Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Is The PC Still The Home Of The FPS?

By John Walker on September 21st, 2010 at 12:47 pm.

FIGHT!

We issue a formal RPS Yay to id’s Tim Willits, and a stern RPS Boo to Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda, with regard toward attitudes to the thriving PC gaming market. Tsunoda made the rather unsubstantiated claim to Game Informer a couple of days ago that “hardly anyone plays first person shooters on the PC any more.” Today Willits told Eurogamer that the PC was still the best place to play the FPS, saying, “In my opinion the PC will always be the core of the gaming industry – it is the timeless stable platform that as developers we will always be able to rely on.”

Tsunoda’s comments are peculiar, in the face of the popularity of everything from Team Fortress 2 to Modern Warfare 2, Counter-Strike to Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead to ArmA 2. His logic is, apparently, that Halo was popular on the 360. Of course, games like MW2 sold massively better on the consoles, but MW2 is not equal to all FPS. Take a look at Steam’s stats to see the hundreds of thousands of people playing FPS games at any time.

Of course, Tsunoda’s comments need to be understood in context: he was hawking Kinect – an exclusive Microsoft Xbox 360 platform. As self-defeating as it may seem, Microsoft really do seem to see game promotion as the exclusive domain of the 360, with the PC left with the horror of Games For Windows Live, despite a near total platform dominance by the megacorp.

Willits’ comments, made to EG this morning, give a very different impression. id, of course, built their company on the PC, and were relatively late to embrace the consoles. And certainly, with people like John Carmack working for the company, they’re aware that the PC is always a significant technological step ahead of its plastic-boxed cousins.

“The PC is still a very viable platform for not only FPS games but also all other genres,” he told the site. “In my opinion the PC will always be the core of the gaming industry – it is the timeless stable platform that as developers we will always be able to rely on. Unlike consoles, the PC doesn’t disappear because one company decided it wasn’t profitable or decided to make a new version. The PC platform is always evolving but staying stable.”

There’s obviously no sensible argument to suggest that the analogue controls of a console – while now a very viable way to play and FPS – can match the mouse for accuracy. Willits agrees:

“The FPS genre is still great on the PC, the input controllers are very responsive, the keyboard allows many more choices and options, and the social networking of the PC allows you to reach out and play with your friends much easier than any of the consoles. Plus, as any hardcore FPS gamer will tell you, the mouse is still the best device for aiming.”

So how about you? There’s no question that the FPS has become an enormously popular format on the consoles, and certainly their market dominance on the PC is a thing of the past. As RPG and RTS dominate PC gaming, the 360 and PS3 certainly have claim for the FPS as their strongest sales. But does this equate to strongest performance? As the consoles reach the grand old age of five, the PC continues to take vast technological strides. Where do you prefer to play your FPS games? Does the precision of the mouse outmatch the simplicity of online gaming of the consoles? Or do you find the controller is now your preferred method of sniping?

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245 Comments »

  1. 21/09/2010 at 12:49 mrmud says:

    kudo can go fuck himself

    BAM! there it is!

    • 21/09/2010 at 17:12 Fred Wester, CEO of Paradox says:

      I approve this message.

    • 21/09/2010 at 17:12 Raum says:

      Upgoat for “BAM!”

      … wait, where the hell am I?

    • 21/09/2010 at 17:33 Dalamar says:

      I seriously doubt he is equipped to pull that off.

    • 21/09/2010 at 19:02 BAReFOOt says:

      Is the PC still the home of FPS? What kind of stupid, attention grabbing, false dichotomy inducing question is that? It’s the ONLY platform for FPS! Full stop. And until consoles become PCs on the outside too*, by getting what’s a MUST for a FPS – a mouse – , it’s gonna stay that way.

      Serious gaming without a PC just is not possible. And if it is, it’s still as stupid as a tricycle with four-wheel drive, a water-tight sun dial, a washing machine with 12 normal and four reverse gears and bread in a can!

      * They are already PCs on the inside: A generic CPU, some vector processing units, a hard drive, a removable drive, some I/O. It’s all there.

    • 21/09/2010 at 19:18 Juror #9 says:

      Holy crap BAReFOOT,

      That was an incredible dichotomy you posted, I laughed my arse off. “Bread in a can”, “Tricycle with 4 wheel drive” “…4 reverse gears on a washing machine”…. fricken genious. All of which describe the idiotic thought of counsols trumping PC’s on FPS play, perfectly.

      Kudos BAReFOOT

    • 21/09/2010 at 19:30 Arthur Barnhouse says:

      I guess I don’t know what you mean when you say that a mouse is required for serious gaming. If you mean for competitive gaming, you’re probably right, but for extended or enjoyable gaming it is not a requirement. I continue to enjoy playing all sorts of FPS games on the PC using a 360 controller, including TF2 and BF:BC2. And lots of games that aren’t shooters are more enjoyable with a controller. The beauty of the PC platform isn’t that you use a mouse, it’s that you get to use a mouse, a controller, or whatever input device you prefer.

    • 21/09/2010 at 23:00 Hidden_7 says:

      You play TF2 on a PC with a controller? Which classes do you play? I’m not judging, it’s just that, TF2 seems like such an old-school PC shooter that when I think about trying to play it with a controller I get a headache. Sniping, constantly checking your back for spies, trick stabs as a spy, distributing healing among a large group, fighting most things as a scout, tracking a scout as a pyro or a heavy, these are all things that would just seem like such a chore to me using a controller. Rocket jumping just seems impossible.

      So yeah, really I’m just curious, how does it work out for you? What sort of roles / classes do you play?

    • 22/09/2010 at 20:04 Arthur Barnhouse says:

      My preferred class is spy, followed closely by Engie, Medic, and, yes, Pyro. These classes do not require a huge amount of precise aiming and I am quite serviceable with several knife tricks. Am I as good on a controller as I am with K + M? No, probably not, but I’m still pretty good, and the controller provides me with a more comfortable experience.

  2. 21/09/2010 at 12:49 Nick says:

    Is that Nathan Barley on the left?

  3. 21/09/2010 at 12:51 Gremmi says:

    The reason MS don’t give a shit about the PC market is because they can’t control it to the same extent as the 360 one, so they can’t earn revenue simply by virtue of someone releasing a game they had nothing to do with.

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:18 mandrill says:

      This. Why do you think windows doesn’t really support OpenGL and DirectX dominates the PC games market? Its all about control.

    • 21/09/2010 at 18:05 Malibu Stacey says:

      It’s not Window’s place to support OpenGL, it’s the graphics card manufacturers job. For OpenGL to work all it needs is a properly written driver. This is no different to DirectX.

      If you actually knew any history of games development you’d know that DirectX dominates the market at present as it evolved quicker than OpenGL because Microsoft were able to throw time & money at it. OpenGL, by virtue of being an open API standard, was hamstrung in this regard as GPU technology moved at a great pace during the last 15 years. Now that GPU tech is pretty much mature, OpenGL has had time to be updated to the point where it can compete on a level playing field with DirectX.

    • 21/09/2010 at 19:06 BAReFOOt says:

      @Stacey: How did it happen then, that OpenGL was so much slower in Vista, no matter the graphics card?
      It had nothing to do with the driver. It was Vista. And probably all that bus-DRM going on inside its rotten, disgustingly stinking core.

    • 21/09/2010 at 19:32 DrGonzo says:

      Because OpenGL isn’t very good and is in genreal slower than Directx.

    • 21/09/2010 at 20:57 toro says:

      Not really.

      OpenGL was doing alot of “correct” rendering, that’s why it was and is still used massively in the CAD industry. On the other hand, DX is targeted for games, which means speed and a lot of hacks.

      And the second reason is that Microsoft put a wrapper over the OpenGL in Vista and guess what: there is a speed penalty. There was also a miserable campaign from Microsoft, which initially “revoked” the support of OpenGL in Vista and they delayed the announcement of OpenGL support until the last moments before the Vista release.

      Sorry for my engrish, but I’m tired.

    • 21/09/2010 at 23:29 Salem5 says:

      I get the feelin, that XBOX* is trying to kill of the PC. XNA and Games for Windows live could be more i.e.
      What that lunatic Kudo Tsunoda says doesn’t help either.

  4. 21/09/2010 at 12:54 Rii says:

    It’s no secret that consoles drive the FPS genre today, and the trend can be observed in the design of the games themselves. Twitch is out, situational awareness is out. The playing field is compressed vertically. UT/Q3-esque mechanics requiring the player to pirouette in middair are out. The games are moulded according to their control setups. There’s certainly no end of excellent FPS games which can be done on consoles, but you’ll never see something like Ricochet on there.

    • 21/09/2010 at 12:57 Nick says:

      I just wish we didn’t have to have gun models sticking out of our fucking ears. Thanks Valve for doing that with Left4Dead2 for no reason at all.

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:38 Enekk says:

      @Nick, I have no idea what you are saying. Please clarify.

    • 21/09/2010 at 16:00 Nick says:

      As in the hands holding the guns in an FPS coming out of the side of the screen at ear level in a weird and unnatural angle. It really annoys me. Its worse in some games where the guns are also so big they obscure a large portion of the right hand side of the screen or their muzzle flash goes over the crosshair because of their height.

      Look at screenshots of L4D1 vs 2 and notice the difference in placement. I find it distracting and asthetically displeasing, not the worst cases being the pistols and the silanced submachine gun which look utterly stupid.

    • 21/09/2010 at 16:40 Heliosicle says:

      BFBC2 has this problem as well, the default FOV is about 50 degrees, meaning that your gun takes up 1/3 of the screen. Increasing the FOV to 75 means that the gun takes up a lot less space and the game is a lot more playable.

    • 21/09/2010 at 18:10 Malibu Stacey says:

      Yeah I hate how you can use the “Field of View” option to increase the FOV from 75 up to 90 in Source Engine 2009 games….
      oh wait.

    • 21/09/2010 at 20:00 DrGonzo says:

      I noticed absolutely no problem with Lef4dead and never noticed a difference in Left4Dead 2 other than that the weapon models and animations seemed a lot better. So if anything I would say the opposite to you.

    • 21/09/2010 at 22:34 Nick says:

      Please note FoV has no effect at all and is nothing to do with it.

      There is also nothing wrong with the weapon models, it is their placement.

    • 22/09/2010 at 02:37 Ganders says:

      They added a console command to change the weapon model fov in l4d2 a few months ago. Should be ” cl_viewmodelfovsurvivor “

    • 25/09/2010 at 01:47 Nick says:

      would have been nice if they did it while I still played the game, but oh well.

  5. 21/09/2010 at 12:55 sexyresults says:

    Almost, but not as good, as Bobby Kotick saying there are no high quality indie developers left outside of bungie.

  6. 21/09/2010 at 12:57 Rinox says:

    I think anyone who has ever played a pure-blood shooter on a console with gamepad and then on a PC with mouse+keyboard knows that mouse+keyboard wins hands down. It’s so unbelievably clunky and imprecise to play shooters on a gamepad, ugh. No wonder they need aim assistance. It just sucks when you see shooters that were developed for console ported to PC and every weapon is absolutely impossible to aim precisely with without auto-aim. It’s becoming a stock feature (like wall-stickiness for cover). :-(

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:00 Rinox says:

      Also: it’s hard to take anything a silly man who wears huge sunglasses indoor all the time seriously.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:10 sexyresults says:

      They look disturbingly similar to what I see a lot of girls wear around. We call them ranga bands around these parts.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:10 duncanthrax says:

      Agreed.

      Oversized sunglasses = Instant douchebag

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:22 subedii says:

      Hey now! You just hurt JC Denton’s feelings!

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:35 Chaz says:

      When I first started playing FPS games like Doom and Duke on my old 486 all I used to use were the keys. The cursor keys for moving about, space bar for fire etc, can’t remember the first FPS I started using a mouse with. Anyway all besides the point, being both a PC gamer and a console gamer I can definitely say that the mouse and key board is better, but that is not to say that using a pad is bad or unweildy.

      The biggest thing I find that makes a difference is often not the controller but the game itself. Far Cry 2 on the 360 for instance was great, the controls felt natural and precise and there wasn’t too much in the way of auto aim, in fact you could just turn it off if you wanted to, which I did. As regards auto aim, I think you’ll find a lot of PC shooters have it as an option too, and has been a default on option in most FPS games for many many years, so it’s not just a there for consoles thing. Any how other games on the other hand might have a rather poor control setup, forcing you to tap the sticks in order to try get a precise aim on smaller targets. However I’ve experienced the same sort of problems in PC FPS games in the past, where you can’t quite get your aim point on the target where you want it, a little nudge on the mouse just moving the pointer just a little bit too much to the left or right.

      At the end of the day, if a game has had it’s control scheme properly taylored for it’s specific platforms, then it shouldn’t really matter.

  7. 21/09/2010 at 13:01 Pandaemonius says:

    I suspect responses may be a bit biased towards PC on this site. Somehow.

    The first and last time I tried an FPS on console (for more than a minute) was Goldeneye. By all accounts it was a great game at the time, but I just could not deal with the controls. I have been handed the controller for others since then, but gave up quickly for the same reasons.

    Also, who edited this article? Did we need to read the first quotation from Willits twice?

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:16 John Walker says:

      I did. And yes you do. You barely pay any attention, and it’s the only way I can get through to you.

      And the second time was in context, after pulling it for the opening, you giant fussy whingebag.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:20 Rich says:

      You fool! You’ve invoked the wrath of The Walker. We will all burn for your blasphemy.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:22 Urael says:

      Pandaemonius, from now on every time I see a comment from you I’m going to be thinking “Giant, fussy whingebag”. Perhaps you should change your name to spare us all the mental effort. :)

      Sterling put-down, John!

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:26 Pandaemonius says:

      Ah good. Thanks for clearing that up. There I was, thinking it was senseless repetition. I suppose this is why you are the professional writer, whilst I am just a nitpicker in the peanut gallery.

      Forgive me, oh magnificent Walker!

      It is a good sentence. I’m glad I read it so much. Although that hyphen should really be a semicolon; Willits need to learn how to punctuate his speaking properly!

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:29 SuperNashwan says:

      The First Plague Of Walker is the Plague Of Tears and we shall all drown neath his salty judgement.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:24 Lilliput King says:

      Senseless repetition? Senseless repetition?!

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:21 Gunsmith AKA NanosuitNinja says:

      I fucking love you guys.

      now come clear this coffee off my keyboard.

  8. 21/09/2010 at 13:01 Dominic White says:

    This comments thread is going to be a massive stream of denial and elitism, so lets just get the facts out of the way before we go into paranoid meltdown mode, huh?

    As much as I love my PC, and use it for most of my shooty-related gaming, the numbers do seem to favor consoles by a large margin. The other night, there were almost half a million people simultaneously online and playing Halo: Reach (myself being one of them), and that’s just a single major release on a single console.

    Now the PS3 has the Move controller (which is arguably more fun than a mouse, even if it’s not QUITE as pinpoint accurate, it’s definitely a huge improvement over a gamepad), I may well migrate even more of my shootybangazap games to console-toys.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:06 poop says:

      cool cya bye toodles

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:09 Rinox says:

      I don’t think it’s elitist or denial to say that FPS shooters (real ones, not on rail or with aiming assistance) play better with mouse+keyboard than on a gamepad.

      I have an Xbox controller for my PC and use it for all sorts of sports games and action/platformers with a console inclination. They tend to be better than the PC controls for that. But FPS? Fuck no.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:11 sexyresults says:

      IGN is thata way ——->

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:15 The Hammer says:

      I, er, don’t think anyone’s going to be arguing that FPSes ARE more popular on the console these days, Dom. That isn’t the argument at hand at all. But still, thanks for showing the middle finger to those hypothetical paranoid elitists! Keep that moral crusade against people who may or may not exist going!

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:15 Rich says:

      What if Halo: Reach were actually released on the PC, on the same day the Xbox 360?

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:16 Dominic White says:

      See, I even point out that I play most of my shooters on the PC, but the slightest suggestion that consoles might have any kind of advantage (even if it’s purely in terms of market saturation) gets nothing but derision.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:17 sexyresults says:

      Not so much the argument/point more the way you came across saying it.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:20 torchedEARTH says:

      I find the mouse too precise after console gaming. It’s more akin to playing a point and click adventure.

      My console controller feels more like holding a gun with a trigger.

      I know the elitists will disagree.

      It all boils down to buying a piece of kit for around 2-300 groats that will see you for the next 3-4 years, or 8-1200 groats that will need more money spent on it to get through those same 3-4 years.

      Money is tight people, and because of that, the console will take over.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:20 poop says:

      I have a natural compulsion to call people assholes when they call PC gamers elitist idiots who are Living In The Past who Just Cant Deal with how PC gaming is dieing sorry big dom

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:25 Kazz says:

      It wouldn’t sell very well and they would no doubt think that every PC gamer is actually playing it because we’re all filthy pirates.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:27 Kazz says:

      Doh! was @ Rich

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:30 ReV_VAdAUL says:

      Beta was the superior format but VHS won out. In the mid 90s Sony claiming VHS was the most popular way to watch home movies wouldn’t be lying. Claiming it was the best way would be a lie, but not pointing out it was more popular.

      So in the same way the PC is better for FPS gaming but it isn’t the most popular.

      @Dominic White: Your assertion about the Move making you favour the PS3 for FPSes makes you a rank fool good sir. Until console FPS multiplayer games force you to download sound files from Unreal Tournament and Warcraft 3 upon joining they just wont have the same ambience or enjoyability.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:30 Koozer says:

      The cost argument never sits well with me. I only get a new PC every 3-4 years for around £600. The Xbox 360 is 5 years old, costs £300 and shows no signs of going anywhere for a while. My PC is roughly ten million times more powerful than my 360 and doesn’t cost me £10 a month for the privilege of multiplayer. Everything else is a matter of taste so I’ll leave it there.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:31 kupocake says:

      It is undeniable that the numbers are there, (and anyone denying them is a fool) but Kudo was effectively saying people have deserted the PC FPS in favour of the consoles, leaving ‘no-one playing’. That market is as big and as profitable as it ever was, he’s just willing to admit that as soon as something even more lucrative appears…

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:35 Rich says:

      “It all boils down to buying a piece of kit for around 2-300 groats that will see you for the next 3-4 years, or 8-1200 groats that will need more money spent on it to get through those same 3-4 years. ”

      Damn, I was going to jump on you then. I thought you were going for the “you need to spend 2-3 grand” argument, which was valid about 15 years ago.
      Still, the £1000 mark is a bit steep. I’m looking at cannibalising the few up to date parts of my machine and only spending about £5-600 to build a monster. Something you can’t do on a console I might add. If MS released an Xbox3 (720?) tomorrow, you’d be screwed.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:36 Nick says:

      I think its your instant launching into cries of elitism when there wasn’t any is what caused the derision.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:37 Jake says:

      I agree with torchedEARTH, I like the handicap of playing with a gamepad sometimes, it feels less like you are just clicking on heads and more like you are firing a gun. Although some games using pads can feel a bit floaty. I now pretty much decide on a case-by-case basis which feels more fun to play, for example I played all of Borderlands with pad despite it being harder to be accurate, it just felt more rewarding to me. Nowadays I only play on PC but once I was a dirty Halo player and grew to love the analogue stick headshot.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:38 Nathan says:

      As someone thoroughly in love with PC FPSs, as well as the Playstation and Move, I really don’t think that Move offers any sort of renaissance in console FPS titles. Whilst I’ve not played the MAG Move patch, from experience with Shoot the Move feels much more like a lightgun with a navigation controller to make it less on-rails. I don’t think we’ll ever see, say, the next COD making serious use of it.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:46 The Hammer says:

      “See, I even point out that I play most of my shooters on the PC, but the slightest suggestion that consoles might have any kind of advantage (even if it’s purely in terms of market saturation) gets nothing but derision.”

      If you think that’s derision, look at your first comment. If you’re going to take the moral high ground before anyone’s even taken the low ground, then prepare to be shot down.

      ANYWAY. Unfortunate comparison made by Mr Tsunoda, especially as, as others have said, Microsoft’s message about the PC is confused and unwieldy. If these are the words of someone towing the party line (and not casting aspersions on a platform he knows little about while advertising his own product) then this great MS-on-PC resurgence being promised is likely going to be confined to reviving old RTS and simulator titles, and official ports of hit Xbox games to PC, like Fable III.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:06 Skurmedel says:

      I’ve played on both consoles and PC extensively, and I prefer PC. I can’t imagine TF2 playing like it does on PC on console. And many console-targeted FPS’ are very flat, not extremely, but CoD 4 for example was quite flat in multiplayer.

      It’s not that it is unplayable, or even boring. Just not as good. If the consoles grew a mouse and a keyboard (you can on PS3 for example) then half the issue is gone. I mean, most FPS’ use autoaim in their console incarnations, not much but some.

      The other issue being matchmaking, which is quite annoying as well. I seem to end up with a texan half the time and everything is very laggy.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:09 sexyresults says:

      I love how he mocks all the potential commenters, insults them, proceeds to list the ‘facts’ that are pretty much his opinion. Oh and then comes back after we have a go at him to say ‘SEE TOLD YA’.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:29 poop says:

      Dominic white will proudly defend even the stinkiest of trash from imagined elitists forever on internet forums if he likes it its just what he does

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:31 DiamondDog says:

      Congratulations Dom on a wonderful bit of trolling. Start of your argument with a pointless insult and then immediately go on the defensive.

      Yes you’re right, you will get an angry reaction to wafer-thin arguments. Apart from numbers of players, what are those console advantages?

      For what it’s worth I think PC gamers can get a little overly sensitive about this kind of stupid statement, noone should really give a shit what Kudo thinks.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:51 Dominic White says:

      Allow me to rephrase, as I clearly came off giving the wrong impression.

      ‘Nobody plays FPS’s on the PC’ and ‘Kinect will ensure Microsoft control of the future’ are two bits of marketing bullshit that only a PR guy could come up with. However, to ignore both wholesale is folly, as there are greater truths beneath them.

      The majority of FPS’s played ARE on consoles now, and this number is likely going to continue. Also, there are a new generation of hybrid motion/pointer controllers coming out that will do a lot to undermine mouse & keyboard as the one-and-only controller for FPS, RTS and other such usually PC-centric genres. This could well further erode PC market share, as the core argument that ‘PC games control better’ evaporates.

      There’s still a large PC FPS/RTS scene, but unless something changes soon, it could well start seeing significant losses as more and more studios move over to consoles. And as someone who loves their mods and freedom to tweak the hell out of things, this would be a bad thing. I would like to see more multiplatform support, though, but unless it’s obvious that they’re profitable, it won’t happen.

    • 21/09/2010 at 16:04 Skurmedel says:

      I hardly see how Wii can be called an improvement over keyboard and mouse either. It’s much better than a gamepad but still quite clunky. Maybe a Move lightgun will be better…

    • 21/09/2010 at 16:10 Dominic White says:

      As I’ve said the Wii/Move controllers aren’t quite as fast and precise as a mouse, but they’re close, and are generally a lot more fun and tactile to use. The market is driven by what people buy, and the days of hyper-twitchy arena shooters like Quake 3 that relied on high-DPI mice are long gone.

    • 21/09/2010 at 17:08 bob_d says:

      @Dominic White: I doubt the Move and Kinect are going to undermine much of anything. All the consoles have motion-based controllers now, but they’re all different from each other. Given that AAA console games are generally so expensive that the user base for each console usually isn’t big enough to support those games (thus multi-platform releases), there’s no incentive to make a game tied into one particular motion controller. So what we’re likely to see is Wii-level (low-graphics, lower-budget) games being released on each platform (many of which are based on simple gimmicks), or multi-platform games with half-hearted support for each motion controller bodged in. What you’re not going to see are games that utilize all the potential of any of the motion-controllers by integrating them into the core gameplay in meaningful ways. In other words, the keyboard & mouse and traditional game controller will still hold sway due to the virtue of their universality.

    • 21/09/2010 at 18:51 Clovis says:

      Why when motion controls get added to a console do you always end up with FPSs being handled as “light gun” games?? I guess it seems natural, but wouldn’t it better to just treat the motion controller as a mouse? If Move is really accurate, then this should work. You don’t normally “aim the gun” in an FPS, you aim your head while the character aims the gun in the direction you are looking. I found using a crosshair on the screen to be pretty fiddly. Why not just move the camera when I move my, err, Move? Shouldn’t that work?* It also solve the “how do I move my character now? How do I turn my head” problems. Pointing at the edge of the screen is awful.

      Anyway, with good enough motion controllers you should be able to get almost exactly the same accuracy as a mouse if they handle it like this. In fact, you might even get equal accuracy if you’re willing to move your had over a wider area since you don’t have to keep it on a table.

      * Oh, you’d need a way to “pick up your mouse” though to turn fully. I guess you’d have to hold a button.

    • 21/09/2010 at 19:09 UW says:

      “Money is tight people, and because of that, the console will take over.”

      That seems like false economy to me.

      First of all, the hardware that games demand has not be going up as steeply as it used to (Probably due to the fact that consoles are a bigger industry now), so a gaming computer will last for a decent amount of time. The computer I currently use was about £800 when I built it and still plays pretty much all games on nearly the highest settings. Even if in a year or two I start having to turn things down to medium, it’ll probably still look better than whatever the consoles are offering.

      Secondly, PC games tend to be a lot cheaper. DLC and updates are quite often free or a lot less money than on consoles, and there aren’t any ongoing fees to worry about.

      Finally, and possibly most importantly, people buy computers ALL THE TIME and don’t play games on them. They might buy a computer that’s “good spec” but not really know why, and end up just using it for Facebook, then go into the other room and play on their XBox. They have capable hardware but just aren’t making the most of it.

      Almost everyone has a computer of some sort and I hear people talking about upgrading or buying a new one constantly just because it’s running a bit slow. They’re already willing to pay enough to get a respectable gaming machine as it is, so why not buy it with the intention of gaming?

      To me the idea that PC gaming is too expensive and that getting a machine powerful enough to game on costs huge amounts of money is quickly becoming a fallacy. Most people have computers and spend a lot of money on them as it is, and let’s not forget that a computer isn’t just for playing games on anyway. I for one was always going to have a PC, might as well spend a little bit more time and money and make it capable of playing games as well.

      The £300 vs. £800 argument just doesn’t fly with me anymore at all. If you ask anyone buying a PC whether six or seven hundred pounds is unreasonable or out of their price range, most people will say no. If they go out and buy a console as well, they’ve already spend nearly a grand when they could have bumped up their spec a little bit and got a gaming platform for what is ultimately less money.

    • 21/09/2010 at 19:11 UW says:

      I should mention I bought this £800 PC in 2007, otherwise there isn’t really much context there…

  9. 21/09/2010 at 13:02 Richard Beer says:

    I just bought Halo Reach on the 360, but only because my PC is packed away in storage for various boring reasons. I honestly do not think I’ll ever be comfortable with a gamepad for an FPS title after having been raised on Doom, Quake, Counter-Strike etc. The potential for agility and accuracy just isn’t there.

  10. 21/09/2010 at 13:02 Archonsod says:

    If it wasn’t for DirectX I suspect Microsoft’s dominance on the home PC would be ripe for a challenge. Just come up with an OS dedicated to gaming which can translate the DirectX calls efficiently and bam …

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:28 Tei says:

      DirectX was created not to help PC games, but to stop people from use standards like OpenGL that make games automatically multiplatform. With DirectX microsoft achieved one thing: stop games from running in all platforms but his.

      Almost all game dev’s are in love with DirectX, and is not reasonable to expect this change in 15 years. Hell… Microsoft can start asking money for using DX, and the game devs will start paying it. *hint* *hint* *hint*

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:36 Drexer says:

      Actually DirectX is a necessity for Microsoft to hold its grounds. even now(as it has been seen from the Valve ports) OpenGL easily achieves most of the graphical prowess of DirectX. DirectX is the golden chain that Microsoft uses to tie gamers to Windows, and if they stopped supporting it they would find themselves at quite a loss very rapidly.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:38 Rich says:

      Thank you Valve for breaking away from Direct X reliance.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:39 Baboonanza says:

      To be fair, ever since about version 7 DirectX has been a VASTLY superior platform for game development than OpenGL. Partly this is because it’s more used and thus gets better driver support, but even taking that into account it still offers more and better feature support.

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:08 Mithrandir0x says:

      I think you’re quite misleaded as how OpenGL operates, Baboonanza.

      Please, start by looking at these:

      http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX

      Then find some other posts from the same blog extending this matter.

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:12 tanith says:

      @Baboonanza
      Uh, care to elaborate, please?
      If I’m not mistaken OpenGL 4.2 should be en par with DirectX11.

      From personal experience the people I spoke to said that they found OpenGL easier to program for than DirectX.

  11. 21/09/2010 at 13:04 AndrewC says:

    Mouse movement isn’t aiming – it’s just pointing. Controllers are too sluggish, with games having to be designed around their limitations.

    It is obvious that the very best FPS control scheme is the sadly maligned light gun, with movement controlled with a joystick up your bum.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:08 Dominic White says:

      Lightgun + joystick, you say? That’s pretty much the Wii Remote + Nunchuck or PS3 Move + Nav. You point lightgun-style to aim with one hand, and have an analogue stick with a set of buttons on the other.

      And y’know what? I like it much more than mouse/keyboard. It’s still not quite as crazy-snappy in terms of movement, but actually scoring a perfect headshot feels more ‘real’ when you’ve got your arm outstretched and your hand trembling.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:14 AndrewC says:

      I’m always *this* close to buying a Wii, but would like them to make a few more games for it. I’m quite happy for the baddies to be fluffy ducks and things just, you know, not a party game please.

      The PS3 has a increasing number of odd, left-field and ‘indie’ games. It’s quite the sexy platform.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:23 Dominic White says:

      Oh, and for the record, before anyone asks why I’m shilling for Microsoft or somesuch, I think the Kinect looks pretty terrible from the demos they’ve showed so far – its functionality as a game controller is VERY questionable. Until some solid major releases support it, and well, I’ll remain unconvinced.

      Nintendo and Sony seem to have nailed the motion-controller stuff, though.

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:16 EthZee says:

      See, I’d agree with this. I do love the light-gun + analogue control scheme. Resident Evil 4 on the Wii was a revelation, truly fun to play.

      That said, obviously for accuracy’s sake the mouse wins out. But using the light gun is fun.

      BTW, I didn’t realise that they were patching Move support in for MAG? I never bought that game but now it’s looking quite tempting.

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:49 Azradesh says:

      The thing with using a Lightgun/Move/Wiimote to play FPSs is that it’s just far more tiring. The M+K combo gives you the accuracy along with a place to rest your arms. (If your desk is a nice size)

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:55 Dominic White says:

      I’ve found an arm-rest on a sofa is more than enough. You don’t have to wave either controller about – you just point by turning your wrist.

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:59 AndrewC says:

      You’re not doing much for the stereotype of pc gamers as being a touch…unfit. Both of you.

      If i had motion control i’d fill my room with bean bags and leap about singing the A Team tune. I couldn’t play for hours on end but, you know, who’d care?

    • 21/09/2010 at 20:54 Muzman says:

      Fellas, don’t misquote the man. You’re missing the essential ingredient. It’s not “Lightgun;Joystick” it’s “Lightgun;Joystick;Arsehole” (Which I think is what the Alpha version of RPS was called)

    • 22/09/2010 at 03:09 Carolina says:

      @ AndrewC

      I never tried playing with a controller in my ass, but having the Wii, the 360 and the PS3, I still find the WASD + Mouse combo way more comfortable for playing FPS games.

      By the way, I’d avise you against buying a Wii if you don’t like party games. There is hardy anyhing worthwhile on the Wii besides that.

      And about the PS3, personally, I think it’s a horrible piece of hardware. Long installs required without any noticeable advantage —in fact, most multiplatform games look better on the 360—, a seriously week GPU, and the most uncomfortable joysticks on the market. I’m holding onto it only because I have high hopes for The Last Guardian.

      Sure, you have Uncharted 2. That’s a good game. But God of War 3, MGS4 and Heavy Rain are way overrated in my opinion.

  12. 21/09/2010 at 13:06 Cooper says:

    Re: Microsoft. They do support games through things like DirectX (wthout which I think many gamers would have already switched away from Windows)

    But they’re bloody useless at pushing Windows as a games platform – given that it’s the most varied, most used and most owned base for playing games on, you’d think they’d have gone for it.

    But then again, with their near Monopoly, they just don’t need to. Hopefully other games will go the way of 40K and they’ll realise they can’t get away with the shoddiness of GfWL

  13. 21/09/2010 at 13:06 Koozer says:

    Hilarious EG comment of the day: console controllers are more realistic than a keyboard and mouse. If I saw someone genuinely moving how your character does using a controller I’d assume they had some kind of motor neuron disease, what with the jerky movements pointing them in a vague estimation of where they want to look.

    On the other hand, I’d be quite worried if I saw someone able to spin round five times a second on the spot, and only have two speeds of movement in eight directions.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:37 Simon Dufour says:

      HAHA.. exactly that. I remember reading that Microsoft did a test to allow multiplayer between PC and XBox at some point. They abandonned the idea because it seems it was totally unfair. I don’t know if RPS published the article… I just searched on google for it.

      http://www.geek.com/articles/games/microsoft-cans-pcxbox-360-live-crossover-gaming-20100722/

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:25 Malibu Stacey says:

      Have you seen how dumbed down the control systems for cross platform games are from the PC to the console. VALVe games show it most since they’re PC first & console second. Go watch the trailers for “The Passing” DLC for L4D2 linked elsewhere on this here site. The ones recorded on XBOX 360 are very obvious. The console controllers need developer coded assistance just to be able to play the game to any basic level where as the PC the game is easy even on Advanced (Expert is a bit of a challenge in some maps) due to being able to aim & move simultaneously.

  14. 21/09/2010 at 13:07 Urael says:

    Can we really claim the PC to be more stable than the consoles, taking GFX upgrades and successive OS and DirectX iterations into account? Not to mention the enormous array of hardware variations, all broadly similar but not 100%? How many games pre-2000 (The year, not the OS) still work in Windows 7 without programming assistance/tweaking with compatibility modes/emulation?

    The MS nugget is clearly pursuing an agenda so can immediately be discounted (or reported to the PC Games Alliance, lol) but personally I prefer my FPS-ing on the PC. You tend not to get all the programming ‘help’ that console FPS’s provide to players to make up for the deficiency of the controllers, making for a more raw experience. If you didn’t shoot the guy it’s because you failed to aim the shot correctly, not because the auto-aim calculated that shot in his general direction wasn’t going to hit him.

    Play S.T.A.L.K.E.R on a console? Oh god, no. I did have fun with Doom on the PS1, however. The shoulder button-strafe worked a treat and it helped not having to aim up or down.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:10 Bob Bobson says:

      More stable, from a developer’s business model point of view. Someday, possibly fairly soon, this generation of consoles will be obsolete. Games made for them will be obsolete (at least as far as retailer are concerned). But the PC will chug along in the background, nice, stable and evolving in a very slow and stately fashion.

      This is not the same as stable for the gamer whose graphics card interferes with the latest sound driver to create a race condition whenever an imp dies while obscured by the cursor.

    • 21/09/2010 at 18:33 markcocjin says:

      Yes the PC is more stable. Console gamers think in the sense that their games will definitely play on their console. Yes that is true. But does their Halo 1 play on their XBox 360? Can Windows 7 play the original Doom?

      Your console is only stable for at least 5 years. When you break your obsolete console, who are you going to get to repair it? Where are you getting the parts? What if Microsoft stops supporting your Halo 2 multiplayer? Oh yeah right because most console kids have just started to play games.

  15. 21/09/2010 at 13:14 Heliocentric says:

    Lego Batman Arkham Asylum and GTA4 both taught me that in a single player game controller agnostism is a lovely thing.

    But in a multiplayer game? Games need to be tuned with a controller expectation.

    Unless its turn based, then you can go hog wild.

  16. 21/09/2010 at 13:16 bansama says:

    Kudo was hawking that Kinnect system at the Tokyo Game Show was he not? So it’s no surprise that he’s making wild claims like that. Microsoft, like almost all of the large publishers in Japan (and certainly all the console makers) like to pretend that the PC does not exist.

    For Microsoft this is doubly important as they are finding it almost impossible to be taken seriously here anyhow, so they really don’t want people realising that PC gaming is thriving in any genre, let alone one that really fits the PC better than any console system currently out there.

    Thus I expect, had he been hawking this new novelty device of there’s at any other game show, this comment would not have been made.

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:03 Jetsetlemming says:

      “Nobody really plays porn games on the PC anymore” – Microsoft, at the announcement of their new 360-exclusive dating sim

  17. 21/09/2010 at 13:17 andytizer says:

    Since Halo on the Xbox, the mainstream FPS has moved to the console. This is because the couch is a way more comfortable place to play games than at the desk. However most people don’t realize that you can play PC FPS games on your TV from your couch very comfortably.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:19 Dominic White says:

      I traded in my desk for a comfy sofa quite some time ago. HDTV-as-monitor + wireless mouse/keyboard is perfectly acceptable.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:24 andytizer says:

      Yes, piping your PC to the sofa is definitely one of the little known advantages of PC gaming.

      Once you compare the Xbox 360 and PC versions of Mass Effect 2 or MW2 on the same TV there is no contest as to which one is better.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:35 StingingVelvet says:

      Maybe it’s because I don’t work in an office, but I never understood this comment. I have a really comfortable office chair and am very comfortable playing games at my desk. Plus I have great headphones and a room to myself, which helps with getting immersed in the game.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:47 Huggster says:

      Its not even that – if you have a family, a “computer room” or “study” is a cave to escape to where you can play Amnesia: Dark Descent.
      The lounge with 37″ plasma is for watching shows with family and socialising, not playing Red Dead on ans Xbox whilst my wife and stepdaughter bore a hole in the side of my head because they want to watch Sex and the City.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:40 Urthman says:

      I can understand kicking back on the couch for a third-person game, but for a first-person game, sitting up close to the monitor is so much more immersive. It makes you feel like you have more peripheral vision.

      It’s like the difference looking out the windshield of a car from the front seat instead of the back seat.

  18. 21/09/2010 at 13:17 rocketman71 says:

    I can only say that Kudo Tsunoda looks like Risto Mejide. That’s a big insult. And a deserved one.

  19. 21/09/2010 at 13:20 RobH says:

    The only place I’d ever play a FPS is on the PC, because it’s just SO much better there.

  20. 21/09/2010 at 13:23 Tei says:

    Wen I look to a console FPS screen, I feel I have to puke.

    I don’t know if is the low framerate (30 FPS) combined with the excess of use of blur + DoF + Bloom, the tasteless gameplay, or the really small levels to cope with almost nil RAM capacity of a console.

    Please, look at this, and tell me this looks “good”
    http://zerror.com/unorganized/crap/strangerenders/uglyrender.png

    Maybe consoles are popular, but is the “fast food” option.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:53 Cael says:

      You hit almost everything here. The only thing I would add to this is the ultra low FOV that the console generation pioneered for increasing framerates. Playing a FPS with 60/70 FOV actually makes me feel physically uneasy.

  21. 21/09/2010 at 13:25 jalf says:

    @Urael: I can run 20 year old games on my PC. So yes, it is stable. Some require tweaking, or Dosbox or the like, *and so what*? It is possible to play old games on a PC. Good luck trying to get your NES game to run on your Wii.

    But even if I couldn’t run pre-2000 games on my PC at all, it’d *still* be stable. Changes happen, yes, but unlike on a console, they’re smooth. At any given year, a PC is able to play games from the last 5 years or so. It is never abruptly reset, like consoles are every generation. The PC is one long gradual progression, which does give developers a lot of stability. Any time you release a PC game, you can be sure it’ll be playable for several years. If you release a console game, it’ll only be playable until the console is replaced by the next generation, which could happen a month later.

    If it wasn’t for DirectX I suspect Microsoft’s dominance on the home PC would be ripe for a challenge. Just come up with an OS dedicated to gaming which can translate the DirectX calls efficiently and bam …

    Ah, because Windows does so inefficiently?

    I love the good old “if only there was a gaming OS” cliche, because it’s so uninformed and, well, wrong.
    It’s not like Windows magically eats up 60% of your hardware resources in order to do things you don’t need.

    It does eat up *some* resources, yes, to provide important services that the game you’re running needs. A “gaming OS” would have to do the exact same thing. The DirectX calls *are* translated efficiently. DirectX and your GPU driver take care of that together. It isn’t rerouted through MS Office or something as you seem to imply. Windows doesn’t insert a lot of cruft with the sole purpose of slowing things down, believe it or not.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:48 rxtx says:

      Your argument doesn’t make any sense. If I buy a console I’m guaranteed to be able to play games from within a 5 year timeframe, which can be either side of the time I buy it. If I buy it at the start of its lifetime I get 5 years going forwards, if I buy it at the end I get 5 years going back. If I buy it in the middle I get 2.5 years either side. Its exactly the same, except that the console won’t need upgrading halfway through its life.

      You also blatantly ignore that lots of consoles have backwards compatibility

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:25 Starky says:

      I still have my MegaDrive (Genesis for you yanks) it works…
      I don’t need to patch, or mod, or work around I just plug those plastic thingies in and they work.

      Ironically though I don’t – I play all my Sega games emulated on my PC also…

      Hell that is a good point actually – the PC is by far the most stable platform, because the PC can play ALL other platforms emulated too – eventually.

    • 21/09/2010 at 16:45 Dominic White says:

      Irony: I can run 10-year-old console games on my PC, but many 10-year-old PC games are just plain incompatible.

  22. 21/09/2010 at 13:25 nine says:

    I understand we are a PC gaming site here, but do we really “boo” people for telling unpopular truths? You quote BF:BC2 as one of your examples, but remember the PC had 33% of the market. Sure it’s equal with one of the consoles, but only half their total size.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:27 Jim Rossignol says:

      Kudo: “hardly anyone plays first person shooters on the PC any more.”

      I think that’s worth calling out whatever the allegiance of the site. It’s nonsense.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:42 Rich says:

      Damn straight.

      Kudo might have said “hardly anyone plays first person shooters on the PC any more.” but what he meant was “hardly anyone plays our most successful first person shooters, all but two of which are exclusive to our console, on the PC any more… so give us money.”

  23. 21/09/2010 at 13:26 poop says:

    starting a pc vs console thread so idiots who never post outside of shit like this can pile in and post tiresome shit that was boring in 1999?

    shame on you, RPS

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:30 Jim Rossignol says:

      Your mum was boring in 1999.

      Also, if MS want to keep spouting gibberish, why not point it out?

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:43 poop says:

      in a perfect world no one would care what some sunglasses clad spokesman douche has to think about a product he is being paid to spruik.

      the rest of this site is rad though gw duder :)

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:46 poop says:

      also every time someone uses a word like elitist in a flamewar without a hint of irony i gain an overwhelming desire to throw myself out a window

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:33 Malibu Stacey says:

      Punctuation and capitalization go a long way. Also writing posts like you thought about them for more than the 5 seconds it took to hammer them out onto the keyboard might cut down on the repeated “replying to your own posts syndrome”.

      With a name like poop I shouldn’t expect much though should I.

  24. 21/09/2010 at 13:26 moosh07 says:

    I would say PCs (or more to the point, using a mouse) are better for aiming, and consoles are better for getting nippy and better gfx without spending a fortune keeping your PC in with teh best hardware.

    That said, the likes of Kinect and Move may address the mouse aiming issue – I’ll wait till Killzone3 is out and see if the Move solves that one.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:33 StingingVelvet says:

      I tried Metroid and Call of Duty on the Wii and it was freaking terrible, not the same as a mouse at all. If the Move is massively better somehow I haven’t heard about it.

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:56 mandrill says:

      The Wii, even though it was the starter of the motion control bandwagon. was never going to be the best. Never once was it claimed that it provided 1 to 1 translaltion of your movements to the character on the screen, the technology was nowhere near accurate enough for that. Kinect is just the same. good for an out of game UI but no where near competent enough to provide the kind of immersion that people seemed to expect from the Wii.

      The Move is by far the most promising of the three motion control systems, using as it does accelerometers, gyros and camera tracking. rather than just 1 of the three.

  25. 21/09/2010 at 13:28 Giant, fussy whingebag says:

    Urael: Done. Pandaemonius was a good handle, though…

  26. 21/09/2010 at 13:31 StingingVelvet says:

    What Kudo is really saying is that the “cool kids play shooters on Xbox,” which an empty and meaningless statement to me as I stopped caring what the cool kids did when I was 16.

  27. 21/09/2010 at 13:32 Fourth Man says:

    I’ve played shooters on both PC and console for many years and the best ones are those that embrace the platform they are created for. Stalker on console – forget it. Halo on PC – forget it.

    The mouse is more precise than the joystick for looking and aiming, no question about that, but the movement is far more controllable and exploration of a space feels more natural using a joystick to direct movement rather than tippetty-tapping keys to shuffle into line and sliding sideways everywhere at top speed. So maybe some kind of joystick for movement plus a few button and maybe tilt controls, and a mouse for the other hand…

    That said, the more familiar you are with an fps control system, the more your moves will fall within your expectations and judgment. And will look like magic to anyone watching who is not feeling incredibly nauseous at that point.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:43 Rinox says:

      I personally am still convinced that a mouse works better for a FPS but other than that: nice and very level-headed post. Very true.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:49 Rich says:

      Halo1 on PC was pretty good. Being able to mod the sniper rifle to fire tank shells and warthog MG to fire the seeking plasma pistol charged shot was undeniably funtabulous.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:39 Malibu Stacey says:

      I played Halo on the PC. It was pretty fun singleplayer & multiplayer. Never got the second one as I don’t agree with Microsoft’s refusal to update DirectX on pre-Vista systems from 9.0c.

      How about Microsoft bring the latest Halo to the PC, enable cross-platform multiplayer & we’ll see how well the console players do against the PC gamers. My bet, flawless victory for the PC gamers.

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:16 perilisk says:

      Yeah, they need to make a mouse with a thumbstick on the side for analog movement.

  28. 21/09/2010 at 13:37 JohnnyMaverik says:

    Microsoft are just jealous that Valve stole the PC from under their noses, and Valve make mostly FPS’ so… yea, nobody plays FPS’ on PC Kudo, w/e makes you feel better.

  29. 21/09/2010 at 13:37 Fergus says:

    I’ve grown up with PCs, but I always wanted a lovely shiny Playstation or Xbox as a kid. Wasn’t until about 3 years ago that, via my brother getting splashy with the cash from his new job, I sat down to play BioShock on the 360.

    I quit after about 30 minutes. I’m sure if I’d stuck it out I could maybe have done better, but the experience of not being able to simply point where I wanted to aim and instead using the guesswork of a joystick was beyond frustrating for me. It’s like playing with a mouse that sticks (in the days before infrared mice); you want to be fighting against the enemy, not your own control system.

    That’s why the FPS will always be better on a PC. I don’t think even the majority of console gamers could disagree on that. And let’s not go into when I tried playing Sensible Soccer on XBLA. *shudder*

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:12 [POo [POo says:

      I actually enjoyed Bioshock much more on the 360 controller than the mouse & keyboard setup, although this is the only case of it happening with a FPS for me.

  30. 21/09/2010 at 13:39 Redford says:

    I believe this man is coming from the same angle as Sony, where upon the reveal of the 3DS, they stated that they had no reason to believe that people would want a handheld which would emulate 3D without wearing special glasses.

    Which is to say he knows he’s still beat but he has to keep up his image for PR.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:53 Chaz says:

      Absolutely, it’s just obvious PR guff. Most of the big game company execs do it though, and why not? It gets them nice juicy headlines and generates 300+ comments threads. Even if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, it gets you talking about their products generating more awareness for them, job done.

  31. 21/09/2010 at 13:47 Clavus says:

    This reminded me of the cross-platform gaming tests they did once, and the reason cross platform was killed: even mediocre skilled PC gamers could beat the best console players because their controls were so much more accurate.

    I recently bought a PS3 and as much as I enjoy the games on there, I also feel that the controls are less intuitive and responsive than on the PC. Also chatting during multiplayer is practically impossible without losing at least 20 seconds.

  32. 21/09/2010 at 13:52 The Hammer says:

    Actually, while I was writing my last comment, I was thinking: how many first-person shooters did Microsoft make for the PC, back in the day? I can think of only Halo, which was a third-party port anyway. Did they develop/publish many more?

  33. 21/09/2010 at 13:52 Huggster says:

    Actually RSI is a valid point. I must admit I did kick back and play Batman AA and a bit of Just Casue 2 on pad you rest my poor ikkle arms.
    I did find the pad annoying though, even after completing Batman AA.

  34. 21/09/2010 at 13:53 Okami says:

    I’m a huge Halo fanboy and think that Reach is one of the best videogames ever made. But that doesn’t change the fact that this Kudo guy is full of bulldung. Left 4 Dead on the PC is vastly superior to it’s 360 pendant and while it’s true that mainstream FPS sell better on consoles, true innovation in this genre is only beeing done on PC – as much as I love Halo (have I told you about how good Reach is? Reach is awesome) it’s anything but innovative.

    • 21/09/2010 at 13:55 The Hammer says:

      The Reach (Remember Reach) adverts make me sentimental for a game series I haven’t even played any games of all the way through. I’ve never owned a Halo game, but man!

  35. 21/09/2010 at 13:53 kororas says:

    the xbox is a fucking pc.

    there i said it.

  36. 21/09/2010 at 13:59 RGS says:

    PC all the way!

  37. 21/09/2010 at 14:00 StingingVelvet says:

    Designed for it or not when I play shooters on a pad it feels like the game is playing itself. The worst is the new trend of the aim button snapping the target to the enemy… what is the point of playing the game? I just don’t get it I guess.

  38. 21/09/2010 at 14:16 Starky says:

    I still want a keyboard with a analogue WASD – then I will be happy.

    That is the one and only thing controllers have over a keyboard & mouse.

  39. 21/09/2010 at 14:18 andytizer says:

    You are right huggster I hadn’t even thought of that :D. Time to get a vasectomy so I don’t have to give up my precious PC gaming TV to screaming women!

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:21 Huggster says:

      Vasectomy or no vasectomy – it did not help me!
      You just have to give in, your life is easier in the long run. Just build a home cinema in the garage or shed!

    • 21/09/2010 at 15:43 Rinox says:

      Couldn’t you just try and go for sons?

      I mean, I wouldn’t exactly let them play Amnesia at 10 but at least you won’t be hearing that Sex and the City drivel ;-)

      (coming from a family of 4 brothers and no sisters and a very lonely mother at times)

  40. 21/09/2010 at 14:20 Starky says:

    For some games I use both.

    Like GTA 4, using a 360 wired controller for druving/flying and most shooting, but switching to M&K when I need to be able to aim.

    For some FPS games I do it also, ARMA 2 did it very well controller for driving and M&K for shooting.
    I actually tried doing controller in my left hand instead of WASD and mouse aim… It actually worked quite well.

    I was seriously thinking about getting a Arcade controller (like street fighter 4) just so I could use the stick instead of WASD and keep the mouse.

  41. 21/09/2010 at 14:24 Skystrider says:

    I have tried to play FPS games with gamepads and… I just can’t do it! I need my mouse, I need my keyboard, I need my headshots, I need my mods. And I don’t need no stinkin’ autoaim!

    I can’t for the life of me understand why FPS games have gotten so popular on consoles. To me, it has always been a genre that have excelled on PC alone. But that’s me.

  42. 21/09/2010 at 14:25 Koozer says:

    I get terrible pains in my thumbs after playing with a controller for a few hours, but I’m fine at a PC. It just manifests itself more when using the controls you’ve used the most in the past. Therefore, if you prefer the PC you should play on consoles for the good of your health and vice versa. My logic is flawless.

  43. 21/09/2010 at 14:29 Koozer says:

    PS. my index fingers can ache too. I blame that Sandshrew minigame in Pokemon Stadium.

  44. 21/09/2010 at 14:39 Duoae says:

    Honestly PC vs Consoles is a stupid argument.

    Firstly because as long as the game is tailored/designed to work with the respective control scheme then it doesn’t matter what platform or control scheme the game is using. The problem originates when a game is poorly ported and the controls do not work as smoothly as if the game were designed with them specifically in mind (also see in-game menus and “press X” commands in user interface in PC ports).

    Secondly, as has been found many times by developers who tried to work out cross-platform competition in FPSes (and stated in interviews by those same developers), the mouse provides too much of a accuracy advantage when compared to twin sticks with and without “sticky” aiming. The keyboard is inferior to an analogue stick but this is compensated by the versatility of the angles provided by corrective movement via the mouse.

    If the games on Kinect have well-designed interfaces and controls (and presumably that the kinect itself works reliably compared to the Wii design – which i’ve found to be the case when using it) then it won’t matter about PC or normal console controls…. there’s just no point in comparing them. The problem lies in the possibility of their games not working well with the technology.

    • 21/09/2010 at 14:43 Duoae says:

      One thing i would add to what i said and in the context of this whole thing is that fewer FPSes appear to be released on PC these days – there’s a lot more focus on different types of gaming. Even then, if a game is ported to PC it tends to be later than the console release date meaning that any potential buyers will be reduced because they wish to play the game when it is new – regardless of the platform.

      These two reasons would reduce the playerbase and count towards Kudo’s statement.

  45. 21/09/2010 at 14:41 disperse says:

    @Kobzon

    [When using a gamepad] you don’t get no RSIs [sic]

    Leaving aside the double-negative, this is simply untrue. RSI is caused by repetitive motions, whether those motions are on mouse and keyboard or on a gamepad. Ask any hardcore console gamer about “gamer’s thumb”. Any time you repeat the same action over and over again for hours, you are risking a repetitive strain injury. However, I agree that the mouse is an ergonomic disaster.

  46. 21/09/2010 at 14:44 disperse says:

    Actually, this is a good argument for switching up your gaming peripheral. Mouse and keyboard on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, gamepad on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and Sunday is for the Wii.

  47. 21/09/2010 at 14:45 Tei says:

    He as a point, anyway. You can play 2 hours a game with the keyboard (say a MMO) and wen your hand get tired, play another 2 hours with a pad. Since is different movements patterns, maybe will help the hand.

  48. 21/09/2010 at 14:46 oceanclub says:

    “Kudo Tsunoda”

    Who?

    I just Googled him. I want those 20 seconds back.

    P.

  49. 21/09/2010 at 14:48 F4T C4T says:

    As someone who entered the world of gaming through the PC via Quake and Unreal Tournament, I must admit that most of my online FPS fun comes from my 360 nowadays. A mouse may be a better aiming device but the fact is that most of my gaming mates left their PC’s behind in favour of the 360 a while back.

    Having said that, I still prefer single player experiences like Stalker on the PC. I can’t imagine I’d enjoy that experience as much on the couch.

  50. 21/09/2010 at 14:53 oceanclub says:

    I am amused that three Google suggestions when you begin to type his name are:

    “Kudo Tsunoda sunglasses”
    “Kudo Tsunoda glasses”
    “Kudo Tsunoda douche”

    P.

  51. 21/09/2010 at 14:53 Butler` says:

    Spectated a high-end CS match the other night. Twenty one thousand spectators for a 10 year old game. Beat that Microsoft.

    As I said on the EG thread: if you’re going to call out the PC platform, don’t make it about FPS.

  52. 21/09/2010 at 14:55 Malibu Stacey says:

    I’ve played Resistance:Fall of Man on my friends PS3 & it made me feel like I was trying to play with an arm tied behind my back. FPS on consoles are probably brilliant if that’s all you’ve ever known (sadly this will be true for a lot of people) but once you go PC you never go back. I’ve played Goldeneye (N64), Perfect Dark (N64), Medal of Honour (PS2), Timesplitters (PS2), Metroid Prime (GC) which are all good games but they don’t compare in pure gameplay mechanics to any of iD Software or VALVe’s FPS games.

    Having said that there’s plenty of games I would play on a console than PC e.g. Beyond Good & Evil was far better on PS2 than PC, Burnout Paradise plays better for me on PS3 than PC. This is probably due to those games being developed for those systems first & ported to the others later unfortunately.

  53. 21/09/2010 at 15:00 Dick says:

    Steam?
    Sorry, I am too busy playing Alan Wake on mah couch.

  54. 21/09/2010 at 15:09 Hélder Pinto says:

    I shall die playing on my PC

  55. 21/09/2010 at 15:09 disperse says:

    @kobzon

    ;-)

    Some friends of mine made a facebook group called “Intentionally using bad grammar to piss off pedants”. I think they were trying to send me a message…

    Oh, and short periodic breaks to stretch made a huge difference for my RSI. You can use a timer or there are software programs (WorkRave) to remind you.

  56. 21/09/2010 at 15:11 Jetsetlemming says:

    I don’t know why everyone tries to make it into some big competition, and I especially don’t know why everyone expects the PC to fight against all three consoles put together or else it’s losing, and I ESPECIALLY don’t even want to know what kind of super drugs Microsoft hands out to its PR people.

  57. 21/09/2010 at 15:12 Chaz says:

    Yeah I get an ache in the left of my groin when playing with a pad on my console. Only because I flop out on the left hand side of the sofa and then prop my left leg up on the coffee table. I mean I could just sit up properly and all that I suppose, but getting into all this thing of maintaining good posture is a slippery slope and leads on to bigger things. Like doing light excercise, improving your diet, joining a gym, running half marthons and then full marathons, and then you’ll be complaining about torn ligaments and bad knees. No no, I’ll stick to being a lazy couch potato thank you.

  58. 21/09/2010 at 15:21 EthZee says:

    Yeah, this man is a tit. FPS’s dying out on the PC? Don’t make me laugh. For smoothness and accuracy, the mouse & keyboard is hard to beat.

    But that’s not to say that the console FPS is a twitching failure. In fact, it has been said that the transition of FPS’s to consoles kickstarted the trend for increasingly tactical shooters; games where finding cover and timing your shots became the higher priority, rather than rocket-jumping, circle-strafing, and generally sprinting for walls of bullets.

    This article at Escapist has some good points on this very subject.

    Personally, I do prefer PC shooters but console shooters aren’t such a hideous thing to play. A good console shooter will build the game around the strengths and weaknesses of the controller, rather than simply try to make a standard PC-style FPS.

    • 21/09/2010 at 20:02 DrGonzo says:

      That’s absolute horse cock. Console shooters have LESS tactics involved than PC. Just because it’s fast do not mistake it for not being tactical. Console shooters are a contest of internet connection, the host always wins a gunfight, then people close to the host etc, and it is pretty much always reflected on the scoreboard.

  59. 21/09/2010 at 15:32 Pew says:

    I think that part of his claim is completely taken out of context everywhere. If you look at NPD sales for games like COD or other multiplatform “AAA” shooters, I’ll believe that these days in specific markets they sell better on consoles than on PC.

    But NPD data doesn’t include Steam sales, and only looking at the traditional AAA shooters means you ignore the ton of other shooters available on PC.

    He also said FPS was primarily a PC genre and that FPS’s on consoles were absolutely awful when people tried to just port them to a PS2 or Xbox. It’s also a running joke that the 360 only has shooters, which isn’t really true but it does have a ton of shooters.

    The whole claim was just a segue into how you sometimes have to change things to make something work, resulting in “Kinect is great”. I won’t argue that that is a good argument or that it’s not a silly thing to say it like this, but everyone does seem to jump on his one tiny bit of reasoning without actually reading what he said and what the context was.

  60. 21/09/2010 at 15:40 M.P. says:

    If Microsoft don’t start lavishing some love for Windows-based gaming, they might actually find their market share eaten up by Mac and Linux. I’m personally a PC fanboy, but with a lot of games now available for Mac natively, strong support from Valve, and increasingly-better emulation for the rest, a lot of people who were only staying on Windows for the games might be tempted to switch over to Mac OS.

    Microsoft are taking the PC for granted, even though Windows and Office sales have been their bread and butter for decades, whereas their Xbox division has only recently become profitable! (Have they even paid off the mountains of debts they’ve accrued on the first Xbox?)

  61. 21/09/2010 at 15:48 Sharkticon says:

    Not a SINGLE console FPS in existence can come close to the pure FPS experience of Quake 3/Unreal Tournament on the PC. It would be like comparing a housebound obese person with an Olympic gymnast.

    The best FPS game out at the moment is Quake Live.

  62. 21/09/2010 at 15:49 Anon says:

    Trololololololol! TROLOLOL; TROLOLOLO! TROLOLOLO; TROLOLOLO! TROLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO!

  63. 21/09/2010 at 16:02 Dustin Diamond's Sex-Tape says:

    i don’t like this policy of appeasement that long term mousites seem to have adopted. a world in which a brave soul would be commended for their relative competence in their quake III dreamcast controller prowess is long gone.

    first person shooters have been dragged down like a once great leader with a full wallet and an empty heart on rupert street. seduced by the debauchery of BIG MONEY, BIG PRIZES, they now waller in the moral filth of tunnel vision level design, big stupid bullet sponge enemies who have the pedestrian courtesy to stay within your immediate cone of view, instant auto-regen health and the total abandonment of 360/3-axis mastery in favour of canned micheal bay moments.

    much has been lost. you can accept the situation, but that doesn’t mean being liberal to the point where you are denying that the thumbstick standard will forever cripple the development of fps.

    • 21/09/2010 at 16:10 AndrewC says:

      Modern Warfare has done more to move the FPS genre forwards than any FPS in the last decade.

      That’s because the FPS genre has hardly changed in a decade. Even milestones like Quake 3 were really just refinements of existing rules. Modern Warfare in emphasing scripting rather than pretending that the player wasn’t in a corridor, has done more to add excitement to a tired formula than anything else. And it changed the ancient cliches of the deathmatch by making it an RPG.

      Everything i’ve written is true.

    • 21/09/2010 at 16:34 subedii says:

      You almost had me going there. Almost.

    • 21/09/2010 at 17:52 Malibu Stacey says:

      Any step Modern Warfare 1 or 2 have taken forwards for gaming they’ve taken more than enough backwards for it to still be in negative equity. You’re actually praising the XP & unlocks for multiplayer & the extensive scripting in singleplayer? Maybe if you’d quoted Halo you’d have a point but seriously you’ve got to either be naive, a troll or both if you’re holding up Modern Warfare as an example of pushing the boundaries of gaming.

      P.S. VALVe called. Apparently they make FPS games on the PC & they wondered whether you’d played any of them for any significant time.

    • 21/09/2010 at 17:55 Tei says:

      Some people is critical at MW2, because have the oportunity and the money to move the genre forward, but choosed to reuse a very old engine, and do some repetitive scripting, just because is the cheapomode way to do things. Zero innovation, just grind manpower.

      I can’t share that opinion, nor I disagree, but is another view on what IW is doing.

  64. 21/09/2010 at 16:25 drewski says:

    The only console FPS games I play are the exclusive ones. If it’s on PC, I play it on PC.

  65. 21/09/2010 at 16:30 Frankle says:

    Can’t someone make Kudo sit down? So we only have to hear the “muffled” sounds of him talking out of his arse.

  66. 21/09/2010 at 16:32 Rich says:

    “Everything i’ve written is true.”
    I should just put that at the end of everything I write.

  67. 21/09/2010 at 16:47 Komus says:

    Console players can’t LEAN. Fact. Except in Goldeneye.

    • 21/09/2010 at 17:56 Malibu Stacey says:

      Neither can most PC FPS players. Lean isn’t much use outside of singleplayer (e.g. FEAR) or ‘tactical’ multiplayer such as the old Rainbow 6 games & SWAT 4. Most FPS games balance movement speed with the shooting so lean isn’t much use as you’re dead by the time you pop your head round the wall since the enemy just ran up to you & shot you while you were taking your time about getting into position.

    • 21/09/2010 at 18:02 Dominic White says:

      I’d argue that you can lean in way more console games than you can in PC games, especially due to the advent of third-person cover systems. Leaning out of cover is a major gameplay element there, rather than just being a seldom-used ‘peek’ feature.

  68. 21/09/2010 at 16:53 Andytizer says:

    If you have a big TV and a 5.1 sound system (and if you scoot closer to your TV) your peripheral vision will be filled and it’s more immersive than a monitor on a desk.

  70. 21/09/2010 at 17:07 utharda says:

    ok. for the derision…

    I just left my local gamestop in the US to pickup my copy of the holy g… err civ v. The clerk in the store didn’t know what civ v was, on release day. she didn’t really even know what civ was in general.

    so, what I learned today,

    1. Just buy it on steam.
    2. OMFG damn kids these days get off my lawwwwwnnnnnn.

    I think I’m just going to buy a spare wireless keyboard and mouse, and a very long hdmi cable, and set fire to my consoles in protest.

  71. 21/09/2010 at 17:21 Στέλιος says:

    “As RPG and RTS dominate PC gaming” – shouldn’t that be “As RPS dominates PC gaming?” That is how I read it the first time round when skimming over the article, at least. Sounds plausible to me.

  72. 21/09/2010 at 17:22 DK says:

    “As much as I love my PC, and use it for most of my shooty-related gaming, the numbers do seem to favor consoles by a large margin. The other night, there were almost half a million people simultaneously online and playing Halo: Reach (myself being one of them), and that’s just a single major release on a single console.”

    Bull. You know why? Because while having a few hundred thousand people playing one game sounds impressive, it’s still far less people playing than the millions playing FPS on the PC. It’s simply spread out over a bigger number of games.

    There’s tens of thousands playing CS 1.6 alone – show me a single console FPS that has as many people playing it after a similar timespan.

    • 21/09/2010 at 21:06 Ravenger says:

      That’s exactly it. It’s easy for Microsoft to say exactly how many gamers are playing a game, and with big blockbusters like Halo a large proportion of Xbox users will all stop playing older games and just play the next big thing for a while, which leads to huge player numbers that Microsoft use for publicity.

      With PC games it’s more difficult. There are dozens of different online services, and many games don’t even hook up to a particular service so there are no centralised stats.

  73. 21/09/2010 at 17:23 frags says:

    Also not sure if you guys know this but…Kudo Tsunoda IS Lorenzo Lamas

  74. 21/09/2010 at 19:46 Kazang says:

    Playing an FPS on a console is like trying to eat soup with a fork.

  75. 21/09/2010 at 20:17 Srethron says:

    I am entirely amused that the acronym for your name is GFW. Maybe we should all begin referring to GFW Live as Microsoft’s Giant Fussy Whingebag Live platform? I for one think it fits.

  76. 21/09/2010 at 20:43 Freud says:

    PR people say stupid stuff, especially when targeting a specific audience. While MS obvious schizophrenia towards PC gaming is a tedious soap opera at this stage, does anyone seriously care? Do we really have to be old men yelling at clouds just because we are PC gamers?

    Just stop getting excited when MS claims to focus on PC gaming, uninstall GFWL at every possibility and enjoy your PC gaming. And if you happen to have a Xbox, PS3 or Wii and enjoy that also, good for you. You are getting the best of both world.

    • 21/09/2010 at 20:46 Bowlby says:

      “PR people say stupid stuff”.

      That’s essentially the message I got from Kudo’s statement, and why it doesn’t really have much credibility behind it.

  77. 21/09/2010 at 21:23 Vodka & Cookies says:

    Kudo Tsunoda chose his words poorly in trying to make a point about developing for the kinect and expectations that it will fail (same was said about console FPS). Though there is no denying that more console owners plays FPS titles than PC’s gamers do, sites I see that never ever mention games covered the release of Halo Reach, you dont get that kind of coverage normally.

    Is the console better at FPS – no of course not, the PC is where it was created and it will always be a part of PC gamings fabric but eventually the console makers will close the gap in control methods & the genre wont quite have the same impact on the PC landscape anymore.

  78. 21/09/2010 at 21:55 Jannakar says:

    I can’t help feeling that you’ve been slightly trolled here.

    While Valve and Id and Epic are still around there will be cutting edge engines available for license to PC developers who do not want to build their own (and frankly, that’s quite a lot of them). And while engines like Source, UDK and Unity are around for the homebrew community, then there was always be FPS on the PC because that’s the best place to play FPSs.

    While it is profitable for developers and publishers to specialise in the PC market or to go through the extra effort to bring the PC version to market then it’s hardly worth worrying about. When it stops being profitable they will disappear (as they already have started to do i.e. BF1943 – how bad does it get when an easy-to-port XBOX360 game doesn’t appear on the PC?)

    Citing Steam’s statistics is also rather unhelpful; today two thirds of the people playing FPSs through Steam were playing CS or CS:S (10 and 6 years old respectively) . Is that progress? Does anybody here think that is a healthy sign?

    Looking beyond the emotional response; What does ‘being the home of the FPS’ mean anyway? If more people are playing more titles on consoles – doesn’t that tell us something about the future?

  79. 21/09/2010 at 22:39 Zonejeu says:

    Actually… I’m probably a good representative of the gaming population who does prefer to play their FPS on a console than on a PC. The reason ? Simply : the technological race to the PC, and my lack of investment into my own, has made me unable to play the latest beautiful FPS on my 3-years-old-and-barely-updated computer, whereas I can play Halo or Bad Company 2 with a good graphics level on an Xbox. So I keep my PC for RPG’s, strategy games and MMOs, and my console for more action-oriented games, just like I’m sure many other players do.

    Still, I enjoy from time to time a good game of L4D or Team Fortress, and I’m pretty sure that if I would have a good PC, I would play all these FPS on it rather than on a console…

    • 21/09/2010 at 22:45 Tei says:

      Consoles are evil, are locked down hardware and dont let the users of the devs to run any software. By using a console you help make the world more shitty and less free.

      So “thanks”.

  80. 21/09/2010 at 23:53 malkav11 says:

    I will never play an FPS on console if they even hint at giving me the ability to play it on my PC. Reasons like better graphics, multiplayer that I don’t have to pay a subscription to access, mods, and Steam deals all play significantly into the equation, but the main factor is that however much success the game makers have had with making FPS controls work on a gamepad, they remain drastically inferior to the mouse and keyboard combination. Even the relative improvement that is the Wii’s motion controls still remains a poor second to mouse and keyboard. (And, in my book, that’s the -only- advantage Wii motion controls have over a standard gamepad configuration.)

    I don’t mean to blast consoles or gamepads here. There are other sorts of gaming that are distinctly better suited to the latter – fighting games, for example. Platformers, often. Driving games. Etc.

  81. 22/09/2010 at 02:54 John says:

    Look I kniw everyone likes defending the PC but for gods sake don’t, what if a microsoft exec somehow stumbles onto a thread like this, stranger things have happened.

    I say this because no sane person would want games for windows to grow in any way shape or form.

    Also a 3 year old PC at this point will performance wise cheese any console FPS.

  82. 22/09/2010 at 03:42 MarktheGamer says:

    I’m looking at a lot of comments on here, and I can only laugh in their attempt for coherence. Look, you’re missing the point. Sure Tsunada was drastic in his comments, but he basically said that FPS’s are getting less popularity on the PC and (consequently) going to the consoles (screw that douchebag, by the way). You can say, “Well I love using a mouse and keyboard and I think that’s the best way” but you’re dodging the point. There’s a fine line between what you like, what you’ve always liked…and what is. The point is, the consoles own the FPS genre, and they have for quite some time. Does that mean I prefer consoles over PC’s? Hell no. I’m not stating my opinion. This is just common sense.

    The PC’s success isn’t determined by finances, by the way. It may be cheaper in the long run to upgrade your PC instead of getting a new console, but the average gamer does not like the idea of committing that much work into a singular machine. As much as I’d hate to admit it, we’re lazy, and many of us prefer to simply buy a new console because, in general, it has all the stuff we want. This may change in the future; PC’s may become the ultimate platform and I hope that they do. But I highly doubt it.

    I love the FPS base on PC’s. I’m a huge BC2 fan and Stalker fan, and any Valve game I can get my hands on is automatically mine (still waiting for Episode 3, Gabey). But I’m sadly not the average person out there looking for hands-on entertainment. It’s the same idea that most people like to buy a car and just leave it at that…but a select number of people prefer to get the car, maybe just the frame, and work from there.

    Hope I don’t come across as a dick or anything. Love this site and love its fans.

  83. 22/09/2010 at 03:48 Ricotta says:

    We call those glasses “spray goggles” here, a homage to all the sorority girls on campus who partake in scandalous activities. =P

  84. 22/09/2010 at 03:58 Coillscath says:

    I think the proof is in the pudding. Replaying Metroid Prime with the Wiimote was ludicrously easy, even for Metroid Prime 2 (Which I know still makes those of us who remember Emperor Ing on the Gamecube being the most painful boss experience in the series)

    Thankfully the Trilogy edition has an extra hard difficulty- Hypermode. It still goes to show how the difficulty had to be dumbed down for the sake of having a slow control stick, as opposed to even a Wiimote. I’m certain this wasn’t the only first person console game to suffer this way.

    I propose that if you got 2 teams together in Team Fortress 2; One made of console players, one of PC players, each with their respective control system, the PC players would slaughter the console players. Just a theory.

    • 22/09/2010 at 07:58 Jannakar says:

      Of course they would! But the respective accuracy of control is not the point here.

      I suggest that what Tsunada is getting at here is the answer to the following question:

      Take an average gamer with a console and a PC. Release a new FPS which has the usual SP/MP bells and whistles. Do they buy it for their console or for the PC?

      If, over a large enough sample, a statistically significant preference for one platform over another emerges, then the preferred platform should be considered the ‘home of FPS’.

  85. 22/09/2010 at 05:12 Joey says:

    I recently decided to try firing up my copy of Fallout 3 w/ my PC 360 controller. I stuck it out for about 5 levels before I decided I just massively prefer using a mouse and keyboard, and this is a game where aiming is not really that important. It may be that I just need to give the gamepad a longer chance, but I remember playing UT for the first time w/ a mouse. It felt right as rain from the get go.

  86. 23/09/2010 at 06:14 Poita says:

    Pseudo is the most annoying person in the games industry. I can’t stand the sight or sound of the guy. I have never, ever seen him smile once in all the Kinect marketing he has been doing. He’s a portly 30 something guy who dresses like a 17yo hollywood wanna be and he takes himself way, way too serious.
    Microsoft have really pushed hard to creat a ‘character’ with him but i just wanna puke every time I see him or hear him talk.

    The Kinect is awesome tech though. I would never, ever play a fps game with a controller but I’d rather be playing on my couch in front of a massive TV so if Kinnect can do better than the mouse for fps games I’ll buy an X box. Ok Microsoft, you almost got me after PC gaming for 20 but just shut Pseudo the hell up ok.

  87. 01/10/2010 at 16:17 jaosn sko says:

    kudo can go fuck himself.

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