Originally posted by: StrangerGuy
Originally posted by: KruptosAngelos
StrangerGuy-
It is true, it's a lot cheaper to game on consoles. But 2 years after that console hit the market, PC gamers will be enjoying much better looking games, that's why hardware always needs upgrading. It's more espensive on the PC, but your games get upgraded too. You have to wait 4 years to buy a new console to catch up, whereas a PC person can upgrade their PC every 6 months if they really want to.
Much better looking. Sure. But are they much better
playing? Think not. It seems like the games which has the best graphics are always FPSes which follows the same old story-based "save-the-world" gameplay formula as the first Half-life 6 years ago. Some of the other PC genres such as RTSes, MMORPGs also didn't improved the gameplay factor much over these few years.
You can argue that console games also lacks innovation from the gameplay side, but at least consoles are much cheaper to play, and with next-gen consoles we may even see consoles overtaking PCs in the graphics sector.
IMO the majority of console games are short lived affairs focusing almost entirely on graphics and fluid action oriented gameplay. They grab the attention at first but quickly become tiresome. Multiplayer counters the short lived part of course, but any decent mplayer game has its equal on pc. Besides that the entire strategy genre is the sole domain of the pc - a signifcant thing wouldn't you say?
I do see the point. Console is released @ $400, graphics are amazing and presumely there are several decent games available. A brand new pc capable of running the latest games will cost $1200-1400 ish (i build my own). In my experience however, this same pc will still be running the latest games in 3 years with just a few hundred in upgrades. My wife's, my own and my stepson's all fit into this category. So, after 3yrs the pc gamer has ~$1700 invested and the console gamer ~$400 (assuming the cdrom still works, which is far from guaranteed, correct?). Of course the pc fills more than just a few roles but I don't need to go into that.
Now come the games. Like someone said, that's where they make the money. In my experience console games are $10 more expensive each time and last a fraction of the time, less than half the gameplay of pc games and that's not counting the massive rts, tbs and world domination games that are so popular on pc and have no presence on consoles to speak of.
Obviously consolers spend overall somewhat less over a period of years, but imo the difference is much less than some think it to be. Once piles of games are added in, extra controllers, memory cards etc, hell even replacement units - xbox and ps2 under heavy use don't last more than 3yrs or so right? My ps1 certainly didn't.
Graphics might sell more games now than they used to, but gameplay is what counts. Personally, I love wasd and mouse for FPS, I feel the monitor offers far greater quality than the television (and if you get into other display options for consoles the cost rockets far beyond that of the pc), and i have no problems resolving the occasional technical problem associated with pcs but absent from consoles.
Speaking of which I think that's a major factor too...I know guys who would never have the patience to deal with drivers/patches/slow stuttering gameplay, etc. These ppl will never come to pc. That's the one downfall for the pc: consoles can attract long time pc users but pcs rarely attract long time consolers due to the extra effort and sometime annoyances that come with the territory along with the deeper and more complex gameplay that inevitably makes the game in question somewhat more difficult to "get into." Console games grab the attention from the word GO and are designed as such.
I agree with some others here. It's apples and oranges and there will always be a market and room to expand for both platforms.
Hurray for games!
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