OT- Games, gamers, and gaming machines

[matt nicholson]

i half agree with you. i used to play alot of computer games. mainly 
FPS. although i almost never play "computer" games any more, i still am 
wary of buying any FPS games for a console, instead of the pc 
counterpart. why? controls. todays FPS games are so complicated and 
intense, a normal console controller does not do the job. the controller 
was designed for alot of different games. you can customize the keys on 
your keyboard for each game, givein you alot more options. this, 
combined with the fact that aiming with a controller is way, way harder 
than aiming with a mouse, sure, after a bit, you get used to it, but you 
can be far more accurate, and fast with a mouse.

as for gaming console being a magnitude better. thats to be seen. is the 
xbox 360, more powerful than my (and most peoples pcs?) yes. infact, 
since it is dedicated, ti is far better. the old " regular xbox" had a 
700mhz (or 733 or something) processor in it.  pretty low end. and the 
gpu wasn't anythign to screem about, least, not compaired to pcs. but 
the xbox could devlier some graphics pc games couldn't touch.

but the converse is true. game console lock developers into a platform, 
a set of hardware requirements that can never change. yes, as the system 
gets older, games get better, but thats only because the programming 
advances, not the hardware on the console. the xbox 360 today is roughly 
as powerful as the last xbox 360 ever shipped will be.

with pcs, you, as a game developer, are not locked into the consoles 
hardware. soon, pcs will be far more powerful than the xbox 
360/ps3/nintendo revolution. look at half life 2. that game wouldn't 
run, least, not the way its made to be run, on a console, or, none of 
the consoles availible when it came out. recently an add on was released 
to show off part of the gaming engine. this add on will not run on my 
pc, and won't run on most peoples. the hardware requirements are that 
high.  but, thats the thing with pcs, hardware can change and get 
better, very quickly, and developers can take advantage of it right 
away, instead of waiting for whomever to build the next console in 4-5 
years.

plus, anyone can get a pc, and not everyone can get a dev-kit for the 
xbox 360 etc. if you had teh drive and programming knowledge, YOU could 
write a great, great computer game, and maybe evetually get sent a 
xbox-dev-kit to port it.

besides, consoles are basically pcs, with an embedded os that has very 
little overhead, so all of teh resources goto the game. also, lots of 
people have pcs, and want to paly games a little,=. spending extra money 
on another system jsut to do that every now and then just doesn't make 
sense to them

just my rant. please excuse the typos i'm sure exist.


Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
> Having never been a gamer on the computer or in the arcades I don't
> understand what the big deal is, but still have to ask; if gaming is
> wonderful why do people wish to do it on a computer?  Aren't the
> custom game machines at least an order of magnitude better? 
>
> Cybe R. Wizard
>