Gal Civ is a fun series, but I won't consider it top of the line. Though I do enjoy my copy of Ultimate its still not as good as my Civ 4: Beyond the sword. At least in the ability to eat up my time. I find I am much more likely to stop playing galciv and find something else to do, then when I play civ. Then again I haven't touched my civ 4 in months and months.

I'm getting a new i7 machine in 3 weeks and was gonna install civ 4 on it. With the announcement of civ 5 I find any interest I had in civ 4 to be gone and I am waiting on the new itteration.

And to the person I chided about the edit button, you must be running that pathetic piece of microsoft garbage internet explorer?

I don't think the original question was meant to just list mega-successful franchises.  Obviously Civ5 will sell on name alone for many people.  I took that list to be a snapshot compilation of PC gamers' anticipated titles for the next year.  It is hard to imagine that anyone reading this post (as in:  those the question was posed to) is not in some way excited about each of those titles in some way.  Even if the franchise itself is not your cup of tea each of those games has the potential to be a very fun and, in most cases, ground breaking experience. 

These are all vastly different games from GalCiv2.  I loved all of them (other than Planescape - I never got to try that one) but it is hard for me to put them all in a category other than "Games I really, really enjoyed". 

As far as the original question:  I am not a "PC gaming is dead" person.  I love my PC and have not owned a cosole for many years.  Yet as my kids get older I can again see the allure of the consoles: 

1) A static set of hardware that you KNOW will run every game you buy the way it was intended to run.  It may not be a good game but it will run well.  My computer right now is running an 8800GTS that is doing a fine job, but games are constantly being developed to push the PC envelope and already I need to scale down a little bit at times.

2) There is a great pre-owned marketplace for console titles.  As a budget-conscious consumer/parent I appreciate that fact.  I still have my "must-own" moments for gaming but often times I wait awhile for prices to drop a bit.  With pre-owned you get lower prices a bit sooner as well as lower-lower prices over time. 

3)  I like the fact that 2,3,4+ people can sit down in the same room and play a video game together.  I was doing that with my friends back on the 2600 all the way through college on the PS1.  Very fun times when you have the people around to enjoy them.

I still plan on upgrading my PC when needed and will enjoy that medium through the end of time..  yet part of me, and a big part of my kids, is getting ready to jump into the PS3 world as well.  I think we will balance both just fine.

This is rushed, but yeah:

Halo Reach= console

Gears of War 1,2 & 3= console

Mass Effect 1, 2 = vastly better on console

Call of Duty= console

Bayonetta, Turok, Star Trek, etc all console.

My PC is rigged up with:

Spore

Galactic Civilizations 2 (all expansions)

Supreme Commander Forged Alliance

Sins of a Solar Empire.... etc

so anyone with a brain can quite clearly tell neither is dead, and both will retain their individual strengths and weaknesses for years to come.

But one thing, Play Staton 3 sucks warm fuzzy anus sack. Just sayin'

You think Mass Effect is vastly superior on consoles lolwut?

Also almost all those games are also on PC.

No Bayonetta and Gears 2 are not (and probably never will be )

Halo can go suck itself though - what a sellout brand. And more about half are Console Only.

But of the PC ones the PC version is vastly superior.

I actually expected this thread to be about On-Live, which I think provides a much bigger real threath to Consoles then just great PC exclusive games.

When On-Live takes care of the hardware setup for you, "casual" people will be able to go back to PC games again, without the hassle of all the tweaking.

If On-Live proves to actually work well, I really dont see how consoles would be able to compete. Ofc It would mean I would have no need to update my own computer as long as it was able to stream the 8Mbit it takes

ME1 might have been better on console because the controls weren't as well optimized for PC, but ME2 works perfectly on a PC.  You can bind the controls however you like so I have no complaints at all with that aspect.  I don't see the advantage.

I'm curious, is it your intyention to say that everyone who thinks Elemental deserves to be in that list is a fanboy? I recommend researching the real meaning of words like fanboy because like many others, you are using the word too losely and to make it worse you are adding things like rabid to make it sound even more fanboy than the word already states which is kinda dumb in a sense. That's like saying a darker black. There is no such thing.

You need not be a fanboy to appreciate a good game. I'm a big fan of the Call Of Duty Series and as much as I criticized Modern Warfare 2's lack of dedicated servers I now own the game and play it everyday. But I don't have a Call Of Duty Wallpaper on my computer, posters on my wall and tee shirts. That would make me a fanboy.

No, but most of the responses weren't that they disagreed but fanatic rants using words like "troll" without any context. Because my words weren't entirely kind to Elemental, they went into attack mode.

That is a clear case of fanboyism. It doesn't have anything to do with posters, t-shirts, etc.

They were annoyed that you were judging a game that isn't due out for ages.

You mean vastly better on PC< right?  I can't imagine any FPS type game playing well on console simply due to the lack of mouse controls.  Which are vital.

My reality is different not flawed. Galciv2 has a better story than any other mentioned because I get to write it. Its user created and I am awesome, and not willing to let you in on the stories.

No I like people bashing noob for being a troll.

whoops, double post : (

First one is on PC too. Both pretty overrated games, by the way. Third one still have to appear, so we don't count it, ok?

Quite the opposite. Vastly better on PC, in graphics, controls and in user interface.

Not really. Every meaningful chapter is on PC too, and it's the better version. Even without dedicate servers (which, by the way, console users never experienced).

Actually, you said that Elemental doesn't belong in the same company as say Civilization V without any rationale.

PC Gamer listed Elemental as one of the 10  most anticipated games of 2010. Now, I'm pretty biased mind you but people do seem to be pretty excited for Elemental.

From today:

Wow, right after Diablo III! Seriously, congrats!!

6 (kinda) Stratergy games on that list... lol.

Hey, if there's anything PCs excel at...

I'm not sure some journalists opinion counts for much more than activating peoples sense of competition...its a quality not quantity equation. The extraction of meaning from such lists is pretty much just a failure of the imagination.

I'm not sure if such a thing is possible, but if it helps to think so I wish you well on your climb.

Its downloading porn.

Well, as I said, we will see.

I don't think anyone will hold it against me if I defend the game I designed and led development on (Galactic Civilizations series) when someone says we haven't cracked the top 100 games..

First: Go here:

http://www.gamerankings.com/browse.html?site=pc&cat=0&year=0&numrev=4&sort=0&letter=&search=

that lists the top games of all time according to the composite of game reviewers.

If you removed duplicates (i.e. Orange Box and HL2 for instance) you'll find Galactic Civilizations II at 22nd of all time.

Right above World of Warcraft and right below Age of Empires II.

So I think I can be forgiven me I don't see the issue of including our next game with a budget many times that of Galactic Civilizations II as being worthy of being listed with Civilization V and World of Warcraft.

Ultimately, we'll see if Elemental lives up to its promise.  

How could those games ever beat Madden 11?

You lie Frogboy!