yesbag said:
I like consoles as well and enjoy some games on PC. But by no means is one "superior" to the other - just different.
Unfortunately, that's just flat wrong. On the one hand, you have a console, marred by proprietary hardware and software both available for a ton of money and rarely any cheaper - because a single company literally owns every aspect of the console and charges what they want with no competition in their market bubble. Consoles also feature long load times, disc swapping, and the same painful update process that *used to be* unique to PCs. Updating the console firmware, updating the games via patches, updating DLC which sometimes happens separately, updating kinect firmware, etc, and if you're still awake 30 minutes later, you can maybe even play a game. But on that topic, the games you play are very limited; you have an insanely small library of games, most of which are only playable on that gen of console and not compatible with older gens or newer gens, specifically to force you to either re-buy them or buy new versions of them when the next console comes out in an attempt to wrangle money out of your wallet for as little effort as possible. Literally the only "pro" to consoles anymore is the fact that some of them occasionally hold a franchise or title hostage, forcing you to put up with all the other bullshit the consoles bring with it in order to enjoy that one game or franchise. And that's hardly a "pro."
On the other hand, you have PCs; which have the single biggest games library of any singular gaming system, stretching all the way back to the 90s, and most of which are still playable today with very little effort (some take more than others, but it's incredibly rare to find a game that's literally impossible to get to work on any current gen OS). On top of that you have game mods, stretching from basic cheat options to console commands in Bethesda games to literal game mods that add countless hours of content to already great games like Baldur's Gate, any given Elder Scrolls game, and also recently Fallouts. And the vast majority of these mods are free and easy to install!
On top of that, PCs are a very open market. Microsoft owns the OS, but the individual components and what software you use is completely up to you. You can choose based on preference, loyalty to a brand or company, who gives the best prices, etc. I mean seriously; compare the variety of Xbox controllers available to the variety of keyboards and mice available. And that's just one tiny aspect of the freedom of choice that PCs offer; it extends to every component inside the tower to where you buy your games. And I don't even have to talk about how steam and gog are vastly better sales centers than pretty much anything available to consoles (protip; they are).
Building a brand new PC can be pricy; a PC with a good monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset etc costs about as much as a console with controllers, headset, games, etc (which is a considerable chunk of money). It's completely folly to say they're flat more expensive, though; it's possible to build a $2000 PC, but you don't "need" to for gaming. You can match a console for less than 1k, and anything above that is accoutrements or flat
superiority in hardware.
Powerful PCs can also emulate, with very little effort, entire generations of older systems and consoles. Adding onto the already insanely beefy PC library comes PS1, PS2, GBC, GBA, Gamecube, and old Sega systems. The fact that you can't pick up a PS1 game and pop it into a PS3, but you can play them just fine on PC is honestly mindboggling to me. It's like console developers literally have their heads up their asses.
Lastly, and this sort of ties in to my previous point about a single company holding the reigns on your system... You know the whole Xbone fiasco? Where a single company said a very resounding "fuck you" to every single potential consumer, detailing all the ways they'd lose basic consumer rights in the name of Microsoft's profits? The only way you can deal with a situation like that on a console is to not buy it, at all; because you have
no control over your system and are at the complete mercy of single company. One who, in this case, cares so little about their customers that they're willing to piss all over them for a buck. Who is willing to mandate a 24/7 camera and microphone built into the system specifically to gather marketing data [http://www.oxm.co.uk/57592/xbox-one-is-built-for-advertising-but-microsoft-will-protect-the-user-from-any-sort-of-abuse] to sell to other companies. One who was willing to mandate every-day online check-ins in a ham-handed attempt to reduce piracy. One who was willing to put needless, overly complicated restrictions on used games simply to make more money at the cost of convenience to the users.
That kind of bullshit is
impossible for a company to pull on PC, simply because of competition. If one company tried to mandate unreasonable practices on its customers, they'd simply leave and go to a less shitty service. That's why services like Steam are so well received; because instead of trying to fuck its consumers over with 24/7 cameras and microphones, they build trust over the years, offer us deals on quality games, and even let us play our games completely offline despite steam itself being a DRM service. They realized that the best way to take off in a competitive environment was to be competitive; not force draconian bullshit DRM down everyone's throats in an attempt to make that extra dollar.
That is why consoles are, and will be for the foreseeable future, inferior to PCs. Lack of customizability, lack of options, lack of control, and lack of true competition for the company who holds the reigns leads to a terribly inferior gaming experience to that offered by a PC. It's got very little to do with "personal taste"; because if personal taste was actually a problem for you, you would have been a PC gamer already.
Consoles offer nothing that PCs cannot, and usually do so for more money and with less goodwill toward consumers. The last bastion of consoles existing at all, exclusive titles, is the thin lifeline keeping the unsustainable ship of console gaming from finally sinking into the abyss where it belongs. Everything else those companies are doing now is attempting to keep a chokehold on their customers, punishing them for the developers' bad decisions and inability to make and market a game for reasonable amounts of money. Continuing to buy into the console market is giving them a leash already tied to your neck, and they can yank it any which way they please. If you want to game without a leash, it's time to step up to the PC tier.
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