Tom McDonald has been covering games for countless
magazines and newspapers for 11 years. He lives in the New
Jersey Pine Barrens.T
he phrase “Consoles are Better” is on
the short list of verboten opinions at any
PC magazine, and certainly not one I would
have voiced a few years ago. I’m a PC gamer
through and through, down to the bone. I
didn’t have a hardcore console childhood and
then drift into computer gaming as I grew
older. I began gaming on computers such as
the TRS-80 and Commodore 64.
But tell me: Did the C64 plug into a com-
puter monitor on a desktop? No, it plugged
into your TV and you sat on the living room
floor. My first desktop PC was an 8088 with
a black-and-yellow Hercules monitor, and
it didn’t even have a mouse until I added a
special mouse board. A bus mouse was exotic
hardware, partner.
So when I say the future of PC gaming is
in the living room and not on the desktop, I’m
not talking heresy. I’m talking about a return
to our roots. The Xbox 360, with its Windows
Media Center OS and PowerPC core, doesn’t
feel like a typical game machine. It feels like a
proto-PC that connects to the TV. And because
it’s capable of streaming media, can connect
to the Internet, and of course, play games, it
certainly feels like a PC. But it’s certainly not
a full PC yet.
The lack of keyboard/mouse control is a
major handicap, but the low player cap for
certain Xbox Live games (Call of Duty 2 is lim-
ited to eight players) is an even bigger hurdle.
More to the point for gamers, however,
is the promise that the distinction between
a PC game and an Xbox game will vanish
at some point in the next generation. Let’s
face it: The PC gaming market is not as
vibrant as it once was. PC gamers are more
likely to get solid titles for their desktop
PCs if games can be PC/Xbox hybrids right
out of the box. The 360 isn’t the machine to
do that, but it points the way toward a true
home-entertainment/PC convergence where
the standard desktop/console distinctions
fall away, and everyone benefits.The Future
of PC Gaming,
Part IIGAME THEORY
THOMAS
MCDONALDquick start THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
10 MA XIMUMPC JUNE 2006
A new company is promising to reduce lag in online games, with the world’s fi rst
Gaming Network Processor (GNP). No, we’re not joking. Bigfoot Networks, founded
by former Intel networking guru Harlan Beverly, has a patent pending on its all-new
lag-ending tech, dubbed Lag and Latency Reduction (LLR).
The company plans to offer an add-in board that will reportedly offl oad network-
ing chores from the CPU, thereby boosting frames-per-second and reducing lag time
in online games, via client-side optimizations. The company hasn’t stated specifi cally
how its card works, claiming that revealing the information would compromise trade
secrets. We’re intrigued, but very skeptical of anything that sounds too good to be
true. Investigate it yourself at http://www.bigfootnetworks.com.Add-In Board Promises Lag Reduction
You’ve probably heard of Intel’s home-theater PC (HTPC)
platform called Viiv. Now AMD has announced its own
HTPC spec named Live (funny how the two names
rhyme). Though Live specifi es the hardware required
for systems to qualify (just like Intel’s initiative), AMD
will also deliver software to “enhance the entertain-
ment experiences by extending the power and fl exibility
of your PC.” (We’re not sure what that means, either.)
Unlike Intel, AMD isn’t tying its initiative to a specifi c
chipset. Find out more at http://amdlive.amd.com/.AMD Takes on Viiv with Live!
The latest technology mashup almost
reads like a new Must See TV show:
Can an uptight, business-type share an
apartment with a pizza-eating, tattoo-
covered gamer?That sums up the unlikely pairing
of the world’s largest PC maker Dell
and straight-from-the-gaming-‘hood
Alienware. Unlike Hewlett-Packard’s
clumsy attempt to eat Compaq several
years ago, Dell says it will keep Alienware
as a completely separate entity, but will
leverage economies of scale to help lower
Alienware’s costs.With Dell owning Alienware, the com-
pany will have a backdoor option to sell
AMD-based PCs bearing the Alienware
logo, without sacrifi cing its presumed
preferential treatment from Intel.Alienware’s 2005 revenue was
reportedly $177 million with a forecast
of $250 million for the next fi scal year,
which would make it the largest bou-
tique PC builder in terms of revenue. Yet
Alienware’s purchase price amounted to
less than a single day of Dell’s revenue,
Michael Dell told Fortune magazine.And We’ll Call it Dellienware
In a surprising move, Dell buys Alienware but keeps details secret