Something I learned about PC gaming...

[Ace of Spades]

Money isn't the problem with PC gaming, it's the troubleshooting that turns me off of it. I buy to play, not to troubleshoot. If I buy a game and have to troubleshoot, that's annoying. If there's a problem that takes more than 2 days to fix, that's unacceptable, and I had to troubleshoot next to everything I bought for the PC.

That's a bit of a furphey. The vast majority of games I have simply install and play. A quick visit to the options screen to set my preferences, and I'm away. The only 'troubleshooting' I've ever had to do with a game is to get older ones to run in later versions of windows - usually solved with at worst a few minutes searching on google, or, more usually, with installing it on the XP build I have on the same machine.

At least I can do that. Backwards compatibility with consoles usually means keeping the old hardware around, and praying that it doesn't fail, or buying it again for the new system if they decide to release it.

With a bit of 'troubleshooting', or as I prefer 'tinkering', I can not only play pretty much any PC game ever made, I can also run any number of emulators (the Amiga one is my favourite - great days for gaming). I have the history of gaming, in playable form, at my fingertips.

Yep. You have the know-how, and you actually enjoy troubleshooting, so the PC is perfect for you. I almost never have hardware issues with consoles, and they are a lot more user-friendly, so we each found our preferred platform.

 

[numbersix1979]

Well at least that's one of you.

Now for the rest who list "oh it's sooo expenisve" as a reason as to why PC gaming is "dying".

What about the rest of us who list 'terrible games, bullshit system requirements, unintuitive controls and a serious lack of innovation' as to why PC gaming is most assuredly dying? Or being absorbed by Zynga games, like an ameoba swallowing a horse.

The first lot of rambling is made up of opinions (although I'd love to know your actual system requirements) so fair enough, but your Zynga statement is false.

You see, PCs have this remarkable ability to, you know, do other stuff. Zynga is a developer for web-based social networking games. Believe it or not, Farmville's not really pulling people away from playing the likes of Team Fortress 2 and whatnot.

As for unintuitive controls, I don't know what's intuitive about aiming with a stick that can only move up to a set speed. Like I said, personal choice.

Now excuse me whilst I log in to Steam; tell me, have you heard of it child? Of course, since PC gaming's dying it's only got over 2 million users logged in right now, but I still like to hop on it every now-and-then.

Sorry to tell you this, but fucking Team Fortress 2 isn't going to carry the computer gaming industry on its back forever. Neither is Crysis or even Steam for that matter. Steam is in business because it's cheap. I don't know whether you've ever played a computer game you had a boot from a CD, but every single time has been nothing but pain and misery for me. I don't like having to deal with reduced graphics or lag if I don't shovel a walletful of cash every year into the pockets of Nvidia, or spend a week updating my computer for no change in performance whatsoever. Yes, computers can do much more things than consoles. But not for long. What with TVs having internet browsers built in and Xbox Live, Steam and the PS3 network, computer gaming is going to have to put up or shut up. Maybe you enjoy how finnicky a mouse is and applying it to gameplay, or using 60 different button combos for simple moves, or the computer industry slowly squeezing you for every dime you have. Some people are just masochists.