A bit of a conversion?

Yes, and we should all worry. They are the biggest and fastest growing gaming market.

 

360 for "play it and forget it" type games
PC for srs games I want to spend time on

Playboy: The Mansion should be multiplayer

 

casual gamers and shovelware... wooo... seriously hope they don't suck other games away. i don't want those, and i can't stand them.

 

For me, a big part of why I game on the PC is because all the games I want to play are on the PC. Sometimes it's meant waiting a little longer (the original Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed come to mind) but in the end I get everything that I want to play, without having to invest in another system. My desktop is five years old at this point, and the only upgrade I've made is to the video card after the old card died; I have no problem running most games at medium settings or slightly better. Dead Space 2 runs just fine, with no dropped frames or graphics slowdown that I'm aware of. Dragon Age 2 looks like it'll run smoothly for me as well, I'm again not seeing any issues.

Finally, the games I'm most likely to be playing are PC only: World of Warcraft and Starcraft II.

 

My mom plays CityVille and has only had her laptop since last June. I think it's kinda awesome. Now she gets why I spend so much time furiously clicking away zombies and aliens and whatnot. Not that she ever complained much, and me being quite old enough it doesn't matter much, but I'm happy for all the kids out there whose moms might now be less idiotic when it comes to vidya games.

And the success of those stupid little almost-games I wouldn't normally take a second glance at will not doom the "real" games industry. Greybrown cover-shooters have hurt us more already than all the 'Villes in the world can ever do. And the blame there lies in the moronic customers who keep buying all those clones. At least the 'Villes show innovation - not to us, who have played real building games like SimCity, Anno and Civ; but to all the old housewives who were stuck with Solitaire until then.
Unless in the future every one of them plays the 7th incarnation of SomethingVille (WorldWar2Ville?). But I'm hoping my mom will find a better game somewhere down the road.


Because I'm sure Blizzard looked at Farm/CityVille, threw up their hands and proclaimed "Cancel Diablo3, people are already manically clicking in someone else's game, no point in it now."

 

yea, but look at the wii. for the most part that's all the system is... and their making more money (or were for the longest time) than any of their competitors. that's what has me more concerned honestly.

and agreed, grey-brown shooters have gotten boring. same thing over, and over, and over again ad infinitum. them and the 5 hour sucky campaign but look WE HAVE AWESOME MULTI-PLAYER games (which are usually one and the same). thank god something like brink is coming out and from everything i've seen is fantastic. i mean, don't get me wrong, i like multi-player, but that isn't what i buy games for. i want a story, which brink has, and the multi-player isn't at the expense of it... it's add into and combined with it. somehow, that just seems awesome to me.

anyways... i wants me some color back in my games! and brink seems to be a step in that direction. as was saints row from what i saw of it.

 

Is the Wii's success really all in those waggly non-games? Doesn't quite look like that to me. If actual games like Mario Kart, NewSMB, SSBBrawl, the Mario Galaxies, Toilet Princess, DKCR, Paper Mario and even the frickin ripoff that was the 25th anniversary make up pretty much half of that list, then I don't see anything to worry about. If anything I see a lot of potential (and color) that the other two just throw away in favor of the next Call of Halo* Gears.
That's why I want a Wii and not the others. And the PS3 still has redeeming factors. Isn't ... what was it called, Nuni Kune? - that Miyazaki-looking RPG - a PS3 exclusive?


*I don't even mind Halo that much, at least that's green and blue and in space and stuff. It merely started this abonimable console-shooter business all those years ago.

 

A-hem. Do not blame Halo (if "blame" is the right word to use here) for the predominance of console shooters. The game that truly paved the way for that was this little obscure title called Goldeneye, which I believe came out on, why yes, Nintendo's N64!

Has the shooter genre killed off or otherwise eclipsed classic genres? For sure. I firmly believe that you can lay the blame on there not being any more X-Wing/TIE titles solely on that. That there are way too many shooters out there striving to become the next Call of Halo Gears? Definitely. Is it bad for the game industry? It is if all major developers and studios rely too much on them (looking at you, Activision), churning out one pi$$ poor sequel after another instead of developing quality titles.

 

No the games industry will be fine. It always moves to where the money is. In Japan that's heading towards portable platforms, and in the west who knows? If X company makes far more profit making Facebook games then maybe they'll move there exclusively. Why bother with expensive, complicated and pirate-happy console/PC games?

 

I worded that badly. I wasn't trying to say anything about what shooters do to gaming at large, I hate what Halo did to the shooter genre. Goldeneye didn't hurt anything. There have been tons of excellent shooters (if not all the good ones!) since 1997. There have been like 2 (an episode and a remake) since the art of first-person kablooey has been reduced to clunky analog sticks and 10 useless buttons.

Hell, Goldeneye has since become an awesome mod for Half-Life.

 

Good, you'd probably be wrong anyway

 

Indeed? And what, pray tell, did Halo do so wrong to the shooter genre?

 

What's the bigger shooter series, Halo or Call of Duty?

 

It's probably Call of Duty considering there are more games in the franchise and it isn't exclusive to one platform.

 

Irrelevant. That doesn't make Crock O'Doody the best series. It's quality over quantity all the time, guys. And show me who's the public face of Call of Duty that just happens to be the mascot of a specific console. Here's a hint: it sure as hell isn't Captain Price.

This is old history, but let's talk about the merits of Halo: Perhaps the guys at Bungie may have looked at Goldeneye for inspiration, but they truly brought a solid, working first person shooter to the game console. It has tight controls, interesting enemies, an awesome sci-fi environment, a surprise twist in the middle of the first game (the Flood) and a hero that had to rely on a limited arsenal (only two main interchangeable weapons he could carry, grenades and his fists) as a change of pace from the previous Doom-inspired shooters, crazy vehicular action and, oh yes, awesome multiplayer action. So honestly what did Halo do "wrong" for the genre?

 

He didn't ask which was better. He asked which was bigger. Quality is irrelevant.

 

That...is why you fail.

 

Don't blame me, blame the 55 million people who have purchased a COD game. Granted I've bought a few myself but...

 

Only one I've ever bought was Modern Warfare 1, so I guess I'm guilty of buying into the COD hype for a bit. It was an awesome spectacle, but it didn't grab me like the Halo universe did.

The thing is, looking at my friend list over the past few months, I did see that many migrated to COD Cold Warfare while it was hot, but many migrated back to Reach as time went by. So, I guess that goes to show which one is the biggest, better, and simply most fun game.