lots of care in this thread.
why fight it, consoles aren't giong anywhere, embrace diversity.
This is exactly the issue, too many platforms for developers... so instead of making games to take full advantage of the PC's greater processing power and versatility they make games primarily for console and make a lazy port for PC. This is especially evident in games like Fallout 3 where you can't remap buttons for simple things like flashlight, to a key... instead you have to hold down the inventory button. That makes sense on a console with limited keys on its controller but on a PC its stupid, and would have taken fuck all effort to add for the PC port.
I don't think I need to say too much about dumbing down of games for console... the latest Civilization game was a disappointment because it was basically an updated PC port of 'Civ Revolutions' which was the console version of Civ. The gameplay is simplistic and fairly boring compared to earlier installments. Look at the latest COD game, remember that youtube where the bloke went through the first level without shooting once?
The fact is that games are getting dumber because of console gamers.
And pc gaming newest interface development is....ready for it.
A mouse with more buttons than your game has functions.................?
Console controllers are definitely one of the limiting factors for innovation in gaming. So you can't be too surprised about new developments like Kinect. Stuff like this will soon be coming to PC, but it will never replace keyboard and mouse for shooting games- nothing at the moment comes close to the level of precision and rate of movement that keyboard/mouse can provide. There hasn't been much progress on the old mouse and keyboard because its so good at what it does already.
i don't have to upgrade my console every 2nd year to play the latest games... just saying.
neither do I.... you can play the latest games on lower detail settings without upgrading. You can stretch it out to 4 years if you wanted to, maybe even more. Many PC gamers are enthusiasts and like to upgrade more regularly, but that's their prerogative and not a necessity.