I have said most of this before, and I am saying it again with additional thoughts. Publishers are the dinosaurs of the gaming industry, along with books and other forms of entertainment, As evidenced by the success of games like Minecraft and The Witcher 2, sold directly to gamers by the developers, game developers are finding out that bloated corporate entities like EA et al. are becoming irrelevant, at best. The only function they really serve at this point is investment, but for established developers, the baggage that comes along with it is probably not worth it.

Good games market themselves via social networks and sites like Gamespot, and the physical disk in a box is simply a burden rather than an asset. And the sleazy (to put it mildly) platform-exclusivity deals (timed or not) pushed by Microsoft and Sony harm the developers and the customers, and only benefit publishers and console vendors.

Meanwhile, we have Steam on the PC front, which is not perfect, but treats its customers with a degree of respect not found elsewhere in the software industry. Where MS, Sony, EA, etc. are doing their best to limit customer options and choices, Steam is doing what it can to open doors, for example making previously PC-only titles available for Mac, allowing unlimited installs for individual accounts, and hosting user mod content. Oh, and they provide support that should make the rest of thees clowns embarrassed.

And yes, much like the PC game market, digital sales will make the used game question irrelevant, but developers will be able to sell games for much less, and use targeted time-step and location-based pricing to reach the folks who can only afford used games right now.

Dare I say it, perhaps consoles will become irrelevant in the not-too distant future too? How many households that have consoles now don't have PCs? With advances in hardware development, capable gaming PCs are becoming more accessible every day. The complexity of connectivity is already becoming a non-issue, since TVs are becoming more like PCs and everything from the phone to the refrigerator are all becoming part of one home network. When you look at it, a console is just a dumbed-down PC with built-in limitations on what users can do with their (licensed, not owned) content.

Here's to a bright future of creative game development unfettered by the limitations and parasitism of the big publishers and the evil duopoly of Microsoft and Sony. We will not miss them one iota. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Publishers are the dinosaurs of the gaming industry, As evidenced by the success of games like Minecraft and The Witcher 2, sold directly to gamers by the developers, game developers are finding out that bloated corporate entities like EA are becoming irrelevant, at best. The only function they really serve at this point is investment, but for established developers, the baggage that comes along with it is probably not worth it. Good games market themselves via social networks and sites like Gamespot, and the physical disk in a box is simply a burden rather than an asset. And the sleazy (to put it mildly) platform-exclusivity deals pushed by Microsoft and Sony harm the developers and the customers, and only benefit publishers.

And yes, much like the PC game market, digital sales will make the used game question irrelevant, but developers will be able to sell games for much less, and use targeted time-step pricing to reach the folks who can only afford used games right now. Dare I say it, perhaps consoles will become irrelevant in the not-too distant future too? How many households that have consoles now don't have PCs? With advances in hardware development, capable gaming PCs are becoming more accessible every day. The complexity of connectivity is already becoming a non-issue, since TVs are becoming more like PCs and everything from the phone to the refrigerator are all becoming part of one home network.

Here's to a bright future of creative game development unfettered by the limitations and parasitism of the big publishers and the evil duopoly of Microsoft and Sony. We will not miss them one iota. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

The obvious and realistic solution is to provide full game downloads at prices that are significantly less than boxed versions. As long as downloads are just as expensive as boxed versions, the box is a better deal because it can be resold or given away. And obviously the box is much more expensive to create and distribute, so there is no real reason other than greed that downloads should cost the same. But the industry is run by third party publishers. They used to serve an important function, but now they are just parasites feeding on the developer/gamer relationship. And they realize their days are numbered, so they will continue to try to screw customers for every dime they can get their hands on while they can. So no, resales aren't killing the industry, but publishers are actively trying to strangle it to death. The sooner they are rendered extinct, via social networks doing the advertising and game developers selling downloads directly to customers, the sooner the real gaming industry can grow to the next phase, which WILL be a tremendous boon for gamers and developers. Good riddance EA, Sony, MS Games, Activision, etc.; we will not miss you one bit. And by the way, your sleazy platform-exclusivity deals do more to harm the industry than resales ever could.

You can still go online and play the the original Unreal (1998), but they didn't put functionality in the game that prevented users from setting up their own servers and networks. Things are different now in so many ways, and most of it sucks. Kudos to Valve, still providing official (and real) support for the original Half Life (also 1998). And they wonder why gamers prefer Steam over EA or GFWL? There must be some REALLY STUPID decision makers at most of these publishers and content providers. They treat us like we're stupid, but Steam's success argues otherwise.

Mods I currently use: SkyUI http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3863 A Quality World Map - With Roads http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=4929 Breezehome Remodel - Workshop http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=4172 Arrow Smithing Fix IN PROPER MENUS and Imperial Light Armor http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=5520

I will always have a PC in my home, and I don't own a TV, nor do I want one. I also live in an area where connection speeds are mediocre at best, and reliability is often an issue. Cloud may work for some people, but not even close in my situation. Then we also have to ask, where is all of this bandwidth going to come from; not just for cloud gaming, but everything else too? The information pipelines are already almost saturated, and everyone keeps talking about cloud this and streaming that.... Somewhere along the line technology may catch up with our aspirations, but we are not even close yet.

If it's not on PC, I don't play it, since I don't own a console or even a television, nor do I want to. Why would I? There are more than enough excellent PC games to occupy all of the spare time I have for gaming. Note that I am not putting down consoles, I just have no use for them. Television, on the other hand, is a societal cancer.

I pay for my games. But when I install a game from a CD, the first thing I do Is find a fix for the "Disk not in drive " bug. Then I put away the disk and play the game. When I reinstall after formats, upgrades, etc., the disk still works. Too many times I have lost the use of a game because the anti-copy drm makes the disk unreadable for installs after a few minor scratches. So when it comes to Steam, I am pretty satisfied. My only beef is that I cannot uninstall and give away a game when I am done with it. But at least I can still play the games I have bought, even if my house burns down, never mind worrying about scratched disks. As for GFWL, no thanks. Call me paranoid, but having one more Microsoft network program on my computer is something I can live without. I trust Steam because they sell games/apps, and that's all. That is how they make a living, and they need to do it well to survive. If they tried any hanky-panky with peoples machines, they would be screwed. Microsoft, on the other hand, has had a history of doing strange things to try to leverage their advantage in all sorts of markets. Now they are very aggressive on selling games. I have refused to buy GTA4, even though I am dying to play it, because I don't want to forced into that. To be honest, if Steam had written my operating system and they were responsible for patching it, etc., I would probably rather buy games from someone else, so it is not just about Microsoft.

Let the battle rage on! Having one company dominate is bad for buyers. If AMD can offer good price/performance ratios on products competitive with what Intel and Nvidia offer, they will stay in the game. I'm sure more money is made in the upper-midrange niche than the bleeding edge (there is a reason it is called that). The problem for buyers right now is that many have held off on major upgrades knowing that Vista, new GPU's CPU's, Mobo's, memory standards, etc. were coming down the pike. Most of us don't, in fact, buy in on the bleeding edge; we are content to let the impatient do the work of paying too much and debugging new products. But now with the 8800GT's and the 3870's out, the cost of an upgrade has gone down, in theory at least. However, there is a large wave of folks trying to surge into the DX10 world now, so supplies aren't meeting demands, which drives prices up. But the important thing to realize here is that it was competition that opened the floodgates, and further competition will open them even wider. And there are a whole bunch of good new PC games out there right now too. It's almost enough to drive one crazy.

Lots of buzz, but let's see who can make enough cards to meet demand. I am stingy, and I have a hard time swallowing paying $50 more than the msrp for anything.