E3 continued....

Joeberg

The original E3 post isnt loading for some reason, need to post here...

time to embrace your innner 360 fanboy, Vincent. 360 exclusives are OK, you own one. PC games are dying anyway, you can't expect companies to embrace that medium when the 360, Wii and PS3 are dominating the game world. By the way, is Portal good? I have the Orange Box (had it for PS3, but didn't play it since GTA and other time killers showed up...then I traded it for the 360 version...w00t) and I am about to go game by game and defeat them as if it were 2004 all over again.

As for the dashboard, I think the way it is set up NOW stinks. Scrolling through a list of 500 demos to find the one I am looking for is NOT ok. I haven't seen the new layout, but anything that addresses the GUI problems they have now is welcome.

For me, the news that rules out of E3 are Rock Band 2 allowing you to use your RB1 disk content - HUGE. I always complained about this with the Guitar Hero series. Harmonix proves that they know what they are doing, and I will going RB over GH this fall.

I bought Mass Effect on ebay this week....has anyone played it? I see it got reviewed well, and now that I have a working 360, I am catching up on all the games I couldn't play because of my problem hardware. Bioshock, Orange Box, and now Mass Effect. Thoughts on it? Thoughts on BioShock already, Vincent??

Harry

First of all Joe . . . screw all else and play portal now.
HEY why are you reading GET PLAYING.

I MEAN IT! play portal NOW!.

Are you done with it yet? Ok, remember . . . the cake is a lie.
Portal has got to be on Harry's all time list of top 5 games of awesomeness. I pwnzored Mass Effect, its sweet, its long, its gorgous. I think I invested about 50 hours when all is said and done. It took a little while for the action to ramp up, but when it did you'll dig the concept of a third person shooter rpg. It feels like your playing a movie.

Yah I agree that the dashboard interface needs much improvement but I hope we don't trade evil for evil. Oh and they can take their Avatars and shove em, my xbox doesn't need that crap. People use the wii for that, totally ghey.

Man i am just overwhelmed by the amount of media, I don't know how I'm going to get to all the things I'm want to play. FF13 is going to own me. I've had my fill of music based rhythm games for a while. Its hard to be excited about it when i can just pick up my guitar, play my keyboard, or play my sons drumset. I enjoy playing it at a party but i won't buy it.

My #1 exciting thing for the future has got to be gears 2. I hope you all buy that, we could get the band back together.

Joeberg

Portal is that good, huh? If I were not at work, I would be all over it.

You can never get too much of a rythym music game. When I get to sing Livin on a Prayer as poorly as I am capable of into my xbox instead of in the car, then I declare victory.

Everyone should be getting Bad company in the meantime. Squads of 4....4 people....makes sense to me. It is really awesome, and until someone else gets it, I am leaving it on the shelf to play Orange Box, UT3 and Lego Indy. Its a shame to leave such awesomeness on the shelf.

I thought I had evolved out of video game geek status when my xbox broke. now that it works, and you guys all have xbox's (even though Bush seems to be the only one willing to play online co-op) I have been pulled back in. Achievement hoarding doesn't hurt either. Put a carrot out there for me, and i will jump at it.

Harry

I think vincent and shaw are to busy having hairy anal man sex, to post on this forum or play games online with us.

CrazyVincent

I don't have a problem with 360 exclusives, but I just can't imagine playing a game like Portal with a gamepad. Not to mention that Valve was born and raised on the strength of their PC titles (Half-Life, Counter-Strike hello!?) and with Steam they have more stake in the platform than any other developer. Their games sell drastically better on PC so it doesn't even make business sense for them to do 360 exclusives. It's an affront to their fan base.

As for the dashboard, I agree that the current one sucks. I'm all for a new one, but what they've shown so far doesn't seem to address any issues with the current one, it just looks fancier. There's no mention of a search feature, or better categories, or a way to jump to a letter, or anything that would make finding stuff any easier.

Joeberg

couple points -

their fan base is evolving - I used to be a Steam fan on PC, now I hate PC gaming.

their fan base is embracing consoles (look at Bush - he is the prime example of a PC gamer who converted).

I would say the day of the PC gamer is slowly coming to an end. Steam is in the business of making money, and if they thought the PC was a viable platform, they would stay there exclusively. Market research told them to follow the 360. Its a business decision. Consumers either evolve with the trends, or play Sim city on their PC's.

VIVLAVIV

Joeberg

Just to clarify a point that may not make sense at first read...

Consumers are already evolving - so I didn't mean all consumers should evolve already and accept the market offering, I meant, the market offering is matching the evolution, and the niche market is what is left (PC gaming fits there now, I would expect)

So Vincent, you are on the fence of niche and mass market goodness, as you have both options - come on in, the water is warm, and the finger sticks are easy to learn....

Harry

i don't believe PC gaming will ever die....it'll just change. You'll always have your World of Warcafts, your Civilizations, your Age of Empires, your peggle, and your snood. Those just won't work on a console . . . yet.

AND, i believe there will one day be a console fps controller that is superior to the current controller. Whether it be waggletastic or make use of your brainwaves . . . we shall see !

Dashboardage:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/36411.html

CrazyVincent

That dashboard video does not make me feel any better. Tycho rips into it also (and the show in general.)

Joeberg

PC gaming may never die, just like vinyl records will never die. You will always have fans of the medium, it is just falling out of the mainstream. Guess how much buzz diablo 3 got?? Barely any.

Either way, I would like to see some industry statistics to support the discussion. Something to the tune of units sold trends year over year for each platform ( is PC trending down, consoles trending up? I think the data would support that)

Back to my original points about PC gaming, it is a freakin hassle to get anything to work on a PC, unless you constantly upgrade your machine for $3000 a pop. Buggy windows platforms, combined with the variability of graphics cards, etc will ultimately be what "kills" the platform (along with compnaies focusing on consoles because you can't pirate that software either), because there are more stable, more user friendly options (360, Ps3, Wii to name 3) There are people like JV who love to tinker with a PC and do not see getting things to work properly as a hassle, but that is generally not the American way of thinking. We think along the lines of easier, faster, better - NOT harder, more of a hassle, tedious. the payoff isn't any better when you do get it to work, so why bother? Get a console, and as long as you avoid a red ring or bricked Ps3, you are home free.

Anyway, I played some Half Life last night, and I don't think I miss my mouse.

CrazyVincent

Joeberg wrote:

I would like to see some industry statistics to support the discussion. Something to the tune of units sold trends year over year for each platform ( is PC trending down, consoles trending up? I think the data would support that)

Funny you should mention that... I was looking for something like that last night. It's fairly difficult to find sales numbers for PC because the install base is pretty much impossible to determine, online distribution is almost never revealed in sales numbers, and most MMOs don't release actual subscriber numbers. The Steam hardware survey is pretty useful, but it's really only representative of "hardcore" gamers.

I also found this site called PC vs. Console that ironically doesn't seem to contain much PC data.

Also, there is a list on Wikipedia for all platforms, but it shows all-time sales, it's not really broken down by month or year, though you could estimate trends based on games' release dates.

I'll poke around some more to see if I can find something better.

I think what you'll really find is that PC is positively huge for MMOs and casual games (and strategy games to a lesser extent,) and consoles dominate everything else. Personally, I'm interested (and concerned) about the trend for FPS to go to consoles. On the flip side, I think it has helped make RPGs more accessible, but hardcore RPG fans are upset that the games are becoming watered down. It's all subjective.

CrazyJester

I like playing games.

Joeberg

Amen.

CrazyVincent

FYI, my Bioshock post is finally up over on my site. Be warned, I think it's the longest post I've ever written, and it links to even longer articles. Also, spoiler alert.

CrazyVincent

Looks like I was worried for nothing. The new Portal map pack for the 360 is going to be the same one that has been available free for PC gamers for a couple months now.

Also, I found an article called Valve: Why the PC is the future when I was writing my Bioshock post. A quote from the article:

There are 260 million online PC gamers, a market that dwarfs the install base of any console platform, online or offline.