Gas Powered Games: PC Gaming Is Not Dead

although its a sweet idea that will probably end up taking over pc gaming, it's sad to know that we won't need to build high power pc's for gaming anymore

Hopefully good news for PC gamers. I will say however that Supreme Commander 2 looked like it should be called Supreme Commander 360. I liked the the first Sup Com much more, RTS and PC gaming go hand in hand.

Gaming in a browser = Zero piracy... since everything is client/server based, there is nothing to pirate.

Software as a service = Welcome to your gaming future.

If only the source engine was stable on wine/linux

You shouldn't be mixing up windows and pc when talking about platforms, because now you can run 5 (or more, I guess) different os's virtually any pc.

Wow, They put Sup Com 2 and SC2 in the same sentence with the words Triple- A titles. I own both but Sup Com 2 has been virtually left alone. Since SC2.

No dumbing down of the platform please. We are elitists and we like it that way.

I think PC gaming took a slight plunge when consumers figured out they could still check their email without a high-end video card, and many PCs were not up-to-spec to play games. Nowadays, Dell, et. al., would probably not hesitate to tell you that you need a 5770 just to watch Netflix (same concept as the AT&T rep trying to tell me that there was no way my 3mb/s DSL could handle Netflix at all. Had to tell her to quit trying to sell me upgrades and keep my service as-is about 20 times). The end result is that many people's "email-checking machine" is already up to light-medium gaming spec. They probably wouldn't buy a gaming PC, but since they already have one that can handle it, why not game a little?

I am sure gaming in browsers will continue to evolve, but to date I have found no such game very enjoyable or worth my time. Even if they increase in graphics quality to that of Starcraft 2 in 5 years, high end gaming will still offer a significant increase in graphics quality in comparison. Also you have to deal with issues with lag a doubtful ability to scale to triple screen resolutions further eliminating it's appeal except for certain types of games.

Full games in a web browser? What the hell for? I don't think this will happen like he thinks it will. MAYBE computers will get powerful enough one day that we will not need to worry about our hardware and any computer will be able to play any game.. but event that is far fetched as long as game developers (god bless them) are pushing the limits of hardware. (can it play Mafia II?)

There will always be a reason to build a high end PC.

SaaS = ripoff

But ....but...but I love that about PC gaming....knowing I got a 7000 this or an 8000 this....4.0ghz this and that....8 gigs of that and this.

knowing I have a beast to run any game you throw at it...That one major factor I love about PC gaming...I really hope the whole browser garbage dont catch on that quick. or rather gain to much popularity.

HA! They added Supreme Commander 2 simply because it's one of their creations, but that's pretty ballsy to compare it to SC2!

And as long as developers are interested in pushing the limits of what is possible, the PC will be fine.

The fact that people jailbreak their PS3s is a testament to the fact that the gaming PC will be around for a long time to come.

So the future of PC games is ... Farmville?

Steam is hardly the saviour of PC gaming - I actually hate the damn thing when I but a new game and have to use Steam to activate or validate it.

PC gaming is on the decline because of the ease of playing games on a console - cheaper and no drver issues.

on the other hand browser gaming will keep people away from bad games therefore not spending money on crappy games.

I say more browser based games please!
the one I play right now is Tiger Woods Online, its free to play (with a membership option to play on all courses.) and it looks really good and has zero gameplay issues, one promo ad at the turn and one after the 18th... not bad at all.

If he really believes that PC games are going to move into the browser space then he's not mixing them up. If those games did move into the browser space it would remove the Windows dependency since all of those games would need to be based on a browser standard that crosses OS platforms.

I think he's dreaming if he thinks that will be possible even in the next 10 years given how terrible the telecomm companies have been about improving the broadband backbone.

Browser based AAA titles? Please. I refuse to give up my hobby for gaming rigs! And I see no way for games to move into browser space on a depth and scale like current install games. Especially with how awful our broadband is in the states..

+1 !
Steam makes purchasing software easy for sure but I'm not fond of it as it's just a little break into into the whole cloud computing/spying/monitoring scheme that were slowly being forced into. What happens when your Steam account gets h4ck3d? Steam support don't give a rats dump and will leave you hanging as my friend lost dozens of games due to this. Their anti-privacy for consumers, slow download of content, and constant updating of useless crap pwning my CSS server connections is for the birds! Forget you Steam!

Yet their Supreme Commander died for me as soon as I played the second game's demo...

Browser based game talk again? Silly for most but will work nicely for others that can't afford to build a decent gaming machine. I personally have no interest in browser based gaming since the intial reports on it indicate poor performance and lag.

Once studios figure out that consoles are holding PC titles back then we can move past this and games can finally take advantage of the hardware we all have sitting in out machines right now not being used to any extent of what it is capable of producing.

I think that PC's are and always will be the pinnacle of gaming. A few reasons being that PC's in one shape or another will always be in far more homes than a console and its vastly greater abilities, ie.. internet, businness applications, and undeniable gaming supiriority vs the cost and limitations of a console. I will give one to the consoles for the ability to CO-OP and Multi-Player offline with friends or family.

But to his other point of streaming games, I have my doubts and fears. The biggest problem is LAG you cannot tell me you expect someone to play a smooth running FPS game on a remote system without severe delay. Also the internet infrastructure as a whole is not up to it at this point and does not look to be improving in the manner to make this possible in the near future. I would gladly pay for hardware in my home than bandwithd to stream content in this manner.

No and NO and NO again. Browser gaming isn't gaming to me.

And I don't like the intrusive Steam spy.

Of course, one possible option for Steam next is that you can ask it to only display games that your system is capable of running, that way you can only buy ones that run.

70% of activition's revenue comes from pc... WoW.. pun intended

Their market would be much greater if they used OpenGL

Gaming through browsers only works when the client has a decent connection to the server and the server is up to the task load wise if not hello ques. PC gaming is for those who truly hardcore gamers like my self. Build it your self and you will appreciate it even more, console not so much. Just a box hooked up to the golden calf aka TV.

All the steam hate... I dunno, I love steam. I've gotten great deals off it (particularly during the perils of summer sale) and I've also gotten some really great games that I really couldn't reliably at a brick and mortar (e.g. indie titles or games that are more than a few years old).

This is a joke. Maybe in more than 5-8 years. Servers would need to be very fast and very close to gamers. Also, the gamers themselves would need fast internet with very low ping (which is really the hard part).