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Forums - Gaming - 5 Reasons PC Gaming Is Better Than Consoles

Normando on 27 November 2012

My #1 reason for switching to console gaming, PC gaming is lonely. Even if you're talking to people, you're still sitting alone on your computer with a headset on hunched over in front of your screen. Gaming is always better with friends.

I'd rather bust out the N64 and spend all night playing Mario Party 2, Pokemon Stadium, and Super Smash Bros with my friends than spend all night playing Crysis on max all alone.

My #2 reason is that for me, games being extra pretty isn't worth the cost. Especially since you're probably going to need a console aswell anyways.



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r3tr0gam3r1337 on 27 November 2012
Normando said:
My #1 reason for switching to console gaming, PC gaming is lonely. Even if you're talking to people, you're still sitting alone on your computer with a headset on hunched over in front of your screen. Gaming is always better with friends.

I'd rather bust out the N64 and spend all night playing Mario Party 2, Pokemon Stadium, and Super Smash Bros with my friends than spend all night playing Crysis on max all alone.

My #2 reason is that for me, games being extra pretty isn't worth the cost. Especially since you're probably going to need a console aswell anyways.

#1 that is more about your own personal opinion than fact, the same can be said about both 360 and ps3 gamers so its not just pc gamers who some times play games online alone but 'hunched up' what a steriotypical comment.

#2 games not being extra pretty, are you for real or what, one of the biggest reason's for PC gaming is the fact PC's can be upgraded and this does effect performance, better graphics with a powerful graphics card will not only give the games a better look but also enable better performance overall, you dont need a console its more of an accessory than a necessity.

take note of the thread title, 

5 Reasons PC Gaming Is Better Than Consoles there is a thread titled 5 Reasons Why The PC Is The Worst Platform To Game On which is where i think your comments would be better suited.



Current PC build:

Asus Z97I-Plus, i5 4790K @ 4.6ghz, EVGA GTX 980 ACX 2.0 1377/1853/124%, Corsair Vengence Pro 2400mhz 2x 8192mb, Corsair RM850, Corsair H80i, 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD, 750GB Seagate Momentus XT SSHD, 320GB Weston Digital HDD, Corsair 230T, Corsair K50 Raptor, HP XQ500AA mouse, Windows 10 Pro 64bit. iiyama Pro Lite G2773HS 120Hz 1Ms G2G gaming monitor.

fordy on 27 November 2012
Pemalite said:


You could always connect a PC to the TV, before HDMI you used S-Video on the old fat CRT Televisions.


Also, what makes them less convenient? You don't HAVE to play games with a keyboard and mouse on the PC.

I know that, though there were a lot of conversion issues at play. Nowadays I can plug in my laptop via HDMI and everything's up and running. It's convenience that lures the general audience in.

If you wish to play a game that's optimal play is about 30 hotkeys, then be my guest. My point is that there's a lot of people who work all day in front of a keyboard, the last thing they'd want to do is have one in front of them during their leisure time.

Pemalite said:


There are exclusives on PC.

Diablo, StarCraft, WarCraft, Civilization, League of Legends, Eve, Heroes if Might and Magic, The Settlers, Anno, Arma, Company of Heroes, X-Com, Shogun, Red Orchestra, Age of Empires, Trackmania, The Sims, Sins of a Solar Empire etc'.

Then you have the recent kickstarter games like Planetary Annihilation, Star Citizen, Project Eternity,  Starlight Inception, Maia, Elite: Dangerous, Wasteland 2, FTL: Faster than Light and Strike Suit Zero to name a few.

Then if you want go back over the decades you have: Dune, Master of Orion, Dungeon Keeper, Black and White, Sacrifice, Alpha Centauri, Battlezone, Dark Reign, Boulders Gate, Icewind Dale, Homeworld, Arcanum, Fallout, Freelancer and Freespace...

And THAT is just what I can remember off the top of my head.

Games like Skyrim, Dragon Age, Half Life, Neverwinter Nights, Minecraft really shine with mods that will never arrive on console.

From a games perspective you can't beat the PC.

 

You missed the point entirely...

Show me some games on the PC that closely resemble Nintendo games. I wasn't talking about exclusitivity count. I was talking about the overall feel of the game. I play the PC a lot for games, but when I'm in a Nintendo mood, there hasn't been many PC titles that take my attention away...



shakarak on 27 November 2012
fordy said:
Pemalite said:


You could always connect a PC to the TV, before HDMI you used S-Video on the old fat CRT Televisions.


Also, what makes them less convenient? You don't HAVE to play games with a keyboard and mouse on the PC.

I know that, though there were a lot of conversion issues at play. Nowadays I can plug in my laptop via HDMI and everything's up and running. It's convenience that lures the general audience in.

If you wish to play a game that's optimal play is about 30 hotkeys, then be my guest. My point is that there's a lot of people who work all day in front of a keyboard, the last thing they'd want to do is have one in front of them during their leisure time.

Pemalite said:


There are exclusives on PC.

Diablo, StarCraft, WarCraft, Civilization, League of Legends, Eve, Heroes if Might and Magic, The Settlers, Anno, Arma, Company of Heroes, X-Com, Shogun, Red Orchestra, Age of Empires, Trackmania, The Sims, Sins of a Solar Empire etc'.

Then you have the recent kickstarter games like Planetary Annihilation, Star Citizen, Project Eternity,  Starlight Inception, Maia, Elite: Dangerous, Wasteland 2, FTL: Faster than Light and Strike Suit Zero to name a few.

Then if you want go back over the decades you have: Dune, Master of Orion, Dungeon Keeper, Black and White, Sacrifice, Alpha Centauri, Battlezone, Dark Reign, Boulders Gate, Icewind Dale, Homeworld, Arcanum, Fallout, Freelancer and Freespace...

And THAT is just what I can remember off the top of my head.

Games like Skyrim, Dragon Age, Half Life, Neverwinter Nights, Minecraft really shine with mods that will never arrive on console.

From a games perspective you can't beat the PC.

 

You missed the point entirely...

Show me some games on the PC that closely resemble Nintendo games. I wasn't talking about exclusitivity count. I was talking about the overall feel of the game. I play the PC a lot for games, but when I'm in a Nintendo mood, there hasn't been many PC titles that take my attention away...


There really arent, and that's why I choose to be a Nintendo/PC gamer.



fordy on 27 November 2012
r3tr0gam3r1337 said:
fordy said:
I'll agree that PC gaming is getting more and more tempting now that most PCs can connect to TV and Hifi via HDMI/SPDIF, but there are some things about PC games that make them a little less convenient for the loungeroom.

For starters, many games generally require extensive use of the keyboard, and quite a few prefer to sit down on the lounge with a controller instead.

Also, there's no console exclusives, like Nintendo. I know you mentioned emulation, but number 1, it's highly controversial and number 2, it's emulation, it can never fully be 100%. The reason behind this is a change in programming techniques used in place of physical hardware interrupts. Emulation comes close, but it wont ever be 100%...

you do know you can use a wireless keyboard and mouse and as its pretty much as essential part of the PC to work with or without games, gamepads, wheels, flight yokes ect are also extensivly required but as many console only games do not realise and think all PC games and gamers mainly play using just the keyboard and mouse.

the comments about emulation was a bit weird, why would anyone want to emulate a game to 100% of the system it's emulating, ive ran GT3 A-Spec at 4x the res of the ps2 default using all the added extras my GPU provides it looks miles better than the ps2 could run it, most pc gsamers that have invested in their systems will no doubt be able to run emulation easily without any problems and easily hit that 100%, unlike what Sony did around late 98/99 and took the emulation creators Bleem to court they should employ these people to work on emulation for the ps4 to emulate ps3 and ps2.

as hardware gets faster, more powerful and generally better emulation will become easier.

the other thing i really enjoy about PC gaming is the MODS, game mods are free they allow changes to be made to the game you want the file for, ie GTA4 there are mods to change the skins of the cars, textures environments pretty much every thing, this is just one game out of thousands that the developers have created tools for everyone to tinkers tweek and build and then add to the various moders websites, things like this are the drems for console owners as its been said before, modding console game can or will result in console bans or bans from online services, console manufactures like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendow do not like people modding games released on there consoles.

i admit this post is confusing.


As I stated in the above post, you can go ahead and try mashing 30 hotkeys down into an 8 button pad, but why would you? The truth of the matter is, there are some games that can run friendly on just a joystick or gamepad etc, but a LOT of flagship titles require the keyboard in one way or another, and MANY don't want to spend their time away from work's keyboard to get in front of another one...

Totally missing the point with the emulation post. While the emulator may say "100%", it's only referring to it's reliability of it's refresh interrupt. Emulation has another layer of abstraction to go through to mirror hardware (two layers if you count Microsoft's Hardware Abstraction Layer and DirectX), so it's always at the mercy f those lower layers, including OS interrupts.

Emulation is to get games workable on a reasonable scale to the majority, but is not a true representation of the hardware itself. Take Blaarg's work on the SPC700 for example. He even stated himself that his SPU emulator was as close as humanely possible that emulation could accomplish, and that it could never be 100%. 

Another thing to take into consideration is that NTSC doesn't run at 30Hz. It's actually 29.997Hz, which consoles like the SNES utilise directly by using an interrupt directly on screen refresh. For emulators, they're either forced to compensate that extra fps through Vsync, which can slowly skew the game timing over time, interrupt at 29.997Hz and poll on every computer screen refresh, which leaves it open to screen sync anomalies such as shearing and tearing.

I'm afraid no matter how fast your CPU gets, the fact of the matter is that there are some parts to emulation that wont be quite 100%. That includes the timing.

Emulation on polygon systems such as the PS2 are a different matter. To be honest, a lot of the techniques used to smooth sprites on earlier consoles look pretty ugly...



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r3tr0gam3r1337 on 27 November 2012

just a quick note, has everyone forgot what the thread is and let it get out of hand.
i thought this was supposed to be '5 reasons why PC gaming is better than console gaming' not '5 reasons to throw a hissy fit at pc's and pc gamers' or just have a dig at PC gamers.

come on people get back on topic and quit arguing.



Current PC build:

Asus Z97I-Plus, i5 4790K @ 4.6ghz, EVGA GTX 980 ACX 2.0 1377/1853/124%, Corsair Vengence Pro 2400mhz 2x 8192mb, Corsair RM850, Corsair H80i, 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD, 750GB Seagate Momentus XT SSHD, 320GB Weston Digital HDD, Corsair 230T, Corsair K50 Raptor, HP XQ500AA mouse, Windows 10 Pro 64bit. iiyama Pro Lite G2773HS 120Hz 1Ms G2G gaming monitor.

fordy on 27 November 2012
pezus said:

Emulation in some (most) cases is better than the game on the system it was produced for. There are problems here and there with some games but as the emulator is developed, more and more games work perfectly.


The aim of emulators is to achieve the exact same outcome as the actual product. I don't see how you can have an emulator that works "better" than a system, as a "perfect" emulator would produce the same results. Additions that seek to improve on an already existing system is not classed as "emulation".

Read my above post. I have already provided points why emulators cannot be considered "perfect". Run an emulated game side by side with it's console counterpart and you'll notice an eventual skew in timing. 



Player2 on 27 November 2012
fordy said:
pezus said:

Emulation in some (most) cases is better than the game on the system it was produced for. There are problems here and there with some games but as the emulator is developed, more and more games work perfectly.


The aim of emulators is to achieve the exact same outcome as the actual product. I don't see how you can have an emulator that works "better" than a system, as a "perfect" emulator would produce the same results. Additions that seek to improve on an already existing system is not classed as "emulation".

Read my above post. I have already provided points why emulators cannot be considered "perfect". Run an emulated game side by side with it's console counterpart and you'll notice an eventual skew in timing. 

Framerate. For example Shadow of the Colossus runs badly on the PS2, hitting 16fps or lower sometimes. Emulated on a PC it can run at 30fps without drops, as it should have been.



DigitalDevilSummoner on 27 November 2012

The great logical fallacy of the PC vs console argument:

 Whereas the console is a set configuration of hardware, like the Playstation 3 for example with its Cell processor and XDR ram, when it comes to the PC we actually talk about the hypothetical ideal PC, the the best possible set up of hardware technology at any given time.



fordy on 27 November 2012
Player2 said:
fordy said:
pezus said:

Emulation in some (most) cases is better than the game on the system it was produced for. There are problems here and there with some games but as the emulator is developed, more and more games work perfectly.


The aim of emulators is to achieve the exact same outcome as the actual product. I don't see how you can have an emulator that works "better" than a system, as a "perfect" emulator would produce the same results. Additions that seek to improve on an already existing system is not classed as "emulation".

Read my above post. I have already provided points why emulators cannot be considered "perfect". Run an emulated game side by side with it's console counterpart and you'll notice an eventual skew in timing. 

Framerate. For example Shadow of the Colossus runs badly on the PS2, hitting 16fps or lower sometimes. Emulated on a PC it can run at 30fps without drops, as it should have been.

Careful. Once again, EMULATION works to perfectly mirror the product. An improvement of framerate may be nicer, but it's deviating from what is known as true emulation.