Finally: A Civ IV Tech Tree Editor!

One of the Civilization IV mods that I've been most interested in seeing has finally emerged--a Tech Tree Mod! I've been really looking forward to twiddling extensively with the tech tree. This should be interesting! One wonders if this could be a way for more Future Tech type technology, like solar power satellites and lunar Helium-3 mining. Congrats to TheLopez, the enterprising coder who put this together. The next item on the SRV wishlist is the Alpha Centauri mod, the development of which appears to have unfortunately stalled.

I was excited about Star Trek Legacy, until...

...I saw the hardware requirements. Bethesda has released the official PC hardware requirements for Star Trek Legacy, and as I feared they're awfully darn steep. This is unfortunate, because the initial set of requirements that had been posted on Amazon.com were quite reasonable. This is a lousy decision on Bethesda's part, because it immediately puts the PC version of the game out of reach for most consumers (myself included). This kind of "hardware creep" is one of my pet peeves, not only because it's aggravating to me personally (I was really excited about Legacy prior to finding this out; now I've canceled my pre-order) but because it's the biggest single reason why consumers have been steadily leaving the PC as a gaming platform. I've never been even remotely interested in consoles, but I must admit that in recent years the increasing capability of console platforms (especially the Xbox 360) has made me actually consider switching over to some sort of console. Until manufacturers realize that 99.99% of us can't afford to buy new systems every three months, PC gaming will continue to decline.