Why PC Gaming Won't Die

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by Angrist

I think PC gaming will not die because of certain genres. It will take a while before we play RTS on consoles. Even with a pointer device such as the Wiimote, people will want keyboard shortcuts.

I 100% agree with this. I HATE HATE HATE RTS on a console. It just doesn't work. Regardless of how brilliant the interface (Universe at War has a nice one), you can't avoid bumbling and wasting time and getting slaughtered because of it.

Just make a keyboard and mouse combo for these glorified gaming PC's and get to what you really want to do if your bringing a RTS to a console.

[KillerGremlin]

I guess the next question is at what point does your console become a computer. You can't really sit on your couch, casually, with a mouse/keyboard setup, and you can't comfortably put your 44" HD-TV on your desk either. Personally, I feel that both the PS3 and the Xbox360 are more like stripped down computers than pure consoles like the Wii is. I'm curious as to what direction everyone goes next generation (aka, will Sony and Microsoft try to copy what the Wii has done for this generation).

My point mainly is that RTS games are made for a target audience, and I think that audience appreciates the nuances of being able to play the game on a computer.

I have a thought for our future game designer/developer, gekko. One of my absolute favorite console games, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, has one tiny little segment of annoyance. Now, I already said that I would never trade the console-Zelda experience for the PC-Zelda experience. However, when using the bow-and-arrow or the hookshot in the first person mode, it is often difficult to hit your target without the Z-targeting feature. Obviously, Z-targeting was implemented specifically to avoid such situations, however every now and then you would have to do some long range sniping with your bow-and-arrow or slingshot or hookshot, and it was a pain in the ass. This problem was magnified when OoT was emulated to the Gamecube and you had to use the Gamecube's analog stick to aim. The Gamecube has a smoother and more responsive analog stick, so doing things like playing the bow-and-arrow upgrade game where you had to shoot the rupees was somewhat difficult. That is the exact type of thing that would be made breezy with a mouse, wii-mote, or auto aim feature. Regardless, for a lot of games it just comes down to the tiniest details.

[Professor S]

Well the one good thing that came out of the Phantom debacle was the lap sitting keyboard and mouse set-up.

I'm not saying that the keyboard and mouse should rule the console gaming world, not in the least. But if we can specialty controllers for shooters and driving games, why not RTS's? God knows keyboards and mice are cheap enought to produce.

The console controller should rule the console, but if the industryreally wants the console to become the universal entertainment marketplace, they need to tet past this aversion to the keyboard and mouse.

[Null]

thats the thing. pc gives you choices choices choices.. want a controller for counter strike? use one. you can if you want, no ones stopping you.

consoles have usb ports.. pretty stupid to not give gamers the option of what they'd like to use.

and the question raised earlier... yes. better controls most certainly do make the gaming experience better. i dont need my game compensate in a bunch of ways for lack of control just to make it usable. game should be hard on its own. shouldnt need how you control it to be factored in.

[gekko]

Originally Posted by KillerGremlin

I guess the next question is at what point does your console become a computer. You can't really sit on your couch, casually, with a mouse/keyboard setup, and you can't comfortably put your 44" HD-TV on your desk either. Personally, I feel that both the PS3 and the Xbox360 are more like stripped down computers than pure consoles like the Wii is.

The biggest problem gaming faces on the PC is quite literally the OS. While it does multi-tasking really well, multi-tasking is also what kills gaming. The CPU is quite literally grabbing information, executing a set number of cycles, then storing its current state, and grabbing in the information for the next task. Your PC may have a CPU twice the speed of a console, yet you watch the console pump out real-time HD graphics and wonder why your computer can't play Crysis. Your hardware is being crippled by the overhead of a OS that's designed to multi-task.

If a new OS came out that contained no GUI and only allowed you to run one program in full-screen mode, you could run games tremendously faster. Not going to happen, but running games on a multi-purpose OS is horrible for it. Hence why consoles exist.

[KillerGremlin]

Do you think the solution to this will eventually be more complex and dedicated video cards? I always read a lot about how the real advantage of these super expensive GPUs is that they remove some of the overhead from the CPU.