PC Gaming Dilemma - May 4, 2007 -

Ashwin | Gaming, Noteworthy, Perspective

For a long time, however, PC gaming and gamers have enjoyed a level of superiority over consoles. This was editorially evident in the PC Gamer magazine that I have subscribed to for many years. Anytime question of the console challenging the PC was quickly squashed with praises of the PC’s prowess.

However, since the introduction of the XBOX 360 and Playstation 3, I seem to find most of the articles and editorials taking the role of defending the PC as an equal in the gaming arena as opposed to the superior choice.

Shortly after my short introduction to the XBOX, I got a XBOX 360 for myself and the gaming glory that began to XBOX has only gotten better. The 360 is currently dominated by shooters, but a larger variety of games are slowly trickling out.

In my most recent memory, with what little gaming time I have, I find myself playing the XBOX 360 more often than the PC. One might wonder why I would choose a console over a PC for my gaming needs. Ask that to any hardcore PC gamer and the response is usually that the PC is superior to the console because not only can you play games on the PC, you could do so much more. Granted that the “more” they talk about involves surfing the web and reading email.

As a software engineer my trade, I can imagine the “more” equating to quite a lot of things. In any case, I counter that if we ignore the clear fact that with a closed gaming system, the time it takes me from power-up to gaming can be quite quick, and more importantly I know that I don’t have to worry about tweaking any settings to get a particular game to load up.

I believe that it is far better to have a device perform a handful of tasks admirably well than have it try to perform every possible task passably. To wit, take the modern cell phone as an example. These days, they come jam packed with a still and video cameras, FM radio, MP3 storage, and many more features than I care to mention. However, all of these functionality have to still fit within a slim profile.

Limited space breeds limited engineering. Compromises have to be made to ensure that a variety of features can be packed into the device to attain to a larger audience. Are you going to suggest that the still camera in a cell phone is superior to a hand-held digital camera? Or that the phone is better at playing music than an iPod?

With infinite reconfigurability comes infinite options and thus since no two computers are the same, the games just don’t auto-magically run the same. However, with a closed system, the gaming experience is similar across the board, be it good or bad.

I think PC gaming as a whole is in a dilemma because of the dwindling variety of games available, because of the quick obsolescence of hardware, and because the PC’s can no longer claim clear victory in the visuals department over the consoles as they once did.

Console gaming is more accessible today. It is far simpler connecting a device to your TV, popping in a disc and playing a game than having to install multi-gigabytes of information and to find that your spanking new DX9 card is just not good enough.

I haven’t even touched on the subject of money as it pertains to a console as opposed to a true PC gaming rig capable of running Supreme Commander, and that’s a subject for another day.

Cheers

Pages: 1 2