WereKitten said:
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.
Once again, you failed to read the bold writing, honestly, how many times do I have to say it before you finally get it, it's so simple. The underlying software to run a game LIMITS a person's choice to ONLY using that software/firmware.
And the use of IBM-designed CPUs limits the choice to those for PS3/360. And the use of alternate electricity to power the devices limits the choice to that for both PCs and PS3/360. And yet they are technical and irrelevant because they are implicit limitations, not explicit choices allowed to the consumer. I choose a PC game or a 360 game: that's the choice I'm poised to make. You can define all kind of weird categories from which you can define all kind of useless groupings, such as "MS exclusives", but they don't map to the real world for the consumer. If a consumer asks a shop clerk "this game for the 360 I see here on the shelf, is it exclusive?" I doubt the clerk will answer "sure it is" thinking of MS exclusive, or exclusive to alternate current devices. He /she will answer "yes" if it only is available on the 360 platform, or he/she might answer "no, we also have it for PCs"
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.
Did I ever say a console could ONLY be used top play games? I said it was optimized to. A console, by it's very definition, is something that is specialized to do one task.
Yes, you did and I quote you: "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". The PC not being a console because it does more than playing games implies that consoles must only play games. But I'm ready to accept that you did not really mean what you wrote there, which brings us to:
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.
Fuzzy or not, A Console is optimized to do one major task, a PC is optimized to do many.
Bold words, as you'll have a hard time measuring the optimization of an Alienware laptop or any gaming rig. It would be very easy to build a PC inside a small case, with an HDMI output and a simplified interface to launch games using a bluetooth controller. I dare you to say that people would not call it "a console that plays PC games" only because its innards are those of a PC and thus not "optimized". You know what, I might call it "DirectXbox"...
All the technical details about "optimised for gaming" are irrelevant. The definitions are about the use of the devices, not their architecture.
No, you are wrong, Thats like saying "my car isn't a car because I use it as a theater system more than I do a means of transportation" does that suddenly make the car a theater system and NOT a car? I don't think so.
A PC is not less a PC because you use it as a console, you know. You're still missing the point that the Webster definitions you quoted are not mutually exclusive.
Even more you're missing that the definitions about what is a personal computer technically do not match what is perceived as a PC by the general public -which may not include say a PDA, that is a personal computer by technical definition- and even less matches what is the PC gaming platform when I am in a videogame store.
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