Viewing Thread:
"Who actually plays the PC????"

The PC's gaming life span is infinte. It will never die as it is so customisable, and even if a PC does not get a console game, still you can get emulatorss. So in the end the PC comes out top. But, it seems not many people realise the potential of the most powerful gaming tool on the planet. Obi-wan the game was scraped for the PC, Due to the lack of technology !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT!!!!! THE PC MADE CONSOLES. The PC is light years ahead of the PS2 in terms of technology. So if any developer is reading this (jeez, as if) then you should take note and make games for the god of game playing. The PC, already the best have decided to create games for the PC, like 'Valve' so why don't you. Come on you know you want to.

Though that was true a few years ago, most games developers work on the assumption that games players will have one of the avalible graphics cards on the market... as such most games provide scalable graphic gameplay... so people with an 8MB 3D card can use a low res screen, with little extras, whilst a GeForce2 Ultra user can have a 1280x1024, bumb mapping, etc...

This runs to a lesser degree to sound cards, etc...

Equally since most current 'standard' PC processor speeds (bearing in mind the standard PC processor speed is not the average gamers processor speed) is still as fast, if not faster than PS2+consloes... (the average speed usually about two years ago... so... 450?)

The biggest problem developers, like Lucasarts have with PC's is the average consumer. The average PC is something like a 200 or 233MMX with 64MB RAM and a 16MB graphics card. In this case, the graphical performance from this PC is not as good as next gen consoles. Sad as it is, developers have to go by the market size. If a game is too high end, then they won't get the sales. Many companies get awy with this by making a game work on the average PC. It may well look hideous, but hey, it plays, sort of. Some other designers have some level of integrity and decide not to try and farce their customers. Companies like Lucasarts are usually (OK Force commander sucked), known for their quality products. If a game is not able to achieve that level then there is no point in doing it. With Obi-Wan, the average PC could not achieve what was wanted and so it had to go. There were also issues about it being more console friendly (ie dumbed down I like to call it) also I admit.
The PC community is full of nuts (like me) who will happily blast lots of cash to have a top notch high end machine. And this does blow any console out of the water, in terms of sound and so on. But however the majority of PC's are those bought by someone for working and the net, and they get into games as an aside. They are not interested in keeping upto date with the hardware market. It is for these people that companies like Lucasarts aim their products at. That's why games like Monkey Island and Age of Empires manage to have such a long shelf life. They are quality products that do not need a Cray to play.

PCs do take a lot of messing about with... when you get a console, you can just stuff the cartidge/CD/DVD in the drive and your away... Its nice to be away from the DOS gaming days, spending half an hour tweaking Autoexec & Config, with your Soundblaser setting and creating a game boot disk, but then again, windows does make games run like a dog with no legs. Besides most people (console buyers) dont really keep up with current computing events, trends and abilities. I've seen and chatted with a lot of people who were completly blown away by the PS2's grpahics, thinking the jump had been made by Soney from the PSOne to the PS2

Everyone said LucasArts claimed ObiWan was trashed becausethe PC wasnt up to spec... but when I went to their site, they actually seemed to be saying that they were killing off ObiWan from the PC becuase everyone (including myself) thought it was the next Dark Forces, when in fact it was closer to a Rebal Assult affair, and since everyone would be hacked off about it they dropped it for the platform?!?! (also at the time they seemd to vaguly offer the notion that a Dark Forces sequal my be on the cards at some point in the future)... Although I wasnt reading too closely, and could be completly wrong... anybody?

One of the problems with PC technology is compatibility. The power is definately there, for some people, but developers wont create a game so intensive that only very few machines can manage it. I've got this box set up just for gaming, and it outperforms any console you can throw at it (for now), but many people are put off pc gaming because they aren't sure if it'll work on their machine (the number of times I've been in my local games shop and heard people come in and say "my machine isn't powerful enough to run it"), and the constant need to upgrade. This does allow for technology to be improved all the time rather than a console which is totally sealed (the Indreama being an exception...?), but also requires people to keep buying new parts, rather than a console where they just take the game and shove it in. Much easier than dos though, spent hours configuring the EMS to running Lemmings 2: Tribes..

The PC's gaming life span is infinte. It will never die as it is so customisable, and even if a PC does not get a console game, still you can get emulatorss. So in the end the PC comes out top. But, it seems not many people realise the potential of the most powerful gaming tool on the planet. Obi-wan the game was scraped for the PC, Due to the lack of technology !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT!!!!! THE PC MADE CONSOLES. The PC is light years ahead of the PS2 in terms of technology. So if any developer is reading this (jeez, as if) then you should take note and make games for the god of game playing. The PC, already the best have decided to create games for the PC, like 'Valve' so why don't you. Come on you know you want to.