Friday, October 28, 2005

What is This Sony/Microsoft Alternating Post Crap?

I don't know. It just wound up that way today.

DQ reader Mike sent along a link to the new Microsoft online application "Windows Game Advisor." Here's the link:
http://gameadvisor.futuremark.com/gameadvisor/service/.

In theory, it's a decent idea. The application does a one-time scan of your hardware, establishes a system performance rating, and can then tell you whether your machine has the specifications needed to run any of the games in the Game Advisor database. It's not something we need, but there are huge numbers of people out there who are intimidated by the gobbledygook of system specs, and this could enable them to buy and play more PC games, which would be good news for us.

I think this is the kind of initiative that signals Microsoft creeping back into supporting PC gaming, and they've said as much publicly in the last few weeks. Abandoning the platform was a terrible idea, and maybe they've finally realized that there's plenty of profit in PC gaming.

I don't think anyone realized it fully at the time, but the birth of 3-D acceleration and the unbelievable rate of performance increases fragmented the PC gaming market so badly that it still hasn't recovered. PC developers aren't developing for one user base--it's more like fifty separate ones, each with different levels of performance.

I know it sounds like I'm pimping Microsoft today, but I don't care who's making the operating system, the console, or the games. I just want the best platforms and the best games at the lowest possible price. I don't care who makes them.

In other words, I'm a consumer.

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