I’ve been gaming since I was 13 years old, so it was with great interest that I watched as Sony unveiled the Playstation 4, and Microsoft the Xbox One. Yet, for the first time in nearly twenty years, I will not be buying a video game console. I have decided to sit-out this generation of consoles in favour of PC gaming. Here’s why.
1. It’s all Microsoft’s fault
One of most appealing aspects of consoles its user-friendly nature – you turn it on you put in a disc and you start playing, enjoying countless hours of fuss-free fun.
That was not my experience with the Xbox 360. It died on me four times. FOUR TIMES. Dragging the console down to the service centre for an exchange was a frustrating and time-consuming affair. With console gaming, it’s supposed to “just work”. With my Xbox360, it didn’t.
To be fair, the graphics card on my Dell XPS 8300 died on me once, but when that happened, I called Dell, and their technicians came to my home to replace the card. I didn’t even have to take time off from work!
2. Pay And Pay
As a PC gamer I remember the days when you’d connect via Hamachi for a DOTA marathon or several rounds of Counter Strike with your friends. Nowadays, online play is held hostage by subscription fees.
On my PC, I can easily jump into an online game of Borderlands 2, Dead Space 3 or Titanfall with my friends without having to pay any subscription fee. Isn’t it enough that I bought the game? Considering that console games cost more money than PC games, why do I still need to pay extra for a subscription for online play?
3. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Controller is AWESOME on PC
PC gamers have had to endure with terrible controllers for years. That changed with the last generation of consoles.
To Microsoft’s credit, they did something right with the Xbox 360 – the controller is awesome, and with a dongle it can be used with PCs. My Haswell gaming rig and Xbox 360 controller has given me many enjoyable hours of Assassin’s Creed 4 .
Ironically, with the Xbox 360, Microsoft eliminated one of the biggest differentiators between PC and console gaming – the gamepad experience.
4. Better Performance
PC gamers find it incredulous that the latest generations of consoles are having difficulties running at 60 frames per section at a high definition, 1920X1080 resolution, when PCs have been able to do that for years.
So much for consoles being on the bleeding edge of technology.
Also, unlike previous generations where all needed was the disk, games now require you to install the game onto the console’s hard disk drive.
Running games off my blazing fast SSD is a real treat. Granted, you could probably install a SSD in a Playstation 4, but the same cannot be said of Microsoft’s console. Microsoft’s proprietary hard disk drives are also considerably more expensive than their PC counterparts.
5. ….but wait, there’s more!
Oh, there’s so much more. When it comes to functionality, even the lowest end PC easily trumps the most expensive console. Do you want to use Photoshop? Do you want a better web browsing experience? Do you want to play media files of different extensions and codecs?
Anyone who has used a PC knows how ridiculously versatile it is in comparison to a gaming console .
6. All my friends are doing it
This is probably the biggest reason for me to stick to PC gaming. What’s the point of gaming on a platform when you have no friends to play with?
Honestly, the overwhelming majority of my friends are gaming on the PC. This leaves me with little incentive to buy a console.
What will I miss?
With that said, there are some things about console gaming I will miss. The most obvious is the games. Some titles are console-exclusive and they will never make their way to the PC.
But with this generation of consoles using similar hardware with PCs, I am optimistic that we will see more ports of console games onto the PC. Even Metal Gear Solid, which has typically been a console-exclusive for the last decade, has been rumoured as coming to the PC.
Another thing I will miss from consoles is the innovation that may emerge from interesting peripherals like Microsoft’s Kinect or Sony’s Project Morpheus. But my approach to buying computer/entertainment hardware is the same to that of buying high-end classical guitars; buy it for how you like it now and what it can do immediately instead of hedging a bet towards what you think it may be able to do in the future.
Because there is a very real possibility that it may never meet those expectations.
