Civ IV and AOE III are hardly showcases of PC POWER though, as nice as they look for what they are. And what they are is not offering anything we haven't seen ten years ago with a few tweaks, sadly. I enjoy Civ 4 lots but it isn't making me go "Wow! See what PC can do!"

As for NFS MW, that's a console game so again not really all that exciting. I can't seem to get into it anyway. And the other two are probably superfine examples of the FPS genre but again do they do much that's not been done before? I'm just not excited much by them. 360 has exactly the same trouble at the moment, and given that the xbox turned out pretty unimaginative for games I don't hold vast hopes yet. Vive la Revolution.

Yeah the revolution should be very interesting, as should the PS3 XBox 360 is probably too close to a PC to get my interest for the time being, and Halo was always a poor mans UT or Half Life 2 anyway in my book.

The problem with PC power as you put it is that game makers will always tend to develop for middle of the road machines just with the ability to turn up the detail. As fas as FPS games go the PC is the daddy still though, just too bad if you don't like that type of game!

I'm really looking forward to the new Sam and Max games this summer, they should be fun fun fun, although again probably not a showcase for PC technology.

(before someone says yes I know the original next S&M game was cancelled but someone else has bought the rights and seemingly most of the dev team and has said there will be a PC release this year!)

For PC games, how about Spore? Isn't that supposed to be out soon-ish?
Then there's Half Life Aftermath, and Oblivion is supposedly out in the next couple of months.
I have to admit though, apart from Spore there's nothing coming that really excites me, even on consoles. I'd love to play PGR3, but I'm not about to lay out £280 + gameprice for the privelege (although slightly more tempted by Game's offer of a £50 tradein on the XBox).

Slightly more ontopic, how about oft-overlooked components such as cases and PSU's?

Spore is hopefully going to be great but it's a bit early to know for sure. That could certainly be the kind of thing I'm looking for though, yeah. Half Life Aftermath though, meh! Oblivion oh gosh I hope so. I wonder if the 360 version will be better or worse.

Since I already have MSR and PGR2, PGR3 appeals not one tiny bit.

Fair enough, its not for everyone. I really enjoy the series though, and PGR was what spurred me to get the original XBox.
Aftermath I'm looking forward to possibly simply due to Dog apparently playing a much larger part, the bits in HL2 with Dog in were the bits I most enjoyed ;-)

There's an interview on joystiq about Oblivion's differences across versions and apparently unless you've got a stupidly powerful PC then the X360 version is the one to get - especially if you have a HDTV.

I'm actually fairly happy about the games drought at the moment though, as I'm concentrating on City of Villains, and toying with the idea of getting X3, both of which are fairly major time-consuming games.

Then there's always...

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/02/01/duke-nukem-forever-in-full-production/