How many people entering college now can claim to have been a hardcore PC gamer since the mid 90's? The era brought us classics like "Myst," "Return to Castle Wolfenstien," and "X-Com: UFO Defense." I remember being given my first actual video game outside of those educational software games, "Star Wars: Tie Fighter" back in '96 (I was seven back then). Since then, I've played the first two "Rainbow Six" games, the old Jane's combat simulations like "Longbow," "Advanced Tactical Fighters," and "F-15," the original "Half-Life," "Operation Flashpoint," "Starcraft," "Diablo 2," the first two "Fallout" games, "Mechwarrior 3," and "Homeworld." In all those years, not once did I have migraines and aneurysms because of CTD's and error messages, not once did I have to upgrade my computer (the machine I used for gaming had a 600 mhz intel processor, 128 mb ram, and a 4mb video card), hell, I was too young in those days to even know that even mattered.
Fast-foward to 2001 and the release of "Ghost Recon." When I bought it for my PC, my thinking was "Hey, its not a PS2 game, its a computer game, should work on my PC. Right?" Wrong, so imagine how perplexed I was when I recieved a "General Protection Fault" error screen when I double clicked the shortcut icon. It took an angry call to technical support to discover that my 4mb video card wasn't up to the task, so I grovelled at the feet of my parents to buy a new video card so I could get back to gaming. Back in those days, we were able to get a Geforce 2 for about 50 dollars on sale, since then, I've purchased 3 video cards (Geforce 4, Geforce 5600, and a Geforce 7600GT), 3 CPU and Motherboard combos (an 800mhz, 1.7 ghz, and 3.2 ghz), and upgraded my RAM 4 times until I finally got a gaming laptop as a high-school graduation present last summer.
Recent years have made me realize the reason why console gaming has begun to gain favor over PC gaming. The cost of hardware is starting to become nothing short of monolithic (for the cost of a top-of-the-line Falcon gaming PC, about $8000, you could get a second-hand 998cc Yamaha R-1 sport bike, or send your kid to a state university for a year). In addition, with increasingly complex game engines comes an increasing number of things that can go wrong with a game, from hardware incompatibility (excacerbated by the insane variety of hardware today) and processing conflicts, as a result, most PC games are buggy messes. Lets not forget the breakneck speed at which the technology progresses; by the time I bought a Geforce 7600GT, the 9 series of Nvidia cards were announced. Sometimes engine technology outpaces the actual hardware, for instance, "Crysis." For me, that game represents everything that is wrong with PC gaming today: an overly flashy engine with no class and finesse to back it up (with "Cryetek" being a German developer, I suppose Germany's game developers are just like their automobile companies
) that laughs at even $5000 gaming desktops and more bugs than an anthill.
So my question is this: When PC hardware has left consoles in the dust in terms of technology, should PC developers stall on technology and hardware development for the sake of the area where console platforms excel (cost and functionality)?
Fast-foward to 2001 and the release of "Ghost Recon." When I bought it for my PC, my thinking was "Hey, its not a PS2 game, its a computer game, should work on my PC. Right?" Wrong, so imagine how perplexed I was when I recieved a "General Protection Fault" error screen when I double clicked the shortcut icon. It took an angry call to technical support to discover that my 4mb video card wasn't up to the task, so I grovelled at the feet of my parents to buy a new video card so I could get back to gaming. Back in those days, we were able to get a Geforce 2 for about 50 dollars on sale, since then, I've purchased 3 video cards (Geforce 4, Geforce 5600, and a Geforce 7600GT), 3 CPU and Motherboard combos (an 800mhz, 1.7 ghz, and 3.2 ghz), and upgraded my RAM 4 times until I finally got a gaming laptop as a high-school graduation present last summer.
Recent years have made me realize the reason why console gaming has begun to gain favor over PC gaming. The cost of hardware is starting to become nothing short of monolithic (for the cost of a top-of-the-line Falcon gaming PC, about $8000, you could get a second-hand 998cc Yamaha R-1 sport bike, or send your kid to a state university for a year). In addition, with increasingly complex game engines comes an increasing number of things that can go wrong with a game, from hardware incompatibility (excacerbated by the insane variety of hardware today) and processing conflicts, as a result, most PC games are buggy messes. Lets not forget the breakneck speed at which the technology progresses; by the time I bought a Geforce 7600GT, the 9 series of Nvidia cards were announced. Sometimes engine technology outpaces the actual hardware, for instance, "Crysis." For me, that game represents everything that is wrong with PC gaming today: an overly flashy engine with no class and finesse to back it up (with "Cryetek" being a German developer, I suppose Germany's game developers are just like their automobile companies
) that laughs at even $5000 gaming desktops and more bugs than an anthill. So my question is this: When PC hardware has left consoles in the dust in terms of technology, should PC developers stall on technology and hardware development for the sake of the area where console platforms excel (cost and functionality)?
