Five PC Gaming myths

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
As far as the money argument goes, I would have a decent PC whether I gamed or not. So PC gaming only cost me the price of a good video card. Which is still cheaper than the good versions of the 360 or PS3.

Most people simply don't upgrade that often. My dad is still using an Athlon 2200, which is probably 4-5 years old. My brother has an Athlon 2800 from that same era. One of my friends doesn't even know how fast his computer is; he just knows it's 3 years old. The vast majority of people can get away with buying the cheapest Dell available, packing it full of ram, and using it for 5+ years. I'm very confident that a $500 Dell with 4gb of ram could easily last 5 years, and I say that when I'm using a Semrpon 2400 with 1gb of ram (I'm at work).
edit: Obviously an old $500 computer will suck balls for computer games. That was my point

It's basically the same argument as Mac vs PC. The PC guys will say the Mac is a ripoff, but the Mac people will swear that it's totally worth it. Here, the total cost of a computer and games dwarfs the cost of a 360 with games, but I'll still say my PC is better than an xbox (for the time being).

 

[LordGestle]

I agree the money arguement is pointless as each person must decide what is the better value and not dollar amount. Being a long time PC Gamer I'm shifting more towards Xbox 360. I recently sold my 8800GTS 640Mb, Sold by E6750 comob, returned to my used 1900XT/opteron 939 combo, and invested that amount in games for the xbox.

The major reason for "me" that I'm more of a multiplayer person and enjoy playing with friends and family. Having a family and responsibilities of my own, my time is limited to play. I started noticing more, and more, of the new releases requiring steaper system specs "DX10/Vista which was bogus for those titles" and "Pixel Shader 3.0". The pixel shader 3.0 was the bigger blow as many of my friends were in the ATI camp with X800 class cards, which I still consider good cards. They were also running older AGP, Memory (512MB or DDR), and/or lower class CPU for today's standards. So really they were looking at at total upgrade.

So for them the pc's are still perfect for windows/internet/application use but not for the latest PC releases. So more and more of my friends/family were dropping off due to H/W requirements.

All of us having gone through several upgrade cycles among the years, they decided to jump on the console route so they wouldn't need to upgrade the PC as much. So the beginning of the year I was the sole xbox 360 user, now out of 10 of us 9 have xbox 360s.

Were actually playing a little more as it's nice to just jump on, seeing someone on, know that games are at the same revisions (ie not waiting for >500MB Patches), not tweaking for VOIP (for the technically challenged friends), and just joing a game really quick.

What also bugged me was the lack of co-op games for the PC. The console provides that via the same console (minor) but allows internet plays as well (major. 4 player co-op on Halo 3 was great). On the pc specifically where most of my multiplayer gaming took place, there's only so many times you can have a 30 kills to 2 death ratio during a deathmatch game and get takers on another round.

So for me I'm falling back on the PC upgrading and game purchasing, and going more towards Xbox.

As far as console games, I agree the 60$ price tag is steap. However, I'm actually buying more used games in the the 15$ (call of duty 2 for example), and <25$ (Oblivion for example). Problem in the past with buying used PC games you didn't know if the online key would work (ie in use) so I was always reluctant going that route for PCs.

So there's my take. I don't knock anyone for choosing either option.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: LordGestle
So for them the pc's are still perfect for windows/internet/application use but not for the latest PC releases. So more and more of my friends/family were dropping off due to H/W requirements.

All of us having gone through several upgrade cycles among the years, they decided to jump on the console route so they wouldn't need to upgrade the PC as much. So the beginning of the year I was the sole xbox 360 user, now out of 10 of us 9 have xbox 360s.

My circle of friends is doing the same thing. The hardware requirements for computer games are just getting ridiculous. Most of my friends now have an xbox 360. It's getting to the point where I would seriously consider buying an xbox and a Mac next time around; games are the only reason I'm using a PC in the first place.

 

[MikeyLSU]

the whole ship now and patch(fix) later is so stupid. To think that now cosoles are doing it too is just as false. Fact is, console games have had bugs that needed fixes for years, but they just stayed broken without the patches since there was no HDD to patch. Now they can fix the games, before they just stayed broken. Perfect example was sports games, where glitches existed all through the XBOX/PS2 years in football games where there were glitch plays that got automatic big plays and such.

 

[Pez D Spencer]

The last console I owned was a PS2 which I sold about 2 years ago. And unless console graphics can ever exceed a PC in terms of graphics I'll never own another console.

I played the PS3 and the Xbox 360 in the stores and IMO the graphics aren't very good at all. I wasn't impressed in the least bit. Plus, pretty much the only types of games I play are FPS games and playing any FPS with a controller just doesn't cut it. They're clunky and at least for me, impossible to get an accurate shot in. The keyboard mouse combo is more accurate and feels natural.

Also, I don't know how console gaming has evolved since I owned one, or if anyone has already mentioned this, but what about game mods? AFIK, console games don't have mods available for them like PC games do. I bet the amount of time I've spent playing mods for HL2 beats out the mount of time I spent playing the original game by 20 to 1.

IMO, the downfall of PC gaming is going to be piracy. I think developers are eventually going to just say that it's not worth it to develop games for the PC because they don't make any money off of it. Sure you can pirate console games too, but it's not nearly as easy. But at the same time (although this is just an assumption) I'd still say that there are WAY more people still buying games than getting them off of Bit Torrent.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

Originally posted by: Wheelock
PC Gaming is cheap if you're willing to settle for second-best. My athlon 64 3000+ with motherboard cost me just $49.99. All other parts were either salvaged from my prior system or hand-me-downs/cheap used parts.

My system runs Oblivion fairly well. And certainly if I were a World of Warcraft addict, I'd do swimmingly.

be that as it may there is not way to make a 350 PC that can play every single game.
the strength of consoles is that you never ever have to worry about requirements or settings.

 

[Mermaidman]

Which makes me wonder why software developers insist on pushing the tech envelope. Do they think that PC gamers would shun new titles with 'old' graphic engines? Developers could focus more on gameplay and less on eye candy and still be able to sell to low end PC users. This could also result in shorter development cycles.

And now, to counter my own argument: I suppose one could say that user mods and expansion packs are ways to prolong an existing title. God knows how long CS will be around--no money to be made there, and thus no impetus for the corporations to invest. The perfect game contributes to the genre's demise . . .