Will you head back to the consoles, or double down on PC gaming ? Fall 2013 - The Great Decision - Page 2

WARNING - Long rant about my PC gaming history (doesn't have much to do with the thread, lol)


I think a lot of this boils down to whether you were originally a PC gamer or a console gamer. Most of us started off as either one or the other, and then maybe we dipped our toes in the other one's water, but usually we come back home to where we were originally. I started off as an Atari gamer (yeah, I know, I'm old). I was on the console side of things with my Atari 2600. After a few years, my dad bought us an Atari 800XL computer. That was my first "dip" into the PC waters, but as anybody who had an Atari 800 knows, it came along before the whole "personal computer" thing happened. It may have technically been a computer, but I used it as mostly just a video game machine.

Around 1986, my Mom got me a NES. For 10 solid years I was 100 percent on the console side of things. I didn't know didly squat about anything PC related until about 1996. A friend of mine (who was also a gamer), was raving about how good Tomb Raider looked on his computer, and how it was leaps and bounds better than my Playstation version. He invited me over to check it out, and after seeing Lara Croft in all her 3DFx glory, I knew that I would be the new owner of a Pentium based computer and a 3DFx card. I think I started out with a Pentium 200 mmx or something like that. I had the VooDoo card in it, and I was off to the races. I still ended up buying a Nintendo 64 on launch day, and played it quite a bit, but the transition to PC gaming was underway. By 1998, I was a full blown PC gamer. I had already upgraded my PC several times, and was being totally blown away by games like Unreal and Half-Life. My Nintendo 64 and Playstation were collecting much dust in 1998 and 1999.

Then came e3 1999. I was lucky enough to be able to go to the show, and witness the arrival of the Sega Dreamcast. At that point in time, the Dreamcast looked like exactly what I wanted. Sega's NFL game looked amazing to me, as did many of the other games on display. When it arrived that September of 1999, I jumped on the bandwagon wholeheartedly, and my days as a "PC gamer" were numbered. I still had a gaming PC, and I would still play a few PC games here and there, but I was basically back to my roots as a console gamer.

The Dreamcast didn't last very long, but it didn't matter because the PS2 and Xbox were just around the corner. As my last gaming PC was now aging beyond the point of no return, I basically left the world of PC gaming, to never return. At least, that's what I thought. Little did I know that the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation would be drawn out for as many years as it has. I've always been an early adopter type. Normally, every 5 to 6 years there was a major gaming system released. I got my Xbox 360 in November 2005, and it was 2010, and I couldn't believe that not only was there not a new machine, no new machine was even on the horizon. I had heard from peeps on NeoGaf that if you're craving a new console, just build yourself a gaming PC, and enjoy higher resolutions and better framerates, and no tearing, etc, etc. I built a gaming PC in 2010 with the help of some peeps on here, and have now made the switch back to PC gaming.

Building this gaming PC rig wasn't quite the same as getting a new console, but it did provide a new gaming experience. I was playing basically the same games that I was playing on console, but playing them at higher resolutions with better framerates. Not quite a generational leap in terms of entertainment, but it still was exactly what the doctor ordered in terms of being so bored from the long, drawn out console lifecycle that we are in.

Now we are in the year 2013, and it looks like this long drawn out generation might finally come to a close this November. For me, it's going to be kinda interesting, because I'm going to be back into a scenario in which I'll likely have to choose between the two worlds. Since I started off as a console gamer, I'm always going to have a special place in heart for the console world. There is something truly special about opening up that box for the first time, and smelling that new plastic. You take the console out, and hook it all up, and you can't help but think of all the amazing experiences that it will provide. Building a gaming PC has it's own particular allure as well, no question, but I still think opening up a new console, and all the possibilities that come with it provide me with a bit more excitement... We'll have to see what happens....

The big advantage of the consoles games, early on, is going to be the fact that the game was targeted to a specific spec, and a specific machine. If you remember when the 360 first came out, it was doing things that we just weren't seeing anywhere, including PC. The graphics of the first NBA 2K game on 360 for example, with the realistic characters and the sweat, etc, etc. Remember the graphics from the first Fight Night ? The consoles will initially have that jump, mainly because development teams were working specifically with a console in mind, and trying to get that first game under their belts. Of course, when Oblivion came out in 2006, it got better on PC pretty fast, but needed a bunch of patches before it ran better than the 360 version. There are also going to be TONS of exclusives, by default. Sure, a bunch of these games will eventually end up on PC, but there could be a significant delay, and you have to wonder about the port.

Two years later, the quality of the PC should surge past the consoles again, but I think consoles will have the advantage, if only for a year or two. It won't be a "true" advantage, instead, it will be more of an advantage by default. The consoles will have the best content, but it won't having anything to do with PC's lacking any horsepower.

It's my personal belief that the 360 looked better than current PC games at that same time. There were certain games (Oblivion), that were definitely better on PC, but in most of the categories the 360 was better. It didn't last very long, but it did happen. The same thing happened with the PS3. When Motorstorm first hit, and the first Uncharted, at that time, those games were arguably more impressive than what was going on with the PC. Yeah, Crysis, Crysis, Crysis. One game.

It's not a question of whether PC's are ALWAYS going to be stronger than consoles. We know this. This has been proven time and time again. Of course, another thing has been proven time and time again. That when new consoles first launch (assuming they were designed to be powerful), for whatever brief moment, they reign supreme. I know it's not because they are more powerful. It's because they have all the top development teams specifically trying to create a game specifically for them. How good did GTA 4 first play on the PC ? Pretty crappy right ? It's because it was designed with consoles in mind. The consoles are going to have exclusive games like the PS3 had Motorstorm and Uncharted. Maybe Motorstorm on the PS3, could have been just as good had it been designed for the PC, but we'll never know. I was playing the Japanese import of Motorstorm during Xmas 2006, and let me tell you, the PC couldn't touch that game, for that brief moment in time. It was pure state of the art.

Now, is it because the PS3 was some kind of technological marvel ? No. It was because the developers had been working specifically to the PS3 spec, trying to tap as much power out of the machine as possible, and they came out with a game that was absolutely awesome for it's release window. (at least for me getting it about 4 or 5 months early )

You know, I was just thinking.... What if Sony and Microsoft make demands on 3rd parties to delay the PC versions of their huge console games ? For example, let's say that at e3, Fallout 4 is announced for the Xbox Infinity and the PS4 and the PC. Only thing is, the PC version won't be out in 2013 like the PS4 and Xbox Infinity version. Maybe it will be delayed for 90 days or so, as a courtesy to Microsoft and Sony. Maybe the same thing will happen with other huge next gen games coming to the new systems.


Were there any delays like that back in 2005 and 2006 ?