Well, it had to happen.

The point where I got tired of the big upgrading show PC gaming has turned into, and finally I made the decisive move to throw in the towel.

I'm selling my enthusiast gaming system, and instead buying a gaming capable laptop with decent specs, but a far cry from the enthusiast level PC I've been working on for the last many years. Actually, the last pre-built PC I've bought was back in 1998, since then I've been upgrading. Constantly.

I guess buying a laptop will ensure I don't fall for the temptation to buy even more hardware I don't need, in order to play games, that simply will be more fun on the 40" screen in my living room (in my case, on the Xbox360)

A laptop is, per definition, more practical and flexible, consumes less power and - if you are careful - will be powerful enough for most games. Yes, Crysis will probably not run well, but same goes for just about any other system in this part of the galaxy.

And gameplay isn't hurt by dialing down some of the more performance hurting capabilities - more importantly, I hope I'll start enjoying the gameplay and ideas behind games, instead of just benchmarking them (or looking for technical details) - a bad habit, I've had for the last 5 years or so.

Said in other words: I'm downgrading in order to enjoy my computer, instead of constantly working on it. I'm downgrading because I'm tired counting shader effects in games and I'm getting a laptop, because I'm tired of loud, demanding and expensive desktop computers, which you'll have to upgrade twice a year. And finally, I'm downgrading because I have a console, which is much more fun - and the games I do prefer on the PC aren't that demanding anyway.

If you have any comments, please do.

Well, my HD3870x2 didn't survive long, unfortunately.

For some reason or the other, the internal crossfire link of the card stopped working, but alas - all things must end.

Fortunately I was offered a replacement for it, and it turned out to be the new HD4870 which should arrive early next week. While I'm waiting for the card to show up, I made some tests with my HD3850 card (which is a spare GPU I bought for situations like this), and to my surprise the card was perfectly able to play all my games; including Crysis (at 1280x800 resolutions and everything at medium)

In other words: considering the price of GPUs right now, especially the ATI lineup, you get more than you expect. I gave around 100$ for my HD3850, which performs just fine - and in a few days I'll get a much stronger GPU, essentially just giving me further AA and AF options to tinker with (and perhaps Crysis running on my 22" monitor in the native 1680*1050 resolution).

As console games will dictate the graphical level of PC games as well, for some time to come, I expect my HD4870 to last for some time. Crysis being the only game atm to really stress my setup, and Crytek is considering leaving the PC platform altogether (for reasons mentioned below)

If you look at the console ports on PC, you'll see the performance is usually quite good on PC, with the notable exception of Lost Planet, so I guess its good times for the PC people, as they don't have to invest too much for some time to come. Or at least, thats what I hope.

About 2 years ago i was criticizing the game industri for their use of really bad copy protection.

But maybe I was looking at it the wrong way - although I'm still against crappy 'protection software' like Starforce, which renders a few games (notably Ubisoft titles) almost unusable on my 64-bit OS, unless I use the very cracks I'm against.

Because the problem is, that way too many people still download illegal copies of games. I remember the early days, when I played a few 'copied' games for fun and because I didn't knew better, but piracy has become a big threat for the whole gaming industry, forcing developers to either drop the PC platform or go multiplatform (which usually means less-than-optimal PC ports). Crytek being one of the very pro-pc developers to drop the games exclusively for the PC.

And I don't want to hear any excuses - there are none. If people can't afford to play videogames, then they shouldn't (and probably spent more time on their career). Alternatively they can save money for the games they really want.

If people have the money, they really have no excuses whatsoever, and can be compared to leeches sucking the creativity out of the developers.

Typically I hear comments like:

"I really like the game, and will buy it later"

- but they probably won't, because they already 'have' the game, and already saved the money

"Software companies make crappy games, and I will only pay for the really good ones"

- But they have no problem playing the 'bad' ones for free? Chances are, when they finally find a 'good' PC game, they'll make a snap judgement call in order to save the money. Furthermore, the money they saved by downloading the illegal game will be taken from the development of new games, generally lowering the quality.

"I don't care about the business, I just wanna play"

- Yeah, but playing any game at any time, and finding just a little value in that, they do care. They just don't wan't to pay, because they're cheap and have no respect for other peoples work. Taking the easy road in this case hurts the business = the games.

"PC games are way too buggy"

- And by not buying the game, you make sure that the Quality Assurance period of a game is cut short, effectively slipping more bugs into the final release.

And I don't want to explain all the disadvantages of illegal copies. But in short - patches, online play and support are all affected negatively when playing the illegal copies.

Crysis, though not the best PC game of all time, is still a great game and a milestone in PC graphics, only sold about 1 mill. copies. Compared to the amount of PCs on the market, even only counting the game specc'ed ones, and the amount of gamers who has already played the game, I'll say 1 mill. is an incredibly low number. Crytek will of course get their investment back, but only barely. No wonder they are planning to go multiplatform, which means the number of custom PC games will be even lower.

Thank the pirates. They really help destroying the PC games industry, and forces the developers to run to the greener fields (= consoles).