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[userpay]

Eh, I hope one day mods could be made on the PC and downloaded for Console games...  >.>
Or made on console and distributed easily...

So we are of differing opinions...

If ye could make the mod on the comp and put it to the console then at least for the developer of the mod he can play it but to put that much effort into something and not get money and/or have to go through all the legal tape it wouldn't really be worth it so those on the console can't customize like those on a pc can. If it were made on the console that goes back to what I said about the consoles becoming computers and rendering the whole discution moot because it all came back to becoming computers.

[Golgath]

The OP question doesn't really make sense, unless we're operating on different ideas of the term 'Mainstream'.  I feel it means the primary market for sellers, so in this case, it most certainly isn't.  I personally feel quality has been dropping pretty much everywhere in the commercial world, but there's also the fact that people expect more of games nowadays, since we have so much more technology to put forward for it.  Still, it seems like gameplay comes after graphics in the case of most commercial games, and if I wanted to see pretty pictures I could just go watch TV or go to the movies..  At any rate, I highly doubt that mainstream gaming is in any sort of trouble.

[HAMMERMILL]

The console gaming has the market with everything except sims and strategy games which don't sell as well and are not as profitable as graphic-rich action games for the attention-span hampered young today.

[de5me7]

i tried to proove myself wrong by buying Crysis today, it got awards and lots of ten out of ten reviews but...

its very run of the mill

the graphics are good, and the shootings not bad, but theres tens of other games with shooting thats not bad,

the story sucks the characters are shallow, the bad guy north koreans all speak english and sound like Kimjon il from team america

for a game thats supposed to be the best shooter of recent times theres little if no original content.

some one mention TES IV oblivion, i already own it, the story line, and the guild story lines all suck balls, some of the missions were alright. On the other hand the shivering isles expansion is a work of genius.

i guess my quip with fps and rts mainstream is; that inovation seems to have stopped. Each new release is a regigging of old ideas with new graphics. I think game developers ought to challenge the core game mecahanics that have beceom so sacrosanct, other wise pc gameing will slowly die

[Uber dwarf2.0]

Most new "mainstream" games are based on consoles as they sell better to the public, they often use gimmicks such as say one few feature. I wouldn't say its dead I'd say its rather hard to find a overall news source. As you all know most games have a Community or Communities, but trying to gather say all the WOW blogs/radios then Combine it with all the other MMOs is a great task not the mention all the other genres.On consoles its a bit simpler as most groups on consoles are limted by it firmware.

[Armok]

I have this (admitedly slightly iffy) hypothesis that because of the growing indie gaming movment, comercial games are retreating to the places were the indie games cant folow due to economic reasons; grapics whoring (requires heaps of artists, and lots of semi-mindless optimization for performance), MMORPGS (needs big expensive servers, paperwork to make it work with monthly payments and such, and the games requite gargantuan amount of world content), and sequels/movie based games/other copyright related.
However, the question wasn't about COMMERCIAL games, it was about MAINSTREAM, and when commercial games become more and more nice and indie games less and less so, the indie games will become the mainstream ones.

Yea, I'm a filthy comunist, and you cant sue me because I'm not from the US!

[Muz]

Hardly... indie games are far from mainstream, just like indie music isn't. It's just piracy. You can put a million dollar budget on a game and people would just steal it. You could put another million dollars on DRM and people will still steal it. Console piracy happens too, but far from the extent of PC piracy.

Anyway, indie games really aren't as popular as indie game players make them out to be. For every person I know who loves indie games, I know at least 4 others who won't give them a glance (unless they're some easy to pick up ones like the PopCap stuff)

[Jackrabbit]

Get TES IV:O if you don't already have it, for it is much more open ended that Fallout.

Gonna staaaaaab yoooooou. Find you sleeping and staaaaab yoooooou.

I love the ES series but have you played Fo1 and 2? Even if you meant 3 I'm willing to bet it's more open ended (apart from the main plot, which is relatively restricted, but so was Oblivion) than Oblivion.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Why do people keep citing console games as examples of why Mainstream PC gaming isn't dying?

Also, the nostalgia argument lost all validity a while ago.  Seriously, look at the facts.

That wikipedia article is a great example.

January:
Saints Row 2  Console Port
Mirror's Edge  Console Port

February:
Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box  Console Port
Perimeter 2: New Earth  Publisher: Strategy First Inc.  Developer: KDV Games  Hardly mainstream.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
Tom Clancy's EndWar     Console Port

March:
Empire: Total War
Codename Panzers: Cold War  Atari published but the devs are in Hungary.
Grey's Anatomy: The Video Game  Licenced game made by some no name company and distributed by Ubisoft on both Wii and PC.
World in Conflict: Soviet Assault  Expansion pack
Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Uprising  Expansion Pack
World in Conflict: Complete Edition It's the expansion and the original game together released the day after the expansion came out.
Men of War  Ukrainian game that's really good but definitely mainstream and the Publisher is only mainstream in eastern Europe.
Grand Ages: Rome  From the land of Bulgaria, doesn't even have a mainstream publisher.  It was the first game they published in North America.
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.  Console Port
Dark Sector  Console Port
The Wheelman  Simultaneous Console Port
Wanted: Weapons of Fate  Simultaneous Console Port
The Last Remnant  Console Port
Stormrise  Simultaneous Console Port
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures  Specifically, the first episode of a downloadable Episodic adventure game
Freaky Creatures  Downloadable Monster fight MMORPG or something.  Sure as hell isn't mainstream.
BattleForge  EA actually does experiment sometimes! With business models at least.  It's a trading card game, on the computer!  With microtransactions!

April:
Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust Simultaneous Console Port, Shovelware, and heck it's an adventure game.
The Godfather Part II: The Game  Simultaneous Console Port
Elven Legacy  Another game that could hardly be called mainstream considering it's developers
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena  Simultaneous Console Port
Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor  Expansion Pack
Braid  Console Port
Demigod  Published by Stardock, developed by GPG and based on a Warcraft 3 mod...
Zeno Clash  Indie Developed, in Chile no less.
Stalin vs. Martians  Intentionally trashy game that's only apparent appeal is how outside the mainstream it is.
Velvet Assassin  Simultaneous Console Port

May:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine  Simultaneous Console Port and a Licensed game at that
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian  Simultaneous Console Port and a Licensed game
Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis  A Point and Click adventure game, and thus already outside of the mainstream.
Battlestations: Pacific  Simultaneous Console Port, and also developed by a Hungarian company, though it's owned by Eidos.
Killing Floor  Indie
Terminator Salvation  Licensed, Simultaneous Console Port
Damnation  A former UT2004 mod.  Steampunk third person shooter/adventure.

June:
The Sims 3
Virtua Tennis 2009  Simultaneous Console Port
Prototype  Simultaneous Console Port
Ghostbusters: The Video Game  Simultaneous Console Port, and technically Licensed, though the film came out so long ago I suppose that doesn't matter much.
Adam's Venture : The Search for the Lost Garden  Europe Only, Downloadable adventure game.
Anno 1404  A city building game.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen  Licensed, Simultaneous Console Port
Overlord II  Simultaneous Console Port
Battlefield Heroes  EA's "Free 2 Play" dumbed down battlefield game with TF2 derivative graphics.  Does this count as mainstream?  I really can't decide.
ArmA 2  Hyper realistic tactical first person shooter from the Czech developer of Operation Flashpoint.
Blood Bowl  An accurate translation of the old Games Workshop game to computer format.
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince  Licensed, Simultaneous Console Port
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood  Simultaneous Console Port

July:
Fuel  Console Port
Trine  A side scrolling physics puzzle game, downloadable only
Street Fighter IV  Console Port
Tales of Monkey Island  First episode of episodic revival of the Monkey Island adventure game series. Downloadable only
Bionic Commando  Console Port
East India Company  Another unconventional strategy game from a European developer

August:
Hearts of Iron III  grand strategy wargame
Ashes Cricket 2009  Simultaneous Console Port
Still Life 2  Another European Adventure game
Return to Mysterious Island 2  Another European Adventure game
Wolfenstein  Simultaneous Console Port
Raven Squad: Operation Hidden Dagger  Simultaneous Console Port, it was another of those titles no one has played developed by a company no one has heard of.  An independent studio based on Hungary

September:
Champions Online
Section 8  Console Port
Darkest of Days  I suppose this is pretty mainstream aside from the time travel.  Course it's also a Simultaneous Console Port
Mini Ninjas  Simultaneous Console Port


So those are all the games that should have been released on PC so far this year.  Almost all of them are just console ports and most of the few that aren't are from small European developers.  Adventure games are a whole entire genre that's outside the mainstream thanks to their near abandonment at the beginning of the decade.  They're just barely starting to make a come back.

Console games or indie and obscure games are not evidence against the supposed death of mainstream PC gaming.  Quite the contrary.

[Ampersand]

Fallout 3 is a sloppily made, crash-tastic masterpiece. It could be such a good game if it didn't crash to desktop every few minutes.

Empires: Total War? A lot of the same crash-tastic problems, also horrible AI.

The main problem of all of these being that they are just so much shallower than more primitive games. I have no problem with claiming that Fallout 1 and 2 are better games overall than Fallout 3.

[Puzzlemaker]

I say PC gaming isn't dead if only because of Steam.

[Twiggie]

Fallout 3 is a sloppily made, crash-tastic masterpiece. It could be such a good game if it didn't crash to desktop every few minutes.

Empires: Total War? A lot of the same crash-tastic problems, also horrible AI.

The main problem of all of these being that they are just so much shallower than more primitive games. I have no problem with claiming that Fallout 1 and 2 are better games overall than Fallout 3.

though i agree with your sentiment, fallout 3 hasnt ever crashed on me afaicr.

old games are generally better than newer ones, i feel, because they know they cant have brilliant graphics, but with newer games, though the graphics is better, because they put so much effort into them, the holes appear much larger - thats why i like DF so much.

[Neonivek]

old games are generally better than newer ones

I can vouch that this is entirely untrue. The advent of the internet has increased the general quality of videogames. There is a reason why there was a Videogame crash.

The REAL question is if old games tended to generate more great games then today. Which would be interesting.

[redacted123]

-

[ChairmanPoo]

The main problem of all of these being that they are just so much shallower than more primitive games.

seconded.

It's not that new games are by default "bad" (in fact, I am sure that after doing a careful pick and choose -like we did for old ones back then- we would find some nice gems). It's just that, when allocating the design budget, they tend to place a much bigger emphasis on graphics, on detriment of the rest. Why? Because it sells, obviously. It's easier to drag people to a game with shallow eyecandy than with, say, a deep, extremedly open ended gameplay with ascii graphics.