Steam predates Xbox live marketplace by over 2 years... He is also in the business of selling console games, and being someone who is actually selling PC games he is probably the only person qualified to comment on this. Unlike you he knows what he is talking about as he has the data, he has games that sell better on PC than console etc.

I whole heartedly agree that graphics don't trump gameplay but I'm sure you've heard the expression you eat with your eyes first, right?

As much as we don't like to admit it, graphics matter a lot.  A game may be fun as Hell but if it doesn't look good it's going to have a hard time selling.  Yes, there are extreme examples like Minecraft (though you could just call that a unique art style), other games like Braid or Limbo would have gone completely unnoticed if they hadn't concentrated so hard on their style.  Other games like BattleField 3 would be left in the shooter waste land if it weren't stand out graphics wise.

You may be enlightened enough to know that graphics don't matter and you play all those indie darlines knowing it's the gameplay that is making them special, but that doesn't make the money and making games is only about making money.

I was referring to this quote in particular, "Steam encourages customers to buy games, share them with friends and compete online for achievements. For those players, it becomes more fun to buy games than pirate them." That was Xbox Live's innovation, not Steam.

Of course their PC games sell better. Portal 2 was free with the PS3. The Left 4 Dead series is sometimes a few dollars. They also sell DLC to console gamers that's free to PC users. Its possible their games profit more on consoles, I don't think that's something Steam would want to admit if true.

Capcom put out little PC software and most of what they do put out is delayed or shodilly ported and all are designed for consoles first, Ubisoft put out a lot of shodally ported, console led, months late ports and games with draconian DRM.

 EA are changing to put more on attention to PC but still mostly console led design, they do however have some of their most successful games only on PC like the Sims so they are a bad example for your argument.

Graphics are not as important as gameplay, you can give your PC port of your console game enhanced graphics on PC but it still won't sell if you keep the console led gameplay and UI.

Steam did all those thing exept achivements (which I don't even know why that's there, steam achivements have never been very succesful as they are not tied to a unified score) before xbox live

They also have higher margines on PC than consoles as they don't have to pay licensing on games, and sell directly to customers through steam where they get 100% of the sale price, revenue may be higher on consoles but profit is almost certainly higher on PC. Also I don't think they count the free steam copy with the PS3 version as a sale, but even so that doesn't really help that much anyway as not all people will have redeimed the codes and every one is tied to a console sale.

I haven't played all of Capcom's ports, but I've played quite a few and they seem to work fine. Perhaps this is subjective? What does it matter if they are console led ports? If its equal to the console I'm happy, but PC ports tend to actually be better if you have good specs.

Your EA stuff, once again I don't care which hardware the game is led for. Sims is a bad example for my argument? What argument?

Graphics are quite important, you don't need the best graphics for a hit but they are still important. What's console led gameplay and UI? Something that doesn't play and look like an MMO?

But wasn't the focus of that achievments? The other stuff... buying games and competing online existed before XBL and Steam. XBL existed before Steam by the way.

You bring up a good point about how Valve sells their games directly, but many people still prefer to buy physical copies at retailers. Valve often reduces prices on sales so I still wouldn't presume PC was most profitable for Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead.

Good luck trying to convince the pubs and devs.

Heroes6 is on my iffy list and then they went and put always online DRM  on it. I won't even bother with it even if they sell for $10.

I have stable 10Mbits connection but that doesn't mean they can do whatever the hell they want.

Console led gameplay and UI is stuff like mapping the mouse look to to the gamepad imput with accelleration and sticky targeting instead of giving mouse users raw input control. Making menues navigatable by keys instead of the mouse, using menu driven inventory management instead of simpler and quicker drag and drop annoyed me to no end in RE5 why do I have to sellect the item go down to give then go to the other inventory and select the item go down to move and then move the item arround the inventory? Why can't I just click and drag the item to where I want it FFS?

Then you have games like RE4 which is barely playable, launched with no mouse control (if you didn't have a gamepad you basicaly couldn't play) had worse graphics than the Gamecube version and was buggy to boot. Super Street Fighter 4 arcade edition is the only Capcom PC game that I havn't had some kind of problem with, and it's probably a matter of time until GFWL decides I don't deserve my save file or something, I know from experiance now not to start playing with an offline profile then use my online one now and I haven't had to reinstal windows in a while plus NZ was finally added to the supported reigons a year or 2 ago.

Even on a joystick the RE series has an annoying interface. That's really all I have to say about that.

The RE4 port was an unusually half assed effort, but it was neither published or developed by Capcom. Just bad quality control. However, it was very playable and it looked fine even without the lighting/shading effects.

If people aren't happy with the ports that's fine, nobody is obligated to purchase them. Ultimately, they are functional ports that get the job done. I just hate to see people piss and moan then enjoy them through piracy.