RE: Xhonzi's continuing thoughts on a possible return from PC-Gaming-Retirement
1. So... Duck Tales comes out on XBLA tomorrow... for the same price it's been on PS3 and PC for the past several weeks. I am buying it on Xbox (most likely) for a couple of reasons.
1.a. I have to keep reminding myself that Steam is a single user environment. Mrs. xhonzi and I are playing Trine 2 together (ah, yeah... some classic splitscreening ON AN UNSPLIT SCREEN!) and only I get achievements and whatnot. Not that she cares... but, it's the principle of the thing. At any rate, I've only really purchased single player games that will be played (or not, as is so often the case with Steam) by me.
1.b. However, I know my kids will at least want to play Duck Tales and will want to play on their own accounts- save their own progress, and get their own achievements. Hmmm... stick a feather in the (current) console DRM schema as it is more family friendly, which, as a Dadgamer, is pretty important to me. However! For what I've paid on Steam for some games, it would be cheaper to buy multiple copies on Steam than a single console copy.
2. There is a serious lack of demos on Steam! I think it might be rough to be an XBLA developer and be forced by MS to have a day/date demo for each XBLA title released... and you have to wonder how many XBLA demos turn off potential buyers... but it really beneifts the consumer! I've played the demo for tonnes of stinkers that I never purchased, though I thought I might.
2.a. However, when you buy a game on XBLA/PSN, you can be reasonably confident that it will play well on your rig. It has been developed for your hardware/controller. There are always going to be the New Vegas 1.0 experiences like certain unnamed (C3PX) members of this thread have had... but for the most part, you don't have to wonder if your console will run the game at a playable clip, and whether it supports your controller.
2.b. So it surprises me that PC demos are more or less a thing of the past. (Yes, there are some on Steam, but maybe about 1% of the games are represented.) Sure, PC games seem to be more compatible with various hardware than ever, and I've been pretty surprised at how well my not-that-great-even-last-year-when-I-bought-it AMD laptop has been chewing up some recent releases... but still. I've bought several games for cheap on Steam wondering if my rig would be able to handle them at all. The 360 controller has emerged as the official unofficial Steam controller, but there are still some surprises when you find out that game doesn't support it (or your controller of choice) natively or well. Oh, that would have been nice to know before you bought it.
2.c. Back to Duck Tales, it has been reported that the control scheme on the Steam version is a little 'wonky'. Most of the otherwise positive reviews have complained about it. It's been called "game breaking" by some.
2.c.i. I will know how well the game controls on the 360 before I've dropped one dime on it tomorrow.
