Old school computers gamers can tell you of the time when the best games were actually developed for the PC. This was long after the crash of 1983 when the first great consoles including the Atari 2600 and Intellivision systems died out, and even after the heyday of those classic Commodore 64 games. In the early 1990s the best games were on the PC with titles that included the original Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, SimCity, Doom, Dune II and Castles. While the shooters and strategy titles were still rough around the edges, console gamers were stuck with side-scrolling Mario and Sonic.
The games for the PC in 1993 may have been awesome but it is generally agreed that the operating system sucked. DOS meant that you had to worry about port numbers, IRQ settings and basically had to hope you could get the sound to work. That all changed with the arrival of Windows 95, which truly turned the PC into an easy to use gaming machine. However, somewhere along the way the consoles caught up, and in many cases surpasses the old PC titles. Today the best shooters, such as Gears of War are on the Xbox 360. But don’t rule out the PC yet.
First, Microsoft went and rebranded PC entertainment with the launch last year of Games For Windows. And next week the newest version of Windows arrives in the form of Windows Vista. Most of the features, including 3D animation with the interface and more folders aren’t floating our boat, but for gaming this could be the start of something big. Here are 10 reasons why gaming on Vista is going to be hot:
1. Hardware compatibility with Xbox 360 controllers. If you’re one of those guys who really prefers the controller over a mouse and keyboard you’ll be able to plug and play with the 360 controller
2. Wireless dongle on the way. OK the 360 let’s you go wireless with your controllers, but so will the PC with an adapter set to arrive in February, which will work with controller, headset and even the steering wheel
3. Cross platform gaming. The first wave of titles isn’t that strong but it is a start. You’ll be able to play cross platform (Xbox 360 and PC) with Uno and Shadowrun. It is fair to ask if you really want to play Uno in the first place. Maybe not, but you can and that’s good enough for us
4. Communication cross platform. Through the Live service you can chat with friends while they’re online on a PC or Xbox 360, and this includes text and voice! With this who needs long distance phone service?
5. The new game folder will let you see game ratings. This might not sound like a big deal, but anything that lets parents see ratings and gives them the choice is a good thing
6. Launch directly from saved games. Microsoft will give game developers the option of letting a game be launched directly from the saved game folder. No reason to start up Half Life 2 and then load the saved game. This could let you do it in one click
7. Parental controls. Not a big deal if you’re a gamer without kids, but everyone says that the decisions should be left to the parents, and Vista will let parents set time limits, and even block specific games, either individually or by content
8. DirectX 10. With the arrival of the Xbox 360 and PS3 games on the PC looked a bit last millennium, but check out a screen shot of Crysis or Shadowrun and you’ll change your mind!
9. Improved multiplayer functionality. Try setting up a multiplayer game with Windows XP where you have three gamers on your LAN and four connecting from various other locations. It can work seamlessly one day, and not at all the next. Vista should help make this better
10. One ID for all games. Try finding which server of Battlefield 2 your buddies are on now. Soon you’ll be able to not only find them, but chat while you’re connecting. Gaming as it always should have been
And since we’re not shills for Microsoft, we have a few concerns too:
1. What’s with the freaking folders. I like my shortcuts on the desktop, putting things in folders just means it is going to get misplaced. No thank you
2. System specs. OK, so most of my PCs aren’t going to able run Vista. No wonder the likes of Dell and Gateway are excited. Everyone has to upgrade their PCs yet again
3. Compatibility. We’re hearing that most older games should still be compatible. We’ll believe that when we’re actually playing them
4. Xbox 360 is a PC. Didn’t Microsoft say for years that the Xbox and later the Xbox 360 weren’t PCs. Sure doesn’t seem that way with the way LIVE is going
5. Xbox 360 is not a PC. Maybe it isn’t a PC after all. I can use my Xbox 360 controller on the PC, but I can’t use my mouse and keyboard to play Gears of War!
I’m looking forward to Windows Vista, way forward, more like the end of this year when they have enough experience to have the bugs they don’t know about yet worked out and when there are enough Vista geared games out to justify the added cost. For now I find XP works great so I’ll just keep using it.
I will say I’m looking forward to the new OS features, I’m a geek like that, I am also currently using a 37″ LCD monitor and I am interested in see how much better it looks on there, but I figure I’ll have a Blu-Ray DVD-RW drive long before I get windows Vista.
Thanks for reading this (if you did)
Well i just got Vista 64 edition and my pc flies like a dream
AMD 64 X2 4200
Geforce 7900GS
2 gigs OCZ 800mhz ram
i have had no slowdown on any of my games and so far everything works
i dunno what the fuss is about at all
it doesnt even cost that much to build a rig once you know where to get the parts.
i hear people complaining that a pc costs like 2g’s to get a good gaming system.
but u have to remember
if u use a pc (if u r reading this then obviously) pcs do everything
hell. console games are designed on pc anyway (or should i say Workstations, same thing anyway)
oh and by the way my system i use for work and it only cost me 1200 and that was because to the wide screen monitor i wanted.
which brings me to another point:
IF U WANT A NEXT GEN CONSOLE TO HAVE GREAT GRAPHICS YOU NEED TO BUY A HIGH DEFINITION TELEVISION. (which will cost alot more than a gaming PC)
sure the consoles have some cool games b4 pc but when those games eventually cross over to pc they kick ass even more. perfect example is any of the Grand theft auto games. the pc version is always the best.
halo is better on pc than on xbox in my opinion. (nothing beats a keyboard or mouse).
any of the battlefied games (64 players online compared to 32 on console)
and i hear everyone talking about gears of war. granted it a good game i love it. but can u imagine what it would be like on PC? (I heard rumors that it is coming to PC but we’ll wait and see. it would make sense)
Link:http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14345
Salut !
Halo 2 is a flop because, while the graphics are nice, and its
potential high, the desighners made several flaws. attempting to get more
people to play, they balanced the weapons, now there are no weapons that
can make those whiny noobs say “wtf? you hacker!”. add on top of that
that, while you used to realy on youre sheild for cover, and run when
youre health went orange, now you run when youre sheilds are low, because
theres no health bars. while dual weilding was a good idea, lowing the
power of old favs, loke the pistol, from an almighty weapon to a water
pistol, and there new SMG’s arent good unless dual weilded. and then the
most favored selection of wepons, the human set, is now worthless due o
the fact that they do little dammage to youre sheilds, and as mentioned
before, thats all you have. many people have had trouble with the new
rifle, the Battle Rifle, because its no longer an auto, and while others
like its accuracy, many just like to let lose a storm of molten lead.
and many people have had troubles with this “Match Making” setup
used on Xbox Live, the complaints are that its to slow, and isnt very
accurate, on on to that, that the entire game setup is random. then you
get weird flaws, where the evel gap is just to great, and you sometimes
end up fighting either someone to weak, or someone to powerful. to piss
even more people off, all this comes at a high price, be it that youre
playing it for PC, where you pay for Vista for no technological reason
for it to not be on XP, other then money. thens theres Xbox, where youre
paying a monthly fee. no, many people scream out “why should i have to
pay for such a crappy game? and what if i dont want Vista? I DONT WANT
VISTA!” well, theres nop suck luck for you my dear freinds, my only
advice is to either wait till Microsoft learns they arent gonna recruit
enough people via Halo 2.
while on the topic of how much Microsoft sucks, did you know that
there was a mod for Command and Conquer Zero Hour that was basicly JUST
like Halo Wars. get this, this show just how bent Microsoft is on money.
now, can you guess what Microsoft did about this? they forced the team
who made this mod to delete all theire files on it, and close all theire
sites. thats right, you heard correctly, they made them DELELTE ALL THEIR
HARD WORK! they treatened to sue, and held the right to sue even AFTER
they deleted it all. now, the team who made this mod wasnt planning on
making any money… they just wanted to make a 3rd pary mod, how often
does Microsoft jump on these cases? never. why this one? who knows, all i
know is that Microsoft was in some way trying to protect theire money.
What i also know is that anyone who was gonna buy halo wars, will still
buy it, they wont replace it with a mod. As for anyone who will, well,
they likely wouldnt have bought halo wars anyways.
that sums up this summary on Halo 2, and some of Microsoft in
general. (btw, wtf? Microsoft? somthing about that name makes them sound
weak if you ask me.)
I love computers, dont get me wrong. What i hate is games on computers. I cannot count how many times I have wasted my money on a game and it didnt work because of some minor technical problem. I hate Vista most of all, with all the Microsoft hypocrites that sell you games that need administrator privileges. And then they tell you not to use the admin account whatsoever for safety reasons. I have given up on Vista gaming for at least a few months until they work out all these fricking problems.
Thats why i love consoles. They just work.
People who claim consoles are better never played on a high-end gaming PC with nice monitor… that’s all there is to it.
Sure enough it costs more, but it is better. I think it’s fine you like console gaming, but don’t say it is better then PC just because you don’t like to spend the money on a good PC.
This is Microsofts grand plan to improve the popularity of PC gaming? Seems to me they are gearing Vista to appeal more to console gamers than PC, make the transition between console and PC easier. It’s not going to work, making computers more console user friendly doesn’t change the fact that they are expensive to maintain and more difficult to use.
Instead of trying to recruit console gamers to PC, how about addressing the major complaint about PC gaming? Coding quality, developers code PC games like crap because they can get away with it while on a console they cannot. Too many games today were not polished, resulting in them running like crap on everything but GPUs in the £250+ price range.
This takes the costs of better optimising a game and puts them on the consumer with upgrades, making the much cheaper and better optimised consoles more appealing despite modern PC hardware being superior. Sure due to the diversity of hardware it will never be as optimised as console games, but I know they can do better when 360 ports are lagging on GPUs with much higher specs than the 360s one.
Force developers to adhere to a standard before a game is allowed on retail shelves, do this and I guarantee PC gaming will boon.
It seems to me that “Will Vista Run Your Games: The Final Word: Drivers, Hiccups, and Personal Experiences” is the wrong name for this article. “Stuff That Revolves Around the XBox 360 and Loosely Connects to PC Operating Systems” would be more apt.
I’m going to have to agree with Donovan, above. Please spend more time on your articles, and ensure they have something to do with your title This is a disorganized, incorrect list. Your content does not match your title or conclusion.
Why? Let’s go through your list:
1) Hardware compatibility with XBox 360 controllers… why is this even on here? This has little to do with PC gaming other than another controller option. By the way; I got a bootleg PS2 and 360 controller for my PC a long time ago, and I’m running on XP. This point has nothing to do with this article’s title “Will Vista Run Your Games”.
2) Wireless options have also been available for PCs in general for a long time. Why site it as an improvement in Vista? Again, wrong context, poor idea. This doesn’t belong here.
3) That’s true, and it’s nice to see cross platform… but once again, this is not a ***Vista*** idea! Resident Evil? Oblivion? Cross platform gaming is not Vista specific, man!
4) … Once again… ICQ? MSN? Not Vista specific!
5) They’ve been on the boxes for years, and once again: This is not about the OS. This is about cardboard boxes. You are supposed to be covering Vista’s abilities… not how they print labels on boxes.
6) That’s cool! I won’t argue with you, here. It’d be nice just to double click savegames. Wait… how is this Vista specific?
7) Nice to have parental controls, but this option’s been around for years as well, and is, again, *not Vista specific*!
8) Yeah, Crysis looks good in DX10, eh? THEY TRICKED YOU. You can unlock DX10 detail in DX9.0c! That’s right! The DX10 features are pissing off gamers around the world, because they are faked. You simply are not allowed to have the option of going very high detail when you are in XP, but if you replace the high end graphics files with very high detail you can run so called DX10 graphics options in XP JUST FINE. So that’s a lie they’re trying to fool you with.
9) Umm… this has NO place here. It’s like saying “Good luck setting up a MP game if you don’t know what you’re doing at all”! Actually… most MP games are easy to set up, and they don’t mysteriously work one day and not the next… You might as well throw in an argument about network ghosts who haunt your system. You just couldn’t come up with a #9, could you?
10) This only makes sense if support has been programmed into the game itself, and once again… Nothing to do with Vista itself!
WELL DONE!
You didn’t make a single argument that actually applied to a Vista experience.
Don’t write more articles unless you actually do some real research first.
Sehr informative Seite. Vielen Dank für die Infos!