You have some interesting ideas, but I think you're premise is bad. PC gaming will NEVER compete with console gaming. It's two entirely different markets. PC gamers are hobbiests. They aren't afraid of technical challenges. They are willing to spend more money more often. They prefer games they can tweak to their own desires. They don't want to be told what hardware to use.

Saying "make X changes so PC gaming will compete with console gaming" is like saying "make X changes so Home Depot gift cards will compete with new home sales". There are some people with the skills, time and interest to build there own houses (and those houses are probably cooler, more personalized, and work exactly like the self-builder wants). But most folks just want to buy something they cant move into and not think about it.

Because developers of sequals are notoriously clueless about what made the original games hits.

I agree with you completely. The style, faces and voices of the original were much better than the sequel. Max of MP1 was a punk, a bitter outsider, a loose cannon and he looked and talked like it. Max of MP2 looked and sounded like Mitt Romney.

The irony is Max didn't look and sound the way he did because the MP1 team has such a highly defined vision of what they were trying to create. The face and voice is one of the developers. The face and voice of Mona was one of the devs real life girlfriend. Those weren't careful artistic choices, they were what they could afford, who was available. It's mostly great luck (for them and us) that it clicked like it did.

So your saying some games you dont have to change any options? You just plug the gamepad in, launch the game and thats it?lbarlow90

That is probably true for games with the "Games for Windows" label. PC games generally can handle multiple inputs for one action so they are getting input from a controller and from keyboard/mouse, whichever you are using. By standardizing on a specific controller it increases the chances that the default button -> action binds will be useful. For older games you'll probably want to dig into an options menu and set your buttons to actions that make sense.

It varies from game to game. For some games the answer is "you don't". Others you just select a gamepad option. Most games will be somewhere in between. Support of the XBox 360 controller is one of the requirements for the "Games for Windows" label so expect support to increase in the future.

Hardware wise just buy a controller and plug it in to your USB port. Most controllers will come with a driver disk. If you have an XBox 360 controller without a driver disk, you can download the drivers for free from Microsoft.

From there it will be usable from any game with specific compatibility with that controller. It will also be usable in any game with general joystick support. If you don't like the default button binds look for an Options menu which usually contains a Key Bind section. Some games let you bind keyboard, mouse, and joystick buttons all through one screen. Others have seperate screens for each input device.

If you are really paranoid and don't mind a little extra work, go to you credit card company's website. Most credit cards offer special temporary e-purchase accounts. You go to the credit card site request one, they give you a new credit card number that is only good for one transaction or a fixed amount. The amount charged to that temp account goes on your normal credit card bill, but it's useless to anyone who would steal it.

As far as compatibility with Window XP SP2 you have no worries with any Valve games. And, in my experience, older third party games sold over Steam are actually more stable than their retail versions. (I had a copy of Arx Fatalis that I couldn't get to run with all the patches and hacks I could find on the internet. I repurchased through Steam and it runs fine.)

I'm a big fan of Deus Ex, it's one of my all time favorites. But I have no problem with an 8.2 score. It was far from perfect. It had a clunky graphics system that looked mediocre and taxed most systems of the day. It was buggy on release. The "choices" in the storyline were mostly cosmetic. And it had some sloppy implementation (25MB save files).

There is lots to love. It had a good story and a great imersive game world. The character development was a lot of fun. And the multiple approaches to every situtation was great. Don't loose track that 8.something is a good score. It means Gamespot liked it and recommended it. It just wasn't perfect.

It's true: console gaming has FAR overshadowed PC gaming in scope and PC gaming will never catch back up. It's not that PC gaming is dying it's that console gaming is exploding. The console game industry currently does more sales than movies and some are predicting that in 2008 it will have greater sales than movies and music together.

But consoles doing great doesn't spell doom for PC gaming. Just because one market is bigger doesn't mean every producers abandons the smaller market. If that were the case there would only be cars, no one would be in the motorcycle business. No one would be making sorbet, cause there's a lot more people buying ice cream. Or an anology closer to the point: are you predicting that people will stop making movies since console games sell more?

There is still money to be made on PC games. Valve has been very profitable and I suspect the recent surge toward Steam distribution is helping them even more. Blizzard is printing money nearly as fast as the oil companies. Franchises like The Sims are tasty dependable income streams. As long as there are success stories like that in PC gaming there are going to be businesses and developers saying, "Hey I could do that!"