Why so much hate for consoles?

[llubtoille]

On my part it's fairly justified fear.
I don't own any consoles, last one I had was the sega mega drive, so while consoles have arguably increased the number of games that get released, the vast vast majority of them end up as console exclusives, thus limits me from playing them - unless I buy the console.
The fear for me is that when the PS4 & Xboxone is released - and when sony & microsoft's desire for exclusivity is at its peak - the pc will see even fewer ports (no matter how easy it may be to port) thus blocking me from buying/playing many excellent games.

 

[silverbullet1989]

the whole "gaming pc's cost thousands of monies lolz" argument -_-
Consoles are cheap short term gaming solutions... i'll use the argument i use all the time... my pc cost me £650 to build 3 years ago, and still plays everything better then a console would. Ive had 2 xbox's in 4 years ive owned a console for, first one cost me £100, it got the rrod, i bought a brand new one at the time for £240 so theres £340 gone on consoles... for every game i own on the console that can be bought on the pc i add the average £10+ extra the console game costs... i currently own 7 console games that can be bought on the pc for £10+ less so lets call it £70 extra on console games that brings the cost up to £410... now lets count 4 years of xbox live subscriptions (im aware ps3 does not have this but since ps4 will it still counts) 4 x £35 a pop in the uk, its now £39.99 but lets say £35 = £140 which brings the cost too £550 which is less then my pc yeah but then lets not count the extra controller, head sets, online passes etc that they try and duct tape onto console games... gaming pc's are a lump sum expense in my opinion, you pay £500-£1000 for an investment of a machine thats going to last 4+ years before maybe the graphic card might need upgrading... but in those 4+ years your console will end up costing you more in the long run.

 

[Sing]

I think that the hate you see OP, mainly comes from people wanting to justify their choice. In my experience, some (not all, but the ones who makes the most noise) people tend to glorify their platform of choice and belittle the others. When it all really comes down to is preferences and personal taste. PC have their share of pros and cons and quirks while consoles have theirs. Which I believe is a good thing for the gaming industry as a whole. This phenomemon isn't really unique to the whole "consoles vs. PC" debate but can also be seen in for example what operativesystem you should be using and what type of phone etc.

Now, my gut tells me (let me remind you that my gut MAY be wrong) that there is a fair amount of PC enthusiasts here on the Escapist. That might be the part of the reason why you see so much hate.
That said I must agree with Windcaler: preference of PC does not equate hatred of consoles. I just think the hating guys get more attention.


As for consoles being the end of the gaming industry...nah. In my opinion the competition between PC and consoles is something nice that should lead to more creativity and better prices/services regardless of platform. Atleast, That's what I hope.

 

[cahtush]

A combination of many things.
Bad ports, PC game series suffering from bad cases of consolitis, level design and such being limited to fit the aging console hardware.
Imagine if a game came out on consoles that had 480p resolution and low res textures and gameplay and interface made to be used with a motion controller, just so that they could release it on the Wii too.
I'd imagine there would be quiet a lot of hate.

 

[Joccaren]

Now, my gut tells me (let me remind you that my gut MAY be wrong) that there is a fair amount of PC enthusiasts here on the Escapist. That might be the part of the reason why you see so much hate.

So far as the posting and voting population goes, yeah, by a large % PC gamers are the most common on this site. Can't comment on the non-posting/voting population as they don't vote in any of the polls or comment in any of the threads =P

Also, welcome to the Escapist. Don't go to the dungeon, and whatever you do do not press the red button.

 

[KOMega]

I think I made my PC for a little over $1000.
Maybe $1500. I dunno. But that was mostly because I was kinda splooging on it, since I was aiming for a much lower budget but my parents suddenly gave me a way higher number before I could tell them how much I think it should have been XD.

I feel sorta guilty about using that much money, but I think it'll last maybe 10 years so it'll be fine.

Anyways, I enjoy playing games on consoles more but PC does have a lot more options in functionality, and games are usually a lot cheaper on it too, imo.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

The only reason PC gamers don't like consoles is because they lost their domination of the market when large swathes of the PC market started paying and playing games like Everquest, Eve and World of Warcraft. They can't blame themselves because that is against human nature so they point at someone else and try to ignore their elitist bretheren that totally traitored against them and left them in the lurch.

The games industry moved on and it even left me, a console gamer, behind. The days of striving are over, all hail equality for the gaming community...you can all finish games now, no matter how incompetant and weak minded you may be

 

[Hieronymusgoa]

If you have a decent monitor, the tower with good hardware will cost 800? I#d say. At least that's what i pay for one which fits my needs.

It's a matter of how and where you want to play and which games you want to play.
I for example only like gamepads when it comes to Beatemups or Jumpnruns so I favor the PC.
Still I love a lot of typical Nintendo franchises but don't care that much for the few titles which are exclusive to XBox and PS.
I only once was close to buying a PS3 and that was actually for Demons's Souls. Since I got Dark Souls for PC I am content with watching DS per Let's Plays on YT.
I have a Wii which is great fun for playing Smash Brothers or Mario Kart with others. Apart from that I don't use it or used it a lot.

tl;dr: I don't hate consoles, I just don't care about most of them mostly. As long as I can play the most important for me on a PC as well.

 

[already in use]

What i dont like about consoles is games being hardwired to a specific computer configuration.
There are so many consoles that it would require thousands of dollars and a lot of space
to play any recent game you want.
Right now we have the wii, the wiiu, the xbox 360, the ps3 aswell as the ps4 and the xbox1 right around and of course several mobile consoles. To develope a game for all of those requires a lot of work, so games are often released for
only one or a few systems. If you buy a console near the end of its lifetime there will soon be next to no new
games for it and it will soon be stored away in the cellar. A new console is relatively expensive, you wont
be able to play the games you already have on it and you will have to wait a few years before there is a sizable catalogue
of games available which are then very expensive for extended periods of time.

What i like about the pc is that i get to keep my stuff. i dont have buy a whole new thingy,
store my peripherals and games away because they dont work with the new thingy. If i want to update my
pc i can do that, new Pc games work with a variety of old hardware, right now any quadcore cpu with 4gb ram and a midrange gpu from a few years ago (which you can get for the price of a new game on ebay) will play any game smoothly in 1080p with good settings.

 

[BleedingPride]

Uhh... no. PCs don't fuck up, period. Ok, if you're stupid or really unlucky they can, but not often, and there is always a way to fix it.
There is no such thing as Computer error, merely user error. I've been running my previous 2 PC builds for 8+ years without an antivirus, no problems. Its not 'cause I'm lucky, its 'cause I don't click any "You've won 1 million dollar" links, or anything else suspicious or stupid on the Internet.

There's a LOT wrong here. PCs don't fuck up period? That's just wrong. If you were to say that on TV you'd get the apple vs pc commercial putting all those disclaimers on the screen.

 

[lolcatize]

Cause fanboys are usually twats, and once you spent money on a 2000 dollar rig you are of course gonna be up in arms about it not realizing that no platform is perfect and its all the matter of money and preference. And note that i am a pc user but i used to be a console gamer and i can entirely see the appeal of console gaming, but try to tell that to a pc fanboy and hes gonna cave in your skull.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

I blame consoles for shitty UI's, QTE's, low-res textures and unconfigurable video settings - when applicable, of course.
See: Saints Row, Skyrim and any game that wants you to switch weapons through a "wheel".
Like this:

Spoiler: image

This shit needs to die. Or atleast removed when ported to PC.

The wheel works absolutely fine with a thumb stick, but I agree. Keep it out of the pc version.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

less fuck up prone

Uhh... no. PCs don't fuck up, period

Oh wow. Just wow. Wanna know what my job is? I answer the phone and listening to how people's pc's got fucked up. Long story short, the root of most of our problems is Microsoft. But its not like games practically only ported to Windows. Oh wait... Seriously, if you think its luck you're wrong. The higher ups at my work have been doing this for a good 30+ years and they still run into problems that completely stump them or the solution to said problem isn't something we can do or requires too much work. Example, printing directly from the Blackboard website on IE10 results in a few hundred pages of gibberish being shot out of the MFD. We so far don't have a way to fix this problem other than using another browser except we can't because "IE is the standard" or downgrading to IE9 but then the computers will auto update it anyway. Thats completely disregarding my own experience. I was adjusting the graphic settings for Boarderlands 2 the other day (the ever smart auto detect was kind enough to set my resolution stupidly low) and the game kept locking up and I had to restart my computer. And while trying to give fallout mods a go, I kept getting a "low memory" with no explanation and gave up after an hour of googling cause I just stopped giving a fuck. But hey, I must just be unlucky right?

 

[Snotnarok]

Take the 400 from your PS4 and filter in a bunch of games at $50-$60 each...how long till you catch up to the price of a PC, it will be very quickly indeed considering the sales on steam,Green Man Gaming, GoG.

Your savings quickly becomes a higher cost.

I don't hate consoles but I don't use them much anymore minus the older gen (PS2 lower). Because honestly why bother when all the games are the same on console and PC but extremely cheaper and better and moddable on PC? The older consoles had much more charm, were legitimately easier to use with no fuss or updates and had more exclusives, or rather more desirable exclusives or simply easier to play split screen games with a friend.

Every time I turn on my PS3 it takes 10+ minutes to update the console and the game/app I'm about to start and given I'm looking to have a quick game and that's probably 1/4th the time I was going to put in it puts me off, vs PC where it updates automatically without me having to do things..and don't tell me about PS+ because paying for automatic updates doesn't make sense to me (yes I'm aware of the other features but I'm not interested so it's not worth while.

A lot of PC gamers feel games are being dumbed(Really? That's not a word?) down as a direct result of consoles and their accessibility.

I don't believe this is the case, but I can see where they are coming from. The whole point of consoles is that they're easier to use, which draws more casual people.

There are other reasons why some PC assholes feel superior, but I think this is where a lot of the negativity comes from.

There IS some legitimacy to dumbing down, consoles limited hardware have developers scraping every bit of power they can muster and sometimes at the cost of things like field of view, which isn't a huge deal till you see the difference between 65 and 90+ fov...or if you're like me where 60 gives you a headache, some games on consoles aren't even HD but scaled up, GTA IV on PS3 is below 720p. Some games flat out getting shoddy ports where you cannot change controls or graphical options (not only to make it look better, but rather lower to RUN better). Devs are working with 256mb of ram on consoles vs 2+GB of memory on PCs so you can see the need but it's a shame.

Not claiming all hail PC just some of the issues.

 

[NotLooking.Trips]

To me it is very simple
Its like football
We chooose a team (xbox, ps4, wtfever)
Then we defend it
I personaly go for xbox and I know pc has far better adjustments mods and whatnot
ps has the blueray and free internet gaming

But I'll still defend for xbox cause thats my team
I dont like sports nor do I watch football

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

If you're paying over 1000 then you're doing it wrong. Unless you're ridiculously wealthy or need a high end computer for your work because you have to render realistic physics stress tests for bridges you design or something.

Anyways you're splitting up the hardware market driving up prices for both groups of people; when PCs are the clearly superior option in every way except being really easy to pick up and drive over to a friends house with.

People are just short term thinkers, so the idea of a more expensive cost followed by it being cheaper for the next 30 years isn't something they consider. I've been using the same computer case for 15 years, I've been using the same monitor for like 7. I only bothered to change my speaker system from the one I had been using for the past 17 years or so because I moved to a smaller living space. I've had the same power supply for 12 years. I don't have to replace every single part when the system breaks. So for the initial cost, I get to just coast for decades on most of the parts I bought.

Oh and at the same time most people almost always have a cheap computer for internet browsing/writing for work and school as well as owning a console, whereas I just have one single system. Someone tell me how much your other stuff pc/laptop cost? 200-300 bux? So you buy a console for 400-500 and a computer for 200-300, and the gap on what is 'cheap' closes quite a bit even just on the initial buy without considering how much better PCs do long term.

 

[TehCookie]

I had my liquid CPU cooler decided to break and spray all over my PC. My brother caught his computer on fire and my dad had his harddrive needle grinding into the harddrive. They're not immune to screw ups and they're not more stable than consoles. Except the 360 because that is plainly terrible, but consoles also have the indestructible Gamecube and Gameboy.

Do you and your family by overpriced pre-built junk by any chance? You know crap like Alienware, "gaming PCs" or cheap pre-built systems? All of those systems use the cheapest possible components often from unbranded manufacturers or ones known for high failure rates. Either this or you and your family are bodging them together and doing it wrong.

All were custom made, but some were ordered from cyberpower who did the assembly and others were us building them. None were cheap or random parts either.

So my entire family is stupid?

Possibly, but seeing as they're hardware errors I'm going more for "Really Unlucky" - unless you bought unreliable, cheap, budget components from brands known for their failure rates. That's like buying a PS3 placed in a Microwave that starts every time you turn it on. Its asking for trouble.

I had my liquid CPU cooler decided to break and spray all over my PC. My brother caught his computer on fire and my dad had his harddrive needle grinding into the harddrive.

As said, I'd guess custom liquid cooling loop there, in which case likely assembly error, or if its closed loop then either a bad brand or bad luck. PCs catching on fire hasn't happened since the old AMD processors without safeties. Modern PCs, if they get too hot, automatically shut off to prevent this. Harddrive likely from a bad brand, or just really bad luck.

My dad was the huge PC elitist, and he would research everything and none of them were cheap PCs (however the fire one was old). Though my liquid loop was closed and put in by cyperpower so no one in my family touched it, I haven't even opened the case to upgrade it before it broke. As much as you say bad luck, consoles failing is the same way, bad luck.

They're not immune to screw ups and they're not more stable than consoles. Except the 360 because that is plainly terrible, but consoles also have the indestructible Gamecube and Gameboy.

A well cared for PC made from quality components should not break. Unless you are really unlucky, components from reliable brands will not break, and often come with 1-5 year warranties to guarantee this. From there that leaves software problems, which are 98% user mistakes like viruses, and rarely something like the RAGE driver issues.
Consoles yes, you have things like the Gamecube [I wouldn't count the Gameboy as that's a handheld, which is IMO a different platform], you have things like the 360 [Equivalent of your not-so-reliable brand PC], and you've got ones in between like the Playstation series; some overheat, a lot don't. At the same time a console being bricked by a new firmware update isn't uncommon, and is completely beyond user control. This is the main reason I find PCs more reliable; If I build it myself, I am in complete control of it. If it fails, its 'cause I've done something that couldn't be considered smart, or was incredibly unlucky and have a warranty covering that so I'm good. With a console, everything is beyond my control, and if its going to brick its going to brick. Its a gamble.

Granted this is a bit too complex of a situation to properly compare failure rates, seeing as you've got everything from budget $150 computers to your $16000 super-rigs, each failing different amounts thanks to the different brands and parts in them, and on the console side you've got your numerous brands, some failing significantly more than others. Really they can both break, and often both do. PC you can be in more control over that though, which I find preferable.

You can get warranty for consoles too. Though coming with a warranty doesn't mean quality, my friend went through 3 laptops under a warranty until Dell got fed up and gave her a better one. But as you said it's hard to compare with all the possible PCs. The reason I've had a lot break is because I've had a lot of PCs. As for my friend, she either has terrible luck or a bad model. Saying PCs don't break is just BS.

If you like the control of PCs better, then get what you like. There's nothing wrong with preferring one over the other until you deny anything bad about your preference, start bashing others for theirs and spreading BS. See above for in denial and bashing others, because PCs can't break.

 

[MagnumOsprey]

I don't like consoles anymore because I don't feel like they have any advantage over pcs anymore. You used to be able to buy any game, take it wherever you wanted and play it immediately on a console. Now you have to install, deal with publishers crap like setting up meaningless accounts and then wait for it to check for updates. I know the pc has the same issues, but I may as well get some slightly better graphics and deals with my games if I'm going to have to put up with it.