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consoles hurt gamers. may the PC reign supreme! Also, sony > microsoft.


orthicviper

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Sometimes I'm reading posts here and there about console wars and as MS and Sony discuss their offerings I see people say stuff like "competition is good". But the competition between MS and Sony doesn't offer much to us gamers, the only competition we need is competition between software developers to develop the best game. If consoles did not exist, nearly every game would be made for the PC. We wouldn't have fractured online gameplay as all gamers could connect to their friends without worrying about who owned which console-specific version of the game. But as it is now, if you want to play them all you need to buy the PC and then pay Sony their 350+ tax and Microsoft their 350+ tax, rebuy controllers because because Sony and MS force you to despite lack of necessity, and pay to pay online. Sony at least let you use PC controllers on PS3 and PC hard drives on PS3 and included a built in network adapter for PS3 quite unlike MS that made you pay for their proprietary overpriced stuff such as wanting you to buy a $100 wireless network adapter for XBOX 360 (they also invented the concept of paying a whopping $50 yearly to play online which is extremely overpriced). Sony also let you install Linux on PS3 which doesn't concern the vast majority of console gamers but still represents an openness you can only find with Sony as compared to MS. Anyway, this is quite a lot of money for console players to waste every 5-7 years, paying thousands and thousands of dollars more than they would have to if only the PC existed.

Worse, the latest consoles now are just basically x86-based PC's except they are locked down to only run licensed apps, which does nothing to benefit us gamers except reduce the chance of cheaters modifying the game. Unless you care about multiplayers cheaters, most gamers are defending the opportunity for themselves to just absolutely throw money away that in a better world they could have used for more games. With the potential money saved they could have been ready to buy the top of the line HTC Vive VR system. Consoles primarily are a luxury item for the monied or those who are careless with money whereas the PC is for those peasants who are on a budget or are wise with their money.

If only the PC existed developers wouldn't have to spend resources on porting games to PowerPC, RISC or cell processors or whatever unique architecture is in the hardware or OS they were now forced to port to. The increased revenue from accessing more gamers with a single game design would have kept more companies in business and probably caused more content to be added to our games.

We'll never really know what the game industry could have been like if gamers could have bought a game without having to worry about having the console it was exclusive to, but hopefully my message will spread and people wont get the MS Scorpio or Sony Neo and dig their own hole into financial waste and perpetuation of of a game industry unable to reach its full potential. But message boards are full of console "peasants" repeating old nonsense to defend their Xbox or their PS4 when they should realize that the days of the PC being $3000 requiring frequent upgrades and various memory management troubleshooting methods are long over. Stop being stuck in the old ways and buy a small PC (yes they can be small now) and connect it to your TV. You can use your PS4 or Xbox One or 360 controllers and join in on amazing game sales offered by Steam, Humble Bundle and Bundle Stars where you can save money like you'd never see happen for the console games.

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Speaking as someone who has only gamed on a PC for the past ten years, I feel like I'm relatively unbiased when I say I think your argument has some flaws.

First of all, regardless of the platform they're released on, games are in competition with other games. Reducing the number of platforms doesn't change that.

Also, I realize PCs are cheaper these days, but I still don't know how you could get a $350 PC and play new games on anything but the lowest settings (and who wants to do that?) I suppose you could eventually save enough money to compensate by buying lots of games on sale (it's true that dirt-cheap PC games are plentiful), but in general I think the PC will still cost more than buying a console.

But the main crux of your argument that I disagree with is the suggestion that game developers would benefit from having only the PC to develop for. That simply isn't true. As it stands now, they get to develop on multiple platforms, making money from multiple user groups. The idea that everyone who owns a console now would purchase a gaming PC if consoles suddenly didn't exist is extremely unlikely. Issues of cost aside, there are a lot of people out there who don't want all the openness a PC can give them. They want the closed architecture of a console that allows them to plug in in and turn it on for the sole purpose of gaming, and never have to worry about whether it will run the game they purchased as well as it should. So if consoles disappeared, some of those players would switch over to PCs, but a lot of them wouldn't. They'd probably switch to mobile gaming or whatever else was easiest for them (this seems to be happening, anyway - especially here in Japan.)

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For what it's worth, I believe I have more invested in the PC I type this on than I do in all the consoles I've bought over the years, and my computer is 10 years old now... That's not to say that I haven't bought consoles either, I've kept up fairly well. However, I haven't been an early adopter since the PS2 came out, and even now I tend to wait until games are on sale. I don't think I've bought a game on day one since Gran Turismo 6 came out.

Honestly, gaming is cheaper now than it ever has been, but I do have other hobbies, so it really doesn't matter to me much anymore.

That said, I prefer a game that I can put in (or bring up off the hard drive), and play, with minimal interruptions or configuring. If I want to tinker with something all day before I get to have any fun, I'll go work on a car. :P

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  • 1 month later...

I think you are right Kitsunebi that many gamers would not buy a PC to play games on if consoles stopped existing. I had not thought of that before but it seems like a good guess.There's a lot of people out there that aren't that much into games and maybe buy a game system to just buy some sports titles and maybe they'll pick up a Grand Theft Auto game or something on occasion and asking them to buy and game on PC is probably too much effort on their part. 

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I'm going to go ahead and say no. I know PC's aren't as expensive as some make them to be but in the long run they cost more than consoles. I don't care to upgrade every couple years. It's stupid. Turn down the graphics, the game will play the same. PC also sort of discarded discs which is a big mistake. I prefer that physical copy and most times it's cheaper than buying digital.

 

Speaking of digital, malware like Steam has ruined the PC as a gaming platform. I want to put in a game and know it'll work. Not DL something for 3 hours or have invasive software phoning home, hogging bandwidth, and not letting me play offline. I've sworn off playing Valve games after that disaster with HL2.

 

No I don't plan on buying these mid-gen systems. One purchase is enough. The library is the same. Nothing will be Neo exclusive from what I hear. Paying to play online is stupid of course but they give out games every month which evens it out.

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I miss the days when console games were only on consoles. PC games are great, but I still think when publishers started to publish the same games on both console and PC, the genres of games took a big hit on both.  I know the market has changed and now the only way to stay in business is to sell millions upon millions of games and sometimes that isn't even enough, but still I miss the old days when console games were made by publishers playing to the strengths of the console (Playstation, Saturn, Genesis, etc) they were publishing for, and were not worried about figuring out how to fit the next big PC shooter on to whatever console they are trying to shoehorn onto to.  That's how we got games like Nights, Super Mario 64, and Donkey Kong Country; they were all focusing on just one platform and learning to push it too its max.  That's just my opinion though.

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That's how we got games like Nights, Super Mario 64, and Donkey Kong Country; they were all focusing on just one platform and learning to push it too its max.  That's just my opinion though.

 

The problem with your argument is that 2 of those 3 games were developed in Japan.  Likewise, many of the other iconic console games you're likely thinking of were also developed in Japan.  But Japan has never been concerned in the slightest with developing for the PC, now or then.  The PC has never been a viable gaming platform in Japan.  The only games released on PC here are either western titles, or porn/visual novels.  So if you feel that console gaming has suffered at all because of the PC, you really only have the right to cite titles developed outside of Japan as examples.

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The problem with your argument is that 2 of those 3 games were developed in Japan.  Likewise, many of the other iconic console games you're likely thinking of were also developed in Japan.  But Japan has never been concerned in the slightest with developing for the PC, now or then.  The PC has never been a viable gaming platform in Japan.  The only games released on PC here are either western titles, or porn/visual novels.  So if you feel that console gaming has suffered at all because of the PC, you really only have the right to cite titles developed outside of Japan as e

Well, there you go.  The west did cause consoles to suffer because the developers here never wanted to focus on consoles but instead PC, so they treated consoles as the bastard child getting the hand me down version.

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Well, there you go.  The west did cause consoles to suffer because the developers here never wanted to focus on consoles but instead PC, so they treated consoles as the bastard child getting the hand me down version.

 

That's an interesting take on things.  One could just as easily make the argument that game development in the west has been able to continuously evolve due to a lack of dependence upon fixed and unchanging platforms as they are in Japan.  Which side of the argument you take probably depends upon what type of games you like, and neither point of view is necessarily based on irrefutable fact.

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That's an interesting take on things.  One could just as easily make the argument that game development in the west has been able to continuously evolve due to a lack of dependence upon fixed and unchanging platforms as they are in Japan.  Which side of the argument you take probably depends upon what type of games you like, and neither point of view is necessarily based on irrefutable fact.

I like your answer. 

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