Holy crap, have you guys seen any of the DirectX 10 games yet?  They look freakin' sweet!



Shadowrun



Crysis




Alan Wake



Unreal Tournament 2007 (with Patch)



Flight Simulator X



Eve Online (with patch)



Hellgate London



Warhound



BioShock



Company of Heroes (with patch)



Age of Conan



Warhound



Alan Wake looks absolutely craaaazy, doesn't it?  It's got that eery zombiesque feel to it that just makes me want to have it right now.

I'm also looking forward to Supreme Commander.  It'll be a DX9 game with a DX10 patch coming out shortly after launch.  It reminds me of Earth 2150 and will supposedly support over 16,000 units on screen.  I can't find any DX10 screenshots, but here's a DX9 screenie...



-b0b
("...Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.")

Supreme commander is an indirect sequel to Total Annihilation. Same design philosophy. Its also the first game with dual monitor support, so i can have say, a large map on one monitor and the 3d view on the other!

Hotness!

Also I'm looking forward to the Witcher, and Team fortress 2 looks clever and fun!

Alan Wake looks amazing! too bad it comes out in December, goodness.

Those just look sick!  (sick here being a good thing).  I really hope this will revive the PC game industry for another go at the consoles.

Well I would say charging $50 a game is moronic..esp with your MMOs.  They charge you for the game, they charge you for subscription, and they charge you for the expansion.  Now I wouldn't mind paying say $30 for a game.  For example...Doom 3 built up to be the best game ever!  The mags owned by the game industry gave it 11 out of 10 and all that crap.  What happens when users rate it...it wasn't no Casablanca of the game industry...it was more like Cinderella Man, except we didn't have an option to take back the game and get our money back.  I think the same thing goes with console games, the richy rich kids can afford it sure...what about the lower middle class kids?  $50 is a lot.  Not to mention you go back 6 months later and get them for $20 less.

So I don't completely buy that computer pirates are responsible for the PC game downfall.  I think console games are more hyped up and so companies put more into them.  I'll give you an example.  Call of Duty 1 and 2.  Both became gold and platinum games.  Both sold for $50 at first.  Then in 7 months an expansion came out for the first one which cost about the same.  Then they were sold for $35 6 months later in a package deal.  Meanwhile the CoD3 only comes out for console.  You can't tell me that they can just throw money away and not offer it to the set up that made it famous and disappoint the PC fans.  But if you look at Halo, they released for both and it drew in mega bucks on the PC.  Even the 2nd one is coming out when Vista is released.  Same thing for the GTA series.  So no, I don't buy that piracy is to blame.  I blame the console wars media for only talking about Xbox, Nintendo, and Sony.  Maybe Sony should make more games for PC this year since they lost before they even started.

X

Games are becoming more complicated every day.  NES titles were typically developed by teams of 4-8 people.  Modern games, though, are running closer to 40-60 employees.  The artists alone outnumber the entire staffs of previous titles by a 3-1 basis.  It's nuts!

A perfect example is Final Fantasy XII.  The cast list at the back of the manual contains easily 300 people.

I read an article the other day about soaring costs for game development which is leading to more "big hits" but is reducing the number of titles reduced annually by a drastic amount.  I don't remember exact numbers, but there are only 80 "major" games slated for release this year across all platforms, which is significantly lower than in past years.

The other downside to the soaring cost of development is the strain it puts on startups and small development shops.  Some of the best games ever made (Myst, Final Fantasy, etc.) were made by tiny shops on extremely limited budgets.  This is practically impossible these days as the required capital to start a sizable project is simply out of reach.

-b0b
(...was in Briney's area at the DIA today.)

It's not ridiculous for a MMORPG to have a subscription fee.

Those games have TONS of content added to them outside of expansions.  WoW had 2 group dungeons, 2 20 man dungeons, and 3 40 man raids added.  New talents, new armors, a new zone, 3 battlegrounds, and pvp ranking systems added without charge, through patches.  That's more content than some games ship with.

Not to mention the hassle of server hardware and maintanenance.  Last time I checked WoW North America had about 60 servers to choose from.  Then you add in tech support for the game, and Game Master support (Which have to be active 24-7 to handle problems).  After all that, I hardly think paying 15 dollars a month for UNLIMITED play is a big deal.

I'd like to see you get a month of heavy play out of another game for 15 dollars.