Do you realize the budget of PC games now? Mass Effect cost about $15mil to make, CoD:MW2 cost $40-50mil to develop and nearly $200mil to launch.ButchDeadlift

No it didn't cost $40/50 million to make and $200 million to launch COD on the PC. It took that to launch the game on ALL three platforms yet when console gamers buy COD BO they are only paying $50 for the game and the extra $10 goes straight into Sony/MS's pocket. However PC gamers pay $60 for the game because there are NO CONSOLE ROYALTIES on the PC.

How much do you think it cost to make Dragon's Lair or the original Civilization? If anything, we should be damn happy that the cost has equalized amongst the various platforms. PC gaming hasn't always had the focus it does now. I remember ages ago when pretty much all there was to do on a PC was Doom or an RTS.ButchDeadlift

I have been a PC gamer for 20 years and I am going "WTF" at what you are saying. If anything we had a massively better selection years ago than we have now and at a cheaper price than the crap that gets churned out these days. As for being happy that our costs have INCREASED to match console pricing (when there are clearly EXTRA costs involved in the console version) erm yeah ok.

The reason they were cheaper then is that the games just weren't on the level of the consoles. Sorry, but they weren't. These days, PCs and consoles all get the same stuff. They're all games on CD developed for a given platform. There's no reason for them to cost any differently.ButchDeadlift

Yeah please show me where console games had the quality of "Tie Fighter" or "Freespace" or "Deus Ex" or "Carrier Command" or "Command and Conquer" etc etc etc. In the past PC games were of much higher quality than console games. Yes there is a reason for the cost difference, you are just ignoring it. There is the CONSOLE ROYALTY fee which is around $7 - $10 and something the PC DOES NOT HAVE. So it is only right that console games are more expensive than PC games because console games incur extra costs to publishers.

I am SO damn sick of people crying about game prices. I'm no old man, but I'm a guy who got an NES for his fifth Christmas (had a 2600 before that, but was too young to remember much), a Genesis later, then a PSX, followed by a PS2, a 360, and now I own a decent gaming laptop. ButchDeadlift

PC games have ALWAYS been cheaper than console games, even if you go back in time to the 80's computer games were cheaper than console games. This is down to two factors, firstly in the 80's 90's console games came on expensive cartridges but PC games were sold on inexpensive floppy discs. The second issue is the console royalty fee every game sold on the console sees between $7-$10 going straight to the manufacturer of the console. The PC does not have a royalty fee so why the hell should we be paying console prices ?

I have no problem with paying $60 for a PC game if costs have increased that much, but only if at the same time console games are $70 and yet they aren't ....... hm wonder why ? Bringing PC game prices up to match console game pricing is profiteering in my books and I won't have anything to do with it. If RAGE is $60 on launch then I will wait till it becomes considerably cheaper and the longer I have to wait the cheaper I expect it to get till eventually I end up buying it when it is $5 in a steam sale.

How can people really use these things??

dangamit

This is what the developer of "Monday Night Combat" had to say about the differences between Mouse and Keyboard :-

It all comes down to how each input mechanism affects your ability to turn. On a console, the angle in which a player can turn is a function of both time and displacement of the thumb stick. No matter how far players want to turn, they have to pay a time cost. Even at the highest controller sensitivity, there is a time cost to be paid. On a PC the angle of turn is a direct mapping of how far you move the mouse. The time cost is variable and the better players get that time cost to approach zero.

Now, on consoles we use an array of aim helping mechanisms all in an attempt to help with this time cost. View acceleration allows that time cost to not be linear from distance the thumb stick is moved. It's an attempt to guess that if players jam their thumb stick to one side and hold it they want to spin quickly, but if they slam it to one side and release they want to make a fast minor adjustment. So at the beginning of the time cost the rate of turn is slower and it speeds up exponentially, to a cap, as time goes by.developer

source :- http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/1/24/

At the end of the day all controllers have their place, I would never dream of playing a beat em up or a platformer with a mouse and keyboard just like I would never dream of playing a game that involves shooting (either tps or fps) with anything other than a mouse and keyboard. Thankfully the games I enjoy excell with the mouse and keyboard which is why I am primarily a mouse and keyboard gamer. Joypads have their place, just like a steering wheel has it's place and a flightstick has it's place.

Vanilla Ice Cream Hard Disk...?FelipeInside

The term "vanilla" is often used to describe something that is plain, ordinary, or standard Hence when I said "vanilla hard disc" I naturally meant the current magnetic hard discs that we have used for decades.

not worth it, low space, overpriced and short lifetime.

Krelian-co

^ pretty much this, I never found vanilla hard discs all that slow myself and though they may not be able to compete speed wise with SSD's they blow SSD's away in terms of storage capacity and price. The cheapest SSD I can find is a 64gb one and it costs £75, I can get a 1000gb legacy Hard disc for £50.

Perhaps the way forward is a "hybrid" of the two ? Seagate have such a product out at the moment. They have combined a 500gb mag disc with 4gb of flash memory to improve disc speeds. You can read more about it here :-

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/laptop-hdd

But it will be many years before SSD's become viable enough for the kind of storage tasks normal hard discs are used for.

I personally preferred Fallout 3 to Fallout NV, I felt there was more of a connection with the Vaults in FO3 than there was in FNV. To be honest I don't even know why New Vegas even had the vaults in the game, they just felt tacked on. I also had a problem with NV's story I just found it so difficult to actually give a crap about any of the factions in the game, the way they were squabbling over New Vegas didn't do much for me either.

People are paying console prices for PC games now but that isn't the best bit. The best bit is that they are thanking publishers and developers for it :roll: .

The problem with Rockstars games on the PC isn't that they don't make money or turn a profit on the PC, I know for a fact GTA 4 sold a fair few million and cost the price of a can of coke to port. The problem is that in Rockstars eyes the PC does not make them ENOUGH profit. Why should they "waste" resources bringing their products to the PC when those same resources can be used to bring products to the consoles and they can milk the console crowd for every penny.

Now aside from them thinking they can make more money on the consoles you have both Sony and Microsoft falling over themselves to write cheques to Rockstar to ensure their respective console gets favourable treatment. So with no one offereing Rockstar big cheques to do PC versions and a possibly lower return on their investment on the PC is it any wonder that they don't bother with the PC version.

Personally after the appallingly awful GTA 4 I don't think Rockstar should be allowed anywhere near a PC until they pass a basic college course on programming.

Apparently they are giving the Xbox 360 an exclusive map and at least timed exclusivity to all the DLC. I don't support developers that show platform preference like that so I won't be getting homefront no matter how many crumbs they chuck PC gamers.

Actually, I'm thinking the videos must be at the same quality as the Xbox version, but since you are playing in higher resolution and closer to the screen, you are seeing the imperfections better.... Phelaidar

^ This, the PC version uses the same quality movie files as the Xbox 360. The reason the video files are such low quality is down to the limited amount of space on DVD's. Bioware had to keep ME 2 down to just 2 discs for the Xbox 360 version to reduce disc swapping (disc swapping is not an issue on the PC since the whole game gets installed to the HD). So to ensure the game fitted on two discs certain sacrifices had to be made and FMV quality was one of those sacrifices.

The reason the videos look so much "worse" on the PC is down to the fact we use a higher res than the Xbox 360, sit closer to the screen and a PC monitor is generally of higher quality than most HD TV's.