Console gaming traditionally trailed way behind proper PC gaming. Mostly this was for technical reasons, the consoles simply didn’t have the same grunt and flexibility as the PC did. This did change in a big way though when the fifth-generation consoles such as the 360 and the PS3 was released several years ago. At the time, the consoles could finally stand on a somewhat equal footing in technical merits compared to the PC.
That was more than five years ago, and while the consoles have been frozen in time, the evolution of the PC in terms of hardware, has proceeded as relentlessly as ever. The vast majority of games these days are published for both the consoles and the PC, and for us PC gamers it manifests itself in some perks and some drawbacks.
The Perks:
The biggest perk of playing games that are also published for consoles is that since the consoles don’t have nearly as much oomph, yet get priority from developers these days means that you don’t need to upgrade your computer as feverishly as you used to. My current computer is ticking in at about a year and a half in age, and while it was a bit of a beast when I built it, it still has no problems whatsoever in running the latest games at high resolutions with all the bells and whistles. This is because the developers are forced to adapt their games to fiveplus-year-old hardware.
Running the latest and greatest games such as Rage, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and so on at resolutions greater than what the consoles can output is no problem. Had this been 2003, my computer would have struggled with then-current games if it was the same relative age. These days, not so much a problem. I doubt I’ll have to make any major upgrades to this machine for the next year.
The Drawbacks:
One of the drawbacks is precisely the same thing as above. Since consoles are less meaty, games have to be squeezed into them. This in turns mean us PC gamers have lost that feverish development pace where each year games pushed the technological envelope even further. Yes, Rage is pretty despite all it’s glitches – but it’s not up the standard I would’ve expected from iD Softwares latest game engine. Why? Because it’s aimed at consoles, with limited texture memory and limited processing power. It might look really pretty on a 360 but on a PC it looks a bit underwhelming. I wasn’t impressed. Crysis for the PC was amazing, and Crysis 2 (which had to be shoehorned into consoles unlike its predecessor) was a big flop for me. In my not-so-humble opinion the first Crysis was much prettier, and performed better. Deus Ex looks pretty much the same on both consoles and the PC, but consoles can’t manage much of the finer details such as high FSAA and texture detail as the PC can, and is somewhat hampered by the puppety-looking characters.
Another and much bigger drawback is that consoles limit the nature of games. Have you ever seen a RTS on a console? No. Basically consoles only need arcade-style games such as racers, or they work with shooters. The more subtle and refined types of games are lacking. Even shooters get dumber and dumber since consoles are limited in their controls and storage space. Add to this, my experience is that the majority of console gamers are spastic teenagers hopped up on caffeine, and generally PC gamers are a bit more refined even though we of course also suffer from the occasional twitchy teenager shouting obscenities in Team Fortress 2. But generally speaking my experience is that PC Gamers appreciate a more mature gaming experience. A while back Crytek (developers of Far Cry and Crysis/Crysis 2) whined about this. Consoles are holding PC gaming back. I agree.
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So, that was my thoughts on that. And yeah, I expect to take some flak for what I’ve written. But they’re my opinions. I don’t expect everyone to agree with them.
