It's the console-lovin predators like Vivendi and EA who insist on mass-appeal ported crap for PC, as well as the chipmakers who are in cahoots with game designers who code so that a game is at its best only on systems with $1500 worth of GPUs in them. They are killing PC gaming. Saying it's the desktop gamers is pure BS. It's not the PC owners. It's pretty clear those two-- entertainment conglomerates and chipmakers-- are working together, however consciously, to put PC gaming in the graveyard. They don't mind; they have little to lose, since there will always be Xboxes that need chips in them and games to be written for them.

PC gaming is in a very uniquely awkward place at the moment. You have chip makers looking for new ways to get people to upgrade, currently PCI-Xpress pretty much forces anyone that wants a new video card with all the bells an whistles to buy a WHOLE new computer. Then you have game developers trying to one up each other by teaming up with certain said chip makers so certain games run better than others on certain video cards. Then you have Microsoft trying to get theirs with requiring a Vista upgrade just to get DirectX10 to run the games that some of those said game developers make, whose games happen to run on Windows. Too much greedy BS going around at just the wrong time, and it will spell the end of PC gaming as consoles get more an more online. For better or for worse, eventually the PC's piece of the game pie/relevancy will be on par with the Mac's, just wait an see

Consoles have one huge advantage, simplicity, whether its compatibility from a programmers stand point or easy of use from a consumers stand point. How many horror stories have you heard about recent PC release games, where people bought the games an couldnt run them whether it was bugs, lack of hardware support, or needed software upgrades(Vista anyone)? BioShock, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, MorrowWind , Hellsgate, ShadowRun an the list goes on

If I wanted to play BioShock or Crysis I would have to totally buy a new computer to even be able to get a video card (most are PCI-Xpress now) that could run it as my mother board only has an AGP slot. Thats at least 1500-2000 right there. LOL an dont quote Dell, if you think Dell computers are good for gaming perhaps YOU need to stick to consoles yourselves! They dont list the motherboard specs, nor the quality of the ram or the ram speeds/latency, all of which you need good quality to get the best performance out of your video card. An at those prices there's no way the quality of the ram and motherboard will be anywhere near the quality of the video card you would have to buy to make that machine worthwhile

Now I can deal with the head ache of the recent PC games not running at all because of bugs while plopping down 2k to play a F$king game! Or I can spend $279 on an Xbox360 an play BioShock no headaches or finger crossing at all if its gonna work.
An lets say all I need to do is buy a new video card, but Im still running XP, if I want to play Shadow Run I THEN have to go buy Vista for 200$ so I have Directx10 which Shadow Run REQUIRES, THEN I have to buy a new video card that supports Direct X 10. I THEN have to deal with bugs inside Vista as well, oh joy!

Never has PC gaming been so jacked up and never have consoles looked more attractive

Honestly though, if one of these companies had a brain, they would come up with a way for people to use their consoles as either stand alone consoles or allow them to be attached to PC's as video card upgrades/replacements. They would then get the benefit of the superior online an downloadability of the PC(harddrives already included) combined with the hardware standardization needed to prevent compatiblity issues that consoles do so well. It would literally be the best of both worlds an I would be the 1st in line to buy one if I could do that

Yes, you can get away with the $575 PC gaming machine, provided the following:

1) You have an existing machine to upgrade.

2) You don't need to upgrade anything else (e.g. hard drives, monitor)

3) You can replace your own motherboard

4) You do enough research to know what parts to buy & what to avoid.

But even if you go the budget route, it is still less economical than a console. The video card will require replacement at least every two years. Motherboard / CPU & memory likely every threeyears. Power supply, hard drives likely every four years. And an OS every 4 years.

At that point you are paying around $850 every 4 years just for upgrades. This does NOT include the cost of the initial PC.

Now, granted a PC has more functionality than just a gaming console, but even if you buy a console and a $500 internet/word processing PC every 5 years, this is still more economical than a PC.

I don't like it, cause I prefer the PC as a gaming platform, but the constant changes to the PC environment are killing it as an affordable gaming platform.

Who worries about the price of RAM in this day and age? RAM is dirt cheap, almost always has been. Once again, prices are current (newegg):

2 gigs Corsair ram (PC2 5300) - $40

Seagate 250 gig harddrive - $65.

Lite-on 20x DVD combo drive - $25

And as I pointed out in my last post, you can get a Radeon x1950XT for ~$175. I quoted that particular card because I have it and I know for a fact that it plays crysis fine. I know there are plenty of other ATI and Nvidia cards that are equally as good for the price, I just choose that one for simplicity.

So assuming that you upgrade your memory, and your video card, and the harddrive, it's still roughly $800. And that's a brand new system, with at least 3 gigs of ram, at least a 250 gig hard drive, at least a midrange videocard, a 20x dvd combo, and a giant monitor.

Realize that I'm not saying you can't spend $1500 on a computer. If you want to play crysis with the graphics maxed and have it play at 100fps, then yeah, you're going to need a damned expensive computer. But who says you have to play the game with every setting maxed and have 100fps all the time? I'm for pretty graphics as much as anyone, but to say "Oh I'm not going to play this game unless I can have every setting maxed and still have superhigh FPS," is just childish.

My original post was only commenting on the statement in the article that "Crysis requires $1500-$2500 to play." I understand that people want more out of the game, and that's fine, but all I was saying that it's flat-out wrong to say that it requires such an investment. If you reread my last post you will see that I never said that there was "something wrong with people" that spend $2000 on a computer. I said it was wrong to think you needed to spend $2000 to play bioshock and crysis. You want to go nuts and spend $2k on a computer to play these games? Fine by me, just don't think for a second that you have to.

So yeah, I'm not disagreeing with you or anyone - some people have higher standards than I do. That was never my point. My point was only that these games do not require that kind of upgrade, and it's wrong to state that they do. It's unfortunate that this idea has been expanded into 3 or 4 posts, but it appears that my original post was somehow misinterpreted to mean that it's impossible or stupid to spend such an amount on a computer, which I never said. Like how a joke gets less funny when you have to explain it in detail?

In closing, it's fine to spend thousands of dollars on a computer to play the games in quesion, but you do, not, have, to. Much cheaper rigs can be configured that play the games at reasonably high detail settings. The article was misleading in that regard, and I only wanted to point that out.

Also realize that although I'm primarily a PC gamer, I've always been a big fan of console gaming so this has absolutely nothing to do with the classic "pc fanboy vs console fanboy" thing.

UT3 gives me a headache

---

Ya you're paying $575 to run it at low settings, or you can pay $279 for a 360Xbox an it plays perfectly as if full setting were on. Most rigs, usually all you had to do was buy a new video card, but the PCI-xpress slot has conviently blocked that normal alternative. That never used to be the case.

No one upgrades to play at low settings, you upgrade your comp to play the biggest baddest games at the high resolutions allowable! UT3? yawn Crysis is supposedly the most graphically impressive game to date. If I wanted to play it that bad I would get the baddest video card on the planet, understand? Thats why its 2k to upgrade, if im not stomping recommended/required specs im not happy!,)

Honestly, who goes out to buy a new game so they can go turn DOWN the graphics so it looks like games you've been play for the last 3 years?

The console route is clearly cheaper than the PC route an the arguement that PC's have superior graphics holds no water. The chip makers team up with software companies to play the one up game with each other so much that no games running perfectly on every rig, but consoles thats not the case. The only thing not superior with consoles is their online ability an download/storage. Some of these console games can be argued to look even better than their PC counter parts, simply because the programmers have an uniform chip set with consoles an are able to tweak the game more graphicly an game play wise rather than spend time making sure its gonna run with different configurations that PC's have. Not having uniform setup to program for is definitely another draw back of the PC.