Well... I can understand where you are comming from with the annoyance (at least that is what I can figure is your major issue and reason for writing this post, since the whole thing was a bit unfocused, no offense).
Before I start playing the devil's advocate, I am going to say this: no one should shove the whole "mine's better than yours", in someone's face, there is room for everyone, and so, respect among the platforms.
However! With that said, the whole reason that this "tiresome arguement" keeps bouncing back up is that the current gen of consoles is 6-7, soon 8 years old. Yes, 8 years. Take a PC from 8 years ago and have it run a modern title, it will really, really struggle, and that is what your console is atm, spec wise.
Objectively, it IS holding back development of games, which results in longer loading screens, bigger weapons in FPS titles (to help out with the running process of the game without having to sacrifice graphics), as well as length limitations, framerate locks and boundary for what the teams can do, creativity-wise. etc.
A lot of games have to spend as much time in development "thinking about how to tweak around the limitations", rather than actually develop what they desire, in order to reach their goals - and that is a way the industry really should not be going, taking all the shortcuts.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are in no rush to develop a new console generation either, the technology has leaped majorly in eight years, but why should they when the current system works? The PC keeps evolving, but their salenumbers are not dropping yet, so why should they be interested in multiplatform-releases?
It goes a bit along the lines of buying a car... a really wonderous car that can pump you up way over the 150 mph, with incredible acceleration. Or so the model should be capable of, but since there are speed restrictions anyway around the city and such, the company has decided to hardlock the car's top speed to 85 mph, because that works fine anyway. And costs a lot less to produce. A lot.
The technology to push things into eyegawping is there, as well as the lack of lagspikes, long loading times, gamefreezes and heavy weight on the machine are available. But it is expensive to develop.
It really is a question about efficiency on many fronts;
Graphics
Framerates
Loading
Objects on the screen (sort of connected to some of the above).
I am going a bit in circle here but... long story cut down to size: It is frustration because the technology is there to make a million things happen on the screen at once, in HD resolution, realism at ridiculous heights, with almost no loading times... but it just isn't being put to consoles because the development is a huge, huge investment, really ridiculously massive.
So until that happens, the PC cars will be held at the lower mile limit, because the 6-8 year old models refuses to progress. It is no longer a question about "reaching the peak", but rather "tweak our 'peak' to make it look like we are still progressing".
...That or put a huge investment in your PC ports, but that in itself would require an almost seperate development of the game, side-by-side, considering the difference between the Consoles and Platforms atm
The gap is only increasing by the years... t'is a bit scary really.
Personally? I am not that much of a fuss over the graphics part... it is nice to look at, but I grew up with a generation of games where visual style was combined with good story and music to make a good combo. Not just visuals. That feels more sickening than everything else, like you are being blatently catered to for the wrong kind of reasons, to distract you from the lack of content in other areas. It needs to be complimentrary of one another, not one outshining the others completely.
So... I would love to see PC and Console on equal ground, so the question about "which one is preferable", comes down to what genre it is... and if it works better with a mouse & keyboard, or a gamepad etc. - because that is all there should be to argue about. The better experience through the means of either of those.
Before I start playing the devil's advocate, I am going to say this: no one should shove the whole "mine's better than yours", in someone's face, there is room for everyone, and so, respect among the platforms.
However! With that said, the whole reason that this "tiresome arguement" keeps bouncing back up is that the current gen of consoles is 6-7, soon 8 years old. Yes, 8 years. Take a PC from 8 years ago and have it run a modern title, it will really, really struggle, and that is what your console is atm, spec wise.
Objectively, it IS holding back development of games, which results in longer loading screens, bigger weapons in FPS titles (to help out with the running process of the game without having to sacrifice graphics), as well as length limitations, framerate locks and boundary for what the teams can do, creativity-wise. etc.
A lot of games have to spend as much time in development "thinking about how to tweak around the limitations", rather than actually develop what they desire, in order to reach their goals - and that is a way the industry really should not be going, taking all the shortcuts.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are in no rush to develop a new console generation either, the technology has leaped majorly in eight years, but why should they when the current system works? The PC keeps evolving, but their salenumbers are not dropping yet, so why should they be interested in multiplatform-releases?
It goes a bit along the lines of buying a car... a really wonderous car that can pump you up way over the 150 mph, with incredible acceleration. Or so the model should be capable of, but since there are speed restrictions anyway around the city and such, the company has decided to hardlock the car's top speed to 85 mph, because that works fine anyway. And costs a lot less to produce. A lot.
The technology to push things into eyegawping is there, as well as the lack of lagspikes, long loading times, gamefreezes and heavy weight on the machine are available. But it is expensive to develop.
It really is a question about efficiency on many fronts;
Graphics
Framerates
Loading
Objects on the screen (sort of connected to some of the above).
I am going a bit in circle here but... long story cut down to size: It is frustration because the technology is there to make a million things happen on the screen at once, in HD resolution, realism at ridiculous heights, with almost no loading times... but it just isn't being put to consoles because the development is a huge, huge investment, really ridiculously massive.
So until that happens, the PC cars will be held at the lower mile limit, because the 6-8 year old models refuses to progress. It is no longer a question about "reaching the peak", but rather "tweak our 'peak' to make it look like we are still progressing".
...That or put a huge investment in your PC ports, but that in itself would require an almost seperate development of the game, side-by-side, considering the difference between the Consoles and Platforms atm
The gap is only increasing by the years... t'is a bit scary really.Personally? I am not that much of a fuss over the graphics part... it is nice to look at, but I grew up with a generation of games where visual style was combined with good story and music to make a good combo. Not just visuals. That feels more sickening than everything else, like you are being blatently catered to for the wrong kind of reasons, to distract you from the lack of content in other areas. It needs to be complimentrary of one another, not one outshining the others completely.
So... I would love to see PC and Console on equal ground, so the question about "which one is preferable", comes down to what genre it is... and if it works better with a mouse & keyboard, or a gamepad etc. - because that is all there should be to argue about. The better experience through the means of either of those.
