The Glorious PC Gaming Master Race

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

and, let's face it, with how the next-gens (save for the Wii U) are going, the PC would follow anyway. Deny all you like, but things do NOT exist in a vacuum and the PC is NOT some end-all, be-all utopia. I have upgraded a PC all of ONCE and I have no interest in doing it again. And I actually think the PC is part of the problem that led to this. Face it, the PC scene is not immune to what the console is doing.

 

[devotedsniper]

I'm afraid I have to disagree when it comes to cost, When i first got into pc gaming I spent £400 building a tower, £100 more (roughly) than what a 360 was at the time but it played all the games on max for a good year or two before needing a new gpu. PC gaming isn't as expensive as you would think it's just you need to be smart enough not to just go buy the latest and greatest if your on a budget.

Also as for trouble getting games to start, more or less 80% of the time you need to do one of three things, either update your gpu drivers (10min job), update DirectX (2min job) or install/update .net framework (2min job). Our pc's may be "elite" compared to a console and the games do look better on them a lot of the time but we pay a price for it, we get treated as criminals by publishers (minus the odd few e.g. CD Projekt Red), quite a few games don't come to PC or if they do there bad ports.

Either way we make a lot of savings over the 2-3 years we don't need to upgrade, considering Distributors such as Steam often sells games for up to 90% off, so really it's not as expensive as you think.

Also forgot to mention my pc doesn't break down every 12 months (looking at you my old 360's!)

 

[Signa]

"A top-of-the-range desktop PC costs a lot more, but I wouldn't just be paying to buy into the new games club. I'd be paying for an entire history of games, safely filed away on GOG.com and the Steam listings."

No it's still not worth it Yahtzee. Not when it costs thousands of dollars for a man to accomplish. Shame on you and everyone who agrees with this. I'd like my games to be affordable without having to buy a bunch of random pieces that cost the price of an actual console.

Forget PC, it's the handheld market that's the true master race.

A good PC is about 700$ now. It blows consoles away.

A PC on the level of the next gen consoles is 500$ max.

Consoles are not the bargains they once were.

A WiiU costs $250. A PS3 costs $250. A 3DS costs $180. You're not convincing me. If anything, you've proven me right that gaming PCs are expensive. I'm not paying that.

So you got the systems cheap. Good for you. What are you going to do with it once you have it? Play games on it straight out of the box, right?

Wrong, you need to buy those too. When games on the 3DS go for a generous $35-$40 and the rest of the consoles $60, that's going to add up FAST over the $5 you could be spending on Steam sales. I'm not going to dig up the math again, but last I checked, it took something of an average of 11 games to make up the difference, depending on the system. That was without counting extra peripherals, or Xbox LIVE subscriptions.

You're not wrong that console gaming can be cheap, but don't think you're getting away scott-free. It's the exact same scam that razor and printer companies pull: sell the base cheap, and then lock the customer into buying the overpriced accessories. Those schemes still work because there is enough value in it for the customer, but when you get down to the dollar-for-dollar matching of another option, you will find you aren't doing as well as you could or should. Hell, PC gaming very well could be more expensive overall, but as most people in this thread have expressed, the quality of the experience is higher as well. That 10% higher price becomes at least a 15% better expereince (pulling numbers from my ass).

 

[Requia]

I would caution people in this thread talking about cheaper systems able to play new games. That's happening because games are being pegged to a standard set by consoles 8 years ago. When the XBone and PS4 are out there may be issues with devs forgetting that not everybody owns top end hardware and taking us back to actually needed expensive machines to run games.

 

[Signa]

Bringing the discussion back to the article, hearing Yahtzee say he's been more of a console gamer explains A LOT. First, getting as jaded as he is pretty much needs the level head he has to be immersed in the corporate console culture. Also not liking Borderlands 2 probably was a result of playing it on the consoles. I won't go back to find it again, but I remember him complaining about a problem that didn't exist, and also complaining about things that weren't a big deal (opening a lot of containers all at once) for me or anyone I knew.

 

[Kuuenbu]

Funny, I don't remember anyone complaining about the Super NES not having any backwards compatibility with the NES...

 

[Moagim]

I'm simultaneously glad to see that a lot of people are realizing that consoles are a bunch of bullshit, and sad that it's taken this level of extremism for them to start seeing it. Sony, MS, Nintendo and Sega have all been hate-worthy ever since the concept of "exclusives" arose. The idea that you can't play a certain game or series of games unless you buy a certain piece of hardware that is identical in function to all the other hardware, to prove your obedience to a private tyranny like those 4 is nothing short of fascism. It's a totally illegitimate structure of authority and control, second only to the exponentially worse system of totalitarian control that the publishing system, driven by EA and Activision, has created. It's surprising, too, to see everyone absolutely rabid about the idea of having to be online to play their games, but it's never occurred to most people that the idea that you have to own the console to begin with or you can NEVER play a very large, and continuously growing, number of exclusive titles, is far worse in every way. We would never in a million years tolerate this in any other industry. If you could only drive on certain roads with certain cars people would be livid! Or imagine if you could only watch certain TV series on specific brands of TV. This sort of thing is utterly unthinkable, so why do we obediently accept it in the games industry? MS, Sony and Nintendo should have to come up with something about the console itself that allows you to play or enjoy games better than their competitors if they want you to buy their console, they should not be permitted to hold our games hostage to try to force people to buy their system if they want to be able to enjoy the full spectrum of gaming. This reason alone is why the PC is the "master" system, literally, by definition. It plays everything and there is no bullshit structure of control to stop it's games from being enjoyed by anyone else.

 

[bjj hero]

Well written, a lot of it though.

I really liked your post, well written, no ranting and you weren't patronising. I was commenting on a guy who tore a strip off a poster saying he couldnt afford a PC. His general point was "You have no idea what a gmaing PC costs, youre just parroting PCs are expensive". I pointed out that the following 2 posts after his talked about spending over $1000 on their PCs. If you regularly read things like this (which on here is a common ammount people claim to have spent) then is it any wonder people feel theyre priced out?

Personally I have a family, 5 year old son, wife mortgage and work full time and then some. I guess I may no longer be a "core gamer". I play a little bit in the evenings after bed time and if the wife takes my son to her mothers. Thats around training and keeping fit, mowing the lawn, painting the fence, maintaning the cars, fixing lights and the other boring home owner stuff. And I still kick the tar out of the 20 somethings at work when we play COD etc split screen.

At that point I wont be buying a $700 PC, I cant justify it for a hobby I spend a couple of hours on here and there. Equally I wont be buying a nex gen console until it comes in at around £200. Ill not be playing the new release AAA titles for a while until there is a price drop.

Currently I play shooters (and right now trying to love dark souls but cant, think Im missing something as everytime I equip a shield I die) on my 360 and niche turn based strategy titles, gog classics like PS:Torment, small games of Civ on my 6 year old laptop. If the laptop packs up I guess Ill have to drop around £400 on another laptop. Maybe the stars will aline and Ill need a new comsole at the at the same time and can drop £600 on a PC but if it happened right now it would be a hard sell to the rest of the family when I also need to pay for a plumber, mechanic and stuff like that.

And heres Xbox 360 for £129.99. I was £9.99 out. [http://www.game.co.uk/en/hardware/xbox-360/?langId=44&storeId=10151&catalogId=10201&categoryId=10471&pageView=&pageSize=20&resultCatEntryType=&catgrpSchemaType=&RASchemaType=&searchTerm=&searchType=&searchTermOperator=&searchTermScope=&filterTerm=&filterType=&filterTermOperator=&catGroupId=&categoryType=&sType=&minPrice=&maxPrice=&listerOnly=&provenance=&inStockOnly=true&cm_sp=topnav-_-360-_-NewXbox360Consoles] Its the 6th one down I think, admittedly 4GB.

 

[Bonemeal]

The seventh console generation courted us with fine dining, and eagerly we feasted on course after course of promises for the modern era. It was only after the check arrived that we learned of the cost. And that we were going Dutch.

When I think about the "always online" or "daily check-in" requirement of the XB1 (and potentially the PS4), I immediately flash back to the whole PSN-getting-hacked debacle that basically benched the console's online functionality for a month or so. Anyone else remember that? In a mad scramble to damage control what ended up being one of the largest security breaches ever--one that involved the account details and credit card information of millions of customers all over the world--Sony at some point determined that, of the scant (terrible) options available, completely taking down its online service was the least terrible.

Just about the only thing the PS3 had going for it despite all the other awfulness surrounding that month-long headache was that, at the very least, you could still play games on the damn thing. This sort of thing will almost certainly happen to either Microsoft or Sony on some scale. If and when it does, your PS4 or XB1 is nothing more than a $500 paperweight.

Once the initial frustration and incredulity wore off, the PSN hack started to feel like yet another one of those world-altering events the young 21st century has already had far too many of. With it came a profound and unsettling awareness that we, as a society, have become so desensitized to being told that, "Hey, just FYI, this bad thing happened and, yeah, you should probably get used to it because it'll be happening a lot more from now on," barely even registers anymore. Information regarding 77 million accounts had been stolen, and the first anyone hears about it is in a 97-word blog post that can be paraphrased as, "This is what the world is like now. Sucks, huh?" You--yes you, the one reading this--deserve better than this.

It honestly astounds me how much we're willing to put up with nowadays, and I don't understand why anyone would ever willingly pay money to be complicit in their own exploitation and debasement. Ever hear the joke about the dude pissing in the bar? It goes something like this: a guy goes up to a bartender and says to him, "Hey, I bet you $500 that I can piss in that empty glass all the way down at the end of the bar." The bartender says, "No way in hell. $500? You're on." The guy hops up on the bar, unzips his fly, and proceeds to empty the contents of his bladder all over the bar, the bartender, the cash register--everywhere but in the glass at the end of the bar. The bartender, smiling broadly, despite being drenched in a stranger's urine, reaches out his hand and says, "Told you. Pay up!" The man laughs gleefully as he reaches into his pocket and hands the bartender five crisp hundred-dollar bills. The bartender, feeling very confused, asks, "What are you so happy about? You just lost $500." The man nods, finally managing to get his laughter under control and says to the bartender, "Yeah, but I just bet that guy over there $1,000 that I could piss all over you and you'd still smile about it."

There is no more apt metaphor for the coming console generation than this.

 

[PuckFuppet]

That said, there are really only three solid arguments against PC gaming, and even as a PC gamer, I completely agree:
1-Building said gaming machine without getting screwed over by Futureshop/whatever
2-Ease of use/maintenance
3-Availability of specific titles

Before I respond to what I quoted this needs to be said: You have made a good post, I salute thee.

There isn't an easy way around issue 1. I actually work for a small business that builds gaming rigs, as well as a whole bunch of other things, and the amount of times I've seen someone come into the store with that "I just spent weeks trying to get [insert company] to fix the mistakes they made with my pre-build" look on their face defies belief. I really can't comprehend how some of those larger companies keep going but its the nature of the beast for people to try and freeload off of the naivety of others. We operate a gaming cafe on the side, with consoles and PC's, and the most common reason people have for coming in to game on our PC's (besides the LAN experience) is that they are genuinely afraid of trying to build their own PC/get a pre-built from a larger distributor.

That is a _sad_ state of affairs for the entire industry, and probably why sales of PC's have been declining steadily in favour of the relatively safer laptop/touchscreen, but the kicker is that it isn't being addressed by the people who have the capacity to address it.

When it comes right down to it the pecking order for most distributors looks like this "Software>Parts>Profit>Customer" and it'll stay like that for quite some time. Parts manufacturers want licensing fees, which are exorbitant at the best of times, and usually offer a slim discount margin for bulk purchases. The lack of flexibility from manufacturers and the uncertainty in the market, been that way since 2008, as well as the manufacturers own business paradigm (BUY NEW BECAUSE BEST BECAUSE NEW BECAUSE MONEY) actively makes being a distributor like Curry's or "Futureshop" a nightmare. You can't risk buying bulk in most cases because there is no guarantee of sales, any bulk purchases have a limited shelf-life due to sudden market swings, most manufacturers won't offer their latest stuff as bulk, the manufacturers pour a lot of money into making ensuring market saturation of their latest stuff at the expense of anything else, which leads to sagging sales of anything a generation prior. I could go on for a while but I think you get the drift, any company wanting to do honest business has to jump through a lot of hoops and survive on a marginal profit at best. This is before you consider how damn near Orwellian the policies of companies like Microsoft are with regards to the distribution and installation of their software.

Companies like Futureshop etc. are little better than cowboy outfits determined to make a buck at any cost but the atmosphere in the market as a whole doesn't exactly encourage them to be any different. The only real answer to problem 1 is to solve problem 2.

As I understand it most schools, at least near where I live (Western Europe), are offering some sort of course in PC maintenance. Even if all it covers are the basic concepts I think that learning more from an early age and understanding what is being stated about various pieces of hardware would go a long way to reconciling the more "elitist" aspects of PC gaming. Oddly enough it has always been and will always be a term I've found kind of ridiculous when applied to the people I game with on the PC, we're probably the sorriest bunch of average joes you'll ever encounter.

3 is a whole other cake, and one that I don't have the stomach to properly digest. To put it bluntly I haven't found many console exclusives of late in any way interesting, the only exclusive that I was really excited about was the new WipEout for the PS3 (a comparatively cheap and utterly worthwhile choice I might add) and beyond that I really haven't seen the need. BF3 plays just as well on a PC, despite Origin, soon enough I'll be able to play both FFIX and FFVIII on the PC and my arcade shooter needs are more than fulfilled by the array of quality (and in the case of TF2 totally free) games of that sort offered through Steam, and I've never seen consoles handle a strategy game well.

I don't have the statistics to hand to properly elucidate my point but from my limited point of view the exclusivity angle isn't really selling consoles of late. I think I mentioned earlier in this thread that I purchased a 360 so I could play Halo 4, both the 360 and Halo 4 were bundled for less than 300ish (with Halo4 decals on the actual device) and I figured I'd probably buy my own copy of ODST or Reach eventually, immediately regretted the decision. Halo 4 wasn't bad or anything, it felt a bit samey but the story was good, it was the 360 that I had the most issues with. All the hoops you have to jump through on start-up, the necessity to create an "Xbox Arcade Avatar" and then the BS of having to pay a subscription to an online service!? That easily dwarfed any issues I had over the years with PC games (FO3's crashing due to multiple cores stood out), and even then once I had figured out how to make the game play the way I wanted it to play it was all fine and dandy. The 360 insisted that I wasn't really a gamer until I had an avatar/profile for a service it wanted me to pay more money for that was essentially just a glorified version of Steam or Origin. I still have the Xbox but I haven't touched it in months and until any nephews/nieces or future spawn I have reach an age where its time to introduce them to games like Halo I simply won't be using it.

To go back a bit and discuss the whole "fear of PC's" aspect.

I regularly use the SHS when talking to customers about what they should be looking for in their system (http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=pc bask in its glory) as its a simple and relatively unbiased appraisal of what is commonly used. As such based on the current numbers this pre-built from Newegg is the business:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229362

Admittedly it has Windows 8, but apparently they're working on a cure for that, and the bundled keyboard is a bit of a gimmick but its easily above the average in all other respects and has a large easily accessible tower if you do ever feel like upgrading anything in it. And its priced for less than what I imagine the Xbone or PS4 will be.

Now I am in no way encouraging people to buy pre-built PC's but if I was to buy a pre-built from anywhere it'd Newegg, and if I wanting something that would play most current games proficiently then I'd get that.

TL;DR - There are options out there.

 

[Sergey Sund]

The monitor is a separate entity, and may or may not be upgraded along with the PC.

The irony of this whole debate? I've hooked up my TV as a computer screen - because the PC is the best console

 

[Do4600]

thousands of dollars

I don't know how this got started, but it's at best a gross exaggeration and at worst a total and absolute lie. Stop telling it.

I could build you a computer that's as powerful as an Xbox360 for $300 US. I could build you a computer that is more powerful than the specs on the Xbox One for $900 US.

If you're spending thousands of dollars on a pc you had better have some DNA to sequence or some feature length cgi motion pictures to render, because all that power and money is going to be wasted if you're just firing up Call of Duty for four hours after work every day.

Most people own computers, a few people own consoles, if you put both functions in the same device you make the experience of both better.

Take the price of a next gen console and the price of that console's online service for a few years and add the cost of a laptop or desktop computer and you're spending the same amount of money just not getting nearly the same benefit.

It costs the same.

 

[Do4600]

You can't take it back, it's ours now.

Is the one in front (the husky one) the Tron guy evolved?

No my friend, that's Gabe Newell, who led my people out of the darkness and into the light of a new age.

 

[MrWunderful]

What is wrong with playing PC and console? That's what I do. Select titles on PC (exclusives of course, among others) and everything else (like "bro-friend" games cod, halo, etc.)

Never understood the whole one or the other argument.

 

[TheRealCJ]

Hm, I'm still more interested in PS4 than PC. Console is supposed to be - no settings and no fiddling around required. Put the game in and play. As for xbox, MS consoles were shit, are shit and will be shit and I don't really give a shit.
Well, shit that's a lot of shit in one post.

I think you and I had very different experiences last Sony generation.

It's more like "Put the game in, wait for the install-to-hard-drive, wait for a firmware update, THEN play."

 

[Holythirteen]

I really liked your post, well written, no ranting and you weren't patronising.

Yeah, it was too long, had to cut out the ranting. One guy said that next-gen consoles were gonna bring a new age of innovation, then he cited a bunch of games that started out as massive PC hits. Grrrr....

I really enjoyed my experiences in PC gaming, and I feel like others should at the very least should drop any prejudices they might have about pc's, there's good experiences to be had, and I'm happy to take a second and share what I know. To be perfectly honest; whenever I meet groups of other PC gamers, I tend to be the dumbest one in the group, so that makes it pretty tough to act like an elitist. I've met alot of guys who would much rather talk down to somebody and act superior than actually teach them about these sorts of things, they will spend hours arguing about why PC's are so much better but they won't spend 30 seconds to help somebody enjoy what they enjoy, or even help them fix a problem, its pretty shameful.

Personally I have a family, 5 year old son, wife mortgage and work full time and then some.

Lol if you have kids and a real life and you still want to mix it up with some CoD, I think that's about as "core" as it gets. Maybe when your son is a bit older you and him could play some multiplayer minecraft! If you do get a laptop, all you have to buy is two minecraft accounts for $26 each, it's one of the best games I've played and it runs pretty well on low-end machines.

That really is the best part about PC gaming, people are still making fun games that don't require super-expensive hardware to enjoy.

Not sure what you'll have to pay if you live in another country, and we switched back and forth between canadian dollars and pounds, so my prices may be off by quite a bit.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I really enjoyed my experiences in PC gaming, and I feel like others should at the very least should drop any prejudices they might have about pc's, there's good experiences to be had, and I'm happy to take a second and share what I know. To be perfectly honest; whenever I meet groups of other PC gamers, I tend to be the dumbest one in the group, so that makes it pretty tough to act like an elitist. I've met alot of guys who would much rather talk down to somebody and act superior than actually teach them about these sorts of things, they will spend hours arguing about why PC's are so much better but they won't spend 30 seconds to help somebody enjoy what they enjoy, or even help them fix a problem, its pretty shameful.

That's actually one of the reasons I haven't switched to PC. Besides the fact that putting together a good rig can be pretty expensive, I'm somewhat intimidated as a lifelong console gamer. Not by ridicule or anything but by the fact that I've never played PC before so I don't know what pieces to buy, how to identify them, where they go in the case, ANYTHING. You could give me the perfect pieces to a rig, I will not know what they are or where they go. I feel like eventually, I will make that switch, and it's going to be quite the learning curve for me. And it would be nice to find that person willing to help me put together a rig instead of just
"Lol, look at the contard finally coming to his senses."
I'll still most likely use a controller too. Like I said, lifelong console gamer. I played a PC at a friends house, the mouse and keyboard are so uncomfortable in my hands, I simply can't use them.

 

[orangeapples]

I really enjoyed my experiences in PC gaming, and I feel like others should at the very least should drop any prejudices they might have about pc's, there's good experiences to be had, and I'm happy to take a second and share what I know. To be perfectly honest; whenever I meet groups of other PC gamers, I tend to be the dumbest one in the group, so that makes it pretty tough to act like an elitist. I've met alot of guys who would much rather talk down to somebody and act superior than actually teach them about these sorts of things, they will spend hours arguing about why PC's are so much better but they won't spend 30 seconds to help somebody enjoy what they enjoy, or even help them fix a problem, its pretty shameful.

That's actually one of the reasons I haven't switched to PC. Besides the fact that putting together a good rig can be pretty expensive, I'm somewhat intimidated as a lifelong console gamer. Not by ridicule or anything but by the fact that I've never played PC before so I don't know what pieces to buy, how to identify them, where they go in the case, ANYTHING. You could give me the perfect pieces to a rig, I will not know what they are or where they go. I feel like eventually, I will make that switch, and it's going to be quite the learning curve for me. And it would be nice to find that person willing to help me put together a rig instead of just
"Lol, look at the contard finally coming to his senses."
I'll still most likely use a controller too. Like I said, lifelong console gamer. I played a PC at a friends house, the mouse and keyboard are so uncomfortable in my hands, I simply can't use them.

I built my first gaming PC about 6 months ago (been a lifelong console gamer myself (since NES)). You can find some good PC building videos on YouTube. The ones I remember viewing came from newegg. It was a pretty simple process. Lots of it is looking at a component and looking for where it fits. The hardest part was figuring out how to organize the cables to maximize airflow.

worst thing that happened was I dropped my CPU on the ground. Still works fine. Components aren't super fragile, though I wouldn't recommend dropping them.

since building it I've helped 2 people build their own gaming computers. We all when through that phase of thinking it was too complicated, but once you get over that, building the PC isn't that complicated at all.

I also got a 360 controller since I am used to the controller though I was gaming with kb/m for a while and it wasn't the worst experience.

my friends and I made the jump because we were noticing that the current Gen were crap PCs. Now that we know the specs on ps4 and xb1 we can say our rigs are safely within those ranges. All of us are running quad core i5s, 8gb ram minimum (ddr3), video card with at least 1gb gddr5 ram, I'm the only one without an ssd. Sure we don't have all of the fancy features, but we got backwards compatibility, can run the games at presumably similar levels