Yeah, this is sort of what I anticipated with this gen coming around. With Microsoft losing ground in the OS field, game consoles becoming glorified HTPCs with the same architecture (and in some cases the same Direct X), and PC hardware getting dirt cheap (you can get a graphic card that provides damn near similar performance to both consoles for $100 right now.) it's only logical that some focus would shift back this way.

A big part of it being that multi-console games will by and large be developed for High End PCs and ported over.

The reason I call the Sim City patch BS is because it was cracked and largely functional offline within a few weeks of release last year.

Microsoft says this every 3-4 years and usually they just demonstrate that they don't understand the pc gaming market.

I would say that the first move in showing a renewed interest in pc gaming would not be to leave your existing games and service out to die. People have been entirely confused on the shutting down of GFWL, there is no consistent message, and everything is left to publishers on a case by case basis. For the most part this means that gamers are left with their account based games abandoned, still unsure what parts will be functional if any. I don't see why I would suddenly jump ship to their new platform given how poorly they handled the old one.

When you combine this with they way they handled pc gaming in the past, charging for online when nobody else did, using a drm scheme that was often a barrier to play your games, connecting, installing, saving games, etc, not releasing some of their larges published games on Windows, I don't see why I would suddenly embrace their new platform.

My guess is that their new renenwed focus is an attempt to push Windows 8.1 or their pc app store or some other broader agenda, so rather than open things up and really sell gamers on the price which is how Steam and other stores won gamers over, they will put games behind some barrier to try and force some ulterior upgrade, service, product, etc.

EDIT: Just read the article, and they mention more to come about shutting down GFWL. It's been since August 2013 and they still don't have something more to say about that if they are going to change direction? It's pointless to announce that they are going to announce something in the future.

GFWL sucked. If MS wants to help PC gaming, all they need to do is get out of the way.

Another example of MS just being way behind the curve, and playing catch up with what will probably be various gaming services of dubious quality and value.

Microsoft always gets in the way, they try to find new sources of revenue and each time it's inferior to what's already available. The entire reason for Metro on Desktops was to push their terrible App Store, which is fine for phones and tablets but had no business on desktops or laptops.

Otherwise 8.1 would have been Boot-to-Desktop by default with "Show Apps View Automatically when clicking Start" enabled

You can't do that if you're trying to sell yourself as the more open infrastructure.

The Xbox 360 wireless controller for the PC has finally price dropped at Best Buy Now at $45 . It has forever been at $60

Is the Xbox One controller PC-friendly like the 360 controller?

Not yet, Microsoft keeps promising drivers but only third party ones are currently available.

I don't know much about hardware. How is this "next-gen crusher" build? Does it really crush the PS4/X1?

http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace...gen.22_crusher

AMD Athlon X4 740 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
ASRock FM2A55M-VG3+ Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard
Patriot Viper 3 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Hitachi Ultrastar 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Club 3D Radeon R9 270X 2GB Video Card
Rosewill REDBONE ATX Mid Tower Case
Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply

Total $426.84

"Crusher"? Not a chance. Maybe close to matching, but the CPU and small RAM would worry me.

Definitely not enough RAM to play a lot of upcoming games at high settings.

taffer - that $700 build seems like more of a true system crusher to me, just based on specs, but if I were going to build a PC I'd probably go close to $1000 to make it last a bit longer - more RAM, an SSD drive, and a more powerful graphics card.

It all depends on how much you want to spend. I've seen a recent video on Revision3 about building a PC, and the guy on there talked about having 32gb of RAM. Does that guy really need that much RAM for gaming? I wouldn't think so.

Watch Dogs PC requirements.

Although i'm not sure why the say Eight Core, given the 3770 is Quad.

So... I take it that I made the right call holding off on my PC building plans?

What makes you say that? Honestly I don't see any reason to hold off, the only major tech coming would maybe be DDR4 memory, but even then it looks like it will be introduced on servers and Haswell-E first, which I don't think would be worth it for typical PC gaming builds anyway. And maybe higher end Nvidia graphics cards using their new Maxwell architecture in the next few months.

Okay so nothing that would make me want/need to upgrade shortly after building it?

For reference, this what I was planning to build (though I've since modified my plans to include a 128GB SSD for the OS, a 1TB SSD for games, and a 4TB HDD for music/videos):

I just want to make sure that once I put this all together, even if/when something newer and better rolls along, it'll be a while before I get the urge to upgrade.

A 1TB SSD is a waste of money, IMHO. I'd put that money into a better video card instead, as a 1GB 7850 is going to be the bottleneck in your setup, by a longshot. I'd look into some of the non-reference design R9 290(x) boards.

Given how big game installs are getting, a 1TB SSD made sense to me.

You lost me at "non-reference design " boards. What does that mean?

EDIT: Do you mean these?

When AMD (and Nvidia) releases a new graphics chip, they have a reference design for the card as far as board layout and heatsink/fan that they make themselves as a baseline. The other video card manufacturers (EVGA, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, etc) can either choose to release cards using that same design, or use their own design and cooling system.

AMD's R9 290 specifically got some criticism for a very loud reference design with mediocre cooling, so that's why I believe flashburn mentioned a non-reference design for that model.

But yeah, I don't think there's anything that crazy down the pipe that would give you upgrade envy in the next year or two (other then what I mentioned earlier). Someone else might need to chime in on that though.

Is the 7850 really that bad? I have that one (2gig version I think) and from looking at benchmarks, it seemed to me that you had to spend a pretty big chunk of money to get a card that works markedly better.

The 290 is a pretty big cost difference (especially with prices still a bit artificially high), I'd actually say a 7950/R280 or GTX 760/770 would be a good mid-high end choice, especially if you're running at 1080P.

Actually yes, SSD drives have dropped by 50% in the last couple months.

I have a stronger Nvidia 760 which still runs into issues from time to time in 1080p (maxed or close to maxed out) and that card was all of $180 when I bought it.

Yes, spent most of the money in the videocard. And go with a known brand. For Nvidia Asus, eVGA, etc., for AMD, hmm not sure. This is specially important if you are going for a non reference design.

I went with Zotac, who I've actually had fewer issues with than eVGA. Of course they're not the greatest for overclocking.

To note, I would definitely look for deals. My card was $185-ish after shipping and came with Assassin's Creed IV and Splinter Cell Blacklist as freebies. These kinds of deals seem to work in rotations.

Which models? I've been buying 500 GB Samsung 840 Pro and now Evo drives for work for the last 6+ months, and I think they've only dropped about $50. 50% is quite a big difference. I know the cheaper brand 128 GB drives are around $80 now, but the better brands like Crucial and Samsung haven't dropped too much.

I wouldn't get any video card with less than 2 GB vram at this point. I concur don't waste money on a 1 TB SSD. Get a smaller 128 or 256 and supplement with a 1 TB 7200 rpm HD. I have all of my games on an HD and loading is never an issue.

I'm the opposite, I prefer my games on an SSD, although I'd agree with everyone else that a 1TB one isn't worth the price. A 256 GB should be good for the most part, although just having BF4 and Titanfall installed takes up over 80 GB.

As far as the video card the 7850 looks like its being taken from the previous system anyway, so it won't be too bad as a stop gap to buy a new card later.