New Consortium Plans to Reinvigorate PC Gaming

If I have to endure another "loading" screen in the split screen challenged Burnout Paradise on the PS3, my head will explode.

Is Valve part of this? Because right now they're the ones saving PC gaming.

Interesting that is brought up in the April 2007 article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/technology/23gaming.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I remember buying several video cards at different points in my life and never paying a super high price...until recently (past 5 years or so).

I bought a TNT2 card when it first came out. Spent $150 and that was fine. 5 years later I bought a Geforce 3 on launch week. Spent $279 and that was ok. Both of them played every available game with all of the bells and whistles on for a few years...and even as new stuff came out, they held their own.

Flash forward a few years, and I have bought 4 video cards since 2002, just to be able to keep gaming with all of the bells and whistles on. My Radeon 9800XT is REALLY showing its age, and even some of the newer models like the 7600 and 7950 have trouble keeping up in certain games.

Spending $1800 every 18-24 months is ridiculous, and that is not even counting the games themselves. Add those in, and you're looking at another $500 or so every year. That gets to be a pretty big chunk of money.

I think for PC gaming not to fade away, 2 things need to happen:

1. Use the Windows (or another company's) rating system for requirements. Don't give me bullshit "Minimum" and "Recommended" settings...just give me the requirements I need to play this game and have it look great. Then, take that hardware level, and keep it relatively steady for a year or two. STOP giving us GT, GTS, GS, LE, VE, XXX, and Ultra cards every 3-6 months! Make a card that is good, wait a year, and improve on that. It makes it much easier to buy something knowing full well that it will still be a good purchase, even in a year. Its harder to justify $500 every 6 months on something that's almost obsolete in a year.

2. Makes games fun again. Please? Valve has always had a good setup, and games like CS and HL2 are fantastic games at a good price. $29.95 and $39.95 are great price points. $50 for CoD4? Not so much. There is no excuse for spending $50 to $60 on a game. None at all. CoD4 took all of 6 hours to play and finish, which was disappointing to say the least. I recognize the need for casual games, which is what MP is for (I can hop on TF2 and play for 30 mins, and have a blast), but there is no excuse for a $60 game that takes 6 hours in single player. That is just greed and poor game design. What about free content? Patches with extra levels, more weapons, etc? On XBOX you have to pay for those now (I won't)...but with the PC, its free. That needs to be used to it's fullest potential...have a TON of free content for the PC, and that will lure people back who don't buy the scam that is Xbox Live. You should never pay for online play, unless its a MMO type of thing where the servers are maintained by the company making the game. You should never pay for patches or add-on content, unless its an expansion pack. Plain and simple.

I hope they realize that the advantage in PC gaming is that you can make games that DON'T have cutting edge graphics and still have them be successful, deliver them online most easily and constantly expand them at your own discretion.

This means small games, that use only the most commonly supported graphical features, can be made cheaply and reach a pretty big audience.

They need to either orientate development that way or make sure that every PC Dell sells over a certain price point has a graphics card in it, because making big budget high end games in this situation is bullshit and chokes the shit out of what should be the most inventive and freest platform out there.

Maybe they should stop making graphics cards cost $500

The recent NPD comments proved that the PC isn't really even in need of life-support at all. ;)

I love PC gaming, and I want to see it thrive. But I have no idea what this Justice League hopes to accomplish - especially since a couple of these companies are direct competitors to one another.

I guess we'll learn more at GDC. More power to 'em though.

On the surface, things look grim for the PC. And then they quote some numbers from the year 2000. In gaming terms, that was thousands of years ago.

MS does this every few years right? DirectX: check. Games for Windows: check XNA: check

I'm a PC gamer who owns 2 consoles but I still prefer PC games. I'm sure this new initiative is a hardware DRM initiative to tie into Games for Windows.

The minute Ed Vries left MS the whole "Games For Windows" effort was shunted aside like a bastard stepchild. Shane Kim isn't fit to head a concession stand at a rodeo, never mind the MS gaming division.

MS is in a unique position to come up with a universal gaming platform with digital delivery that could give the best of both worlds and turn new platform launches a thing of the past. Unfortunately MS seems to be taking the tack of other publishers nowadays which is to simply grab as much cash before the fiscal quarter ends and not worry about the bigger picture.

Only way to solve this is to think of consoles as PC's, allow use of any input device, run business apps, etc. A single device that follows industry standards to run PC applications and games, aka, the universal console but with PC abilities.

If I knew anything about WoW I'd make a joke about the PC Gaming Horde. Or maybe the PC Gaming Alliance vs Console Gaming Horde?

Fill in your own, I guess

Wow I never knew PC Gaming needed Viagra?

Step 1 - Bring back GLIDE baby!

Go justice league GO!

Haha @ Justice League pic.