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]EM[EXTREME In All Her Glory!

The 3 C's of Why PC Gaming Is Dying

I have been an avid gamer for about 20 years now. I love PC games and grew up playing a lot of first person shooters on the PC. I have played Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, Woolfenstein, and many similar shooters on the PC. But it was Unreal Tournament that I grew a love for. I played UT for about 4 years on-line. I played in a clan and I played competitively. It has been a few years now sense I really participated in PC gaming like I once did. Here are the reasons why I will never go back to it, and neither will many of my friends.

1. Cost

Having a PC dedicated to gaming is a very expensive hobby. Every time a new game comes out, you need to upgrade your hardware. Just because the game may play on your PC, does not mean that you will actually have any chance playing on-line. You have to understand that playing on-line is more than skill. In fact you could argue that skill is the third most important factor in on-line play. Either your ping or your FPS (frames per second) on your PC can make you uncompetitive in on-line game play; even if you are at the top of your game. FPS requires good hardware and a good ping. Good hardware and a good ping cost monies. My last game PC set me back a few thousand dollars, and I was replacing it every year and a half and upgrading along the way. What a waste of money. I wish I had all that money I have spent on PC gaming hardware all those years. :)

2. Comfort

This is an easy one. Let's see:

A. Do you prefer hunching over a 22 inch computer monitor, squinting your eyes and screaming at your computer as your back and butt ache.

or

B. Do you prefer sitting back on the couch or on an easy chair resting, with your feet up and your game controller in one hand and a cold one in the other hand?

Kinda a no brainer. You can argue this, but I think it is a moot point.

3. Cheating

This one really strikes a cord with me. When I first started gaming on line and playing Unreal Tournament competitively, I really sucked. But I played for fun. As I played more and more I started realizing that some of the kills that players were getting seemed impossible. I spent hundreds of hours refining my skillz and I got pretty good. I also spent a lot of time specing folks (watching them in first person mode) with the intent of learning how to play better from them. I quickly noticed that there were a lot of folks cheating. Unreal Tournament is one of the most hacked games out there. It is a great game, but unfortunately many have found that it is more fun to cheat to win then to just play and have fun (win or lose). Because of the open gaming nature of the PC, it will always be easier to cheat on a PC then on a console. This is not to say that you can't cheat on a console. It is just easier to do so on a PC. I find that in most cases playing games on a console is fair, legitimate and fun. To put it simply, cheating (PC gaming) is not fun! When I play on the console and I lose I do not feel bad about it, because I got beat, fair and square. When I used to play Unreal Tournament in competition and watch bullets going around corners, I felt cheated. Trust me that is no fun!

For this final reason alone, I will never go back to PC gaming.

Cheers,
David]R[

New XBOX On-Line Web Interface

I like the look of the new interface. Although it seems very slow.

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