The Saturday Scan - 20 Games That Will Save the PC
I admit, I don't talk about much in the way of PC games here, mainly because I don't play very many. But for anyone out there who does follow the PC world, here's a Saturday Scan just for you. This is a feature from the August 2000 issue of Next Generation, entitled the 20 Games That Will Save the PC. Seems like every other year people have to come up with reasons why the PC isn't going to die.
Oddly enough, the eventual fates of many of these games did a better job of representing the problems in the PC market than they did to "save" anything.
I am legally obligated to step in here to say "lol halo"
While some certainly had a strong following, few of the titles on this list became breakaway hits or otherwise performed in a way you'd expect of a game that would "save the PC." Some of the biggest profile titles ended up becoming despised by a large portion of the community (Black and White, Tribes 2, Escape From Monkey Island). Of course, it's also hard to save the PC when you're never released on the platform:
Soon after this issue, New Legends was dropped for the PC and became an Xbox exclusive title. Ultima Worlds Online: Origin was cancelled in March 2001, at least in part due to fears that the new game would take away players from the original, still going strong Ultima Online.
SimsVille was also cancelled, with many of its features divided up and used in other games. Shadowbane wasn't released until two years after the Q2 2001 date mentioned in this article; in March of 2006, Ubisoft announced that the game was now free to play for all.
As they rightly guess, Warcraft 3 didn't come out until a year and a half after their predicted date, but it's still arguably the most successful title on this list. Team Fortress 2 is, six years later, still in development, and now bears no resemblance to the shots seen here. TF2 is currently planned to ship along with Half Life 2: Episode Two.
Comments
It is funny how people have been claiming for years that the PC Market is dead or dying yet every year it manages to do just fine and sometimes better than the console market.
Posted by: Jakanden | July 30, 2006 5:44 PM
My main comment on these is that it's almost entirely made up of the same two genres it seems every other PC release falls into: FPS and RTS. It doesn't matter if it's 2000 or 2006 it seems.
That Monkey Island game was OK. I preferred the previous ones, myself.
Posted by: Tony | July 31, 2006 3:37 PM