Falcon Northwest Q&A

[Evil Avatar]

Gamecloud has posted an interview (http://www.gamecloud.com/article.php?article_id=3165) with Falcon Northwest founder Kelt Reeves, getting an update on their future plans from this high-end gaming computer manufacturer.

Gamecloud: Falcon also has a line FragBook laptops. Is the company confidence that laptops are finally a solid PC gaming machine that can rival a desktop?

Kelt Reeves: The DR models with the GeForce 7800 Go graphics in them can certainly rival a desktop. They’re as fast as the desktops we were selling one year ago. But the ability to rival a desktop is not really why we stayed out of the laptop market so long. We just waited until we were sure we could offer something more than a better paintjob to the laptop world.

[XxSATANxX]

Really have always liked this company. One of the reasons I learned to build rather than buy was because I wanted a machine as good as a MACH V but did not want to pay the price. Looking forward I'm wondering about the 360/PC combo. Love the idea but am wondering about how it's done. If I built game PC's I'd be searching hard for a way to connect them to a 360.

[Steele Johnson]

You could buy a shit computer from Walmart and it will run every game these days. Software is lagging way behind the hardware so I really don't think spending thousands of dollars more for a brand name makes much sense anymore. Geeze, I don't even buy desktops anymore. There's really no need unless you use if for some heavy multimedia thing which requires tons of pci express slots. Even still, I'd probably look for a laptop.

[Mister Pie]

I have a computer from these guys. Say what you want about me blowing my money, but it's outlasted all my other computers (Dell, etc.). It still runs most games reasonably well and I've had it for nearly 4 years now.

[Evil Avatar]

You could buy a shit computer from Walmart and it will run every game these days.

Which is what everyone thinks and is 100% not true. Those Walmart computers with their on-board Intel, S3 or GeForce 4 MX video chipsets can't run anything correctly, even simple shit like The Movies and The Sims 2 doesn't run on GeForce 4 MX cards (Remember, the GeForce 4 MX chip was really a scaled down GeForce 2 chip, not a GeForce 4 chip.) and people buy those crap computers and then try to run Call of Duty 2 or Quake 4 and wonder why the grahpics are all screwed up or the game will only run for 30 seconds before crashing.

PC gaming isn't a mainstream hobby, which means that the games are often very cool (because they aren't designed for the mainstream gamer), but that is also its biggest weakness because many games barely move 200,000 copies these days compared with their console port which may move 500k copies or more.

The fact that companies like ATI and NVIDIA are pushing out new cards every six months (not to mention Intel and AMD pushing out new chips) means that there is no consistancy in the hobby and it means the games are a lot buggier than they should be and if you really want to play PC games you have to dump nearly a grand into your computer every other year.

I love my PC and I love FPS titles on the PC, but I'm really tired of the upgrade ratrace and having to wait three months for the patch that adds the fun.