Console and PC Gaming... why not both?

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?

For the most part they have their perks. Sure you can emulate most PS2 games quite easily. 

Honestly if I still had my PS2 working I would still be playing it. I had an XBOX 360 for quite a while before I got into PC gaming. Primarily the initial cost was not that bad on my parents and I had no idea that PC could game like the consoles at the same price/performance a few years back. Not only that, my father not knowing what computers were capable of though that simply playing a flash game could lead the computer inevitable failing exponentially faster than it would if was not playing games at all. I never understood that mindset.

Got an Xbone now and basically the only game I have for it Halo MCC mainly for nostalgia purposes and the included Assassins creed game which I highly doubt I will ever play. I basically bought me a Halo playing machine and also got into touch with old XBL friends that I haven't talked to in over a year or so.

In terms of performance/reliability/price. PC does much more than the consoles could ever do. Yes indeed PC backwards compatibility is as far back as some old DOS games but not without some tinkering with windows or a VM. But that is the fun with it. You work at it until you get something that is functional because of your efforts. That's what I like about PC. Some, not so much.

I an of the opinion, that if you tun around screaming PCMasterRace!!! In a serious manor. You either have mental issues or need a better hobby.

There are products that don't work for everyone, and like you said the simplicity sells n favor of consoles. If you claim laziness then i encourage you to take the world as it is and not how you'd like it to be.

You have the money go a head and buy all the device your budget allows. I know if I had the money I know id ask myself how green the grass is on the other side

That's just my opinion anyways

I am not a big fan of emulators with the exception of Dolphin (which actually does a good job and is still under active development) PCSX2 has problems with the games I like to play (Ratchet and Clank has texture problems with the emulator) and most emulators (with the exception of Dolphin which has multithreaded options) are heavily single threaded, which basically means they hate my AMD FX-8350.

I'll just run console games ON my PC, Just going to wait for the encryption on the PS4 and Xbone to get cracked so I can run the few exclusives there as I doubt I'll see emulation of the PS3 and 360 to work any time in the next decade, but the x86 based consoles out now wont need to be emulated, just decrypted and run on a fast enough system.

Microsoft did just announce that Xbone Games can be streamed to your PC with Windows 10. which is a nice feature. i wouldn't be surprised to see the Console and PC integration becoming a thing. Microsofts future is looking a bit promising. but only time will tell.

http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-10-will-allow-xbox-one-games-be-streamed-any-pc

 

I don't see what is stopping them from introducing steam in home streaming. Like c'mon the XBOX ONE/PSE are freaking HTPC's, it would only add the features of the consoles. Although most likely some legalities would have to be worked out between Valve and Microsoft/Sony.

This thread is full of heresy. 

Heresy is the name of the game!

I want many consoles besides PC. whooaaaa! who gives a shit?!!1

WiiU,Dreamcast,NeoGeo(most of them) PC-Engine,SNES........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ocaztxj87E

Well, I don't want to sound like a PC Master race nazi (wink-wink, Pistol), but I disagree with many of your points.


I don't consider my 6yo self playing games on a 386 running DOS a tech savvy fellow and here I was. Also many folks around me, who don't know crap about computers and likely think they run on fairy magic (and when you ask about their computer, they reply in terms of color) do game on PCs, at least in my country.

Your point about workarounds is also misguided. You talk about games like Battlefront 2 (PlayStation 2-era) and Crysis (Playstation 3-era) not running hassle-free on your current gaming PC (Playstation 4-era). Guess what? You (with few exceptions) can't play the older games on newer consoles and there are no workarounds. I for one can run most games of all ages with little effort on a single machine - for example - Dizzy (MS-DOS), Super Castlevania (SNES), Age of Empires (Windows 95), Oblivion (Windows XP), Witcher 2 (Windows 7), and I could go on forever.

Not only PCs, but consoles suffer from poor optimalization too, and in their case, it is hardly justified - case in point - Assassin's Creed Unity with it's gigs of patches for XBONE, which in many cases fix one bug and add three new ones.

Your point about Windows is pretty much spot on, but you almost got the answer - Linux. Yes, native Linux games make just a fraction of all PC games, but still exceeds the number of games on the current-gen consoles - 327 XBONE games vs. 1732 Linux-compatible games. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_One_games ; http://www.lgdb.org/games). True, not all Linux games are AAA titles, but many games are ported daily, with a few to-be-released games announcing their day one linux compatibility. To be honest, many current-gen AAA titles are not worth the money they cost, being just a rehash of older games. (I'm looking at you, CoD 123)

Disclaimer: I do own an old PS1 and PS2 consoles, I spent countless hours of my childhood on (S)NES and Sega Genesis, but I don't really see the point in buying current-gen consoles.

Well... I'd love to see PS3 emulated, but from what I can tell, that's one tough cookie... Xbox 360, not so much. IIRC 360's CPU is similar to PowerPC, with ATI custom-made GPU being the problematic one. Although PS3's Cell CPU is PowerPC-based too, from what I read, the use of SPEs and other oddities made it hard to code for, and so much harder to emulate with any decent performance. That being said, if this (http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/216spd/the_cell_has_been_cracked_early_playstation_3/
 ever gets usable, status quo can change rapidly.

I doubt it will be usable, it'll be like trying to emulate the Sega Saturn, which is still a bastard to emulate well.

Just look at how terrible the performance of PearPC was for emulating G3/G4 PowerPC CPUs, it was far easier for PowerPC to emulate x86 then it was for x86 to emulate PPC.

Also, IIRC the majority of the complaints about how hard the Cell was to program for was because it was a multicore CPU, and still to this day you see crappy programmers whining about how it's hard to write multicore aware code.

So as I said, I've got more hope for the current gen consoles as the underlying architecture for both are very similar and are based on commodity hardware making the task of getting it working closer to that of encryption cracking then that of emulating the hardware, though I have no doubt that there'll be a few bits of wonky hardware that'll have to be emulated.

The newest console I would consider buying at the moment is the PS3/ Xbox 360.  I guess it's still considered, "current gen" although it has been replaced and it is on its way out (slowly), there is absolutely nothing compelling about the new PS4 or Xbone.  And it seems like even the worst optimized console games run better than average, kinda sorta optimized PC titles.  Watch_Dogs on the PS4 doesn't lock up the whole system every 45 minutes.

You seem to know quite a lot. Care to elaborate on the PowerPC/x86 emulation, or send me links? Even though I am a newbie in terms of emulation, it interests me and would like to know more...

what about. PC -> Xbox streaming?

If they can make a seamless method of doing that with a few more perks/features I can see some people implementing that in their house just for that feature.

i still like to play games on my Wii

Games should be about the gaming experience and not the device its running on. My 2c.

Dolphin has a problem with a majority of gcn games. A lot of them are unplayable. PCSX2 can play a lot of games and most of the problems are minor (textures, tearing, etc), but the game is still playable. And, sometimes, you can solve these by messing with the gfx pluggin and switching it between direct x 11, 9, or opengl. 

That's the way it was the last time I messed with them so I might be wrong.