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Crysis almost certainly did fall short of its sales potential, even if it sold over 1 million, and piracy may indeed have taken a significant toll. But it's not because the game is too system-intensive, or because the game wasn't any good; rather, it's because Crytek overlooked one of the key channels for modern PC gaming: digital distribution.

The response to my previous post has been remarkable; clearly, many gamers are passionate about DRM and its place (or lack thereof) in PC gaming. I've read through all the comments, and would like to take a moment to respond to them.

Bioware's highly acclaimed and formerly XBox 360 exclusive RPG Mass Effect is fast approaching its release on the PC. Most PC gamers were undoubtedly pleased to hear about enhanced graphics, faster load times, and a re-designed menu system; but it's likely that fewer were happy to hear about the evil digital rights management that will be unscrupulously bundled with the game.

I downloaded Doom on a whim off of Live, and I've got to say I'm surprised by just how good it still is. Great level design, interesting enemies, good weapon balance.

Music can't really make the game part of a game better. With the exception of rhythm-based games, music doesn't really have any connection to gameplay. Which kind of begs the question: to what extent is it fair to judge a game by its music?

This week, Crytek president Cevat Yerli, mastermind of the next-gen blockbuster Crysis, mentioned in an interview that his company will no longer produce PC-exclusive games, asserting that piracy has become so rampant on the PC that making exclusive games for the platform is too risky.

I haven't played Grand Theft Auto IV yet, and I probably won't play it for quite a while. But that doesn't mean it isn't exerting an influence on my life. Like many people, I've been keeping track of the game's astronomically high Metacritic ranking, and it's safe to say that I'm pretty damn stoked about the possibility of playing it. The problem is that I'm currently in the midst of a competing set of interests and commitments, which for sake of brevity I'll simply refer to as "life."

The words on everyone's mind today are Grand Theft Auto IV. This is a big game, quite likely destined to be one of the biggest in history thus far. I hardly think I need to explain why, but for anyone who needs proof, look no further than your nearest newspaper or television newscast.

It seems that as long as there are videogames there will be scientific studies trying to prove how harmful they are. The credibility of these studies varies widely, ranging from rigorous and well thought out to flawed and utterly misleading. An article in the upcoming May issue of the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology entitled "The effect of the amount of blood in a violent video game on aggression, hostility, and arousal" lies a little closer to the dubious end of the spectrum.

For most people, the idea of "virtual reality" probably conjures up images like those from The Lawnmower Man or The Matrix, with a heavy emphasis on visual realism. The upcoming May issue of Computers in Human Behavior, however, looks at the rather foreign concept of virtual reality for the blind.