PC -vs- Game Console

Re: PC VS Game Console

I have friends who are staunch fans of consoles, even friends with killer machines (computers) but I am a hard core like alot of you. I see the whole console thing taking resources from me. If game developers weren't so dang busy making console titles, I would have more FPS's to play.

Down with all your consoles.....

And yes, I can feel the heat comming on.....

Bottomless Pit

I'm sure this has been done before, but hey I want to do it again..

The PC just seems to be a bottomless pit - where you can spend an infinite amount of money, upgrading all the time - take for examples with the GeForce 3 and 4. The GeForce 3 hardly had a chance before it was superceeded..by the next generation, much like with everything else with pc's.

At least with consoles you just get the same platform for at least 3 years - giving developers the best chance to get the most out of the system, before the next console is released. And when it is released, you're only forking out about £300/$300, wheras you could spend that every 6 months on a PC.

We all know that the PC can do more than the consoles, but only because your paying so much, to buy the thing in the first place, and then upgrading it to keep up with the latest games..

It's an expensive hobby.

I think that's the defination of " hobby" an activity to use up slight more time and money than it should.
If all you are interested in is console type games, go with the console, the PC has many more capablites, but if you don't/won't use them it would be overkill to buy one.
a reasonably upto date, very capable computer doesn't have to be expensive, unless you fall in to the trap of "needing" every "latest and greatest" component, and with careful purchase many parts can be moved to a new system.
V.S.
a console if you bought the newest one every time there is an upgrade, plus all the controllers, and add ons, at the end of it's life cycle few parts are forward compatible, so you start over. to me that's very expensive.

I agree that upgrading PC is expensive, but no one is forcing you to upgrade to the latest hardware etc. That is your choice.

And just because you upgrade, doesn't mean that the old components are useless, they will happily suit a lower spec machine, which you can then sell to fund your next upgrade

As for consoles - Who wants to by an out of date console?, at least older PC's are still useful

Yeah but my PC can emulate almost any console anyway

I believe the game console will die out soon, once the PC becomes the all in one wonder that it is supposed to be. As the chips keep getting faster and the drives can hold more info., there will really be no reason to use a game console. A PC can be used for basically anything, hence it is not made specifically for gaming so it is not optimized for that either. Still I believe soon enough the PC will get to the point to where gaming will be unrivaled on a PC when compared to a console.

In my honest opinion I believe gaming consoles are only still around because the older generation still crave for them, remembering the good old days of playing on the Atari or Nintendo. That and the fact that massive hard drives aren't standard yet on modern PC's although they will be soon. As processor speed keeps increasing expotentially better and better graphics will be produced allowing for a better quality gaming experience on the PC and the console.

I think sometime in the next 20 years the monitor will replace the TV as the dominant screen to watch TV shows and movies and whatnot on. It is inevitable that this will happen but to the number of movies and TV shows being pirated and the fact that nearly all the newest graphics cards come with stanard TV out ports.

Well, I guess I've rambled on enough about this so I'll stop now. Remember these are just my opinions.

My PC can easily emulate a DC, admittedly not fantastically. As for the PS2, developers have had a hard enough time coding for the PS2, let alone people trying to write a PS2 emulator. XBOX and Gamecube are not realistic to be emulated at the moment though simply because noone know's enough about how they work yet.

As soon as hackers etc. crack Micro$ofts protection in the XBOX, it should be easy to get XBOX games running on a PC, since the XBOX basically is a PC.

With respect to Money-to-performance ratio, I think, consoles are a better deal. A latest console these days can get you a powerful graphics chip and sound system, a cpu, an optical drive, a mainboard to connect everything to, all for around $200. With PCs, $200 can get you the latest graphics card alone. You will have to spend more for the other components and will probably end up troubleshooting due to software/hardware incompatibilities.

Consoles are a great deal for anyone who's into gaming and doesn't have a lot of money to spend on a PC. Games will ship-out to store shelves with little to no bugs in them due to game optimization for a single system.

If you already own a Gigahertz-caliber PC with a Radeon 8500, then buying a console may be a waste of money.

i have to disagree with you on that. IMO, as i have mentioned a hundred times, it's not the hardware that matters, it's the games. what good in buying phantasm's ASCI White if you can't play games on it (say your primary purchase is gaming)?
and according to an article i read, the console is more popular as a gaming machine than the PC in japan is because it takes up less space (which is an issue in japan)... cheaper..

The PC is an all-in-one gaming machine. One word: emulators

Love to see the PS2, XBox, GC or whatever have a PC emulator :stickout:

The idea of "Which is more powerful" is very relative, and not very fair. If you set the hardware down side by side, and compare a mid/high end PC, with say, a 1.5ghz CPU and a GeForce 4 Ti4200, (neither of which will set you back very much), and compare it to a console, the PC hardware would eat the console harware alive. Theres one big difference though. When a company like sony releases a console, the developer sets it down and goes, "Ok, this is what we have to work with. It has this CPU, this GPU, this memory, these features, and uses this media format." It's called closed hardware. They design the game to run on that hardware, and that hardware only, then they release the game. That's why 99.9% of the time, you will never find a game that is released with some fatal bug that crashes the game on some PS2's, but not all. Look at a game like Final Fantasy for PS1 for example. Final Fantasy 7 came out, and dazzled people with its graphics, which at the time, were astounding. Then Final Fantasy 8 came out, and pushed things even further. Then Final Fantasy 9. Things changed quite a lot from old hoof-hands Cloud to the swinging tail of Zidane. Did the hardware? No. It was all just programmers making better and better use of what was availible to them. PC game designers dont have that luxury. When they code a game.. it's necessary that the game runs on any number of CPUs, Video cards, sound cards, internet connections.. they dont have the option to optimize the game to an extreme and make it run beautifully on all systems. Just for an example, go look at the demo's on ATi and nVidias websites that show off the power of their video cards. GeForce 4's and Radeon 8500/7500's can do amazing things at high resolutions with high framerates, but only when programmers sit down and write the code that allows them to do so.

Just my $.02.

This has been debated for years, bottom line:

Consoles are the "AOL" friendly version of gaming. Exists for people who do not seek a gaming experience beyond the limitations set forth by Software Developers or kids 8-14 years of age. Does not have the complexity or expandability that PC games bring to market THUS making gaming as easy as AOL. Screen resolution is set to 800 x 600 - 1024 x 768. Games typically beaten in 1-5 days.

Personal Computers are the "NASA" version of gaming. Infinate expandibility, unlimited modifications, unlimited levels, unlimited multiplayer, unlimited customization, and while they do cost more are capable of astronomical full screen extremely high resolution (2048 x 1800) gaming worth thousands of hours of fun in easily accessable online multiplayer environments.

They are the same, people!

Okay this thread has a lot of good points, it seems to me that you are all missing out on the fact that a console is a computer is a pc.

They just have different demographic targets and different ways of making profits for the manufactures.

Think of the typical PC as a wildly successful, expensive console, first designed to assist business and then on to gaming. The typical console as a gaming specific, stripped-down PC.

Can't we all just get along? :blush:

I see PC differently from consoles. It's true that I'll choose games on which console according to their genre, but I find the console less troublesome.

Console
- Just Pop' n' Play!
- You don't have to look at "System Requirements" when you are buying games.
- ALOT of titles to choose from (Although FFX is really the only reason why I'm working like a robot all day just to get a PS2)
- The controller. Sometimes it just beats the keyboard.

Talking about Life-Span. I've seen PS1 games running at 5fps! (Around that. It's my estimation) I don't know what's the title, but it's about a 3rd person shooting game (You view the scene, not through the character). I've seen FFX lagging the PS2. (When fighting your aeons before Yu Yevon) and I can't do anything about it!

My PC used to be suck at running games, but not that much ever since I upgraded my GF2 MX200 to GF4 Ti4200. Scalability, is the advantage of a PC. Another factor is the ability to change the amount of detail for many pc games which are converted from their console counterparts.

I would be a bit bias towards the console as my preferred gaming platform, because I treasure ease of use and time-saving.

Apples and oranges...

Games lagging on a console is pathetic; if you're not playing multiplayer. The game was designed for that system and that system alone. What the hell is it doing lagging?!?!?!