Boomtown X

The reason I'm more likely to use my PC on a big screen these days rather than a next-gen console is actually not one of graphical power. There's more variety on the PC. Consoles are increasingly boxes for multiplayer shooters and third person adventures. And there's even a lack of variety within those narrow fields as everyone tries to be Call of Duty.

Okay people may scoff at the train-spotter appeal of Euro Truck Simulator 2 but it's been a big (and well deserved) hit on Steam recently. I can play that on my big screen using an Xbox controller thanks to my PC. Right now PC is offering more choice. There are experiences and genres that console manufacturers just aren't interested in offering. And this viewpoint is even poisoning their PC development - Microsoft killed its PC Flight Simulator franchise.

It seems that each generation since the original PlayStation has narrowed down the choice of games available. Remember that platform had games like Microprose's Gunship available for it. I know there's some simple economics behind the choice of Call of Duty style games being the current console vogue. But we only have to go back to earlier in this current generation to see brilliant games like Chromehounds, something I couldn't expect to see released today. And it saddens me that the games I want aren't available in a simple and relatively cheap box I can put under the telly.

Sony is inviting us all to "see the future" in New York City on February 20th. What could this mean? Well it seems an awful lot like Sony's project Orbis - the next generation PlayStation is going to be unveiled.

No doubt the New York event (taking place at 6pm Eastern/11pm UK) will tease us with footage from a new Gran Turismo game, that won't be released for another two years.

In the true traditions of 21st century marketing there's even a YouTube tease from Sony.

Microsoft, your move.

Yes you are right, there haven't been many updates to the site recently. But we aren't dead. The site isn't going away. We're planning for the future.

Over the spring and summer you're going to see a change in editorial output here as we shift over to cover the next generation of consoles and PC gaming exclusively. So no more Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 nonsense.

We're not going to be fully up to speed until after the summer. But once we hit September we're going to be a full time gaming news outlet.

In the meantime we hope you enjoy your visit and we look forward to bombarding you with lots of content every day from later this year.

Playground Games' Forza Horizon has been widely acclaimed for its technological achievements and mostly successful translation of the Forza franchise to a (somewhat) open world setting. But one month on from the game's release many of us initially excited about the game aren't playing it, despite still playing Forza 4 one year on.

Why is that?

My PC copy of FIFA 13 has just arrived in the post so I thought I'd share my initial thoughts. I installed it and played my first game. ?FIFA 13 Looks gorgeous in 1080p on my fairly modest PC - certainly knocks the socks of the console version, so glad I went PC this year.

I loved the atmosphere have having the real world form on. The commentary team discussed real events and form. I played the first game against Liverpool and they were on very poor form. Suarez even got injured (\o/) and the commentators chatted to Geoff Shreeves who reported from the touchline on what the injury might be.

I was also very impressed that when one of my played went down injured he eventually got up and ran it off. Overall it felt like a really convincing game of football. Lots of end to end action with the ball pinging around rather than stuck to feet.

Another welcome feature was how the game brought over my preferred settings, points for playing FIFA 12 and favourite team - even though I'd only played FIFA 12 on Xbox, not PC.

So the early promise of EA Sports FIFA 13 is good. But I've only just started investigating the wealth of things to do in the menus and it seems like a huge game this year. Perhaps I'm impressed more because I didn't actually end up playing FIFA 12 very much, so I'm really coming from a history of the last game I played in depth being 2011.

You may notice that there have been some changes to the site today.

We now use the Disqus system for site comments instead of the native ones. I've made the change for a very simple reason - to make things easier for you.

You can now comment without creating an account here - all you need is a Twitter, Facebook, Disqus, Google, OpenID, Yahoo or Guest account instead. We hope you find this a much easier way of telling us that we're talking bollocks.

The only downside of this change is that you will no longer be able to view the old comments on the site. These remain in the database however, so should we ever revert to the old system your pearls of wisdom will once again be there for all to see.

Update: Well not having the php skills to create and output script to get the old comments in a form Disqus likes I've decided to leave the old archived comments on show below the new system on each post. You can view these, but any replies must use the new system.

The FIFA franchise may be better than it's even been, but can this re-working of the Street brand live up to quality set by its big brother?

Joe Bennett tells all.

Today it was announced that Codemasters had signed another multi-year deal to be the official publisher of Formula 1 games. And that's a shitty thing.

We've had two F1 games from the publisher and neither was in a finished state upon release. Both releases saw important aspects of the sport either missing or broken. The first game couldn't even do lap times properly - oh well it's not as if lap times matter in F1. Oh they do? Dammit.

I used to wave the flag for Codemasters, the company that brought us Colin McRae Rally, TOCA Touring Cars and Micro Machines, but I've had enough of the company's products thanks very much.

We've found the one man who thought Need for Speed: The Run isn't rubbish. James checks out the PlayStation 3 version of the EA racer.

Joe returns to two of his favourite PlayStation 2 games. But does Ico & Shadow of the Colussus HD Collection on PlayStation 3 retain the magic of the original releases?

In our first review for a while, James checks out the latest God of War collection for PlayStation 3.