Having played PC games far longer than I’ve played console games, it’s easy for me to romanticize PC gaming as some holy tradition that must be protected. The reality is, a good game will get my attention regardless of what platform it was made for. But there are a lot of reasons why I prefer to play games on the PC when given the option.
- Mouse and keyboard. Yeah I know it’s an endless (pointless) debate about which is better, mouse/keyboard or gamepad. Honestly this issue is a relatively minor one, a gamepad (or Wii remote) feels slower and less natural to me but not by a huge margin.
- Steam. I think without Steam I might’ve given up on PC gaming by now. I know this isn’t completely logical, but I’d much rather spend 4 hours downloading a game in the background than 15 minutes installing it from a DVD. There’s just something about the whole installation process that really bugs me, it’s so archaic. And having to put a disc in every time you play a game, yuck. The consistent interface and community options that St
eam provides are pretty hard to live without once you’re used to them being there. The 360 dashboard offers a similar experience, but it’s weirdly slow and has a completely confusing layout. And it costs money to get access to all the services. And it’s ugly. Like your mother. - Speaking of interfaces, console games generally have a really unappealing interface. They have to be big blocky things that are legible on old TVs and navigable with an analog stick. Unfortunately now that the majority of PC games are lazy console ports, PC gamers unnecessarily suffer from these things too. And often they don’t even bother to get rid of the console gamepad buttons displayed onscreen. Do they not understand how these seemingly small things can turn somebody off immediately?
- Mods. This one is probably overplayed in the PC vs. consoles debate. There are some great mods out there but they are few and far between. It’s an advantage but not a really significant one for the most part. That said some games are completely saved by mods and I can’t imagine playing them out of the box on a console (see Oblivion).
- Piracy. Yeah I know I’m a horrible person and I’m singlehandedly killing PC gaming. I download games because if they even bothered to make a demo it likely doesn’t give a very good impression of the game. And I’m not going to pay full price for a game I play for 2 hours and then get bored of. Sorry. I honestly do buy games that turn out to be good. And I even occasionally impulsively buy a bad one that I didn’t try first from Steam because it’s just too easy to buy games on Steam.
- Dedicated servers for multiplayer games. I can’t believe we 360 Live Gold members pay Microsoft for the privilege of peer-to-peer game hosting on the 360. It’s complete shite. Dedicated servers have many advantages, one of which is lower latency. Another is the persistent nature of a dedicated server. You find one that you like and you keep on coming back to it. You become sort-of-friends with the other people who regularly play on that server. Idiots are kicked off the server by active admins. The game doesn’t end when one person decides to leave the game (as can happen sometimes on the 360). It’s so much better.
- Hardware upgrades. Believe me I understand it s
ucks when you buy a game and can’t play it because your computer is not good enough. But at least in that situation you have the option of buying better hardware. It may not be practical for most people, but it is an option. On consoles, 30 frames per second has somehow become not only acceptable but something to strive for. We’re now at the point where a lot of games peak at 30 fps and constantly dip in the 15-20 range. I’ll put up with it if I feel like I just have to play the game, but any average quality game with a bad framerate hasn’t got a chance. And there’s nothing you can do, you can’t overclock your console or put in a new graphics card. Either you live with it or you play a lot less games. - Control. This can cover a lot of different points. Like the one above, if I’m playing a PC game that’s all about the graphics, then ok I’ll set everything to high and put up with the lower framerate because I want to see the pretty pictures. If it’s not about that then fuck it, I’ll make a game unbelievably ugly if I can play it smoothly. Some people complain about having to configure their games and system to optimize performance, for me it’s always better to have that option than not. That’s the beauty of PC gaming, it’s up to you.
Man consoles stink don’t they? Too bad almost nobody makes PC games anymore.
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While I agree with pretty much everything you said there, console games do have a few ups on PC games. The main ones being price and simplicity. With a console you pay a few hundred dollars for one every five years or so, and you immediately have access to every game available on the system. Like you said some games aren’t as pretty or smooth as they could be do to the processing limitations of the console, but everyone is on the same page. A given game will run on any (working) console, anywhere. PCs are much more of a hassle in that respect – there’s just so much more that could go wrong.
The other big thing is simplicity. Any idiot can pick a console, buy it, and plug it in to their TV that they already own. Stick the game in, and that’s it. PCs require much more knowledge to own and operate. You want to start gaming on your PC? What kind do you need? How much RAM do you need? What kind of processor are you running? Are you going to buy a gaming PC that might cost you upwards of a few thousand dollars, or are you going to build one for much less? If you chose to build one, do you even know how? This kind of knowledge is becoming more and more common, but it is far from being widely known. And for a hobby as generally brainless as games, the less knowledge required, the better chance it fares on the market. For a prime example of this look at Sega. They offered consoles with many optional upgrade options (Sega CD, 32x, Sega Channel, etc), but people just got confused and gave up.
Now of course non of this speaks as to the quality of the games themselves, and again I do agree with your points about PC games. But it really is no wonder why consoles do so well in the marketplace.
Yeah those are valid points and I think most of my problems with consoles are just growing pains that will be ironed out in a generation or two. Only problem is that’s like 10 to 15 years real time.
Well again those points don’t speak to the quality of the games, only to the reasons why consoles remain so much more popular than PCs.
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