PC Gaming: The Truth

After reading countless articles and comments on this site that spread lies and misinformation about this platform I decided to share my thoughts on the matter without screaming “PC gaming is better” or “Consolez FTW”. I am biased towards PC gaming as I am a PC gamer and own neither console. However I used too and gamed on the consoles for years so I believe I have a fair insight on both sides. This is not an article to start a flame war in the comments about which platform you prefer, everyone has their opinion and I advise you not to post why your system is the best. It’s all preference.
This Blog is only here to throw away the big lies about PC gaming which I spread out into three topics.

[Price]

A lot of arguing goes on about this topic. You have the “uninformed” console gamer who believes that a PC costs around £2000 however I am going to ignore this because it’s just plain stupidity. Then you get to the real argument PC’s are a big investment, you are likely to pay triple the price of a console to get a good gaming rig that will last you a while. However console games generally cost around £10 more than a PC game at launch and drop in price a lot quicker. Then there is the factor of upgrading your PC which is not normally necessary to keep playing games which brings me to the second big lie about PC Gaming, people who say that you have to worry about upgrading your parts for every new game that releases. If you invested in a good system at launch there is no reason why it can’t still play games 4-6 years down the line. Due to most games only running DX9 because of the consoles however of course you will need to upgrade your computer if you want to run DX11 and bought a DX9 graphics card however this is not a necessity.

TL;DR PC gaming is a massive investment at first however If you buy a lot of games it will probably end up being cheaper.

[Ease of use and reliability]

Well a lot of people want their gaming platform to be simple and easy to use and in this field consoles trump PC however the jump is not as big as people think and you will actually learn something useful if you learn how to build and maintain a PC. Thinking of building a PC sounds a lot scarier than it really is, I learnt how to build a computer after watching 4 short youtube videos and glancing over my motherboards instructions. Yet it is completely understandable If someone does not wish to do this and consoles are definitely the better choice for ease of use.

A lot of gamers see PC’s as something that never works how you want it too and you need to install drivers and all of these things. However I disagree windows 7 takes care of 99.9% of driver installs automatically. The problems that do occur with my PC can normally be fixed after a quick google search or patch. Consoles on the other hand are not very reliable, The problems that occur with consoles are more likely to require you to return the console unless you have a very good technical understanding.

[Games]

“But the PC has no games” As a PC gamer I hear this a lot. However this is not true at all PC has way more games than both consoles combined. It is fully backwards compatible and with services such as GOG.com really old games are being brought back to life. PC games normally address the PC Gamer crowd. They are often less casual and more strategic. PC gamers love strategy games and so we have big series such as Starcraft and Total War, two games that also hold their own against console top sellers. PC is also the “true” home of indie games and innovation, It offers developers a complete freedom so that they do not have to abide by the rules of Sony or Microsoft which has allowed for some great titles such as Minecraft, Mount and Blade and terraria. Three games that would never have passed approval by Sony and Microsoft due to buying unfinished games and the way they evolve. Then there is Mods, a lot of console gamers see mods as something that adds a new skin or enhances a games graphics however their have been some pretty impressive mods. For example: Team Fortress, Counter Strike, Nehrim, The cube and much more. There are also mods that fix problems in games such as The Unofficial Oblivion Patch that fixes 800 bugs in the game. And of course graphics mods which seem to be getting the most publicity at the moment.

Then there is F2P games. These are regarded by most gamers as cheap and trash however some of these games are pretty good. Recent ones include KAG2D and Team Fortress 2. However I agree that most past F2P games have been plagued by pay to win and all sorts of issues. Developers seem to have noticed this and there are some promising F2P titles such as End of Nations and Firefall which both do something new and great.
So I think that throws out the no games argument.

In conclusion game on what you want to game on. PC gaming is not better than console gaming and console gaming is not better than PC gaming, they both suit different kinds of people. Gaming is primarily about fun after all.