The personal computer is dying.
On the one hand, we have console gaming. Granted, it's been around forever, but more than ever I can feel the push to get in on the trend. Full disclosure: I have never owned a gaming console. This is a state that I do not find regrettable. What I do find regrettable is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to find PC games. What's the standard modus operandi these days? Multi-platform, which - translated from developer speak - means "We develop for console and if you're lucky, you get a PC port." Let's not mince words here: most of them suck. The controls in particular, the savepoint systems we get burdened with, all that legacy crap from the consoles. Even if the port happens to be good (like, say, Rogue Trooper), it's still bleedingly obvious that as PC gamer, you're second fiddle at best.
Consoles do not provide superior graphics power . I mention this in particular in conjunction with the PS3, which seems to have picked up the "cheap for the power!" tag that is, at best, totally divorced from reality when you consider that it's the most expensive console on the market. There's no denying that. Now, you might counter, it comes with a BluRay drive, which go for well over 1000 dollars. Hello? Do you think they'll stay there? (The whole HD market is a big fucking scam anyway, but I'll get to that another time.) And it doesn't have the near-miraculous computing power some people seem to believe it has. Repeat after me: The PS3 will not cure cancer, spontaniously develop sentience or do your taxes. It's just...different. And weird enough that it apparently requires a completely seperate development approach than, say, the X-Box 360. That it gets some big exclusives - like MGS4 - is more of a function of Sony going off on its own tangent again than any messianic amount of raw power.
The console developers are cooking with water, like everyone else.
Additionally, consoles are absorbing some bad habits from PCs, like not being uniform. What's that bullshit about the 360 Core? Or the "cheaper" PS3? (Cheaper in the same sense that launching a space shuttle is cheaper than building an orbital elevator.) Say what, homie? Developers now have an additional element of uncertainty there. Plus, you're getting patches. Yes, you heard me. They're patching console games. Because now that consoles can go online, the developers can sell you a game piece by piece, fix the bugs that got shipped because the deadlines moved up again, and generally make you pay for the benefit of getting to PC gaming ca. 1997. Yay! Sony's even calling the PS3 a "computer" instead of a console. How's that for a hint?
For added fun, Vista promises to fuck up the PC standard all in the name of copy protection. I marvel at the G-tolerance of the PR guys who spin that to be a good thing for the customers, but even if I assume that it gets cracked - and it will, sooner or later - the damage will probably already be done. "Robust" hardware, "trusted computing" and all those fun things, all trying to carpet bomb the jungle that is the open PC standard into a neat, orderly world of a few certified suppliers making their own prices. Let's not mince words: the PC got where it is today through third parties, gray markets and plagiarism, all driving prices down and development forward. It's been one of the greatest assets (for the consumer), and now they're looking to kill it. In other words, they're turning the PC into a console.
It's the worst of both worlds, and we're sitting right smack in the middle of it. Better lube up, ladies, daddy's gonna be rough with us.
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