't large enough to support a ton of big budget games, especially games/studios without strong existing fan bases.

That's not to say that PC gaming is dying, it's just that it went through it's big growth phase a while ago and now it's just stable and steady growth after a strong contraction a few years ago.

 

[Phife Dawg]

Doom 3 was so profoundly disappointing that it knocked my faith in id - too many triggers, dumb AI, linear levels. I guess I had been spoilt by Far Cry and expected so much more.

Having said that, I loved RtCW: Enemy Territory so I am very much looking forward to Quake Wars.

I wasn't discussing the quality of Doom 3 really. The post I was quoting said that id showed they fail at MP with Doom 3. Whereas the focus was on SP, wether or not they succeeded in making a good SP experience is a different question. Personally, I enjoyed it. Sure it had a lot of triggers but HL was full of scripted events and I still enjoyed the hell out of it. And which FPS had good AI anyways?

Oh and the QW Beta rocks, if you enjoyed ET you'll definetly dig this.

 

[Pseudo judo]

Huge development budgets play a much, much bigger role in games going away from PC exclusive than any other reason. Literally, the PC market just isn't large enough to support a ton of big budget games, especially games/studios without strong existing fan bases.

That's not to say that PC gaming is dying, it's just that it went through it's big growth phase a while ago and now it's just stable and steady growth after a strong contraction a few years ago.

True enough. I guess it's a 'money we're making' versus a 'money we could be making' perspective as far as revenue and piracy goes. There are obviously a lot of other factors involved.

I actually never believed in the 'death' of PC gaming. Actually over the last 2 weeks I've purchased:

Antec 900 case
XFX 680i LT SLI mobo
2 gigs of OCZ Platinum ram - 800Mhz
HDA Xplosion 7.1 DTS connect sound card
2 x 250 gig Sata 2 hdd
Writemaster DVD drive
Corsair 620W PSU
Logitech G15 gaming keyboard
Logitech G5 gaming mouse
Nostromo's N52 gaming pad

When the Q6600's drop in price in a week I'll get that and then it's all about the video card and there I can't decide if I should get the 8800 GTS or GTX. Supposidly because I'm gaming on a 32" 720P LCD tv the resolution is too low to justify the GTX (1366x768), something about my CPU acting as a bottleneck with a video card that's too fast. I'm not a PC gamer, I've only gamed on console, but I think I've done my research pretty well and did a decent job balancing between power and cost. but if anyone can confirm the validity of this 'bottleneck dealy' I'd appreciate it. I might just bite the bullet and buy a friends 37" 1080P Westinghouse. He's selling for $600 but it has only DVI and VGA in where as the 42" model has 4 hdmi ports but of course cost an extra $800. One thing that sucks about PC gaming: too many choices and not enough money.

Any-hoo long live PC gaming, PC 4 Life, Borys for President ect, ect ect...

 

[KyanMehwulfe]

Speaking of Carmack, I hadn't googled his rocket 'hobby' in a few years. They're pretty hard-core now, eh. He's become the lead engineer for his Armadillo Aerospace company. They seem to be making good progress on their manned vertical lift-off rockets and getting one into orbit.

They've got some neat videos on their site. This one in particular from this year 2007 is pretty interesting.

 

[Woo-Fu]

Who cares, as long as they don't dumb down their pc games for the console ports?

Read the story, that is exactly what they're doing.

Making somebody use a 360 controller on their pc to play an id FPS=dumb down express, all aboooooard!

 

[FrankT]

Actually this interview is new as it wasn't included in the OP. Anyhow the key part for me is this;

SN: I'm not that aware of what our competitors are doing and what they're promising with their road map, but when people walk into our booth, they see that we have four platforms running at 60Hz with the exact same assets. We probably have artists in the company that aren't aware we have our new technology running on the PS3 because you need to do absolutely zero changes, no packaging, no extra baking, no extra steps, to get to the PS3. It really is a seamless, multiplatform, no-hassle solution. That's what people are telling us is extremely attractive. There's also the power of the rendering. No one has this rendering solution that we have with the unlimited texture. People are shocked by that. They weren't expecting it. It's a totally different path than where everyone else is going with their technology right now. It's Carmack again coming up with something that no one else in the market is thinking about. People are surprised by that. I mean, you expect John [Carmack] to come up with massive technological leaps in rendering, but at the same time people are really shocked to see it running on all the platforms.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6175061.html

I think that is really going to appeal to people and like I said it seems as if it's already getting some big names interested, well at least according to Ngai. It's something fresh and it seems to be really seamless which I believe a lot of development houses are looking for. This could be the new "it" engine. At the very least I see it having the potential to breed some healthy competition. Can't wait for Quakecon to see the new engine and the new game plus Wolfenstein.

 

[Slavik81]

This man knows what he is talking about

That makes me sad inside...

 

[ex0du5]

True enough. I guess it's a 'money we're making' versus a 'money we could be making' perspective as far as revenue and piracy goes. There are obviously a lot of other factors involved.

I actually never believed in the 'death' of PC gaming. Actually over the last 2 weeks I've purchased:

Antec 900 case
XFX 680i LT SLI mobo
2 gigs of OCZ Platinum ram - 800Mhz
HDA Xplosion 7.1 DTS connect sound card
2 x 250 gig Sata 2 hdd
Writemaster DVD drive
Corsair 620W PSU
Logitech G15 gaming keyboard
Logitech G5 gaming mouse
Nostromo's N52 gaming pad

When the Q6600's drop in price in a week I'll get that and then it's all about the video card and there I can't decide if I should get the 8800 GTS or GTX. Supposidly because I'm gaming on a 32" 720P LCD tv the resolution is too low to justify the GTX (1366x768), something about my CPU acting as a bottleneck with a video card that's too fast. I'm not a PC gamer, I've only gamed on console, but I think I've done my research pretty well and did a decent job balancing between power and cost. but if anyone can confirm the validity of this 'bottleneck dealy' I'd appreciate it. I might just bite the bullet and buy a friends 37" 1080P Westinghouse. He's selling for $600 but it has only DVI and VGA in where as the 42" model has 4 hdmi ports but of course cost an extra $800. One thing that sucks about PC gaming: too many choices and not enough money.

Any-hoo long live PC gaming, PC 4 Life, Borys for President ect, ect ect...

If I were you, I'd just get a 320MB 8800GTS and upgrade to the 9-series when they come out. Or, if you want a little more future proof, and higher resolutions, go with a 640MB GTS, or a GTX.

I can't recommend the Q6600 either, unless you have specific CPU intensive encoding or rendering applications (games don't use quad core). The quad core CPU's generate a lot of heat, so they need very good cooling....so if you don't need the quad for anything, you're better to go dual-core.

I'd recommend an E6850 coming out very soon. It's the same price as the Q6600 (I'm pretty sure). It's coming out at 266 USD, and is clocked at around 3GHz, with 1333fsb.

Otherwise...very nice rig. How's the G15? I've been tempted to get it, but wasn't sure if I wanted to spend anything extravagent on a keyboard. I need a new one, as my current keyboard doesn't let me press shift+w+e at the same time....it's quite annoying.