PC piracy levels are "astounding" says Call of Duty 4 Developer

[CJ Jackson]

Well PC Gaming is more expensive than console gaming on a small TV and I can agree to that, HD console gaming is only worth playing if you got a 42" TV with HDMI which totals roughly £1,300 (including the Xbox 360 ) and that amount can get a decent graphics card (~£250, OEM), a decent motherboard (~£80) with a couple of ram (~£30 2GB), a decent hard drive (~£60, 500GB), a decent DVD-RW drive (~£50), a decent CPU (~£100) with a decent cooler (~£10), keyboard & mouse (~£10), 22" monitor (~£200), a decent case (~£40) and a decent power supply (~£50) which totals at (~£880). The PC games are a lot cheaper than the console games.

 

Anyway I don't think it is piracy that killing PC Games, I think it's all down to lack of motivation and innovation!

a phillips 32" hdlcd=£400

360 premium=£250

hdmi cable=£12

flashing drive=nothing

total=£662.

id take the 360 option anyday.

 

Don't forget that Microsoft expects to make more money from the Xbox 360 games, each Xbox 360 new releases would cost around £35-£50, if I multiple the minimum cost by 25 that would be £875 then I would add onto your total (£662) then that would make it £1537. As PC new releases would range between £25-£35, again I'll multiple the minimum by 25 then that would be £625 then I'll add that onto my total (~£880) which make it ~£1505.

 

Note: I have estimated both the XBox 360 and PC Games ranges from Amazon.co.uk game charts to make sure that it is a fair calculation.

[fumanchu]

you can buy preowned,have you seen the amount of games lately that have just been out for a month or 2,going for around £15-£20(360 games that is).

[Shoma]

Buy a bloody 360 PS3! DOnt even bother buying new video cards!

A cpu tech at the store tole me himself, "I may know alotta crap about computers but I would never waste my money on upgrading it!" Nvidia can come out with 3 new cards in 1 year and now you're stages behind! Crysis main example, your top tier card can barely handle it! SO now you borught he lastest card that will be "under minmimum" in a year! ITs seroius BS and I dont plan on updating my graphics at all, since my console can handle it.

 

*BTW, next-gen consoles are just overatted/overpowered gaming cpus lol*

Edited January 22, 2008 by Shoma

[Sybarite Paladin AxL]

The real reason your PC can't handle the newest games but a console can is because those moronic, freakin lazy ass developers will always not bother to optimize the damn games they release... What, you guys think a 360 or a PS3 is some sorta revolutionary piece of hardware? My ass, they're probably as good a really high end PC two years ago. But they're freakin forced to create the game around a certain setup that's always constant and will, and should never change. The moment you start upgrading your console, is the moment it's going to go down the same road as PC gaming.

 

With PC games it's different, they have all that computing power to wallow in and don't bother wasting any more money paying their developers to actually optimize the damn things.

[BlackKnight]

Ok a little off topic here, is piracy what killed the DC?

 

No. The Saturn, the PS2 and gay support is what killed the DC.

[Shibathedog]

I don't think people realize that PC gaming isn't really that much more expensive than console gaming.

 

Seriously, Start running your games at 640X480 like your console does, I bet even your 5 year old PC can instantly handle anything again.

 

Even now with HD games, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, That isn't crap as far as PC games are concerned. No crap a machine playing the game at 2560X1600 is going to require more hardware and money. Even 1600X1200 is a decent jump over 1080p (not that p and i even matter in the PC world!)

 

I agree with what was said before though, There is next to no good games coming out anymore, and I don't pay for crap. I DO buy good games though (especially if I want to play online, I'm not going to deal with all the cracking/risks of playing pirated stuff online)

[fumanchu]

ok so what are we saying here?

a top of the range pc with the most up to date graphics cards and all the rest of the bells and whistles blows over anything a 360/ps3 can do graphically and processer wise.

[Wizard]

ok so what are we saying here?

a top of the range pc with the most up to date graphics cards and all the rest of the bells and whistles blows over anything a 360/ps3 can do graphically and processer wise.

Yes.

 

PC's are infinitly more better in all fields compared to consoles when it comes to it. The only problem with PCes is, while there is a standard, there isn't a set standard (aka, Minimum requirements VS Recommended requirements). There are alot of different veriables to consider when there's a PC version of game, because not everyone is running the same hardware obviously. Developers can push any console to the limit while they can nearly do it on PC. Every few months, something better and bigger comes along in the PC market and developers adopt to those. It's easier making a game then dumbing it down than building it from low spec to high spec mentality.

 

I also agree with Axl, to a degree. Yes, developers don't optimize their games enough for certain computers, but, computer generations last 2-3 years at best compared to a 5-6 console year life span. To add to that, what is expensive today, could be $50 to $100+ cheaper tomorrow in the PC market. It's with the PC market that consoles in the first place get their spur from, as the advances in the PC market, the console market builds itself upon tried and tested hardware from the PC generation. Espeically this console generation.

[fumanchu]

so if you were to buy a top of the range with the very best of everything,what kind of price would you be looking at?(roughly).

[Diso]

I don't think people realize that PC gaming isn't really that much more expensive than console gaming.

 

Seriously, Start running your games at 640X480 like your console does, I bet even your 5 year old PC can instantly handle anything again.

 

Even now with HD games, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, That isn't crap as far as PC games are concerned. No crap a machine playing the game at 2560X1600 is going to require more hardware and money. Even 1600X1200 is a decent jump over 1080p (not that p and i even matter in the PC world!)

 

I agree with what was said before though, There is next to no good games coming out anymore, and I don't pay for crap. I DO buy good games though (especially if I want to play online, I'm not going to deal with all the cracking/risks of playing pirated stuff online)

 

^agreed.

There's not much need to max out everything unless you really like seeing all those graphics. Otherwise, old gen cards can run recent games pretty decently. You're not really required to upgrade every time a new card/processor comes out so it saves some money before you have to upgrade again.

 

In my opinion though, although you get used games with console gaming and I'm not sure if that exists with PC gaming besides through amazon and such, the prices for PC games go down significantly faster than console games. That and there's usually a buttload of special deals that cause PC games to lower their price.

 

Also, pirating does some good in this age where you can't tell if a game will be good or not anymore. I buy games that have a huge replayability/story. Ironically enough, I did play COD4 while pirated, but I have the official game now because I love the game alot. Whereas some guys you might pay for and then find out that there are numerous bugs with the game because it was rushed or underdeveloped (aka black screen where your character just falls to his death INFINITELY in Spiderman Friend or Foe). The problem with PC games I have atm is that a lot of them (especially RPGs/Dungeon Crawls) usually have a load of bugs. I think it's ridiculous to buy a game for about $50 and then find out it's somewhat unplayable to the number of bugs (Titan's Quest had like 9 patches within a month whereas NWN2 I heard from my friend had a load of patches on the day it was Released.)

 

I thought that this past winter was pretty good for PC gamers. There were good games that made gamers put faith in the gaming department again to buy the actual game (COD4, Orange Box, Crysis, etc.). I hope the quality of these games stays that way; otherwise, PC games will continue downhill like before.

[Wizard]

NWN2's engine is pretty refined (after 10 patches) at the moment, but it mostly has to do with quests and in game stuff that may or may not explode your game. I've encountered nothing game breaking thus far with NWN2 as I did with NWN1.