I know that, and my post was clearly not saying consoles and PC were the same.  I indicated PC remains more likely to have bugs in certain games, and why.

But this gen only the Wii has offered me what is touted as the true console experience - essentially bug free, plug and play games.  The PS3 and the 360 have taken consoles a big step closer to PCs, by dramatically raising the specifications of their tech and by inviting games of a coding complexity they would formerly only have appeared on PC - the result is a big jump in buggy games and content on those platforms.

On PC, I could write a game and publish it myself on the internet, and it could ruin your entire PC - that's because PC is open of course, as it has to be because a PC isn't just for games.  Console's are a closed environment, which enables basic quality control to take place, however you loose certain advantages, primarily mods.

While having uniform hardware helps, it's not the big issue many seem to think - it's the open nature of the platform and the lack of certification that causes the most problems these days, particularly as today most home PC's are as cookie cutter as a console, coming from Dell or whoever with a set specification that most owners will not change.  It's only the PC hardcore who will chop and change the inards, and normally they know what they're doing - always exceptions of course!

I wasn't arguing in defense of PCs, as I've had plenty of problems myself, so much as noting that this gen the 360 and PS3 have eroded the gap between the two in this regard, with both platforms seeing a fair few examples of bad bugs and glitches.  To this day I still don't know how some of the Fallout 3 DLC got through certification, nor how Assassin's Creed managed to get through certification despite a game freezing bug.

I guess I feel there is a bit of a double standard in play, as I note many PS3/360 owners speak as though PC is the exclusive home to bugs, etc. in games when that's far from the case anymore.  Wii owners, however, would appear to be safe in this regard as, while I haven't played every Wii game, have never had problems with any major titles and haven't heard of anything that damning with a Wii release.

it's interesting that you mention DRM, I have found out that you have a limited number activations if you buy it DIRECTLY from Runic Games, while the Steam version doesn't have any of that nonsense. but I suppose people are more annoyed by third-party software that is installed without telling you, if I wasn't browsing Runic's forums I wouldn't even know about that.

I think you and Richardhutnick should be friends and stick to consoles.

LOL, this made my day.

I came in expecting another Legend11 thread. Strangely though, I don't completely disagree this time, even if the issue's not as one-sided as he's making it out to be.

 Lucky. My PC hates Fallout 3. Mind you, the fact that it has about fifty mods on it probably doesn't help...

With PC gaming, it is important to read reviews about games before you buy them. If the reviewer is any good, he/she should be able to tell you if the game is buggy or not.

I feel your pain, however. I am playing The Witcher and, even though it is an amazing game, it has it's fair share of bugs. I finally figured out to set my resolution to a 16:9 aspect ratio to fix some of the graphical bugs.

If your problems persist google the witcher crash bugs. It had many bugs but a lot of people found ways to minimize crashes as much as possible.

You will always have more bugs on the PC vs. consoles because your talking about developing for 1 environment vs. 50 environments.

The programmers have to test and ensure the title will work on a far larger range of PCs than consoles. Because of such a situation, it will always be more perilous.

But its always a double-edged sword. You do get some neat PC games in the process.

I beg to differ. Especially this gen has shown the problems of console developing. When developing something for PC you usually rely on many third party libraries that have been tested and made for just about every enviroment there are. Those libraries have been for years in development and they will eventually get as stable as any program will ever be able to get. Everything else will be basic code in some programming language.

With consoles you don't have such a legacy for each new gen, unless you use same kind of hardware as PCs are, and there will be more and more bugs when games will get more complex, because you will have to build up just about everything from the scratch.

And yes, there are no real quality control for PC games and just about everything can be released. However don't expect to get good sales with buggy games. :)