I blame the internet for the death of PC gaming.

Not because of piracy; that hits every platform more-or-less equally, as far as I can see. No, the problem is the ease with which patches can be distributed.

Back in the old days, if you shipped a game and it didn't work properly (say, because it had no text whatsoever), you were fucked. Rigidly, bloodily, and without mercy, and in the most sensitive of places - the bank balance. Not so these days: because the Internet is sufficiently widespread that anybody buying recent computer games almost certainly has access to it, games companies can simply provide patches and declare the problem solved. I cannot help but think that this fosters a lax attitude. It also means that PC games tend to come out in a less polished state - "we'll fix that bug/replace that missing content in the patch," declare the marketing department, "but we need to get that game on the shelves by Christmas!" In any other industry you'd go out of business in short order (and get done by Trading Standards) if you made a habit of selling products which simply aren't fit for purpose, as the original release of Mark of the Betrayer blatantly was; because patches are so trivially easy to deliver these days, the PC gaming industry gets a free pass that it doesn't really deserve.

I am mildly worried that the same thing will happen to console games, now that hard drives and internet access are becoming integral components of console systems. We'll have to see.

Well said - welcome to the Light Side.

Having been burnt once too often by graphics-based glitches, having to return games (cause this was before the days of internet patches), and generally get messed around by PC-gaming, I turned myself to consoles and have never looked back. The game-play's the same, the controller-based system is more intuitive for me than a keyboard and a mouse, and above all I love the lack of system angst. When I go into a gaming store, the only thought I have to have in my mind when I pick up a game is, "Do I want to play this?" and that's the way I like it. :)

I'm rather wary of the "availability of patches fosters a lax attitude" argument because I seem to recall that games were quite buggy even in ye golden 12 floppy days. You just gritted your teeth and worked round them. And I'd much rather have bugs that can fixed than bugs you just had to live with. Also games are so bigger and more complex now that it seems an unfair comparison - or possibly I'm just being naive. Also the internet does make for incredibly cool modding communities. And walkthroughs. How much do I LOVE and ADORE the read availability of walkthroughs these days.

Also I think the PC keyboard and mouse set up does really benefit certain types of games - turn based RPGs, strategy games, games like Civilisation. It would be awful to play these games with a controller, I think? Of course, for anything remotely reflex-sensitive you want a controller. Or a plastic guitar. Hee!

Although I don't know why I'm going to this trouble to defend PCS. Long live the console!

I'm rather wary of the "availability of patches fosters a lax attitude" argument because I seem to recall that games were quite buggy even in ye golden 12 floppy days. You just gritted your teeth and worked round them.

Yes, but usually the bugs weren't of a magnitude where you couldn't even begin playing the game unless you had a patch, and whenever they were the companies responsible crashed out of business in short order.

Also I think the PC keyboard and mouse set up does really benefit certain types of games - turn based RPGs, strategy games, games like Civilisation. It would be awful to play these games with a controller, I think? Of course, for anything remotely reflex-sensitive you want a controller. Or a plastic guitar. Hee!

Really? I seem to recall utilising barely any of the keyboard buttons while playing, say, Planescape Torment or Command and Conquer. I used to think I couldn't play FPSs without a mouse and keyboard, but I've been proved pleasantly wrong. In terms of processing power and control systems I honestly don't think there's any type of game a console would be unable to run these days; in terms of control systems, I can't think of anything which would require a keyboard aside from perhaps text adventures (and people have already found ways to use keyboards and mice on XBox 360s). Thanks to the increasing internet capabilities of consoles and their shiny new internal hard drives we'll probably see modding communities for console games happening in the near future.

I can easily foresee a future where all gaming happens on consoles, and PCs are used exclusively for designing mods or homebrewed games, which you can then transfer to your console's hard drive to run. (Heck, there's already people coming up with ways to mod Guitar Hero). You can bet that Microsoft won't stand in the way of that happening - if they can convince people to buy both a PC and an XBox they're laughing.