Misunderstanding PC gaming

[Daveman]

1. the cost of a pc is too high and you have to constantly buy new hardware.
- you can buy a pc for $700 and be able to play almost every modern game at highest settings(excluding crysis 3 and games similar to it) with decent resolution plus any retro game, including console games from gamecube, ps1, gba, genesis, snes, nes, n64, etc.
- My computer is only slightly more expensive(add $100) is nearly 2 years old and i can still play farcry 3 at high settings with good framerate.

To be fair, some people would have to buy 2 PCs; one for work/school and one for gaming. I know there are gaming laptops but from what I understand their batteries die pretty quickly and they'd still be more expensive than a garden variety laptop. Besides that, you'd miss out on the console exclusive games of which there are quite a few

Strictly you can buy more batteries and swap them in to get more life.

Also strictly you don't need a gaming laptop. I do have one but I got one that plays games in 3D and stuff. My friends who I game with have average laptops and they play most/all games fine. We are currently waiting for graduation at university and playing TF2 for free and Lord of the Rings online for free and Left 4 Dead 2 which you can get in steams sales for under 5 pounds and Payday: the Heist for 3 pounds.

 

[Milanezi]

Sooner or later, after my PC-related trauma has passed, I will attempt to build a new one, I DO expect your help when this dire moment returns.

 

[Festus Moonbear]

Bottom line: Until they make a gaming PC you can just walk into a store and buy without speaking to anyone (or buy online), and know with certainty that you can put the game in the drive, pick up your controller and play it without doing anything else at all, these arguments are not going to cut it for console gamers.

(Full disclosure: I am both a console and PC gamer, but I generally prefer consoles for the above reason and only use the PC for PC exclusives. I couldn't give a shit about resolution, frame rate or anti aliasing, and nor could most gamers.)

 

[hutchy27]

[HEADING=1]Blah, Blah, PC purists[/HEADING]
E3 will blow you all away with the assortment of console exclusives that none of you will ever own.

[http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/03/tomb-raider-vs-uncharted-the-comparison-we-had-to-make/]
No Uncharted Series (PS3),
No Tomb Raider (2013) for PC.

Bow your heads,

"Thank you, Console Exclusives".​

​

[li]No One Builds their PC[/li] I hope you all reaize just how small a % of PC gamers actually do this -- 5%?

[li]PC Market Growth[/li] It's growing because of Social Gaming (Facebook) and the average MMO, not because of Crysis 3 or Witcher 3, so don't count on a PC exclusive to rock the gaming world like Playstation 3's Uncharted 2 or Wii's Super Mario Galaxy 2 did.

[li]Game Sales[/li] Like any sale, you've got to hunt for them, and then create accounts in Amazon, Steam, Origin, Windows Live etc...

[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/10241-SimCity-Is-Broken-And-Its-Not-Just-the-Servers]​

[HEADING=3]And When Publishers Answer to No One?[/HEADING]

You would think that freeing a company of the big bad Console market would make triple-A titles more intuitive to a wider audience. Not so, because now they don't have to meet the standards of Microsoft and SONY's quality management. They can put out whatever they want.

For example, Final Fantasy XIV got ripped for being the junk that it was; but consider these problems fixed as SONY will now be incorporating that title into their console library.

[h4]Console better for Gaming Purists[/h4]
If you're not obsessed with expanding your library 20+ games a year, and if you're only interested in the fine experience of a diverse and quality selection of titles, then consoles work best.

[h4]pictures have links[/h4]​

No Tomb Raider (2013) for PC? But it is on PC?

Also I see a lot of people saying £450 is expensive however most of you would have a computer. A basic computer that cannot play games starts at like £300, so you're only paying an extra £150 to play games on your computer at high settings.

I got my computer earlier this year and I can play Crysis 3 on high settings. Case in point, it's not very expensive if you want a computer also.

 

[silentNate]

I've kept a fairly accurate record of all my generation 6/7 console game purchases and have found that out of 229 games:

29.79% of my original Xbox games were unavailable on PC
73.68% of my PS2 games were unavailable on PC
33.33% of my 360 games are unavailable on PC
46.07% of my PS3 games are unavailable on PC

Technically all games are available on PC. It's just a matter of having a proper emulator. I can play Red Dead Redemption or Heavy Rain on PC if I want to. I can get every single old school game: battle toads, mario, echo the dolphin, street fighter; all saved on my computer in under a single GB of space.

Exclusivity is not something that will stop a PC gamer with an internet connection and a willingness to follow basic instructions.

Interesting... Red Dead Redemption is the only game game I have wanted to play on my PC and the only thing that has tempted me to get a console. Not bothered since the PS2 and can't see myself going back to expensive consoles and their prices.

 

[Arina Love]

All i know is i dropped fucking 1000$ on PC (don't live in us) and it now lottery whenever games actually work on it. Tomb Raider worked ok but Grid 2 crashed video drivers as well as Far Cry 3.

Service people can't help, no news or working solution from Nvidia.

Tried every solution i found on google and eventually gave up, now i have 1000$ reddit and anime machine because i don't trust that it will actually play game i bought.

So here you go my experience in PC gaming, and precisely why i will be buying next gen consoles. PC gaming = never again.

That's a shame, it's great when you get going and you really should get some use out of your $1000 PC. How did you know it was a driver error? Drivers tend to be fixed quite quickly if there is an error with a new game, if you down loaded the latest (certified) drivers now I'd hope it would work fine. Far Cry 3 fair storms along on my PC, I was playing it last night in fact after a break and I forgot how great it looked. It's on Nvida!

Yeah i know what the problem is, it's "Nvidia windows kernel mode driver stopped responding restarted successfully" which is DirectX Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR) is messing with drivers restarting them and crushing games.
Done pretty much everything trying fix it, even tried disabling TDR feature itself in Registry Editor, it didn't work.

 

[Calcium]

1. Fair enough.
2. Not quite. Though the problems I've experienced regarding crippling bugs resolve around clients more so than the actual games. Having something that works alright for over a year and then breaks unexplainedly, requiring you to spend a week searching for the obscure bug and realising the 'fix' is to open the command prompt and enter a line of code every-single-time you want to play a game? That's just the kind of nonsense that happens every now and then.

Personally though, I assume it's the attitude of dem elitists that puts people off. I don't even play on consoles anymore, though calling myself a 'pc gamer' would make me feel... Well, let's say I'll just stick to 'gamer' if I have to label myself.

 

[Arina Love]

All i know is i dropped fucking 1000$ on PC (don't live in us) and it now lottery whenever games actually work on it. Tomb Raider worked ok but Grid 2 crashed video drivers as well as Far Cry 3.

Service people can't help, no news or working solution from Nvidia or Microsoft.

Tried every solution i found on google and eventually gave up, now i have 1000$ reddit and anime machine because i don't trust that it will actually play game i bought.

So here you go my experience in PC gaming, and precisely why i will be buying next gen consoles. PC gaming = never again.

Okay let me guess:

You bought it at a store after the guy says it goes "vroom vroom super fast."

And what specs do you have? If You dropped 1,000$ on a 8800 and a dual core I would feel sorry for you. Most 1,000$ computers are absolute scams or master machines if you built it yourself. The latter shouldn't be that finicky.

Well i don't have a best buy in my country but yeah i bought ready made from trusted retailer in Russia that deals with only PCs and parts for them.
It's I5 3570 with GTX 660 TI and 8 gigs of Corsair RAM and it was great value for money, compared with everything that i researched. If i bought ready made PC it dosenlt mean i can't read or research tech on internet, i just rather not to deal with assembly and willing to play extra 100 bucks.

 

[Something Amyss]

Isn't that more of a console problem, considering used games on PC shouldn't be available at all? Or are you talking about the minimum requirements for each game?

The complaint is about hardware/software compatibility, and it is an issue if you're not willing to put some work into it. PC gamers have a tendency to be DIYers, so they tend not to see this as an actual flaw. Sometimes, it's not a bug but a feature.

Case in point: My PC's specs smoke the minimum and even the weak link on my computer (graphics card) is well better than the recommended for Alpha Protocol, but it plays at like 3 FPS on my computer even with all the settings at minimum.

I could probably find some support on this, though I was never arsed.

 

[Arina Love]

All i know is i dropped fucking 1000$ on PC (don't live in us) and it now lottery whenever games actually work on it. Tomb Raider worked ok but Grid 2 crashed video drivers as well as Far Cry 3.

Service people can't help, no news or working solution from Nvidia or Microsoft.

Tried every solution i found on google and eventually gave up, now i have 1000$ reddit and anime machine because i don't trust that it will actually play game i bought.

So here you go my experience in PC gaming, and precisely why i will be buying next gen consoles. PC gaming = never again.

Okay let me guess:

You bought it at a store after the guy says it goes "vroom vroom super fast."

And what specs do you have? If You dropped 1,000$ on a 8800 and a dual core I would feel sorry for you. Most 1,000$ computers are absolute scams or master machines if you built it yourself. The latter shouldn't be that finicky.

Well i don't have a best buy in my country but yeah i bought ready made from trusted retailer in Russia that deals with only PCs and parts for them.
It's I5 3570 with GTX 660 TI and 8 gigs of Corsair RAM and it was great value for money, compared with everything that i researched. If i bought ready made PC it dosenlt mean i can't read or research tech on internet, i just rather not to deal with assembly and willing to play extra 100 bucks.

Ready Mades are watered down trash most of the time. Some companies even force it to be obsolete by making certain parts non upgradable.

There is a big no no in terms of buying PCs, and its never buy it from a mass producer.

If you must, get the off the shelf parts yourself and pay the guy at the tech support desk to do it. Pre builts are designed to be money pits from the get go, and not meant to do anything else.

Even brands like alienware are guilty of this, its better to just pick the parts yourself.

That's why i made sure to get what i need and not what people said i need. That store i bought it in, lets you choose stuff you want and they assemble it for you AND add 2 year warranty for free on every part of PC. It just happened they had ready made pc with specs i wanted because it's a most popular config in Russia right now. It just they can't do anything about the driver and shitty MS DirectX Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR) that for some reason has problems in some games not all of them but some.
They tested RAM, Video card and even PSU everything is working perfectly.

 

[hutchy27]

All i know is i dropped fucking 1000$ on PC (don't live in us) and it now lottery whenever games actually work on it. Tomb Raider worked ok but Grid 2 crashed video drivers as well as Far Cry 3.

Service people can't help, no news or working solution from Nvidia or Microsoft.

Tried every solution i found on google and eventually gave up, now i have 1000$ reddit and anime machine because i don't trust that it will actually play game i bought.

So here you go my experience in PC gaming, and precisely why i will be buying next gen consoles. PC gaming = never again.

Okay let me guess:

You bought it at a store after the guy says it goes "vroom vroom super fast."

And what specs do you have? If You dropped 1,000$ on a 8800 and a dual core I would feel sorry for you. Most 1,000$ computers are absolute scams or master machines if you built it yourself. The latter shouldn't be that finicky.

Well i don't have a best buy in my country but yeah i bought ready made from trusted retailer in Russia that deals with only PCs and parts for them.
It's I5 3570 with GTX 660 TI and 8 gigs of Corsair RAM and it was great value for money, compared with everything that i researched. If i bought ready made PC it dosenlt mean i can't read or research tech on internet, i just rather not to deal with assembly and willing to play extra 100 bucks.

Ready Mades are watered down trash most of the time. Some companies even force it to be obsolete by making certain parts non upgradable.

There is a big no no in terms of buying PCs, and its never buy it from a mass producer.

If you must, get the off the shelf parts yourself and pay the guy at the tech support desk to do it. Pre builts are designed to be money pits from the get go, and not meant to do anything else.

Even brands like alienware are guilty of this, its better to just pick the parts yourself.

That's why i made sure to get what i need and not what people said i need. That store i bought it in, lets you choose stuff you want and they assemble it for you AND add 2 year warranty for free on every part of PC. It just happened they had ready made pc with specs i wanted because it's a most popular config in Russia right now. It just they can't do anything about the driver and shitty MS DirectX Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR) that for some reason has problems in some games not all of them but some.
They tested RAM, Video card and even PSU everything is working perfectly.

I went to similar place in Britain, pick the parts, they put it all together and you get like 2 years warranty. All that for a very reasonable price.

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

Well said.

You can buy an entry level gaming capable PC for about £350, nicely spec'd one for £600, and at £1000 you're beyond any sense of reason.

PC gaming in absolute terms is more expensive than console gaming, but your PC doubles as a general purpose computer, as well. Not to mention that, in the long run, you save so much on Steam sales, the likes of which just aren't seen in console sales.

The compatibility issues argument is a bit silly. GoG even go to the effort of making older DOS games compatible with modern Windows. Any modern game that can't get itself going on a modern Windows installation (Vista, 7, 8, as they work off the same base kernel) has more pressing issues to deal with, most prominently, incompetent developers.

Still, if I'm to get a console this generation, it will more than likely be a PS4. It seems like the least of the three evils. My PS3 died a year ago, and yet have not suffered at all. My PC has done all my gaming.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Well, to be fair about cost, think about it like this:

The Xbox 360 is 7 years old now. Therefore, if someone got an xbox on launch and that xbox hasn't failed on him (I know, it's a huge stretch, but it's a hypothetical), then that person would have had his Xbox 360 for 7 years while only paying $400 (or whatever the launch price of the Xbox 360 was, I honestly don't remember).

Now on the flip side, does anyone use a 7 year old PC for playing modern games? Hell no. So if someone got a new gaming PC at the same that that the xbox 360 was released, they've more than likely upgraded that PC at least once.

Therefore, the Xbox 360 would still cost less if it survived for the entire console cycle than a PC would.

Now, of course we live in the real world where this isn't necessarily the case. My Xbox 360 has died 3 times, so the initial cost of $400 + $300 worth of repairs + $50 a year of Xbox Live puts the grand total at $1050. Combine that with the much greater cost of games on the Xbox 360 versus the PC, and the two platforms come out to cost about the same, even if you end up having to upgrade your PC in the middle of the console cycle.

So I definitely wouldn't say that PC gaming costs less than console gaming, it ends up costing the same amount, or more depending on the PC you get, but while the costs are about equal, you do get a better experience on the PC, what with being able to play more games, at higher resolutions, with better graphics, and with mods.

Mostly this. There's also the fact that some people (read: computer n00bs) simply don't know what to buy and don't know what kind of performance to expect for what they paid. Not only that, I don't know a lot of people who want to own desktop and gaming laptops cost about 50% more than a similar desktop. Pc gaming is cheaper if you know what your doing and have what you need (I, for example, would need a good monitor)

Sometimes it's just easier to have multiple devices

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

guys, if people don't want to, let them get on with it, you're not going to convert anyone to PC with these threads.peoples minds are set to their prefered choice.

if anyone has genuine questions about making the transition to PC gaming, they'll no doubt make a thread and we can all jump on board with advice.

anyone thing water cooling is worth it?
noise vs cost

 

[MajorTomServo]

*list of games and prices*

Yeah... no. That's a terrible argument. Here's my list.

---------------------
Console Peasant Games

New Super Mario Bros. Wii-$40
Uncharted 3-$18
Dark Souls-$18
Metal Gear Solid 4-$12
---------------------

PC Games

New Super Mario Bros. Wii-n/a
Uncharted 3-n/a
Dark Souls-$30
Metal Gear Solid 4-n/a


Console gaming is cheaper. It just is. I know PC gaming "can be cheap," but even low-end builds have 2-4 times the up-front cost, and you have to upgrade them more often. No amount of f2p games that you play twice and never touch again, or DRM-laden steam sales on games you can't sell when you're done will change that.

Also, when I want to play a game, I want to put a disk in a tray and go. I don't want to spend an hour on google trying to find a solution to the bizarre error message I'm getting that won't let me play the game that I payed for.

One more thing, if you just can't live without all those "quirky," pretentious, story-heavy side-scrollers known as indie games, a lot of them are available on XBLA and PSN.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Someone has probably already brought this up, but in the long run, depending how many games you buy, a PC can be cheaper. Most games go on sale within a month. I preordered Tomb Raider for maybe $32, Sleeping Dogs for about $27, and had preordered Homefront, Brink, Rage, and a few other games for 15-20% off back when D2D was still around. Also got Black Ops 2 + Borderlands 2 season pass, both preorders, for $55.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

*list of games and prices*

Yeah... no. That's a terrible argument. Here's my list.

---------------------
Console Peasant Games

New Super Mario Bros. Wii-$40
Uncharted 3-$18
Dark Souls-$18
Metal Gear Solid 4-$12
---------------------

PC Games

New Super Mario Bros. Wii-n/a
Uncharted 3-n/a
Dark Souls-$30
Metal Gear Solid 4-n/a


Console gaming is cheaper. It just is. I know PC gaming "can be cheap," but even low-end builds have 2-4 times the up-front cost, and you have to upgrade them more often. No amount of f2p games that you play twice and never touch again, or DRM-laden steam sales on games you can't sell when you're done will change that.

Also, when I want to play a game, I want to put a disk in a tray and go. I don't want to spend an hour on google trying to find a solution to the bizarre error message I'm getting that won't let me play the game that I payed for.

One more thing, if you just can't live without all those "quirky," pretentious, story-heavy side-scrollers known as indie games, a lot of them are available on XBLA and PSN.

First off, Dark Souls on PC comes with the DLC, which is $15 on PSN (not sure about XBL). Second, Dark Souls - $15 [http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/pc/games/action/dark-souls-prepare-die-edition-na/]. I don't really ever get "bizarre error messages", and I have hundreds of PC games.

 

[Frezzato]

:words:

So google one? There's several that run perfectly fine. Try http://hackingnation.org/

One thing I will say though about the low framerates is that you do need a more powerful computer to run emulation for modern systems successfully with good fps. Because basically you are running windows and then you are running an entire console in the background on top of it, so if you normally only get like 30-35 FPS for games designed to run on PC, then you're likely going to have some issues. This technically could drive up the cost of a PC by potentially 150-300$ for a better GPU and CPU. But it's still cheaper than owning every single console and a PC.

By all apppearances, Hackingnation [http://blog.extramaster.net/2012/10/3ds-emulator-112-is-fake.html] is [http://www.emutalk.net/threads/54465-HackingNation-s-3DS-emulator] a [http://www.webutation.net/go/review/hackingnation.org] fraud [http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/hackingnation.org]. And while I would love to test out every unsigned, 3rd party executable floating around the net, I'll pass. Who knows? Maybe one day there will be perfect emulation software to run legally-owned discs of a non-Windows format. That, for me, would be a happy day indeed.

I want to make myself perfectly clear. When I asked if there were any emulators I said:

...that's not a boast. I would really love to have a PS3 emulator! For entirely legal use of my discs of course.

I meant it. Great, I would no longer have to worry about a dead console. No worries. Believe me, I would love for the day to come when statements like this are actually true (emphasis is mine):

Technically all games are available on PC. It's just a matter of having a proper emulator. I can play Red Dead Redemption or Heavy Rain on PC if I want to. I can get every single old school game: battle toads, mario, echo the dolphin, street fighter; all saved on my computer in under a single GB of space.

Exclusivity is not something that will stop a PC gamer with an internet connection and a willingness to follow basic instructions.

...but today is not that day.