Why is PC gaming still a thing?
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Why
is console gaming still a thing? PC Gaming makes cold hard sense,
console gaming is mostly practiced simply because people are used to it +
marketing.
Here are PC Gaming’s advantages:
- Backwards compatibility. Yes, sometimes with very old titles you have to tweak them a bit, but that is a small price to pay for having your entire gaming library on one machine. On my 2018 high-end gaming PC, I can play my old classical games from my childhood as well as the newest AAA titles. And since games scale on PC, I can potentially get them to run at insane frame rates and/or force better filtering and/or use 4K or higher resolutions.
- Emulation. Some people love entering moral debates here but the fact of the matter is that emulation is the only way we will be able to preserve older console (and computer!) games for the future generations of humans. Until the console overlords grow some brain cells for the good of gaming long term and put their old games on PC or give native emulators, it is what it is and it is a massive pro.
- Modding. Many gamers underestimate its effect but fact of the matter is many game developers start as modders. Half of MachineGames (Wolfenstein 2014–2020 developers) were modders for older id and Valve games. Genres like MOBAs and Battle Royals started or got shaped by mods. Some of the finest games in the world like Call of Chernobyl are mods. Yes, it is fan-made content, yes it is often not the prettiest (but sometimes it is!) and yes it may lack some polish or voice acting. But when so much passion and effort goes into a project, it does absolutely show. Be it storytelling or mechanics, world design, gameplay or atmosphere, modders *CAN* compete with AAA game developers and are always a part of the PC gaming equation for those that dare enter the rabbit hole.
- Long term cost for PC Gaming is quite low actually. No need to pay for online, cheaper games overall, many more games. Like many times more titles than what all consoles have, combined. More free games, free mods add to the amount of content… the value of even a low-end game PC is objectively much higher than that of a console. That is also why we here in Eastern Europe are PC Gamers. It really is just better long term, cheaper too!
- Options and customization. Be it in performance and visuals or even control scheme.
- It is not actually even that expensive to get into PC Gaming. Consoles do NOT use Ultra settings and rarely do more than 30 fps. Something console gamers often do wrong is to try and compare a PC that does Ultra, 60 fps vs a console and then claim the console is much cheaper. If they were to use a weaker and cheaper PC with console settings and performance, they would find that the cost difference is smaller than they expected. Using the same standards is obviously the correct way to do this.
- Multi-tasking and capability. A PC can do it all and do it at the same time (provided it has the CPU grunt and RAM). Consoles are very limited devices in comparison.
Honestly,
there are many more but these are the big ones. I do not have to use
graphics and PC power, because while that is an easy to demonstrate
advantage it is also comparatively minor next to these. But yes, a PC
can be much more powerful than any console and run games better and
prettier.
If
anything… why is console gaming still a thing? All it has is a small
advantage in up front costs and is slightly simpler, though seeing how
simple PC Gaming is… I can not consider that a serious position for
functioning human beings. In all else, console gaming is basically
useless, objectively. If it did not exist, it would not have exclusives
either so that is really a moot point as well.
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