gamingeek said:

So 4 games I'm interested in, which are all out on every platform under the sun. Why do I need an Xbone?

Because it has the name XBOX man!!!! Xtreme gaming!!!!

Honestly, with how much more stable PC gaming has gotten the last few years and how the consoles have become wannabe PC's I don't understand why everyone doesn't just build a solid gaming PC, if you have the means. Services like Steam have aken the hassle out of most modern games. You can hook your PC up to a TV and reciever just like a console. And the deals on games are so much better. And you also have the choice between using KB/Mouse or controller for most games.

edgecrusher said:

Honestly, with how much more stable PC gaming has gotten the last few years and how the consoles have become wannabe PC's I don't understand why everyone doesn't just build a solid gaming PC, if you have the means. Services like Steam have aken the hassle out of most modern games. You can hook your PC up to a TV and reciever just like a console. And the deals on games are so much better. And you also have the choice between using KB/Mouse or controller for most games.

People want plug and play games that are guaranteed to work with no hassle. People want cheap hardware prices and the exclusive games from the console makers. PC games are cheap as there is no licencing costs involved. And hardware is more powerful and upgradable but that all comes at a cost.

I used to be the PC gamer in the 90s and upgraded all sorts of shit to my desktop but eventually it became outdated and wouldn't run most games. For legacy purposes I prefer to have a console than relying on a new PC to play old collections.

Famitsu review:

• JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle (PS3) – 10/10/10/10
• The Wonderful 101 (Wii U) – 10/10/10/9
• Ragnarok Odyssey Ace (PSV) – 9/9/8/9
• Lost Planet 3 (PS3/360) – 9/8/7/9
• Seitokai No Ichizon Lv.2 Portable (PSP) – 8/8/7/6
• Hotchkiss (PSV) – 7/7/6/5
• Saki Achiga-Hen: Episode of side-A Portable (PSP) – 7/7/5/5

GamesMaster review scores are as follows:

• Saints Row IV – 81%
• Pikmin 3 – 85%
• Dota 2 – 90%
• Payday 2 – 88%
• The Walking Dead 400 Days – 70%
• Scourge: Outbreak – 36%
• Capsized – 74%
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II – Vengeance DLC – 69%
• Mount Your Friends – 89%
• Tales of Xillia – 72%
• Stealth Inc: A Clone In The Dark – 83%
• Tokyo Jungle Mobile – 78%
• Superfrog HD – 69%
• Kung Fu Rabbit – 75%
• Hotline Miami – 93%
• EarthBound – 91%
• Mighty Switch Force! 2 – 68%
• Aqua Moto Racing 3D – 44%
• Bugs vs. Tanks – 60%
• Dillon’s Rolling Western – The Last Ranger – 60%
• Urban Trial Freestyle – 72%
• Tekken Revolution – 69%
• Dynasty Warriors 8 – 70%
• Time and Eternity – 36%
• Ride to Hell: Retribution – 5%
• Rogue Legacy – 80%

gamingeek said:

only €59 each!  Or, for those of you in the UK, a whopping £54  

There's something peculiar about the new Dualshock design, and it's more apparent in the red/blue versions.  It looks very utilitarian, more so then previous itterations.  It nearly looks more like a professional grade drill the likes of Makita or Metabo then an entertainment device.

SupremeAC said:

I only started gaming on pc less then 2 years ago, and I must say that your points concerning ease of use are forfeit.  Steam has made PC gaming even more plug and play then console gaming, with all your games being stored on your HDD and saves in the cloud.  I'm also betting you could get a PC the price of a PS4 to run almost any contemporary game you can think of.  I'm gaming on a 4 year old laptop, and it runs Borderlands 2 wonderfully.  So that leaves us with console exclusives, which these days are more often then not 'timed exclusives'.  Even games like Metal Gear Rising are headed to pc.

The only real argument against PC gaming I can really think of is that new OS's and hardware will eventually not support older software.  But I for one really don't play that many older games, despite owning a lot of retro consoles.  And if those retro consoles break, there's no way I'll be playing parts of my collection either.

Anyhow, I've been a console only gamer for 25 years.  I finally made the step to steam, and while I don't think gaming on a PC is as comfortable as gaming on a console (and no, I'm not plugging my laptop in my telly), it does facilitate gaming online with friends, as not everybody owns the same consoles, but almost everyone I know has a PC that could run most games.

Agreed.

gamingeek said:

Those colors make the controller look cheap IMO. Give me one with the Slate Grey color they released for PS2 and PS3:

SupremeAC said:

I only started gaming on pc less then 2 years ago, and I must say that your points concerning ease of use are forfeit.  Steam has made PC gaming even more plug and play then console gaming, with all your games being stored on your HDD and saves in the cloud.  I'm also betting you could get a PC the price of a PS4 to run almost any contemporary game you can think of.  I'm gaming on a 4 year old laptop, and it runs Borderlands 2 wonderfully.  So that leaves us with console exclusives, which these days are more often then not 'timed exclusives'.  Even games like Metal Gear Rising are headed to pc.

The only real argument against PC gaming I can really think of is that new OS's and hardware will eventually not support older software.  But I for one really don't play that many older games, despite owning a lot of retro consoles.  And if those retro consoles break, there's no way I'll be playing parts of my collection either.

Anyhow, I've been a console only gamer for 25 years.  I finally made the step to steam, and while I don't think gaming on a PC is as comfortable as gaming on a console (and no, I'm not plugging my laptop in my telly), it does facilitate gaming online with friends, as not everybody owns the same consoles, but almost everyone I know has a PC that could run most games.

Do you have to disagree with everything I say 100% of the time?

A lot of people don't want saves stored in a cloud or games existing on a HDD that may crap out. And they want guaranteed legacy support with a console, not relying on a new PC that may nix the play of older games. Whilst you probably could build a desktop with similar grunt to a PS4, many people don't want to build anything. And they are heading towards laptops and tablets which aren't as cost effective. Not to mention that the OS on PCs eat up processing power and a similar spec PC to PS4 or Xbone wont perform as well for games. If your retro consoles break you can always pick one up on ebay. Not everyone wants Steam either, despite its fantastic prices, some people want physical boxed games and guaranteed legacy support. People buy fuckloads of games from Steam because of the price - if they were priced the same as physical copies would they do as well?

For me bottom line is I don't want to have to look at the required specs for every game before I buy it. And my laptops have been especially unrealiable, 3 laptops have crapped out within 3 years - two of them overheated constantly, one of them has weak hinges that cracked the screen casing and they wanted £300 to fix a plastic case! There is no way I want to game on laptops or desktops that will shit out a couple of years from now. Especially with Nintendo, I expect the consoles to last 5-10 years. X1 is built to run constantly for a decade always on.

gamingeek said:

Do you have to disagree with everything I say 100% of the time?

A lot of people don't want saves stored in a cloud or games existing on a HDD that may crap out. And they want guaranteed legacy support with a console, not relying on a new PC that may nix the play of older games. Whilst you probably could build a desktop with similar grunt to a PS4, many people don't want to build anything. And they are heading towards laptops and tablets which aren't as cost effective. Not to mention that the OS on PCs eat up processing power and a similar spec PC to PS4 or Xbone wont perform as well for games. If your retro consoles break you can always pick one up on ebay. Not everyone wants Steam either, despite its fantastic prices, some people want physical boxed games and guaranteed legacy support. People buy fuckloads of games from Steam because of the price - if they were priced the same as physical copies would they do as well?

For me bottom line is I don't want to have to look at the required specs for every game before I buy it. And my laptops have been especially unrealiable, 3 laptops have crapped out within 3 years - two of them overheated constantly, one of them has weak hinges that cracked the screen casing and they wanted £300 to fix a plastic case! There is no way I want to game on laptops or desktops that will shit out a couple of years from now. Especially with Nintendo, I expect the consoles to last 5-10 years. X1 is built to run constantly for a decade always on.

I don't have to, it just turns out that way  

As long as there is an internet connection, how can steam fail you?  It's completely independent of the hardware you play it on.  PC breaks?  Buy a new one, redownload your games and off you go.  Better yet, buy hardcopies of your games and enter them on Steam, if you so must have physical copies of your games.

I didn't say you could build a PC to rival PS4 with the same budget.  I said you could build a PC that plays almost any game rather well for that budget.  Also, in my point of view the price of entry is lower then that of console gaming.  I need a decent PC for my work.  No need to shell out another €200-500 just to play games, everything I need is already sitting on my desk.  And as I said in my previous post, even if you don't need a decent pc for professional purposes, everyone has a PC, which, at this point in time, should be sufficient to run most games in an acceptable state.

Nintendo consoles are built to last upwards of 20 years, or so they are in my mind.  On an emotional level I understand your points though.  The only reason I don't worry about digital only copies of my games on Steam is that I don't care for those games like I do for the ones in my physical collection.  I'm a Nintendo gamer.  Never would it cross my mind to buy a Nintendo game digitally.  You just need that new-game smell, to be able to hold the game, see them lined up on the shelf.

Foolz said:

The older software thing isn't really true, either. There are always going to be people making old games playable on new OSs. You can play the majority of well recieved games on PC from any era; you just can't install them and expect them to work instantly. Like you said a console's life time is finite...if it wasn't, then there might be an argument.

Yeah that's part of the problem you can't install them and expect them to just work. Talking about the period when I was a PC Gamer games came on floppy discs. Modern PCs don't even have floppy disc drives, how am I supposed to play these games without rebuying digicopies or downloading them illegally? Most of the newer laptops I'm looking at don't even have DVD drives which is fecking annoying as I have programs on discs that I want to work. One fantastic windows XP program I had wont run on vista or Windows 7. If I bought Windows 7 Professional with a virtual XP environment maybe it would work, but that costs over a couple of hundred pounds. I had to install a CDROM a couple of years later on my 90s PC. Then when I got my next PC none of the games I played on the previous PC worked. Eventually years later they released this SCUMM program which could play a few of them. With the PC games I used to play in the 90s I would have to carefully check the required specs and then sometimes I would get home and it would be a pain in the ass to just get it to work. Then when it didn't the stores wouldn't even take it back so it was like flushing money down a toilet.

And as I mentioned my modern laptops have all prematurely crapped out or got riddled with viruses, or had hard drives fail, screen drivers crap out, hinges crack. It's just a big pile of fail and I don't want that.

I don't want that hassle anymore. I get a laptop to browse the internet use the disc drive for music and video and to write the occasional letter. Now I probably use the Wii U internet browser more than the laptop for the internet.

SupremeAC said:

I don't have to, it just turns out that way  

As long as there is an internet connection, how can steam fail you?

LOL you are saying this to me? Man I had a baaaaaaaad couple of years with my ISP, internet constantly lost, speeds changed and restricted - constantly having to phone India to get it working and then waiting a fortnight only for it to crap out a couple of weeks later and go through it all again. And they have you on contract so you can't leave either.

In the UK the internet speed varies drastically, on average it's supposed to be 7mbps but tell that to the guy who lives 3 miles away stuck with 500 k or 1mps.

With Steam will it always exist? What happens if the company goes broke and the servers are shut off? I would always want to burn hard copies of my games which I believe you can do. And for full games I don't know what your download speeds are but I swap between 1mbps and 10 here. Usually it's one and it's completely unfeasible to download full length retail games on that connection. Not to mention the amount of HDD space it would eat up. I could buy a usb hardrive and download full Wii U games but why would I want to? Why would I want ridiculously slow downloads on a hard drive that may eventually crap out? I want a physical copy with a physical box, box art, instructions.

"I said you could build a PC that plays almost any game rather well for that budget."

We have no idea how next gen will stack up. PC can play any cross gen game now, but will your existing PC (not mega expensive behemoths like Edgecrushers) be set for the next 7 years? Why would I buy hardcopies of games and enter them on Steam? If I had hard copies I wouldn't need or want Steam. When I see Steam the benefit is super cheap prices and massive sales. I am at a point where I can barely keep up with the games I already own, I don't need or want to download a fuckton of games I don't have the time patience or energy to play.

"Also, in my point of view the price of entry is lower then that of console gaming. I need a decent PC for my work. No need to shell out another €200-500 just to play games, everything I need is already sitting on my desk"

You're different from me. This is the whole point this discussion is based on, you like it and it's for you, fine. I'm not interested, I get it, Steam is great, people love Steam. Fine.

I need a console I need to play console exclusive games. I am swapping out PCs and laptops for tablets which aren't powered high enough or don't have the inputs neccessary for hardcore gaming. I am sacrificing power for digital freedom, touch screens and massively long lasting batteries. That's more important to me.

"everyone has a PC, which, at this point in time, should be sufficient to run most games in an acceptable state."

I don't agree that everyone has a PC that can run all games in an acceptable state. Peoples definition of what's acceptable differs from person to person. Some people have new PCs, great for them, some others are owning older PCs on the back end of the curve when it comes to tech. Sure they might be good when they get a new PC, but how far out is that? 2 years? 3? 4?

Jett Rocket 2