Im not a big compeative player (read: not at all), Im co-op focused (2 of us). Thus GalCiv2 was not what I 'wanted' but I really loved it. If you are a speed player most AIs in most games will not be good enough for you. I make an effort not to do the 'best' thing but what I find 'fun' which usually meansindirectly increaseing the difficulty of the game by actually playing it!

If GalvCiv3 can deliver multiplayer (coop like Civ4) and real time tactical battles (like Nexus or combat part of Sins) along with all the standard features (building your own ships primarily) it will be what I want.

Ella will need to equal Civ4 in Coop regards for me and with the tatical battles should be better overall for us if thats the case.

GC2 may be up there in age, but I haven't played it in a couple of years either.  It wasn't a question of speed rushing the AIs either, it just didn't seem to matter what I did, as eventually the games came down to at least some form of ship to ship combat and then it was simply no fun.

I had discussed my feelings on the GC forums and wondered why the AI was so weak in this regard, and Brad gave the answer, which had to do with too many possible moves for the AI to deal with.  Like I said, the open space design decision was the ultimate problem in my mind.

But enough on GC2, it was certainly not a bad game, just not quite up to what I wanted out of it.

It's not only the price, is how easy is to play a console game compared to how easy is to play a PC game. Consoles don't have drivers, installs or other things that tied to PCs. It's a whole machine dedicated to gaming, it's easier to make gaming a more pleasant experience overall.

And from the dev front is the same, it's not the same to have to support a finite number of very well known hardware combinations than the hardware mess that is PC gaming.

Either way, even if they cost of the consoles is "high" at launch, they eventually go down to a price where it's nearly impossible to beat them with a PC, so, things will probably continue the same (or are you saying you can get right now a PC to play CoD:MW2 with the same quality as a 199$ XBox360?).

This first part is very important. I have one person who buys me games as gifts, and that's my twin because we play a lot of games together online. I hadn't received a game as a gift in years... until I had my Wii. I've received 2 (not including twin gifts) since which doesn't sound like a whole lot but it does mean my cousin and my dad felt comfortable enough to buy me a game. There is no way they'd try to do that with PC games.

As for the dev part, sure that might be true but that doesn't stop devs from being ultra lazy and releasing buggy and generally poorly optimized games. The wii has had two recalls that I am aware of games that had such awful bugs (and the Wii doesn't typically patch) and at least one of the third party games I have shows a noticable slowdown at certain points.

We're all DOOMED! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=potlDrRI01A

 I think we will see a new pattern perhaps in console and PC gaming, a pattern of convergence and divergence of the two and the games they excel at. Consoles seem to be moving toward motion controls like the wii and xbox's new project. PCs could be looking at a more feasible mobile technology, and the historic trend of just making them more pwerful, and that might change its functionality as a home gaming system as well as expand the types of games being sold for it. I for one would like to see an increase in games that work on all digital media devices like the faildroid and iphone.

Maybe PC multifunctionality will be fully realized on the Xbox720 so that one can finally use it for something other than being terrible to people nice enough to actually play a game with you.

Who knows?

If there were a nuclear device detonated in the ionosphere, then, yes, consoles would be doomed. But then again, so would PCs be doomed at that time as well as any electronic circuit not shielded or designed to be hardened against EMPs.

What on earth are you talking about?

Sorry, it was brought up in another thread.

I think console gaming is likely to die. We know enough stats of the upcoming generation to know that, in terms of hardware, the proposed design for the new Xbox is strictly inferior to most currently existing gaming computers (6670), and these machines aren't out for two years. WiiU is a bit better than the Xbox (about 20% better by the math I've seen), but it's still substantially behind the curve. Nintendo has made that work before, and they've got the userbase to keep going with it, but it seems like they're selling gimmicks over real progress and market diversity, and that's not indefinitely sustainable. Sony hasn't shown us anything, but based on their general competency we can assume that whatever they produce, it will be laughably bad. Quite frankly, I expect consoles in general to sputter out this generation, with only Nintendo making enough for a generation after the current one to continue making economic sense , and even so the Nintendo market will see considerable shrinkage.

Either that or Bobby Activision will cash in on a new round of fourteen year olds with infinite Cowadooty and that sort of game will continue to hold the industry up.

Nope - no chance in hell that consoles are doomed.  That said, I own them all (no vita anyway) - play most of my games on PC.  I'm not typical by a longshot.

Life is still good a pc gamer, though.  Hope it continues (and not through shitty ports).