tempest in a teacup

This test by ExtremeTech appears to suggest that Windows Vista has finally reached performance parity with XP as far as gaming goes. Another interesting note - Ars Technica has also started recommending Windows Vista (with Service Pack 1) as the operating system of choice in their monthly system guides.

Is it time to bite the bullet and upgrade to Vista? Perhaps along with a nice DX10 graphics card like an nVidia GeForce 9600GT, or an 8800GT…

Vista tends to get a bad rap from a lot of people, but it does have a lot of good features that Windows has been needing for a while (user access control, a composited window manager, integrated desktop search, lots of under-the-cover kernel improvements). The main thing keeping me from upgrading was the possibility that my games (the only real reason I keep Windows on my hard disk) would take a performance hit.

It does sound like a lot of things were changed just for the sake of changing things (like the location of Control Panel apps) which may be a problem when switching initially, but other than that it doesn’t sound like there’s much of a barrier to me upgrading any more.

Can any Vista users (who also use their PCs for gaming) comment?

Or, should I say, broadband-aid. :P

*gets things thrown at him*

Ars Technica has been doing a lot of articles about the state of US broadband lately (here’s their latest one). I’ve ranted before about how lame the so-called ‘broadband’ in the US is (the fastest connection I can get in my area is 1.5 Megabits per second, and I live in an urban area), but another thing that this problem has reminded me about is the importance of regulation in free markets.

After the stagflation of the 1970s, most of the Western nations spent the ’80s and ’90s in a fit of deregulation, ostensibly to improve market efficiency. Deregulation is good in certain cases (most people seem to point to the airline industry as one badly in need of it, and post-deregulation one could certainly make the case that - post-9/11 shenanigans notwithstanding - the budget airline space has really taken off).

However, claiming that deregulation is universally good is misguided. People who make such claims (I’m pretty sure we all know who they are) ignore one of the important lessons of basic economics: that markets are not infallible. Market failure is inevitable most of the time, and government regulation is needed to mitigate the effects of market failure. Some of these problems have market based solutions - the success of cap-and-trade initiatives in dealing with emissions certainly demonstrates this - but even these need to be regulated so that the supply of permits is kept in check.

Regular telecom companies are subject to this kind of regulation (which is why infrastructure owners are required to act as common carriers), but broadband companies aren’t, resulting in a de facto monopoly or duopoly for broadband services in most areas. Less competition almost always results in higher prices - and that is more or less the situation the US is in now compared with most other advanced industrial nations.

If you ever need to shoot down market fundamentalists, the situation of broadband is as good an argument as any.

I got a Gamebridge off someone at work last week.

If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a device that plugs into your consoles’ regular composite/S-video cables and transmits the signal to your PC via USB, letting you either play your consoles on your PC monitor (which it does terribly, by the way) or capture screenshots and video from your console games (something for which it is far better suited). It doesn’t seem to do component, but I don’t own a PS3 or Xbox 360, so I have no problems with that limitation.

I hooked it up just now, and captured a sample video from King of Fighters XI.

Not a dazzling show of my combo skills, but it does prove that the device works pretty well.

Now I need to think of a way in which I can actually use this thing. I’ve got a few tentative ideas, but I need to figure out how feasible they are.

EA scales down copy protection for Mass Effect and Spore

Angry people on the Internet actually caused change…I WA SHOCK!
The new scheme still limits you to three installs, which is lame, but the need to activate every ten days has been replaced with a check every time new content is downloaded, which is more reasonable. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s about where BioShock’s copy protection was, which is slightly annoying but acceptable.

In other EA PC gaming adventures, both this and this are looking really cool. I don’t know what’s more surprising - the fact that DICE is making something that isn’t a Battlefield game, or that said game is an Unreal Engine 3 game whose predominant palette colour isn’t brown.

Anime file sharers arrested in Japan
(Man, I seem to be linking to Zepy’s blog a lot for anime news)

If this means fewer high-quality raws for fansubbers to use, we might be in for a bit of a dry spell :/
What particularly annoys me is that so few studios have even bothered to offer a viable alternative to fansubs (Gonzo is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, and like hell I’m watching anything they put out).

Info on Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu (The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya) will apparently be in next month’s Newtype magazine (in Japan).

Between that Clannad followup and that new Lucky Star OVA, I was wondering if KyoAni would ever get around to announcing more details. I guess they have their priorities straight :)

I’ve already read the translations of the light novel chapters that will form the main story thread (and it’s a very good one indeed), but I’m wondering which of the other side stories they’ll toss in as filler. Awaiting details eagerly.

I was hoping that I could write about something unrelated to gaming today…it’s not like I’m lacking for topics in any way.

But then EA goes and pulls a stunt like this with two of the biggest upcoming PC releases; games which I had been very much looking forward to.

I guess the appearance of security (and mind you, it is only for appearances - the probability that this copy protection will be broken by an enterprising hacker is pretty much 100%) is far more important than customer goodwill.

(BTW, anyone who suggest I should buy a 360 to play Mass Effect can go die in a fire)

You have been warned. :P

Kotaku covered an interesting interview on Gamasutra with CD Projekt’s VP of PR and marketing. For those not in the know, CD Projekt developed The Witcher, one of the standout PC games of last year. Click here to read the interview.

All in all he pretty much chimes in with what Stardock’s CEO mentioned in that interview I linked a while back (although honestly I think the whole “PC Gaming Alliance” thing is basically hot air until real initiatives to popularise PC gaming are proposed). He does raise one point which from my experience is pretty much correct, though:

As time goes on, sites that don’t offer any unique perspective will probably watch their readership dwindle. There are a lot of great sites out there that are worth visiting just for the quality of writing; so while they might not provide a lot of in-depth editorials, it’s just entertaining to read their takes on the day’s news. As someone who has predominantly worked on PC games in recent years, I have a different gripe: most of the major blogs just don’t really cover the platform very much.

This is pretty much spot on, I think. My experience with the major gaming blogs has been that PC gaming news, be it related to games or new hardware, doesn’t really show up that much outside of the occasional small piece on PC games sales charts (always accompanied by those “lol PC gaming is dying” comments that I loathe so much). I cannot give credit to any of the major gaming news websites for discovering gems like Sins of a Solar Empire (I discovered it from a review I read on technology enthusiast site Ars Technica), or The Witcher for that matter (I have Penny-Arcade to thank for that one).

I know the audience for PC gaming is relatively small compared to the combined market for consoles, but why can’t my platform of choice be treated with equal regard as the others? It’s not as if the major sites shirked PSP titles when the platform was doing poorly.

Another rhetorical question, I suppose.

(On a side note, a handy site I discovered from that Gamasutra article was Rock, Paper, Shotgun - a blog devoted to PC gaming. Needless to say, it has been added to my RSS feed aggregator)

…was pretty good on the whole. I’m still making up my mind as to whether it deserves to be up on the pedestal so many people put it on, but it certainly deserved to be played a heck of a lot more than it actually was.

Quick bullet list of things I liked and didn’t like:
+ Great dialogue and characters, witty writing
+ Solid platforming
+ Good aesthetics
+ Good level design with some creative themes
+ Psychic powers are put to use in some pretty creative ways
- Some stages where the camera and controls work against you
- Mouse and keyboard controls are terrible for combat
- Game doesn’t scale to higher resolutions very well

I’ll turn it into a proper review at some point.

For anyone interested in trying out the game, it’s available on PC through Steam (for the undeniably low price of $20) or through the Xbox Originals service on Xbox 360.

Next up on the hit list: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
Hopefully I still remember how to play it. :p

Some of you know that I have a pretty sizeable gaming backlog. A lot of it is games that I want to play but haven’t gotten around to buying yet (Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection is currently #1 on that list), but there’s also a pretty big backlog of stuff that I own but I haven’t gotten around to finishing yet:

• Psychonauts (I put some effort into beating it this past weekend, and finally reached the endgame…I had to skip a lot of optional stuff to do it though)
• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (I’m at about 60% completion)
• Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition (level 15, right after beating Vergil for the second time)
• Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition (mission 3-1…which is proving to be annoyingly long. Oh, and I have almost no ammo left)
• Zack & Wiki (the last puzzle is so ridiculously hard)
• Super Mario Galaxy (technically I’ve ‘beaten’ this game already, but I need to get one…last…star!)
• NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (2 levels in on each side)
• Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (I’m on mission 13 of the campaign but for some reason I can’t bring myself to finish it)
• Sonic Rush Adventure (Blaze’ last Sol Emerald is giving me trouble)

This is not a state of affairs that I’m particularly happy with, given that there are other high-profile releases coming up that I’d like to devote my time to…in particular Mass Effect drops at the end of the month, and the PC version of Devil May Cry 4 arrives next month.

So much gaming to do, so little time :(