QOTW: Is PC gaming really superior to console?

[Danzio]

It's just a matter on if you can afford it or not.

I disagree, For some its a choice, they choose not to spend as much money, because they simply don't care enough. Some just want a console to play fifa or CoD or GTA with their friends. I couldn't afford the rig I have now outright, it's cost me around £4200. I've had to save month after month to buy different bits.

So, if done this way, I guess most people could afford it, it really that some people just ain't that bothered.

[jnutt]

Yes!

[superp]

All games are made on master race machines and then gimped to run on peasant boxs or stations. Remember who feeds you or our machines is stop making games for you!

[cheesemp]

Loving all the comments about PC gaming costing more than a console. It really doesn't unless you want high graphics. I game on a £300 laptop that plays most games at low. I also game on a PC that I've only spent £300 on it in 4 years (new CPU, ram and motherboard). Got a hand me down GPU and it still plays everything at high/medium at 1080p which is plenty good enough to enjoy yourself.

The biggest problem with PC gaming is the poor console ports dragging it down rather than pushing it (part of the reason I can spend so little). Hoping star citizen might change this as they just don't care about console compatibility...

[superp]

AH yes, sometimes traitor machines make games only for peasant boxs. But we have to remember that the machines are not the traitors, the suits controlling them are. I imagine a machine making a wonderful game, then chewing it up and compressing it so it fits on a disk with a spit. A last gesture of defiance if you ask me.

[loccothan]

No, It's different. For PC you need Time, on consoles Plug&Play
But PC is a computer not console that's diffrent :-)
I have both

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So what if people don't build your own PCs,or don't want a desktop?? For enough people,consoles are something they can spend a few hundred quid and not worry about whether they have the hardware to run a game,or whether all their mates can run it or not.

Plus the whole consoles dragging PCs down is not really are true - I have been a PC gamer for over a decade and people look at PC game through rose tinted glasses. Plenty of games were bug ridden in the last 20 years and they didn't need consoles to help drag them down....!

The biggest dragging down,is because people simply don't have the hardware anymore to be pushing games which push technical boundaries. The rate at which graphics cards are improving has crashed when compared 10 years ago,and card prices are going up year on year for similar improvements. This is the effect of process node development slowing down,and card sales crashing,so ASP has been going up. All the cheap tricks used to improve visual fidelity have dried up,and further improvements need more and more processing to get the visual improvements needed. Games are getting more and more expensive to develop.

Consoles are lead platforms for many games,since they have a massive user base and it helps spread costs.

Even Crytek and DICE now target consoles first. Crytek never did financially well out of PCs despite being one of the most pro-PC developers out there.

Hence the most popular PC games now are things like LoL,DOTA 2 and Minecraft which are made to run on low spec PC hardware.

Even Blizzard,who are bastions of PC gaming,have ported D3 onto consoles and the last time that happened with a game they were involved with was the first Diablo.

OTH,there are fantastic game series like Mass Effect which originated on consoles.

The whole PC Master Race E-PEEN is stupid.

If anyone is a true gamer they would not care what platform a game is on,or whether its simple a game printed on pieces of card.

But maybe as I get older,I realise the most important aspect is fun not platform.

I had as much fun playing Time Crisis in the Arcade,as I had playing Crysis on PC and building a new PC so I could play it,Ingress on my phone when I am out or a board game with mates.

[Dareos]

Cat, and others before him, speaks much sense.
I am lucky enough to have all the platforms I need. PS4,3,Vita, Xbox, 360, One, tablet, PC (several versions dating back 10 years, having owned PC's for pretty much bang on 20 years)
I play games to relax primarily (you wouldnt think it if you hear me on CoD), I love all sorts of game types and although some games are better played on PC than console, I would argue that the reverse is also true.

The fact is that a lot of gamers are not very technical people, and while some of us think nothing of installing steam/origin etc, others balk at it. Then theres the graphics options, should i turn on antialiasing and should it be 2x or 16x? Have I updated my drivers and is the resolution right? Its a multiplayer game, which of the 4000 servers should i play on, what do all the acronyms mean next to the server name? How do i chat to people in the game, console commands, teamspeak/ventrilo etc?

Theres a lot of great gamers out there that just want the plug and play experience and only a console will deliver this.

Funnily enough I dont think cost is actually the factor people think it is, but its not entirely obvious.

Gaming pc = circa £800
basing that on 24 inch monitor, i5, 8Gb or 16Gb RAM, good mobo and £250 graphics card. Nothing top of the line but altogether good value.

Console = circa £300 or less

Initial outlay, thats a big difference

however - New console game £40-45 , New PC game £30
I have a lot of games... not as much as certain mods...but a fair few. lets say around 150 for consoles. Thats an outlay of 10to15 x 150 more than the PC cost, which is on average around £1250, so that initial outlay of £500 more, is now actually £750 less over a machines lifetime.

Then theres peripherals. I went through a 360 pad once a year, PC version was cheaper to replace, by a fair amount, it adds up.

Then as Saracen says, the PC has more than just one or two uses, its got several.

And, theres humblebundle sales, which means my actual pc game outlay is significantly lower than previously stated, although its not always games of choice
and then theres free games

So no, theres no choice for me.
As stated earlier I game to relax, and depending entirely on what I want to play I load up that particular device.
If im playing with friends, its console, if its an RTS or similar type then it will probably be pc as its generally more suited, if not its console.

[rpjkw11]

I've never owned (or even considered) a console because I've always felt a PC is superior, especially when it comes to the wide variety of components available.

[cveto]

i own one of console and play it maybe 3 times i year for a week PC i play ewry day.so this is my answer

[THCButterz]

PC is still king, Gradual updates to hardware allow for constant improvements to the gaming experience, With platforms like Steam the latest games can usually be found cheap ( I have over 300 games and only paid 60+ USD for 2 of them or so) Your games never expire, On one machine I can play GTA V and Half Life 1, Halo CE, or virtually any other pc game I have ever Bought, game mods are awesome too, even minecraft is better on pc because of this, dont even mention skyrim or GTA IV, PC "supports" 4K not just 720p or 1080p, but 2160p, and the oldest arg in the book is still true Keyboard and mouse Still Rule the input world (put cherry switches in a controller, it might stand a chance... not) Consoles are the restricting factor in gaming, the tight hardware specs of the consoles tend to limit the quality of games, those games get ported to pc and are **** quality because there console counterparts where ****, the newest revision of consoles has helped bridge the gap due to x86 hardware (terrible amd hardware, slightly outdated, but x86 none the less) however it screwed with us pc users, we had to make a rather sudden jump, from the 360, ps3 days when 1.5 to 2gb vram would handel anything, to all of the sudden needing 4-6 gb vram.. however my pc can still play any game I throw at it, at or above console settings, and im running a 5 year old amd 1090t rig with a mid range 760 sli setup I paid $300 for, so we now are in a time where you can have a gaming pc for arround the same price as a console, and outperform said console, just saying... I love PC

[atteru]

It depends, for example, I was a PC user, but now I will buy PS4, why? Becouse I started to live on my own, I'm working, and I can't afford PC to play smoothly in every game, with console I won't have this problem, and besides that I don't have time for PC, right now PC for me is a tool for work, and i need something to relax, and for this purpose I will use console, ofc. graphics will be worse, but I don't have to worry if game will work or not.

[smilertoo]

Consoles used to be a 99% guarantee that the game was bug free and complete, that's no longer true as publishers now think it's fine to ship an almost working game then patch it up as they go.

[genkifd]

i use to play games on my PC until one major thing that turns me off - Driver issues. almost every game has issues. didnt help my cause for having two GPUs and surround monitor setup.

for me console suits me best. gaming on my $30k AUD Audio Visual setup is an awesome experience that im fortunately enough to use daily.

[crossy]

PC gaming superior to console? No. Is it different to console? Yes

Yes, I know there's the usual argument about the superiority of mouse v's controller and the "omg, my pc can 4K game at 120+fps". But does 4K graphics (etc) really make the game any better? Prettier yes, but it doesn't necessarily make it more enjoyable? A mouse IS a more precise device, problem is that while you've bought the "Deathstriker Rabid Hamster" mouse and are wiping the floor with the dumb console games, along comes Mr Nerdo with his "Deathdominator Rabid Hamster Plus" mouse and gets those fractions-of-a-millisecond better response than you. So it ends up being like an arms race... And personally, there's some games where the immediacy of a controller means it's just "better" than a mouse/keyboard combo.

Then there's the downside of PC's. Windows, Windows, and Windows. Roll on SteamOS because quite frankly Windows makes the best argument for doing all your gaming on a console. And don't get me started on device drivers...

Ever tried getting support for a misbehaving PC game - oh what fun... "Email us your configuration"; "Downgrade your drivers"; "Oh, you've got a GTX970, our game needs 4GB memory to work reliably"; etc, etc.

I've got Assassin's Creed:Black Flag on PC and console - why? Well because I've got inexplicable lock ups on the PC version, yet the console is rock solid. Okay, the XBox360 version also looks pretty naff compared to the glories of the PC version, but I want to play the game, not marvel at it's graphical splendor.

Can we have a voluntary moratorium against these "console v's PC" questions because frankly they're becoming very, very boring.

Here's a QOTW for you: Are we any more at risk from malware now than we were ten years ago?

Besides, I thought the up-and-coming thing was tablet gaming... (ducks and runs before that starts a "iPad v's Android" debate)

[george1979]

PC gaming superior to console? No. Is it different to console? Yes

Yes, I know there's the usual argument about the superiority of mouse v's controller and the "omg, my pc can 4K game at 120+fps". But does 4K graphics (etc) really make the game any better? Prettier yes, but it doesn't necessarily make it more enjoyable? A mouse IS a more precise device, problem is that while you've bought the "Deathstriker Rabid Hamster" mouse and are wiping the floor with the dumb console games, along comes Mr Nerdo with his "Deathdominator Rabid Hamster Plus" mouse and gets those fractions-of-a-millisecond better response than you. So it ends up being like an arms race... And personally, there's some games where the immediacy of a controller means it's just "better" than a mouse/keyboard combo.

Then there's the downside of PC's. Windows, Windows, and Windows. Roll on SteamOS because quite frankly Windows makes the best argument for doing all your gaming on a console. And don't get me started on device drivers...

Ever tried getting support for a misbehaving PC game - oh what fun... "Email us your configuration"; "Downgrade your drivers"; "Oh, you've got a GTX970, our game needs 4GB memory to work reliably"; etc, etc.

I've got Assassin's Creed:Black Flag on PC and console - why? Well because I've got inexplicable lock ups on the PC version, yet the console is rock solid. Okay, the XBox360 version also looks pretty naff compared to the glories of the PC version, but I want to play the game, not marvel at it's graphical splendor.

Can we have a voluntary moratorium against these "console v's PC" questions because frankly they're becoming very, very boring.

Here's a QOTW for you: Are we any more at risk from malware now than we were ten years ago?

Besides, I thought the up-and-coming thing was tablet gaming... (ducks and runs before that starts a "iPad v's Android" debate)

Pretty much exactly what I was about to say but you've nailed it. Silly debate, bored of it.
Neither one is superior, just different.