Interesting article, nice one!. @sgt_brent "PC gaming is losing steam". Funny to read that, since it's (slowly) gaining Steam thanks to "Steam" ;) "they HAVE to, is because of how much money it will bring in.. " Console games is more expensive (you have to pay royalties to the first party), more difficult (you can only use authoriced tools), more time consuming (Compliance checks, submission testing and First party approval that are not required on PC) and technically limited (It has to mork under a specific system, fisical format space and framerate). PC games: you use your tools, pay no royalties, and you are not limited by a specific system technical limitations. So, Why they don't relese most of console games on Pc too since it's cheaper and measn extra money?. Simple: over 50% piracy rate, and getting worse since it seems every single PC lover does not admit this and looks the other side. Consoles suffer from a lot less piracy (just for the fact that it is slightly harder to pirate a console), that is the reason you don't see a lot of games on PC; it's not worth it for most companies.
Being refused a rating by the USK (Germany's Age ratting division) does not equal a ban. Rather, it imposes strict trade restrictions on the title (you can shell it, but you can't advertise it, show it on the selves or shell it to anyone under 18). While only very few games are actually banned (Basically those with Nazi reference), it is true that the list of indexed games (the first case) is very long. About your article, well... I'm sorry dude, but in Germany (ehre i'm living now) I didn't ran the risk of having to pay a extremelly high fine for importing Mortal Kombat and Bulletstorm from the UK. That is the problem with Australia and that is why it always with the spotlight over her self. Suffering a fine for importing a game? you spect that from a totalitarian regime that imposes it's morals over it's citicens (like China, as you said, or any teocratic nation on earth), you don't spect that from a fully democratic country. And last but not least; people (specially non-german press) should actually sit a moment in front of the computer and check how the German system actually works and not call every single game "baned in Germany". That is not true in 95% of cases (Hell!, Gamespot still says that "Dead Space" was banned here and it was actually released fully uncensored and with a USK18 rating!)
@nnn2004 It was really time consuming at the begining, but nowadays you can play quite in the casual way and still get to see most of the endgame content. That "game for lifeless people" general idea dissapeared more than one year ago, saying it in a general context is being outdated in the subject. Just saying.
At the moment is not to expensive to get a massive Pc update; I got a 6600 quad core, a Gforce 9800, new motherboard and +2 GB ram for around 350EUR (roughly 400$) more than enough to play almost any game in the masket at quite high detail. Of course the game story, gameplay and contest is still there (with the exception of the flying camera in console versions). The textures, on the other hand, suffered a downgrade due to the lacy incompetence of the porting studio; I can understand is hard to make 15GB fit in a x360 DVD without downgrading the texture's resolution due to space but... in a 40GB PS3 Blue-Ray??? don't make me laugh! both machines can move those textures if you add a bit of distant land blur (GTA IV, Oblivion and Mass Effect as example). Cheers :)
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