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« Endless war | Main | Full-Pipe Recording »

Wasn't Wei just talking about the death of PC games?

Penny Arcade:

I've been the PC holdout in my group for awhile, now. Kiko plays RTS, a genre until very recently dominated by the platform, but the moment a viable interface was available on the 360 he pulled the emergency stirrup and let his computer crash to earth. Gabe plays WoW on his PC sometimes, but (and this is serious) only if he happens to be upstairs, because he prefers to play on his MacBook. There's no allegiance there.

He never had to massage conventional memory. He never played Civilization or Star Control II, and wouldn't like them if he had. Nine times out of ten these days my friends are playing the games they play on consoles. Many of my favorite, historically PC centered developers are now focused on the dedicated consumer hardware called consoles, I assume because people actually buy software for them, which is great if you are a person who makes software.

And here i am, having decided not to move on to the next generation of consoles, thinking about going back to PC games. I am excited about BioShock for example, and would have already bought Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (also on next gen consoles) if i didn't know deep in my heart that i don't have time to play a game that big. I hear Galactic Civ II is also a good expansion on the first.

Man, i wish i would get laid off.

By fnord12 | February 2, 2007, 12:58 PM | Video Games


Comments

I think, at this point, it's pretty much a given that any game seriously worth playing on the PC will also come out on the 360. It's also possible that games worth playing on the 360 will come out on the PC, albeit it may be a few years later (Looking at your here Halo 2). I suppose some of the more obscure titles like GalCivII aren't 360 bound, but Oblivion was PC/360 simultaneously at launch, BioShock I think will be the same (not sure if it'll be Vista only though, ugh).

All in all I'd say, get a 360, it's cheaper and easier.

can't get gears of war for pc. give in and get the 360. halo 3 is coming out this year and halo 2 not on pc yet if ever. and no more wired controllers. overall the graphics on pc is better for games depending what graphics card you have. i mean if you're gonna spend $300 on a graphics card might as well get xbox. plus i need to mooch games. there's an expansion coming out for galactic civ 2. supppose to be very good.

pc games won't die. systems are more and more pclike. it's just that game makers and console builders are locking big hit games exclusively to each franchise. soon you'll have to have all the systems to play the mix of good games for each. sad it is.

If you're still thinking about getting Elder Scrolls, I would actually prompt you to get the PC version over the Xbox for a few reasons. First off, with the PC version you can download and add modded content. This can be anything, from adding custom weapons and armor, having a T-Rex randomly roam about the world map, changing the sneak system to be more realistic, having more weather options, etc. etc. You can even download total conversion mods that change the entire game from the ground up.

The one thing I did notice about the Xbox 360 version is that they fixed the faces. On the PC, the default texture of faces is 128x128 while the rest of the model is rendered at 256x256 (I think), but there's a free file that fixes the faces readily available.

Also, as Oblivion is a huge game there are occassional glitches. I had one instance where an NPC was supposed to meet another NPC at a certain location and I was to kill them both (as they were vampires). I killed the 1st one, took their key and went to the specified location at the right time. No 2nd NPC. Luckily on the PC version you only have to hit the ~ key to open the debug menu and ressurect the fallen character to fix the quest. It also lets you change the game time/real time ratio so that you get something more approximate to real time. Its always a pain to go out, do some adverturing and then have to wait 10 hours for the shops to open so you can sell off all the stuff you found.

Another thing you can do with the PC version is Purge the Cell Buffer (PCB on the debug menu). This wipes all the maps that the game loaded and helps get rid of lag. This is important if you've been playing for hours and start seeing lag because old maps from places you haven't been to in a while are still loaded in the backround. I don't know how you would handle that on the 360, it might do it for you, or you might have to power down and restart the system.

As for not being able to get Halo on a PC, that doesn't seem like a big loss to me. There are a bunch of other games on the market that are just as fun as Halo and Halo 2, and have a lot of perks. For example, Half Life 2 has a great multiplayer setup, and new maps are readily available for free. Also, you don't have to pay a montly subsciption to play the multiplayer on many PC games.

Don't like Half Life 2? Miss the dynamics of Halo multiplayer? Want your shields back? Piece of cake. Half Life 2 and many other PC games are made to mod, so you can mess about with the Soure engine (or Unreal engine, or whatever you prefer) until you can clone the game you're looking for. Or just wait for someone else to do the dirty work for you.

Anyway, that's my big speech about how I prefer PC over Xbox. Most of it is because I'm cheap, I want free content and I don't want to pay for the Xbox live subscription!

I own Oblivion on both the 360 and the PC, and I agree with most everything you say, but you're missing one very important point. An Xbox360 will run you $400 (probably less soon). A new PC capable of running Oblivion will probably run you 3x that at least. I don't think there are any mods for Oblivion that are worth $800.

Also, Xbox Live Arcade rocks. And you don't have to pay for a subscription to download stuff. You can buy arcade games/add ons/expansions with just a silver account, which is free. The gold account, which you have to pay for ($50 a year, totally worth it), lets you play games online (Gears of War online co-op was *awesome*).

Well, I already have a PC that can play Oblivion, so the choice was easy. To paraphrase Alton Brown, the Xbox 360 is a unitasker while the PC is a multi-tasker.

I can also get my hands on some old school games with the use of emulators (which are legal if you already own a copy of the game).

Last, if you want to upgrade from an Xbox to the 360 its a flat $600. To upgrade my graphics card was less than $100. Because PC's are somewhat modular you can extend the life of your investment longer than you can extend the life of a pre-packaged console.

How do you figure it's $600 to go from an xbox to the 360? Are you talking about buying both? If so, you should be adding the cost of your first graphic card into the new one. If that's not what you're talking about then I don't get it ;). (Also not sure what sort of GPU upgrade you're getting for $100. Top end GPUs are generally in the $4-600 range).

You're right of course, if you have a PC that can play Oblivion there's no reason to get a 360 just to play it. That sort of goes without saying. I'm working on the assumption that you don't have either a PC that's less than a year old or a 360.

Also, I think for the majority of the population, keeping a PC up to spec for the latest & greatest in gaming isn't a reasonable undertaking. It's much easier to buy a 360 and know it'll work for the next 4 years, no fuss. PC gaming has it's place, I'm not denying that, but I think it's going to skew more towards the hardcore gamer as time goes on. The gamers who actually install mods, or want the gaming experience that's provided by games that aren't going to be blockbusters (i.e., GalCiv). The reason I own Oblivion on both the PC and the 360 is because Robin had no interest in upgrading her PC to play it, it wasn't until I got the 360 and she had an easy way to play that she was interested in playing.

both of you bring up very good points. while it's not practical to keep updating computers you can make due with gpus that are around $200. the problem is as stated already is that it constantly changes. but keep in mind that a mid to high-end gpu will suffice for almost all games at good levels unless you're one of those monkeys that spend an extra 2-3 hundred more for a few more frames. and the mod ability for pcs is great but xbox360 with built in hd will lean towards that in the future as more development tools become available im sure. as is it can connect directly with windows media centered pcs. well thats what it says, im connecting the two now so we'll see how it goes. also consider that when playing console you usually bring a group of friends together and even if playing online everyones spec is same unlike pc where there may be lag due to your friends inferior pcs. also on a side note gears of war is awesome.

*blarp*

i think if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that gears of war, is indeed awesome.

Actually I can't agree that Gears of War is awesome because I've never played it. I don't want to throw out a judgement on something I haven't tried, but I'm willing to accept your endorsements of the game as "awesome".

you should get a 360, try it out ;)

my cat's breath smells like cherry pie.