Comment Re:Multiple interpretations (Score 1) 542
Look at it as how much money you wasted...
$20 for a couple months of Netflix (or similar) vs. $200 purchasing.
That's a $180 difference - in your favor.
Screamer II was the epitomy of insane graphics - no PC on the market at the time of its release was fast enough to run it in its highest resolution and all the extras turned on. By the time computers caught up with it, it wouldn't run on them because it was a DOS game and running it in DOS mode had no sound.
IMO the PC gaming companies are insane. They write these games for rich kids, and rich kids only - you have to have thousands of dollars worth of equipment, then pay $60 and up for the game itself. It's madness. They should write for today's top end machines, not tomorrow's. They should write the games so that if you have a video card that costs twice what an Xbox costs you'll get the graphics, yet if you have a normal $50 video card the game will still play.
And they should sell them for a far lower price. A movie costs from millions to hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, but I can buy a DVD for between five and twenty bucks. It is a rare game that has a production budget of over ten million, yet they sell for three times what the most expensive DVD costs.
So am I the only one who thinks it's great that games might be designed with the ability to scale its graphics as new hardware comes out after the release of the game?
I mean, I understand where you're coming from about cost and target market re: rich kids. But 1) your numbers are outdated, you can get a screaming gaming machine for under $1k, and 2) that target market you mention is made of people for whom half the fun is building and overclocking their pc.
Poorly written/optimized code aside, it's not like you *have to* run a game with all the graphics options set to UltraHigh to enjoy it. At least if it's a game worth playing.
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none.
