Recently I had a lot of time to browse forums and websites that are gaming related, being that I was on a seven day suspension on this site, and I found two really good articles. I would like to share them with whoever may find them as interesting a read as I did.

The first article is titled PC Gaming: Why I'll Never Console Myself with Second Best and the author basically states in depth why they believe PC gaming to be the better of the platforms. It doesn't outright bash consoles but does shine a light on PC's many strengths over consoles (no it doensn't just talk about graphics).

The second article is titled Birdmen and the Casual Fallacy and the author talks about why third party developers and publishers are having a hard time having the same success as Nintendo on the Wii. The author also goes into detail on how he thinks Nintendo's current gaming strategy does not push aside it's "hardcore" following and how Nintendo may just be one smart company. This article is a long read (took me 26 minutes)but is well worth it if you have the time.

Behold is a PC setup that will cost less or equal to $650 CAD before taxes. This PC will be able to run any game out there, most with high detail. I say this with a 19" or smaller monitor in mind and not counting keyboard and mouse. I do this because it seems every day I find some retard on the shallow end of the gene pool who believes a PC that can beat consoles in detail will cost in the thousands of dollars. I am tired of looking and giving specs over and over so now I can refer them to this blog post. Also these prices will be without mail in rebates and are at a local PC shop of mine called Canada Computers. Lets begin:

Motherboard: Asus M2A-VM = $63.99

Video card: Palit ATI RADEON HD 4850 512MB = $195.99

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ = $86.99

RAM: Mushkin EM2-6400 (2x1GB) (996527) = $47.99

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda (ST3320620AS) 320GB = $56.99

Optical drive: Asus DVD-E616A3 DVD-ROM 16X = $16.99

Power Supply: Cooler Master Extreme Power 500W = $43.99

Case: Cooler Master Elite 330 = $39.99

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Home= $91.50

Total: $644.42

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/game-doom-quake,5310.html

It's official, Doom 4 is going to be made. I am very happy at this news, happy enough that my mind is pushing away my instant worries that the PC version will get shafted. The engine being used is "cross-platform" which means they only need to write one version of code for all three version. This sounds good, but what if PC gets a carbon copy of the PS3/360 version ? I know my PC can produce better quality graphics than that. I guess I have a lot more faith in ID Software pulling that balance act over many others. Well here's saluting the soon to be Doom 4. I hope it can continue the greatness that the rest of the series has been.

I have seen so many posts in forums about how people are angred that PC isn't getting GTAIV. They need to calm down. If they think back San Andreas came out on PS2 in October of 2004, and on PC in June of 2005. Vice City came out on PS2 in October of 2002, and on PC in May of 2003. GTAIII came out on PS2 in October of 2001 and on PC in May of 2002. See, this isn't new at all. We haven't got our PC version of GTA at the same time as consoles since maybe the GTAII days. Wait 6-7 months and I bet we have it then. I don't mind waiting, I have plenty of games to finish up that should take at least a few months.I think that tiem was well spent anyway as I believe our PC ports to have been quite good for Vice City, GTAIII, and San Andreas.

I am sure that title has been used before, so I will in no way say my genius created it. Earlier today a friend of mine purchased a Xbox 360 and a comment was made about how much more sales consoles get over PC games, well even my friends commented on how angry I became. He did not say PC gaming is dying, lucky for him, but I will say that I believe anyone who says PC gaming is dying/died/could die or anything close to that is an uneducated moron. This blog post is going to be me going through the financial aspects of just how well PC gaming is doing with the data available to me. Here are links to the data I am using:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6185089.html?page=1

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6184847.html?sid=6184847

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6184987.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/31/more_than_100_million_graphics_chips_shipped_in_q4/

Going by this Console video game software made $6.64 Billion, and PC software made $911 Million. This seems like a big gap, but watch me close it. That $911 million doesn't include digital downloads, so lets say that those sales were half of the retail sales, or about $455 million. That brings the total to $1.366 billion. Now that NDP data on PC software also doesn't include proceeds from WOW subscriptions. The current reported number of WOW users is 10 million. Now since the NDP data is only for the US, I will onl;y factor in North American WOW users which was reported at 2.5 million. 2.5 million WOW users at $14 a month is $420 million in a year. That brings the PC total to $1.786 billion. Now my figure of $455 million for digital sales is being liberal in my opinion, but since there is a lack of hard data, i'm being nice. How can any educated person say that a market that makes upwards of $1.7 billion a year is dying ? I know I should only be angry at the fan boys not every console gamer, but it's sometimes hard to stay focused. I would also like to point out that over 100 million PC graphics cards were shipped in the 4th quarter alone of 2007. Over a four quarter average that's over 400 million graphics cards. Now I am willing to say something like there are only 75 million actual consumers and many poeple buy more than one graphics card per year. That's fine, but only an estimated 17.44 million consoles were sold in 2007. You would have to say that 22.86 times as many consoles were shipped as were sold to catch up to an estimated 400 million graphics card (an average but still). All in all one could say that the PC gaming market both hardware and software is doing very well. The game sales may be down from last year, but everything has an off year. Not to mention piracy is rampant in the PC community and our shelf space in game stores is diminishing, hell i'd say the decks are stacked against the PC on purpose. This blog post was made for a few reasons: I felt like blowing off some steam, and if there is a chance some person comes by this who is one of the people who say PC gaming is dying, well maybe they will change their mind.

Finally it was officially announced that we will be getting a sequel to Vegas. The ending of the first one all but assured that either a sequel or expansion would be made and now I can rest pretty easy. I say pretty easy because Ubisoft could always screw up. There are some things I would like to see in the sequel, and they are as follows:

Bigger online play

16 player support was nice, but when it comes to online games, the more the merrier is my motto. I would like at least 32 player support if not 64 or higher. In my opinion as long as the maps aren't too small, having more players increases combat and intensity.

PC First

As I said Vegas was good but I want it to be ported to the 360 and PS3, not from it. Ubisoft shouldn't forget about those many PC gamers who made this damn franchise popular.

More Video Options

This kind of ties into the last request, but I want more options. I want to be able to turn AA and AF on and off, I want higher resolutions such as 1920*1200, I want the option for multiple ways to improve quality and framerate.

Better AI

The first vegas wasn't very hard. The enemies wern't really smart as they were well placed. I hope for smarter enemies in the next game.

I'm sure I willl think of more, I will add to this list when I do.

I have laid off of insulting the Wii's poor graphics for some time now. I have done so because I accept that it is never going to satisfy me on that front, and also because the bulk of Wii titles I have played have had good enough gameplay to make up for the mediocre visuals. Then I read The Wii Graphics comparison and it got my blood boiling again. Here is why: it just adds to the excuses I have had to hear since the Wii came out such as

"Graphics aren't important anyway"

"It's the developers fault, they haven't taken advantage of the Wii"

"The graphics will get better in time"

"Well, (insert game name here) looks good for a Wii game"

and now there is this graphics comparison which basicly boils down to "Hallelujah, there is a Wii game which has better graphics than a GameCube game from the year 2004". If that is the best argument towards the progress of the Wii's graphics then it has failed horribly.

This time in March if all goes well and I get the money that I should get, then here is what I will be getting:

Intel E6600
Asus P5N-E SLI
2GB OCZ PC-6400 Gold
2x 8800GTS 640MB
600 Watt OCZ GameXStream PSU
Vista Basic
Western Digital 400GB SATA II HDD (WD4000KS)

I will be all set for Crysis at the highest settings then, and will still have my PC crown among friends.

I have been told by certain people that my reviews on games are too boring and in depth. My response to this is that I go as in depth as I do because that it what is lacking these days. I see so many people review a game in 5 lines and not really say anything except "this game ruuules and has gr8 grphcs", and it is disgusting. So few people go the extra mile and say why the graphics are good or bad, why the sound and gameplay are good or bad. When I am reading a review I do so to see if I would like the game, and so you can see why the question of why the game is good or bad would help me. I write reviews for people like me that are looking to have questions answered and not just to see people say good things about their favorite game. When I rate reviews I have given people a positive rating even if they wrote a review bashing a game I like, as long as they can backup their dislike of the game with decent reasons. The same goes for me giving reviews bashing games I hate, I will give them bad ratings if they can't backup why they hate the game. I have also been told I should add some humor to my reviews, and I say why ? I don't read a review to laugh. If I want to laugh i'll watch a comedy. For better or worse I think this is what player reviews need and hopefully it catches on.

I have just found out the system specs for the Wii and I am concerned.Here are the specs:

IBM Broadway CPU at only 700MHZ!!
ATI Hollywood GPU - I would of preferred Nvidia
512MB Flash Memory - wow, I have that sitting on  my desk for christ sake.
support for only up to 480P

I know the games so far look preety decent despite that, but  I expected a slightly more powerful system. I will still consider buying it, but I was more comfortable before I knew how weak it was. Oh, and as for that 480P support, it isn't a big deal considering an HDTV cvan support up to 1080I or 1080P. I like the price of the Wii, just think they could of done more.