Platform of choice

[crownjules]

PC first. I have a 360 and I haven't bought anything for it in ages. I'm about to drop my Gamefly sub too because I usually play those games for 1-2 hours and then forget about them for a week before returning them.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I own a kickass PC rig and a PS3, I basically have the PS3 for 2 reasons, a handful of good exclusives such as Heavy Rain and Demon's Souls, Infamous 2 which are reasonably impressive, and the rest are coop games which are good for multiplayer with a few people in the same room such as beat em ups (soul calibur) and a couple of others (Resistance, Killzone etc).

There's also a couple of good arcade games which are worth playing, I happen to quite like Stardust HD, Burnout crash which is just a laugh when drunk, and some other things like Renegade Ops.

Honestly it's a pretty small collection and I wouldn't buy any of the games brand new for sure, the prices are just way too high, but with 2nd hand sales online being dirt cheap at £5 about 1/10th of the RRP it becomes worth it.

Basically the only time I play anything on the PS3 is when I literally cannot get it on the PC, if exclusives didn't exist I would not have a console, it's just a poor mans PC.

 

[gorcorps]

The problem I have with PC games is that it's a lot harder to find them on the cheap since a) they are released later than their console counterparts often (likely due to piracy) b) it's super easy to find used console games and c) I really only want to buy PC games through Steam.

And silly me, I like my 360 achievements (single handedly the best thing Microsoft has ever done in their favor for cross platform games).

Sadly, there are entire classes of games that don't exist on the PC, likely because they rely on a controller for a good experience.

That's exactly the opposite experience I have. There's not a single game on PC I haven't been able to find cheaper than on the consoles. What with all the online codes games require on consoles now, there's not much reason to buy used. Many PC games are still priced $10 lower than the consoles too. Games then go on sale so fast that you never have to pay full price for a game again. Amazon has good deals like 10-20 bucks back for preorders and stuff as well.

I'm shocked you can't find PC games cheap. Are you outside of the states?

 

[PrincessFrosty]

That's exactly the opposite experience I have.

Same here.

In the UK the console games RRP launch way higher than PC games, it's fairly typical to see RRP of £30-35 for PC games in stores on launch day and RRP of about £45-50 for console games. Often you'll find deals for both but the relative price stays about the same. It's no surprise the console business model is to sell the hardware cheap (cheaper than it costs to manufacturer) and then recoup those costs in royalties from game sales.

I never find particularly good deals for console games, the only way to guarantee a very low price is to buy second hand which I almost always do, all apart from a couple of exclusives I thought were really worth it (Demons Souls and Heavy Rain), the platinum titles idea for the PS3 is quite a good idea however, but mostly from the perspective of joining the platform a few years late once the games are older.

However brand new games on the PC often plummet in price on deals quite fast, especially over steam, if you shop smart on the PC you can get a lot of games for very cheap, the steam deals often sell packs of 20+ games for the price of a single console game (<£50), and you'll find yourself able to get AAA games free with hardware upgrades, video cards and CPUs often ship with the latest and greatest like BF3...there's nothing like that for consoles that I'm aware of.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I would just play everything on my PC if they were all tailored to the PC and no poor ports. Some ports are just bad (GTA IV), others are pretty decent but don't offer many graphic options.

I guess I'll have to pick and choose (exclusives not withstanding).

I disagree about GTA IV being a poor port. Sure, it was a buggy mess when it first came out, but now that it's had a few patches that I have a rig that can run it maxed out, it absolutely blows the console version away in every single visual aspect; better textures, better models, improved draw distance, better filtering, higher resolution and better post-processing effects, all running at double the framerate. It's not even close. And it's like that for every game, crappy port or not; the Assassin's Creed games may not be the best console ports, but I can run them at a higher resolution with 16xAF, 8xAA, 4xTRAA and still have a higher framerate than I see on a console...

My biggest issue with PC gaming has always been the lack of a good controller for certain types of games. A first person shooter works much better with a keyboard and mouse, but that setup is worthless for a racing game. But now that the Xbox 360 controller works on the PC? The controllers for a console and PC are now literally identical, and most current PC games, ports or originals, support the Xbox 360 controller natively. Take away that edge, and what do consoles have? They can be hooked up to a TV? So can my computer. They're cheaper? That's a big one, but it doesn't mean much to enthusiasts who are going to build a gaming PC regardless. Exclusives might be the last bastion of console gaming that remains a convincing reason to buy one and that knife cuts both ways.

My roommate is a die-hard console fan. He played the hell out of Skyrim on the Xbox 360. Went through 4 or 5 characters. He couldn't understand the appeal of playing it on the PC. And then he started a playthrough on my computer just to see what it was like. And he realized that not only were the graphics better, but there were mods that addressed some basic issues in the game, like being able to craft arrows, or adding new features like a smithy inside your house. Modding is something you really don't see for console games, because how could you? It's not possible.

I'm not saying that consoles are worthless; my roommate and I both have a PS3 and 360, and I have a bunch of other consoles dating back to the SNES. With all the advances made in PC gaming, the rise of HTPCs that can run games at better specs than consoles and increased controller support for PC games, the PC is making a very strong case for best gaming machine. It can do everything a console can, and the major inhibiting factor (the cost) is something most of us here don't care about. Unfortunately, that cost is also what dooms it to a lower market share than the 360 or PS3. And that's a shame. Because, honestly, it's just better at everything.