Head to the EA Site to grab the PC Crysis 2 Multiplayer Demo.

While Console are considered the Gaming item of choice, it is agreed that PC’s are already a generation ahead of the consoles in terms of hard core numbers. If a desktop computer can run at a higher resolution, have more frames per second and look better, why it is that games are held back and also on the decline in the pc market? There is many reasons why this is the case and there is shouts of Piracy, sales, floor space and multi platform. If you look back over time, the tables have turned many times, first the PC was the gaming machine of choice and then there was a whole bunch of new consoles and finally the PC came back to fame – so what is holding the PC back?

Multiplatform

The first issue is the game makers, they have a team in-house and they need to write the latest blockbuster. This is not a 5 minute process and some games can take five year to get out of the door and onto the shelves. Quite often they write a core game and ‘port’ it across to every single console and of course the PC. What happens here is you end of with a game that is not fine tuned to say the PS3 and it will not get the full advantage of the PC hardware.

Piracy

This has been chucked about many times – if a game only sells a very small number due to everybody downloading the game then of course the publisher is not going to invest heavily in the next game and instead focus on what is bringing the money in. In most cases this is Console – this not only sells by the bucket load but also re-sell’s time and time again. I remember the death of the Dreamcast been put down to the sheer number of people that pirated the games instead of paying for them.

Hardware

Inside every single XBOX360 and PS3 is the same hardware as the next one, this means If you one set of goals to aim for and with this you can get every last drop out of the console as you know what your up against. Once we get to the PC, there is a whole range of different hardware out there and even software can cause a game not to run properly. To compare, when I shove a game into my PS3, it checks for any updates, puts them on my machine and I am good to go. On the PC, I have to normally find the update, apply it and repeat until up to date.

Floor Space

Any Store Selling games only has so much floor space, the two big guns (PS3 & XBOX) will get the most space along with a whole range of accessories such as Rock band 3 Guitars and whatever. The PC by comparison is a tiny corner of the shop and most titles get reduced quite quickly due to lack of people buying them. It makes business sense to stock what is making money and PC Gaming and especially peripherals do not sell much at all.

Cost of Hardware

To the average person on the street, let us compare and contrast. The console itself will cost about £200 ($199 USA I think) and this works out of the box, no OS to buy, no tweaking to do – it is off the shelf and ready to go. We need to add to this maybe the cost of some games, there is a Lot of cheap one’s out there (older titles) and you are now good to go. If you wanted to play ‘decent’ games on a PC, you need to make sure you bought one that could actually handle games along with a screen that has a good enough resolution and some decent speakers. I would estimate that the PC would cost 4x more and it will get obsolete after a few years.

Bottom Line

The people making the games do not care that your monster rig can run Crysis at 120FPS running at super high resolution, they will write the games for the console as this makes money. This is not the death of PC Gaming but it will slow it down a lot. Expect titles that only come out on Consoles – my view is buy a console for gaming and get a cheaper PC for the rest.

What seems like an age, I wrote about me wondering what system to get – Xbox360 or PS3 and am I sorry to tell you all that I have not bought either of them yet (arghhhh). What makes it even worse (in my eyes) was the varied systems to choose from, what bundle I want to get, do I need to Move or Kinect System and so forth and so on. I even sat through 12 long videos which compared these systems to death – the end result of this one was they come out equal – shoot.

The Online Battle

Having spoke to people at work who own one or the other, I worked out that while the XBOX Live service is £35 for 14 months, this allows me to have a constant name across all games (like Steam) and I can play my music in any game and chat to people across game so to speak. The Playstation network was free but much like PC gaming, it has no constant naming, not all game support me playing my own music and I cannot cross chat across game. They say go for the system that your friends are playing and by this then we would have to choose the XBOX then, I only know of Two people at work who have a Playststion 3.

Bundles

The Xbox is pretty clear cut here, ignore all the options apart from the 250GIG model, the only thing to worry about is the bundled games. What I have been advised is that unless you want them games, then the Base model will suit just fine. The Playstation though comes in Three models – 160, 250 and 320GIG and along with these models we have countless bundle deals which makes the whole choice sheer madness.

The Playststion 3 prices

In the UK and searching online for just the bare console, the prices I came out with are:

SONY PlayStation 3 Slim Game Console – 160GB – £227.99
SONY PlayStation 3 250GB Game Console + ModNation Racers – £259.97
SONY PlayStation 3 Slim Game Console – 320GB – £279.99

This compares with the XBOX360 250GIG and 14 Months Live subscription of £234.98

Add in the PSP Move and MS Kinect

My view on for example the Wii is that it was a family based game type system and while it would be great to have 4 people trying to play 10 pin Bowling or a fighting game, a sole person would loose a lot of that aspect. The other bad side of these systems is space, you need a lot of it and while I could maybe manage moving the table around and such – it is not something I can see lasting longer than a few nights to be honest.

I have read and saw the Kinect for the XBOX and personally neither the games or the fact it Lags made want to rush out and buy it. the PSP Move still needs a lot of room so I read and there is a sheer lack of games for the thing. The only pack which made me want to buy the Move system was the Playststion 3 320GIG plus Move starter pack plus Sports Champions for £285, thats £1 more then the 320GIG model on it’s own.

Do I need 320Gig Model?

The fact you can swap the hardrive on the playstation 3 for any 2.5″ SATA drive means it is not mega important that I get the 320GIG model. If you recall I have a couple of NAS Boxes that serve up my movies and music collection – so the space would only be used on Demo’s and such.

Why am I taking so long to pick a system

While some people are happy to buy the first thing they see, I like to make sure that what I buy will last me. £200+ is a good chunk of money to be splashing out on a console while I have a few computers here that play the games just fine. I can understand that if a person has ploughed a large amount of money into one system (imagine the console plus games plus add-ons) that they will only be too happy to tell you it’s the system of choice and the other one is just plain junk (aka fanboys).

My sensible side is telling me to buy the 160GIG PS3 and buy the games I want later on (such as Need for Speed Hot Pursuit), my other side is telling me that the right choice is the XBOX360 with 14 Months worth of live – of course Live is pointless if I do not have the same games as the people I know. It’s the odd little things that keep putting me off – just when I am happy to choose one system I read that people disconnect half way through a game (and the game ends as they ran the server).

Am I the only person on the planet who is struggling to make up there mind? Maybe deep down inside I know that gaming on the PC is better anyhow as I love FPS – stay tuned anyhow for the soon the be bought system

Steam is the service created by Vale who in turn make games such as Half-Life and TeamFortress (plus many others of course). Recently over at Tom’s Hardware I read a story about Game Stores View Valve’s Steam as the Devil - The basics of the story is that a Major UK Game Retailer in the UK are upset enough by Steam to threaten that they will not carry any product that carry any Steam integration – I am having a guess here that the store in question is Game maybe? I might be wrong, but how about we look at buying a game via a store verus buying the same title over the Steam Service.

How Steam Works

After I bought the Orange Box at funny enough Game for a super low price of £9.99 which is by a large MUCH cheaper then sold on Steam (£16.99), I created a Steam account and installed the game. The service works by the fact whatever machine I installed steam on and log into that account, I can get the games – no need for the DVD any more in fact. Later I bought ‘Left For Dead 2′ and again this was cheaper in the store then via steam – a LOT Cheaper in fact. This was added to my account and now all the games can be played on any number of machines (one at a time of course).

Where does Steam fall over?

If you checked out my previous posts about steam, you will see that if you loose access to your account, you can wave goodbye to your games until you get it sorted out and this can take well over a week to get sorted in fact. This does not happen with normal games, you get a CD key and away you go and you can re-install and play to your hearts content.

Is there a good reason for steam?

Much like the XBOX Live Service, your account and name stick with you, this means you will be called Mauldor (as I am) in HL2 Death Match as well as Team Fortress. You can invite your friends to join you in a game and you can chat in-game. The other thought here is that if you want Black ops, no need to wait till the store opens tomorrow, add it to your list, pay for it and it will soon download.

Should the Store’s be worried?

It depends of the Store’s are worried about Selling PC Based games to be honest – I have no idea if Steam works across the likes of XBOX or Playstation. The floor space given to PC titles in my local Game store is shrinking each week and soon they will be out in the cupboard in the back at this rate. It makes sense for the Store – they are not selling many PC games, they blame pirates and they can shift the much more expensive Console games as well as re-sell them on and so forth. What these stores forget (as most stores have since learned) is that with the power of the Internet I can find the cheapest price on Black Ops for example, have it ordered and delivered the next day. They cannot hold every single PC titles, do I waste my time looking for a game that they do not have?

Sometimes it works

If I am in Town, I *might* pop into the shop to have a look, 90% of the time I walk back out without any games and I honestly feel bad that I am ‘just looking’ when they ask me if they can help. Sometimes I see a Game I want and the price is right, I am only to happy to buy the game – its something I can walk away with and store on my shelf. I still feel distrusted of Steam – a so called secure system manay to loose not only my password but no emails of this happening and it was not like the person went to jail even though I provided his IP and Picture. For me – I shall continue buying at the store I think.

In my time I have owned a PS1, a Nintendo 64 (Complete with Doctor 64), Dreamcast and an XBOX and out of all of these, I still have the Dreamcast which works fine (It came from Hong Kong) but of course the years have not treated it well and the games look a bit ‘basic’ to say the least. Recently though I have been thinking and looking at the console on offer, I think what caught my eye was while in GameStation, I saw some ‘pre-owned’ XBOX360 Elite for £99. In the last few weeks then, I have been toying with the idea of buying a box, not sure why I would want one but lets go through some of my thought process anyhow and see how this pans out.

Cost of Console

The XBOX 360 with a game and Live Gold Subscription will set you back roughly £300, this compares with the PS3 Slim 320Gig plus game plus Move Starter kit. While it is possible to reduce the cost of the console by just buying the lowest, bare console – we are talking £230 for the PS3 120GIG and £200 for the XBOX360 250GIG.

The technical nature of each console

I would say the main reason for buying a XBOX would have to be the Live Subscription plus the games that are on offer. If we look at the PS3, the main parts are BluRay built in and free online services as wel as BlueTooth.

The price of the games

An important fact is how much its going to cost you to buy the add-ons you need as well the games, if we said a game costs £50 and you bought 10 of then – that’s £500, a good sum of money and on top of the console, we are looking at £1000 – a lot of money just to play games.

From a quick look on Game we can see that the games range from £35 to £40 for most of the games while the major titles are coming in at £45. I saw a lot of older titles for as little as £10. If we compare the price of PC Gaming – the latest titles are £34 Max and if you wait a few weeks, they often come down.

A quick example then – Battlefield Bad Company 2, the PC Version I bought for £15 while the XBOX / PS3 Version is £28, that’s double the price almost.

Playing the console

The most obvious choice here would be to plug the console into the 42″ TV via HDMI and get the full experience but there in lies the problem – my wife likes to watch TV and would not be too impressed with me taking over the TV to play games. This means I would have to plug the console into the Dell 23″ Monitor (it has a spare port for HDMI) and play it that way – am I not then doing the same thing as playing games on a PC?

Another factor which bothers me though, my type of game is FPS, this means I am at home controlling using the keyboard and aiming with the mouse. How does a game pad compare in this respect? have the games been dumbed down to compensate the slow speed of aiming using such a device?

Still not sure

I need to add here that I like the idea of buying a console and what it could do for me but on the flip side, I am not sure which to buy. I would love to hear some thoughts on this subject which may help sway me one way or the other.

Controller vs. mouse and keyboard? Not a fair match.

With gaming technologies so similar these days, as games use the same engine technologies, it would seem like a logical step for different platforms to be able to play with each other online. After all, Macs and PCs have been harmoniously getting along with each other online. So what about consoles?

Microsoft controls what goes on its Xbox 360 platform, so through its Games for Windows initiative, one would assume that Microsoft at one point must have contemplated getting its console gamers online with PC gamers. According to VoodooPC founder and HP CTO Rahul Sood, Microsoft tested it and then canned it.

Why? Because console gamers were no match for PC gamers.

“There was a project that got killed at Microsoft. This project was designed to allow console gamers and PC gamers to interact and battle over a connected environment,” Sood wrote on his personal blog. “I’ve heard from reliable sources that during the development they brought together the best console gamers to play mediocre PC gamers at the same game… and guess what happened? They pitted console gamers with their ‘console’ controller, against PC gamers with their keyboard and mouse.”

The results shouldn’t be too surprising.

“The console players got destroyed every time,” Sood added. “So much so that it would be embarrassing to the XBOX team in general had Microsoft launched this initiative. Is this why the project was killed Who knows, but I’d love to hear from anyone involved — what happened?”

Sood then continued expressing his belief that cross platform play with the Xbox 360 would promoted the PC as a superior gaming platform, with a little nudge to developers to consider looking at making games for HP’s newly acquired Palm webOS.

Remember the days when you walked into a Gaming store and more then half was dedicated to PC Games? Recall also a time when this was the only point of reference you had of how much a game cost and also the fact that there was a lot of people buying games this way back then? Have you now noticed how few stores there is (I have a grand total of two) that sell games as well as how small the PC Gaming section is? Do we blame the internet as it is easy to compare prices and get better deals? Do we blame the pirates for making people stop developing PC Games? Finally do we blame the fact there is many consoles out now that are talking up the floor space.

Retail vs. Online Model

If you are a PC Gamer, chances are you are in front of the computer already looking for games but unless you keep track of the latest games, you may not know all the games that are out there. Armed with Google searching, you can find the very cheapest deal possible for the game you require. Who in there right mind would spend £35 on a game when if you looked around (even on the same store website as retail) you can get the game for half that price?

Retail store though do have there uses – I can go in the store and browse (the very small) collection of PC games on offer and may spot many bargains that I would just not see on-line. The other aspect is finding games that I have personally never heard of such as NecroVision for example. I must admit it is quite a lure to pick up two top quality games for £15 and these also might include the special edition versions as well. Quite often though, I walk away without buying anything and this is more the course for many people I see entering and leaving the shop. I would rather take a note of some of the games, go back home and get a demo and see what it is like before I may go back and part company with my money.

Console Madness

The other aspect of a store is that they have to stock XBOX, XBOX360, PS3, PS2, Wii and every other console known to man game out there. For the most part console games cost more and thus are bringing more profit, the other aspect is that most of the population will just buy a game and will have no idea about this “chipping” thing or downloading games. This is another reason why retail store dedicate the smallest amount of space possible for PC Games.

Piracy

Torrents and NewsGroups provide the means for many people to get the game they want free of charge. They cannot normally play on-line and quite often then not, the keygen / patch will have a trojan in there for the ride but it saved you a chunk of money and allows you to ‘try’ the game all the way through right? The less people that are buying games, the less the publishers will bother and turn to console instead. The guy in the store (GAME-UK) actually give that as a valid reason why there is so few PC games in the store though I personally did not agree with this.

If the game is single player only, I *may* buy it but only after playing a demo and how much it costs. I refuse to pay £35 for any game, no matter how good it is. £25 is closer to my mark but 4 games will get rid of £100 out of my wallet – that’s a lot of money people. Once I have finished the single player – the game sits on a shelf. Multi player is where it is at, this allows me to carry on playing the game LONG after it is finished, I still play for example Call of Duty United Offensive on-line and this is where they can score as you need a CD Key that works and is valid other wise you do not get on-line.

My Own thoughts

We see ever increasing graphics cards and if people were not buying them (as they do not play games) then you would soon see this. If you visit many of the on-line lobbies of even very old games, you see not only a lot of servers but a lot of people playing. I personally have never enjoyed controlling a game via a controller, I play mainly FPS and RTS – so Keyboard / Mouse is where I am at. Many people have made a point of saying gaming is for children but they then change there tune when they happily play FIFA on there XBOX. Maybe these people would enjoy gaming of they in fact gave it a try, there is many types of games out there and not everyone enjoys the same type of game. Getting shot every few seconds on a FPS is a sure fire way to put a person off the game for sure. I will still visit the retail stores, I will still buy PC Games and I have no mad rush to buy a console any time soon.