X360 vs PC Game Versions: Big Differences

james.miller · 14 Feb 2009 at 11:28

of course you cant. the arcade(and the 60gb more so imo) offers fantastic value for money. nobody in their right mind wouldnt argue with that.

now, if you said build a pc for the cost of a ps3........

ill also say ive had less fatal hardware problems with my pc's (none in fact) than you have with your 360 - its all been software.

FrenchTart · 14 Feb 2009 at 11:28

Ultra_Extreme said:
The real question is can anyone build a PC for 130 quid (the price of the 360 arcade) that competes?

And for those bringing up reliability issues, ive had 5 RROD 360's since launch, Thats a lot LESS problems than i get from the average high spec PC

The real question is can you upgrade your PC for £130 so that it competes? Answer: easily. You've already got a PC - nearly everyone has. And this is something that people don't seem to pay attention to.

I'm not sure that using 5 complete hardware failures as an example of how reliable a system is is a particularly great arguing technique either.

james.miller · 14 Feb 2009 at 11:34

Aekeron said:
The real question is can you upgrade your PC for £130 so that it competes? Answer: easily. You've already got a PC - nearly everyone has. And this is something that people don't seem to pay attention to.

playing devil's advocate here, thats not a great argument either. not everybody can just plonk a £130 gpu in their pcs (because that's basically what it would take). blimey, most pc's out there still dont have a pci-e slot. Then there's issues with power and all sorts of other factors to consider. its not always so easy to upgrade a pc with a budget of £100

simpletom · 14 Feb 2009 at 11:38

james.miller said:
playing devil's advocate here, thats not a great argument either. not everybody can just plonk a £130 gpu in their pcs (because that's basically what it would take). blimey, most pc's out there still dont have a pci-e slot. Then there's issues with power and all sorts of other factors to consider. its not always so easy to upgrade a pc with a budget of £100

You are only just touching on a point. Really, would most people want to bother doing it and why would they bother? They have no interest in the mechanics of the PC and use it for social networking, a bit of porn and email. They play their games on a console because it goes on the tv in the living room. It can be tucked away and is as plug and play as you are going to get.

PC gaming requires effort and that surely puts people off.

Saying that, I have just got Left4Dead via steam and enjoy it loads. I would prefer it on the 360 but I can't use the controller very well

FrenchTart · 14 Feb 2009 at 11:39

james.miller said:
playing devil's advocate here, thats not a great argument either. not everybody can just plonk a £130 gpu in their pcs (because that's basically what it would take). blimey, most pc's out there still dont have a pci-e slot. Then there's issues with power and all sorts of other factors to consider. its not always so easy to upgrade a pc with a budget of £100

I'm not particularly anti-console but I'm trying to make the point that the cost issue isn't as clear cut as a lot of people make out. For less than £100 you could easily upgrade a lot of modern PCs to the graphical equivalent of the xbox360, plus you've then got all the other things you can use a PC for rather than just a gaming/media machine.

simpletom said:
You are only just touching on a point. Really, would most people want to bother doing it and why would they bother? They have no interest in the mechanics of the PC and use it for social networking, a bit of porn and email. They play their games on a console because it goes on the tv in the living room. It can be tucked away and is as plug and play as you are going to get.

PC gaming requires effort and that surely puts people off.

That's about the best point made so far really. I can't really argue with it.

Typhoon · 14 Feb 2009 at 12:44

1280x1024 a greater res than most peoples Tele's the consols connect up to, you wouldn't need anything to special graphic card wise to play at that res. But yes, cdonsoles are far more plug and play than PC's.

Dark_Angel · 14 Feb 2009 at 13:01

Graphic wise my PC looks better in most games (dead space for example) some games I do prefer on consoles, and I like gaming on both equally.

Goldfingers · 14 Feb 2009 at 13:16

Just chipping in with this:

Xbox 360's arn't as cheap as you think, just looked into getting one. I think it's only fair to compair it to a PC if it's the 60gb console, with at least 1 year gold membership and for me (like many) I don't have a hd tv, so that's an extra £20 for a vga cable right there.

Console -£159.99
Xbox live gold - £35
Vga cable - £20

TOTAL ~ £215

For £235 you could buy :

Am2 mobo - £40
Athlon x2 5200 - £50
Ocz 2gb ram - £20
8800gt - £85
Seasonic 400w psu - £40

Which would upgrade pretty much anything to modern standards..

m4cc45 · 14 Feb 2009 at 13:24

simpletom said:
Patches are pretty much automatic on the 360. I remember OFP gold edition on the PC and it was a pain trying to find the right patch for the version you were running.

PC gaming eats into time and requires a fair amount of dedication. For example, upgrading components requires money, the installation and hoping there is not a clash with previous drivers or whatever. Software designers, while pushing the boundaries in the visuals stakes, have grown somewhat lazy. Consoles allow designers to work to a specification, which makes optimising a little easier.

I did enjoy modding OFP and AA, two games that really won't be seen on a console, but at the end of the day it is a time and money pit.

As for the old games. Well, there were some great ones but to play them now requires tolerance for shoddy visuals, crap sound and hardcore game play. Loading times were a nightmare. Things were new then, advancements in game tech were rapid. However, there was an awful amount of rubbish about. Rehashes of the same isometric format, poor arcade conversions, dodgy scrolling and brutal game play. We tolerated it because it was a novelty.

Well I never tolerated it. I enjoyed gaming. On every format there has been brilliant games. Games that pushed the boundaries. Games that made me want to own a computer. The thing is, at that time, the market was flooded with games. They cost £1.99 on the C64 and I played a hell of a lot of them. Yes there was crap (as there is on every format - just because you have a console doesn't meen you're not gonna get rubbish games) but the experience of playing games like Rainbow Islands, Bubble Bobble, Dizzy and the aforementioned games were brilliant.

If you don't want to mess around with patches then use Steam where it's all automated. You don't even need a CD for it so it makes it a much more viable platform than the consoles. I can't remember the last time I had driver issues. Installed Vista, installed latest drivers, forgot about it. And it's as stable as anything.

You may not want to own a PC which is fine, your choice, but it's not that cheap to own a console. Take the PS3 for example it was over £500 on release.

M.

skullman · 14 Feb 2009 at 13:34

thevet said:
the only thing that lets bad company down is its control method using a ps3 pad(they suck for fast twitch fps games),but if you play the game using "xim" which enables me to use my logitech keyboard and mouse from my pc then its like playing battlefield 2 all over again!
Bad company has a far superior engine to bf2 and is just as good as bf2 if not better in my opinion.....my bf2 account....
http://bf2s.com/player/44395510/

Also you get to "own" the console players with there inferior pads...i never ever finish a game under 5th place and thats is classed as a bad round for me

Fail.

atpbx · 14 Feb 2009 at 16:28

simpletom said:
Patches are pretty much automatic on the 360. I remember OFP gold edition on the PC and it was a pain trying to find the right patch for the version you were running.
.

I have never had this problem with any game in nearly 12 years of PC gaming.

I put the disc in, I install the game, I play it.

I cant think of single instance where I have had to faff around doing anything to get a game working.

AWPC · 14 Feb 2009 at 19:02

Margaret said:
So how does the 360 version that runs at 30FPS run smoother than your PC version at 60? Come on I wanna know.

1920x1200 vs 1280x720, how does the 360 version look better then?

1: The load/save game menu is instant on the 360. PC has a minor loading or decompression delay. As are some of the other ingame menus which all seem to take longer to appear on the PC. Big part of the game experience this as you need to go into the menus a lot.

2: The 360 version looks slightly better to me as my 360 is set on the dashboard to 1920x1080 so my 360 upscales the 720P game image to 1080P. The smoke in particular on the 360 is more dense than the PC version and the FPS when there is a lot of smoke & other debris on screen at once is more consistent. PC does have slightly sharper textures but it makes little difference as the textures are pretty low res & undemanding anyway. I would say its a tie for image quality overall as 360 has better shader FX & 2xAA but PC has slightly better textures although no AA.

This all goes back to my original point that the PC is for some X360 ports getting not even the same but slightly inferior 4 year old gfx card shader FX as some devs are obviously aiming very low with their target spec even though you need a recent PC to run the games smoothly your still not getting a superior experience vs X360.

skullman · 15 Feb 2009 at 01:52

The AA on the console versions of Dead Space is just a blur filter. Like quincunx-AA helping to smooth out the jaggies without the performance hit. Problem is the blur ruins the image quality and detail is lost. The link in post#2 containing comparison screenshots shows evidence of this. Not sure if the PC version features the same technique but i'd take a higher res and sharper image & textures any day over a low res running with a blur filter or 2xqaa.

It seems the other games also featured in those comparison shots the PC wins every time on iq.