PC Perspective makes a mockery of console ownership.

[MustangSVT]

why do some ppl need a justification for their enjoyment? play whatever the hell you want and get over it... jeebus...

back to sc2.

 

[darkewaffle]

Could you elaborate on this? I hate getting into PC/console flamewars, but I'm interested as to why you say WoW is "consolized."

Because for the last 3-4 years the game's been on a constant progression to cater to the lowest common denominator. I liked Wrath heroics when I first did them, because they were actually dangerous. As such, they were gutted and nerfed so much that even with just Naxx gear they were already a joke. Naxx itself was no challenge from the get go either, and as I understand it Cata dungeons have seen a fairly similar trend. I don't actually know how the raids up til this point have gone, but the most recent one has been pretty easy as I hear it, my old guild going 6/8 or something without much trouble in their first week or two. Not to mention the continued content recycling, the events/games/etc that are essentially gear give aways, and mechanics like the "Raid Finder". Though at least there is some sort of divider between what can be done/earned in a 'real' raid and the 'raid finder', which is a decent idea.

Essentially what everyone likes to call "consolization" I don't think has anything to do with consoles at all. It's because so many more people are playing video games now, period. Not because of how they play them. The demographic spectrum for video games is growing and diversifying, and the industry is simply reacting to that trend.

 

[Golgatha]

There is a huge difference between the patching required for PC games and those required for console games.

You're right. Steam patches my games in the background for free while my computer is running.

 

[Veliko]

You're right. Steam patches my games in the background for free while my computer is running.

Again with the obtuseness with the issue of patches for PC games. Why are you avoiding the elephant in the room?

 

[homercles337]

Doesn't mean it always works. Personally I have my HTPC hooked up to a 32" TV and I have to play basically every game in Windowed mode. Any game that tries to display in fullscreen is subjected to some sort of improper upscaling that I've yet to resolve; it's playable but completely unreadable and just looks like crap, basically extremely blurry. I may have found an answer for it buried deep in some Toms Hardware forum post, but I've yet to get around to trying it. Regardless, I have been able to plug and play consoles to the same TV, so I think there's still something to be said for simplicity.

Really? Just set your video card to output the res of your TV. This stuff is not hard people.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

Again with the obtuseness with the issue of patches for PC games. Why are you avoiding the elephant in the room?

What do you mean with these obtuseness comments? You said the same to me above when I said the exact same thing Golgatha did. Steam patches in the background and my computer still works, a console does not (and is slower). That's just a fact. I find it better and easier. What is this elephant you speak of? Consoles don't need patches? Games never work on the PC but do on consoles??
Very

 

[darkewaffle]

Really? Just set your video card to output the res of your TV. This stuff is not hard people.

And here I was figuring it was obvious that I would have tried the obvious things, my mistake.

The fact that you don't even acknowledge that there can be difficult to diagnose problems when using non-standard configurations of hardware really isn't doing you any favors.

 

[QaaQer]

People bang on about how cheap consoles are. In my experience though, they are not.

My wife bought a wii 2 years ago: the day she bought it she spent $210 for the wii, $99 for the fitboard(?), $49 for controller #2, $50 for SD card, and $120 for a couple of discs. total $520.

I bought a ps3 in the first year $599, ~$50 for controller #2= $650. And (much later of course) >$200 for all the move accessories, which brought the hardware alone to >$850.

Then you factor in the premium for games and running a console is pretty pricey. Nonetheless, I loved mario galaxy 1&2 and would have paid $470 just to play those two games. And my PS3 gets used all the time for blus, and the occasional exclusive. So I'm happy.

But of course I prefer my PC because it does sooo much more than game. Any $$ sunk into my PC pays dividends in many other ways than gaming.

 

[Veliko]

What do you mean with these obtuseness comments? You said the same to me above when I said the exact same thing Golgatha did. Steam patches in the background and my computer still works, a console does not (and is slower). That's just a fact. I find it better and easier. What is this elephant you speak of? Consoles don't need patches? Games never work on the PC but do on consoles??
Very

The elephant you are avoiding is that there is a culture amongst PC game developers to release unfinished and buggy games so that they can fix them later. This is not the case for console exclusives.

Patches are also often required to fix various hardware incompatibilities, again an issue that doesn't exist with console games.

That is why I originally said that the patching required for PC games is very different to the patching of console games.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

The elephant you are avoiding is that there is a culture amongst PC game developers to release unfinished and buggy games so that they can fix them later. This is not the case for console exclusives.

Patches are also often required to fix various hardware incompatibilities, again an issue that doesn't exist with console games.

That is why I originally said that the patching required for PC games is very different to the patching of console games.

Really? Quick search:
Patch inbound for PS3 Assassin's Creed

Bethesda acknowledges PS3 Skyrim frustrations, pledges a "future ...

Not only did patch 1.2 not really fix the lag problem, but new bugs popped up on both the Xbox 360 (available last night) and the PS3 version

Resistance 3 highlights where the PS3 user experience goes wrong

The first thing I was asked to do after putting the disc into the system was download a 600+ MB update. Depending on how unknown factors come together, this update could take just a few minutes or, in my case, nearly 60 minutes.

"Xbox 360 Users Greeted With Bugs From Skyrim Patch 1.2 ..."

Patches and bugs on consoles. Even zero day patches! Sure, this culture you describe exists, but it's both on console and PC so who cares? "OMG PC =patches/bugs!!" is just not a good argument anymore.

I'm not an idiot so I don't buy games on release so thankfully I don't see much of this, but I vastly prefer the patching in Steam to my PS3.

 

[Throckmorton]

The only real way to play PC games on a TV is to... put the TV on your desk and use it as a monitor like I did.

Few PC games are made for use with a gamepad these days. I think I own one, Prince of Persia. And I gave up after 15 minutes because I couldn't do the jumps right.

 

[Veliko]

Assasin's Creed was released four years ago, Skyrim is not a console exclusive and Sony have been criticised for the Res 3 farce.

By mentioning Steam you are sidestepping the issue I am talking about which is the requirements for the patching of PC games. The release and patch later culture does not exist with console developers and it is a situation that is to the detriment of the PC games market.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

Assasin's Creed was released four years ago, Skyrim is not a console exclusive and Sony have been criticised for the Res 3 farce.

By mentioning Steam you are sidestepping the issue I am talking about which is the requirements for the patching of PC games. The release and patch later culture does not exist with console developers and it is a situation that is to the detriment of the PC games market.

Oh I get it. So disregard Steam, Impulse, Origin etc (because they make patching easy?), and if it's on another platform it doesn't count either? And Res 3 was just a fluke? I see how this works..

There have really been no console games released that had bugs and were patched? huh, I must pay better attention to the console news I skim past because I could have sworn I read..

And where do you get this BS about required patches for PC games? Do you mean patches are required for them to work at all? I'm pretty sure that's extremely rare. I play plenty of PC games all the time and I'm fine. I don't have a problem devs patching to remove bugs, optimizing etc, that's expected. No game will ever be bug free. That's why I like that patching is made painless, non-disruptive and quick with Steam.

 

[Veliko]

Oh I get it. So disregard Steam, Impulse, Origin etc (because they make patching easy?), and if it's on another platform it doesn't count either? And Res 3 was just a fluke? I see how this works..

There have really been no console games released that had bugs and were patched? huh, I must pay better attention to the console news I skim past because I could have sworn I read..

Steam, Origin and Impulse are the delivery mechanisms for patches but that is not what I am talking about.

I never said that console games didn't have bugs or patches for them either, I said that there was a culture amongst the PC developers to purposefully release an unfinished game that they will patch later. Games have to be approved by MS, Sony or Nintendo prior to being released so this culture hasn't manifested itself in the same way that it has for the PC.

And where do you get this BS about required patches for PC games? Do you mean patches are required for them to work at all? I'm pretty sure that's extremely rare. I play plenty of PC games all the time and I'm fine. I don't have a problem devs patching to remove bugs, optimizing etc, that's expected. No game will ever be bug free. That's why I like that patching is made painless, non-disruptive and quick with Steam.

I have a problem with the amount of bugs that are present in PC games prior to their release. I am not asking for bulletproof games just a decent, finished product. Steam has made the delivery of patches far less disruptive but the need for the patches is still as disruptive as it ever was.

There are many cases (BF3 being one recent example) of games being worse for some people after a patch. I am glad that the option to release patches after release is there but it is a feature that has been abused by PC developers for decades now.

 

[ShawnD1]

While on consoles games just work.

Truf. I started another playthrough of Fallout New Vegas and it was going good for the most part. Suddenly it started crashing at the same point. I walk over this rock, the game crashes. wtf? I read a thing online about sound codecs and it says disable the codecs. I go into ffd settings and see that it's already disabled. Alright then, I'll do the opposite. I'll put ffdshow at super high priority and let it run in Fallout. Now the game works. After dicking around and reading articles and watching youtube videos, it finally works. The console versions of Fallout suck but at least they work most of the time.

Console gaming seems to be getting worse just as quickly as PC gaming is getting worse. On the PC, I was having problems playing Fallout because my connection was down and I couldn't get it to run in offline mode. On my PS3, I tried launching Netflix and it bitched about needing to update. It starts to update, and the update fails because the PS3 wireless is so unbelievably crappy. Arrggg!!

I miss the days of SNES and Genesis. Put the game in, it works. Done. No bullcrap.

 

[Pacman4]

Pacman, you sound woefully ignorant about why people play on games consoles.

You sound woefully ignorant regarding the dumbing down process PC gamers have to suffer thanks to consoletards.

 

[Pacman4]

People bang on about how cheap consoles are. In my experience though, they are not.

Good point, and your experience sounds a lot like the articles example.
I'm reacting to the belief that consoles are about the same as PC and much cheaper, but in reality, the PC is the champ for nearly everything, of course there are exceptions, but way too many people have abandoned PC gaming in favour of console exclusivity and then have the nerve to criticize the PC.

 

[Veliko]

You sound woefully ignorant regarding the dumbing down process PC gamers have to suffer thanks to consoletards.

What does this have to do with what we are discussing?

 

[Veliko]

Good point, and your experience sounds a lot like the articles example.
I'm reacting to the belief that consoles are about the same as PC and much cheaper, but in reality, the PC is the champ for nearly everything, of course there are exceptions, but way too many people have abandoned PC gaming in favour of console exclusivity and then have the nerve to criticize the PC.

If someone decides to stop playing on the PC and play on a console instead there will be reasons for that. Exactly what is wrong with these people then voicing the reasons?

 

[Pacman4]

Assasin's Creed was released four years ago, Skyrim is not a console exclusive and Sony have been criticised for the Res 3 farce.

By mentioning Steam you are sidestepping the issue I am talking about which is the requirements for the patching of PC games. The release and patch later culture does not exist with console developers and it is a situation that is to the detriment of the PC games market.

LOL, you really are full of shit my friend, even numerous examples and common knowledge that consoles require patches doesn't seem to deter you.
Don't get me wrong, releasing games with show stopping bugs annoys the hell out of me, and is one of the reasons I've not bought Batman or Skyrim as yet, however, consoles aren't the plug and play experience you're pretending they are.

 

[Veliko]

LOL, you really are full of shit my friend, even numerous examples and common knowledge that consoles require patches doesn't seem to deter you.
Don't get me wrong, releasing games with show stopping bugs annoys the hell out of me, and is one of the reasons I've not bought Batman or Skyrim as yet, however, consoles aren't the plug and play experience you're pretending they are.

Yes they are. What console games haven't worked out of the box and required patching in order to be played?

 

[ShawnD1]

You sound woefully ignorant regarding the dumbing down process PC gamers have to suffer thanks to consoletards.

Duke Nukem Forever is a great example. PC games are typically complicated with lots of buttons and customization. In WoW, all of the number keys do something. In Quake, there are 8 numbers for 8 weapons. This is too many buttons for a console controller, so it needs to be stripped down. Games like Halo or Gears or Duke Nukem Forever have 2 guns at once. That reduces it down to only 1 button (switch weapon).

I hate consolization so much. Part of what made classic games like Duke Nukem 3D fun is how much the gameplay changes just by changing your gun. Do you want to use the powerful ice gun that is prone to missing at distance shots or do you want to use the shotgun that is more accurate? Do you want to shrink those flying things that shoot rockets, or shoot rockets back? You can play the game 30 times over and no two playthroughs are exactly the same.
I tried Gears of War and found that it had no variation. I end up using the same guns at the same parts every time. The lack of complexity removes all replay value that this otherwise amazing game would have.

 

[Veliko]

Duke Nukem 3D was released on the consoles as well and there was nothing complex about it.

Duke Nukem Forever was a PC game that was released 8 years too late.

 

[Pacman4]

Yes they are. What console games haven't worked out of the box and required patching in order to be played?

Which PC games are in the same boat?

 

[Veliko]

Which PC games are in the same boat?

A quick Google gave me these.

Mass Effect
Empire Total War
Hellgate London
Oblivion
Morrowind