So I picked up quite a few PC games in the last week or so as part of Steam, Amazon and Origin sales. Most have worked without problem, but FIFA 13 has been giving me troubles. I don't do a lot of PC gaming because of stuff like this where you have to spend weeks troubleshooting some random problem that makes no sense.

FIFA 13 will work fine, but if I exit the game I can't launch it again without restarting my computer. I have no idea why. I contacted EA customer support (I love EA and don't wish to hate on them or criticize them) and they tried helping me for awhile and eventually asked what OS I was using. When I replied Windows 8, they go "oh that's the problem, we don't officially support Windows 8 in any way and don't guarantee our products will work on Windows 8." He then goes on to say that Windows 8 isn't actually a finished OS yet and I shouldn't expect things to work on it.

It's not finished? That's news to me considering it had a retail release and I paid money to upgrade to it....

Everyone always wants to sell you on PC gaming, and yet there's all these unknown factors for developers who make PC games. They don't know your hardware combinations, software combinations, etc.

So when EA came out yesterday and said the next gen consoles are MORE POWERFUL than any top of the line PC today, I believe them. They're not talking just in numbers, they're talking in usability. They know exactly what they can get out of a PS4 and Xbox One and they can develop to the strengths of each and use EVERY last bit of power. PC gamers tend to think all that matters is numbers, and bigger is always better, but I'll take something I know is going to work and work as good as it possibly can work, and work the same on everyone's system than anything else.

Sorry to be a bit of a Devil's Advocate here, but this kind of has always been a problem even for older games. I have a Jumpstart game called Spy Masters Unmask the Prankster. It doesn't work well on Windows 7. While consoles are more stable generally, that stability can sometimes not even happen unless the dev knows what they are doing. There's plenty of games where stability on a console is almost like talking to a wall. Some games from before the PS3 was known for buggy ports have plenty of problems on stuff like the PS2. In fact, there's even cases where the game is just plain out badly optimized for the system.

You are correct in how consoles have better stability, but this doesn't always mean the performance will stay. Max Payne on the PS2 actually gives me motion sickness because the framerate gets so bad, for example. This problem can even extend to games that are exclusive to a specific console. With PCs of the IBM standard you can't know what to expect. That's why so many PC games have problems. If consoles could be upgraded, the problem would happen on them.

This transformed from a "Help, my game isn't working" thread to a "PC gaming svcks, consoles rule" flamebait thread about halfway through. Way to maintain your reputation, Jona.

But I'll take a bit of the bait. The consoles definitely are not more powerful than any top of the line PC now. And it always takes a few years for developers to start getting the absolute best out of the console. By then PC gaming will have doubled in potential performance and the consoles will have stayed right where they are. This happens every time. That's why consoles are always behind in performance.

It's made clear in the title I'd be expressing the distaste I have with PC gaming. On it's own PC gaming is great, especially when it works. 99% of my Steam library works and that's cool. But it takes one bad experience to bring that bad taste back to your mouth and I can sit here and troubleshoot for days or just get the console version of the game and be done with it. At what point does time spent outweigh the cost of paying more for the console version.

That's all I'm getting at. I'm going to continue using Steam into the next gen, and I love the way Steam looks in big picture mode on my TV, but I could never get behind the argument that I should abandon consoles altogether in favor of PC. Aint nobody got time for that......unless you actually have time for that. I don't. I just want to pick up and play.

This is going to be flamebait? Oh no... Excuse me as I hide behind a wall made of both console and PC games. That'll hide me better than any flameshield could! Who wants such an innovative made up shield?

I game on both consoles and PC. I prefer the PC because my tastes have grown more towards what is most popular on the PC, but I love my consoles and handhelds. Only reason I'd ever go exclusive to just one kind of gaming machine is if I no longer can afford consoles or they begin to seem way too impractical for even someone who has a use for them. I will always keep up with handhelds, though. Many of my favorite games I still play to this day are on handhelds.

I didn't really see the opening post as flamebait, at least as intentional flamebait. This topic does tend to get a bit heated, though. Sad, because https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XYFJUP84lE

If this was true, nobody would ever buy a console. They'd be way too expensive. The price of a high end graphics card is more expensive than the entire console.