TeAM YYePG

RADAR GLADSTONED
GLADSTONED
Great moments in gaming punditry
COLUMN
Every five years, some alleged game
industry “expert” earns a berth on the > short bus with this half-witted assessment:
“PC gaming is dead.” I know I touched
upon this briefly in my last column, but I’m
pissed. One such clown in the mainstream
media recently wrote of his willingness to predict
that the real loser to the emergence of the
Xbox 360 and PS3 will be PC gaming. Buddy,
PC gaming isn’t dead. Not by a long shot. OK,
so the new consoles demoed at E3 look pretty
interesting (even though the Xbox 360 was
> You
running on an Apple G5 workstation and the
PS3 demo was running on...wait for it...a PC
with two GeForce 7800 GTX cards in SLI
mode) but what those consoles can do now, a
PC will do better in six to eight months.
Some refer to Moore’s Law, but I like to call
the console-versus-PC battle “The Five Year
Itch.” In 1996, the original Playstation
launched for $300. It had a 32-bit RISC CPU
(33.9MHz), 2MB RAM, 1MB Video RAM and
proprietary technology to handle 3D graphics.
At the time, a $3,000 gaming PC packed a
200MHz Pentium CPU, 32MB DRAM, and 2MB
Video RAM, and the first good 3D cards were
coming out. These numbers seem a little
skewed, but since a console is streamlined for
gaming, it can operate faster and requires less
horsepower than your standard-issue PC rig.
Over the next five years, programmers tried
to eke as much as possible from the PS1
before hitting a technology wall. After all, you
can’t upgrade a console.
When the PS2 neared U.S.
shores, promising a 300MHz
CPU, 4MB DRAM, 4MB
VRAM, and another proprietary
graphics engine for
$300, gaming PCs similarly
beefed up. A lean machine
sported an AMD Athlon 750,
128MB SDRAM, and a
64MB graphics card for
about $1,500. Fast-forward
another five years to mid-
2006 and the PS3's arrival.
The PS3 may shock you
with its power when it
launches but I’m willing to
bet my graphics card you
can expect low- to midlevel
computers to easily dwarf
the power of the new con-
24 > COMPUTER GAMING WORLD
soles within a year (two, tops) of their launch.
And soon, thanks to XNA, you’ll finally be able
to play a game on your PC as you do on the
consoles, simply by sticking a disc in the
drive—without having to perform an actual
installation. XNA promises developers it can
easily standardize game coding (and allow you
to use Xbox 360 controllers on your PC). And
with the coming gaming/consumer-friendly
new Windows OS, code-named Longhorn,
Microsoft is making a broader, more aggressive
case for PC gaming in general.
can expect low- to mid-level computers
to dwarf the power of the new
consoles within a year of their launch.
Yes, your average PC will cost more than a
console. But really, how much more will it
cost? Speculation has it that the Xbox 360 and
PS3 will be a little pricey—possibly as much
as $400—and they can do only a fraction of
the things a PC can. You can get a great performance
PC for under $2,000, and I know
plenty of other things I can do with it beyond
gaming, pr0n downloads aside.
PCs have the market cornered on MMOs,
FPS games, and countless strategy and RPG
titles. Consoles have their strengths, obviously—ease
of use and couch-potato gaming
being at the top of the list. Point is, there’s
enough room in my house for a PC and a console.
How about you?/Darren Gladstone darren_gladstone@ziffdavis.com
THIS IS A CONDENSED VERSION OF
THE RANT DARREN SPEWED FORTH ON
CGW_GIZMO.1UP.COM.
NAME THAT PLATFORM
QUESTION: Three games on three platforms,
all using the same engine. Which is which?
A b c
ANSWER: EPIC’S UNREAL 3 ENGINE PROVIDES THE BEST
EXAMPLE OF WHAT IS POSSIBLE ON EACH PLATFORM.
TECHNICALLY, THE XBOX 360 DEMO OF GEARS OF WAR (SHOT A)
WAS RUNNING OFF AN APPLE G5 WORKSTATION. THE PS3 DEMO
OF UNREAL TOURNAMENT (SHOT B) WAS DONE ON A HIGH-END
PC WITH TWO NEXT-GEN NVIDIA CARDS IN SLI MODE.
MEANWHILE, THE PC’S UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2007 (SHOT C)
LOOKS EQUALLY FANTASTIC, BUT CONSOLES DON’T EXACTLY
IMPROVE WITH AGE—PCS DO.
REGULAR
CONSOLE CORNER
A LOOK AT THE REST OF
THE GAMING WORLD
There are plenty of good games out
there beyond what’s on the PC. Whether
you also own a PS2, Xbox, GameCube,
PSP, DS, or—heaven help you—an Ngage,
we’re here to help. So here’s our
pick for the best of the console world
now shipping to store shelves.
SONY’S PSP
> NORMALLY, THIS IS THE SPOT WHERE
we single out a console game that we
feel you simply have to pick up. This
month, though, it’s a little different. Sony’s
handheld, the PSP, could very well be the
next Walkman. We are not exaggerating
here—every editor at CGW has a PSP, and
we’re hooked.
There are already a bag load of good
games—which we’ll get to in a second—
but Sony’s new handheld is capable of a
whole lot more. We’ve used ours to read
comics, listen to a couple hours’ worth of
music, and even watch DVDs ripped onto
Memory Stick Duos (tip No. 27: Buy
SanDisk’s 1GB memory card if you can find
one—its cards are reliable and relatively
inexpensive at $150). And the PSP is quickly
becoming a hacker’s dream machine, as
people are finding ways to put console
emulators, Web browsers, and more onto
the new portable.
As for what should be on your play list:
Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Wipeout Pure,
Ridge Racer, and the digital crack known
as Lumines. Also promising at press time
are Rockstar Games’ PSP versions of GTA:
Liberty City Stories and Midnight Club 3:
DUB Edition./
>> Sony’s handheld,
the PSP,
could very well be
the next Walkman.
>> in Orange County, California. >> In a move that shocked absolutely no one (2 million users worldwide can’t be wrong), Blizzard recently announced >>