Can someone please explain to me why PC gamers and Console gamers can't get along?

[FuktLogik]

This is just something that has always bothered me... No, that's not right, it doesn't bother me it pisses me off. Here we have two sects of the community that love nothing more than taking cheap pot-shots at each other. It seems that every other comment I read regarding gaming has PC gamers bashing the Console gamers and vice versa. It's both infuriating and embarrassing.
I understand why certain people will prefer one platform over another, hell I can even sympathize and respect the decisions that lead to that preference.
A console is more user friendly; put in disc, download latest patch or whatever, play and enjoy.
A powerful PC can run a game more smoothly that not only looks better but may even play better. That along with Mods means that you may be able get a lot more mileage out of a game on a PC than on a console if its fanbase is strong enough.
Don't get the wrong idea though, both Consoles and PCs have strengths as well as problems; a perfect gaming platform doesn't exist... Yet.
So as gamers why can't we get along?

I dislike PC gamers because they're petty and condescending. These are the kinds of people who aren't happy to play a game on the PC unless PC was the lead platform. Case in point, the Quakecon Skyrim footage, where the crowd boos incessantly when they say they're demoing the 360 version. Like I said: Petty.

 

[DementedSheep]

Eh I think the problem is mostly just that a very small but vocal percentage of gamers won?t shut up about how there platform is ?superior? and take every opportunity to say so. The majority don?t give a shit. I prefer PC gaming and never bothered to get latest consoles but I don?t hate console gamers or think the PC is better in every way.

 

[Kurokami]

The most peaceful and viable solution to inter gamer conflict is obviously for everybody involved to immediately stop giving a fuck about bullshit.

Isn't that true for just about any conflict?

 

[Eggbert]

Well, most people pick one. And then they like it. A lot. Now, there's two ways they deal with flaws they find. First, they accept the flaws, find flaws in the competition, compare the flaws, decide if they're going to continue with what they've chosen or not, and move on as quiet, normal people who don't make a ruckus. I wouldn't be surprised to find that they make the quiet majority. Then you have the people who go into denial, and spew frothing rage and inanity at anyone who points out a flaw in their chosen system, giving most of us a bad name. Then one from the PC camp meets one from a console camp, and everything devolves into inanity and overused caps lock.

For the most part, we do get along, you're just seeing the minority who scream like incontinent four year olds.

 

[tycho0042]

Both have their place but honestly, there's always some douchebags on either side of the fence screaming their side is better. I've never understood that kind of platform fascism

 

[Macrobstar]

Because console gamers love to argue amongst themselves about which is better then a PC gamer mentions how PC hardware stomps over consoles and they get defensive and label them an elitest and naturally hate builds.

As it's been said both sides have benefits but I find console only gamers to be much worse than PC gamers.

Well your evidence to the fact that they're just as bad as eachother
EDIT: Above statement was a joke
EDIT AGAIN: Actually no, there may be more console fanboys but anyone who thinks themselves better than someone else because of there choice of gaming machine is a **** (see elitist) plain and simple

 

[kasperbbs]

I don't really care about that stuff, i just happen to own a PC, i know why i bought it so i dont have to justify it to anyone, sadly many others have to point out the flaws in other systems so they could feel better about their choice.

 

[kasperbbs]

dammit. double post.

 

[Thamian]

From my perspective, it's mainly that once proud and powerful genres and/or control schemes that work beautifully with keyboard and mouse have petered out somewhat as they flat out don't work with console controllers and that's apparently where all the big money is now.

Certainly, it annoys the fuck out of me that just about the only real AAA-grade RTS house still going is Relic, and it downright pisses me off that space sims have gone the way of the dinosaur, and don't even get me started on the brutal streamlining of RPG elements that BioWare inflicted on ME2.

Beyond that... I guess some idiots will always proclaim the greatness of the PC over the console on the basis of how much easier it is for indie developers to produce games for it, or just how vast and strong the PC's back catalog of games is (especially given how relatively easy it is to find or even produce workarounds for the cases where windows' backwards compatibility doesn't quite work). Myself, I've only just thought of those reasons.

Meh. I love my PC. It's a touch behind the curve, but it still handles everything I throw at it without issue, and when I'm tired of modern games it'll quite happily load up Alpha Centauri or FreeLancer for me and let me lose myself in them for a day or two, and if I don't want to think at all, it'll play my music collection. And while I'm quite happy with (and maybe a bit proud of) the fact that I'm never going to buy a console if I have any say in the matter, I really don't understand why people get so militant over it.

If I'm happy with what I've got, and you're happy with what you've got, why fight?

 

[krazykidd]

I don't "hate" console gamers, that would be incredibly silly.

I happen to prefer PC gaming not for the power of the rig itself but for the mods I can make/get for a lot of games that I couldn't do with a console.

That doesn't make a console only gamer any less worthy.

It's all just a matter of choice.

Personally I have a bit of envy towards console gamers. They spend about £200 or less on a console and it can play any game that comes out with no issues (besides the bugs that game has) whereas I spent £1260 on my rig a bit back and then spent another £400 to upgrade my graphics a few months back.

PC gamers, if they want to keep up with thew tech, have to upgrade on a regular basis, make sure drivers are kept up to date so on and so forth whereas a console gamer just has to slap a disk in and relax.

And this is why i am a console gamer , so much simpler , insert disc , play game . No checking the box for ram requirements or grphic card mumbo jumbo . I reserve my pc for RTS and thats it.

 

[Macrobstar]

Well I own a PC obviously so its not like im unable to play PC games, its just i choose to play on my console

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

I play with both PC and Xbox regularly...
That makes me public enemy no. 1 with PlayStation Players.

In all seriousness, its pathetic. We're all gamers, we have enough worries with non-gamers yelling at most of us for wasting our lives...
Why do so to each other?

 

[snow]

Really, these days I only ever hear the argument is when some one makes a thread some where about PC and console gamers and their hatred towards each other. Other than that? It pretty much doesn't exist. Anyone that does bring it up in a lash of hatred is generally trolling and usually they get called as such, ignored, and then suspended.

If there are people out there that argue over this seriously. Then they are probably either young and easily angered. Friends that are busting on each other, trolls, all of the above, or really insecure about their purchasing decisions. Games are games, who cares what system you play it on.

 

[Nazulu]

I think lord.jeff hit it right on the head, there are a lot of idiots though and they really don't think about what they're saying at all.

However, I'll tell how I saw this how stupid thing began. I remember a huge battle started on one of the threads here when we first heard games were being "dumbed down" (for a lack of a better word) for computer, mainly because company's were not making as much money from the PC versions. This made many outrage of course, not so many console players understandably. Then someone called those who complained 'entitled' and that's when I first saw the flames.

 

[otakon17]

So as gamers why can't we get along?

To compress a lot of things into one sentence: bad ports.

The different (and arguably dumbed down) experience that console players have is intruding more and more into the world of PC gaming. Features that we have come to expect in any game are missing, and it's usually obvious that console-centric design philosophy is the cause.

EDIT: Also, this-

Is that Ackbar in the background on the right?

OT: Basically comes down to how the same game can be different on the console compared to PC. Sometimes it doesn't matter, other times one is clearly the penultimate copy to own. Take Dragon Age: Origins for instance. To make it work on consoles, graphics were scaled back and the tactical camera removed. My personal peeve is the inability to use "move-here" actions while in the command wheel. Actually, at the moment I can't think of a valid counter for a console game being better than it's PC version at the moment. But there's my two cents for what it's worth.

EDIT: DAMN, sorry I didn't read your post, you summed up exactly what I was thinking already. I just quoted it for the damn funny pic.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Well, I can see the bad influence consoles have on PC gaming, but since I've owned both pretty much as far back as I can remember, the argument seems kind of moot to me.

Bullshit. How does the negative influence PC games have on consoles not count for just as much? The regression of Splitscreen multiplayer is blood on the PC's hands.

No, the introduction of advanced networking onto consoles caused that...

When devs realised they could network consoles together, that caused them to stop making an effort to deal with split-screen gaming. (Notice how the console with the worst networking features has the highest proportion of split-screen or local multiplayer games?)

Just because the PC had network gaming 10 years before that doesn't mean PC's are at fault for that.

(And PC's had next to no local multiplayer gaming. It was either no multiplayer at all, or network based. I played Doom on a LAN in 1994... But are you seriously going to blame that on game consoles in 2005 no longer having split-screen games?
Or is Xbox live the fault of PC's too?)

Anyway, even if that's true, look at what consoles have done to PC's in that timeframe:

-Badly optimized graphics that underuse the PC's capabilities.
-Control schemes that don't work properly on PC.
-Gradual removal of networking features from PC games. (LAN support - almost gone; Local -instanced multiplayer from a single disk - gone; Dedicated server support - on it's way out
-Reduced complexity in games. (because console input devices can't handle them, and the genres that had that kind of complexity were only ever really popular on PC to begin with.)
- More and more insane DRM
- Loss of demos. (seriously, how many times in recent memory have I seen a game that has demos... Oh, but not for the PC version. Sorry. - Which probably needs it the most, considering the compatibility issues...)
- Reduction in the amount of patching & new features games used to get for free...
- Loss of games that would in the past have had PC versions, but now don't...

I could go on and on with this. And some (or even many) of these complaints would be quite ridiculous - especially in regard to specifically blaming them on consoles, but you had all of one counterpoint (to an aspect of what I said which I consider relatively unimportant), and it wasn't even a good one, if you're trying to blame PC's for stuff...