The Great BD PC vs Console Debate

[loki]

I have seen the overtones of this debate rumbling along a few threads so hopefully it can help from cluttering them up. On scale with the AMD vs Intel, Nvidia vs ATI and probably just as futile

These are just my musings and ramblings on it purely from my experience. Pretty much like everyone else it's opinions and there is no categoric right or wrong answer to it.

Instant GameplaySo to start us off where consoles take the lead is the out of the packet experience. So if you just want pure gameplay as soon as your DVD/CD hits your front door mat then the Console is the one for you. Plug it in, play it and your away. Certainly a lot better than installing on DVD That said the almost sanitised experience offered by the console is not for everyone. Some people do like the tweaking of a game, hacking and chopping some of the code.

Is there a clear winner ?? I would say no as its horses for courses.

Mouse & Keyboard are better than Control Pad - Fact Well is it a fact. Things have kind of gone full circle for me on this. Ever since the days of playing a scrolling 1st person shooter called Operation Wulf on the old Speccy, that used a controller. Then onto PC Gaming witht he mouse and keyboard and now back to a controller for Consoles.

Out of all three I would say that I am most comfortable with a mouse and keyboard but is that because it is what I have been used to using the most. Having played a bit of Gears of War 2 over the weekend I found it difficult but I think that was more to do with being used to using both hands. It is taking time getting used to moving the cursor with a thumb stick rather than zipping with the mouse. Over time I suspect I will get better.

Again no clear winner

Games need patching on release, I need to update grahics drivers
Again this can be looked at in one of two ways. If you want your game time out of a box and are happy with it then console gaming is for you. But ask yourself a question, why are driver updates released, in most cases it's to advance the performance of the existing hardware, so is it safe to assume that from a visual perspective at least my experience should get better with time. For me it's not really a big issue to download a driver update.

The last time I had an issue with a game out of the box was for Battlefield 1942 when the native drivers for the nvidia 5200 were gash. Other than that I have had no real issues with gameplay and performance because of incompatible hardware.

You need the latest PC Hardware to make it look good

This is think is a dangerous argument from the console gamers as it isn't factually true. Again from my experience you don't need to have the very latest hardware to run the very large percentage of games nowdays. Using one of my relatives as an example, an old Athlon 3700 and a Radeon 9700. His experience of Call fo Duty 4 is just as enjoyable to him as it is to me on Quad Core and 4850. Ultimately you don't have to upgrade all of your PC to get some very good performance issues.

The ExperienceConsole Fans would have us beleive that XBL is the best thing to happen to gaming because of the achievment system and social networking of gamers. Up until a few months ago I probably would have gone with that but I don't think it offers anything dramatically different to what Steam offers at present. All with integrated chat and match making. In some case I think Steam can be a little better given it's catalogue of top games available direct to drive. This gives the added benefit of not having an Apache Gunship (Xbox360)whirring underneath the TV whilst your playing your game

Where the PC fails on this count is that there is too many platforms. Steam, Xfire, GameSpy Arcade, Metaboli, Direct2Drive, Good Old Games, Gametap. Not to mention the ill fated PC Gamers alliance.

The other argument on the experience front comes from "Well I can just sit on my setee playing on my plasma whilst you are hunched over your desk" Well I am comfortable with each. One thing I will say is that console gaming has kind of turned my wife (Game Hater) into a casual gamer of sorts. We have had a real laugh playing SingStar on the PS3. Me and Litte Loki have had some good fun playing Little Big Planet and Fifa which I don't think can be replicated on PC.

That said gaming for me isn't about grinding out achievements or results, the social experience is far more important to me than any grinding session. I have made some very good friends over the years through gaming. A lot of the time I am happy chatting away on ventrilo to them talking the usual boys stuff whilst browsing the web, doing some work or watching a film and them doing something completely different. I doubt I could be arsed to fire up the console to do that in all honesty.

Conculsions

In a perfect world, you would want a system as quiet as PS3 with the games catalogue of the X360 on a platform like Steam. I think there is no clear winner in this and it is down to personal preference in a lot of cases.

What muddys the waters is that it is no always a level playing field. Too often we get caught up in the debate of Consoles sold x more games than PC so it is naturally better. In a lot of cases the official sales figures don't include digital downloads on platforms like steam or D2D. The only facts we do have is that there are less PC titles being released yet PC sales figures are up year on year (According to MCV) Console games also get more shelf space than PC Games.

If PC Gaming is to progress it absolutley needs to sort out DRM as a matter of urgency. It's amazing that the proper paid up gamers get treated worse than what the pirates do. I don't think it needs the dramatic overhaul some would have us believe. In as much as its great playing on a big screen with the family, I can still have my main PC plugged into it and it will look better than the console version like for like

Do I have a preference over what system I use ??? Well actually no and I am happy to put them in particular order. They all offer something different to me from what I want from my interactive gaming experience. I like the idea of playing on bigger multiplayer maps for PC Gaming but am really liking the story driven games on console. I also love the idea of some really classic games being transformed by some wondeful maps and mods on PC. So my gaming experince potentially is cheaper and lasts longer on PC than on console.

For me there is no clear winner. The cynic in me says that the only clear winner is the software houses as they will get a sale of there software regardless if you use a M & K or Controller.

Thanks for tuning in....

[iCraig]

I agree with pretty much everything you said, consoles and PCs each have their own pros and cons. I love my PS2, and I want a PS3. Yet my PC is now capable of playing the latest games at ultimate settings, which is ace. For me, I'm on the fence, because despite getting into PC gaming more than past 2 weeks or so, I have a lot of fun with consoles. Take for example Gran Turismo series on the PS2. I love them to bits, and you're 100% spot on in terms of switching it on, and having a race in next to no time. I couldn't imagine it on PC either, the controls would just suck. The gamepad lets me steer and accelerate and the PS2 has those pressure sensitive buttons, so I can feather my car's throttle. It all just fits. Sure, it could look nicer, and a top end PC would render cars as gorgeous as Rachel Stevens in french knickers, BUT, it would be in exchange of playability IMO.

However, and this is a rather large however, PC still has another niche IMO, one which the console will struggle to fill, at least for me anyway. FPS shooters. It's my favourite genre. Nothing better than blasting terorists, zombies, germans etc with a big gun. The keyboard and mouse combination works amazing well, allowing for speed of aiming, good accuracy etc. Consoles struggle, even with 360 degree aiming controls, I still find myself struggling to aim, hence I suppose why assistance has been given in the likes of autoaiming etc.

[Blighter]

All we need is for the 360 to get a game where it allows use of a USB M&K. I already use a USB keyboard on my 360 for sending messages etc

[Davey_Pitch]

I don't think there's a need for a debate to be honest. Each system has their place IMO, as each does different things. I prefer playing games like Football Manager and stuff like that on the PC, but I prefer most other games on the console. That's just my personal preference, which is where the whole debate stemmed from - personal preference.

[Blighter]

Again in response to iCraig... I think FPS might be better with a mouse, but there are some (GoW for eg) that I can't imagine using anything other then my pad

[Davey_Pitch]

Originally Posted by Blighter

All we need is for the 360 to get a game where it allows use of a USB M&K.

You have no idea how dead set I am against that idea. The beauty of the 360 (consoles in general really) is that for games like that you're on a level playing field. You're on the same hardware, using the some controllers, so it's all boils down to skill. If you start giving people the option to use different control methods, you start bringing other factors into play, and I don't want that at all, UNLESS you get the option of only playing against people using the same control method as you.

[Blighter]

Originally Posted by Davey_Pitch

You have no idea how dead set I am against that idea. The beauty of the 360 (consoles in general really) is that for games like that you're on a level playing field. You're on the same hardware, using the some controllers, so it's all boils down to skill. If you start giving people the option to use different control methods, you start bringing other factors into play, and I don't want that at all, UNLESS you get the option of only playing against people using the same control method as you.

That is a very good point. I retract my comment

[NokkonWud]

For instant gameplay there is only one winner, that is consoles, that's what it does. The PC doesn't do instant gameplay, so it can't compete. The only time it can be remotely classed as that is if purchased and played through Steam or installing a No-CD crack, but by that point a console is already well into its game. Obviously some people like editing code etc.. to make it run better, but that's not the purpose of the game, nor the goal of the developer - the game is meant to just be played but without a definite system for design on PC it's an issue PC games will always have.

Mouse and Keyboard being better is a personal irk of mine as neither are better but both are different. One hilarious explanation for why M&K was made here the other day by someone saying "Try playing GTA on a console and then telling me a joypad is better - auto-aim ruins it", yet driving around (which is the major element to the series) is awful with a mouse and keyboard. Another thing I find amusing is that people say "M&K is more accurate" and sure, the mouse may be more accurate, but the statement made is ill conceived because there is no way in hell a digital key press is more accurate for movement than an analogue stick.
In this world there is space for both control methods, heck the PS3 allows for M&K support in games deemed 'necessary', which basically boils down to UT3. What I will say is that a joypad offers the best all-round solution across genre's, where as M&K offers a bigger advantage in a select few; RTS and FPS. I also don't wish for M&K support on consoles - a level playing field is much more important to me.

The last platform I'd want to use is Steam to be honest. We're talking about a platform that was released and slated because it was slow and didn't work. In that time since its release it has sped up, but only recently has it all started to work as something you could even class as a platform.

For more than 3 years the friends element of it didn't work most of the time. Features wise it doesn't really do anything and it's so far behind what Microsoft offer now that if I was to use it constantly I'd feel like I was going back to 2001 when the original Xbox Live was released. As for Steam having more 'top games', Steam is a shop for new titles, Xbox Live isn't. If you want to compare classics though then Xbox Live Arcade wins as that's what its aim is - selling classic games, so not comparable in a shop sense.

The reason Live would be the best choice is not only because of it's usability to get to stuff, but its integration with official websites or when in-game too. Play something like the PGR series and you get leaderboards, friends lists, and ghosts all right there, no editing, no downloading outside a game - right there, automatically. When you're not online it doesn't look like it's missing something either, it's brilliantly done. Halo 3 is probably the best example so far of game integration from a central point we've ever seen. Not only is it the sharing of service records across live, it's how everything is integrated into SP and MP both in the game and through the website. It stat tracks, takes screenshots, maps where battles took place and even records all your statistics in SP campaign when playing with friends. Some things have to be seen to be believed that can be done - not all games make the most of it, but several do a bloody amazing job. This is something that simply can not be done through Steam.

This also isn't the case on PSN where Sony didn't create a central service, instead leaving developers to their own devices, something which really irks me as Metal Gear Solid 4 quite clearly takes the mickey, 3 different registrations for player names, 2 different passwords and you HAVE to use the Internet and then PSN separately and this is just to get in game. Anyone who has played it online knows exactly what I'm talking about. This is why Xbox Live is head and shoulders better than everything else. It does more than any other service and also does it's things better than most.

Sure, it's not perfect, maximum of 2 player private chat is ridiculous, but that's fixed in the new update (Wednesday) allowing for 8 players. That for me was my major problem and I would really have to think hard for something else...

Something I would like to clear up however is this talk of 'grinding' achievements. This is something Xbox360 owners such as Haly, Abooie and Creature have heard time and time again as Xbox360 only users and was a complaint levelled at them from PS3 users and PC gamers. Playstation 3 has since had Trophy support which is Sony's imitation of Microsoft's Achievement service and has quietened that crowd since learning what it's all about. As a die-hard gamer I went through the whole confusion prior to the 360 launch and thinking 'What the hell is all this achievement palava about, seems pointless', and to a degree it is, but it offers many more positives than negatives...

When I've completed games in the past I've played from the start to the end and that's it, completed and I would enjoy the experience obviously, else I wouldn't play games. Achievements however turn it up a notch, you can complete the game and still have things to do, goals to achieve. It would give me reason to try and get these too, not because of the points, but often because they were tricky or difficult to get and when you look at your friends you realise you've got something they haven't, achieved a goal they haven't... it's something we've all had in the past "Oh, I can't do X/Y/Z on so and so game", you turn around "Oh, I've done that", "yeah right, I don't believe you", except with Achievements we have die-hard, concrete proof. Bragging rights if you will.
Achievements aren't made to be 'grinding' on a game, it's not like leveling up in an RPG or MMORPG, if you buy a game, love it, completing it and then completing those goals set out by the developer is a great feeling. What's more, some games have some very creative achievements, none more than Dead Rising, which by the way is one of the best games of the last 5 years, where it ranges from easy to incredibly difficult, some from amusing to rage fuelled frustration.

Achievements are an addition to a game and should be enjoyed, not seen as something that is none-fun and a case of repetition - if you spend £40 on a game surely something to add further depth and enjoyment to something is a good thing?

As for needing new hardware, it's not really a debate, it's a fact. If you want PC games to look their best you have to buy the best parts, but PC is the format for showing the bells and whistles and to do so games often outweigh the hardware available and are a generation ahead. This isn't anything new, this has been the case for a lot of years, but it's getting worse in a day and age where the top graphics cards are £500+. I have first hand experience of this, prior to getting this GPU second hand my previous 2 cost a combined £840 and neither lasted anything remotely long enough to show games how I would like them.

This is not a 'dangerous argument', consoles are a defined hardware set with games coded to take advantage of this. Developers learn shortcuts and techniques and get more and more out of these games. The Xbox360 has been out 3 years now and it plays the latest games at a smoother frame-rate with sharper graphics, more on-screen and more features, my graphics card also happens to be 3 years old and I played Crysis and Stalker last year and neither could be played at a level of graphics I would deem acceptable to play them, the former actually looking awful to be played and this is on a system that was updated just 2 years before playing these games. Yes, drivers get a little more out of this, but when I want to play games it's an annoyance to find out what drivers are out, what the benefits, or more to the point, side-effects are, finding the quickest download is, installing, restarting, booting, playing the game, tweaking and what do you get? Often 2-5fps more. On a console you get alerted to an update, it downloads and installs immediately (as they are never big updates), and you're good to go.

I prefer the relaxed nature of sitting playing consoles over a PC now because I spend so much time sat in front of a PC anyway, so much so that at the age of 24 I suffer from terrible lower back pains (a common family problem on my Fathers side) and so getting away from it, relaxing and playing with friends is just perfect for me.

A common complaint for the Xbox360 is its sound, and they aren't quiet, but in the dashboard my 360 is no louder than my PS3 and my PC is louder than either of them and that's without my WD Raptor banging about like it wants to escape.

What is clear is that Console gaming is serious business, this is what seems to bother so many from the PC crowd who like to see consoles as 'kids game machines' and that is no longer the case and often in doing so, the arguments put together make them look like hypocrites with childish complaints and uninformed comments, LeoWyatt sent me a link a couple of days ago from a professional PC gaming site which just further proved my beliefs (I shall post if people want). Console games is also the major market for developers, with many swapping primarily to console development. Consoles now often gets the games first and PC's second and the major developer for PC's, Epic, has now gone consoles and see's PC's as a black sheep of the market - not good for the creator of the most used gaming engine out there. I remember all the complaints that BioShock was made console first too and some of the 'issues' regarding the focus on consoles as a primary system on Overclockers are hilarious.

Am I anti-PC? No, I'm not. I think PC's are the largest gateway to many games and often the most accessible (though primarily down to the ease of piracy). If console games were as easy to access as PC games I guarantee a lot of PC gamers wouldn't be so negative towards it. Also, my 3 favourite games of all time were on the PC .

I am a firm believer that some games are better on PC too, firstly RTS games, I can't see them working on a console, not that it bothers me as they just aren't my bag, but interestingly I also thought FPS games couldn't be done on a console due to a 'lack' of buttons, but that wasn't true and it's been proven it can, though a lot of that comes down to the pad - the Xbox360 pad is brilliant to learn on due to the size of it, the positions of the joysticks, the quality of response from the sticks and the triggers - I still struggle to play FPS games on a Playstation pad and I've tried, it just isn't suitable for me due to it's small size (the West is a bigger gaming community Asia - sort it out you arrogant tools), poor joystick locations for FPS games, lack of joystick response (massive deadzones people) and convex triggers (what a stupid design idea).

If someone was saying console FPS'ing just wasn't right and tried doing so on a PS pad I'd fully understand where they were coming from and sadly, with the PS2 being so massively sold and a lot of PC gamers seemingly buying PS3's over Xbox360's (although I'm really not sure why), I think this is the case.

[divine]

I agree with most of what you said so i'm not going to waste time typing virtually the same stuff again, so i'll just mention the bits I want to add to or disagree with

Instant Gameplay
I think this can work both ways. It's a given the console will play out of the box (though with the PS3 installation is usual so the only difference is in tweaking settings) however the PC then has the advantage over actually getting your game. Say we both decided we wanted to play Fallout 3 right now but neither owned it. You wanted it on console, I wanted it on PC. You'd have to mail order it or take a trip into town. I could load Steam, click click click and then 3 hours later it would be installed and ready to play with no further interaction from me. That's pretty awesome if you ask me, though with the pound turning to jelly compared to the dollar, the £1=$2 deals that abounded on Steam are gone somewhat now it's nearer $1.45 to £1.

Mouse & Keyboard are better than Control Pad - Fact
Depends what you play. FPS and RTS I don't think a controller comes anywhere near. Driving, sports, platformers etc. I think the controller wins hands down. Both are perfectly possible with the other but will never quite match up to the others strengths in the end.

Games need patching on release, I need to update grahics drivers
Patching I think is virtually a non argument as it covers both PC and Console and on both can be entirely automated. There is a brilliant program for PC which I forget the name of (I don't care enough about patches to bother, I only use manual ones when something is actually wrong on my machine. If it aint broke dont fix it) but that keeps a list of installed games and downloads any relevant patches for you as when they're released.

The need to update drivers is an odd one. With my old X800 I installed one set, upgraded once and then that was it for 2 years and it never once caused me a problem. Probably didn't have max performance but meh, it all worked. I'm probably going to update my GeForce ones more, if only because they actually have a noticeable improvement (I netted an extra 6 or 7 FPS in CoD4 with a driver update recently) and they've also got stuff like PhysX and CUDA in them, CUDA being something i'm quite intrigued by.

You need the latest PC Hardware to make it look good
Not entirely true. Games with crap engines like Crysis maybe, stuff done well such as Left4Dead still have the ability to look great and i'm running it on a 3 year old £800 PC with a £45 graphics upgrade (best value ever that too 8800GS/9600GSO).

The Experience
Depends what you're getting at here. One area I think consoles have always had an edge is single system multiplayer, sat with three mates all half beating the crap out each other in aid of playing PES or something. Consoles are starting to lose this now though with online gaming, as where I used to go round a mates and we'd do system link Halo with two teams in two rooms etc. and have a real blast, now most of them just play online, sat on their own with a headset and microphone, something the PC has done for years.

Conculsions
PC is better by miles

Though really, it does come down to what you want from a system. There was a certain amusement factor to coming downstairs the other day to find my sisters boyfriend playing Mario Kart on my old GC and sitting down and kicking his ass at it just like that (he's not put it down since, he's determined to beat me) which we couldn't have done if i'd seen him sat in the other room playing RTCW on my old PC.

The other thing is just where your money is better invested. Ultimately, gaming isn't the biggest priority for my money at the moment as I can't afford to just waste it (he says going out and getting hammered most weekends) so dropping £300 on a console and accessories and subs etc. makes no sense to me, when I already have a PC that can play most of the same games and the ones that only the console has don't really appeal to me. Any gaming upgrades I do make to the PC, also benefit me elsewhere. I added some RAM at one point, which not only improved my games but Photoshop ran faster, the PC in general was quicker etc. which is a sort of multitasking value you can only apply to the TV part in a console. Everyone needs a PC anyway still and currently to me, it makes far more financial sense to have spent £100 on it to make it play the latest games and run faster overall than it would have done to spend £200 on a 360 and have an overall slower PC still.

[loki]

Originally Posted by NokkonWud

Snip

I will post a full reply when I get home. Most points I agree with, three points I don't

I still don't think point about the latest hardware being essential is entirely correct. Yes if you want full AA and Anistropic Filtering along and really really high frame rate then you have to spend your wedge on card capable of doing that. However that will make it look better than the comparable console version.

The example of Crysis and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is valid bit certainly not representative of PC gaming in general. Crysis even on a £3000 pc will struggle to hit above 60 frames per second and have all the bells and whistles turned on at anything more than 1280x1024. No matter how much Crytek bleat on about piracy, it was a game that was poorly coded. STALKER on the other hand was over four years in production and went through a number of developers before it was released. Its biggest problem was that it came out at the same time as Vista, so the developers had problems from the outset getting it to run on that. As I say both valid examples but not representative of pc gaming in general.

Final point I take issue with is steam. Having used Live on PC, XBL and Steam, I would say Live on PC is the worst out of the three. Steam has come a long way, it's stable, easy to use and offers similar functionality to XBL and I genuinely don't see it being that bad from a user, developer or content perspective.