[jonwessel]

Now with both platforms (xbox & ps2) now online with the ever popular EA Sports lineup, platforms are even getting more popular. With platforms, you know u are gonna run at some fairly high FPS at have that be constant, there aren't gonna be any points were u get low or high FPS, also with the platforms, u aren't gonna run into any technical problems, platform games are more widely played and socially excepted, for instance a game like Doom 3 will probably sell the same or more copies on Xbox than on PC. Obviously u can play 2 or 4 player without having to go online, so u can play a friendly game of Halo or GT4 on a huge 65" HDTV!!!!! my guess is that PS3 will come with a HD installed, a built in ethernet port, so u won't have to buy one, and will ship with HDTV A/V cords, the Xbox2 might come with DVD playback enabled out of the box without any bogus remotes or S/N to buy, PCs will have their work cut out for them when these nextgen systems come out!

[TommyHolly]

As long as they have good Keyboard support then it will do fine. I refuse to play FPS games like Doom or Unreal on a crappy joystick.

[gravitywell]

Hard Drives? Ethernet ports? Sure sounds like consoles are becomming PCs, rather than "stealing PC's thunder."

The next generation of gaming consoles are over-advertised gaming pcs. Offering MP3 playing and storage, playing DVD's, allowing you to download content for your games, letting you play online, having pay-to-play MMORPG's...

Where in that description would you think I'm talking about a "Console?"


Regardless, My PC, is my gaming system, I can tweak it, upgrade it, and do pretty much whatever I want, without upsetting a multi-billion dollar corperation (or three). I'm very happy with my PC gaming experience.

[Slid3r]

I have an xbox, and a PC. the only 2 reasons i see PC online gaming still alive, is...

1) they have more poeple online/per game- The Xbox has hit 1 million people a while ago, while PS2 has had quite a few with Socom 2.

2) game expanding - Look at all the mods out there...

When Xbox gets more poeple, then i think it will be over for PC gaming. Xbox has a better service than any PC game and undoubtly will get people over PC because most people look at it as a pain in the ass...

[Lusankya]

WHat crack are you guiys smoking??
PC's will always be better then consoles barring the few exceptional games.

[Lunchmeat]

Most console games suck. The only games worth playing I've seen on consoles were old n64 ones such as goldeneye, and ps2 RPGs. You can barely do anything on an 800 mhz / geforce 2 console (that's an xbox, the ps2 is 400 mhz). A long long long time ago, consoles made a PC look outdated, but not anymore.

[jonwessel]

yeah, u all make good points, the ps3 and xbox2 will practically be PCs, plus when i play PC games online, i feel more connected like a community, the ppl playing ps2 and xbox online games are mainstream from all walks of life, but when i connect to a CS server, which i actually gave up about 1 year ago, b/c literally it was a bad addiction for me, i'm not even joking a lil bit, i would seriously spend everyday after school from 3:00 to 11:00 pm on CS servers, so i juss gave it up. but anyways when i did connect to CS servers, it felt more like a community, and there were no newbs compared to any console online gamer, cause with PC games online, u don't have to worry about newbs or 12 yr olds or younger connecting to the servers, but do any of you think that when u connect to a CS server u feel like ur in a community or a family rather than lets say go randomly connect to some person on the PS2 online of Madden 05! I think another contributing factor which makes PC games onine more family like is that most of the time, the good games are free mods that teens in their garage juss like u and me created rather than games that a multibillion dollar corparation like EA sports creates every year like Madden , which is basically the same game every year, and the only reason we buy it is cause they cut off the online gameplay and the roster updates when the new one comes out, so we are suppose to go out and pay around 53 dollars and change for the online support, the new rosters, a new cover boy (ray lewis), and a new feature??? The sad part is that EA shoots themselves in the foot b/c they are greedy, and the other sad part is that CS has about at it's peak 10,000 ppl playing online and this is a PC game that usually has 1 copy in stock tucked away in the corner of the EB games, whereas the new maddens have huge ass posters and all the new copies and bla bla bla!!! can u even imagine if CS had commercials on TV like madden 05, and huge posters, and it sponsored NFL Live, and all its other exposure?

[Oni]

Each has their place.

I have a PSX and a Gamecube. I love both to death. Both have great games that I play all the time.

I have my computer. I love it to death. It has lots of great games that I play all the time.

In the end, as with all games, it's the fun factor that counts. If a game isn't fun you're not going to play it, are you?

[Misanthrope]

The only thing that worries me is the ammount of good games the Xbox is buying away from pcs. No one that is not a CRPG fan can notice this at first glance but really, outside mmorpg's what good, big production rpgs are comming out this year for the pc? Are there any computer rpgs at all comming soon? Instead look at the rpgs that are comming out for the xbox: lots and lots of them, many of them like Jade Empire, KOTOR II and Fable that should have been PC Games in the first place.

It is my opinion that if this keeps up the xbox could kill the CRPG genre all togheter leaving nothing but mmorpg so you can pay ****loads of money to camp like an idiot, while the interesting games that are often single player will just stop existing in favor of dumbed down xbox games.

[hUMANbEATbOX]

console games slow down. they don't run at a rock solid FPS. i can think of a few EA hockey games that ran like crap, also fifa i bet doesn't stay at 30 even.

[Roof Jumper]

the easiest answer is : yes, consoles are taking over PC gaming, and I will tell you why..

Price of brand new console : 300 USD
price of an "ok" gaming PC : 700 USD w/o monitor or speakers

now, which do you think a teenager with no money(and no brains) except for what he gets from his parents is going to buy? Do you honestly think that the average person is going to spend time to grab drivers, troubleshoot, and all of the rest of the garbage that goes along with setting up for a new game?

This whole argument reminds me of the P&P gaming days, where everyone thought that the PC was going to be garbage for games , including the whole "they are dumbing down games" argument. We all know which group won that.

[jonwessel]

Originally Posted by Roof Jumper

the easiest answer is : yes, consoles are taking over PC gaming, and I will tell you why..

Price of brand new console : 300 USD
price of an "ok" gaming PC : 700 USD w/o monitor or speakers

now, which do you think a teenager with no money(and no brains) except for what he gets from his parents is going to buy? Do you honestly think that the average person is going to spend time to grab drivers, troubleshoot, and all of the rest of the garbage that goes along with setting up for a new game?

This whole argument reminds me of the P&P gaming days, where everyone thought that the PC was going to be garbage for games , including the whole "they are dumbing down games" argument. We all know which group won that.

Yeah but most teenagers live at home, and most families these days already have PCs, so it's just a matter of either buying one platform at about 250 USD, or buying 2 150 USD vid cards that will last you about 4 years combined. Plus these Xbox games are looking more and more amazing, and you know that when the Xbox2 comes out, it's just gonna continue to close the gap, until the programmers will be able to use every single byte of memory and every single Mhz of cpu power on those xbox's. I think the Xbox can put the PC gaming outta it's misery if lets say it's released in 2006, then the xbox would have to this: Pentium 5 4Ghz, what ever vid card is the top notch in mid 2005, and about 1GB of DDR2 500 Mhz!!!!!!!! u see when the xbox shipped, it was already shipping with pretty outdatted parts inside it, and look at how amazing the games look, imagine what the games what look like compared to the comp if the xbox ships with the top notch parts from about 8 months ago, so lets say if the xbox2 shipped today then it would have around a Pentium 4 3Ghz w/ HT

[Lunchmeat]

They aren't going to put state of the art parts in it; it would cost as much as a pc.

[jonwessel]

Originally Posted by Lunchmeat

They aren't going to put state of the art parts in it; it would cost as much as a pc.

i didn't say state of the art, i said top notch 8 months ago, and as u know the speed of top notch products getting outdated is increasing by alot, i mean the top notch vid card 8 months before ship, well they could slide 2 more vid cards in there before the xbox2 ships, besides, don't you think since microsoft and SCEA would be ordering about 10 million of these parts each they might get like a ridculious 60% off the MSRP ?

[jonwessel]

i read in an article somewhere that only about 10% of all ps2 owners have actually bought the network adapter, that's why the ps3 needs for it to come built it!!!

[squads]

The problem i see with this XBox2 is going to be the TV's. sure you can play it on a regular POS television and how good will it really look. I find that sometimes i can't stand playing some console games because it just looks washed out compared to my 1280x960 rez on the PC. If you really want the best out of the XBox2/PS3 you will need a ridiculously expensive TV.

And PC's will always have FPS. If they manage to make keyboard/mouse combos commonplace on consoles (previous attempts have obviously failed) then basically it becomes a PC. A crappy, limited, nonupgradable PC.

[sirjinx1974]

I love my PC and there are a lot of games out there, but I think PC gaming is only for kids and people that dont work. A lot of PC games take a lot of time to play and each game consumes your life like a virus. I play two FPS games on-line and thats it. I like console games because they are for adults that work and have a life. The console games are easy and do not take much time to play causing people to spend more time with their family. My little brother has a XBOX and it is very cool to play Halo on a 32in T.V. I think the consoles are more widely accepted in most american homes. I know a lot of middle aged moms that play console games because the games are not to hard and they can play along with their kids. (Family time). I think console gaming will not die any time soon.

[AC Slater]

The next generation of consoles will be great. The specs that have been leaked for the Xbox 2 are super impressive, although they may or may not even be true. HDTV's aren't ridiculously expensive either. You can get a smoking hot 32" Sanyo HDTV at Wal Mart for $747, it's what my parents have, or you can even see some deals around town for display model 50"+ HDTV's for around $1000. I've gone into Huppins, www.onecall.com , several times and have seen nice big HDTV's for between $1000~1500. You just have to shop around.

The next gen consoles should all be able to support 1080i/720p in all games (hopefully) and that will be a huge selling point. I personally play my Xbox a lot because of sports games, fighting games, racing games, and emulators like MameoX. On the PC side I play FPS and RTS games for the most part. If I weren't so uncoordinated using a controller for Halo and other FPS I'd play them more on the Xbox. I love PC gaming but I really love Console gaming as well, especially on Xbox Live.

[OC Noob]

Next gen consoles have well over top of the line tech with 3 power PC processors and they can afford to do it because a damn CPU doesn't cost $400 to produce or even $200. The are cheap and IBM can sell them to MS for dirt cheap and still make a bit of cash on each of them.

My only problem is getting the $3000 for a DLP HDTV. Almost anything less is crap and won't do 720p.

Even with that I'll never get, from consoles, what I get from PC gaming and visa versa (sp?).

[Oni]

Specs don't really matter for a console, though. It's the games that matter. I could care less about the specs of new console XYZ. What I care about is: does it have games that I will play and enjoy? Same goes for PC games. Why would I drop money not only on the game, but hardware to make the game look and play better if I didn't like it?

Originally Posted by Roof Jumper

price of an "ok" gaming PC : 700 USD w/o monitor or speakers

now, which do you think a teenager with no money(and no brains) except for what he gets from his parents is going to buy? Do you honestly think that the average person is going to spend time to grab drivers, troubleshoot, and all of the rest of the garbage that goes along with setting up for a new game?

310-Dell. Problem solved. Joe User doesn't care about specs that much, either. He knows that higher numbers == faster computer. That's all he needs to know. And at $600 monitor included, you're not doing too bad for games. Sure, they won't run great, but they'll run, and that's what Joe User's kid's care about.