Are PCs still really less reliable than consoles?

[Eldritch Warlord]

I think the term you're looking for in relation to user error is fault tolerance, not reliability.

Is that meant to be an argument? Fault tolerance is a component of reliability.

So, to the OP.
Consoles are more reliable for two reasons (which I here illustrate with personal experience).

1 - If I was to purchase a 360 game I would do so with full confidence that it will work on my 360 and I have the assurance that if it does not work it is a problem with the game and I may trade for another copy at the retailer for no additional cost. If I was to purchase a PC game I am deprived of both comforts, sure I could be confident that it will work but I cannot be certain. If I should find that it doesn't work I have three options (all undesireable); leave the game to collect dust until I upgrade my PC, upgrade my PC now, or sell the game used.

2 - I can count on one hand's worth of fingers the number of crashes my two and a half year old 360 has suffered. To do the same for my laptop of 8 months I'd have to enlist the aid of a considerable portion of my extended family. Game related crashes only mind you.

That said, I do indeed recognize the many advantages of PC's over consoles as well as vice versa.

 

[crimsondynamics]

See, when I get my friends together, we usually party with supermodels and kiss them on the mouth. Why would you prefer a sausage party over that?

Because every once in a while, sausages can be mighty tasty.

Ever tried Merguez?

 

[geldonyetich]

This thread talks a lot about the hardware, but I suspect a lot of the PCs reputation for unreliability has to do with the software aspect. Sure, hardware is an issue when you've so many varying kinds of hardware being stitched together into a single computer, but the trouble with the software is a lack of quality-control. Too many PC games are released in poor condition, requiring patches, many never truly stabilize.

If consoles have a leg up on their reputation for stability, it's mostly this: the console developers make it hard for games in poor condition to be released for them. (Granted, their record isn't perfect.)

 

[Xojins]

You can't really compare them, they're dominated by very different demographics.

 

[jamesworkshop]

How I see it Pc has less reliable software, check out gothic 3: forsaken god and besides the bugs the voice acting is terrible.
Consoles has less reliable hardware like the laser in the PS2 or the RROD for the 360 but to be fair bugs are creeping in as fallout 3 has bugs on every system probably rushed for x-mas than any sort of programing issues.

 

[Sewblon]

It all depends on who made the PC, its compenents and its opperating system.

 

[L McD]

When they do go wrong you have the option to simply buy a new one. An Xbox360 now costs as much as a mid range graphics card alone (at least UK prices).

My PC now can do everything I need it to do. It is adequately upgraded to play the X series of games and thus I will not bother spending any more money on it. The entire rat-race of upgrades is frankly retarded. Consoles are constant, and are future proof for at least 5 years. My 8800GTS graphics card was top class when I got it waaaaay back in the summer of 2007, now it is obselete. If I want to use it to play the latest PC games I must upgrade again. I purchased my first Xbox back in 2006 and it is still cutting edge and likely will be until at least 2010.

This is the other problem with PC games (after them being criminally bugged) - they tend to only run properly on the best hardware available when they are released. This is a retarded dick move by the game companies as this wipes out about 90% of your target market.

You know this is a blatant overstatement, games are designed to run on older hardware. Most modern games are still compatible with old Pentium 4 proccesors and can run on 1 gig of RAM. They obviously won't run on the highest settings with perfectly smooth gameplay but that's why PC games have graphics options.

And about your graphics card, no offence but your doing something wrong. My second-hand 320MB 8800 GTS can still run any game I throw at it on at least High settings, apart from Crysis where I have to tone down some things to Medium, and that's perfectly fine for me. This card will probably keep running most games for 2-3 years probably, you know why? Because of consoles. An 8800 is a better graphics card than either of the current consoles have so it will be able to run any game that's also on the PS3 or 360 until the next-generation of consoles come out.

Sure if you want to run every game perfectly on the highest possible settings then you will need to upgrade every year or. However if you're perfectly fine with decent settings you'll only want an upgrade every 2-3 years really.

 

[mike1921]

This thread reminds me that my computer kicks ass except for the processor (2.8ghz)

PC = cheaper, easier and best of all, funner.

Cheaper: no
easier: HELL NO.
Funner: fun is pretty subjective. I personally don't want RPGs, most PC FPSs bore me or are on consoles, and RTSs are only fun if you're in the right mood. 3rd person asskickery like in DMC3 (screw 4 for being everything yahtzee said and way too easy, screw 1 for having a fucked up control scheme that makes asskickery impossible for me, and I never played 2) is always fun for me and wouldn't feel right on a PC.

 

[Gormers1]

It all depends on who made the PC, its compenents and its opperating system.

I once decided to buy a Dell pc to get things right instead of paying someone to build one for me. Oh how stupid I was.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

And about your graphics card, no offence but your doing something wrong. My second-hand 320MB 8800 GTS can still run any game I throw at it on at least High settings, apart from Crysis where I have to tone down some things to Medium, and that's perfectly fine for me.

And Fallout 3. And Farcry 2. And Devil May Cry 4. And GTA4.

If you really do have that graphics card, you can go and verify this for yourself [http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest]. So no offence but you are either completely wrong or are making stuff up.

What is so amusing is that every single one of those games works perfectly and looks fantastic on the good ol' Xbox360. In order to get them looking like that on a PC I have to shell out even more money.

How I see it Pc has less reliable software, check out gothic 3: forsaken god and besides the bugs the voice acting is terrible.
Consoles has less reliable hardware like the laser in the PS2 or the RROD for the 360 but to be fair bugs are creeping in as fallout 3 has bugs on every system probably rushed for x-mas than any sort of programing issues.

Basically, this is the case. It isn't so much the PCs as the games themselves.

 

[L McD]

And about your graphics card, no offence but your doing something wrong. My second-hand 320MB 8800 GTS can still run any game I throw at it on at least High settings, apart from Crysis where I have to tone down some things to Medium, and that's perfectly fine for me.

And Fallout 3. And Farcry 2. And Devil May Cry 4. And GTA4.

If you really do have that graphics card, you can go and verify this for yourself [http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest]. So no offence but you are either completely wrong or are making stuff up.

What is so amusing is that every single one of those games works perfectly and looks fantastic on the good ol' Xbox360. In order to get them looking like that on a PC I have to shell out even more money.

Fallout 3: All high settings, fine. Farcry 2: All high settings, fine. Haven't got the other two so I can't say.

According to SRLabs I'm safely past the recommended for all the games you've mentioned except for GTA4, for which I apparently should get a quad-core proccesor and 2.5 gigs of RAM (I have a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 gigs of RAM), my graphics card passed the recommended on them all though.

 

[cuddly_tomato]

Fallout 3: All high settings, fine. Farcry 2: All high settings, fine. Haven't got the other two so I can't say.

According to SRLabs I'm safely past the recommended for all the games you've mentioned except for GTA4, for which I apparently should get a quad-core proccesor and 2.5 gigs of RAM (I have a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 gigs of RAM), my graphics card passed the recommended on them all though.

No, you have passed the minimum required specs, not the recommended. If you have passed then you obviously don't have a 8800GTS 328MB, because SRlabs will fail every single one of those games on recommended required specs due to the 328MB of video RAM.

Devil May Cry 4:-
Video Card Features - Minimum attributes of your Video Card

Video RAM: Required - 512 MB , You have - 320 MB
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Vertex Shader Ver.: Required - 4.0 , You have - 3.0
Pixel Shader Ver.: Required - 4.0 , You have - 3.0


Fallout 3:-
Video Card Features - Minimum attributes of your Video Card

Video RAM: Required - 512 MB , You have - 320 MB
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Vertex Shader Ver.: Required - 3.0 , You have - 3.0
Pixel Shader Ver.: Required - 3.0 , You have - 3.0


Farcry 2:-
Video Card Features - Minimum attributes of your Video Card

Video RAM: Required - 512 MB , You have - 320 MB
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Vertex Shader Ver.: Required - 3.0 , You have - 3.0
Pixel Shader Ver.: Required - 3.0 , You have - 3.0

GTA4:-
Video Card Features - Minimum attributes of your Video Card

Video RAM: Required - 512 MB , You have - 320 MB
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Vertex Shader Ver.: Required - 3.0 , You have - 3.0
Pixel Shader Ver.: Required - 3.0 , You have - 3.0

I don't particularly care though. If the software devs behind those games want to perform appaulingly in terms of sales next to there console counterparts, that's none of my business. What is so amusing is that they will actually make games that don't run on the vast majority of PCs out there, and then when those games do so badly they will blame piracy, or the PC game industry being "in disarray", or anything except for the fact their target market is so tiny.

Now we have DX10 to add to the mix too. That means an OS upgrade which in itself costs as much as a brand new console and is completely unnecessary for anything except gaming (XP works fine). The industry is killing itself off and it's time the fanboys stopped pandering too it as they are part of the problem.

 

[searanox]

No you don't.

You just need to run them at the same pathetic rendering resolution as the Xbox 360 does.

If you tried rendering these games on the Xbox 360 at anything above 1280x720, it would choooooooke like a sassy hooker.

It's true. Most games on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 have a lot of cut corners, like low-resolution textures (compared to PC games), and often don't even run at a full 720p, much less non-upscaled 1080p. Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War both seem to be the poster children for how powerful and capable the Xbox 360 is, yet both games look worse than their PC counterparts, run at lower resolutions (in the case of Modern Warfare, it's something like 640p), and still only manage about half the average framerate that you'll get on a decent gaming PC (i.e. mid-range, nothing top of the line, but not some stupid piece of shit you got from Best Buy for twice the amount of money it's actually worth) at higher settings, resolution, etc. It's hilarious to see console fanboys debating over the graphics of the latest console games (Killzone 2 vs. Gears of War 2, go!), yet my computer, which is starting to show its age after a couple of years, can run Crysis nearly at highest settings (only limited by not having DirectX 10) at 720p with an average framerate higher than 30 fps. Add to that the fact that most PC games are targeted towards a very wide spectrum of hardware and thus are much harder to optimise, and yeah, your consoles are looking pretty pathetic right now.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Why are we arguing about graphics? Only a moron would argue that PC's in general have worse graphics than consoles.

The topic at hand is reliability.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

"In the early months after the console's launch, Microsoft stated that the Xbox 360's failure rate was within the consumer electronics industry's typical 3% to 5%.[7][8][9][10] Nevertheless, Microsoft has not released their official statistics on the failure rate of the various versions of the console; the company's press relations policy is to focus on the prompt resolution of any technical problems.[11]"

There goes reliability.

Yes, for Xbox 360 hardware. Have anything on the other's hardware or all three's software?