Those guys at Epic are making the world a better place through the newest Unreal engine. It looks to kick ass (Gears of War). My only complaint is that Unreal Tournament is set back to 2006/2007. That's a long wait for the next installment. But at least it gives me time to upgrade my computer. I saw a lot on the E305 on G4, but I'm still left to wonder how much of it was actual gameplay screens and how much is pre-rendered stuff.
Another thing. You console gamers know no pain. You feel little in the way of slowdown or incompatability. PC gamers constantly have to worry about the latest game even running on their system. When Halo came out on X-Box, the X-Box gamers didn't even question how well it would run. They knew it would run just fine. When it came out for PC finally, some of us had to wonder if the game would even run. It did, for the most part. I'm just worried about the newest gaming systems upping the ante. PC gamers have always had the possibility of the best picture, sound and upgradability for their games, not to mention multiplayer has been strongly left up to PC gamers. Now the console wars have forced Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony to realize they need to do something about that. PC gamers still have the edge when it comes to how many people are playing at once, but console gamers have the cost-effective thing down pat.
HDTV is still not as good as a high-res match of Wolf, but it's getting there. Even at 640x480, console gamers have a good hand dealt to them, at least when they play games on big screen TVs. A 32" TV costs around $200 if you look around. A 32" monitor is nearly unheard of. The best we can usualy get is a 21" monitor for over $300.
No longer are the PC gamers elite. We are kinda screwed now. We had our time in the sun, and now, even I am considering getting my hands on a PS3 or X-Box 360.
What do we still have though? Mouse and keyboard controls OWN any game pad when it comes to FPS games. Potential for much higher resolution games. Modifications are made far more often for PC games. Multiplayer is rarely more than 16 players on consoles. It can go as high as 64 on PC (not including MMORPGs, which are frankly, the bane of the PC gamer). Finally, there's warez, but even console gamesr can go through a couple extra steps and play their favorite console games for free.
Let's face it. Console games are usually more fun, easier to get running (pop a disk in and you're ready to go), less likely to have problems, often look better (attributed to television blurring and lower resolution being squeezed for all its worth) and have a more social attitude. You don't usually invite friends over to play games on the PC while drinking beer and partying. There's rarely a PC set up in the living room for that sort of thing. Sure, we have LAN parties, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper to get four X-Boxes together and have a 16 player Halo match. I've done this, it's fun. More fun than getting 16 PC owners over and finding space for all 16 fucking boxes.
We no longer own online play. We no longer own FPS games (though we have better controls). We can't even say we own better looking games anymore. Doom 3 and Half Life 2 were our last chances. Now, we're just screwed.
Have fun with Gears of War guys. We saw this coming when Rockstar released GTA 3 on PS2 and not on PC until much later. We may never even see a GTA San Andreas for the PC.
