Also, you can use a PC for pretty much anything, so it pays for itself.

This whole abandoning of the PC really annoys me. This year, there will be no Madden 09, no NFL Head Coach 09, no NBA 09, no FIFA 09

All because EA Sports is 'reviewing the PC market from a financial standpoint'

Starting PC Price - Including all peripherals such as keyboard/mouse/surround sound/monitor. Usually $2000-3000 if you're going for one of those masturbational high performance rigs built for you. A self built high performance is usually around $1500. A self buil mid range, (like for me) can be and often is as low as $600 measily dollars. Parts failure or hardware damage can be solved by simply ordering a new part and installing it.

How about our console for comparison?

Average Price - $400-$500 dollars for the console itself and a controller. Just those two.

You have to PAY to use the console online. (Awesome, paying to the internet connection you ALREADY pay for.)

Consoles only play certain approved games and some music and DVDs. HD-DVD is available but usually leads to massive price markups. (A computer can do all of these things with more options, all with built in HD functionality at no extra cost.)

Console hard drives are INSANELY overpriced. They're usually 300+ dollars more than a typical PC hard drive. How about the games? Which are 10-20 dollars more than a PC title?

Parts failure? You're boned. Send the whole console back to get fixed and hope you get it back within the next month only to have it fail again in another few months.

If you wanted to play all console games available, you would have to buy all 3 systems. Which would cost you well over a thousand dollars. A PC is a single system, all software is compatible with it by nature. Don't even bother arguing about the backwards compatibility. The PC wins no contest there.

Their's a notion that PC's are "more expensive" that I just can't understand. Sure PCs are expensive. But that's an immediete short term cost. In the long run a PC ALWAYS pays for itself. Especially considering all of the equipment it will usually come with. Compared to this, consoles are a scam. The short term cost is low basically to fool you into thinking it's cheaper. The reality is you only get graphics per dollar value. It comes at the cost of EVERYTHING ELSE. :)

The problem is people only THINK consoles are cheaper. :)

Not if you have a PS3 ;)

PS3 uses a standard pc 2.5" sata drive, it doesn't affect your warranty


on another note, crytek talk about PC piracy, GTA4 on Xbox360 was on p2p days before the offical release.

To be honest, the main reason why I don't have an X360 is because of the multiplayer fee. I would get one to play with my friends who do have one, but I just can't justify the fee to myself. I had (still have) an xbox and used free 'live' months to play with my friends. It was a horrid experience for me. First of all, I had trouble hearing anybody with the headset most of the time so I couldn't really communicate. Secondly, there were way too many little kids using that thing. It was one of those things in life that reminds you of how most people in the world suck. Screaming kids, singing, blatant use of insults such as the N word, etc. As a wise man once put it, they are all "a bunch of hooting dickholes." And people PAY to use that service? Why is the N word so popular with kids anyway? Jesus. I don't use voice chat on pc unless it is with friends or mature servers with admins ready to boot the idiots.

Whoops, I kinda went off there.

The PS3 is just plain expensive to begin with. I think they made a cheaper one available, but you lose out on backwards compatibility. Nice. So imo the PS3 gets huge bonus points over the 360 by not having you pay a fee to go online.

I could probably cope with the expensive games of the console by just sticking to used games, renting, and sales/bargain bins.


On backwards compatibility,

It's great that I can easily play any old pc game I have. Not only that, but I use my pc to play my old PSX games as well. They look better emulated on my pc than the PS2. Plus, I no longer have PSX mem cards to save psx games with the ps2. So I just save them to my hd. My PSX died long ago, I expect the same eventually of my xbox and ps2. It's nice knowing that I may be able to just emulate those old games on my pc in the future. Win/Win


As to PC's being more expensive. Well, you get what you pay for. And if you can fully realize it's potential then you actually get much more than what you pay for. I can and have done so much on my pc that I can't imagine my life without one. Not proud to admit it, but a PC and a high speed connection have become necessities in my life. Bless this time we live in.

http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/...racy_PC_Gaming

Good reading. ;)

"PC game developers seem to focus more on the "cool" factor. What game can they make that will get them glory with the game magazines and gaming websites and hard core gamers? These days, it seems like game developers want to be like rock stars more than businessmen."

"If the target demographic for your game is full of pirates who won't buy your game, then why support them? That's one of the things I have a hard time understanding. It's irrelevant how many people will play your game (if you're in the business of selling games that is). It's only relevant how many people are likely to buy your game."

"Anyone who keeps track of how many PCs the "Gamer PC" vendors sell each year could tell you that it's insane to develop a game explicitly for hard core gamers. Insane. I think people would be shocked to find out how few hard core gamers there really are out there. This data is available. The number of high end graphics cards sold each year isn't a trade secret (in some cases you may have to get an NDA but if you're a partner you can find out). So why are companies making games that require them to sell to 15% of a given market to be profitable? In what other market do companies do that? In other software markets, getting 1% of the target market is considered good. If you need to sell 500,000 of your game to break even and your game requires Pixel Shader 3 to not look like crap or play like crap, do you you really think that there are 50 MILLION PC users with Pixel Shader 3 capable machines who a) play games and b) will actually buy your game if a pirated version is available?"

"The reason why we don't put CD copy protection on our games isn't because we're nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don't like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don't count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor - we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry."

"When you blame piracy for disappointing sales, you tend to tar the entire market with a broad brush. Piracy isn't evenly distributed in the PC gaming market. And there are far more effective ways of getting people who might buy your product to buy it without inconveniencing them.

Blaming piracy is easy. But it hides other underlying causes. When Sins popped up as the #1 best selling game at retail a couple weeks ago, a game that has no copy protect whatsoever, that should tell you that piracy is not the primary issue."



On a personal note: I recently bought Medieval 2 Gold, which has Securom. Can't play it because it keeps claiming a conflict with emulation software, even after I uninstalled, deleted and went on a rampage through my registry to remove any traces of it. At least they're not using Starforce. :shifty:
Same with Rome:Barbarian Invasion; keeps saying "insert correct disk" while I'm trying to start it from it's own d**n autorun and I have only 1 optical drive. W T F?!

Winners? Pirates. Losers? Paying customers.