PC Gaming and the problem with parity.

I love my PC I really do and whilst I've probably spent more time gaming on my PC this past year or so than the PS4 Pro, the cold truth for me at least is that I've had a more enjoyable gaming experience playing the PS4 exclusives.

Disclaimer: I play mainly single player games. My online gaming is restricted to MMO's.
 
I have not gamed on a PC since BF2142 days, The cost even then, hassle with crap services like Origin at the time and the lack of room to home a PC turned me to console, with the talk of MS probably adding mouse keyboard support to the Xbox do any of you think you might change over, I'm quite keen to try the K/M when it arrives for FPS games as that felt much more comfortable for me, and then use a pad for everything else.
 
Blown away with my 34" superwide monitor, RPG and RTS games look amazing in it.
I enjoy the hardware side of computers and this community.
Mouse and keyboard
Indy titles and the odd gem that comes out.
Total war series
 
NZXT30 said:
You'll be back to PC before the end of the year once you realise how bad consoles and their online communities are.
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I very rarely play online games (BF1 being the main exception).

I enjoy single player games far more and I think everyone can agree that the PS4 exclusives are amazing SP games.
 
As i've stated before, there are many aspects of consoles i don't like i.e lack of a open digital market, it's closed nature, it's reliance on retail (i hate physical media and value space), no free online gaming, pay-walled features, ***** network speeds, lack of original IP, a non existent strategy genre, almost no mod support, it's focus on AAA and sequels, lack of I/O options, adverts embedded within the interface, only 1 of the 3 support digital refunds, etc.

The only thing going for consoles is first party exclusives. That's it. If i felt the need to play them, i'd wait until the generation is almost over, pick up the console for under £100 and buy the exclusives games for £10 or less, play them, then sell the lot.

The grass definitely isn't greener on the other side.

Also, it'll be VR that pushes PC hardware over the coming years. Not mediocre AAA console ports.
 
Not read all the pages but if you look at it consoles today are nothing but SFF pc's with a proprietary OS installed.

It's funny when you look at how much things got hyped all of a sudden because a console could finally do them. 1080P FULL HD!!!!!! pc gamers had exceeded that with 19x12 years previous. Sony and their cell processor which was a gpu, a cpu and a sound card....only when they got samples back they realised they must have been smoking the crack pipe so they went to nvidia hat in hand to get a castrated 7800gtx "reality synthesizer" for their console. :p

Used to be a massive difference, now its much smaller, frame rate, anisotropic filtering\anti aliasing and slightly better textures on pc is its only real advantage these days (besides having obviously superior fps controls). Game modding for the big triple A titles is all but non existent as devs would prefer to lock their engine down as much as possible to flog DLC instead of letting people make their own mods. Sad the way things are going, little mods like Counterstrike and Day of Defeat gave the "gold source" engine so much longevity long after it was relevant.

We played through the golden age of pc gaming now it's just games made with consoles as the primary focus. Top end rigs running half assed ports that somehow consume multiple gigs of ram, tons of cpu cycles and video memory due to their shovelware nature. The days of running quake 2 on a voodoo 2 and seeing how amazing it looked for the time are well behind us. :(
 
I enjoy small indie studios and will always always prefer PC Gaming for the hardware side to it and the community.

I will never change every console I've owned just hasn't met my PC elite standards.
 
Dabbled in PC gaming in the past 1997-2000 and had consoles since the Megadrive and bought a ps4 pro last year, and with the exception of BF1 and Uncharted I hardly use it.
Really prefer the better prices of games on Steam and the fact that even on a 1080p monitor it's a visually more pleasing experience than the ps4 pro. I really am bored of paying to play one game (BF1) online.

Really considering selling it and going PC full time when my psn runs out in October.
Just not sure?
 
I keep my PC for strategy games like planet coaster, cities skylines etc. Only when it can’t run those will I upgrade it and probably with second hand components.

Anything else it’s console all the way now for me. Can’t wait till PS5. Proper 4K gaming on console at last.
 
IMO the cost difference between PCs and consoles becomes negligible if you need a PC for anything more than basic admin.

Any kind of dev/creative/networking type work and you're going to need a PC costing 4 figures (or close to) anyway, so for me I'd rather spend that few hundred extra on a gaming GPU than on a console
 
Use my PC for photo editing and gaming. So I'll always need one.
Must admit I do prefer BF1 on the ps4 pro. Seems to be more players, and I just can't get used to using a keyboard and mouse, and when I use a controller I get slaughtered. Only thing that annoys me on the ps4 pro is the stuttering on Ameins the FPS drop is horrendous, on the PC is doesn't drop below 60fps ever.

My PC is hardly a super machine I5 7600k 4.8
RX480 and 16gb of Ram.

May but bfV for ps4 pro and keep the PC for everything else.

Will look to upgrade in 2019/20
 
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As a gamer of ... what ... 34 years? Here's my two pence... nothing has changed in that time. To quote Shirley, this is all just a little bit of history repeating.

If all you are doing is playing games which can be played with a DPad style console controller, on a TV, sprawled on the sofa then I can see the argument that PC gaming is less useful these days. Get a console. knock yourself out.

However, try playing a game like "DCS World", with some decent HiFi add ons, on a console and not only will it come grinding to a halt but you will come running back to the PC for proper controls, keyboard, mouse, TrackIR, advanced peripherals etc. Hint, ideal spec is a 1080Ti (or SLI) and 32Gb of system RAM.

There are many games which simply don't lend themselves to the console. Many "menu UI" based games are extremely irritating on console, even if you find and get a mouse working with it.

Not to mention with multi-monitor I can read the web while playing on PC, can't do that on a console which is a one application wonder.

More annoyingly there are games which want to take the large lucrative console gaming market and make compromises in the game to cater for that "casual console gamer" market.... promptly ruining the immersive experience the real hardcore gamers/simmers want. Case in point Project Cars. A racing simulator with high potential all but ruined by console kiddies. When they made things more realistic, such as in tyre heating and wear the console kiddies exploded because their rapid stabbing of buttons and mashing mini-sticks caused their tyres to melt and when told to play in "Arcade" mode they exploded again. Due to the large console market force the game reverted and STILL in Project Cars 2 some of the tyre issues remain and you have to drive like a console button masher to get them to heat up.

But this is not new. I remember in the days of the Amiga and Atari ST this same field levelling occurring, with titles retreating to the lowest common denominator so they could release a game on both platforms and port it to consoles easily.

So, yes, it really comes done to a few basic drivers about how you want to use the platform. If you are typically only playing games which are console-esk, released on console, ported to PC. If you don't do any actual computer work / productivity, then get a console and use your phone or a tablet for web browsing.

If you find yourself playing more involved simulation or management games where the console interface/controller is inadequate and using a TV does not provide the fidelity for the high res UIs required... or if you do productivity stuff, be that editing video, writing code, photo editing, electronics design, whatever, then a PC is probably better for you.

BTW, PC gamers are not helping themselves with regards to graphics. This obsession with higher FPS is hurting us. I remember when 30FPS was considered absolutely fine, 20FPS was perfectly fine and 10FPS was still usable. (Actually Flight Simulator (original) on the Spectrum 48k has a frame rate of about 1FPS). Today, while I can notice the difference between 30 and 60FPS it's not such a game changer really and 100FPS+ is just stupid, it's FPS for the sake of FPS and the benefit has long ago entered into the territory of diminishing returns and point scoring with benchmarks. My brother will spend 3 hours trying to get a higher frame rate on a game, then spend 10 minutes playing and get bored. However as this trend continues PC titles are optimising for high FPS and nobody is trying to push the video cards harder and harder into producing higher and higher quality graphics. This helps them port to console for 40FPS and PC where people can use 1080s for 80FPS and 1080 SLI for 100FPS. Lets double up the texture sizes on PC and see how many people can run at 100FPS. This would benefit us all more.

On TV use. If you really can't tell the difference between a TV and a monitor either your monitor is extremely cheap or your TV extremely expensive. That or you really are a console title gamer. High res menu/mouse/pointer style games where screen space is at a premium just don't work on TV. TVs typically use different panels to soften TV and have to provide "PC" or "Just scan" modes to make PC/Console content look at all acceptable and even then they look decidedly worse than a monitor. Desktop usually looks hideous on anything but a really expensive TV.
 
Yeah, I remember playing and enjoying Crysis maxed out except for aa and I would be getting around 21fps when it came out on my heavily overclocked 8800 GTS. As I hardly play first person shooter games online I still find most to be fine between 30-60fps with gsync. Can’t stand these world war simulatators personally. Let’s re-enact murdering our fellow humans, yay!

I much prefer IQ over FPS. As long as it is playable, I don’t care what the FPS counter says. Some games need 60 for me to enjoy, others 30 will do just fine. Imagine how good a game would look that was running 100fps where they spent 50% of that performance on graphics. I really want to see a game like Crysis made again that will push cards. Would be cool to see the line “yea but can it run xxx?” again :D
 
It's taken me about 2 months to warm to PC gaming with all its foibles and stuff but I do like having the extra freedom to choose resolution/framerate/etc. Just the crashing at random intervals with some games just annoys me.

I'm still eagerly anticipating the PS5/XboneTwo to see what they bring to the table though. I might be in cloud cuckoo land but if the majority of games run at 4K60 then I probably won't upgrade my PC.
 
ic1male said:
It's taken me about 2 months to warm to PC gaming with all its foibles and stuff but I do like having the extra freedom to choose resolution/framerate/etc. Just the crashing at random intervals with some games just annoys me.

I'm still eagerly anticipating the PS5/XboneTwo to see what they bring to the table though. I might be in cloud cuckoo land but if the majority of games run at 4K60 then I probably won't upgrade my PC.
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I don’t think majority will run 60fps purely because of devs. They will likely target 30fps and stick the grunt into graphics. Most console gamers are fine with 30fps from what I can see. 2-3 years later they will make a ps5 pro and allow you to upgrade to that if you want 60fps :p
 
ic1male said:
I might be in cloud cuckoo land but if the majority of games run at 4K60 then I probably won't upgrade my PC.
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Cloud cuckoo land indeed. Never going to happen. Someone should tell the peasants over on Resetera to pull their head from dreamland too, with regards to their expectations for next gen consoles. They expect an i7, 32GB of RAM, and a GPU equivalent of a 1080Ti for $400.

Anyway, i'm of the opinion that console gamers shouldn't be concerned with specs. It's a box you plug into your TV, play games, that's it.

If they want great hardware then they should buy a PC and pay for decent hardware, like everybody else. Otherwise, they should shut the **** up about specifications and continue to play popcorn games.
 
PaulCa said:
As a gamer of ... what ... 34 years? Here's my two pence... nothing has changed in that time. To quote Shirley, this is all just a little bit of history repeating.

If all you are doing is playing games which can be played with a DPad style console controller, on a TV, sprawled on the sofa then I can see the argument that PC gaming is less useful these days. Get a console. knock yourself out.

However, try playing a game like "DCS World", with some decent HiFi add ons, on a console and not only will it come grinding to a halt but you will come running back to the PC for proper controls, keyboard, mouse, TrackIR, advanced peripherals etc. Hint, ideal spec is a 1080Ti (or SLI) and 32Gb of system RAM.

There are many games which simply don't lend themselves to the console. Many "menu UI" based games are extremely irritating on console, even if you find and get a mouse working with it.

Not to mention with multi-monitor I can read the web while playing on PC, can't do that on a console which is a one application wonder.

More annoyingly there are games which want to take the large lucrative console gaming market and make compromises in the game to cater for that "casual console gamer" market.... promptly ruining the immersive experience the real hardcore gamers/simmers want. Case in point Project Cars. A racing simulator with high potential all but ruined by console kiddies. When they made things more realistic, such as in tyre heating and wear the console kiddies exploded because their rapid stabbing of buttons and mashing mini-sticks caused their tyres to melt and when told to play in "Arcade" mode they exploded again. Due to the large console market force the game reverted and STILL in Project Cars 2 some of the tyre issues remain and you have to drive like a console button masher to get them to heat up.

But this is not new. I remember in the days of the Amiga and Atari ST this same field levelling occurring, with titles retreating to the lowest common denominator so they could release a game on both platforms and port it to consoles easily.

So, yes, it really comes done to a few basic drivers about how you want to use the platform. If you are typically only playing games which are console-esk, released on console, ported to PC. If you don't do any actual computer work / productivity, then get a console and use your phone or a tablet for web browsing.

If you find yourself playing more involved simulation or management games where the console interface/controller is inadequate and using a TV does not provide the fidelity for the high res UIs required... or if you do productivity stuff, be that editing video, writing code, photo editing, electronics design, whatever, then a PC is probably better for you.

BTW, PC gamers are not helping themselves with regards to graphics. This obsession with higher FPS is hurting us. I remember when 30FPS was considered absolutely fine, 20FPS was perfectly fine and 10FPS was still usable. (Actually Flight Simulator (original) on the Spectrum 48k has a frame rate of about 1FPS). Today, while I can notice the difference between 30 and 60FPS it's not such a game changer really and 100FPS+ is just stupid, it's FPS for the sake of FPS and the benefit has long ago entered into the territory of diminishing returns and point scoring with benchmarks. My brother will spend 3 hours trying to get a higher frame rate on a game, then spend 10 minutes playing and get bored. However as this trend continues PC titles are optimising for high FPS and nobody is trying to push the video cards harder and harder into producing higher and higher quality graphics. This helps them port to console for 40FPS and PC where people can use 1080s for 80FPS and 1080 SLI for 100FPS. Lets double up the texture sizes on PC and see how many people can run at 100FPS. This would benefit us all more.

On TV use. If you really can't tell the difference between a TV and a monitor either your monitor is extremely cheap or your TV extremely expensive. That or you really are a console title gamer. High res menu/mouse/pointer style games where screen space is at a premium just don't work on TV. TVs typically use different panels to soften TV and have to provide "PC" or "Just scan" modes to make PC/Console content look at all acceptable and even then they look decidedly worse than a monitor. Desktop usually looks hideous on anything but a really expensive TV.
Click to expand...

I remember seeing this with some cars in Assetto Corsa over a year ago. No matter how hard I drove with wheel/pedals/stick, I couldn't get the tyres to heat up. I had to roast them. Once driving for many laps they went blue/cold.
 
I think value still strongly resides in the PC department.

I'm playing modded Skyrim [on a GTX 670 bought before the PS4 was even released) at 1080p with mods, enbs, textures which far far far outperforms any version of skyrim on a home console.
I have access due to my huge steam/origin library of around 400 games which can all be HD remastered (upped resolution..) at the click of a button and many of them can be modded to look out of this world compared to consoles.
If you are a bit edgy re:piracy, you get access to 4k upscaled Gamecube/Wii U/PSP/GBA/SNES etc. titles which normally if needed have fan mods to make them EVEN better than they are.
Control schemes wise, mouse a KB is king for so many games. I've played recently ME2 and Skyrim, both of which I could NOT have enjoyed without a mouse and keyboard. For complex inventory management and real time strategy...


So if that sinks in, a GTX 670 rig is still able to 1080p and output a fairly good picture. Now IMO that is value for money. Add in that a simple graphics card swap would give my rig another couple of years and PC gaming doesn't look THAT expensive given the backwards compatability.




Now the counter argument... and it all comes down to how much time we actually have to play games and of course EXCLUSIVE titles which the PS4 has. These exclusives somewhat can tip the scales in the favour of consoles. Some of my FAVOURITE gaming experiences of all time have sadly come from home consoles in the past 2-3 years (Bloodborne, BOTW, Super Mario Odyssey, Fire Emblem Awakening, Fire Emblem Conquest, The Last of US) but then again, games like Dragon Age Origins and Skyrim I would NOT have been able to appreciate or probably even get through on a console due to their inferiority.




If think if you're not chasing 100 FPS and playing on ultra, PC is still very very very good value. The sad truth is a lot of us get obsessed with gear .. whether its FPS, Hz, adaptive sync, chasing 4k, chasing ultra wide... and thats expensive... and thats when i think parity becomes an issue. If you treat your PC like you treat a console and let age gracefully, you will get parity swinging in your favour.


If I was starting from scratch today, it would be a very difficult question. PC has a HUGE price of entry. To get a PC + OS + KB + Mouse + Controller + Receiver + Bluetooth dongle is a pain in the butt whilst a home console includes everything you need to get going.



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BTW I'm glad people no longer debate which is the superior platform. I remember 5 years ago people tried to debate what was better, the PS3 or a gaming PC lol... taking into account my PC which is old plays Dark Souls just as good as the remastered version released today should speak volumes.
 
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