Prebuilt PC

Marty_J

Arch_23 wrote: »

As long as PC games like WoW and others are making vast sums of money then the developers will continue to make PC games. That was my point.

Personally I hope pc gaming continues for a long long time to come, standalone gaming is for consoles but gaming communities are online with the PC.

On a side note, thanks for Alienware link but I'm not really looking for a laptop, at least not for gaming.

My brother plays his PS3 online all the time. *shrug*

Personally, I think in a few years games will be totally platform independent, and you'll basically play them in your web browser. So in that sense I think neither console nor PC gaming will continue "for a long long time to come".

[Deleted User]

SemperFi wrote: »

Bang per buck, £100 max for 1Tb Samsung F1 vs £100+ for 150Gb Raptor, it's not rocket science. If you can tell the difference, I'll give you a banana!

Read some reviews on the F1. It's comparable and even faster than the raptor in some cases.

Can I have one please?

SemperFi

A banana? Sure. On it's way. (via Gorilla.bas qbasic game).

[Deleted User]

Marty_J wrote: »

My brother plays his PS3 online all the time. *shrug*

Personally, I think in a few years games will be totally platform independent, and you'll basically play them in your web browser. So in that sense I think neither console nor PC gaming will continue "for a long long time to come".

I doubt that will ever happen. Can you see Sony or Nintendo aboloshing their hardware platforms in favour games that run on web browsers, ie Microsoft's court? Of course not.

The allure of consoles is once you've bought it you are guarenteed to run any game that is made for it for the lifetime of the console, unlike a PC which really requires upgrades every six months in order to run games as intended.

magyar

Marty_J wrote: »

My brother plays his PS3 online all the time. *shrug*

Personally, I think in a few years games will be totally platform independent, and you'll basically play them in your web browser. So in that sense I think neither console nor PC gaming will continue "for a long long time to come".

It's a fair point, although I don't see it as 'browser'-based, but virtualised. It's already commonplace to see virtual systems at work in server situations, and increasingly so for workstations.

(In other words you have software which provides a common 'virtual PC' on whatever physical hardware you have).

At the moment you can pretty much create a virtual version of consoles of the previous generation, so a PS3 can emulate a PS2 quite happily (as can a PC).

When you get to the stage when you can emulate a current generation machine, then it's basically platform independent.

Marty_J

be_alright wrote: »

I doubt that will ever happen. Can you see Sony or Nintendo aboloshing their hardware platforms in favour games that run on web browsers, ie Microsoft's court? Of course not.

But that's how all computing will be done, so they won't have any choice. I think in the future, you'll basically just have a screen that connects to the internet. There won't be any upgrading of computers or specifications.

Marty_J

magyar wrote: »

It's a fair point, although I don't see it as 'browser'-based, but virtualised. It's already commonplace to see virtual systems at work in server situations, and increasingly so for workstations.

(In other words you have software which provides a common 'virtual PC' on whatever physical hardware you have).

At the moment you can pretty much create a virtual version of consoles of the previous generation, so a PS3 can emulate a PS2 quite happily (as can a PC).

When you get to the stage when you can emulate a current generation machine, then it's basically platform independent.

What I meant by "browser based" was that it's over the internet. I don't think anyone will really own any computer hardware once networks get fast enough.

I already have 300 times more storage space in my online email account than I did on my first PC's hard drive!

[Deleted User]

Marty_J wrote: »

But that's how all computing will be done, so they won't have any choice. I think in the future, you'll basically just have a screen that connects to the internet. There won't be any upgrading of computers or specifications.

I highly doubt it.

Technology just isn't going to stop advancing at a certain point is it? Hardware will always become outdated and subsequently need updating.

Do you think Sony and Nintendo are going to stop making their own platforms? Who's going to stop them and tell them they can only develop games for this unified platform you speak of.

superscaper

I doubt it as well, the whole terminal and server thing will always be behind in capability to independant computers and since gaming in particular really pushes the hardware I don't think it'll ever be taken over by terminal only systems. It's a fact of life some people will have more money than others and want and pay for better hardware than others, how would that standardise with a terminal and server? It's almost computer communism.

magyar

superscaper wrote: »

I doubt it as well, the whole terminal and server thing will always be behind in capability to independant computers and since gaming in particular really pushes the hardware I don't think it'll ever be taken over by terminal only systems. It's a fact of life some people will have more money than others and want and pay for better hardware than others, how would that standardise with a terminal and server? It's almost computer communism.

I agree you won't see terminal-only systems. But with games like World of Warcraft you're certainly at a halfway house, with the game persistence and mechanics being dealt with on a server and your computer is just graphically creating the world.

Also, don't forget that when you talk about 'games' and PCs, you're instinctively thinking of action games and so on which require a lot of grunt, whereas in fact the fastest growing sector by a long way is casual gaming. Many of the games on the Wii for example could very easily be emulated on some fairly simple hardware.

So I could quite envisage, for example, a virtual 'console' which can run on most hardware, linking to an online server which is maintaining the game world etc.