I have been wanting to write this for probably ayear or so now and maybe this time I will get it done.

First let us cover a few things that have occured....

Fact#1: When video gaming was young PC gaming was the leader because it featured superior hardware that consoles just could not match. While PC's still feature the latest and gretest hardware the differences are hardly noticible to most poeple and it certainly isn;t enough to the mass market to pay $500-$800 for a video card when you can get an console for that price or cheaper.

Fact#2: The way hardware moves in the PC industry is too fast for the mainstream. In a nutshell you would have to be pretty well off to keep up with the latest hardware.

Fact#3: For some odd reason until as of late game deveopers have always been making thier games for the highest end hardware out there and some even push for beyond that like Crysis. Of course form a business standpoint this was always dumb because while there are a lot of PC's out there (more than all the consoles) bot that many are high end. The effect of the old model was the PC developers make thier expesive games for the smallest market.

Fact#4: Devopment in PC gaming has shunk. Don;t believe me? Go find a litl of games relesed 10 years ago? 15? Compared to today it is massive I assure you. Not to mention that many PC game only devs have moved to consoles, the ones that are left anyways.

Ok there are probably more but lets move on. i am going to say this but right now I would say that the PC gaming you have known and maybe loved for I don't know how many years now is in the end of its current life as it was. No kidding. I do not see PC gaming continueing in its old model much longer.

So what do I mean?

Well first thing is first almost no company will be developing games for top of the line system's anymore. The ones that hold out will lose money that is for sure and maybe even go under. Proof? Look at Blizzard's next two offerening, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. Nirther of these games is being made to push any system. The are shooting for mainstream sales, the same thing they accomplished with WoW another game built around low system specs.

Also things may not be free much longer. You can thank MS for thsi one with the 360 leading the way with the charge for everything protocol. Think not? Think again. Gaming is expesive and it cost money to run servers no matter what the game is. Recently Joystiq posted a comment from Blizzrd concerning Battle maybe not being free soon.Just so you know Battlenet is used for thier other games that are not MMO's like Warcraft 3, Starcraft and Diablo. If this ends up happening it will be the first time anyone has chrages to play these types of games, ever. I do not know if this will come to pass but my prediction would be yes. And it is not like Blizzard needs the moeny either. Maybe it is something from the whole merger thing. Activision is after all worse than EA these days. Hell they are the new EA and EA seems to be changing more for the better.

At any rate new content will almost all never be free. Free will be rare. Why give it for free when you charge after all. Even better why charge less when you can charge more. I have heard the price of music on games to download is like double or more than it is on like iTunes.

Hardcore, what is that? I think gaming jounalists are showing how out of touch they have become when they say that as gaming has gone more mainstream it is better. Really? What proof do you have of that? Less games are being made. There are less developers now than ever. and there are less genres of games. Not to mention games today are beginning to have the challenge part of them removed. Don;t think so? Ok I loved Bioshock but that game was shockingly easy. Did that ruin the experince? In a way, yeah. Don;t get me wrong I do not long for mad difficulty of the 8 and 16-bit days but I think things are going a little too far to the easy side. Not to mention I think it teaches kids today to be lazy and that everything should be given to them, why earn it? Yay?!?!

I think Spore is another example. You know I have the Sims. i have Sim City, good god Spore is like so unlike Will Wright. That guys agmes have always had some challenge and comlexity and it is like not there in Spore. It was like they designed it the marketing department. Yay for designing for dummies.

I am not sure where things will go on the hardware front. I have to imagine that there release cycles are going to have to change after gaming no longer supports things the way it is being done now else they wan't seel anything. Any really it is dumb the way things are now anyways. It takes anywhere from 2 to 5 years to make the better gasmes these days and from the time one is announced till it releases i can't even begin to count how many CPU's will be released, or even worse GPU's.

I haven't even gottern into piracy either. There seems to be no good solution to it. Look at Spore. They put that DRM thingie on there and people went nuts even though its hardly anything new.

So there you have it. I probably have only just toched on the topic but I am not one who ignorant, and yes there are those who think PC gaming is "just fine" and i think they are nets and in denial. There is tons of proof it is not and nothing to support that it is. I do not think saying well Crysis only came out for PC is a defense. It did and it has been outsold by many console based FPS's, even once that came out on the PC as well.

On another note I almost feel like console gaming needs to change too. I think people are kind of getting tired of buying a new system every 5 years, but that is another blog post altogether.