For the first time since The War began, I will post something in a forum. As a person who grew up on the first Delta Force and Half Life, but also connected to Tekken 3 and FF7 through a good childhood friend of mine (read: i was solidly hooked on PC AND PS games... gaming-saturated childhood I guess) I gazed upon the birth of the PS2 in AWE while I was killing the local noobs in Counter-Strike at the age of 9-10. For that reason I saw it fit to own both the PS3 (tekken 6... yeah) AND a gaming rig that was razor-sharp 2 years ago. Before I type in anything, let me make this perfectly clear - these are MY views, MY resolutions and MY personal observations which are in NO WAY to be taken personally...
With that being said - here is a list of things that TO ME are myths regarding both sides that I find hilarious and sometimes downright depressing to read:
1 - Ease of operation/Game management - In the past both sides had to handle disks. I think that whoever has to nitpick between swapping disks or double-clicking an icon after installing ONCE has a serious issue and needs to seriously think about how he spends his free time. Nowadays, even though consoles still have to deal with disks sometimes, same as the PC crowd, you can't seriously think that having all my games in a drop-down menu via steam or on my desktop is NOT more convenient than having to take out and put in another disk every time I need to play something else. So me and a buddy are rocking Tekken Tag 2... we decide that old-fashioned Fight Night 4 is better suited to channel our passive-aggressive urges. I have to get up, take out the Tekken disk, put it in the box, find Fight Night, put it in, wait for the software to kick in, and THEN we get to play. When I play SC2 and my friends want to do the WoW dailies all I have to do is hit alt-F4, double-click the WoW Client Icon and hit Start...
2 - Accesories/Periferals/Mouse&Key - The obvious first. My mouse and keyboard have been plugged in for 6 months straight. I have to plug-in the Dualshock3 every 2 days and sit closer to the monitor (cable length) for the thing to recharge. Me and my buddy are rocking some MGS (backseat driver mode) and right when the clueless guard is about to turn around the game pauses and a message tells me I have to plug in the Dualshock...
Less obvious - I am always amused when some hardcore gamers from both sides start arguing about how the Pad is just as easy/versatile to perform with as the mouse and board... Are we REALLY considering this!? How can two thumbs perform faster and more precisely than a wrist/fingers combo with 16+ bones, 1 major and 5 lesser joints... If that does not make a case (biology and all, huh?), any mid-tear gaming mouse(that costs half the price of a Dualshock) have a much higher performance and precision capability than 2 thumbsticks can ever have. Be serious. And if that STILL doesn't make a decent case - Warhammer 40K Space Marine is a game that is equally played on PC and Console (well, was... RIP SM), some XBox gents from our community wanted to put an end to the discussion once and for all and wanted a thorough showdown between their top clan and the clan I play with. The results were laughable. The panning and acceleration capabilities of a mouse outperform the Pad SEVERELY. I'm not talking about Pro Counter Strike gamers here. (that would be even more redonk). I personally see no way for the pad to compete versus a mouse provided a roughly equal skill in the game, further reinforcing my opinion that owning a console IS justifiable if you want to play certain genres... which do not include FPS, 3rd Person Adventures/Shooters etc... Beat-em-ups - yes, Sport Simulators - sure (even though half the advantages are null with better game design) but there is hardly anything else that the mouse and keyboard don't handle better.
The Kinect-a-likes are a joke at this stage and should NOT be taken seriously by anyone.
3 - Hardware - You can look at charts and diagrams until the Brahmin come home, but 6 months after I bought my PS3 and gazed at the awesome graphics I saw what the current version of the Cry Engine could do and was a little disappointed with Sony. For a time console games look slightly better, but then a year later the Ultra Graphics on my PC outperformed the PS3. 2 years later the PS3 capabilities were still the same. The PC had Skyrim. There are vids on YT that showcase two instances of a game side by side... There is no room for comparison. A year ago people started to notice and it wasn't such a big deal, but if you want to go the "graphics are not the most important part" route, don't shove that comparison chart war on the forums. Not regarding the Wii (unique concept at the time and all), the Xbox 360 and PS3 stopped being graphically relevant wa~ay too early in the cycle and I think they served to delay and severely hinder the hardware advance that the PC offered. Since we are looking to compare and deduce weather consoles are still viable I will refrain from going into coulda-shoulda-wouldas, but just to leave a mark - would the price of a next-gen Nvidia be as high if the developers didn't have such a big market piece set back to older tech? ...Who knows.
4 - Software/General technical understanding requirements - The way I see it, there is hardly a difference in terms of updates and software download. Sometimes the 15 minute PS3 sofware patch messes things up, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes PSN gets hacked, sometimes I have to install a game, patch it, patch the PS3 Software, patch it again and THEN play the game. PC has it's own issues. The difference is this - the PC ones CAN be avoided with BASIC understanding and routine. No amount of google-searching can help me start FF13 when the PS3 software update I just downloaded screwed up somehow, needs to roll-back, re-download and hope for the best. When the new version of Steam kicks in and one of my games doesn't launch or crashes, all I have to do is rehash it and it adds the missing files automatically. When the PS3 bricks, I have to spend half a day re-rolling and google-ing. I look at it the same way I look at my financial education. I could stay at an office from 9-to-5, get my salary and be happy as a clam. Sure, it's got it's downsides, but it' stable and I DON'T HAVE TO THINKABOUT IT. I could also read a few books, try and fail a few times and in the long run provide myself a much more flexible and broader financial security
D master race metaphore...). There are things that I like that the PS3 just can't seam to handle - modding for example. I think one of the greatest myths surrounding The War is that PC users need to go through a 2 year IT course just to install and handle their games... I've been doing this for 17 years... I've accumulated enough PC wisdom to get a job at the local Ubisoft office as a tester... Sure, the PS3 is more s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d. That doesn't make it less tedious. There are routine tricks and habits a console user picks up along the way that are equivalent to console-editing, modding, file-editing and not opening spam mail (
), like restarting by holding down the power button vs the menu button in certain situations etc. (actually, that's the only one I could think of...).
5 - Exclusives - I understand the case. I accept it. I don't condone it. Business is business, gamers need to get wise to that and live with it. I hate the amount of console ports. The way I see it, however, the PC exclusives kinda top the console ones... Think about World of Warcraft, Star Craft, Counter Strike and the Mobas, all e-sport material, all with thousands (if not millions) of players that are impossible for a console. People like to say that consoles are for people that like games. That phrase is in dire need of "wake up pls". I remember when games used to be played in groups of 8-10-16. LAN ruled the world. Nowadays, I feel like these things are good remnants of a time long passed. I'd rather believe that PC gaming has done more for the medium than consoles (for the sake of trimming this already ginormous wall of text down a little I won't go into detail). Devs tried to make console MMOs and ended up with always online DRM.
My ultimate verdict as of the way things stand today (and have for the past few years) is this - consoles were AWESOME 10 years ago. They were an idea who's time had arrived. They provided a great blend of arcades and home entertainment. Back then the technology and public views were PERFECT for consoles to thrive and the concept of a gaming PC was distant. The more things changed, however, the more the BOOM of consoles (more like the people behind and around it) failed to adapt. The idea had it's time and instead of adapting and evolving MUCH faster, it started to stagnate. The current gen was a major disappointment that people couldn't swallow in my opinion. Somehow, along the way, it became more important to play the new MGS or DMC on PS3, then moving on and supporting a much larger idea that STILL hasn't lost speed (more like picked up if you ask me) - innovation. Innovation makes our medium what it is and consoles just can't keep up anymore, which is why they try to be so many things these days (instead of supplying what they originally had to - simplicity). Are they STILL viable? Yes! Yes, they are... But not AS they are now. Instead of becoming smaller, more compact and niche, they opted to get bigger, more versatile and "beefy"... Thing is, we have the PC for that. If you are one of those guys who enjoys ye olde mario and MGS and doesn't care for competitive shooters, MMOs with the population of a major city and MLG e-sports candidates, you SHOULD have been able to grab your next-gen handheld and have at it, leaving the other stuff to the current idea who's time has arrived, the PC. A person can live his life from the seat of a PC these days. Watch TV, listen to Radio, have access to 1000 people with a few clicks, play games, watch movies, create art, conduct business, handle his job etc etc etc. Consoles would need 2-3 more generations to achieve this AND IT'S POINTLESS BECAUSE IT'S ALREADY DONE AND ADVANCING FAST. I think the console crowd should have learned from the previous gen some much needed lessons and moved on, forcing the devs and companies to adapt to the demand (like they did with the NES, the GameBoy, the PS/Gamecube/Xbox, the Wii etc.) instead of forming camps, raising banners and putting memories on top of reluctant, melancholic resignations... The current titans in console gaming seek to PREDICT the future of consoles, instead of create in, using the only measure that matters - the gamer's needs regarding the time we live in. I stoically believe that consoles SHOULD NEVER have been what they are now. They are huge, clunky, on the edge of profit, demanding, restrictive and only lead to more and more bad business practices that can't be avoided. Looking at the list of pros and cons from the PoV of a gamer that appreciates and owns both:
PC has better performance, better versatility, better capability for peripherals and accessories, more room to grow and advance. It gave us e-sports, MMOs, the ability to do what today's next gen consoles can do tomorrow, years ago, Steam etc.
The consoles just can't keep up with that and should either find a new place or become something else entirely.
Lastly, I LOVE my PS2, I still have it and a library of close to 40 games, collected over the years. I still keep my Game Boy Color with Pokemon red/blue/green... I loved those times and I grew up with them, but I started to mature the moment I could afford my first PC. The only time I looked back was when for a brief period of time me and my gaming friends played the new Tekkens, Mortal Kombats and FFs (which are iconic in all the wrong ways... FF13... yes, YOU!)... The idea of a high-end PC is something of a fobia to TOO MANY people. You don't need a Nvidia Titan Crossfire Video System to play the latest games. With some knowledge one can build or buy a stable gaming PC that would last him throughout the next console gen easily.
(hindsight - DAYUUM dat post turned out long... and all I thought was "be compact, be short, don't be thorough)
