PC Gaming is now pathetic

[Hellboy]

I know that the PC in mine and many others opinion is the best gaming machine bar none...

The trouble is now.. That PC games are now no longer sold by our local Tesco ( our equvilent of Wallmart ).

They have stopped selling all together except clearence lines...

PC Game magazines are anorexic... Spore is the best game out for ages.

Ensemble Studios shutting down.. Lucas Arts not giving us the Force Unleashed... Its getting desperate...


Will some one give us a moral boost before we are all playing poxy PS3's and Xbox's.. Wii's are just so good that they deserve every thing thats comming to them... But the PC has been left behind..




HB

 

[infornography42]

I so tire of this.

Spore Crysis COD4 Dawn of War Company of Heroes World in Conflict Bioshock Sins of a Solar Empire Warhammer Online Fallout 3 Starcraft 2 Team Fortress 2 Halflife 2 Portal Dragon Age Galactic Civilizations 2 Diablo 3 and tons of others.

These are just games that have come recently, or are coming soon and have gotten tons of acclaim and/or media attention.

Yes, consoles are getting a lot of good titles. So are PCs. As the current generation of consoles age the PCs will get more and more games again. Quit yer bellyachin. There is nothing really to complain about.

 

[purplerat]

Funny thing is that in the last year I've spent more money on Wii hardware than on my PCs. Yet I find that every month there are better PC titles coming out than there are Wii titles.

 

[bobwya]

My mine issue is the flood of after thought console ports. You that have the 'A' and 'B' button graphics still left in the game, etc. Ah they are mostly s*** with that really annoying third person perspective that lets you magically see around corners.

Maybe folk will wake up from this consolemare and see the light... Hopefully helped by the resurgence of decent priced GPUs thanks to ATI's 48xx series!

A gather the new THQ Red Faction version will be a console port to the PC.. So another excellent game potentially ruined in the interests of making money. Thats were it really hurts!! Lets just hope Dues Ex 3 isn't bastardized...

Bob

 

[Heyyou27]

I so tire of this.

Spore Crysis COD4 Dawn of War Company of Heroes World in Conflict Bioshock Sins of a Solar Empire Warhammer Online Fallout 3 Starcraft 2 Team Fortress 2 Halflife 2 Portal Dragon Age Galactic Civilizations 2 Diablo 3 and tons of others.

These are just games that have come recently, or are coming soon and have gotten tons of acclaim and/or media attention.

Yes, consoles are getting a lot of good titles. So are PCs. As the current generation of consoles age the PCs will get more and more games again. Quit yer bellyachin. There is nothing really to complain about.

Diablo 3 doesn't come out until at least 2010, so I wouldn't say "soon", and half the titles you listed came out in 2007. A good number of those titles are on the PS3/Xbox360, and those versions either have outsold the PC version, or will outsell the PC version when they launch. Spore currently has an 86 on metacritic which is pretty good, but from the little bit I've played it is a disappointment after all the hype and a long development cycle. You're in denial if you don't think the PC is losing popularity as a gaming platform. Epic is basically dropping the PC all together, Valve is launching its titles on the 360 simultaneously with the PC, and id software is launching Rage on the PS3, 360, and PC. Blizzard is basically the only major PC exclusive developer left, and they haven't launched a new game since World of Warcraft in 2004, although their upcoming titles look amazing. Now, the PC isn't dead, nor is it going to die as a gaming platform; we just need a couple more years for the PS3 and 360 to become even more dated technologically so the PC will once again look that much better in comparison. Honestly, I can't wait until we get cards capable of running Crysis at 1920x1200 with at least 4xAA on all Very High settings with a framerate of 60fps or better.

 

[Doomed_UK]

I have been reading about PC gamings death since I bought a 450mhz machine a long long time ago, and yet it still exists.
Back then it was that PC games were too complex to install/run, having to do odd bat files in dos etc.
Now its piracy / lack of support, but it will continue.
If the big developers pull out there will be a niche in the market for smaller developers to produce quality games. Just look at kerberos and the game sword of the stars.
PC gaming will not die, just evolve.

 

[dtq]

Last time I read by hours of play time the PC was still the biggest gaming machine out there. I think a LARGE chunk of reduced PC sales has to be down to mmorpgs theres MILLIONS of players out there devoting their time and money to mmorpgs, surely that has to drop the number of single player games they can be bothered to buy right down?

 

[razor512]

pc gaming companies complain about people not buying their games, and based on a NPD sales report, it shows that many people don't buy them

but theres 1 flaw in it

NPD only logs in store sales and not online sales


and how many games do you see in stores.

the local circuiticity and best buy didn't even get crysis yet

the pc gaming rack is like 2 square feet of space with very few pc games

theres nothing to choose from

most pc games have also gotten so hard to program that they cant do anything new and cool with the games because it will be too hard to program due to the graphics war thats going on between game developers

pc gaming will never die as there will always be a few people willing to make games the problem is games are just getting harder to make

it is even starting to happen with console games we are starting to see less and less of them due to how hard they are becoming to make.

console gaming is still doing better even though it has vastly higher levels of piracy (while a smaller percentage of console gamers pirate, due to the total number of console gamers, console has more pirates than pc games)

console gaming is still more successful because you don't have to upgrade the consoles videocard every 4-5 months to run the latest games the way the developer intended them to be run

since they cant have a graphics war on console, more people find it to be a more cost effective investment

console also has more transparent DRM

a legit user wont be bothered by the drm on a console game. they just put the game disk in and the game plays

it cant get any easier or simpler then that

thats what makes a game sell


while MMO's are also causing problems with pc gaming as when you pay a monthly fee for a game, your less willing to spend even more for another game

and more developers are trying to make their own MMO's then complaining about poor sales

everyone seems to be trying to make their own WOW with out thinking, if most of the pc gamers already have WOW and are paying a arm and a leg every month to keep their WOW subscription, what makes you think that they will spend their other arm and leg on your MMO when they already have WOW

this causes poor sales and game developers will blame it on things like piracy

all crappy games that barely sold any copies had developers that cried about piracy



if piracy was the cause of poor sales then hellgate London should have sold the same number of copies as call of duty 4

 

[baldinie]

the problem is that new games, especially crysis, require u to have a £300 craphics card just to make them playable. and even then there's no guarantee it'll run. So as graphics get better and better, and the hardware requirement list gets longer and longer, the PC will become less popular. why pay £300 for a gpu when people can get PS3 which doubles as a home theatre system for the same price? and will play all the games that come out for it, without having to upgrade.

Programmers for PC games need to spend more time streamlining their code, so they can be played on machines other then some hardcore gamer's £3k system. Like valve did with Half-life 2. Crysis needs a stonker system because it's badly written, hell they dont even bother to support it anymore since they've given up trying to sort it out.

When developers make new games play on the average PC system, then the PC will become the dominant gaming platform again. Other wise, gamers will choice a ready made, guaranteed to work system called a console.

 

[razor512]

the problem is that new games, especially crysis, require u to have a £300 craphics card just to make them playable. and even then there's no guarantee it'll run. So as graphics get better and better, and the hardware requirement list gets longer and longer, the PC will become less popular. why pay £300 for a gpu when people can get PS3 which doubles as a home theatre system for the same price? and will play all the games that come out for it, without having to upgrade.

Programmers for PC games need to spend more time streamlining their code, so they can be played on machines other then some hardcore gamer's £3k system. Like valve did with Half-life 2. Crysis needs a stonker system because it's badly written, hell they dont even bother to support it anymore since they've given up trying to sort it out.

When developers make new games play on the average PC system, then the PC will become the dominant gaming platform again. Other wise, gamers will choice a ready made, guaranteed to work system called a console.

yep not to mention when you get a 360 or a PS3, the console will last you 3 years + before you have to upgrade to a new console, while with pc the upgrade time line is more like every 3-5 months if you want to run the latest games as the settings the developers intended them to run

and crysis is badly written

on the settings I ran crysis on, (sound on high, physics on high and everything else on medium except post processing and volumetric which are on low)

I can run COD4 on high settings and it would look much better than crysis on those settings and run at least twice as fast


on the lowest settings on crysis, the game looks like it came out in late year 2000

but it still runs slow when you compare how it looks to games that look much better and run faster

crysis has inefficient coding



but if you want really poor programming, then try the game
second life

crysis runs better than second life

my friend has a GTX280 and he gets around 50FPS in crysis (high settings), but only around 30-40 with second life

which looks better to you

second life

full sized http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/7243/snapshot061ei6.jpg

or crysis

full sized http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/3696/crysis1zi3.jpg

so at least we know that crysis may not have been made by the best programmers but they certainly weren't made by the worst programmers either

 

[mothhive]

£300 graphics card to run crysis? Even assuming you meant $300, that's still an exaggeration. You can get a GTX 260 or HD4870 for under $300, both of which can handle Crysis perfectly fine. I myself use a 9800 GTX which is cheaper and inferior to both of those cards and run Crysis at Very High @ 1680 x 1050 fine.

Also, £3000 on a PC to run it? I built a complete system a few months ago for half that, and that's including the OS, a high quality 22" monitor, speakers, case, etc.

I think you need to read up on PC's and PC gaming before commenting. Regurgitating the crap that console fanboys spout about PC's just show's your ignorance.

 

[mi1ez]

And isn't Second Life slowed by being an online game rather than it's graphical complexities?

 

[harveywuk]

£300 graphics card to run crysis? Even assuming you meant $300, that's still an exaggeration. You can get a GTX 260 or HD4870 for under $300, both of which can handle Crysis perfectly fine. I myself use a 9800 GTX which is cheaper and inferior to both of those cards and run Crysis at Very High @ 1680 x 1050 fine.

Also, £3000 on a PC to run it? I built a complete system a few months ago for half that, and that's including the OS, a high quality 22" monitor, speakers, case, etc.

I think you need to read up on PC's and PC gaming before commenting. Regurgitating the crap that console fanboys spout about PC's just show's your ignorance.

Agreed!

For about 1500 you can get a complete rig monitor mouse keys etc... and a computer that should run crysis at a high res with
few problems!

 

[harveywuk]

And isn't Second Life slowed by being an online game rather than it's graphical complexities?

That and a stupidly unoptimized engine! :lol:

 

[razor512]

That and a stupidly unoptimized engine! :lol:

it has a offline mode for debugging and testing

it may be the worst game engine ever created

in a sandbox sim in the mainland, a large scale particle spam causes the framerate of a geforce 8800gtx SLI to go from around 40 fps, to around 5FPS

even though games like crysis and COD4 will have hundreds of times more particle effects going on

another thing that shows how bad SL is, is that I have a geforce 6800 and I get around 28-40FPS

my friend has GTX280 and he gets 30-40FPS

1 other person who i hang out with on SL has dual 9800's in SLI and he gets around 30-40 but usually in the upper 37-40

but 1 well placed particle bomb knocks all of out framerates down to single digits unless we use the particle limit in the settings

SL= epic fail game engine

sl also seems to render everything even if it is not in view or blocked by another object

as if you build a large box, and place a particle bomb in there and set the range to 5 meters (make the box 20 meters )

it will still cause a large drop in FPS

and the cpu and the videocard and memory don't seem to be bottle necks as I have trouble getting the game to even use 40% cpu usage, and it doesn't even use close to half of the video memory in the videocard (you can check video memory usage using rivatuner )

and a GTX280 is many times more powerful than a geforce 6800 so it should get more than a 5-7FPS boost in SL

 

[baldinie]

Firstly, am not a console fanboy. I play PC games, and am building a new rig as we speak, with a q6600, HD4870, 4GB RAM. but i've seen all bencmarks get barely acceptable framerates with all the bells and whistles in crysis with things like DDR3 RAM, HD4870x2 (£300 thank you) and an x6800. the fact is, that the console is still playing the game at the developers best settings with no problems, or driver issues, or hardware conflicts and without the need to upgrade, ever!
"For about 1500 you can get a complete rig monitor mouse keys etc... and a computer that should run crysis at a high res with
few problems!"
my point exactly again. u need to spend £1500 for a decent set up to play crysis. £300 will get ut a PS3, and everyone has a TV already. so ya set, for £300! there's no reason crysis should need a system that high in spec, if the developers just spent some time steamlining to code, instead of rushing to get it out along side ghost recon and CoD4, before the graphics moved on and crysis looked out of date.

 

[baldinie]

Agreed!

For about 1500 you can get a complete rig monitor mouse keys etc... and a computer that should run crysis at a high res with
few problems!

Firstly, am not a console fanboy. I play PC games, and am building a new rig as we speak, with a q6600, HD4870, 4GB RAM. but i've seen all bencmarks get barely acceptable framerates with all the bells and whistles in crysis with things like DDR3 RAM, HD4870x2 (£300 thank you) and an x6800. the fact is, that the console is still playing the game at the developers best settings with no problems, or driver issues, or hardware conflicts and without the need to upgrade, ever!
"For about 1500 you can get a complete rig monitor mouse keys etc... and a computer that should run crysis at a high res with
few problems!"
my point exactly again. u need to spend £1500 for a decent set up to play crysis. £300 will get ut a PS3, and everyone has a TV already. so ya set, for £300! there's no reason crysis should need a system that high in spec, if the developers just spent some time steamlining to code, instead of rushing to get it out along side ghost recon and CoD4, before the graphics moved on and crysis looked out of date.

 

[infornography42]

I can build a pretty powerful system for half THAT. If I were to build a PC today it would cost about $1000 to $1500 American including Monitor, keyboard, mouse, and shipping. Of course I don't care about all the settings in Crysis being maxed out as long as they are decently high and the framerate is good. I also don't play Crysis.

You don't get significantly more performance per dollar above the $1500 mark so I don't typically go above that point.

 

[baldinie]

ok, ya all missing the point i was making! the console market is popular because vendors dont continuously bring out a new card, or a new varient, or new shiney label! and ya dont have to get a new system everytime someone changes the number of cpu pins. when ya buy a PS3 or an XBOX, ya sorted. thats it. it'll work with everything, and every game that comes out, forever. unlike the PC, where ya have to upgrade, and new (BADLY WRITTEN GAMES like Crysis) come along and make everyone have to upgrade in order to keep up! that was the point i was TRYING to make. crysis is a badly written game, and needs high end parts to be playable and a decent lookin resolution like all the promotion vids show it looking like.

 

[infornography42]

My point is that is irrelevant. There are plenty of very good games coming to the PC still. I don't see the point in crying because some of those games happen to also be coming to consoles, that is just petty.

 

[baldinie]

yes there are, starcraft 2 is one I've been waiting for for many years. but programmers have to make sure that the games are playble by the 90% of people who dont have a top of the range system.

 

[infornography42]

Agreed. But on the other hand, 90% of game developers do put out games that are compatible with systems that are 3 to 5 years old. I don't feel it is fair to point at the exception and say 'see, they are doing it wrong'. The number of games I have ever had to upgrade for, I can count on one hand and I typically don't build a new computer more often than once every 3 years.

 

[psymanproductions]

Agreed. But on the other hand, 90% of game developers do put out games that are compatible with systems that are 3 to 5 years old. I don't feel it is fair to point at the exception and say 'see, they are doing it wrong'. The number of games I have ever had to upgrade for, I can count on one hand and I typically don't build a new computer more often than once every 3 years.

yes the games are "compatible" but the difference between compatible and enjoyable is huge. pcs from 2/3 years ago will run the newest games but the resolution/eyecandy has to be turned down so much that the game is far less enjoyable than if played on an xbox360/ps3 from years ago which costed the same or less!

i think the main problem is developers pushing up system requirements... i bought a hd3850 for £115 7 months ago and some new games are already starting to look shabby, grid is one game that sucks on my sytem but is such a good game that i would love to play at high settings. i cant get the game to run at decent fps above 1024x768 which is gay... no doubt when gta iv and tomb raider underworld come out (my next planned purchaces) i will need a hd4850/hd4870 and maybe a quad core cpu. thats another £200 atleast. to get those 2 games on xbox/ps3 it would be £80 and they would be guaruneed to look good, and i would already have gta iv, infact **** pc gaming when this mobo and cpu is useless im getting a ps3

 

[bobwya]

I think too many games rely on eye candy rather than substance. This is not helped by the influence of the Console. I enjoyed playing Mass Effect at first. That was until I realised it had huge chunks missing around the edges with many corners cut in a very obvious fashion... You know like interspace travel hasn't even got a cut scene. The stupid planetary buggy thing. Etc. I mean UT2004 has better physics and vehicles!!

I still enjoy going back to play the likes of Red Faction 1 and Dues Ex 1. I just feel that the development cycle of modern games is too short and they spend too much time on the graphics and not enough time on the actual gameplay. If you have the development time then you can produce a decent game with good graphics. Doom 3 may have linear gameplay but it is very enjoyable because a hell of a lot of time went into the atmosphere and sound. It also pushes DX 8 to the limits.

UT3 is another game in point. Dodgy graphics engine with bugs in the shadows, etc.. I know a lot of people prefer deathmatches to the more open style of UT2004 but I don't. It feels like a step backwards. Console influence here? Issues of porting to multiple platforms adding to the complexity? I don't know for sure but one can speculate.

Plus it's got to be said again "3rd person" viewpoint is evil and should be banned for FPS...

To the people complaining about PC hardware expense and upgrade cycles. When competition is working things aren't so bad. E5200 + 4850 = good deal for example. The price of my old HIS AGP 9800 128Mb Pro buys a Radeon 4870!! Also RAM is much cheaper these days.

Sure there is no golden age of PC gaming (plenty of sh** games produced in the past)... But things aren't getting any better!! Rant, rant...

Bob

 

[ovaltineplease]

If you compare it purely on a system per system basis, metacritic.com will show you that the PC has more A titles total (which are still absolutely worth playing I might add) than any single console.

I'd go so far to say that at any given time the PC has more A titles than the PS3/Xbox/Wii combined (assuming you don't duplicate cross-platform titles)

You can even knock off the PC cross-platforms and you'll still end up with more for the PC.

The only thing i'm unclear on as i'm not a console gamer /at all/ is whether the PS3 is backwards compatible with PS2 games, and the Xbox360 with Xbox games - if they are fully backwards compatible then i'd say the consoles have a fair bit going for them, but if they aren't backwards compatible than my point stands.

That said, the only thing that is a drag about PC games is waiting for titles - typically it takes a great deal more effort to code a PC title because of compatibility issues while with a console its 1 software/hardware set. I think really this is why you see so many companies focusing on MMORPG titles, because they have a lucrative subscription model which helps to pay for the developement.

Lets assume for a second that you could take a game like lets say: Stalker, Clear Sky. Give it a good developement time, flesh out the playable area/factions, put it on a subscription model as an MMOFPS somewhat like Homeworld, but with lots of singleplayer/co-op/pvp objectives, in a NEW game; do you think people would buy into that?

I guess just the way I see it is that "MMO" Fantasy games seem to be the most successful PC games right now, so offering some sort of personal advancement model (such as leveling up in CoD4) seems to be the main way to attract people to continue playing your game.

Anyways, the idea of re-thinking the MMOFPS genre is just a convoluted idea at best, but I thought i'd throw it out there.