PC or Consoles - Which do you prefer playing video games on?

[method115]

these are pics I've shared over the years. TVs have evolved far beyond their traditional uses as soon as LCDs/plasmas came into the mix - for like over 15yrs now I've always used them as an additional desktop screen resource when needed:

an old conference room with wireless displays at 666 3rd Ave.

my old bedroom:

current desktop setup (I hardly use it nowadays, have upgraded to W10 since)

my office at 5 Bryant Park (center screen is a TV).

smallest conference room at 5 Bryant Park

main conference room at 5 Bryant Park

I worked at a company once and my manager pretty much harassed this company to hire a person to manage all our conference rooms and get them uniform with good equipment that works. Everyone was trying to pick the good conference rooms and the shitty ones were always empty so they wanted to redo all of them.

So my manager hired this guy and right away I'm thinking what a useless field to want to concentrate on but he fucking loved it and I'll admit he was good at it but I would always talk shit about his position. Not even 4 months after we hired him he got hired by Google to do all their conference rooms in Europe. I was fuckin blown away.

 

[Senzo Tanaka]

PC but it's been all over the place over the years.

80s > Consoles > 90s > Consoles > Late 90s > PC > Early to Mid 2000s > Console > Late 2000s to current > PC

Going forward, I don't see any reason to go back to console outside of the occasional Sony exclusive and rumor is, Sony will start putting their titles on PC after timed delays. Microsoft has already said no more console exclusives.

Everything comes out and plays better on PC. It's not like the 90s or early 2000s anymore where you got crappy ports, had to deal with crashes, bad drivers, etc. I played and beat a huge number of PC games last year and can remember maybe 2 crashes. You probably get the same or more on console at that point. I also like that Steam is pretty much a one-stop shop for all of your games and they have never had a history of removing games or any major issues. It's a long standing service that's reliable and trustworthy. It's getting a little more complicated with Epic, Uplay, Battle.net but Steam still dominates.

PC gaming is just more of an intimate experience to me. I'm right in front of my monitor, I have an Xbox Elite controller (for non FPS) and a good sound system. I can max out the settings and get high frame rates that make it incredibly different from a console experience. I like playing on a big TV as well but nothing beats the PC experience to me.

I think it helps to have grown up on PCs but I think there's an anti-PC crowd out there that is afraid of them, thinks they are too hard or just doesn't see the point. I can't imagine NOT browsing the internet on my PC. So many people are just used to doing everything on their phone now but that blows me away. It's such a gimped experience and I only use it in a pinch. If I'm at home, I'm on my PC doing everything. Games, music, internet, chat, work, everything. It's my all-in-one entertainment and multi-purpose hub. Because of that, it's much easier to not have to get up, go to the living room, power everything on and play a game. I can just stay in one place for everything and it's the superior experience.

 

[Senzo Tanaka]

Common console gamer responses I've seen on this thread and others and my retort:

"I like playing on a comfy couch with a controller" - You can connect your PC to your TV. You can buy a PS4 or Xbox One controller, connect it to the PC with a wireless USB dongle and it's just like a console at that point. Turn on your controller, start Steam and start playing. Another option is that we are in a golden era of gaming chairs. I'm sitting on a Tempurpedic memory foam chair and it's awesome. It's just as comfortable if not more than my sofa in my living room. I can just as easily lean back and relax in the chair and play on PC with a controller as a I could on a couch.

"Games crash and you have to deal with bugs and drivers - This was definitely an issue in the 90s and early 2000s. Technology was changing rapidly in the 90s and it was hard to keep up and develop for. In the early and mid 2000s, PCs got a lot of console ports and they were hit and miss. Some were better than console but some were buggy messes. That all changed when the PS4 and Xbox One came out. The architecture for those consoles are the exact same as PC. So now, when developers are making games, they are essentially creating a PC version and then just making it run on "Medium" specs on the consoles. As I mentioned in my last post, I saw maybe 2 crashes the entire year of playing on PC (and both were Call of Duty ganes). Literally 100s of hours of gaming and 2 crashes. Windows is stable, drivers are stable and that stigma should no longer exist.

You'll get the occasional bad launch like Assassin's Creed Unity but it tends to make big news and it's quickly fixed. By the time I played Unity, I didn't have a single problem. You just as much hear about bad console launches with games full of bugs that are quickly fixed. It's not the console or the PC but the programming.

"PCs cost too much" - This one I'll concede. There's a large initial investment with a PC but once you get it built, it will last you for years to come and you can keep it updated with minimal effort. If you can spend around $1200 on a PC, you're going to kill consoles in performance. Also, a pet peeve of mine is that people think PCs are only for gaming or work. The phone culture has taken over people and they don't realize what a better experience it is to browse the internet, watch YouTube, watch porn, collect movies and music, etc. on a PC with a big monitor. I just can't imagine doing all of that on my phone exclusively. It's an extension of my PC, not a replacement. Maybe I'm just a different breed but I love waking up or coming home from work, plopping down on my chair and having my PC as my all-in-one hub for everything. It's relaxing and I guess it's how most people treat their phones these days. Fuck those people.

 

[Snubnoze707]

"I like playing on a comfy couch with a controller"

This one always cracks me up. I have a PC hooked into a monitor at a desk with a DAC/Amp headphone set up and at the same time hooked up into my AV Receiver that runs my 4K tv and sound system.

I can have two football games streaming at the same time to each monitor while I sit on my comfy couch.

PC's give you WAY more than just being a gaming machine.

 

[SaiWa]

PC by a fuckin' mile. You can do so much more with a PC than a console.

But there are exceptions to the rule. I'd rather play games like Zelda, Mario, Unchartered or Final Fantasy games on a console. It's the feel of it. I grew up doing it so it would feel weird playing any of these games on PC. Not that I couldn't.. Just prefer not to it possible. But in this day and age where you can emulate and just connect whatever controller you want to the PC that line has been heavily blurred...

 

[method115]

Common console gamer responses I've seen on this thread and others and my retort:

"I like playing on a comfy couch with a controller" - You can connect your PC to your TV. You can buy a PS4 or Xbox One controller, connect it to the PC with a wireless USB dongle and it's just like a console at that point. Turn on your controller, start Steam and start playing. Another option is that we are in a golden era of gaming chairs. I'm sitting on a Tempurpedic memory foam chair and it's awesome. It's just as comfortable if not more than my sofa in my living room. I can just as easily lean back and relax in the chair and play on PC with a controller as a I could on a couch.

"Games crash and you have to deal with bugs and drivers - This was definitely an issue in the 90s and early 2000s. Technology was changing rapidly in the 90s and it was hard to keep up and develop for. In the early and mid 2000s, PCs got a lot of console ports and they were hit and miss. Some were better than console but some were buggy messes. That all changed when the PS4 and Xbox One came out. The architecture for those consoles are the exact same as PC. So now, when developers are making games, they are essentially creating a PC version and then just making it run on "Medium" specs on the consoles. As I mentioned in my last post, I saw maybe 2 crashes the entire year of playing on PC (and both were Call of Duty ganes). Literally 100s of hours of gaming and 2 crashes. Windows is stable, drivers are stable and that stigma should no longer exist.

You'll get the occasional bad launch like Assassin's Creed Unity but it tends to make big news and it's quickly fixed. By the time I played Unity, I didn't have a single problem. You just as much hear about bad console launches with games full of bugs that are quickly fixed. It's not the console or the PC but the programming.

"PCs cost too much" - This one I'll concede. There's a large initial investment with a PC but once you get it built, it will last you for years to come and you can keep it updated with minimal effort. If you can spend around $1200 on a PC, you're going to kill consoles in performance. Also, a pet peeve of mine is that people think PCs are only for gaming or work. The phone culture has taken over people and they don't realize what a better experience it is to browse the internet, watch YouTube, watch porn, collect movies and music, etc. on a PC with a big monitor. I just can't imagine doing all of that on my phone exclusively. It's an extension of my PC, not a replacement. Maybe I'm just a different breed but I love waking up or coming home from work, plopping down on my chair and having my PC as my all-in-one hub for everything. It's relaxing and I guess it's how most people treat their phones these days. Fuck those people.

Yep I've done both their pros and cons to both. I eventually went with console but I've gone back and forth a lot this gen over it. My main issue with PC at this point is all the different stores. I hate having all my achievements in separate places I want everything in Steam or whatever takes over just one place that has every game and every achievement. On my PC I had it setup just like a console it boots up, open steam in big picture mode and boom I can start playing with my controller. The other stores though killed it for me especially Epics exclusive BS.

 

[Da_Rev_Ong]

I play wherever the game I want to play happens to be. I'm split pretty equally between Console and PC, but a lot of time I find that my work time sways where I want to play when I get home. When I did game QA in the early turn of the century, I had all of the current consoles but I played mostly on PC because I QA'd on console for most of the day. In direct contrast to that, when I was doing hardware QA from between 2009 to 2015 I spent over 40 hours out of each week staring at computer monitors or digging into test PCs. Because of that I spent a majority of my free time playing on consoles.

Currently, I'm looking at upgrading my PC (my current rig was put together back in 2010), so I'm mostly playing on my PS4 or Switch. Usually working through the backlog on series I've yet to finish. Hopefully I'll be able to jump knee deep into a PC game once the upgrades are finished, but I've got a suspicion something will come along to distract me (life always does that).

 

[deviake]

PC exclusively since 2014, was consoles outside of games that would run on my laptops from the mid 90s to that. It's my all in one entertainment device, plus I can do other stuff on it as well. PS3 was the last console I bought. I like the simplicity of consoles (at least last I remember...), plug & play is great, but my PC is more versatile and saves money over buying consoles and laptops. I really like FPS games, and there's no going back to playing them on a console. Plus mods, better performance in every way, very few crashes these days. The only thing I miss are Playstation and Nintendo exclusives.

Before buying my PC, I noticed the next gen consoles didn't look like a significant jump from the current and I thought it was pointless to keep buying computers & consoles when a PC fulfills both roles.

 

[jefferz]

So I'm supposed to get a 100 ft cable and have it strewn throughout my house? Lol cmon dude. Get real.

Don't mind Rob, he likes to argue with people just to argue.

Some people have a separate desktop PC that they put next to their tv to play games with, I've done that for years.
You can also go the streaming service route with lower end hardware like a laptop, Nvidia Shield hardware, or even a Raspberry Pi. These services use your desktop pc to do the heavy computing then streams it over your network to other devices.

Here's a short run down on how the Steam In-House Streraming service works
https://www.howtogeek.com/189601/how-to-use-steam-in-home-streaming/

 

[Takes_Two_To_Tango]

these are pics I've shared over the years. TVs have evolved far beyond their traditional uses as soon as LCDs/plasmas came into the mix - for like over 15yrs now I've always used them as an additional desktop screen resource when needed:

an old conference room with wireless displays at 666 3rd Ave.

my old bedroom:

current desktop setup (I hardly use it nowadays, have upgraded to W10 since)

my office at 5 Bryant Park (center screen is a TV).

smallest conference room at 5 Bryant Park

main conference room at 5 Bryant Park

Wow you must be loaded.

 

[Steve-French]

I used to have a laptop when I was in the Army around 2005 that could play most PC Games. I remember it being kind of a Big deal that it could handle Doom 3. This was my last time I really did any PC gaming. My squad and I used to play Far Cry multiplayer in our barracks.

That being said I've always liked Consoles more as I just never liked the feel of a mouse and Keyboard. I think building a PC would be fun, but I could see myself messing with it more than I would actually be playing games.

I was born in 1980 and have been playing video games since the Atari 2600 and spent most of my on the NES and in arcades. I just don't see the returns you get from a high end PC to be worth it.

I was able to get a refurbished Xbox one X for $250 that I plug into my 65" UHD 4K television. If I bought or built a 4K gaming rig I would be looking at around $800-$1000 that is going to be on par or maybe a little better than my One X. I also like sports games and have friends over to play locally, and a console is better for that.

 

[Steve-French]

Consoles. The only people I know who play games on PC are fat disgusting slobs.

LOL...

 

[vinnie245]

As soon as i got a decent PC in 1999 i pretty much never looked back other than the occasional console exclusive.
Mod support, higher visual fidelity, better online functionality, a much more vast library of games and just more freedom in general

 

[weed]

the last console I bought was a ps3. I only bought it because I was addicted to the GTA series. but then I gave up on GTA 4 - & never touched my ps3 since. that was the drop off point for me & video games. yesterday, after coming across this thread, I installed GTA 4, hooked up my ps3 joystick & voila. I had some resolution/display issues but after a few tweaks I got everything working in perfect order. my specs: i7 8th gen, 512 m.2 ssd + 2tb firecuda, w/ 32gb ram (ThinkPad p52s). I thought I had a shit graphics hard (Intel UHD 620) but it surprisingly performs with zero issues, & I maxed out all the settings.

the convenience of having games like this on my laptop - everything consolidated into one device is just ideal. I'm going to install GTA 5 next.

 

[blaseblah]

...have you lived in/been in a house with cable tv? did you see coaxial cable "strewn throughout?"

This has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Go back and read though the thread because you're clearly confused.

and ffs, like a few of us already said - YOU CAN DO THIS WIRELESSLY.

i just didn't bother with wirelessly running my tv since it's just 1080 and a hdmi works.

You haven't thought this through. You can't stream games from other parts of the house for obvious reasons.

 

[blaseblah]

Personally, I stream from my desktop to my laptop which I hook up to my tv and sync my pS4 controller to my laptop via Bluetooth.

Thank you. The one post in this thread that actually presents a viable solution. The other guy didn't know what he was talking about.

 

[rob mafia]

This has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Go back and read though the thread because you're clearly confused.

...it's literally the same thing. running a cable.

You haven't thought this through. You can't stream games from other parts of the house for obvious reasons.

ffs, man. numerous people here already explained this to you. even with different methods. and you STILL insist it can't be done.

 

[blaseblah]

...it's literally the same thing. running a cable.




ffs, man. numerous people here already explained this to you. even with different methods. and you STILL insist it can't be done.

Stop being a moron. Installing cable in the outlet next to your television is not the same as having a giant hmdi cable running through multiple rooms.

I wouldn't even be able to close my doors with your solution. "Just like having cable." Lol idiot.

 

[rob mafia]

Stop being a moron. Installing cable in the outlet next to your television is not the same as having a giant hmdi cable running through multiple rooms

...where do you think the cable comes from? lolz @ believing it just magically appears from an outlet!

I wouldn't even be able to close my doors with your solution. "Just like having cable." Lol idiot.

holy hell. you have no idea how to run a line of cable, like, at all? even after i mentioned hints? good god, man. this is embarrassing. let me guess, you don't own a drill and if someone lent you one, you wouldn't even know how to use it.

newsflash: my doors close.

 

[blaseblah]

...where do you think the cable comes from? lolz @ believing it just magically appears from an outlet!



holy hell. you have no idea how to run a line of cable, like, at all? even after i mentioned hints? good god, man. this is embarrassing. let me guess, you don't own a drill and if someone lent you one, you wouldn't even know how to use it.

newsflash: my doors close.

Are you proposing I rewire my house just to play computer games on a big screen? Stop being a moron.