There has been an increasing number of console/PC is dead threads and/or articles circulating the net these days. And as usual there are always those that flock to such sensationalism and defend either claim with their lives. Lots of half arsed posts/threads/posters that start/contribute to this discusion usually mostly based off their particluar inclinations or even worse beliefs with nigh any facts to back up their perspective. I hpe to use this thread as a means to put this issue to rest once and for all and will try and state the facts out as they are; not necesarily to convince those that will disagree with we, but to at least provide a basis for amicable discussion. This will be a long indepth post. So if you can't be bothered to read then pls, DO NOT POST in this thread and voice out any silly childish slanted opinion cause that is what this thread aims to avoid. Do us a favour and just move on now.
PC vs Console vs Straming
The general argument is that with consoles becoming more and more like PCs, and with PCs being up to 4 times more powerful than consoles and with the rise of digital distribution. That generally, console gaming is on its last legs and thus becoming obsolete. The more versed among us suggest alternatives like game streaming as what will ultimately become the replacement for not just consoles but maybe even PC gaming. No that we have a foundation for this discussion, lets move on.
| PC | CONSOLES | STREAMING | |
| COST |
PCs can cost anywhere between $200 all the way up to $20k if you are ready to really push the boundaries. They are infinitely and specifically upgradeable. Yes, it is true that you can get PC hardare at console prices that can for the most part match the performance of consoles. But anyone that only tels you this is not really being honest. To accomplish that you have to get really creative with your shopping and seek out to best possible deals to build the most const effective PC. And in addition to this, you will still have to get an OS too (but hey, you can always pirate that). On the plus side you can just go for broke and put in the best of everything in there, well.... at least reasonably soa nd build a rig that would cost you no more than $800-$1000 and will be capable to run any game that run on consoles at least as good as those consoles run them and in most cases even better. More on this later |
A console will be its most expensive when it launches. Its prices will only always go down and you do not have to buy anything to upgrade or mak eit more powerful. What you pay for is what you get, now and forever. Cosnoles will typically cost around $250-$500 for everyone (barring forex differences). | For the end user, thisis by far the cheapest option. All a user will need in most cases is a dedicated reciver that comes witha controller which could cost no more than $100. Or just the controller and an app for their phone/tablet/PC and they are good to go. Pretty simple and straightforward. |
| PERFORMANCE |
Nothing. And I mean NOTHING. Can match the PC in terms of performance. And naything that does today, will be obsolete by cutting edge PC performance standards in 6-18 months. Mind you, this also applies to PCs themselves. You throw in a $1000 card in a PC today, be rest assured that by this time next year there will be a $1000 card that may very well have two times the power of what you have in your rig today. Its the nature of the best so to speak. Because of the vast number of possible PC configurations, PC development is more.... lets say primal when compared to console development. Don't be deceived, no developer takes the absolute most powerful hardware steup on the market and builds their game to run on that hardware. They only do that for that trailer or marketing bullshot to get people all hyped up. They build their games to run on the lowest acceptable minimum their engine will support. Think a PC that can run the game at 720p@30fps. Difference is though, that they allow the option for gamers to muscle their way through the settings and run it at whatever their rigs will support. PC development is an act of brute force. Running ridiculously unoptimized code in the comfort of the fact that the hardware out theer will just brute force their way through it. The alternative to this would be to optimize like they would on a console. Funny, try doing that for over 1000 possible hardware and software permetations. |
This is supposed to offer the best price/performance ratio in the industry. Don't let anyone kid you. NOTHING will match a standalone console in terms of price to performance. At $400, it will be impossible to get a PC that will match a console when you consider everything you get in the box down to its OS and services that you. And by the time you can get a PC that will match at with no hassle at $400, said console wil at that point cost $300 and so on. And that is where consoles really have a performance advantage. When a PS4/XB1 costs $200... just go try buying new parts to build a rig that can play games at 1080p@30fps for that price. A windows OS will on its own cost you around $100 so that leaves you with $200 for everything else. Most users throw numbers around and either try and confuse or imply that comparing console to pc performance is an apple to apple affair. Well it simply isn't. Conoles are known to push above their weight. Call it coding to the metal or optimization. They just do. Its the single largest benefit for having standardized hardware. |
Theoretically. This is supposed to be the holy grail of performance. If you don't read the fine print that is. But lets just focus on the theory for now. This will cost you little to nothing up front. Its not your problem. Games will just look and run better than anything you would probably have been able to afford on your own. Is it possible to have games running at what would have been the equivalent of a rig with 4 titans in SLI running off a PCIe SSD with 16GB/s of transfer speed and over 3TB/s of memory bandwith? Absolbloodylutely. And it will cost you no more (up front) than $100. Think about that, $100 of unlimited 8k@120fps or whatever your TV or display can support gaming all at $100 for entry. And you can game on anything that has a screen and an internet connection. Your games will also be optimized to hell and back and then some. Yup, as I said. Holy grail of gaming. But wait.... latency. Have you ever played a game online and it lagged? Well, all that game was sending in its netcode was input data (mostly). Input data can be sent with as little as 5kB/s. Now imagine sending input data along with recieving video data. |
| USERBILITY |
This is a simple one. How easy is it to get into and set up? Want a summary? PC<Consoles<Streaming. I should just copy and past that in all the feilds and call it a day but that will be bad form. So pls indulge me. A PC has got a lot of moving parts. Or should I say, moveable parts. Everything in a PC, down to its power unit can be changed/upgraded. This means that if someone wanting to build a PC rig, its not something that when doing for the first time will take you 30mins, or as long as it would take you to go to a store and back. A LOT of forward planning has to go into it. You have to think about not just what you want it to do now, but what you want it to be able to do in 2years and what you are willing or mostly to change first when you start considering upgrading. You don't just buy a motherboard, you consider cpu types, sockects, PCIE lanes, sata connectors and speeds, cooling support and options, hdd type and configuration, to raid or not to raid, boot drives, keyboard type, controller type, mouse type, GPU types, I/O versatility, you monitor, overclocking support or if that is even something you want, an OS...etc. And get this, most things I mentioned here have at least 3-5 drivers that need installing. Worse yet, its not a one driver install to rule them all kinda thing. The drivers installed changes based on what else you have running in your hardware. So what drivers work for you may not work for me. What you did to run your game may not work for me. That folks, is PC gaming for you. Anyone that tells you different, is lying to you. Its not the end of the world though.... anyone that has basic reading comprehension, that can follow instructions, that know their way around the internet can handle all that in a respectable amount of time. Hell, if you find yourself to be the kinda person that savours that moment when you rip open a new peice of electroni and take in that new plastic smell, then you may even find this super interesting. Sometimes mores so than actually using the system...eg, I spend more time installing a new ROM on my phone and customizing stuff than I do actually using the phone. Some PC vendors try to make this process as painless as possible and sell you gimped PCs that can be minimally upgraded. Basically, its the if less can fit then you have less things to confuse you approach. That however, is akin to them building a very poorly put together console. And will usually cost more too. The crime of the PC elite, is that cause they find this stuff interesting, the seem to think that everyone else out there also would. |
If you read all that about PCs. I want you to let it sink in into your head. Having done that, lets look at consoles. You walk into a store, buy it, plug it into your tv... and thats it. Actually thats not true, these days you have to go through one ridiculous update process or the other first. But yh, now thats it. Everything will work outta the box, only research you need to do is well, which of the consoles you want to buy. Less hassle, cheaper and all the legwork has already been done and will always be done for you by whoever is making that console. No driver updates, nothing. Plug and play (almost literally). |
You though consoles were easy? Ha... this makes them look complicated. With this, you will probably never see an update screen or an install screen. Once you have it set up t will just always work and is ready to go. Everything is handled for you on the server side. You don't even need to know if the games are powered by rainbows. Shit just happens. And its usually as easy as buying a controller and a reciever to plug into your tv, or your tv may already come with the app installed and all you have to do is put in your id and password. Done we just love streaming???? How can't you???!! |
| VIABILITY |
Touchy topic. Logic dictates that PCs have the highest possible install base of gaming capable platfroms out there. And thus should be the most viable from a business point of view. If that were true, consoles simply wouldn't exist. Problem with PCs are that if you consider your market to be those poeple that don't care whats in their PC as long as the PC runs? then you are looking at poeple that have a $300 or less laptop with a 720p screen. People that couldn't care about getting a controller and somehow getting it to work on said laptop or connecting that laptop to a tv for the big screen experience. For those people, its just cheaper and more straight forward to just buy a console. If you are looking at your market to be those that are willing to spend upwards of $500 for a GPU alone, then you are basically limiting your market to a size potentially smaller than 10M people. And thats not even saying those people are all gonna buy your game. But whats really scary, is that the more PC adept a user is, the more Pc adept he is... this means that the people that have $1000 rigs, are also the very same people that are more likely to pirate your game. They are the ones that know how. |
Control. That what you have here. Control and ease of use. The package is so hassle free that it looks like a no brainer. You just buy it and g. They control everything about the system, so things like piracy is not an issue. And the people that buy these consoles, seem to be more willing to actually buy games to play on them. This controlled enviroment also serves as a trojan horse for lots of other stea..... I mean errr, services. Think of paid online or price fixing to get the most off any and all consumers. This business model serves to the fact that a majority of the people out there, even amonsgt those that know about all these things.... just don't care about them. Ignorance is bliss so to speak. |
This should be a super viable option for th end user... if you can stomach the possibility of paying say $20-50/month. It will however be a nightmare to anyone that tries to make this a reality. There is this thing said about the PS3 back in 2006. If the PS3 was a runaay success in 2006 and sony sold a shit ton of them, then sony would have gone bankrupt. Without going into too much detail, I will put it this way... if PSnow, had native support for a HD8350 cpu+HD7970 gpu +8GB GDDR5 ram. It would mean that in the dev kits they gave devs all that will be in the kit so they could make their games. It would also mean that for everyone that signs on to the PSnow service, they would basically have to have a "console" with those exact specifications sitting in a server rack somewhere with thousands/millions of others for every other user that signs into the service. Those games have to run somewhere. Having said that, if you are paying $20/moth for the service, sony would need you to pay for that service for 4 years before they make back what they put into making the remote station for you. $year for them to just break even all with tehm taking $20/month from you. And this isn't even talking about the problems with internet speeds and stability, but say we can overcome those problems in 10yrs+. It doesn't change that they can't overcome the ridiculous hardware costs on their end. |
Phew.....
Now anyone that thinks one option will kill off the other, I want you to think about the pros and cons of each option. Then understand that for one to kill off another, it has to overcome all its own inherent cons and aquire all the pros of what its killing off.
Thanks for making it this far.... discuss.
