Is PC Gaming dead?

Hi my nerdizzles, sorry about not posting for a while. Life changes etc and being lazy is no excuse for not posting so I am truly sorry.

Anyway, I would like to discuss the current state of PC gaming. For one I love the PC, it has brought me much entertainment and has such versatility that can not be matched. It spawned the internet fandom, is the forefront of gaming technology. You can just do just about anything with it. In the early 2000's is was the most popular gaming platform and in front of any other console on the market in terms of games and technology, so why are people saying it is dying?

Well, I have been involved with computers for a very long time and this sort of thing happens all the time. You had the Amiga and it was one of the best gaming platforms around, then it died to the consoles and eventually to the PC. So is it time for the PC to just give up on its old motherboard and die? certainly not. There is still more PC's out there than consoles either for personal or business, it all depends on how you look at it.

The PC has some of the best developers out there, look at Valve and its Steam platform. It is proving that there is still a market for PC Games and that piracy is not an issue when you can create a quality game that people will buy, also with Valves Steamworks for the PS3 and allowing PC and PS3 players cross platform will be amazing and improve sales on PC and PS3 titles across the board. Valve has some A+ titles coming out that is going to blow the socks off of everyone. We have Portal 2, Half Life Episode 3 and probably some others we dont know about.

Then we come to Blizzard, oh Blizzard how I love thee. They have proven you can still make a bucket full of cash just on the PC alone. I am not just talking about the obvious World Of Warcraft either. Starcraft 2 was the second fastest selling PC game ever (behind its own WoW expansion Wrath of the Lichking) and it continues to sell by the truck load everyday. When cataclysm comes out it will sell and more than likely beat Wotlk in sales.

Yes that is only two developers you might say, but they are but a few out there that is keeping PC gaming alive and with these developers the PC will never die to just being a Business machine it once was. With your consoles, you will have to buy a new model just to keep up. With a PC buy a new graphics card and you are good, or just turn the graphics down a little and it will still run on a machine that is 5 years old. A good graphics card could run you $70, where as a new console will run you $499 on release and even then if you are lucky to get one opening night and wait in a long queue all night for it to release.You will have to buy games that are $60+, PC games with equal or better graphics will be $50+ so $10 cheaper.

So for me, with piracy aside, I feel the PC still has long life and something will come along that will breath new life into it.

The PC and PS3 crossplatform gaming!!

Hi my nerds,

Just a quick post before I head on to bed. I just read an announcement by Valve Software that they are planning crossplatform gaming between the PC and PS3 for Portal 2 can we say WEWT!. For the moment this is going to be co-op which is great in itself, but just imagine in the future...Counter Strike and Team Fortress pwnage. Finally Valve is seeing a potential in the market and is acting on it. This proves my speculation in my previous post Gabe humps the PS3.

Can not wait.

Rune out!

Some of the best E3 Video's

Well it is that time again that I post before I bugger off to real life and work. But anyways lets get to the meat of the show shall we. I have been trawling around finding some of the most interesting E3 video's so far. Now I am a PC Gamer through and through but some of the video's will be 360 also and PS3 but they just caught my eye. I will give a reasoning why I picked them below the video's. So lets begin shall we. Some of the video's have stupid age verification on them so I do apologize in advance.




This trailer sent shivers up my spine literally. I have been a fan of portal for years and love it. I can not wait for this.




Starwars: The Old Republic probably the most hotly anticipated new MMO. I know I am looking forward to it, I know Bioware will not let us down.




Marvel vs Capcom 3: Oh yeah baby huge fan of the other two and has teh deadpools. Not a PC Title but I will play the fuck out of this.



For some reason this caught my eye, I will investigate on what this is later but it would seem to be a game for the Natal or the PSeye. Comments please.



This seems interesting, not sure what platforms it will be on but it caught my eye.



Oh yeah!!! been wanting some Nam action for my grizzled trigger fingers. Time for me to put on the best of Creedence Clearwater Revival and kill me some folk. YEEHAWW



Well what can I say? its Fallout.



This is probably the most badass trailer of the lot Starwars The Force Unleashed 2



I know not PC related but this looks fun for the children even though this just screams Kingdom Hearts.

Well that about wraps it up for tonight's blog, hope you enjoyed watching and please leave some comments.

Gabe humps the PS3

So Gabe Newell of Valve Software (HL2, Portal, Left4Dead) announced at E3 that they will be developing for the PS3. This does not come to much surprise to me, but the content of the announcement did. He mentioned that the PS3 is "the most open console" and will be developing Steamworks on it. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Steam (you been living inside a whale all your life?), Steam is a online distribution service for the PC and also serves as Valves online multiplayer platform. But what has peaked my interest? well not the ability to download games or view pretty trailers. It is the multiplayer and the technology behind it. Could we see finally see a true cross platform system to allow PC gamers on Steam and PS3 players to finally go head to head?. Here is what he had to say.

"We're a huge fan of open platforms in general," Valve's Erik Johnson told CVG today. "That's something that we feel like is the right thing for customers. The PS3 looks like the most open of the consoles right now.

"Fundamentally, we want all of our customers to be able to interact with each other - especially with a game like Portal 2, where people want to tell each other about Portal and have fun together.

"The work we're going to do on Steam [on PS3], feature-by-feature, we don't know exactly what that's going to look like today. But we want to create that same kind of thing on PS3 [as we have on PC] - where people can talk to each other, know what they've played."

"In terms of timing, it was a while ago. The thing for us that made it make the most sense was talking to [Sony] about Steam.

"We shipped Team Fortress 2 on PC and the Xbox. We shipped over 120 updates on the PC and we've shipped less than five on the Xbox. That's something that we feel like we've done a pretty poor job on and we don't know how to fix it.

"There's problems with shipping that many updates on the 360. For us, we kind of need to solve a problem with PS3 customers and hopefully Portal 2 does it.

"We want to make sure we're doing it right and they're gettin the kind of value we like to provide to our customers. We're not interested in giving them a less than stellar experience."

So I will leave you to draw your own conclusions to this information, if you have read my previous post about cross platform gaming then you will understand my excitement. I am not holding my breath for such a feature, but one can dream oh yes one can dream.

Microsoft - An opportunity wasted

So is PC Gaming dead?..some say it is and some will argue it is not. Back in the mid 90's and early 2000's PC gaming was at it's most popular, it was the most powerful gaming system around. It allowed mods and a massive community, so why the demise of the most flexible gaming system around?. Most say it is piracy which I do have to admit is a huge contributing factor. Personal computers have been plagued by piracy since the early days of personal computing and is still strong today, they also say it killed the giant that was the Commodore Amiga. But this is not a discussion on piracy, this is a discussion on opportunities wasted by companies not seeing the big picture.

One such company is Microsoft a software giant that has a ton of potential but is wasting the opportunity. Why? you may ask...well it has to innovate and not sit back and look at rivals and see what they are doing before acting and investing. Playing safe perhaps? maybe. But this is not a discussion on its investments either, we are talking about PC Gaming. So let me pose a question to you. How many of you out there would like the chance to frag a smug console owning noob at a FPS with your weapons of choice? i.e a mouse and keyboard. Of course you would..who wouldn't?. I for one would love to jump onto Modern Warfare 2 and own the entire map and wipe the grin off of the console loving fools. But alas it is not meant to be. Microsoft had a nice little program going called Live for Windows. This enabled people who owned a few games to actually play against XBox 360 owners, wow this sounds really cool!. But alas no, they only released a few games that allowed you to do so. One such game was Halo 2, released 2 years later to a uninterested crowed and with Halo 3 already in the works DOH!. Today Live for Windows is almost none existent, relegated to the backwoods of their Live! site and no one interested.

And so to my main point, if they released games that would enable the PC Gamer to play against XBOX 360 owners would you buy it? I know I would. If they are worried about pirates then the trick is is not to worry about it. Let them pirate but the multiplayer aspects of the game is what people would be interested in and the community it brings. If you pirate it you wont be able to play online with a plethora of nubs just begging to be destroyed by your powers.

So are you listening Microsoft? you have the infrastructure to make it happen.Show some love to the same people that made your company successful.

So this is the end of my first blog post. More is to come with some exciting idea's and new people. Please feel free to comment.

Microsoft Press release for Games for Windows