As I read over this thread, I have one real question. If the consoles fully supported the keyboard+mouse combo, and they had a VGA/DVI output right out of the box, how big of a blow would that make to PC gaming? If I could pull out my computer tower and replace it with a console, keep my monitor, keyboard, and mouse but gain a controller, and still have basic stuff like web surfing, music (CD or audio files, using a hard drive), possibly instant messaging, and of course, playing video games.. it would replace my gaming rig entirely.
Then I could just run Linux on my laptop, and not only would that sidestep the Windows Vista issue, but I would be off the computer upgrade treadmill.
I've been feeling the strain myself. Life has certainly gotten better as a PC gamer since the Windows 9x days, but there are still problems everywhere. This past year I've had several issues with games.
I picked up Serious Sam 2 with the sole purpose of playing it co-op with a few friends of mine. We all really loved the first two Sam games. Turned out to be a crummy console port that caused hours of frustration, then finally went on the shelf to collect dust for several months until a patch was finally released that actually fixed our multiplayer issue. The game was still glitchy and very clearly a console game on PC. Not to mention it just sucked overall compared to the older games.
I grabbed Need For Speed: Most Wanted and never got beyond the second race. My car had a constant issue with the alignment being off and veering hard to one side, or the other. There were no newer patches for it at the time, and the issue wasn't with my controller. I tried reconfiguring it and simply using my keyboard. A complete system overhaul (reinstalling or updating all drivers), a clean re-install of the game, and even a hard drive format later, and the issue remained. It's been collecting dust ever since. I don't even feel like dragging it out to try it again.
I just grabbed Star Trek: Legacy not too long ago, hoping that the reviews were just being harsh. (I'm also a big Trek geek, so I knew I would love the game on some level, even if it sucked.) Sure enough, it's practically garbage. Another console port, sloppily thrown together to the point where it's hardly playable. All of the controls are awkward and glitchy, the AI makes me feel like I'm back playing something like X-Wing or TIE Fighter again. I haven't even bothered to try multiplayer yet. Since so many people are having problems with it, I don't even feel like wasting my time. I also found several mods right off the bat that improved the graphics, musical score, and added a save feature to the game. On top of everything else, 4 - 7fps during "typical" gameplay on a A64 3200+, 2GB, PCI-E Radeon GTO2 256MB, 1280x1024 "high" details with no extras.
I've had terrible luck with PC games this past year, and each time I buy an "unfinished" game that never seems to have even been through a beta testing phase, I grow a little more weary. It's not coming home and putting a brand new, $50 game away because it simply doesn't work. It's not just the problems from the games themselves, it's the hours of scouring the internet. It's sitting here trying this and that, re-installing this, updating that, tweaking here, modifying there. Hours of frustration and tedium because of a game that shouldn't have even have passed the testing phase, much less be on store shelves.
Like someone else mentioned, I'm not just some kid wasting away my free time. I pick up a game because it looks enjoyable, I just want to play it and have fun. I don't want to sit here and pull my hair out trying to get a game to work on a computer or a console.
But I'm not ranting on against computers. That's more of a rant on the current state of video games as a whole. Amazingly enough, I do remember a time when patches were just sort of superfluous and fixed a few small bugs or updated the game a little to add some support or content or something, and most of the time were completely unnecessary to enjoy the game.
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