I think I'll stick with my console and keep telling PC publishers where to stick it. Maybe I should send them pictures of my PC game collection and keep asking why they won't make a game I feel comfortable buying.

That's the thing, if the big PC publishers are doing this, and show no signs of changing, mind you. I'd rather they die, quit feeding them money, let them die. Don't play their games or if you must don't pay for them (that's up to you, I choose to simply abstain since there's quite a bit of good stuff out there that doesn't require activation).

I should note, I buy way fewer games for console, since it's not an ideal platform for 2 genres I really do like a lot (shooter and RTS).

It's not just the publishers it's the developers and the hardware manufacturers. Everyone is trying to kill the PC at the moment. Nvidia and AMD don't care as they make money on the consoles, Intel dont care as they make money on the consoles. ASUS, MSI and other motherboard manufaturers have moved into netbooks so they dont care either.

You may not care about the PC but me? They will drag me kicking and screaming because there is no way in hell i'm buying a console that's based on tech from 2002.

When was the last time you saw either Nvidia or AMD pushing PC gaming hard?

I like the fact Indies are blossoming but they get to a certain size and then "Shit these fucks who have been buying our games are pirating our shit!! We are moving to consoles for the monay."

I don't think console piracy is as low as people think it is. Basically it's the cost of a second console in order to not get caught on your main box (where you care about multi with your buddies or whatever).

I don't do it, but I have 2 XBox 360s in my house, how much does it really cost for a 3rd? PS3 was 250 bucks on Amazon.com (once you factored in the 50 dollar value of the credit, I should say) a few months ago.

Remember how much money that Russian mp3 company was making selling tracks to the US and Europe for 1-2 cents apiece. They eventually got shut down, but the side economy on that site was huge, with retail outlets selling credits to buy songs on that site to people in countries that couldn't buy directly. People often will pay a little money if the payoff seems big enough. All those Arcade titles on XBox Live contain the full game (if you buy it merely downloads an auth), I assume PSN is the same. Their files can be moved from hard drive to hard drive. If indies move to consoles to avoid piracy I think they're living in a dreamworld.

I haven't seen nVidia or ATI pushing gaming hard. No one's producing a game that needs anything beyond the gtx260 or whatever I have in this comp. It's pretty sad, actually.

We could have 300-600 dpi monitors with quad graphics cards by now, but hardware manufacturers aren't on board and neither is established gaming.

And there you have it. Console piracy is far more rampant than on the PC especially on the DS and PSP yet no one does anything about it. Why? The PC is simply that fat guy crying in the corner.

I went to a family camp out once (one that I'm not longer related to). I remember about 6 kids sitting around the campfire, all playing DS, and none of them had anything but a single cart with about 50 pirated games on it. My kid was the only one with any purchased DS games in that whole camp.

There was an interview with Team Meat recently where they said the Xbox360 version of Super Meat Boy sold 200K and the PC version sold 600k and they made far more money from the PC. They decided not to make a Wii version because most Wii games are complete rubbish and any Indie would be on the shelves with all that crap.

800,000 sales at, I assume, an average of 10-12 dollars apiece, wow. That's not bad. I think anyone actually putting out an honest to goodness Crysis today would probably make a mint, no one is doing it, there's been no reason to upgrade a gaming rig in a couple years now. Clearly there's a market for stuff like Super Meat Boy.

Trouble with PC exclusives is no one talks. No figures are available for STALKER even though there were 2 sequels so they clearly made money. I'm still expecting STALKER 4 to be multi-platform. It's not about how much you make on one platform but how much you can make full stop.

The thing is even budget PCs are starting to have more oomph than an XBox 360. The graphics don't look horrid on XBox 360 or anything... until you see something really really nice on PC. No one is doing stuff with PC level textures for monitors with way more pixels than a HD TV.

Why would they? The money is on consoles. Look at the former PC developers who are console devs now and 'may' port games to the PC. Lionhead, EPIC, Rockstar, Volition etc

And yet Super Meat Boy PC outsold its console version by a margin of 3:1. I think it's outdated thinking that causes this, the kind that doesn't produce games like Angry Birds, and yet, Angry Birds exists:)

Fascinating debate. Keep going.

/popcorn

(No, I'm serious. I'm not being facetious.)

I think I lost my debate partner for a few hours:)