maybe I am mistaken, or its was EBGames doing some regional pricing thing compared to the states.. I remember waiting quite awhile before i purchased a copy (and got it heavily discounted from steam) because I said to myself "not willing to spend that much" when i saw it in store. and since my usual "to much" number back then for impulse buys was anything above 50, so i seem to think it must have been 60..


maybe my memory is failing me though, its not exactly the most reliable when it comes to exact launch prices of individual games (especially with how many games i buy haha)

I don't know how it works in Canada or EBGames, but I certainly do remember the physical boxed version of the PC version of Fallout: New Vegas cost $50 dollars (USD) at GameStop in 2010 when I purchased it.

EBGames is basically just the Canadian branch of Gamestop (Gamestop is its parent Company, after a buyout in the early 2000s), i remember way back when it was still called electronics boutique and wasn't owned by gamestop, but thats another thing entirely..

so maybe either my memory is failing me, or it was regional pricing

As others have mentioned, I think you might be looking at one specific situation, interpreting it in a certain way, and applying your interpretation across all of PC gaming.

For one thing, high-end GPUs do not become obsolete in 2 years. I have a system at home with an old Core 2 Quad 9450 CPU and a GTX 670 GPU that can still run most modern games at detail levels that surpass current-generation consoles. The video card is 3 years old, and will likely continue to see use for at least another 2-3 years.

Also, game detail settings are relative. "Ultra" settings in one game can have very different hardware requirements than "Ultra" settings in another game. Case in point: when Crytek released the first Crysis game for PCs, there was a lot of belly-aching from people with expensive hardware that couldn't run the game at 60 FPS at maximum detail settings. They felt that because they could run other games at maximum detail settings, they should be able to run all games at maximum detail settings. This was silly, because Crytek intentionally released their game with detail settings available that were beyond the current generation of hardware. The idea was that as hardware got better, their game would look better. It was a way to add technical longevity to their game. People were so used to the relationship between hardware requirements and hardware being flipped in the other direction that they couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that Crytek had intentionally inverted the relationship.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the fact that detail settings exist in a game doesn't automatically mean that you need to use those settings (or should expect your hardware to be up to the task) in order to get the experience expected by the developers of the game...much less to get an experience that's on-par with current-gen console hardware. Sometimes developers include forward-looking detail settings that are more appropriate for hardware that doesn't exist yet (or to accommodate people with bleeding-edge hardware that want to get something out of it.)

Combine that with Ubisoft's reputation for poorly-optimized PC ports, and I think you might be overreacting a little to the 8GB video RAM recommendation by Ubisoft.

Me too. In fact, I remember when I worked at Babbage's and Electronics Boutique was our main competition in the mall. Heck, I remember when the first Electronics Boutique stores started popping up in Illinois.

One also needs to remember that consoles break a lot more often than PC's. The initial PS2 (lasers), and 360 (overheat) were a disaster and the PS3 was not exactly solid either. Some of my console gamer friends run through 3 of their favorite consoles each generation and they are not always under warranty (especially not the sony consoles). Even the PS1 had tons of issues. Incidentally, they were able to get by the 360 problems without actually paying anything due to the failure rate fiasco and extended warranties. Even nintendo had problems. Remember the disk loader on the NES? All consoles were basically broken until they made the top loader. Sega CD? lol it was not good. The only console that I have never seen break down is the Atari 2600... rock solid and still works and is in my closet lol.

From a PC hardware perspective, they are obsolete in that the new cards blow them away in two years. At least that is the general rule (sometimes its just 1 year). They are not obsolete when compared to a console but that is misleading because consoles are usually obsolete hardware wise by the time they hit the shelf due to development cycle. Games have also stopped trying to push the envelope on the PC since the rise of the 3D console so you can easily use the same video card for 5-6 years today. Not so 12 years ago when every new game tried to top a competitor lol. Now everything is made for the console 1st, thus you dont need high end hardware to enjoy any AAA game until the next console cycle.

I suppose that depends on your definition of "blown away." Does Skyrim running on a GTX 980 look nicer than Skyrim running on a GTX 670? Sure. Does the difference blow me away? Nope. It still looks great and plays well on the 670. To an untrained eye there might not even be a huge difference. Doesn't the quality of the gaming experience mean more than benchmarks?

This is true, but there's more to it than that. 12+ years ago (my first 3D card was a 3dfx Voodoo), 3D gaming hardware was still evolving very quickly. These days, hardware designers struggle to eek out more performance from contemporary GPU designs. Game developers also have to target mid-range hardware in order to sell their games. Not everyone is willing to drop $500 on a video card.

I wouldn't judge it by Ubisoft's games, they have never been great PC Ports, in fact Unity had issues across all platforms, then there is Arkham Knight which was ported by a small studio with no PC developing experience at all, where as Mad Max ran great on my PC but that was by Avalanche studios, whose games have always ran well for me,

i think its some of the publishers mostly nowadays and their non caring attitude towards the PC version's of games, you shouldn't need to buy a new GPU every year to play a game properly, no doubt Ubisoft will patch Syndicate... eventually!.

Meh, the cost of building a decent rig isn't too much, but I've noticed the price of AAA titles isn't much cheaper than consoles anymore (I remember they used to be like ￡30 when console games were 50-60, now PC games seem to be catching up to like 45-50). And it's not as if the quality is improving.

Im was a dual major CS guy so when I say blown away, it means by raw hardware power. I agree that perceptually, it really isnt a big deal to some folks myself included. i have plenty of friends who disagree and spend $500 a year to upgrade (they sell their previous card to make up the difference usually). Their philosophy is just as valid as our own, after all, what is $500 a year anyway especially if you use it for hundreds of hours? Its not much especially since we all make over $75k now (most of us make a lot more). Cheaper than going to the movies twice a month and that barely equates to 4 hours of entertainment a month. So I get their perspective too. I personally dont care because I am more about strategy aspects. They dont need to be pretty for me to get my enjoyment.

We are showing our age... the Voodoo card was about 18 years ago (1997-98)... not 12... I know because I wanted one badly but I was still in high school and my parents still thought the video games were bad for kids at the time lol. I actually didnt have my own computer until I built my own out of thrown away parts from other folks. I ended up getting a Banshee for about $30. Those were the days lol.

3dfx Voodoo was my first video card as well in 1998 when I first started PC gaming with Unreal. Glide was a pretty good graphics API back then. Then I went with ATI video cards, then AMD video cards, but always had more Nvidia video cards than ATI or AMD video cards.

Ahh.. thanks. I wasn't sure which is why I asked. I haven't owned a console since Sega Genesis.

Wait until Lord Gaben's voice echoes gently in your ear 'Summer summer summer....sale sale sale....'. : >

Seems like gog.com is non existent and greenmangaming.com don't exist to some PC gamers, both of which have sales in the Summer and in the Fall and during the Holidays.

From what I hear if you purchase PC versions of video games from greenmangaming.com and get Steam keys, VALVe does not earn any money at all.

Why would I want Steam not to get money? I'm not a Steam fan boy, but I do like Steam. Using their platform but going through trickery and hoops to not pay a one time tiny fee in your purchase is just conning them. It's a free service besides, so it's not like Steam is some evil P2P third party service.

I never said Steam is bad or evil or whatever some people who hate Steam say.

I was just saying it's sad some PC gamers are ignoring gog.com, when in fact they also have sales and is competition for Steam.

When purchasing PC versions of video games from greenmangaming.com and VALVe not earning any money is because i think VALVe allows third party websites to exist to sell PC versions of video games to compete with Steam, even if VALVe doesn't earn a single cent or dollar.

Without gog.com, Electronic Arts (EA's) Origin, Ubisoft's uPlay, greenmangaming.com, and so on Steam would be a bigger monopoly than it is right now.

You wouldn't want Steam to turn into a monopoly on the PC gaming market now would you?

Wouldn't you like it if Steam had a patch rollback feature like gog.com so you can revert to a previous patch if the next new patch released breaks your video game? Until it's fixed? That is one of the uniqueness of gog.com.

Anyways PC gaming is not too expensive because we also have gog.com who does Summer sales, Fall sales, Halloween sales, Holiday sales, and a bunch of other random sales as well.

I have enough logins, accounts, and other similar things already. So "have to sign up for another webstore" is enough of a negative that it'll keep me from going anywhere I don't absolutely have to. (like, it being the only place I can get a game I really want.)

...I was briefly tempted by the SSI "gold box" D&D bundles that GoG put out a couple months ago, but then I remembered I don't have enough time to play the games I already have, let alone half a dozen more old-school RPGs.

I have enough accounts made on so many places too, but I will not be limiting my self and go for a place that sells all if not all almost every single PC version of a video game 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free.

But this isn't a discussion about that this is a discussion about PC gamers seeming to forget or not even mentioning gog.com, which has just about the same amount of sales as Steam does.

except GoG has a far smaller library, and not many of the newer titles (as in, games released in the last 4 years) compared to what Steam has

Eh, I was also a CS/CE major and have been a software engineer/architect for nearly 18 years, but when someone says a product "blows away" another product, I usually take that to mean that it performs very significantly better for their use case. I usually take on-paper specs and synthetic benchmarks with a grain of salt. That, and "raw hardware power" can mean different things with GPUs. FLOPs, texture fill rates, pixel fill rates, memory bandwidth, etc. all have different effects on performance depending on the application. It's not uncommon for a GPU with a lot of processing power on paper to perform worse in games than one with less.

At any rate, my only point is that the fact that GPU manufacturers release new models once or twice a year doesn't mean that older models are obsolete. People expect new hardware to be released on such a cycle (CPUs as well). I'd assume that they're able to make their money back on the R&D and re-tooling required since they're still doing it. As long as games still run well on older hardware, there's nothing forcing users to upgrade every year. If people want to upgrade every year because they like to be on the bleeding edge, that's their decision. I personally haven't felt it was necessary (for me).

I know the Voodoo is over 12 years old. I was just using it as an example, as it was the first piece of computer hardware I ever owned that was made specifically for gaming. I was in college and working part-time at the time, and I was pretty much blowing all of my extra money on beer and computer hardware. My next upgrade was a pair of Voodoo2 cards...man, that was an expensive upgrade at the time. Right after that was when nVidia really hit the scene and started putting 3dfx out of business with their TNT series GPUs. ATI's offerings at the time weren't really even in the running as far as 3D gaming hardware went. They didn't become a serious competitor until they introduced the first Radeon series GPUs in 2000. Nail in the coffin for 3dfx, that was.

The industry really exploded after that and there was a lot of growth. My point was just that the hardware isn't evolving as quickly now as it was back when 3D gaming hardware was fairly new.

Well it seems like it's changing ever year for gog.com.

Right now gog.com has 1337 video games available for sale. Stardock Entertainment just joined fully on Friday and will be releasing every single video games that they publish for sale on gog.com.

For 2015 gog.com said they got a change in their business strategy, which said their library should be growing even bigger.

And gog.com will still remain 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free.

I think this is where they talk about their business strategy for 2016. Here you go.

https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/Press_Room/Aktualnosci,news_id,2555

And, in general, I don't give a crap about relatively non-intrusive DRM. (Would I prefer that they went back to disc checks, code wheels, and manual-word lookups, rather than online servers? Sure. But Steam, or registering a code? Meh, whatever.)

...also, Ballowers, I've always been honestly curious. Why is it that you have a habit of typing out certain things in the most verbose way possible, every single time. ("100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free", for example.) It frequently comes across as either machine-generated text, or the kind of thing you'd get from a professional paid PR guy.

Off topic: My problem with Steam is very much like a problem ive just had, id purchased a game its not that old, went to play it, it wont run, i spent a night on the net troubleshooting it, its because the company shut down the DRM server and it can no longer be authorised, you can get to the window to put your code in, and when you find the work around to open the window, it makes no difference theres no authorisation server to connect to, i have way over 60 games on steam if for any reason they shut down, same thing and i lose all my games. Oh and the way to fix it, is to download a hack, to bypass the DRM.

On topic: I dont see a problem with PC's and the age of them, i have a freind playing fallout 4 on an old laptop under minimum requirements and it run without a hiccup and graphics are good, the machine im on now is out of date and im playing games with hardware that i shouldnt be able to play, with no problems at all, i had friends who were playing games on old machines and not having any problems, it will only be when a company goes out and decides to make some outrageously stupid high end end game, that people will go i want to see that i want to play it and make it popular and then every other company jumps on the bandwagon and then people are upgrading left, right and center.

I don't think that anybody is suggesting that one should buy only from GoG.com, or from any one source.

The advantages with GoG is that their games are DRM-free, they have a good refund policy if a game doesn't work, and they have frequent sales and promotions.

PC gaming costs ebb and flow. PC requirements jump with new consoles and then that tech trickles down to mainstream. PC gaming isn't terribly expensive so long as you ask on a knowledgeable forum before you buy and have reasonable expectations.

For the most part, the difference between a decent new PC and a decent new gaming PC is $250-$400.