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@ Ricardo:
but thats my point you dont need to upgrade your card.
i have not monitored the FPS while playing crysis, yes obviously if you want 60FPS you need a high end card.
a friend of mine has 2 Nvidia 295GTX i think they are hooked in SLI and to be honest crysis off those looks better but not that much better than off my 9800GTX.
once a game gets to the point where your only improving the FPS the differences are barely noticeable.

crysis came out and for a good year no one could play it on max settings.
thats what i want now.
i want a game to come out and force me to buy a top of the line card to be able to max everything out settings wise forget FPS.

maybe RAGE or crysis 2 can be that game but neither of those are due out till late next year if that.
and half life 2 epp 3 well i doubt ill see that in my life time.
hell knowing what valve are like, my great gran kids will have great gran kids by the time thats out.

Please excuse my broken English. I have been writing a term paper and my head is all sorts of messed up.

I would like to point a few things out. I am not disagree with the author, but I see one of the main reasons that PC games available at stores are so limited because of two things. The first is that all the games there are leftovers no one will ever buy or WoW. The second is of the availability of PC games via the internet. It is true that on the current-gen (PS3 and 360) it is possible to buy and download games, but that doesn’t have near the power that a whining kid and Wal-Mart does (which would explain WoW at stores). Back to my point, has anyone ever heard of Steam? You can easily buy, download and play a huge variety of games. Hard copies of games can easily be purchased online at places like amazon and the like.

Consoles are much simpler than PCs when it comes to families. A parent buys a kid a console and when he (she?) wants a new game, all the parent has to do is go to the store and buy it. The same is true for mature people, but this is just an example. People who game on the PC usually know how to obtain the newest games…the internet…which is also readily available and used on the PC. Yes, you can browse the web on a PS3 (360?), but it is limited and cumbersome as opposed to the PC. They both have game stores (I think) but simply browsing is much more ackward.

My point from all of there is the ease factor. Consoles are easy to buy and get games for, making them a good place to be marketed at stores. PC games are also easily obtained straight on the PC and require even less walking. You just click a few buttons, enter a few numbers, etc. The way to obtain each game is in its easiest place at the moment, but because of that, the public view of PC games is such that they are overlooked since normal people (such as parents who buy games for their kids or average people who just want to have a game to pass the time) don’t see them when at stores.

I don’t really know where I was going with this, but I just wanted to make that point. I have other points I could make, but that’s for another day. Simply, PC gaming is sick, I agree, but I don’t think if it falls too much, people will switch from Windows. They may not know how to use it well, but they know better than anything else and people HATE changing to a different OS where they know that they would know even less than they do now about how to use it.

@ WB:

Commenter clearly not intelligent. Why talk of Windows 7? Never heard of this thing the past? This article was posted in September 2008. Windows 7 wasn’t out then yet.

Author clearly not educated about chosen subject oO

And why the talk of Vista/DX10 – never heard of Windows 7?

Last summer I put together a Core2quad Q6700 rig and added a $100 Nvidia 9600 graphic card. I have been running 32bit Windows XP which used DirectX 9 and so far it has run every modern game I have thrown at it with maxed out settings, including (but not limited too) Batman Arkham Asylum, MOH Airborne, Drakensang, Sim City Societies, X3: Terran Conflict and Oblivion without any problems. So it is not exactly true that you have to have DirectX 10 to play games. In fact, when I have compared the same games running on DX10 and DX9 and can not see any real difference between the two. I personally think all the hype aimed at DX10 and DX11 being better is nothing but a marketing scheme. While I also enjoy console gaming, I am first a computer gamer and would hate to see the genre die.

as a side not if you really want to build a great PC look into a phenom II, those aren’t the fastest, but super cheap and super fast. Forgot to mention the higher end AMD, so I had to follow up.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/balanced-gaming-pc,2477.html

also check that article out.

@ name:
Your crazy, I have a GTX 260 and While I can play Crysis on high settings, the game plays at around 24 FPS, which is arguably not bad, but I dream of getting two 5790’s in the near future to run the game at 60FPS.

Upgrade path is a pain, but the truth is as of right now you can get a core i-5, a pair of 2GB OCZ Platinums, decent motherboard, PSU, and an HD4890 for under 600 dollars. That has you covered for at least three more years for gaming. When those two years are up you can just buy a newer graphics card and your good for two more years.

Unless your doing a lot of video encoding, you don’t need to upgrade you CPU every other year.

I consider myself an enthusiast and yes, a year ago I had a q9400 with a 3.0GHZ e8400 and in the last month I upgrade to a core i-7 and just spent over 1300 on the upgrade. Yes, but that is me. I do a lot of video encoding and I edit a lot of footage. Sure my GTX 260 is crappy for video editing, which is why I am upgrading. It was ok for the job when it came out, but now it’s showing it’s age. But again, this is just me.

If you just want to play games, just throw a new video card in your system and you should be good. The upgrading of a pc is the most overused excuse.

As for the DirectX argument, I can notice the difference. Yes, big time. It’s apparent to me, yes, I upgraded to Vista just for DirectX 10. And I hated Vista, but I ONLY USED VISTA FOR GAMING. Once the OS started acting up and ruining my life ; ) I installed Mac OS X and Windows XP on my 500 GB HDD. My 1TB was being used for games, with two extra 1TB used for holding my files. And it made things livable. Anyways, The minute the Windows 7 Beta was released, I got the heck out of dodge. I am running Windows 7 and I don’t need to use any alternative programs, which still has the exact same Windows problems that have always been there (Maybe the problems are how it’s supposed to be) but it is still less buggy and ‘thick’ than Vista. The point is, 7 is out, Vista is a bad nightmare and the only people who upgraded for DirectX10 are the people who noticed the differences, so it was never a “had to upgrade” situation.

Am I the only one who does not find the back of games complicated?

Your PC tells you what you have right in the My Computer start menu option. Can’t you take the number that is given to the right of each category and match it with the number on the box. You only really need the Ram and the Processor speed and your video card model number. you have 4Gb of Ram, box says 1GB (which is what most games use) your good. The box says 3.0GHZ processor, your PC came with a 2.8GHZ dual core, your good. Dual means two, the box only states the minimum, which is obviously referring to a single core. While your processor speed is slower than whats on the box, you got two cores to share the load and they both run at 2.8GHZ. One core is at like 80%, the second gets the other 20%.

If the box says at least a 6800GT, you own an 9800GT. common sense people.

I get mad when people don’t know even the most general info on PCs, A friend of mine does not even realize the quad core PC I built him a year ago is better than that Dell branded crap he is looking to “upgrade” to. Maybe PC gaming should die. Before it was to a point where a generic Joe could understand the specs of a PC, buy himself a basic machine, than buy a few extra components depending on what it was going to be used for. Now a days, the average Joe has gotten stupider, that he can’t understand the exact same information a Joe from 5 years ago could understand. Everyone tends to blame advancing technology, but the sad fact is that humanity is getting stupider.

You want a way to simplify PC gaming to make it more accessible to the casual gamer. F*** that, if we have to make something match someone elses laziness, than we have a problem. If they really wanted to get into PC gaming to begin with, they would. They would take the time to learn the ins n outs. They would put in the effort.

Making their products stupider for a more stupid joe, is like having Fender remove two strings of their guitars to make it more accessible for the stupid children of this generation. I’m just saying, I wanted to learn guitar, so I learned. I practiced and practiced. Same deal with PC gaming. It’s super easy to learn, compared to guitar. All it is is memorizing what is faster than what and which component will get your job done. That simple.

You don’t have to learn what hyperthreading means, you don’t have to have a SLI setup. You just need to ask, what will play, umm, let’s see, Modern Warfare 2 on High Settings. A:GTX 260-200 core i5-200 core i5 mobo-150 PSU-50 4GB DDR3RAM-100=700. The i5 alone will have you in the green for about 5 years. GTX 260 for 200 dollars, that will have you all set for two more years. Odds are your looking to spend that much on a new PC anyways. There are also many guides on building a decent core i7 pc for less than 500. I just picked components of the top of my head. Google a bit and you could game with us. See you on the battlefield, the real battlefield.

death of windows?
you seriously can not believe that!
you do realize PC gaming has been going down the shitter latley.
PC gaming use to be king, top trump but now its the bastard child.
it use to be the best of the best, now its got the short end of the stick.
PC games use to be made around the PC than ported to consoles, so PC games were always heads and shoulders above consoles, thats not the case anymore.
look at the PS3, every 6 months or so theres a new game taking the game industry to a new level, raising the bar.
first with heavenly sword than uncharted than MGS4 than resistance 2 than killzone 2 than infamous than uncharted 2.
same goes for the 360.
but what has the PC had?
crysis and crysis warhead and arguably S.T.A.l.K.E.R
thats it, 3 games compare to how many console games?
crysis is over 2 years old and nothing on PC has topped that.
if a 2008 computer (thats how advanced it was, took almost a year for hardware to catch up) can give you crysis i want to see what a 2010 computer can give you.
ive got a 1 year old PC with a 9800GTX+ and i can run crysis at max settings.
if 1 9800GTX+ gives me crysis i want to see what 1 265 GTX will give me.
i want to see what a 295 GTX will give me.
i want to see what Nvidias new DX11 cards will give me.
were constantly releasing new VDUs and CPUs but what for?
theres not 1 program available that requires it, so what is the point?
sounds like overkill to me,its like spending thousands of dollars for a crane to lift and move a leaf.
sure i can do it with my hand, but there is much bigger more fun ways to do it.