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PCs

94 (91.3%)

Consoles

7 (6.8%)

Hand-helds

2 (1.9%)

Total Members Voted: 103

[Sean Mirrsen]

No, but unless EA completely overtook the entire PC gaming scene, there would still be good quality options.

[Mfbrew]

Handheld is the best for passing time on the bus/train/etc.

Console is best for parties/friends and for gimmicky games (zapper gun, wiimote, dance pad, etc)

PC is best for mods/hardcore gaming/online multiplayer and the indie scene.

[Funk]

Oh and player-modifications. You almost never see those on console, but when you do the mods screw with you (Whatever that sackboy game was called).

mods make good games great,look at
half life
morrowind
civ2

[LeoLeonardoIII]

That is what I meant. But those mods aren't available for the console versions, are they? So that supports me saying that PCs are better than consoles if you care about mods.

[nenjin]

But in PCs versus Consoles, there are different views. On one hand, consoles are BUILT for gaming and are much less prone to have errors in their games.

I was going to avoid posting in this thread but....seriously? Seriously? Here, Gamespy is even on the money today with an adequate reply.

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/109/1091650p3.html

http://media.gamespy.com/columns/image/article/109/1091650/the-people-who-make-videogames-are-lying-to-you-20100520024924730.jpg

When the PS3 was announced, you know what their big selling point was? The Bluray player. Modern consoles were designed as media centers in addition to being gaming platforms, something PCs had already done for a solid decade.

The benefits to a console are:

1) Standard hardware to develop around.
2) Developer kits that are provided to console developers
3) Investors with a vested interest in the success of the platform AND the success of the title.

That means, today, a lot of money and support gets pumped into console titles, producing a lot of AAA titles.

But please, they were not designed strictly for gaming. That's a fallacy that ended in 2004 when consoles began actively trying to replace PCs.

As far as technical stability goes....it's about as hit or miss as with PCs. RROD, anyone? Compare that to failure rates on PC hardware. Now that consoles are fully internet ready....they're also patching all their titles AT LEAST ONCE after release. So they're not really technically more stable than PC titles either; that comes down to the developers. The perceived stability is, again, a benefit of standardized hardware and development. Most PC game issues stem from hardware mismatches, and people trying to play the newest thing on a 5 year old system set up.

I believe the true difference between consoles and PCs lies with developers; they're the ones that sign the deals to develop for consoles before PCs. That is the major change we've seen in the last gen of consoles. They have much more clout, they've got developer's attention, and now that MS and Sony provide plenty of support, it's actually easier to develop on consoles in many ways....as long as you're set on developing a console game. That's why the quality of PC ports has been utter shit lately.

Consoles can still lay claim to the 'stay connected with my buddies" angle that used to have merit back when everyone had to come to your house. XboxLive, PSN, you could just as easily replace that with the dozens of gaming networks available for PC and get the same experience, sans all their wonderful proprietary DLC and mandatory product registration. So that's not a perk that's really honest either; that's marketing baby.

In the end, I encourage people to go PC because it teaches them to maneuver in a technological world with an iota of self-sufficiency. I've taught friends who were computer illiterate to do things like install their own drivers, understand their configuration settings and solve their own problems. It's made them more technologically aware than if they just plugged into their console and played by the rules. I also believe that PCs, although increasingly less, offer people a much more diverse line up of games to play. The consoles are catching up, with their cheapo titles that they're starting to fund and distribute, but you still can't beat the sheer variety PC games offer.

And lastly....let's not forget that you now pay a premium for console anything. MS's pricing policy on peripheral hardware is predatory, and that's being nice. Console titles are now default $10 more expensive than PC titles, and lucky us, publishers are using that to justify bumping the price on PC titles now too.

I can really only say that if you have money to burn, sure, go console. Most of the people I know that have one or two consoles have them because they had the money and were like "yeah, I feel like dropping ~$500 today."

[Mfbrew]

Also, don't forget that all console games eventually become PC games thanks to emulators.  A computer built 10 years from today is going to be able to store every ps3/xbox360/wii game ever made, on one hard drive, and probably play them all better than the original system.  Just like how you can build a mini itx computer inside an NES case that can play every snes/nes/gameboy/genesis/etc game today.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Or you buy the last gen stuff. Wait until the last of the new consoles manufactured in a generation and pick it up then. Your games will be used, but $5 - $10 each.

Or just go PC and play whatever.

Also, don't forget that all console games eventually become PC games thanks to emulators.  A computer built 10 years from today is going to be able to store every ps3/xbox360/wii game ever made, on one hard drive, and probably play them all better than the original system.  Just like how you can build a mini itx computer inside an NES case that can play every snes/nes/gameboy/genesis/etc game today.

Of course this is illegal and nobody would ever do such a thing, even if they claimed it was the best possible thing you could do for a variety of reasons, including the ones you gave above.

[nenjin]

I disagree that they'll run better too. At least my experience has been with stuff from the Xbox/PS2 era, there's some proprietary stuff going on there that emulators don't handle well. The same is true with a lot of Nintendo products. Whether or not that's legal....when I have to go to ebay and pay someone 200% the cost of the original title because no one carries it anymore...yeah, copyright can suck it.

[HideousBeing]

I like my PC because I like the keyboard and mouse and that my PC is superior in hardware to modern consoles. Also I'm a customizations whore. I like consoles because they usually support more than one person, don't need to install anything and they try to push out new ideas for gaming (well nintendo tries...).

TBH though I generally like PC games better and they generally give more replay value, but I couldn't say one is superior to the other.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Or you buy the last gen stuff. Wait until the last of the new consoles manufactured in a generation and pick it up then. Your games will be used, but $5 - $10 each.

Or just go PC and play whatever.

Also, don't forget that all console games eventually become PC games thanks to emulators.  A computer built 10 years from today is going to be able to store every ps3/xbox360/wii game ever made, on one hard drive, and probably play them all better than the original system.  Just like how you can build a mini itx computer inside an NES case that can play every snes/nes/gameboy/genesis/etc game today.

Of course this is illegal and nobody would ever do such a thing, even if they claimed it was the best possible thing you could do for a variety of reasons, including the ones you gave above.

Dingoo. Pandora. Dingoo even went so far as to include company-made (though admittedly crappy) emulators for many first- and second- generation systems, without the ROMs of course. I should note that they're both handheld.

And yes, my sarcasm detector is tingling.

[nenjin]

What games are on console or PC is quickly becoming irrelevant. What I think prevented more PC/console titles in the past was the effort it took to port a PC game to a console. The cost/time didn't meet sales. Now that consoles are much closer to PCs in terms of architecture, it's easier to port from console to PC, and do it quickly to make your money. But then you get lots of crappy ports too.

So when I say PCs offer more variety, in truth it's mostly older games. Stuff like the $10 anything on Steam can run on any of the consoles just as easily, only no one has made the effort. I think we'll be debating less in the future about what games you get to play on PC versus consoles....and more about what the experience is like.

Again, that Gamespy article is apropos:
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/109/1091650p7.html

Rockstar games are kind of a test bed for this; GTA4 played differently on each of the consoles and the PC (and the PC was the worst.) Same thing is happening with RDR right now, people are reporting different quality of play for each console. A port to the PC is probably due in a year. I'm not sure what an ideal future looks like here, but hopefully it would be one where I didn't have to worry about my platform, and that the choice between PC and console is about what services you want or need, and the level of control you want.

[Mfbrew]

What'll be really cool is when we have a PC emulating a console emulating a console.   Or a PC emulating a console emulating a PC running DF with a Turing complete computer made with self-referencing artifact mechanisms

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Each level of emulation reduces efficiency though. Say you emulate a Super Nintendo. You need to spend more processing power than the Super Nintendo used to get it to run.

Now as long as you have surplus processing after that, you can say your computer can run it better.

However the emulator may fail in some way to emulate the hardware or software properly. More likely the hardware, I'd guess.

So if you have a Mac emulating PC emulating Linux emulating a 360 emulating DOS emulating an NES (assuming that's even possible?) you'd have to have a really powerful Mac to get it to work right.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Mac->PC is possible. PC->Linux is possible. Linux->360 not so much. I don't think there's any decently working emulator for a 360 yet. You can swap out 360 and generic "PC" for Mac->Vista->Linux->XP->DOS->NES. You'll need about 4 gigs of ram just for the OSes, and a good multi-core with good virtual machines, but it's possible on today's hardware.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Awesome!

...

SNES emulating an Atari? Or is that stretching it