Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Via Kotaku: A Visual Guide to the First Person Shooter

Article here.

Every time somebody talks about how good a FPS Goldeneye was, I feel a little sicker on the inside. It wasn't bad.. for a CONSOLE game. But it couldn't hold a candle to Quake, Duke3D, Unreal, or even the original Doom.

It's depressing, because the only reason the PC gaming market isn't completely dead right now is because, despite having perfectly good USB ports, console makers and developers are still inexplicably ignoring the mouse as the world's best analog input device, one that is prerequisite for FPS dominance. When they DO figure that out, you can pretty much kiss PC gaming goodbye. There were already some PS2 games that had USB keyboard support... keyboard and mouse support on XB360 would mean you no longer have to spend ~$1000 on a gaming computer, when you can get a console for less than $500 that plays every bit as good, has less support issues due to hardware standardization, and is much less complicated for your average person to use... all while now getting the same games and comparable experiences.

With the glass barrier of input type shattered, other genres that have been up til now largely exclusive to PCs would also be fair game... particularly MMOs and RTSes. Heck, the PS2 might have had a trimmed down version of Sims 2, but you know with access to KB&M, the next Sims sequel would blow away all sales records if released on consoles.

Then we'll ALL be console 'tards.

1 comment:

PPMcBiggs said...

This is just the natural progression of technology. Soon, there will be no distinction between console and PC. You will go buy a set-top-box that does everything both modern consoles and PCs do (eg: games, social-networking, tax returns, homework, porn). Think about it, all decent video cards these days have HDMI which is a consumer video interface (this is great departure from history where PCs have always had "Pro" (VGA, RGBHV, DVI) connectors.

Shortly after that every monitor will have the hardware necessary to make it a "terminal". There will be no local storage, and minimal local processing. Everything will happen in the cloud. See: http://www.onlive.com/

Guys like us should just start embracing our new overlords now.