@atomicpoet#Consoles are also fairly self-contained appliances with a fixed cost designed for shared living spaces. A successful console platform can play compatible #games for its entire life without upgrades and the tinkering that comes with a general-purpose platform. That’s a compelling value for many people.
And I say this as someone for whom tinkering is the #game sometimes.
@mjgardner You can use a PC as a self-contained appliance for a shared living space. Just get an Intel NUC and boot into Steam’s Big Picture mode.
And maybe a successful console can play compatible games for its entire life without upgrades but:
A console’s life is very short
A console’s library is small
A PC’s compatibility for gaming is a lot bigger
If you want the best version of a game, if you have a console, you’re screwed since there is no upgrade path
On my tower, I can play PC games that were made in the 80s and 90s. I can also play the best version of any AAA title because, try as they might, consoles don’t have dedicated GPUs. At the most, the Xbox Series X has an APU that’s equivalent to an RTX 2070.
In other words, you have the worst of both worlds. Consoles are machines that can’t play old games well nor can they play new games well either.
@mjgardner I am the target audience for consoles. I’m looking at 10 in front of me: an NES, a SEGA Genesis, a SEGA Nomad, a SEGA Saturn, Retron 5, PSOne, PS2, PSP, original Xbox, Xbox 360. I own more – these are just the ones in front of me.
You know why I own so many consoles? Because backwards compatibility is not a thing. And when it is, it’s usually not exhaustive.
Console gaming is great only for a small window of its existence. Be an early adopter, there’s too few games available for it. Be a late adopter, games stop being made entirely for it.
At a certain point, I realized something: PCs are now good enough to give you the console experience.
On your point about NUCs: all of them are gaming PCs. Anything that calls itself “gaming-oriented” is marketing claptrap. I can go onto Amazon now, buy a Beelink Mini PC for less than $200 and play Half-Life immediately.
Or I can go even lower, buy a pre-built Raspberry Pi, and also play Half-Life on it.
Any by the way, my tower isn’t evergreen. At this point, it’s two-years-old. Regardless, this isn’t strictly about being able to play AAA titles. It’s the fact my PC can play both AAA games as well as games from the 80s and 90s – which new consoles can’t.
A PlayStation 5 cannot play Croc 2 on it whereas almost any modern PC can.
I’m really sorry that your #NintendoSwitch repair was so expensive. But it’s a vast leap generalizing that to a condemnation of all #consoles for everyone.
@atomicpoet Also, it’s self-contradictory for a PC gamer to shut down on #ConsoleGaming, an alternative that suits other gamers, when the entire point of #PCgaming is to cater to individual choice
@mjgardner No, when I speak of cultural capital, I speak of the regard people have for specific forms of gaming – console gaming being seen as the apex. Specifically, as “real gaming”.
Whereas PC gaming, mobile gaming, and handheld gaming is seen as something lesser.
How do I know this? Because games released on console get more attention, more press, more praise than everything else.
This despite the fact that games released on console isn’t even the best version of a game upon their release.
Now is there any reason that Cut the Rope is considered “less premium” than Assassin’s Creed? No, nothing – other than that mobile gaming is seen as something lesser than console gaming.
Look, I don’t make the rules. Long ago, the media gatekeepers decided that console gaming is “premium” gaming, and everything else is not.
@atomicpoet
I kind of agree. Sadly for me it's the only way to play a AAA game. A PC with a good enough GPU is out of my reach in this country. I have a cheap XBox Series X that runs all titles smoothly.
@Andres I don’t know what country you live in, nor do I know what the price gap is between a good enough PC vs console.
But long term, I feel PC is the better value. If you buy a game now, it will likely work on PC for a very long time. Games I bought in the 90s work on my PC.
For example, I bought Screamer for PC in 1995. It works now. I also bought Final Fantasy VII for PC in 1998. It also works on my PC.
I have a big, big library of PC games. All those games I review every day? I own them. Even as I change hardware, these games are still playable.
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