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The cool thing is that Revan fits both male and female. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Naming a child after a video game character? Oh yes. Yes, indeed!

Regardless, games don't seem to have passed a point where profitability is prohibited by production costs outstripping revenues. It seems to be quite the opposite. I take the position that the great and successful games of days long past, rather than the games of today, were the ones which were selling at nonsensical prices (from a purely cost and time investment vs. pricing standpoint). Games which essentially constituted several weeks of coding by one or two programmers, in the early eighties, selling for $40, whether on carts, disks or casettes, was a situation where it doesn't seem to me time and expense were in alignment with the price on the label. But it was a much smaller industry back then. To cite my own pet system, the number of experts in TI 99 assembly worldwide, doing all the games for the system in the early '80s, is a figure you can count on your fingers. There was a time when the same could be said for Apple II. But that isn't the case anymore. So more realistic pricing focused on real expenses and time investment is inevitable. There's such a thing as selling a product for virtually pure profit, with utter indifference to operational expenses, and some industries occassionally operate on the basis of that kind of indifference. A few years ago, when it was still possible to market dialup web access at $15-$20/month, that was a product that was almost pure profit for the businesses with existing dialup customer bases. And when it was still possible for coders to sit down for a few weeks, write up a big pile of BASIC and some Assembly and have a chance at making it big as a game designer, that was virtually pure profit. But in a crowded market, that kind of thing won't persist forever. And it didn't persist for the games of the BASIC era.

On the one hand, I agree that further level progression would seem insane, as with KotOR II, we've pretty much capped out the existing system, and we've become the most powerful force-user in the universe. Normal humans are completely helpless against us, and the Sith Lords have been destroyed, or we are the greatest of the Sith, as the case may be. Who would we fight in the next game, if we progressed further? ? Even if they did that, the system would still be capped, and would need to be virtually reinvented from scratch, which would raise the question...why did the characters lose all their key force powers spontaneously, and gain seemingly unrelated ones? But on the other hand, yet another instance of the "you were a powerful veteran jedi, but somehow you ended up back at level 1" character development trope would seem pretty perverse. Really, I don't know what could be done. The only reasonable option I can see is playing characters who truly are NOT world-changing figures like Revan and the Exile in future KotOR games. Perhaps games with more of the feel of the first half of BG1, for a change (i.e., you really do feel like just a young adventurer making his way in the world for the first time). The world changing war veterans have been milked for all they're worth.

Is it my mind playing tricks on me, but I could have swore that prices for games have come down since the 80's and early 90's. Well, as far as the eighties go, it seems to me they've gone up. My TI 99 games (1981 to 1988) were generally priced between $12 and $40, it seems. Certainly, there was a price increase in the transition between the "a few thousand lines of BASIC" game design era (although, admittedly, a lot of assembly was used on the systems of the early '80s) and the "voice acting, FMV, texturing, modeling and large-scale corporatised development" era which saw media rich games like Wing Commander III introduced. But I think that was a fairly rational point in time for price increases to hit, and a logical basis for them. KotOR and KotOR II, as development projects, are far closer to a movie than a BASIC game, obviously. As for the original price comparisons, they seem out of place. I think CDs are probably a bad source for price comparison, given the disturbing sickness of that industry. The core music industry is, at least among the modern and web saavy, seemingly pretty much considered the poster child for a diseased medium whose biggest proponents are doing everything imaginable to destroy it on their own behalf. I really doubt anyone in their right mind should wish to emulate their pricing model. And I tend to think games can only realistically base their revenue model on their own costs and their own revenues. Currently, they're making money. Analogy to quite disimilar and horridly malfunctioning media industries in other areas isn't going to serve to enlighten as to its own circumstances and profitability. If games are making money at their current typical price per unit, it's hard to imagine that collusion on such a scale as would be necessary to permit a substantial industry wide price increase will ever occur, except gradually.

Depends on the PC , but if you were as clued in as you claimed to be you would know that. Still I'd like to see a PC built for

Erm...okay, creepy.

Fixed.

Nope. I've seen the first movie a few times, though only once in recent years, the second one a couple times quite a while ago (I don't really remember much about it), and the third one only once, many years ago. I haven't seen Attack of the Clones. I saw Phantom Menace and didn't like it. Yeah. Not much of a fanboy, that's for sure. KotOR and KotOR II were good RPGs. That's why I'm here.

Indeed, the KotOR games certainly offer more food for thought than any of the Star Wars movies, new or old, and generally better acting and writing as well.

An extra 1000? Please. A midrange gaming PC can be put together for well under $1000 total. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> And as I say, most financially capable households in the web already own a midrange PC, so the price of entry is in fact $0 for that majority of households. For those who have an old, out of date PC, the price to upgrade to a video card within minimum specs for all current games is between $50USD and $100USD. The price to upgrade to a CPU within minimum specs for all current games is between $50USD and $100USD. As for RAM, there are stores which practically give away generic DDR for free, and that's been the case for a while. DDR 2100 is virtually worthless these days, but still fully capable of running all modern games.

They stopped porting these titles to PC simply because there was no market for it. Same goes for Final Fantasy games. 7 and 8 both came out for PC and then they stopped because the market was just too small. People figured out that getting a $200 console was a better solution for these games and many other titles. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Moreso, I find that among the core PC gamer and particularly RPGer base, there is simply very little interest in certain types of game particularly characteristic of the console aesthetic. And bad ports only reduce interest all the more. FF7 was a classic example of a very console-oriented RPG gameplay style made the worse by a terrible port. The execution hardly served to inspire interest. The P&P D&Ders and PC Gamers with whom I graduated high school around the time Final Fantasy 7 was coming out, while they were big fans of certain PC titles, even for that most momentous of all console RPGs, FF7, with its massive fan following, found themselves mostly apathetic about it. Some played it, and some didn't. Certainly, virtually no one I knew played FF8 or FF9, which stretched the link between their style of play and storytelling, and classic 'RPG' mechanics beyond any really meaningful connection whatsoever. Among the PC gamers I knew, NONE bought the FF7 PC version, but not because they decided FF7 for PS1 was a better option. None of them bought that at the time, either (I only got a PS1 a year ago, myself). Rather, they didn't buy it, because it was a crappy port of a game which didn't serve the aesthetic preferences of the platform's adherents.

There's much to suggest that force users are not necessarily so much powerful on a linear scale as powerful in differing respects. Given this, it's very difficult to rank them in this way.

Zelda II for GBA. Such a classic. And one of the most underrated games in history, scorned for not being a carbon copy of its predecessor. I adore it.

I only ever played, I think, Ultima II. So my favourite Ultima is Ultima II. Also, my least favourite Ultima is Ultima II. Really, I have nothing constructive to add here

Will this, "hey, hey, look at me everybody, I'm a BIG BOY!" nonsense never end?

I'm trying to quell my surprise, but my surprise simply won't be quelled! Oh...what? You mean quelle surprise? Ah.

Not really, you have consoles for games and a much lower spec PC takes care of everything else. Unless you use it in some sort of professional capacity like CAD. For most purposes the PC is soley a games machine and nothing more. It's a use I'd be more than happy to see the back off given the crap infested releases of recent years, perhaps they were always crap infested come to that, and it's only recent console evolutions that have given an alternative. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> In which case, the argument goes, a low-end home PC (which will generally come these days with a Geforce 4 level or ATI 9200 range card as minimum spec), and intended for use in web-surfing and word processing under Windows XP can still run 98% of the full library of PC games, if not the most demanding 2% of PC games (limited to a handful of titles released in the last year and a half). Essentially, any homes capable of furnishing a game library or a gaming platform of any sort will tend to have a PC of this variety at least. And the fact is, virtually the entire western world owns such PCs. So the price of entry for playing the vast majority of games, for the vast majority of users, is $0. People seem to be applying this console principle, which presumes that a device either can or cannot run ALL games ever made for the platform, if it has a certain set of hardware. Which just isn't the case, with PC technologies. Therefore, the price comparison in a console versus PC debate is a wild mess of economic acrobatics involving one's needing to determine an average minimum spec among PCs not specifically intended for gaming (which we presume most homes to already be furnished with, regardless) but which are still capable of running the vast majority of games anyways, determining what range of titles are excluded by such non-gaming specs, determining what the price to upgrade that minimum spec to a spec capable of running the handful of games which fall beneath it is, and doing a comparison of a fully capable gaming PC (i.e., able to run virtually all past and present release titles - doesn't need to be the latest Alienware Area 51) versus a capable PC not intended for gaming (only able to run 98% of the PC game library, excluding some recent titles), versus current consoles.

In comparison to this poll, the PS2 and Xbox are things that don't suck

The original notion, comparing buying a (complete, new) PC every several years to buying a console every several years, completely misunderstands how an ideal PC upgrade path works, anyways, and so should be ignored. Buying brand new PC parts in a single bundle, all at once, then keeping it for four years exactly as you bought them is an idiotic way to keep a PC running games. Far, far more viable (i.e., cheaper) is buying it a piece at a time, as upgrades are required. Some components can stick around practically forever (there are ATX cases that have been in use for nine years now and are still perfectly good), while with others, if you're on a budget, you get your best money by upgrading to a model from a couple years back, every few years (e.g., Video Cards and CPUs), and with others, constrastingly, you might get the best deal by upgrading to the latest high end model, but only ever five or six years (e.g., PSUs - and yes, 350W ATX PSUs capable of running today's cpus/boards are an around eight year old spec). People upgrade their PCs all the time not because expensive, new PC hardware outdates itself in a couple years. It doesn't. Many people upgrade some given part of their computer every year or so because buying old, cheap PC hardware which outdates itself in a couple years bit by bit is the cheapest way to buy it.

All these arguments which compare a PC used solely for gaming to a console used solely for gaming really astonish me, in their obtuseness. The comparison makes no sense, as a PC is not solely a gaming machine. My argument for why the PC will persist as a gaming platform dwells on the other uses for which PCs continue to be absolutely necessary in our society because that necessity which is external to gaming is precisely the advantage PCs have over consoles as a set of technologies which cannot be effectively outmoded. You cannot kill gaming on PCs, simply because PCs do not depend upon gaming, either for their existence or the advancement of their technologies. And because an absolutely necessary market exists for their other more significant uses, one will inevitably spring up for games. Comparing the price of a PC as a gaming platform to the price of an Xbox as a gaming platform is like comparing the price of a car as a device for listening to music to the price of a walkman as a device for listening to music and declaring the death of cars and car audio on the basis of the lower price of a walkman. Findings in this comparison: Advantages of car audio: - Optional quadraphonic (or greater) sound and other configurations. - Stronger bass. - More interesting interface possibilities. - Single systems accomodate a larger and more diverse set of technologies. Disadvantages of car audio: - More expensive than a walkman. - Not portable. - Parts of the system semi-permanently built into the car. Small, Irrelevant Addendum: Cars also drive you places

"Ancient times"? The 90's were yesterday, so to speak. Any game younger than, say, Lands of Lore, came out recently. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Now that's a game whose name I don't hear mentioned all that often (presuming you mean the first, Throne of Chaos). I lost my CD, but liked the game enough to repurchase it off Ebay, recently. Now I've got myself a brand new complete Lands of Lore. I shall have to play it again soon.

I'm glad most RPGs don't have timers of any sort, let alone real world timers. I often take far too long to complete them My record is Dragon Warrior 1. 1989: Got it at release. Created my character leveled through the first several levels. Early '90s: Leveled him up to around level 12 or so. Mid '90s: Played him into the teen levels. 2004: I took out my cart again, and with the same controller, on the same save, on the same system, with the same character, leveled up and killed the Dragon Lord. It took me over 15 years to beat the game. Good thing there wasn't a timer (and good thing my cart's battery didn't die before I did)

The PC is not a static platform. It's a set of technologies, related to varying extent to one another, and constantly changing. Because PCs will necessarily remain extremely common for reasons other than gaming, they will be used for gaming. Simply because they're there, and therefore a market exists. It's inevitable. The PC is defined by the quality of its attempting to perform as many jobs as possible as fully as possible on a single set of technologies. Gaming happens to be one of them. And as long as its other purposes remain, and are not replaced, there's no reason for gaming to disappear. Especially because its other uses have the tendency to push technology forward even for their own sake. And "replacing" for their other purposes, a mess of different technologies which may or may not depend on each other to lesser or greater extents depending on user needs and preferences is not possible. How is it that a platform of the future will simultaneously replace, say, PCs which function as fileservers running NetBSD, PCs which function as routers running Linux, PCs which function as your grandmother's $300 web-surfing-and-nothing-else box, PCs which populate school computer labs, PCs which function as web kiosks on custom Linux builds, and PCs which function as high-end gaming terminals? Even if all games disappeared from planet earth, a huge necessity for PCs would persist specifically because they represent a vast range of technologies which serve very different purposes under very different circumstances. You can't replace them all. What defines PC, anyway? X86? The relevance of the original X86 standard as the basis for modern "PC" processors is increasingly minimal. And BSD and Linux "PCs" operate on non-X86 processors anyway. It can't be that. And will Windows be the OS of tomorrow? Who knows? Mac is increasingly stylish. Linux's marketshare is continually increasing too. One can never underestimate the possibility for sudden and radical change in the world of computer technology. But even if MS disappeared miraculously from planet earth, a horde of other companies would be only too happy to take their place, and snatch up the huge demand for a popular PC standard (which is really all MS provides - benevolent tyranny over the industry - it's arguable that there being no tyrant ruler for the industry would make it even stronger). The notion of another "platform" replacing the "PC" is nonsensical, because the PC itself is not a singular platform: it is a vast array of semi-inter-connected computing technologies which persistently adapt and develop in response to the various and often quite disimilar needs of various industrial and personal user environments alike. And it's not the property of any one vendor. It's the property of hundreds, and the work of thousands of independent developers. And as long as PCs (or Macs - the difference is trivial at this point) populate the earth, they will continue to be a viable gaming platform, by virtue of their very existence. There's no way to go back to 1975 and the days of CP/M at this point. As soon as you hit the mid-seventies, games on popular computing platforms are here to stay. There's no way to destroy the technology so horrifically as to prevent the operation of games on them. And games demonstrate a tendency to spread, as far as I can tell, rather than to remove themselves from viable platforms, where they exist. In a world where games move in to fill tiny cell-phone screens and black-on-green PalmPilot screens at the slightest opportunity, PC games are here for good. Their relative popularity as a gaming platform may vary over time, but their presence as a gaming platform is quite inevitable.

I suspect that the benefits of an early, holiday release will have outweighed, in monetary terms, the benefits of waiting for a more complete version a couple months down the line. And the fanbase are just a small portion of those sales. Really, what the hardcore fans think, and the forum nerds, seems a small thing, by comparison to the seasonal whimsy of the market.