• 6Aug 07

  Console wars should be based on game quality, not number of units sold...

  I was bored and had an afternoon to burn so I spent a few hours... in the console wars forum. Having made a few posts, dodging a few bullets, and laughing my head off at how people can't type I quickly realized that something was terribly wrong. All of the arguments made are reinforced and based off of one thing: unit sales. "Oh! The Wii is winning cause it is selling most of all!" "The PS3 is totally beating the XBOX cause it is selling the most since the beginning of the year!" blah blah blah.  

  In my opinion, the only thing that can be confirmed from sales is where the crowd is going and who is following who. Little Jimmy thinks the PS3 is the best because he played two games at his friends house, so he whines to his parents until they buy him in one. Then he, thinking the PS3 is great, goes on the forums and screams at everyone who says otherwise. The same could be said about Little Timmy. I have played both, both are great systems, both have advantages and disadvantages but I am buying the 360 soley because it has games I want to play and I have friends who have it. I'll bet money the people who have actually sat down and played both consoles wouldn't be all over the System Wars forum.

  And now for my next point. What do we want out of this? Good games! That is all! THAT IS IT! The gamers want good games to play, who cares if their home console is selling the most? That everyone is buying Madden, so they'll buy it too. In the System Wars the quality of the games out for that console should be the major fighting point, not the units sold. I don't care if the Wii or the PS3 outsells the 360, as long as they keep their game quality up. To compare systems people should be getting the average scores of the top 20 games on each console, not going off of sales figures. 

  Of course, if we were to do that the 360 would come out on top, but it did have a one year head start. Its highest rated games did not come out until its second year (with the exception of Oblivion) so the Playstation still has time to catch up as it always takes developers awhile to unlock the system.

  In short, the only thing sales figures show is where the crowd is going. In my eyes, the winning system is the one with the best games and I think people should adobt this outlook. 

  • Posted Aug 6, 2007 4:05 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 2Aug 07

  The Death of PC Gaming?

  I have been an avid PC Gamer since, I was 7 or 8. I always preferred the PC over consoles, the advantages were just so apparent. Then the PC dominated over the consoles with considerably better graphics, better prices (remember when AAA PC titles cost $30?), and better on-line play. Now, it is approaching time for an upgrade, but it has just hit me, is it really worth upgrading my PC?

  When one looks at the difference between consoles and PCs, the PCs advantages over consoles is dwindling quite rapidly. AAA PC titles cost $50, merely 10 under its console counterparts, and even when you shell out $50 for a game you don't know if it is going to run on your PC, run at all or run it well enough to play it as the developers intended. A few months ago I upgraded my graphics card. My computer is rather old, and PCI-E slotless so I had to buy an AGP card. I bought the best AGP card on the market, and I was happy with the purchase. I loaded up Oblivion and was pleased to see "Game Set to: Ultra High Setting". Two months later, I buy Supreme Commander and my computer can't handle more then three AI playing at once.

  What does this mean? I have to upgrade, again and this time I need a new motherboard, processor, video card and even then there are no guarantees that the next game I buy will run well.

  This has been hanging over me, and then comes E3. Maybe there will be so many games at E3 it will make sense to bite the bullet and spend the money to upgrade and now that E3 has gone, it just doesn't make sense.

  The one PC only title that looks good is Crysis, and out of everything coming out this year it is going to be the most graphics intensive. Do I really want to spend who knows how much to play one game? And then I thought about buying an XBOX 360 for the first time. Lets see, Halo 3, Call of Duty IV, Bioshock, Fallout 3, GTA IV, Mass Effect, there all coming out within the year (except for Fallout) and they all look amazing and all I can think of for the PC is Crysis.

  Windows promised to turn PC into a platform with the Games for Windows initiative, but the initiative has been weak and almost non-existent. All PC Gaming got at the press conference was an "Oh yea, btw, Gears of War and Viva Pinata for the PC!! And now for Xbox...". Microsoft's focus is still on the XBOX and at this point it seems like it always will be.

  And when I think about it more, I would much rather play games from my couch on a large HD-TV then in a chair huddled around a monitor. When friends come over to play games, you don't all sit around the monitor and watch as one plays a game, you sit around the TV and have some good old split screen action. And then the small blissful feeling that the game your buying will run how the developers intended it, at the highest settings. Face it, consoles are looking just as good as PCs graphics wise, and to have the insurance that your game will run 100% on a console is too hard to pass up.

  I am caving in, I have the money to buy a 360 and as soon as that price drops I am driving down to Target and buying one and I have a feeling I will not regret it.

  So there it is, I just don't see it worth the money to shell out one or two grand to upgrade for Crysis when I can spend a fraction of that and get so much more for less. I really hope PC gaming pulls through at some point, but right now it is looking grim. 

  • Posted Aug 2, 2007 2:13 pm GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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