I like to consider myself a technology pragmatist. I use a Mac laptop, Android tablet, Windows desktop and an Apple iPhone. I try not to subscribe to one companies products. In this vein of thinking, I also don't really prefer PC gaming over console gaming and vice versa. Sure there are plenty of advantages to PC gaming (cheap games, better graphics, free online, community mods) but I will also contend that their is a beautiful simplicity to just sticking a disk into a console and knowing that the game is going to work flawlessly. Unfortunately, due to the fragmented and broken nature of Windows, PC gaming is a non-option for many non tech savvy people.
I often get irritated with having to find workarounds to get games to run on my gaming computer (Battlefront 2 on Steam crashes if Stereo Mix is not enabled in Windows's sound settings, Crysis One will not run on a 64-bit system without googling, downloading and swapping files in the game directory, older games frequently have issue's with modern graphics cards and driver incompatibilities requiring me to go in and edit graphics config files etc.) plus poorly optimized games (I am looking at you Ubisoft) that run like ass even on my $2000+ dollar gaming machine.
Don't get me wrong, many games (like Crysis, Metro: Last Light etc.) look fantastic and run great. Other games (Assassins Creed 4, Watch_Dogs etc.) constantly crash, have memory leak problems, or just don't run very well. Part of the problem (and one of the biggest contributors to the problem) is game companies like Ubisoft, which released half-baked, broken and poorly optimized PC games onto the platform. I would rather they just not release them at all. If I cant get more than an hour of Watch_Dogs play time without crashing, that's a serious problem, and not worth my money.
The other contributor to the problem, is Windows. Having extensive experience with the three major OS's (OS X, Linux (primarily Mint, Fedora and Ubuntu) and Windows) I can say with certainty that Windows is a major reason why people are sticking with consoles. Windows is like a cake that they just keep layering more frosting onto. They keep adding more and more code, but it's not clean. Driver incompatibilities, crashes, disk defragmentation, the list goes on. Part of the problem is the necessity for Windows to still be able to run legacy code for businesses and such. I still feel that Windows need's a serious overhaul, I hope that the upcoming Windows 10 is able to achieve this.
I love PC gaming. I also love console gaming. I still play on my fat PS2 (which I have kept running for 13 years!) and PS3, because there are console exclusives that I like (Ratchet and Clank, Wipeout HD, Uncharted etc.) I play games on both PC and console. I don't see what the harm is in using both, and I don't understand why people get into internet flamewars over "which is better." If I had to choose one, I would choose PC. But choosing both gets you the best of both worlds.
Phew, and as usual, I have been extremely long winded.
Thoughts?