Sure, an i7 build with a few 295's. Waste of money to me, but I wouldn't be building/paying for it so whatever.

 Reply

If you've got the money, you can get a helluva lot.

 Reply

Nah not really. GFWL is a crap hole, but it's the only place you can buy DLC for PC games where are also windows live.

Prime example: Fallout 3.

Besides, it's easier to get gamerscore on the PC than an Xbox, with FPS and RTS games anyhow.

 Reply

They need to drop the ridiculous point system to begin with.

My hatred for MS Points on XBL will never go away, every time I'm forced to pay more than the item I'm buying and ending up with extra points I'll never use.

Don't bring that boatload of suck into PC gaming.

 Reply

GFWL, along with having a crummy donwload service, the interface its terrible. The whole "hit guide button, browse through friends list, and send a message" system works on xbox, where you're using a controller, but with a mouse, it just feels crippling. Steam is made for PCs.

 Reply

Yeah. As much as fellow PC gamers like to tout their customizability and such... the PC game market needs organization, and the community needs to be connected. Consoles have always been able to have a close relationship with their audience, and that's something the PC needs as well.

But yeah, just like the 360 has live, and the ps3 has PSN, the PC needs one service, and that service is Steam.

 Reply

Competition breeds innovation... having more than one digital distribution method forces Steam to keep upgrading and innovating and being better than the rest of the pack.

Steam wasn't always as good as it was, and it had nowhere near the support, and as much as I love Steam it still has a long ways to go.

 Reply

I don't think Valve will have any trouble keeping users happy with Steam.

I agree that we need organization. As a PC user, I already have a handful of websites, email accounts and other things to deal with, having my games spread out amongst all these DD services is the last thing I want.

It simply has to be more user-friendly and I can't really see cut-throat digital distribution competition helping us out any.

 Reply

It needs to be more than organization.

The first thing Steam needs to work on is getting their European prices correct. I'm not European, this dosen't even bother me, but from all the legions of European people always talking about it, apparently the pricing for the games there is out of wack.

Hell, to add to that, they need to get their American prices in check too. We need to start seeing games cheaper than retail on release, to give people more of an incentive to use the service. Hell, games like Dawn of War 2 or Fear 2 that you can register on Steam, can be found far cheaper at retail - Valve said in the beginning going digital would help the consumer out on the backside, but... it doesn't. Retail PC games are constantly cheaper than Steam, I know why this is (due to retailers not wanting to get shafted), but it's still a bit unsettling. I hardly get any new releases on Steam because of this, except now I can just get the retail versions way cheaper and register those to Steam.

Valve really needs to do some kind of quality control on the games it puts up. Valve constantly says "it's not our job to check for that stuff" but so many games are either broken, horribly bugged, or are missing patches. The developers say "We've given Valve the patch" and Valve usually goes "No, we don't know anything about it". This usually happens for smaller games.

This is pretty much a non issue anymore, but the fact some games come laced with double DRM is a real kick in the pants.. Securom on top of Steam DRM? I know Stalker has this double helping of DRM, and I believe Witcher does as well. There is no reason for that, you only need Steam's DRM.

Also, the fact that to play Fallout 3, I have the Steam overlay, and then ANOTHER GFW overlay on top of it.. ugh. Please, just let me use Steamworks. I know this is more of a publisher thing then a Steam thing but it's so annoying. A few other games do this as well, it's annoying as all hell.

Games need to start coming out day and date with retail services and other DD services... case in point is Red Alert 3: Uprising. EA has said "maybe it'll come to Steam.. after we see how well it does on other services". That leads back into your point Paradox, you get RA 3 from Steam, and right now the only place to get Uprising is from D2D or EA's store, but NOT Steam. This is where I think Valve needs to start stepping in and say "Hey, cut the bullshit, release the game on our service". Steam and EA still aren't cozy by any means.

There needs to be better integration of making these games work on Vista, period, or don't advertise that it works on Vista. A lot of smaller games I've bought that have said to be Vista compatiable, I've had to use Steam's own forums to find the tricks to make it work.

Now, don't get this wrong, I don't want someone to think I'm a Steam hater by any means, I own about 115 Steam games.. but from someone who uses the service constantly, on a daily basis, this is stuff that needs to be addressed before Valve can use Steam as the "one stop digital download stop".

Because hell, most of these issues aren't issues with me, but they are a big deal to a lot of the PC gaming community. The first time your average user downloads a game that doesn't work or has problems, they are going to swear off Steam forever.

So at least we have other DD services like Impulse to motivate Steam to actually work on this stuff, rather than just sitting back and doing nothing because consumers have nowhere else to go.

 Reply

Also, an addendum: Every game needs to have preloading. No excuses. Ever tried to buy a game the day it comes out? The service chugs and it takes forever to download.

What does Steam do right, in my opinion? I actually already think it's easy to navigate, the weekend deals are awesome, the preorder deals they've been running have been pretty top notch, on a non big release day games download super fast, I like the fact it automates getting all my patches for me, I am basacially just a big fan of the conveinence it provides in general.

I do firmly believe if Valve fixed all the smaller problems, they would be absolutely unstoppable.

 Reply

And that's why Stardock should be thanked because their competition may force Valve to shape up the service.

 Reply

Exactly. Quite Frankly... STEAM IS GOD. I don't want interferences. Competition is good... i guess... but these guys seem kinda arrogant.

They're gonna have most major developers on board? Better Cross EA off the list. They've got pretty strong ties to Valve at this point. And... oh yeah... don't count on Valve posting their games on your service either.

 Reply

/thread

 Reply

your so wrong. did you even read what you just posted?

yea, $400 my ass; prove it

 Reply

You don't understand. This thing has four of the highest end video cards on the market. You'll be at the top of the line in PC tech for the next decade, and be able to run every game on high res with max settings for another ten after that.

 Reply

ten years, not ten decades :P

 Reply

What could possibly go wrong?!

 Reply

Oh god, I totally got the game wrong. Doom, I meant Doom.

*facepalm*

 Reply

Tell me how this was not made for that rig.

 Reply