Before I begin, I have to mention that I play my videogames on a large desk with a powerful PC hanging underneath the desk and an Xbox 360 sitting above it, both hooked up to a 1680x1050 monitor. I play both regularly and I am a large fan of games on PC like BF3 and TES and I also play Halo on my 360. Just want to get that out of the way before the impending rant so some (read; not all, only some of you) of you ignorant people realise that I am NOT a PC elitist. An elitist blindly refuses to acknowledge the advantages of a console, few as they may be and I do see the advantages of them.
Now, I haven't used this account in a few years but I felt that it was necessary to find my password and log in again just to clear up some awful inconsistencies in this thread. It's such a mess. Some of you pro-console people (oh look, it's that word again, "SOME") have just presented views that are so outdated and incorrect that I'm sure they're just posted out of pure fanboyism. Note that I don't consider myself any kind of authority on this topic in any way, these are all my opinions and observations and much of it is taken from something called common sense. But their are just so many fallacies and examples of ignorance in this thread that I have to post something that will maybe allow some people to see the error of their ways.
For starters, you would have to be absolutely out of your mind to think that playing videogames as a whole is of a higher quality on a powerful PC. Let me list some advantages and disadvantages of both.
PC
Pros
-Mods
-Customisation
-Better graphics
-More powerful hardware (at the moment)
-More third-party support
-Free online gaming (yes, the PS3 has this too I realise)
-Better controls, more keys, more precision with a mouse
-Support for any gamepad, should you desire it
-People with more money can utilise it to augment their experiences
-Broken games usually fixed by communities
-Cheaper games
-Downloadable games
-There's plenty more but for lack of time and space I'll leave it here
Cons
-A good one might cost you an extra couple hundred dollars
-Sometimes games might take a while to get running to an acceptable standard
-Lack of portability
-Getting picky here but if you’re using a console you’ll sometimes have it in the lounge with a big comfy chair and that is sometimes not practical on PC (while completely possible)
Console
Pros
-More accessible
-Most people have one nowadays
-Larger playerbase
-Cheap to buy and maintain
Cons
-Poor controls
-Less graphical capabilities
-Old tech
-Bad multiplayer services (from my experiences)
-Heavily limited by the owning company and their laws
-Lack of/simplified customisation
-Lack of advanced controls mean less room for games like RTS etc.
-Very little digital distribution
-Online pass with some games, usually EA
-Rarely dedicated servers
-Games are nearly never displayed in full 1080p, they’re usually upscaled from 720p, resulting in blurry images
As you can see there’s a slim list of cons for PC and a fat list of them for console. Let me just reiterate that if you believe that the PC is not more powerful. It’s a simple damn fact. My PC cost me about a thousand Australian dollars to buy and it’s at the very least 20 times as powerful as my Xbox. That is no exaggeration. There is simply no way that the Xbox can compare to my PC. And hell, my PC is a little bit old too, and these days you could probably get the same result for about six hundred bucks, about the same price as an Xbox on release (in Australia, anyway). The Xbox uses 5-year-old tech, and I guarantee you it would absolutely quail at the prospect of running Skyrim at the highest graphics settings. So I hope you realise that the PC is in complete fact more powerful than the Xbox by a large amount. If not, you’re completely wrong. There is simply no way around it. And yes, when the next generation of consoles come about they will have tech that isn’t seven years old, but they’ll be no better than PC, and only comparable to PC tech for about a year or two. Corportations release GPUs and CPUs every half year or so and they are nearly 1.5x the power of the last batch almost all the time.
As for what this does, it really severely limits the progression of games these days. For example, BF3 last month was only allowed 32 players on Xbox in comparison to PC which allows 64. As for Skyrim the textures and overall quality was brought down by a ridiculous amount. I’ve seen the footage and screens and it just looks like rubbish compared to how my game looks.
Now this next part may seem slightly underhanded of me but some quotes in this thread are just so ridiculously ignorant and misinformed that I had to reply to them.
PC market is soon, not dead but wiped anyway so might as well allow mods for Xbox live and PSN, for the future.
Its not that PC games are bad, they are someitmes better. But future consoles will have better hardware then what will be out for the PC for another year to come.
But even thats not why.
The only reason why PC gaming is dying, is due to piracy. Thats it.
Skyrim was out, WITH the release patch, on release day, as a downloadable copy.
Since its a single player game. You have it all.
You wont find cracked versions for xbox and psn since although you can, you need a modified xbox, modified with hardware, and you will never be able to log on to xbox live with it.
Sure some use a 2nd for piracy but its an extreme hazzle compared to the PC. Where you click download, follow some instructions that takes less time then the most basic installatiion of a mod. And you have it working.
Game developers should stop releasing major games to the PC once the new consoles are out in a year approx. They must, in order to earn money.
That, or ONLY focus on online games.
Steam is one way to ensure people cant crack it. But,,,again, even that was done immediately upon release.
Good god. Where to even begin...
Well, for starters, your comment about PC slowly dying is absolute rubbish. I don’t know where you got that idea but the digital distribution industry is absolutely booming and there will always be PC games while PCs exist. It’s just a fact. As for piracy that’s the most ignorant part of your post. Guess what buddy? Piracy exists on console as well as PC! Not only that, but the pirated version of Skyrim was available on the Xbox ten damn days before the game was even fully released on all platforms! Those idiotic developers/publishers that believe they need to limit the PC’s potential and market to stop piracy are just looking for a damn scapegoat, and that is clearly where you have gotten your misconceptions from. And they’re completely false. There is no more piracy on PC than there is on console. And with Steam taking over the market it’s also taking over the market’s DRM services (if you could call DRM a service at all, it’s really more of a hindrance). Steam is hosted by smart, capable people and I’m sure Gabe and the crew will have a way of preventing easy to obtain pirated copies of games. No, they won’t erase piracy completely, but that’s never going to happen on any platform anyway. So no, PC is not dying, and it’s certainly not dealing with the final nails in its coffin as you seem to believe.
Controls my ass. There's no advantage over a controller, it's personal preference. Draw distances? I already said graphics. What I said still stands. The only thing PC has over a console are better graphics and modability (which includes tweaking settings that you can't on the console).
That’s a ridiculous statement. See the above advantages and disadvantages. And no it is not personal preference to controls. More buttons = better, and game devs agree with me, because there’s plenty of interviews where they complain about lack of buttons on a controller. And the mouse is simply superior to an anologue stick, you can’t possibly argue against that.
Well there’s my damn essay on PC vs. console and I might save it to copy+paste onto other forums when I need to, as I inevitably will.
As for my opinion on this poll, the answer from me is going to have to be no, unless it is strictly limited to consoles being able to import. I dread the day that I have to cater my mods to all platforms, and all the confused little people crying up at me and complaining about the lack of a console version. I never want to develop a mod for a console.
And before you rebut me with a slack statement about PC elitism, refer to the top paragraph and try again. My first gaming machine was an N64, then an Xbox, then a 360, then I got my PC when Oblivion came out. Call me an elitist and you may as well have not read my post.
» Mon May 28, 2012 12:50 pm 
