PC and console gaming have always been segregated. If anything, PC and consoles and their gamers are less segregated than ever before. PC gamers are just more numerous and more vocal now than ever so it makes it seem like there's this big segregating between them.
PC gaming in the 90s was terrible for me because I hated the game design philosophy and I hated typing commands into a command prompt just to play a game. When Windows 3.0 came around, things got a little easier, and Chip's Challenge could be fun if I didn't have anything else available. But what I really wanted to play was Mario or Mega Man. And I grew up on Japanese console aesthetic sort of games, that's what I loved, and what I still love. I looked at the PC and saw games like Doom on the shelves, and wondered why games out of my country seemed to star big burly men. At least Mega Man looked like a child my age. Same with comic books, why would I want to buy and read Batman, a rich adult I can't relate to, when I could buy and read Sonic and friends? American video games and comic books offended all of sensibilities with being all about adults, in a similar way that people today who are adults complain about Japanese games being all about kids.
And too many PC games, and thus Western games, also went for realism or a weird sense of cartooniness I didn't like. I was a kid, I wanted cartoons. Not weird psuedo-real stuff. Sorry, I know some people like it. But I never got that aesthetic at all. When I got home from school I watched cute cartoons for kids, not a bunch of action movies for adults like Terminator or something.
Of course, there were exceptions, and there were definitely ports of games like Mega Man. But they were almost always terrible ports to go along with the hassle.
And this is why console fans and Japanese gamers grew a bad reputation of PC games/American games. Look at that, why would you draw Mega Man like that? Why would you draw robot masters like that? And this wasn't even from a time that anime inspired stuff like Mega Man looked more like 50s American cartoons than the distinctive style we see today. Why would you design gameplay like that?
I just wanted to use a controller, because playing a video game on a keyboard is terrible. And I just wanted to plug it in and play. Not go through some time consuming installation and command usage. If this was the "golden age" of PC gaming, it was terrible. The golden age of PC gaming was terrible. I hope it never comes back. This is the real golden age of PC gaming right now. That time back then is why most gamers are console gamers today. It was awful and console gaming was infinitely better. Local co-op, good scrolling games, everything you want.
Today, now we finally have plug and play. Internet is blinding fast. You buy a game, you click it, it downloads in a few moments, you play it. You have it forever. Games are finally starting to have local co-op. I don't care what kind of gamer you are, games need local co-op. PC finally starting to get this in some games is finally starting to make it an actually viable platform. I hope they start making use of multi-monitor setups for local co-op, that would be great. And a huge local co-op advantage the PC would have. And controller support is everywhere, I finally don't have to have to deal with the horrible abomination of a task of playing a video game with a keyboard. And we're finally getting a variety of good games in a variety of genres. Not just point and click games, not just first person games. But side scrolling platformers, fighting games, Japanese RPGs, SHUMPS, all of the great console genres. And the PC platform is starting to win people over like me.
The segregation is disappearing. PC gaming is becoming just like console gaming, and that's great. Because it's actually giving more people a reason to be a PC gamer.
