console + PC games are NOT exclusive

[WereKitten]

ironman said:

Ugh, where to begin, All of you completely missed what I said MULTIPLE times, WINDOWS IS A MICROSOFT PLATFORM, NXE IS A WINDOWS PLATFORM, GAMES RUN ON EITHER ARE RUN ON A WINDOWS PLATFORM. The PC itself is not a MS platform, but then, you are all confusing the PC hardware and the MS OS. Many (if not all) ports cannot be run on anything but windows (natively) and are, therefore, a MS exclusive. This of course is IF you really believe that a PC is a console.

Now, as for a PC, it is not a console, the reason being, they are a processing unit, they do more than just play games, they run a completely different set of parameters. Even IF you have a PC whose main purpose is to play games, do you surf the web on it? Do you Photo shop on it? Do you write documents on it? Do you download things on it? Can you use if for recording studio quality music, Do you use it to edit videos, can you use it to run CAD programs like Solid Works and Catea? A console has ONE main purpose, A PC has MANY...even IF you claim yours has one main purpose, it does not, OEM computers are designed to do MANY things that involve computing, You can build your own computer with parts mainly designed for gaming, but the processor, and motherboard are not optimised for gaming alone. (The motherboard may be tuned for gaming, but it is still able, ready, and easily made to do some pretty heavy processing on other fronts.) You know what's even better, if I had YOUR gaming rig, chances are, I would NOT use it for gaming, in fact, I would use it for Drafting...I could then say that "my (your)" PC is now for drafting, meaning it is "an electronic system that connects to a display (as a television set) and is used primarily to play video games Draft solid 3D Models." See what I did there, I took your gaming rig, and turned it into my Drafting rig. You can't do that with a console, a console has ONE specific purpose for EVERYBODY, a PC can be many things to many people.

The "Microsoft exclusive" thing is a red herring. The fact that the OS underlying the PC game is made by MS or by Apple doesn't affect the freedom of choice for the final user, it's only a technical detail. Or do you refer to PS3/360 games as "exclusive to IBM-designed CPUs"? People think as PC and 360 as two different platforms -and rightly so- and can choose between the two.

As for the "PC is not a console" part, you're flunking the simplest logic. If the definition of console was "a device than can only be used to play games" than you would be right, but that's not what the Merriam Webster definition you provided said.

And of course it can't be because nowadays the line between a console and a PC is way fuzzier than it was for the NES: consoles nowadays can play movies and music, have internet browsers, connect to social services, display photos in slideshows and print them. I don't think it's impossible to think that when proper motion controls are here for all consoles we'll see some video editing/ photo manipulation software being released on consoles.

All the technical details about "optimised for gaming" are irrelevant. The definitions are about the use of the devices, not their architecture.