Morgoth

Yeah...sooooooooon. So sooooooon that we just wait a little longer until it's sooooooon again.

Maybe MS should shut down themself to make more profit LOL!

So was Extraction Point.

I hope AP's gameplay will be anything BUT Vegas' gameplay.

I'm pretty sure the NWN2 Associate producer regularly scans the official Bio forums for bug messages. I think this one is the wrong place.

A good Diablo clone is a good Diablo clone. Why not? Just because every single studio failed to capture the excitement of the Blizzard classic doesn't mean an actual capable studio like Ensemble couldn't pull it off. And that Agent game certainly sounds cool as well. Perhaps Tony Goodman's new studio will continue working on these concepts, or perhaps they they collaborate with MS again to make a new AoE game...?

I'd like to wait for a demo first. Something tells me this is just another lame Tomb Raider-clone set in WW2.

Gamasutra article Well done, Microsoft! War of the Worlds RTS? I'd take that anytime over some Halo bull****. Amen. And MS just has this habit to destroy all that hard work establishing a succesful company. Well done, Microsoft! Here's the rest of some artworks. Click What a shame, really. I've yet to get an answer why MS decided to shut down Ensemble. RIP. Shame on Microsoft.

The 360 will always be the leading platform for your typical AAA game, so the PC will consequently be a port. And that's what I'm afraid we have to live for another 5 years or more: Games that always play similarly, and look similarly thanks to the focus on consoles. This sucks. That's why I still continue to support Bioware (Dragon Age), Blizzard and Valve.

Download the demo, man!

The school didn't really fit into FEAR at all. FEAR was about bleak, eerie and wonderfully gloomy corporate offices and industrial complexes. It's a gloomy, eerie and depressing school for an industry giant's human genetic experiments on children in their early years, where teachers' desks have notes on the use of psychoactive drugs on the kids, instead of say, how well Billy did in the gym last week. I'd say that fits pretty well. No. They shouldn't try to pull a Condemned. But we'll see what the full version offers, it's hard to judge a demo that consists of glued-together maps from everywhere. But my stomach tells me it won't be as good as FEAR1.

HS was more a movie, less a game. Back then when I still owned my PS3, I was quite intrigued my teh graphics...but man, that game was so primitive. All you do is always hitting the same 2 buttons. MGS4 also filled a full Blu-Ray btw. Contrary, Valve managed to get HL2+Ep1+Ep2+TF2+Portal on a single normal DVD for the 360.

Pretty much. SInce the platforms will be essentially static until the replacement platforms are finally released. A big difference of course compared to the dynamic and constant tech improvement seen with pcs. But overall, it is a really good thing for 2 reasons: 1) Our current technology will still be playing games for 5 years instead of just for 5 months. 2) With the emphasis no longer on technology as a means to demonstrate how great a game is, developers will be forced to actually design games instead of engines. I mean, if all games look the same, devs are going to have to actually do some design work to make their game interesting and unique. I think that is fantastic. The current gen console hardware is already for some 3-4 years available, yet we still see tons of boring and crappy games released on it... The difference is just, we now have to wait longer for the good games.

It also means games will look and play the same over the course of another 5 years...

Well perhaps if PC hardware starts getting more unified, are more efficient but also easier to program (no API's anymore), maybe then they also start to become cheaper. That's what Sweeney predicts, or at least that what he wishes. In that case, yes, consoles would become obsolete.

Isn't "one box that controls everything" just a wordy way of saying pc though? A console is a game optimized computer, still a computer, but one with a very specific purpose. Going back to a general purpose "one box that controls everything" is going right back to the pc again. If that approach didn't generate sufficient reveune for game devs and pubs before, why is it going to do so in 2 or three years? That's because publishers are now all greedy and hawt on consoles and treat the PC like it doesn't exist. And because they fear they become one day unnecessary when they finally realize developers could earn their money on PC games thanks to STEAM and whatnot. Seriously, don't you make more profit if you sell 500k units on Steam (you get 60% of that) rather than a console game that sells 2 million (and you only get 10%?).

I presume MS won't jump on the next-gen tohuwabohu before there isn't PC hardware available on the market that makes a huge difference graphics and gameplay wise. Doesn't make sense to push out hardware that runs on, let's say DX11, but gets too quickly obsolete. So if Sweeney is right and Intel/Nvidia and who knows else finally establish some news standards that don't require sloppy drivers and confinig APIs, I think then MS will start to have an idea about the hardware specs of their next console. 2012 maybe? Or longer? And what will Sony do? Using 16 CELLs? Wasting money on a new CPU/GPU multimonster?

Why don't you just play the demo? ooh, pissy I'm not pissed. I just wanted to help. And now go download that demo!

Pro-question 1... does everybody who have PC, have PC capable of playing current gen PC games? No... I have 3 working PCs at home only 1 is capable of playing current gen PC games. 75% of PCs sold today are not suitable for gaming... Most of the people buy desktops/notebooks for work school or internet browsing... Pro-question 2... does everybody who have Xbox 360/Playstation 3/Wii have Xbox 360/Playstation 3/Wii capable of playing current gen console games? Yes... 100% of consoles sold today are suitable for gaming. That is the difference, people spent much much less money on console gaming in a span of 5 - 10 years than on PC gaming. And i dont believe it will ever change... So the cost of the PC is very relevant to gaming... Most of the people who are buying Wii or Xbox 360 arcade (because of they low price), never played on PC anything beyond minesweeper That's why every Notebook and every friggen Dell OEM computer needs a decent graphics card by default. Not the crappy Intel Onboard ones.

That's because MS don't want to. The money is now with the 360, because that's what MS lobbies for. And because they make a profit for each sold retail copy, somthing they can't do with a PC copy or electronically distributed copy. MS and Intel (with it's crappy "look we push OEM PC's with our crappy intel gfx chips outside") just don't really see the fact that the PC fanbase is just much larger. With a wee more focus, more standards and some better services, this could dramatically change. That about Tim Sweeney was a seperate subject, more hardware related. But calculating instructions directly through software would really push things forward. You'd only need DirectX for backward-compatibility.

Alas, writing is totally boring. This game is as backward as BG1, with a little prettier graphics, but that's it. I'm more looking forward to divinity 2 and Risen, besides of the Obsz/Bioware giants.

Really? What console games has Crytek made? Is there a console SDK for the CryEngine2? No? That's very exaggerated formulated. Tim Sweeney, holiness of graphics programming, thinks that by 2010 (or later), there will be new CPU's that feature 10 cores and more, GPU's might take the same route, so this enables of course new possibilities for programmers. Like if well coded, the confining nature of DirectX could be replaced by direct software rendering, so the communication wouldn't run through hardware via drivers, but like with Vista and soundcards, through software. Sweeney also hopes that CPU's will be directly programmed through C++, not some other sort of language like you need one for the graphics, one for general purposes, and an additional for the CELL. PC's of course will be the first platform that will indroduce such CPU's/GPU's, or maybe a mix. Who knows. And then Crytek will introduce CRYING, the next awesome FPS using Crytek3 that will be PC exclusive again.

Why don't you just play the demo?

With 10 Gbps, I'll download your face!

The school didn't really fit into FEAR at all. FEAR was about bleak, eerie and wonderfully gloomy corporate offices and industrial complexes. Ahh I loved that. But I'm gonna buy FEAR2 anyway, knowing that I can accept change.