pc games are changing?

[smaky]

I wanted to reply to the other thread but was afraid I would only get flamed.

Here is my take on it:
I have played games with all the different securities. Fade, Securom, Starforce.

None have given me any problems at all. 12/2006 I have even gone and ordered several copies of ArmA from the Czech republic, knowing it came with Starforce, just so I can have it 6 months sooner. I have also bought an Atari (english) release of ArmA. (yeah I am a Flashpoint fanboy)

When I buy a game I dont' look at what security features it has. Yeah at first I was on the boycot bandwagon, but lately I could care less as long as I can play.

Now to the real reason pc games suck:
When Duke Nukem, Doom, Quake, Halflife, Operation Flashpoint and many other games first came out, they were revolutionary. New, ground breaking and exciting stuff!!!!!!!

Nowday all we get is OVERHYPED REDUX of old games. Those games I just mentioned I completely finished and played many times over. I have never finished Doom3, Halflife2 even tho they were great looking games with awsome controls. Did not finish or play more than 5 months of ArmA even tho I played operation flashpoint for 3 years.

Because there was none of the " oh wow I can pick up a piece of pipe and smash ....." or after playing a multiplayer mission in Flashpoint for the 1000th time I finaly get the rpg to hit the dam chopper, which was coming at us, and blows up on top of us killing us all. We all were just laughing non-stop. To this day we talk about it. Those kind of OH SIT moments dont' happen any more.


Why has this happened? Consumer is to blame! We buy into the marketing schemes of these big companies. They stick with what works. We should be going out there and looking for games that look interesting, new and exciting. Ones that may not get the massive advertising dollars but are willing to take a chance on a new idea for a game.

Call of Duty4!?!!?! what the blank?!?!?!
Its the same game just updated graphics. Its overhyped on all the markets out there. Thats why we buy it. Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to buying CoD4 for pc but I don't expect anything new at all.

Anyone remember the game Mafia? It didnt' get much press. Not as much as "Godfather" which because of marketing was a great success. I played both and they are pretty much the same game Mafia maybe a little better.

Than came WoW. I played for 2 and half years. It was new and exciting to me. My first MMO. Got bored and looked for another MMO, but they are all similar. No completely new stuff. (currently I am playing Tabula Rasa, MMO with FPS pretty fun).

Piracy: It has always been there, always will be on the pc platform. Companies that make great games will get their money.

To summarize my random bables:
The DRM issue is not. Gamers need to look beyond the huge ads. Developers need to invent new stuff for the game market. Piracy is a non issue.


Spore is something I will definately try. I may not like it but its new stuff. Developer is realy pushing the boundaries on this one. They are taking a risk and I will reward them by taking a risk and buying their game.

Darkfall is another one that is ambitious. Will definately try it.

Whats another $50 to try and find the excitement I use to have when playing a game.

 

[Beev]

Games have gotten progressively worse since they became mainstream. Gems exist here and there, but for the most part it's all garbage.

 

[Xavier434]

Understand that the issue you are concentrating on has been around for years. This is nothing new. Every 3-4 year span goes through the same thing. You get tons of shitty unique games. A number of awesome clones. Tons of mediocre clones. And a few great unique games.

The next 3-4 year cycle repeats itself except you will see the clones focusing on those few unique games that were a success during the previous cycle. Rinse and repeat. It has never changed and probably never will. The gaming industry changes fast but slow at the same time depending on how you look at it and what is important to you as a gamer.

Now, in regards to your idea that buying more unique games will help break this cycle, it might work but probably not. For one, people don't have the time or money to do this. Secondly, this is not how unique games become successful. Unique games become successful through marketing, word of mouth by consumers, and most importantly by the developers taking their time to make a quality fun game. In many cases for newer developers, it isn't until the sequel of a game like this that you truly see where they can shine. If the developer meets these requirements, then there game will be a success.

Lastly, DRM is a problem. It's just not a problem that you have experienced yet. Think about what it would be like if you bought a game that you waited to play in anticipation for over two years only to find that it is working like crap for you and not others just because the DRM doesn't like some other legal software that you may have on your system? That is bullshit. That is a disappointment. That is not what you paid for or waited for.

 

[Munky]

I believe many PC games suck because they are console ports, and they inherit the gameplay limitations of those consoles. For example, I'm seeing a trend towards squad-based shooters, where you feel pressured to always be on the move, and you can't just play at your own pace and explore every part of the game world. Some games like COD4 actually pull it off well, and it definitely feels more realistic than the traditional "1 guy saves the world" type of game. But others like MOH Airborne are downright frustrating with poorly executed scripting and gameplay mechanics which scream "console port!"

Some games from a few years ago captured my interest because of innovative storylines and the "mood" of the game. For example, the Max Payne series, the No One Lives Forever series, and FEAR were the types of games that I just wanted to keep on playing. More recently, Bioshock also had me interested all through the game. Then you have games like Portal, which introduces new concepts, and would be a blast to play if it was developed into a full-fledged FPS game.

Then you also have to consider the multiplayer aspect of gaming. Many people spend most of their gaming time playing online, or just with other people in general if it's a console game, so it could be one reason that the single player quality of PC games is declining.

 

[smaky]

I agree with your first 2 paragraphs.

"Unique games become successful through marketing..."
Lets look at how I came to some of the games I played:

Doom, Halflife, Quake-- probably mix of marketing and friends recomendations. Too far long ago to remember.

Operation Flashpoint---friends. Played for 3 years or more, loved them

LW ,Delta Force/joint operation series----friends. played for ever, fun fun fun

Battlefield 2, Halflife2, Doom3, rest of Quake, Call of Duty series, Oblivion-----marketing hype ---played these games for a week or less

World of Warcraft--- my brother in law got me into it, I got 2 of my nefews, my brother and sister in law into it also. played for over 2 and half years. tons of fun!!

I was going to get Warhammeronline (marketing), but now I will skip and wait for Age of Conan (friends) or Darkfall (friends)

currently playing Tabula Rasa (same brother in law who recomended WoW)

I upgraded my computer to play Crysis/Unreal3 (hyped up marketing) never bought the games after trying the demo.


So yeah , marketing gets me to buy lots of games, however the most enjoyment I have had was from games that friends recomended.

How did I find out about spore? Game stop guy couldn't stop talking about it. Otherwise I would have never known about it.

 

[smaky]

Oh yeah!!! Max Payne!! awsome game!! tx for reminding me Munky!

I never did finish Max Payne2 tho.

can't remember how I came to playing the game. None of my friends have it. Must have been marketing or I just got lucky picking out the game in the store.

another sweet game was Serious Sam.... playing split screen on the left side of the keyboard and my nefew with the mouse. Fun times they were. Tried the Serious Sam2 demo, never bought the game.

Now that I look at the games I liked, they were mostly multiplayer, except for the first few games. I used to take turns with my nefew after death in single player games. Maybe thats why some of these remakes of single player games dont' interes me.

 

[Xavier434]

Part of marketing is getting people to talk to each other about the product. Word of mouth is always the most trusted and businesses know that which is why that is one of their main goals to achieve. However, they need to start somewhere to inform the first of those who start talking to their friends. It's their job to start the fire.

 

[skace]

Here are my thoughts on the topic, read em and weep... or disagree.. I do not care

First off, PC gaming is not dying, dead or otherwise. Anyone suggesting such has not really put much thought into the matter, but I am going to argue as if it were for the sake of this post.

- The PC gaming platform in itself has been heavily diluted. Once upon a time, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake 1 being released in a similar time frame was considered significant competition. These days you are lucky if 12 other FPS games don't come out the same time you do. On top of that, Microsoft did a huge disservice to PC gaming with the Xbox360. They've created 2 completely separate groups of PC gamers on 2 different platforms. Imagine if all those people playing Halo were playing something decent on a PC, that would be a completely huge community. Imagine if they were actually modding like in the old days, you'd have so many excellent mods. Now take all of this and add in MMORPGs, this is a genre that didn't exist early on, now it does, and it stole plenty of gamers in the process. Sure, not every MMO gamer used to be an FPS gamer, but they are over there, in enough numbers. It's hurt every other genre in that respect.

- DRM and Anti-Piracy schemes. The Quake1 community was huge, but let's face it, that game was friggen easy as hell to steal. It had absolutely no copy protection or anything. Even more so, to buy it at the time it came out, you had to order it over the phone direct from id software. I remember because I had to get my mom to buy it for me. But tons, absolutely tons of people were stealing this game. The reason is because you could take demo discs and just throw in some unlock code and bam you had the full product, it was extremely easy. So this community was massive because a large majority of it wasn't even paying for the product. Quake1's community could be viewed through it's entire lifetime as the poor persons game. Not only was it easy to steal, but as it aged it became much easier to run on affordable hardware. So people who couldn't afford new computers could keep playing Quake1 very easily. It also ran on linux/etc, another bonus for the accessibility. This is the reason that Quake 1 was a game that even after Americans stopped playing it, continued to have a flourishing userbase in foreign countries, lots of brazilian players, uk players, etc. Now one could estimate that all of the piracy that went with Quake1 probably hurt it, but one could also make the claim that it helped it. The massive community kept people coming to the game, some of them probably paying for it. It also meant massive exposure to the engine, which id software always made lots of money off of. The realization is that having a huge community, even if they aren't all legit, has a lot of perks.

Phew, that was a mouthful, now onto DRM. You've suggested that you've bought a lot of DRM products without any issues. I have too. For a long time I swore that all the negative light cast on DRM solutions was by warezers bitching because they could no longer have their free ride as easily. But then my 100% flawlessly stable machine started crashing after I loaded a DRM title. My stability went downhill fast and I could find absolutely no hardware issues. It got so bad that my dvd drive was having issues at bootup and reading certain cds and dvds. I was convinced a DRM package had destroyed my DVD drive. Then the icing on the cake was a friend who had a machine go from 100% stable to crashing every 15 minutes until he went through a convoluted process of removing starforce. I've read of others who had entire system failures because of it. The fact is, just because you yourself didn't have an issue, does not prove people aren't having lots of problems. All of these DRM issues work by exploiting and breaking hardware and software, which is their hope that it won't be circumventable. DRM has kept a lot of people away from products and also a lot of casual thieves away from games in general, all around reducing your entire community, which ends up being a really bad thing. No community = your game is relying 100% on it's shelf life exposure and then it's gone to the bargain bin

 

[smaky]

Everyone has problems with pc. Its the nature of the beast. Between driver problems, windows problems (authentication stuffs too), steam, DRMs, internet connection and viruses ect.... there are tons of problems to be had with pcs.

DRM is just another one of many.

Its becoming unrealistic to expect non-enthusiast to bother with it all. Even if they go and buy a $5000 computer (like my brother did) its no picknick. He definately doesn't know much about computers. few months after me trying to help him out with all the problems he was having he stoped asking me for help and he gave up. Its sitting in his basement doing nothing.

He does have an xbox and playstion now to play games.

 

[Xavier434]

That was an extremely good post skace.

I would also like to toss in one quick comment to add to your quake example which is how it's popularity got so big that you had people paying for copies of the game many years after its life cycle ended just for old times sake and the fact that they saw it for under $15 in a bargain bin one day. Not many games make that many sales like they did with that game so many years down the road.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: smaky

Everyone has problems with pc. Its the nature of the beast. Between driver problems, windows problems (authentication stuffs too), steam, DRMs, internet connection and viruses ect.... there are tons of problems to be had with pcs.

DRM is just another one of many.

Its becoming unrealistic to expect non-enthusiast to bother with it all. Even if they go and buy a $5000 computer (like my brother did) its no picknick. He definately doesn't know much about computers. few months after me trying to help him out with all the problems he was having he stoped asking me for help and he gave up. Its sitting in his basement doing nothing.

Very few of the problems you mentioned stem out and result in the multitude of problems that DRM has been doing to legit users. Not to mention how difficult it can be to eliminate the problem without doing a format. The vast majority of other problems you stated are at least recognized as real problems which need real solutions by those responsible. The makers of DRM and the developers that use it have not taken any serious action to recognize the problems it is causing for the legit user let alone take action to fix those problems. I have never seen security software effect a legit paying customer like this in my life on such a wide scale.

If you have driver problems then it effects that piece of hardware and that's it. Fixing it requires an uninstall or quick update. Worst case scenario, you have to do an uninstall from safe mode.

Networking/Internet connection problems are a result of user error or outages more than anything.

There is no direct solution for DRM. It either works properly with your hardware and software setup or it doesn't and you cannot return the game to a store and expect cash back for this reason.

 

[smaky]

Xavier434:
We will have to agree to disagree here. My exprience with DRM has been uneventfull. You have not said anything about your personal experience with DRMs.

I don't like DRMs, just to clarify, however I will not boycott a game just because of that. Its pretty annoying that they install this crap on my pc.

I was pretty angry when after buying Tabula Rasa I could not play my free month without first giving them my credit card info or buying a game time card.

I would rather put up with DRMs than give out my credit card info to be honest, but I wanted to play so i gave it to them.

 

[Craig234]

I think PC gaming is the best it's ever been overall - and I've played games from the earliest (think late 70's 'games'); the biggest problem I see now for games is the competition with gaming consoles. At the end of the day, PC's are an accidental gaming platform, while consoles are designed for gaming.

PC's remain the optimal gaming platform (IMO) because there's a niche market willing to spend the extra for the flexibility to remain cutting edge, and the overlapping use of PC's for much of the market - but eventually, it seems likely consoles will get to the point that PC's offer too little advantage. Imagine a console that could be kept current on technology, with all the same benefits - hard drive, internet, etc. - for a lower cost (and optimized for gaming).

The thing is, today's consoles, lacking the keyboard/mouse interface, tend to have a more limited - and IMO lesser - scope and design, even the market forces this - but the big bucks draw some of the industry's top game designers away from the PC market to the console market, lessening the great PC titles available, and replacing them with more and more ports of console games of lesser quality.

But the basic market of some form of computer gaming seems sound; the question is more about the culture and quality. PC Gamers are, unfortunately, something of a niche market with their demand for in-depth (and expensive) design. That worked, when PC's were the only alternative to the arcadish consoles, but the ongoing growth of the console market may pose an increasing threat.

By analogy, think of the simulation game market within the PC gaming industry; it has a devoted and demanding market, but not enough dollars to keep the selection of big-budget titles the players would like, compared to the shooters and MMORPG's. The PC gaming market could have the same issue within the larger gaming industry.

We benefit today from the evolutionary progress of both game design and technology. While there's something to the point that gameplay has a timeless element - it's only one element, and the evolution has led to gameplay improvements.

The next step is not known, but probably includes trying to figure out how to better justify the timesinks of MMORPG's than simply adding yet more factions to improve and items to obtain, as thousands of hours are spent - which may lead people to wonder why they put so much time into WoW today. It may involve richer game worlds, more real-life consequences and interactions, more player-created content and personalization - who knows.

But I do think it's a great artistic medium, and hope the market allows the artistic growth to continue, rather than it becoming a wasteland analogous to daytime television's wasted resources of an audience of millions. As long as gamers spend well and support the innovative, complex, artistic developers, we should see good evolution.

 

[gorcorps]

The thing about PC gaming is that everybody's machine is unique, so they all have a different experience. You might not have had a bad experience w/ copy protection, but I have and plenty of others have too. When services like steam do so well to prevent piracy I wonder why things like starforce comes about. Stuff like that is just one of the reasons I got a 360.

The longer games have been out, the harder it is to do something original because so much has already been done. It's just like the music industry. It's only gonna get worse. Sequels aren't bad if they're done right. Madden 'sequels' are terrible, but have you even PLAYED all of the CoD series? Each game has it's own luster outside of the better graphics. CoD4 has the best multiplayer I've played in any game period, although the single player wasn't terribly different from the past.

 

[Oyeve]

If PC games are dying ( IMO I dont think they are) its not due to piracy, drm or anything like that. Its because, IMO, consoles have gotten to a point where the graphics and horsepower are pretty damn good. I have been and will always be a PC gamer first and foremost, but I do own nextgen consoles also. Game developers will make console games first as that is where 85% of the $$$ is, then, if they choose to, make a port to the PC. Years ago PCs were king of the cpu/gpu and games hit the PC LONG before any console got it. Now its the other way around. PCs get (if we are lucky) the ports. I didnt mind ports when PS2 and Xbox were the latest and greatest consoles because ports to the PC looked and played much better. GTA:San Andreas, IMO, is a good example of a PC port that greatly benefitted on the PC. WS, higher res and all that jazz. But I bet we wont be seeing GTA4 anytime soon on the PC if at all. There are always the Indie companies that keep the PC king.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
If PC games are dying ( IMO I dont think they are) its not due to piracy, drm or anything like that. Its because, IMO, consoles have gotten to a point where the graphics and horsepower are pretty damn good. I have been and will always be a PC gamer first and foremost, but I do own nextgen consoles also. Game developers will make console games first as that is where 85% of the $$$ is, then, if they choose to, make a port to the PC. Years ago PCs were king of the cpu/gpu and games hit the PC LONG before any console got it. Now its the other way around. PCs get (if we are lucky) the ports. I didnt mind ports when PS2 and Xbox were the latest and greatest consoles because ports to the PC looked and played much better. GTA:San Andreas, IMO, is a good example of a PC port that greatly benefitted on the PC. WS, higher res and all that jazz. But I bet we wont be seeing GTA4 anytime soon on the PC if at all. There are always the Indie companies that keep the PC king.

Good post. I don't think PC games are dying....yet. I will say that if the console industry's rate of game quality and flexibility continue at it's current pace and the pace of PC gaming doesn't change either then PC gaming will gradually become less and less popular to the point of near extinction. This largely depends on the future generation of gamers if you were to ask me. If our kids grow up and play a lot more console games than PC then you will find that the whole idea behind the mouse + keyboard + pc gamer loyalty will become harder to to find and less important to the gamer market due to preference and console "horsepower" as you mentioned. Eventually, that could mean that it will no longer be worth the money for companies to port their games to PCs which some are already choosing not to do. It will be a very long time before we find out if this is the case and there is a lot that can happen between now and then but we'll see. I do know that PC Gaming is here to stay for a while yet at least and it will probably never go away completely.

 

[Maximilian]

The popularity of the internet is probably a factor too. Well i cant speak for everyone but before 2000 i just bought games based off how they looked on the shelf and how cool their name was. Today i read reviews and get opinions from forums or other games in other games. I cant really tell why but a lot of games get amazing reviews but the game itsself is not amazing... maybe reviewers are bribed nowadays since video games is a much larger money maker than it was before, anyways these awesome reviews make people buy the game instead of buying something else.

Recently i find myself buying really old games that were labeled awesome back in the day, at least then i KNOW it will be good, half life 1 was good when i got it in 2005 so i figured i should get more games i missed out on, so far ive gotten:

American Mcgees Alice - Great fun! Nice simple killing things game with a crazy storyline! Alice grows up and hits the bottle pretty hard, goes back to wonderland etc etc its good stuff!

Alien vs predator - Being the alien is great fun but i suck at being a marine or predator, guess im just used to playing the alien

Dungeon keeper II - This game is awesome, someone in bullfrog thought exactly like i do as well, sometimes i like to treat my RTS games as building simulations, sim base if you like, and dungeon keeper II caters to that with "my pet dungeon" which you can even launch attacks on! Great stuff, ive only ever been able to do that in starcraft with a custom map.

Ive got "Red Faction" "Total Annihilation" and "Thief I & II" sitting here still to be played. Im working my way through call of duty 4 right now which is pretty good because its pretty challenging, exploding cars are an absolute PITA that i think shouldn't have been included in the game but apart from that its pretty good.

 

[QuantumPion]

Personally, I want more remakes. I want MoM2, that is 100% exact same gameplay as MoM, but with shiney graphics. I wanted SupCom to be TA2 (which it wasn't, disappointingly). I want RoN2 to be 100% the same as RoN, with more features added on and new graphics (and for the love of god a better multiplayer lobby).

Lately the only games I have been playing are WoW (which is fun for the social aspect, the game itself is pretty boring at this point), and classic games like x-com, MoM, etc.

 

[tigersty1e]

Has it really been 3 months already?


(these PC games suck threads always pop up every 3 months like clockwork)

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: tigersty1e
Has it really been 3 months already?


(these PC games suck threads always pop up every 3 months like clockwork)

Voice your opinion about thread consolidation

 

[tigersty1e]

I'm just saying that everyone says pc gaming is dying when it's not.... in a few years people will be bringing up today's games and comparing them to tomorrow's games and say how we had is so much better in 2007 and 2008....

 

[duragezic]

I don't play as much as I used to, but that might be just getting older as well as having less time. When I was a teenager, I friggin' played tons. I started a Quake clan when I was 11. Generally, games out now can't hold my attention like they used to, but that could be the game or just I'm not into gaming as much. Still, it's hard to deny how awesome playing Quake online for the first time, CS back in the day, Diablo 2, C&C games, etc.

Still, I don't share the same view as most on here that hate almost all new games because they aren't as good. Crysis... awesome fun game and insane visuals (I assume, my computer can't do it much). C&C3, done very well, nearly as well as the old Westwood ones. Team Fortress 2... simply awesome. STALKER: very cool and original game. There's dozens of recent games out that I think are fun. Granted, playing UT3 or the latest Hitman isn't as fun as playing UT99 was, or Codename 47 at the time was very original. But they aren't bad games.

I do believe piracy is hurting PC games. There was a recent article on Dailytech about COD4 piracy, and no numbers were given but it seemed pretty big. OTOH, I don't share the resentment of DRM like a lot here do, nor do I assume some game 2 years out is gonna be crap just because the studio was bought out. I don't like the more invasive DRM schemes obviously, but I have not experienced the problems that most do. People like to say that them and 50 people they know aren't gonna buy Bioshock cause of the DRM, same with Crysis, but yeah right. Obviously DRM harms legit buyers, and normally doesn't stop pirating, but no one can deny piracy hurts the industry, so devs obviously have to do something about it. It's unfortunate about some of the DRM that has come from devs doing something about it, but christ I don't go apeshit over it. I never got the big problem with Bioshock activation and whatnot. My roommate bought it. It has five activations. He's asked me if I wanted to install it, though I haven't just cause I don't care for the game. But I don't see how the activation hurts him as a legit buyer. A lot of PC gamers whine too much and say they want a refund or boycott this and that. No wonder devs are switching to consoles.

 

[Piuc2020]

I think what happened is... consoles got too greedy and started taking on PCs in the FPS (and now even strategy) field, all major franchises have gone multiplatform and in order to cater to the much wider console audience (who isn't used to this kind of games) they have dumbed down the games.

I miss the days when consoles were a different experience than PCs, where you could play awesome games like Yoshi's Island and Chrono Trigger on the SNES and then play some Marathon and Warcraft when you got back to your PC, two very different experiences that complimented each other very well.

Now the Xbox360 offers nothing but a bunch of dumbed down shooters (which are still fun but aren't really as good as they could be) which are better on the PC anyways. This is why I'm sticking with my Gaming PC and my Nintendo DS because they offer very different experiences from each other, I'm thinking of buying a Wii for Galaxy and a PS3 for MGS4 but I'm not nearly as excited with these consoles as I was with the PS2 or the N64 for example.

Now I wouldn't say PC Gaming is dead, there are still some pretty good games out there, Bioshock might have been held back by console-itis tremendously but it was still an spectacular game, Valve still innovates a lot with their games and as time passes on and now that Halo has finally died (thank god) we might start seeing much more elaborate shooters and developers will no longer feel the need to dumb down games.

If anything, the GPU industry is struggling, the cards haven't been updated since Q4 2006 and in most games they have trouble performing properly in DX10 modes, hopefully AMD will get back on track and release something like the 9700/9800 and make the GPU market as good and competitive as it was during the 6800/7800 days.

If anything 2007 was the best gaming year since 2004 and many of the titles that made 2007 great were on the PC so I don't think PC Gaming will die, in fact, I think it will be reborn now that Halo is out of the way and shooters are starting to be a more elaborate experience on consoles.

 

[Fenixgoon]

FPSes have been done to death. PERIOD. sure there are little innovations, but nothing i'd call revolutionary. there are only so many ways to kill people.

not that i don't find FPSes fun (cause I play TF2, just bought crysis, loved HL2:EP2).. just that i don't expect games to raelly bring something new to the table. i still expect them to be fun, though. crysis is indeed fun for me

 

[homercles337]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
If PC games are dying ( IMO I dont think they are) its not due to piracy, drm or anything like that. Its because, IMO, consoles have gotten to a point where the graphics and horsepower are pretty damn good. I have been and will always be a PC gamer first and foremost, but I do own nextgen consoles also. Game developers will make console games first as that is where 85% of the $$$ is, then, if they choose to, make a port to the PC. Years ago PCs were king of the cpu/gpu and games hit the PC LONG before any console got it. Now its the other way around. PCs get (if we are lucky) the ports. I didnt mind ports when PS2 and Xbox were the latest and greatest consoles because ports to the PC looked and played much better. GTA:San Andreas, IMO, is a good example of a PC port that greatly benefitted on the PC. WS, higher res and all that jazz. But I bet we wont be seeing GTA4 anytime soon on the PC if at all. There are always the Indie companies that keep the PC king.

This is just wrong. Every platform is unique and there are 3 of them. Why does one compare all three to the PC? If you look at sales independent of this unfair grouping PC sales are better--across the board.

I disagree with the OP though, DRM is killing PC gaming. There isnt a single form of DRM that has not been cracked. However, there are many, many instances of DRM really messing with machines (mine recently died, starting with the optical drive that was running Witcher--*when* it would run). OP you think all these complaints are coming from a couple people? Honestly, if everyone that had a problem with some form of DRM refused to buy another game from the same publisher, those publishers would figure out how to fix this problem--quick.