5 Things I Want This Year In PC Gaming

As every year passes, it seems more and more that developers are pushing PC gaming aside in favour of focusing on consoles.  The reasons are obvious for anyone to see, larger audience, and therefore more money. Sure we've been promised more focus and attention only to be let-down.  However mainly thanks to the release of 2011 blockbuster Battlfield 3 from EA's DICE, PC gaming has seen a new lease of life with console gamers buying gaming PC's after hearing the game would boast many PC exclusive features.  Whether they stayed is yet to be seen, but 2012 needs to be a year where PC games see as much attention as the consoles.  It sounds insane to say the developers are preferring to develop for a 6 or 7 year old piece of hardware rather than state of the art powerful machines capable of exceptional feats.  Money, money, money.

So what would i like to happen in the world of PC gaming in 2012?  Let's see....

5 - Call Of Duty 2012 given the same love as Call Of Duty 4 on PC

Rambo mode, off the hip style.

Let's be honest, the last Call Of Duty game PC players accepted as not being a shoddy console port was Call Of Duty 4.  It was a great game on all systems and completely set the bar.  With complete mod support, excellent map design and pure gun-on-gun gameplay the series has never been back to these heights since.  I'd like to see the series overhauled, and the PC version get the version it deserves.

4 - A greater PC presence at the E3 show June 5-7th

E3 isn't actually a shopping centre, promise.

Every year at what is the biggest game show on Earth, we're treated to tons of reveals, announcements, trailers and general surprises.  But we all know it's dominated by the big 3 conferences from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony.  And of course the only worthwhile news is wondering if we will even get a port of the big console games being announced.  Anything PC related is normally very low key and you have to do some searching to hear about it.  Maybe things could be different this year?  I wouldn't count on Ubisoft giving PC any love in their conference but maybe EA?  

3 - A PC exclusive to win Game Of The Year 2012

Let's be honest, this was 2011 GOTY, and the PC version is the best

The award for Game Of The Year isn't exactly an official award, as there are many many websites and publications that state their Game Of The Year, so it kind of comes down to which title, won the most Game Of The Year awards.  So it's pretty unlikely the could be the case with a PC exclusive seeing as the majority of guys giving out these awards are sucking on Microsoft and Sony's teet's too much to even consider playing a PC exclusive.  Last year our greatest hopes were The Witcher 2 and Minecraft.  With both these titles seeing a port released on the Xbox 360 this year wouldn't it be just a little bit funny if one of them won Game Of The Year just because it was on the Xbawx360z?

2 - Steam keeps doing what it's doing

                   No Caption Needed

Steam's revenue manages to shoot through another roof with every year that passes, and with great reason.  While Steam has it's problems, there are improvements and new features being made all the time. If they can just sort out their customer service and maybe let us know if we actually own our games that we purchase through them that would be great.  It's a bit of an addiction of mine, i have a stupid amount of games in my library, many of which i havn't given the time they deserve.  Down to their stupidly good sales and Gabe Newell's smile mostly.  It goes without saying that Steam will continue to grow this year, but i'd like to see some big new features added, perhaps the built in video recording feature that has been previously mentioned?  

I may as well slip this under the bit about Steam.  This is in every list, every year, we want Half-Life 3.  It's getting to a point now where it just HAS to be coming.  Consoles are coming to the end of their lifespans and Half-Life 3 has almost certainly been developed on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 so surely they don't want to leave it too late to announce this game.  Also fuck off Origin.

1 - Acceptance

                                                                                              Not relevant

I'm not sure if i want PC gaming to be accepted by console gamers, or whether they just need educating.  It's only getting worse, reading through forums and comments on videos made by console players makes me simply angry.  I'm not saying it's all of them, but fuck me it's the majority.  Things console players have actually convinced themselves to be the truth are insane, here are some examples....consoles have better graphics, a controller is more accurate than a mouse + kb for FPS games, pretty much the only games on PC are World Of Warcraft and The Sims.  So for fucks sake, please let there be some light shine down that let's them know this isn't the case.  The first step has already been taken thanks to Battlefield 3 and the common knowledge that the PC version is the definitive version with it's 64 player matches and beautiful graphics.  So education, acceptance, whatever it is, i just hope something makes them realise what the PC is capable of.