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Forums - PC Discussion - Are the "PC Master Race" days over?

Because of Batman? LOL no. That would be like me declaring all console gaming is dead because Halo:MCC had broken online.



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Witcher 3 bought on my PC and I rented Arkham Knight for PS4

Winning combination in my opinion.

Then, later this year or next year, if Arkham Knight drops to a good price on sale through Steam, I'll probably pick it up there.



All your console and handheld games are created on PCs.



okr said:
All your console and handheld games are created on PCs.


Did you just...



I have been gaming on consoles my whole life and will keep doing it until I get bored of gaming. if pc master race stopped to exist or not, isnt my concern. there is a big comunity in console gaming enough to stay afloat and that's what really matters to me.



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I feel that the whole problem with the PC gaming master race argument was that it was trying to convince console gamers to play on PC. In doing that, it was deliberately trying to make PC gaming be something it wasn't, which is to say, convenient, simple, functional, and mindlessly enjoyable.

I always felt like the whole argument that PC gaming has better graphics, frame rates, and resolutions than console games defeated the core ethos of PC gaming. For me, the joy of PC gaming is spending hours finding work-arounds to get a game work when it really shouldn't. It's the kind of joy that comes with tinkering with emulators just to get a particular game to work. It's a rewarding experience.

I feel like anyone who grew up as a PC gamer understands the appeal of a console. It's just nice always being sure that a game on a console will run reasonably well. Consoles are also appealing because the machines and the operating systems themselves don't degrade after about five years. I love being able to go back to my PS2 and having it work almost perfectly, whereas if I were to go back to my PC from 2000, that machine would likely melt trying to even start up.

I really wonder how a lot of new PC gamers are going to react once, in about four or five years or so, they find out that there once super powerful PC can no longer play the games it once could.



patronmacabre said:
I feel that the whole problem with the PC gaming master race argument was that it was trying to convince console gamers to play on PC. In doing that, it was deliberately trying to make PC gaming be something it wasn't, which is to say, convenient, simple, functional, and mindlessly enjoyable.

Nobody seriously said that said that PC gaming is more convenient, simple, functional, and mindlessly enjoyable than console gaming. The argument was/is that modern PC gaming got much more convenient, simple, functional, and mindlessly enjoyable than PC gaming in the past: automatic game-patches without searching the internet (Steam, Origin, Uplay, GOG Galaxy, other game clients, the games themselves), automatic driver-updates (or automatic notifications when new drivers are available), automatic game settings (f.e. Nvidia Experience), automatic security patches (Windows Update), better and free malware-protection and -detection (UAC, Windows Defender), better game controller support (almost every game of the last decade supports at least the Xbox-gamepads), no noisy DVD-installations or disc changing or nasty disc-protections (like StarForce or Tages) or typing in long CD-keys for account-bound games.

Meanwhile the consoles didn't only adopt features from PCs but also inconveniences like mandatory installations and other stuff. The convenience gap between modern PCs and modern consoles shrunk a lot over the years!

patronmacabre said:
I always felt like the whole argument that PC gaming has better graphics, frame rates, and resolutions than console games defeated the core ethos of PC gaming.

You felt wrong. It's not hte whole argument, it is only one of the arguments.

 

patronmacabre said:

I feel like anyone who grew up as a PC gamer understands the appeal of a console. It's just nice always being sure that a game on a console will run reasonably well. Consoles are also appealing because the machines and the operating systems themselves don't degrade after about five years. I love being able to go back to my PS2 and having it work almost perfectly, whereas if I were to go back to my PC from 2000, that machine would likely melt trying to even start up.

You are feeling very much, aren't you? I hope you feel well.

You don't have to go back to your PC from 2000 to play PC-games from the year 2000... most of them will also run on newer PCs. And in most cases they will even run much better now due to scalability of PC games, they run in resolutions and settings which would have been insane in the past.

Outcast (1999):


View on YouTube

 

Many classics got even more enhanced for free with mods.

Deus Ex (2000):


View on YouTube

Gothic 2 (2003):


View on YouTube

GTA San Andreas (2004/2005):


View on YouTube

patronmacabre said:

I really wonder how a lot of new PC gamers are going to react once, in about four or five years or so, they find out that there once super powerful PC can no longer play the games it once could.

The 2012 - 2016 games (the games the PC is bought for now) will run the same on the 2015 PC in "about four or five years or so" as they are running now... perhaps a bit better due to graphic driver improvements and game patches. With a simple change of the graphic card (it has not to be an expensive high-end GPU), they will run gorgeous.

The 2017 - 2019 games will probably also run fine... the next big jump of "minimum requirements" in PC-games will probably arrived together with the launch of the PS5 / Xbox Two since most games are multiplatform nowadays.   



 

patronmacabre said:

I feel like anyone who grew up as a PC gamer understands the appeal of a console. It's just nice always being sure that a game on a console will run reasonably well. Consoles are also appealing because the machines and the operating systems themselves don't degrade after about five years. I love being able to go back to my PS2 and having it work almost perfectly, whereas if I were to go back to my PC from 2000, that machine would likely melt trying to even start up.

You are feeling very much, aren't you? I hope you feel well.

You don't have to go back to your PC from 2000 to play PC-games from the year 2000... most of them will also run on newer PCs. And in most cases they will even run much better now due to scalability of PC games, they run in resolutions and settings which would have been insane in the past.

 

You missed the crux of my argument. I wasn't talking about backwards compatibility, I was complaining about the annoyance of software rot. Computers age after five years (three to four years for laptops) and don't run as fast as they once did. Anyone who has never experienced this has never used the same computer for that long a span of time. The only way to really fix it is to straight up reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows. 

I was simply pointing out that the nicest thing, for me, about consoles is the fact that I can go back to a ten year old, fifteen year old, or twenty year old machine and it still functions like it once did. That is a nice convenience for me, though I am sure not everyone would appreciate it. A twenty year old PC is worthless trash.

The reason for computer rot is that there is planned obsolescence in the software and hardware of PCs that is non-existant in consoles because of the nature of generational changes. A console doesn't need to degrade, because games will eventually just stop coming out for that system. Planned obsolescence isn't as bad in PCs as it is in, say, smartphones or tablets (which have a lifespan of about two years before their functionality start to go south), but they still have life-spans. Hardware and software manufacturers need to push you away from your old computers, which is why older OSes don't receive support and updates. It is also seemingly apparent that hardware manufacturers, Nvidia in particular, are speeding up the rates of hardware obsolescence with their graphics cards, as there are reports that the Geforce 700 series do not play games as well as they properly should.

I don't mean to get into an argument, but it seems more and more apparent that that so many new PC gamers have no idea what they're getting into. A GTX 980 isn't going to futureproof your computer against the next generation even if it should, because PCs have built-in planned obselence. 



PC master race will NEVER die!



its because of devs making trashy ports on pc