Absolutely.  Ask Crytek.  They made a big budget follow up to FarCry (IMHO, Crysis was just FarCry with better graphics and a different plot) that was being hyped as the game that would open peoples' eyes to PC gaming again, and all that happened was that people pirated the hell out of it, and it wasn't even really released as a finished product.  I remember seeing endcaps at Best Buy with stacks and stacks of copies of Crysis--nobody really bought it.  Even Crytek admitted that the game needed polish.  I'm sure if I were to reinstall it now and patch it all the way up to the most recent version, it would probably run better now.  But at launch, everything after the part where the island freezes ran like garbage.  So basically, you had a game that looked great and raised the bar on the PC, and nobody really cared that much about it.  As I recall, the multiplayer didn't even work right at launch, and that was one of the big reasons I bought it!!

I'm an all or nothing type person.  My attitude about PC gaming was that if I'm going to play on the PC, I'm going to play at max settings with smooth frames.  If I have to dumb down my video settings just to get good performance and play without interruptions, then why play on the PC, especially when I'm no fan of MMOs or RTS games?  I was long overdue for a new video card when the 8800 Nvidia cards launched, and I was building a PC specifically to play Crysis.  I was at Fry's on launch day with $600 in my hand to pick up the 8800GTS.  I took it home, threw it into my quad core rig, overclocked it, and got ready to have no life for at least a couple of months while I was playing the single player campaign and 12 hour long multiplayer matches. 

And it didn't happen.  Crysis wasn't a very good single player game, the multi player was sub par, and the graphics only looked good if you didn't mind playing a slide show.  That's when I started to look around at the kinds of games I play and realized that none of the stuff I play is exclusive to the PC anymore, and certainly doesn't look any better on the PC.  And so I made the move. 

That's just me.  I used to be the guy railing on people for liking consoles over the PC, but at some point you start getting sick of the hassle.  Or you have kids and can't justify the expense anymore.  I don't care how you try to put it to me, PC gaming is a huge expense if you actually want to see the advantages of the PC.  If you are going to buy middle of the road graphics cards and running everything on medium to low, there is absolutely no point in playing on your PC.  In my opinion, of course.  If you want to play The Sims and WoW 24 hours a day, more power to you.  For me, it is unfortunate that PC gaming has gone that direction.

crysis looks head and shoulders above any console game. Acutally come to think of it pretty much any PC port of a console game can look better than its console counterpart because with PC you can up the resolution and AA.

 Actually some claimed Need for Speed Shift  for the PC looks better than Forza 3 for example.  I don't have it for the PC but I'm sure it's possible. Still for me I happy with most HD graphics on both console and PC  even with 30fps framerate 720p.  I remember in the PS years you was lucky to get 30 fps.

Yeah the multiplayer part of Crysis is weak to say the least....

Crysis was a success, and it cost far less to develop it than either Halo 3 and Killzone 2. In my opinion, Crysis was the best shooter of 2007, purely because of gameplay, ambience and level design.

You really need to ponder about what you said though. You are someone that wants to have the best graphics on PC, yet settles for the comparable low settings of console games... makes little sense. Crysis on Medium Setttings still beats Halo 3 on graphics, and your PC was enough to play Crysis on High Settings (which was graphically better than any other game at the time). The Max settings were strictly for future hardware.

Actually, it makes perfect sense FOR ME.  Maybe not for you.  If I'm going to play on the PC, I'm going to want a top end PC.  If I can't afford that, then I'm not going to bother with it.  If I'm going to settle for the lower end graphics, I'm going to go to the consoles, which actually have a lot more of the types of games I like to play these days anyway. 

What are you trying to do, convince me to go back to the PC for gaming?  What's the point of that?  PC gaming doesn't work for ME anymore.  The consoles are cheaper and have a lot of really bad ass games AND all my friends have consoles.  NONE of them have gaming PCs.  Literally none of them.  I didn't say YOU have to stop playing on the PC.  I just said that I stopped.  PC doesn't have the games I want anymore.

Yes, PC gaming has the best graphics and it has the most hardcore players. The best game players are on the PC, put any console player in a 1v1 in Quake or Starcraft -- games that require skill far beyond what console gamers can muster -- and you will see where the elite players are. Don't get me wrong, the guys in MLG are great on the consoles, but it just doesn't compare to the players in the competitive Starcraft, CS, quake and even WOW/MMORPG scene.

Consoles just make it accessible to everyone, which isn't a bad thing, but no way they are more elite/hardcore than some of the serious teams and players on the PC side who have being playing for years.

 I agree. 10 years ago I had a PS which did have some hardcore games (Carnage Heart). I couldn't afford a PC at the time and though that I didn't have to with PS2. Vagrant Story failure at the end of PS life made me realize console games has it's limit when it come to depth. As you said it's has be accessible and easy to  pick up and play. If there any need to read a manual as in Vagrant Story and Carnage Heart then it's doom to fail on consoles.

nm...........

That's ignorant and wrong imo.

Here's something for you to ponder:

The platform a player chooses has nothing to do with their potential skill level.

Controls have nothing to do with their potential skill level.

You can take an accomplished PC FPS champion, and put him up against a reasonably good Halo 3 player, hand them both 360 controllers, who would win?

From speed and stealth runs in MGS4, to SMB mods and speed runthroughs, you will always have very skilled gamers across all platforms.

Ever hear of fighting games? jTourneys? You think that PC FPS only gamers are more hardcore about those? Do you think fighing games require less skill, and are less hardcore than RTS games? Do you think that the skill required to reach the top level in Virtua Fighter is significantly less than the "skill" required to master World of Warcrafts battle system? Keep in mind, you can find my World of Warcraft PVP videos on Warcraft movies as we speak, if you think you're gonna bullshit me. Do you think their skill levels could match mine at Tekken without training on an arcade stick?

It's just silly. Training is required to master anything, and the consoles have games as deep or deeper than games found on the PC. Games that take years to master. Games that are impossible to master.

Now, where you're confused, I think, is that you assumed certain genres, which require vast amounts of invested time, are far more populated on PC. I agree. The MMO crowd(which is also the RTS) crowd, sometimes puts a lot of time and effort into their gaming.

However, for you to imply that platform choice determines gaming prowess, is complete and utter ignorance at a level rarely seen on this forum, and it is also completely and utterly bias, and insulting to me personally. Elitism like that is what causes those PC fan stereotypes.

In fact, let me define stereotype.

Stereotype: logical oversimplification in which all the members of a class or set are considered to be definable by an easily distinguishable.

An oversimplification or generalization, based upon laziness or ignorance.

Do you want to continue to generalize an entire group of gamers and marginalize their importance to gaming, or do you want to actually stand behind your platform with a cohesive argument, because right now, this thread needs some hardcore PC gamers, because the ones you've got haven't stood up to well against this casual console n00b.

@bolded

I just laughed and laughed.