Gears of war is out on the PC

Looks like it kicks the 360 in the graphics department, much better quality and detail than the 360 version according to all the reviews.

I havent played it yet, hope that despite the simple gameplay mechanics its still a good game for players that don't care so much for the doom run and gun type of play.

theres a 360 v's PC video here:
http://www.gamepro.com/video/player.cfm?vid=118260

The video was okay to watch, I hadn't really seen much footage of the game before. It's all very much the same colour or palette - at least it looks that way when watching the video, lots of greys/browns - not very vibrant - is it more so 'in person'.

Is it a DX9 game or a wretched DX10 one ?

That's the most inane commentary I've ever heard. You're using a mouse, okay, we get it.

Both.

Going to get this when the price drops a bit, can't be arsed to pay full-price when I'm actually required to have a Gold Live! account to play it co-op online....on a $&@*ing PC.

I just thought it interesting because lots of people thought a PC was a long way off of handling a game with graphics like that when the subject was brought up a year ago.

I'm not really into the art style much either, but would like to play the game and see what its like. I expect that Crysis is much more my thing, gears of war seems very linear, kind of like a modern Operation Flashpoint type affair.

I find reviews pretty unreliable in this respect. There seems to be a lot of wishful thinking from PC reviewers who have paid 5 times the cost of a 360 for their games machine. Whenever I've seen comments about the PC version being much better and have played the game on both PC and 360, I find the 360 is usually a little bit better. BioShock being a good example of one where all the reviewers said it was better on PC, but it patently wasn't. Perhaps I'm being a little unfair. Perhaps they compare it to a 360 on a TV whereas I play on a monitor, and I think a good monitor is always better than a TV of the same res.



It's fun. It's not really Doom-style run and gun. It's actually all about using cover, keeping the enemy pinned down with suppressing fire and then picking them off before they get close. Most of the boss fights are puzzly tactical fights where you're trying to get one good shot or where you can only kill them in certain ways or at certain times.

I'm not sure how it'll play with keyboard and mouse though. It's one of those games that really needs a gamepad. I expect it supports the 360 controller on PC as well though.

crysis and half-life beat it, I don't care what you say :)

You can play the PC version with the 360 pad which is what I'd do. The game has a great mechanic that feels liquid with the 360 pad. Graphics wise you couldn't do much better than the 360 version so I'm sure it's a few minor things. As Gabriel said the gameplay is anything but Doom style. It's very tacticle, the cover mechanic is strategic and reflexive though so it's a lot of fun.

It's not slow paced like Crysis but it's got a decent amount of strategic thinking. It's really just the fact that you're a squad instead of just an individual and the firefights are in urban areas instead of solo affairs in the woods so that right there is the reason there's more action. You need to push through enemies to further your objectives, there's no sneaking around. However, you cannot run and gun or you'll be killed quick.

yeah like most new PC games it has direct support for the 360 gamepads. I always like mice better for anything that involves aiming though.

I understand that the biggest difference between the PC and Xbox is that they used a later version of the unreal 3 engine and higher res textures throughout. So a lot more detail than on the 360 version.

We're just beginning to see the divergence of PC and console abilities. The gap will widen.

Well the 360 is a PC in a box so you could argue the gap has never been slimmer.

PC's will always have a step up on consoles, but that step up will cost you. You cannot build a PC for the price of a 360 that will do anything near what the 360 will do. I'm sure for most gamers buying a 360 and an HD set will yield more bang for the buck than buying a high end PC. I got my 360 and HD (1080i) set for less than $800. You're not going to build a PC (especially not with a 26" monitor") for anywhere near that.

I have a decent spec PC and the difference between it an the 360 is pretty minor. Some games look better on the PC some on the 360, it really depends on what the developers did. For the most part they are pretty similar.

From a quick look standpoint, they both more or less look similar especially from watching it from the clip, but a closer inspection you can tell the PC does have the edge on graphics. Granted its nothing totally mind blowing, but its noticeable. Then again, its really hard to tell in a video clips like these anyways. I recall the same issue when comparing the older Metroid Prime games to Metroid Prime 3 on a video clip...you really can't tell unless you're playing it live yourself.

I have to pay to play multiplayer deathmatch? What the hell?

There will no doubt be patches out to work around that, if the games popular enough. There's always someone on the PC working away at something :D

I didn't see much difference between the PC and the Xbox version in that video, if there was any at all. The only difference that there is for certain is that you will have to pay 3-4 times as much money for the PC that is capable of running that game at framerates, resolution and color depths that might be able to make the console look bad.

Ultimately, that might bring a big shift in the market with it: Unless you're working a lot with audio, image and video processing, every 300 to 500 Euro PC already has enough power for everything a regular user will ever do. Double the price, and you will get a PC -PLUS- a console that will always run every game that was written for it.

Now look at the technical quality of Gears of War and tell me why you still need a PC for high-end games? And the 'best' thing is that current games are still not taking full advantage of the technical capabilities of the Xbox 360 or PS3.

But that's the same on the PC. I was quite astonished when I saw that even HL2 EP2 did not use the second CPU core of my machine at all - it was in idle mode while I was playing. Still, the game looked and ran great at 1680*1050. Just imagine what other things they could do if they also used the remaining processor core?

In comparison, Crysis and Unreal 3 run like crap on my machine even though they seem to be using all that computing power; the cooling fans jump in and the CPU utilization is at maximum on both cores while Unreal 3 is running at 640x480 with LOW details... You can imagine how impressed I am. Crysis is just playable at 1024*768, medium-to-low details, but rather should be running at 800*600 with low details, when I pay attention to the recommended settings.

On a console, they all would have to live with given hardware specification and they would have to optimize their code until they throw up. Customers are now able to directly compare, because more and more blockbuster games are being released on both platforms. And that leads to the simple question: Why should I pay more for the PC when I get the same games on a much cheaper hardware platform that does not force me to upgrade every six months?

hmm strange, crysis runs quite well on my system 1024x768 everything maxed out but no AA and I have a 4 year old 2.2ghz single core cpu and AGP 7800

Gears of war is supposed to run well with maxed out graphics on systems with 6800G& at 1024x768.

If you already have system, even an old one like mine with a mid range card you don't need to upgrade in a hurry to play the latest games. Gears of war doesn't have as fancy graphics as Crysis from what I can tell.

I don't see the point in spending $400 and $60 a game for a console when I use my PC all the time and not just for playing games. And most of the games that are cross platform seem the same or better on the PC anyway. If you have a 360 controller most new games I play act just like the 360 does. I'd rather pay $200 - $300 a year on keeping my development computer up to speed than waste it on consoles that are starting to fall behind the pace of PC technology a lot quicker than they used to.

My system is between 2 and 4 years old appart from 2gb of PC4300 ram I upgraded the other week. So far everything I have thrown at it has run at a playable framerate, even crysis with all high settings.

I guess if you use a mac your going to have a hard time with the latest games since even the 4 and 8 core systems come with mediocre GPUS and upgrades are more expensive.

No they don't. PC's only have three different kinds of games: RTS (otherwise known as overcomplicated shoot 'em ups), boring repetitious formulaic FPS that are mainly differentiated by the name on the box, and MMO games, with the average depth of IRC with graphics.

Consoles on the other hand have a huge diversity of videogames. Fighting games, platform games, party games, driving games, shoot 'em ups where you don't have to build units, practically hundreds of different genres and lots of innovative titles (Rez, Ico, Katamari Damacy, Wii Sports). Even some of the staple PC genres like FPS games and RPG games have more titles available on the consoles. It's only a matter of time before the consoles do to PC gaming what it did to Amiga gaming. PC owners are the new Amiga owners.

And so pretty much every console wipes the floor with it.

Are you serious? Most of the console ports are RUBBISH on the PC. Stranglehold doesn't even work, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a handful of characters short, GTA San Adreas looks exactly the same, except it can't tell how many buttons you have on your joypad, and don't even get me started on Spiderman 2, which was a completely different game on the PC than on the PS2, and most certainly not for the better, oh and it's always a joy playing a version of Virtua Tennis that will crash randomly. This not to mention that the lions share of good games never get ported to PC at all.

Well that's just bad math. For 2-300 USD a year, over the last 4 years you could have an obsolete PC with no games (which aren't that much cheaper than console games anyway), or you could have a PS2 with every good game released for the platform, and a handful of mediocre ones. Hell. For $1200 USD you could get a Wii and at least 50 odd games (more so if you buy trade-ins). This is of course not counting the original $2000 odd USD you must have originally paid for your PC for it to still be able to run anything at all after all that time.

I don't know what you consider playable, but my PC is less than 4 years old (it will be 3 years old in 8 days according to Windows), and it just barely meets the minimum requirements (and only because I recently upgraded the graphics card), never mind the recommended one, and it will play almost nothing at an acceptable framerate, certainly nothing that looks as good as XBox360 games (most noticeably Clive Barker's Jericho and Tabula Rasa).

I already know I don't like the same games as you flameduck.
A good PC build your own costs about $600 - $800 if you already have a case, PSU, monitor and basic peripherals.

Clive barkers jericho and tabula rasa both look rubbish.

PC components must be much cheaper in the US. 3 years ago my PC (with the configuration listed in my sig, which I did build myself) cost me roughly $3000USD at the current exchange rate, not counting the PSU, screen, keyboard, trackball, joypad and harddrives.

yeah they are much cheaper I think. In the local store this week.

E6850 with decent motherboard is $340
Q6600 with mobo $375
2GB DDR2 PC6400 Twinx Memory $40

Only thing hard to find localy that I'd order online in order to get a good deal is the vidcard where a 8600GTS 256mb starts at $152

Wrong context, I was referring to raw hardware.

You can build a decent PC for a few hundred bucks if you already have the components from your last one:

CPU + mobo : $150-300
GPU : $100-300

If you buy the very latest model of everything it can cost three times as much, but I usually go for the second-newest thing on the market.

Hardware? The "modern" PC is the technological equivalent of a fourth generation console (a SNES or Amiga). It has a CISC processor architecture, with separate co-processors for graphics and sound, using separate memory. The main increase in performance is due to improvements in manufacturing techniques (45nm CMOS rather than 3.5 micron HMOS for instance) rather than technological advancements.

It's going to take modern 1977 era PC using POCISC processors forever to catch up to the pure processing power of (say) a PS3's Cell chip, and when they do, you can just add another Cell chip, and it's back to square one for Intel and AMD. Thanks largely to the PS3, Folding@Home is now the worlds most powerful distributed computer network in the world. So basically this project has been running on PC's for the better part of 7 years, prior to the PS3 being released and kicking the research into gear. The average Windows user contributes about 1/20th the processing power of the average PS3 user.

What about new RAM? You need to upgrade that as well, not much point in having a 1Ghz FSB, and 400Mhz RAM - and even if you could live with the bandwidth bottleneck, you'll need more of it, and buying obsolete RAM isn't exactly cheap. Also chances are good you're going to need a significantly larger PSU to provide all that extra juice. So what exactly have we got left to reuse here? A $50 USD harddrive? Not really much of a deal breaker.

Ram isn't much, looking at the local electronics stores weekly specials. You can get them cheaper online but then you lose the convenience and have to wait.

That IS cheap...

... right

Anyway, there's always going to be a line in the sand with PC gamers on one side and console gamers on the other. I just kind of walk the line and laugh at the two sides. They are getting closer together (thanks to the 360 pad) but still there's something cool, social, and just more organic about console games.

PC games are more mechanical which suits some games very well. However, using a keyboard over an analog pad is just plain jerky and although the mouse has a fluid aspect it also has a jerky trait in how you have to lift it up and reposition it every so often. For some games where you need precision point and text input though, you can't beat the PC.

I personally, like mouse and keyboard for FPS games but love an Xbox 360 controller for them. It's just a smoother experience. If you compare the two the mouse and keyboard might have the advantage in a frag contest but who really cares if it's not as fun, smooth, and organic to interface with. A balls out racecar might be better at winning one race but wouldn't it be more fun to race in a production car against other equally balanced production cars where you don't have to rebuild the engine every time out?

I find console games generaly simple and jerky, but it has gotten bette mostly thanks to the original Xbox and its HD, and the current Gen with highr resolutions means you can play some of the more traditionaly PC type games.

Also many of the best PC games over the last few years started off as Xbox games. I guess it just depends on the types of games you like at the end. Both sides generaly cater for completely different gamers, particularly if you like Japanese systems and games.

Only games I like that come out of japan are the odd racing game. Everything else, Zelda, Final fantasy, MGS, almost all Mario titles... I just never got into any of them. I sometimes like how they look but not how they play. It might be that they have for the most part been pick up and play games with fairly simple game mechanics, and it doesn't help that I dislike about 95% of games anyway.

I still manage to find as many as 5-10 games worth buying a year, almost all of the ones that interest me are either on 360 or PC (5). 0 for nintendo, and 1 for PS3.

No there isn't. Just like there isn't always going to be a line in the sand with Amiga gamers on one side and PC gamers on the other. Unless PC games pick up the pace, and start diversifying, the PC as a games platform is history. History is repeating itself and PC gamers are the new Amiga gamers.

I've been playing computer games since 1984 - my first console was a N64. My second console a Wii. My last PC - the one I'm getting soon to be able to play Tabula Rasa and Spore - after that I doubt there's going to be any PC games worth playing, that isn't a console ports. I mean seriously? What games are you waiting for? GTA4? Mass Effect? Gears of War? Stranglehold?

Tell me that you don't believe that Grey Matter and Aspyr aren't the Windows equivalents of Hyperion Software (Amiga) and Loki Games (Linux).

Sure. But we haven't really seen any text adventures, or even point and click adventures for the last decade or so, PC or otherwise.

If by "most" you mean "all". The last games designed specifically for the PC (and later ported to consoles) were The Sims, Civilization and Microsoft Flight Simulator X, and I'm willing to bet the last is going to be Spore. Every other game was designed for consoles, and then ported to PC as an afterthought.

maybe you like those games above. But my taste in PC games is different to yours.

There are plenty of good games, these are the ones I currently have installed on my puter if you include the Crysis demo.

Right now I'm playing The Witcher, an brilliant RPG for the PC which beats my last favourite RPG game Oblivion.

Medieval II, another brilliant RTS game that standout from all the boring generic C&C clones. Another brilliant PC game.

X3:Reunion. Again, brilliant trading space sim. Only thing missing is landing on planets. But otherwise it beats everything else that went before it (so long as you have the patience that most console gamers lack).

Company of Heroes. Another great RTS game that allthough loosely beased on C&C is way better than anything since and gave me the same kind of thrill as when I played C&C in the mid 90's.

Crysis is out this week, looks like it will be the best FPS of recent years, unless you like generic run and gun games like the unreal series. You actually need a brain to play Crysis since its much better played if plan a strategy to take the bad guys out discreetly without making a big fuss.

It just depends on the kinds of games you like really. Flameduck obviously prefers console games. Either because he likes simple pick up and play game mechanics. Or he doesn't want to take the time to get involved with PC games which often can't be picked up and played in 5 minutes so easily. (one of nintendos trademarks, probably because of their coinop/arcade roots).

After PC the Xbox has all the best games, not everyone will agree. But there are very few on other platforms that interest me in the slightest.

There's still quite a bit actually. Spore as you mentioned and pretty much anything in the future from Will Wright since he believes the mouse is the best input device. You've got Crysis, Hellgate, Supreme Commander, World of Warcraft, Tabula Rasa as you said.

I don't think the PC will ever die out. Even though many games are ported to it from the consoles you can't beat the open development platform. People will always make games for it. The other thing is that the Amiga was a much more specialized platform. The PC is like this constantly changing entity which knows no real bounds. It might not be ideal but it's got long legs.

Oh obviously. That must be why out of my game collection of about 800 videogames, an impressive 16 are console games (not counting the 5 PlayStation games that got stolen - so I don't have those any more).

Which are both console games, designed specifically for the XBox 360.

Being different doesn't make a game good. Personally I found the game (and it's predecessors) shallow and simplistic, offering the strategic choices equivalent of a rocks/paper/scissors game. In other words exactly the same as C&C, and lacking the depth and strategic choices offered by older titles, like for instance Stronghold.

Except it's Dawn of War with WW2 graphics and slightly altered game mechanics.

So in other words, a dumbed down, simplified version of the game Frontier: Elite 2 from 1993.

Well I liked Unreal Tournament 2003, but the the best FPS games are (in order of pure enjoyment): Deus Ex, No One Lives Forever, No One Lives Forever 2, F.E.A.R., Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Command & Conquer Renegade. Crysis is for people who enjoy things, not because they are good, but because they were difficult to make. People who think virtuosity in itself is a virtue.

I think it's amusing how you're the one playing the simplified, dumbed down games like X3:Reunion (poor mans Frontier), Medieval II (poor mans Stronghold) and Crysis (poor mans Deus Ex), yet I'm the one "scared" of committing time towards a videogame? Pot calling the kettle black?

For the record, here are the games I'm currently playing:
Tabula Rasa: Clocked 12 hours so far, not even 10% through the game.
Dawn of War: Dark Crusade (et. al.): Clocked hundreds of hours since the first DoW game came out.
Evil Genius: Takes about 20-40 odd hours a game. Completed it 4 times.
Warlords Battlecry 3: I've lost count. Seriously. I have no idea, it's probably more than what most people would consider healthy.
Civilization 4: Again, too many hours to count. I know I've played the Beyond the Sword expansion pack for about 2 hours every day since it came out (to and from work).
Chaos League: Enough to complete a championship 4 times with different races.
GTA: San Andreas: Completed it 3 times.

Sure. Peter Molyneux thought the same. So when is Fable 2 coming out for the XBox 360? Besides Will Wright seems to take roughly 8 years to deliver on a new game. You think he alone can keep the PC alive because he makes new albeit interesting games once every decade? I mean think it over, even traditionalists like Sid Meier (who's been developing computer games exclusively for the better part of their entire life) are starting to switch to consoles. In three years, who are we going to have left? It's not like in exchange for losing Peter Molyneux, Sid Meier and Tim Schafer we get Hideo Kojima and Shigeru Miyamoto.

I personally know the first 200 people who also thought that about the Amiga. I know at least 20, who still thinks the Amiga will never die out.

Of course. People still make games for the Amiga, hell new games are even being made for the C64. The question is will the PC remain a dominant platform? The answer is no. The reason is in the sales charts.

If you're talking about Linux, sure. If not then the PC is defined by Microsoft. Now the problem with that is, that it's not in Microsofts best interest to keep the PC as a viable games platform. It's in Microsofts best interest to switch people to the XBox, which they can control. Why do you think all Microsofts recent games are for Vista/XBox 360 only?

Thing is you never talk about computer games, only trash them and gush over console ones. I know, because I always disagree with your posts, even if I don't always respond.





You are mistaken, The Witcher is a PC game not avaliable for the 360. And I didn't include oblivion in my list, just mentioned that I liked it.

---
BTW Fable 2 is coming out for 360, was at this years GDC and is well under way. Interesting that you play the same games over and over.

I only ever play and finish a game once. I already know what happens so there are no surprises, and most games are quite repetitive and boring by the time you finish them, just relying on a good story to hold them together once the gameplay gets tired. Kind of like I rarely read a book or watch a movie more than once.

------------

The PC is defined by the hardware that comes out for it, not so much the operating system. MS has done a lot for games by providing Direct3D which did both more for games on the PC and evolved faster than GL.

I think MS are also responsible for raising the bar with console hardware by introducing the HD and pioneering nicely packaged effortless online multiplayer on a games console, and pushing shader technology and providing PC developers another more lucrative platform for traditionaly PC Games.

Not saying that GL is bad, but hardly any tools support shaders in GL properly making it tedious for indies with small teams to develop with.

Not all Microsofts games are vista/xbox only. Gears of war just came out on PC, and most xbox games make it to the PC eventually. I liked KOTOR, Jade Empire, Fable. Viva pinta is coming out soon on the PC, and theres probably a lot more I missed.

Flameduck always manages to skew facts to suit his own personal view of things, wouldn't be so bad if he didn't portray it as the definitive global view, where the info is most often incorrect. It seems that your strong dislike of Microsoft blinds you to some of the good things that come out of the MS camp.

Not everything that opposes microsoft is good, whether its sony, nintendo GL or linux, just like everything MS produces isn't bad.

There are two constants on this forum:

-"Flameduck" will always contradict whatever you say.
-"Flameduck" is always correct.


I think is may be that the DirectX10 debacle was not designed to sell Windows Vista at all, but rather to kill off DirectX-based PC gaming. MS can't intentionally cripple DX on the PC unless they make it look like a mistake.

Yeah, I should know better than to get dragged into these things. Guess he hit a soft spot with the PC console games thing.

I actually think that Both Sony and MS's long term goals are to replace home computing and gaming with powerfull consoles. Whats holding them back most of all is the low uptake of high res HDTV. Once high res TV's dominate everyones home, the need for a PC to browse the web, email, watch videos on youtube and play games will be a lot less than they are now.

Both Sony and MS have shown their intentions countless times since the launch of the PS2 really. Nintendo are the only ones to really focus on games, just a shame they don't have the games I enjoy playing.

I don't really divide games into computer games and console games. I divide them into good games and bad games. It's not really my fault that the only good games that have come out since Civilization IV are on consoles.

Yes I know. You'll remember the lead designer, a certain Peter Molyneux as a vivid computer game designer, primarily responsible for classic computer games like Populous 2, Syndicate, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White and The Movies. He even made the "show the awesome power of the Pentium" game Magic Carpet. The only computer game designer, I can remember ever aggressively pushing PC hardware, is now a console developer.

I play the good games. In the absence of new good games, I play the older good games again.

I'm sorry. That statement is so stupid, I don't even know how to respond to it.

Give credit were credit is due. If it hadn't been for 3Dfx and GLide (based on OpenGL) there wouldn't be any PC gaming.

Wow.
1. Sega pioneered online multiplayer on a games console. You would remember that, having had a Dreamcast and all.
2. Silicon Graphics and by extension OpenGL pushed shader technology, while Microsoft were still working on a fixed rendering pipeline (aka. Hardware Transform and Lighting).

Sure. But I don't think it's fair to give Microsoft credit for the quality of nVidias tools, or the platform they've chosen to write their tools for.

No. Just all the new ones. Gears of War is the exception rather than the rule. ShadowRun, Halo 2, Crysis (on very high graphics settings) are all Vista only. Not because they have to mind you, all the "criminals" in various cracker groups have long ago figured out how to get the games to run on XP, but it shouldn't really be a criminal act to want to play a Microsoft game on a Microsoft OS that is still being sold and supported (in name, if not in practice) by Microsoft.

Not if you're running Linux. The PC is defined by hardware, not OS, remember? Indeed.

A thief believes everybody steals. - Edward W. Howe.

Well you're entitled to your opinion, even though you're wrong. For starters I don't dislike Microsoft, much less strongly. Secondly I think AJAX is a really cool technology, and I think it's sad how horribly Microsoft failed to capitalize on their one true innovation and I'm glad they're aggressively pushing XML and for once have chosen an open standard, rather than coming up with their own inferior propriety alternative.

No I won't. :o>

Sony killed the Amiga, so don't think for a second I'm more sympathetic to their stupid ideas for market dominance.

I agree.

Why did Sony kill the Amiga? I don't see anyone else in charge than stupid Commodore itself.

For the same reason Microsoft killed Netscape. It was a competitor and market leader. I mean they didn't just kill the Amiga. The Panasonic 3DO, Phillips CD-i and Atari Jaguar and Falcon lead similar fates. To some extent even the Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 suffered, largely due to Sony's insistence on PlayStation platform exclusives.

And stupid Atari, Panasonic, Phillip, Sega and Nintendo? The Amiga wasn't the only platform effected by Sonys entry into the market. Hundreds of computer game developers lost their jobs.

Well, you can't blame others if your doing not your own homework. Commodore made bad (no and wrong ones) decisions and that's why they got wiped out.

No, it was mostly the PC that killed the Amiga. It also didn't help with Sega and Nintendo having inexpensive machines out.

Commodore certainly did make many poor descisions - the 64GS being one (and possibly the C128 too). Then there was the CD32...

Every corporation makes bad decisions, but in either case surely Atari and Panasonic weren't affected by Commodores poor decisions.

Most (if not all) of the people I know who had Amigas went to the PlayStation, not the PC.

Yes. On the other hand, the PCjr was a brilliant idea.

i worked in a pc shop untill the demise of commodore and distributers fell by the wayside

we folded for a few reasons
location location location
we were a 15 minute walk from town

future zone had been trading for about a year ... bang go our amiga/mega drive (not that we did much sega) software sales

without commodore we lost our main ready money
peeps could and would buy an a600/a1200 for birthdays and id show them a pc only if they said "oh and word processing too" as tv's for workbench were naff and a monitor ontop of the amiga brought it over the price of an amstrad 386/486 with 40mb hdd
ok the games wernt there at the time but they soon were

the only ones who survived were futurezone (before they became eb) and game ... all the independants died with unsold amigas no doubt going to liquidation sales or escom

The Amiga mostly destroyed the Atari ST with far superior built in audio and graphics capabilities.

I had both and switched to the Amigs within a year for those very reasons, and so did many others. The PC then started to get more attractive games, doom came out, photoshop for the PC destroyed anything the Amiga had to offer and apple sucked.

In my case the only choice for me in the mid 90's when I finaly gave up on the amiga was the PC. Wasn't interested in 2D graphic design, PC had softimage, and 3dsstudio plus all the best games, and photoshop came out about the same time and was easier to use than the mac if you were juggling floppy disks a lot.

Actually, I can see the PC and the traditional consoles both just merging. Heck, even the Wii I like to use to browse the net and do other things than just play games. In fact if the Wii browser would support more video formats (like ABC's) then I'd use it to watch shows I missed during the week. As it is I can hook my PC to my TV to watch shows but I don't have a remote. With the Wii I could just use the Wiimote with the browser and bam. I keep thinking of what the next gen will be like.

That's not entirely accurate. The Atari STE pretty much caught up to the Amiga, and the Atari ST had a built-in MIDI interface, giving it a slight edge audio wise. Grab any "Carebears" demo. Few demos on the Amiga came close, and the Atari Falcon blew the A1200 right out of the water, and lets not even compare the Atari Jaguar to the CD32, because that would just be embarrassing.

They don't cost much. If you have your PC switched on all the time, it's a fairly good investment.

Me too. Mostly because it doesn't take several minutes to boot.

I sometimes wonder why there isn't a millionaire who is an amiga fan and who would like to see AAA running...