PC gamers shun Vista, sticking with XP

Games like Crysis benefit clearly from the DX 10 upgrade, but that benefit hasn’t been enough to push gamers into upgrading to Vista. Historically, those are the very first computer users, living on the bleeding edge, to upgrade to new hardware and operating systems. The statistics from Valve, whose Steam system lets gamers download titles from the web and which collects system information in return, shows that Vista still has less than a 15 percent market share among these users.

That’s roughly in line with the total consumer market, but it’s a real surprise considering the advantages Vista’s DirectX 10 offers gamers. There’s no way to run DirectX 10 on XP, so the only way to get the very best PC gaming experience is to run Vista. They should theoretically be lining up to buy Vista in droves. Read the full article on Yahoo Tech

 

PCAnswers.Co.Uk: Why my new laptop is a Macbook

…For £700 I could have bought a high-spec laptop that enabled me to play some games, but instead I decided to buy an Apple Macbook. This will no doubt be sacrilege to some PC users, but let me explain my decision. I already have a games capable PC, which is far more easily upgradable, so there seems little point in going for a laptop that would only be able to play games for a year or so, before the hardware demands exceeded the laptop’s specifications. In addition, with Apple’s Boot Camp, you effectively get two laptops for the price of one, because I can and do run Windows on it, alongside OS X. However, the biggest reason for switching to OS X is that I’m sick and tired of dealing with all the security issues that are associated with Windows. Read the full article on PCAnswers.Co.Uk

Play Valve’s Team Fortress 2 on a Mac

The latest version of CrossOver, Codeweavers’ Mac and Linux application designed to get Windows games and applications working on those systems, has been released. CrossOver 6.2, now available, features a number of different updates both to increase compatibility and to make Windows applications run faster than ever. And first among these updates is the fact that it will now run Team Fortress 2 right out of Valve’s new Orange Box. Read the full article on TUAW.Com

Gabe Newell: DirectX 10 for Vista was a mistake

Gabe Newell, president of Valve Software, said that Microsoft made a terrible mistake releasing DirectX 10 for Vista only and excluding Windows XP. He said this decision affected the whole industry as so far only a very small percentage of players can use DirectX 10. Read more.

Does Microsoft Game Studios not trust the Windows API?

Microsoft Game Studios‘ Combat Flight Simulator 3 (CFS3) does not in general run properly on dual core computers running XP or Vista. The reason appears to be that the code by-passes the functionality in the Windows Application Programming Interface (API) for sharing out processing tasks between CPUs. In my case it was a little known AMD utility that saved the day. Read more.

Microsoft: These are our Competitors…

Microsoft succinctly and clearly identifies many of its major competitors. Why should anyone outside of Microsoft or among shareholders care about this information? Partners can identify areas of Microsoft strength or weakness that could impact their businesses. For IT organizations, Microsoft loosely identifies alternatives to its own products through its list of competitors. Read more.

Japan Explains: Why Xbox 360s Heat Up and Crap Out.

Face it: the Xbox 360 isn’t quite up to snuff. The design is flawed, leading to an abnormal number of machines konking out. Since Microsoft won’t reveal the details of what exactly is causing the problems, Japanese news source Nikkei had a thermal design expert analyze the 360’s heat radiation system. Two Xbox 360’s were used for the investigation: one purchased in 2005, and the other that was repaired in May 2007. Their findings? Read more.

Stream media from your Mac to a PS3

I bring you news of a cool tutorial on streaming media from your Mac to a PS3. This method is basically built around the MediaTomb open-source UPnP media server. The tricky part is installing MediaTomb on your Mac with fink and setting it up for the PS3 from the command-line. But once you do, you should be able to stream audio, video, and pictures from your Mac over the network. Read more.

Bach Sold Stock as Xbox Problems Mounted

Market Watch reports that filings lodged with the Securities and Exchange Commission show Bach sold $6.2 million in stock between May 2 and last Thursday when Microsoft officially acknowledged it would be necessary to fork out around $1.15 billion to cater for an “unacceptable” number of Xbox repairs. Bach had sold no stock for eight months prior to May. Read more.

Microsoft deletes 900 forum messages about crashing Xbox 360s

In what appears to be an effort to conceal the over 900 replies gamers provided on the official Forzamotorsport.net forums about Forza Motorsport 2 crashing on the Xbox 360, Microsoft has deleted the long thread, now stating that it’s “exclusive content for registered forum users” only. However, the thread was removed entirely, even to registered members. Read more.

A tale of 11 broken Xbox 360s

Justin Lowe is your average hardcore gamer. He’s fully embraced the HD era, owning both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and loves his Nintendo DS and PSP for gaming on-the-go. He even helps run Aggravated Gamers, an indie gaming podcast. What’s special about Justin, though, is he’s currently on his twelfth Xbox 360. Read more.

NoteBookReview.Com: Hasta La Vista, Vista

You’ll probably tell me I am being presumptuous with this article/editorial, and that I am running around with my head cut off screaming “THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!” I wouldn’t totally disagree with you. But here’s the bottom line: Windows Vista’s effect on the market will be catastrophic, and OEMs and PC users alike are in for a very rough go of things over the next year or so. Without further delay, let’s talk about why you should be concerned … and talk about solutions to the problems. Read more.

Vista games cracked to run on XP

The news is sure to irk Microsoft who may now face an increased delay in some consumers adopting Vista at this early stage. However, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Earlier this month Falling Leaf Systems said in a press release that it believed Microsoft was deceiving consumers by stating that the titles would only work on Vista, and announced its intentions to release compatability software to disprove the claim. Read more.

[Most] Vista PCs being sold right now aren’t powerful enough to run Vista

Just imagine what might happen if the majority of Vista PCs now being sold were not up to the job of running Vista. If users were experiencing unacceptably slow performance, although the published minimum specifications were met. 

 In that situation you might expect there’d be a lot of dissatisfied customers right now, and the ranks of the disgruntled would be growing daily as Vista PCs continue to be sold in large numbers. Well, this exactly what is happening at the moment. Read more.

“Dad, do you have an unused copy of Windows XP?”

I thought the request was weird. Why? Well, he has a cool MacBookPro and already has Vista running on it with both Parallels and Bootcamp. Read more.

If Microsoft made toasters

I believe that Microsoft’s domination of the PC software market has dulled and altered our expectations of the ‘fit for purpose’ and ‘use from the box’ aspect of all - not just computer software - products we now shell out our hard earned for. Read more.

Xbox 360 Failures Explained

In response to the recent Mercury News interview, a man who has had 8 consoles fail so far explains what he believes the issue with the hardware is.

read more | digg story

A thought from the author: PC vs Mac

I came to a realization the other day while surfing around the net looking for things of interest. I happened to read a comment on a site from a PC user to a Mac guy. It was a very biased and ignorant comment that left me envisioning this PC user as a 5 year old kid with his index fingers in his ears yelling “Lalalalala. Macs suck. Lalalaa I can’t hear you!”

But then it hit me. I used to be one of those guys!

ExtremeTech: DirextX 10 Report Card.

To put it bluntly, the early news is not good. At this point, I’d give DirectX 10 in combination with the new generation of DirectX 10 hardware a C-. The job gets done, but it’s not pretty, elegant, nor particularly inspiring. Read more.

Xbox 360 Vice President on hardware failures: “No comment.”

Q: I’m sure you’ve seen some of these complaints that we’ve written about from the guy who went through seven machines. There are a lot of people posting on the blog saying they still have problems. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that the quality of the Xbox 360 isn’t there. How can you paint the bigger picture for me there?

A: We’re very proud of the box. We think the vast majority of people are having just a great experience. You look at the number of games they are buying, the number of accessories they are buying, the Live attach. They love the box.  Read more.

Microsoft pays $50 million for Grand Theft Auto exclusive downloads

Microsoft is paying an unprecedented $50 million for exclusive rights to publish two episodes of the forthcoming game, Grand Theft Auto IV, on its Xbox 360 games console, according to statements from a senior executive at GTA IV publisher, Take-Two Interactive. Take-Two has already recorded the payments in financial filings as deferred revenue, explained Lainie Goldstein, Take-Two’s newly appointed CFO, in a conference call with analysts. Read more.

Microsoft responds to European inquiry on scratched 360 discs

Even though Microsoft seems to be dragging its feet when it comes to addressing the EU’s anti-trust concerns, the software-giant-cum-console-maker was quick to respond to European Commissioner for Consumer Affairs Meglena Kuneva’s inquiry regarding accusations of faulty 360 hardware.  Read more.

Microsoft secretly modding broken xbox 360s for more cooling.

French Xbox 360 owners who’ve sent in their defective or broken Xboxes to Microsoft to fix are finding that the return console have a little extra “wooooosh” in them. Read more.

id Software hints at next-gen Mac game

Engadget’s live coverage of the big Apple conference held today tells of John Carmack revealing hints on their next “blockbuster” game. Currently code named “id Tech 5″ the demoed level showed a track with over 20GB of textures in it. This game looks like a definate Duke Nukem Forever killer. (That game did come out right?) With this news and the news of EA Games returning to the Mac, it sure looks like gaming is starting to become a very big thing on the Mac Read more.

EA Games on the Mac!

Electronic Arts (EA), the video and computer game publisher behind some of today’s most popular games, has announced its direct support for the Macintosh. The company will begin releasing Mac versions of some of its biggest games beginning in July. Read more.

Humour: Microsoft bans Hitler’s 360 from Live. [video]

Stumbled across this. Thought it was funny. Now I share.

Is my PC bad for gaming with Windows Vista?

“Under XP, I don’t really have any issues running anything with everything turned up. FEAR, Company of Heroes, what ever. Company of Heroes I can play on the medium maps with all options turned up at my native resolution and I don’t run into any slow down. If I try the large maps, I have some slow down. Now on Vista, I can barely play CoH on the small 2 player maps! It absolutely crawls. I just picked up Shadow Run and it is a beast. I have to turn down just about everything and go to 1024X780 (which looks awful on my monitor) and turn down all the graphics options. Read more.

XP vs. Vista - A Tale of Framerates: Part II

[H]ard|OCP recently ran an article showing a significant framerate discrepancy on popular gaming titles between the two Microsoft operating systems on NVIDIA hardware. They’ve since gone back and done the same thing with ATI hardware and the new 158.xx NVIDIA drivers. While ATI did better than NVIDIA, there’s still a disturbing overall trend.

read more | digg story

Is Microsoft Trying to Kill PC Gaming?

Judging by the lackluster game releases and the attempt to suck the blood from PC gamers with “Games for Windows Live,” it starts feeling like Microsoft is doing all it can to actually kill PC gaming. Maybe my ideas will make no sense to them, or they’re just plain stupid ideas, but at some point, Microsoft needs to “cowboy up” and get serious about this. Because frankly, if it wasn’t for gaming, a whole lot of us would already have Macs, or be running Ubuntu Linux and never looking back. Read more.

Play the hottest upcoming PC Game “Crysis” on a Mac!

Is gaming the one thing preventing you from jumping ship and moving from a Windows PC to a Mac? Well that excuse is now null and void. Now that Intel chips are inside all Macs and you can run Windows XP or Windows Vista on a Mac the door is open for PC gaming on a Mac. But what about all those bleeding edge games that make owning a PC a neccesity? Also a null and void argument. The newest Macbook Pro’s (and likely the impending new iMacs as well.) feature DirectX 10 capable Nvidia 8600 cards. Sweeeeeetness!

[Oct 31st 07 Update:] Since this post is getting a lot of traffic this week, I thought I’d link to this article for those still not quite ready to make the leap… Installing OS X Leopard on a high end PC (Tutorial)

[Feb 28th 08 Update:] This is now the hottest post on this site. Since being posted it has been read by 8,216 visitors (That’s a whole lot of gamers interested in gaming on a Mac.) Please check back soon for a follow up article where I will be running and benchmarking Crysis on a Mac.

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Valve Software’s hardware survey shows gamers yet to embrace Vista

The latest results for Valve’s Steam hardware survey are in, and they provide a valuable look at the types of systems most gamers are using. They also show a much lower uptake of Windows Vista than Microsoft will likely be happy with.

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Criticisms of Windows Vista

Considering buying Windows Vista? Read this encyclopedia entry from Wikipedia.Com before you do. Windows Vista, the latest version of Microsoft’s desktop operating system, has been the target of a number of negative assessments by various groups. Criticisms of Windows Vista have included… Read more.

Picture Of The Day

Pray your xbox 360 never gets the dreaded “3 Blinking Red Lights of Doom” like mine.

If it does, there’s still a chance for you if it happens within one year of purchase and you have the original receipt.

Xbox 360: 61% failure rate!

Everywhere you turn, there’s another story of a broken 360 and anyone you speak to has either had their console fail on them, or knows of many others who have. It really is the problem that simply won’t go away.

read more | digg story

Use your Wii with your Mac!

SwitchingToMac.Com has an excallent article on using your Wii with your Intel Mac. Read more.

Microsoft Games Losses Down, Still Substantial

Even though sales are up on the operating system side of things, Microsoft’s games division is still struggling. The Entertainment and Devices division lost $315 million, with sales slipping some 21 percent. That’s 22 percent down from last year.

CrossOver Mac 6.1 improves 3D gaming

CodeWeavers today released CrossOver Mac 6.1 and CrossOver Linux 6.1, improving Windows 3D game performance with quicker speed frame rates. CrossOver Mac enables Mac owners to run Windows software on a Mac by sidestepping the entire Windows environment with all its accompanying issues and vulnerabilities. The update enables Outlook users to work remotely using RPC over HTTP, and adds support for more games such as Call of Duty 2. Popular Windows applications supported by CrossOver Mac 6.1 include Microsoft Office, Viseo, and Project as well as Quicken and QuickBooks. CrossOver Mac 6.1 is priced at $60, and requires an Intel-based Mac. Read More.

XP vs. Vista - A Tale of Framerates: Part I

[H]ard|OCP takes a look at gaming frame rates in XP and Vista. Seldom has the rumor mill turned faster than when gamers talk about gaming in Vista. Some folks are staying away from the new OS simply because they feel it doesn’t game well. We set out to put some hard numbers on those claims. We applied real world gaming scenarios to both operating systems in some of today’s most popular 3D games.

read more | digg story

[update] A follow up article/retest has been written.

DirectX 10 games on non-Vista PCs?

Is it possible? Didn’t MS tell us that we’d need to shift to Vista to play all DX10 games? Well, according to one person, you don’t have to…

read more | digg story