I greeted this ExtremeTech article about Windows Vista and gaming the same way that the French dabbed watery eyes and blew kisses at the liberating allied forces during Word War II. “Long live PC Gaming!” Many of the old timers that I know have remained strong and resisted the call of the console box. “See how easy it is to play me.” “No configuring me for anything.” “Aren’t I just as expensive as a new video card?” Let me tell you, it’s been tough.
Hope is on the horizon! The resistance will win! Windows Vista will be a true PC gaming platform!
I’m not going to re-hash the many reasons why I don’t like console gaming. To each his or her own I say. But I was getting very tired of reading and hearing how the PC was dead as a gaming platform, despite the fact that I am playing many more hours on the PC right now than I ever was back when consoles were these jaggy silly primitive products.
There are simply better PC games these days. World of Warcraft and Out of the Park Baseball are really the only titles I play right now. OK, I just started Halo. I literally don’t have the time to play much else. But it’s all PC all the time. I stopped playing console games when I stopped reviewing them.
So get ready old timers! Start thinking up new excuses to tell your wives and significant others! Now we can blame a “mid-life crisis” on our hours in front of the monitor. And we can even afford to buy all of the games that we shouldn’t be playing!
With apologies to OOTP Baseball and Football Manager, PC gaming sucks! I am would do the smiley thing, but PC gaming along with the whole patch thing really does suck. To each there own, so I will keep to console gaming and Duran Duran concerts on VH-1 Classic. OK, too much beer, but I have never been fond of PC gaming.
jc is out of his mind. PC gaming is where I’m returning as soon as our move is through. I can’t wait. Patches? Please. Most of the console sports titles released now NEED to be patched and have major flaws and bugs. At least these can be worked around with mods on the PC. Consoles have their place and it seems to be heading in the direction of let’s make a movie that the gamer can be a part of. Yeah, yeah, let’s make a bad B-movie that the gamer can be a part of. However, if you are a simulation guy (me) or desire more physics based gaming (me) or want to play in worlds that are more open ended (me) then PC gaming is where it’s at.
Vive la PC Chris!
I haven’t touched my PC for gaming in years. It was purchased in 1998 and I upgraded RAM and the video card for Madden 2002.
Now, with Age of Empires 3 coming out, I’m tempted, although it would be nice if I could pick up a nice laptop that lets me play AOE3. But that isn’t likely unless I spend like $3k.
There is no reason why most of these PC games can’t technically be done on the PC. I think things like Football Manager are probably too niche for consoles but certainly WoW and AOE3 and other RTS games.
It’s just that Microsoft doesn’t want to allow keyboard and mouse use because they think it would be unfair to the people who play with controllers. How frigging difficult is it to plug in a USB mouse and keyboard if the console has USB ports all over???
Interesting way of putting it, "Aren’t I just as expensive as a new video card?"
For me, it’s "Aren’t I just as expensive as a new console?" or "I’m even more expensive than a new console" when referring to high-priced video cards.
Guess that’s a sign of a mindset change.
I think it’s a myth that PCs themselves are very expensive. They aren’t. Visit the sites that have Dell deals every quarter, and you can get a fully rigged very nice PC for $700 or less. Heck, this week you could buy a very nice Dell laptop for $800. The main expense these days is the video card. That’s where you do sink a lot of money, but for folks such as myself, the expense is worth it.