Next Gen (+PC) System Analysis

[MaHe]

Well, in my personal opinion, 360 was one of my best purchases in a long time ... but that's probably just me ...

 

[VmprHntrD]

Not quite a MMO as it's Cooperative but Guild Wars does in all 4 campaigns have a strong story that all tie together from start to end.

Regardless your Wii+PC choice is the smartest by far. A factor you didn't add in as you cut it off with the up to PSX/N64 era stuff is that the newest of those DS emulators run most the games good-excellent quality. With that factored in you can add some pretty damn good RPGs into the mix of the style that PC tends to lack. Also on PC, as stated, insane backwards log of old games. Sites like Abandonia have a ton of them to download so that can also feed the beast and all it takes is loading up teeny old DOS Box and you're good to go. Wii itself due to the PC end you won't need to use the Virtual Console unless you prefer the stuff on there as outside of trying to find/burn TG16 CD/SCDs all the other stuff can be done very well natively with such programs as NESTopia(NES), NO$GBA (GB->DS), ZSNES (SNES), *Various*Genesis, Ootake/Magic Engine (TG16), and NeoRage (NeoGeo.)

Doing that combo you get the unique value that the games and Wii control can supply, and even the not so unique of genres PCs just tend to stupidly ignore. I'd check a site called IndyGames and you can find some highball crap that covers those dry areas like platformers and stuff for PC too. As you already did state the PS3 is well overpriced to get the rightly working unit and even then backwards is sketchy and the game well is pretty dry. The 360 is basically a toss up really...yah a few of its most quality games you won't see on PC for a little while, but many of them you will, and could enjoy more there likely so that's just preference...but since PC can run most and it does more than just what 360 does I can see why you'd lean there.

 

[Bitbyte]

Very nice topic! Also, an excellent opportunity for me to rant about all of this.

First things first, the current-gen consoles. This isn't as easy anymore, Xbox 360 was all alone at the top, Wii came in second with quite a few A titles and PS3 was stuck at the very bottom. Nowadays, in my opinion, I would still rank them the same. However, Wii is starting to get more and more great games, but so is PS3. Now, a couple of weeks ago, I used to hate the PS3 as much as the next guy due to mainly two factors:
1) it was way too expensive!
2) its games library was pretty much non existant.
Now that a couple of months have passed since the European (and American) launch, there have been quite a few price changes, making the PS3 much more affordable. The games library is finally starting to pick up pace, with already quite a lot of A titles like:

Assassin's Creed
Oblivion
Warhawk
Heavenly Sword
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
The Orange Box
Folklore
Ninja Gaiden Sigma
Timeshift
Unreal Tournament 3

I'm not even mentioning the upcoming Playstation exclusive titles which we've all grown to love (if you had a PS2) like the new God of War, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Devil May Cry (not exclusive anymore) and I bet loads more will be announced. Remember the PS2 was the best console last gen, no one can deny that its library far surpasses the Gamecube's and the Xbox's.

With PS3 and Wii out of the way, only Xbox 360 is left. This fella probably still has the biggest amount of must-have titles and no doubt it will have a bright future. Very surprised about this, seeing how the Xbox had so little top games.

Next topic: PC games. I know this might provoke a lot of flames, but I'm going to say it anyways: I don't consider PC gamers to be "true" gamers (if you are offended by this, please read on, I'm interested in contra arguments).
Mind you, I'm strictly talking about the PC nowadays, not about the Commodore, Amiga and Atari iterations. A few decades ago, there were so many wonderful games on the PC, before gaming consoles started to take over. I'm talking about the plentitude of great DOS games, the early Windows games, the games most of us grew up with.

Nowadays however, there's SO little diversity, it's really just FPS after FPS after FPS, sometimes there's a decent RTS, but then there's all those crap games that nobody cares about and all those racing games (yeah, every so often there's a good one of those too; but it's not what I would refer to as a top game). You really can't say PC has good RPGs either (with the odd exception every now and then), at least not real RPGs; there's only those MMORPGS where all loot savvy people flock to. I'm sorry, but in my opinion these don't qualify as good RPGs at all, they miss the key element of an RPG: a good story with a great plot and nice character development. If I want to play a hack 'n slash game with the option to use magic too and make up an entire build with skill points, I'll just boot up one of so many great console RPGs or even an older PC game (Baldurs Gate 2, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, Fallout series come to mind). The PC really lacks diversity and that's its biggest downfall to me. If anyone's gonna tell me something along the lines of "you probably can't even run the current PC games" I'll go ahead and tell you that my laptop is more than capable to do so.
It kind of makes me sad to see the youth addicted to games that don't offer that big of an experience when compared to the more immersive console games, they really don't know what they are missing out on; console games just have that little something extra.

Then there's the other major complaint I have about the PC: you constantly need to upgrade your rig to keep up with the latest games. If you're anything like me, you always want to play your PC games with the maximum possible graphical quality (I'm not a graphics whore, not at all, I'm bringing this up because most, if not all, PC gamers like to brag about them having the best graphics). Why else would I sacrifice the great controls that a console offers in exchange for the best graphics at that time? A console on the other hand doesn't need upgrades, it's a small one time purchase that just keeps on giving and giving. Especially if you compare the price of a high-end graphics card to the price tag of a console, you'll see why you're far better off with a console: 400$ for a graphics card (not even counting the various other parts of a computer) versus 400$ for a console + controller, games aren't needed in the equation because you need to pay for the software on both platforms. Games for the consoles are always optimized, you don't need the latest 500$ high-end graphics card to run it on the maximum and it'll last you for at least 5 years, whereas if you're a PC gamer, you can expect to upgrade your specs (at the very least your video card) every other year to keep pumping out the best graphics.

One last thing about the PC: it's my favourite electronics device ever, it's my medium to obtain most of my (obscure) games and to bid on retro games. Would you be able to spend one day without the PC? I know I can't . ;] But since this topic is about games, this doesn't really matter.

 

[ZeWarrior]

Actually the Xbox 360 Core/Arcade model does have HDMI ports now; so it is HD. And the price on the Core is similar enough to the Wii to be a good deal. As for PC, that's the most expensive choice of all if you're going all high end. Plus the game selection is limited. Sure there's lots of FPS and RTS games, but you won't find any platformers or many A-grade RPGs.

Oh, and as for the PS3's backward compatibility, the smaller HDD versions don't have it at all, the mid-range only have extremely poor software compatibility, and the hardware BC isn't that great either. If you've ever looked at the hardware BC charts you'll notice Sony ranks a game's compatibility from 1 - 5 (I think) and most of them have a rank of 3 or so. Meaning FMVs don't work, etc etc.

Ace your really wrong. The 80GB PS3 has 80% BC which is far, FAR from Extreme Poor especially when the 360 doesn't even support half of the Xbox games. That Hardware BC = not great is a fanboy statement. The 60 and 20GB models had literally 99+% of games working. Only the 80GB has some bc problems, the 60GB is pretty much perfect.


QUOTEits called a cable. all decent graphic cards have ATLEAST two ports(either VGA or DVI or a combo), and most have an s-video port which you can plug into your tv and no extra hardware is needed but a 3$ cable from dealextreme.

You wouldn't really want to use S-Video when using a TC as a monitor, it will only carry 480i and that's a very poor resolution for today's standard.

 

[Ace Gunman]

Actually the Xbox 360 Core/Arcade model does have HDMI ports now; so it is HD. And the price on the Core is similar enough to the Wii to be a good deal. As for PC, that's the most expensive choice of all if you're going all high end. Plus the game selection is limited. Sure there's lots of FPS and RTS games, but you won't find any platformers or many A-grade RPGs.

Oh, and as for the PS3's backward compatibility, the smaller HDD versions don't have it at all, the mid-range only have extremely poor software compatibility, and the hardware BC isn't that great either. If you've ever looked at the hardware BC charts you'll notice Sony ranks a game's compatibility from 1 - 5 (I think) and most of them have a rank of 3 or so. Meaning FMVs don't work, etc etc.

Ace your really wrong. The 80GB PS3 has 80% BC which is far, FAR from Extreme Poor especially when the 360 doesn't even support half of the Xbox games. That Hardware BC = not great is a fanboy statement. The 60 and 20GB models had literally 99+% of games working. Only the 80GB has some bc problems, the 60GB is pretty much perfect.

Well a couple of things, the PS3 may have a lot of games working, but most of them don't work properly. If the cutscenes of an RPG don't work because of poor backwards compatibility, then that RPG is useless. And looking at the original backwards compatibility chart that Sony had (which I can't seem to find), that was the case with most of the games. They worked, they just didn't work 100% properly. Oh, and I'd like to make a correction, when factoring in BC I only did so with PS2 games; PS1 games work on all the hardware.

As for the Xbox 360, it has does indeed have half of the original Xbox library working. I've had the numbers checked, the number of games in relation to the percentage and as of the last BC update it equals out to approximately 51%.

 

[ZeWarrior]

Actually the Xbox 360 Core/Arcade model does have HDMI ports now; so it is HD. And the price on the Core is similar enough to the Wii to be a good deal. As for PC, that's the most expensive choice of all if you're going all high end. Plus the game selection is limited. Sure there's lots of FPS and RTS games, but you won't find any platformers or many A-grade RPGs.

Oh, and as for the PS3's backward compatibility, the smaller HDD versions don't have it at all, the mid-range only have extremely poor software compatibility, and the hardware BC isn't that great either. If you've ever looked at the hardware BC charts you'll notice Sony ranks a game's compatibility from 1 - 5 (I think) and most of them have a rank of 3 or so. Meaning FMVs don't work, etc etc.

Ace your really wrong. The 80GB PS3 has 80% BC which is far, FAR from Extreme Poor especially when the 360 doesn't even support half of the Xbox games. That Hardware BC = not great is a fanboy statement. The 60 and 20GB models had literally 99+% of games working. Only the 80GB has some bc problems, the 60GB is pretty much perfect.

Well a couple of things, the PS3 may have a lot of games working, but most of them don't work properly. If the cutscenes of an RPG don't work because of poor backwards compatibility, then that RPG is useless. And looking at the original backwards compatibility chart that Sony had (which I can't seem to find), that was the case with most of the games. They worked, they just didn't work 100% properly. Oh, and I'd like to make a correction, when factoring in BC I only did so with PS2 games; PS1 games work on all the hardware.

As for the Xbox 360, it has does indeed have half of the original Xbox library working. I've had the numbers checked, the number of games in relation to the percentage and as of the last BC update it equals out to approximately 51%.

Most of the games on the 60GB/20GB work flawlessly, compared to the 360 the PS3's Backward Compatibility is pretty damn good. And seriously, is 51% is not really a good number o.0 It's not bad but it's pretty poor. That Chart is old, on update 1.8, I think it was they fixed quite a lot of ps2 games. A lot of games that didn't work on launch now work on the current firmwares. The 80GB is coming a long but still isn't the best.

 

[Ace Gunman]

That Chart is old, on update 1.8, I think it was they fixed quite a lot of ps2 games. A lot of games that didn't work on launch now work on the current firmwares. The 80GB is coming a long but still isn't the best.

Oh the chart has been updated? Well that's where I was mistaken. I didn't realize that they were actively fixing games with the firmware updates. And I had only seen the chart during the early stages of the PS3's release.

 

[cubin']

PC's are very cool but they're just too expensive to keep running the latest games with nice graphics.


If you have the cash shell out for a decent PC. If not grab a 360