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[cyberheater]

<good post about PC gaming>

The other benefit about PC upgrades is that it's enabled me to build a second PC with the bits I would have sold for my main PC upgrades.
I've now got 2 gaming PC's which allows us to play co-op on death matches at home. And I feel I got the second PC for free as I kept the parts I upgraded over time.

Awesome.

 

[Triple U]

Ok just gonna throw in my two cents. This is the first gen where consoles with the exception of the WiiU and handhelds (ie the PS4 and Xbox One) are completely out of my range of choice for machines.

The only reason for this is the value of the system over its life time. I regret this as there are some great exclusives I'll miss as I did this gen, but that is a sacrifice worth taking for me.

Intial investments from pervious years include monitor, speakers etc. The very same is true for consoles, hdtv, speakers etc

I go and build a mid-level PC for between (£400 -£500) thanks to the bonus of my case and psu, drives etc carrying over from the previous gens build. If this wasn't the case I could also start from scratch and build an entry level PC for (£450 to £500). Both of these machines would already be as capable or (more likely) more capable than the PS4 or Xbox One, something that hasn't been possible at this price in previous gens. But this isn't the only reason.

As time goes on, every two years I will upgrade. This cost is justified by the savings from what would have been spent on xbox live/ps+ and the fact that every game I buy throughout this period being below £10 with the exception of games that I consider must haves, numbering between 2 - 5 each 2 year period on average (80% of the time these are priced £20 or £30). So guaranteed saving is 2 years live/ps+ is £39.99 x 2 = £79.99 (I know that these subs can be bought cheaper but considering the price difference of games I will leave it as is for a guaranteed figure.

During the two years, I will find that more recent games no longer run at 1080p avg 60fps. On the PC I have the freedom to choose the temporary sacrifice to make in order to maintain what I feel is optimal for now (1080p avg 60fps). I like aliasing and 1080p and AA, so those stay. I maybe choose to reduce the resolution of shadows or the physics complexity, whatever I feel provides the biggest gains and least loss of quality. Never in the previous gen was this loss of quality worse than those on the consoles.

The two year mark is reached and I get to choose what to upgrade. Typically, I'm an nvidia guy who uses the gtx ?60 series of cards when they are priced between £150 and £200. An example from the previous gen, I sold my gtx 260 for £90 and bought the new one for £170 therefore a cost of £80, I still fell like I have saved here due to no subscription fees and this exceeded by my way of purchasing games.

As above what happens in the following 2 year periods is what decides what I upgrade, selling the old components and buying the new ones, maintaining that margin of cost.

Now what blows me away and will always keep me on the PC is that the upgrade I have made, not only allows me to play games at a quality that is now even more significantly ahead of the console. I get to experience the PC exclusive titles at a higher fidelity and the performance gains are further increased in all my previous games. In some games it feels like its a whole new experience with the increases in frame rate and graphic features. In the previous gen, the jump from gtx 260 to gtx 460 for example, brought in tessellation increases, that looked and performed incredibly. Going from fairly ok ocean and water simulations to out right epic ones was stunning.

Moreover, what really matters is that I think VR will be a big deal this gen. My upgrades, in theory will allow me to experience VR in the 90<120fps range at >1080P, an experience that will not be possible elsewhere at this fidelity.

Now obviously, this is just my case and it just so happens that how I purchase my games (through sales, bundles etc and probably now also through family sharing), allows me to do all these upgrades and experience better quality while still saving a ton of money. If your habits are different and you have no interest in playing your old titles or VR or RTS or whatever, then console are a good solution.

But all this combined with the freedom to also work and create, as well as experience the thousands of community enhancements and mods for games old and new, makes PC an even clearer choice than it ever has been in any generation prior

This is a great post .

This OP quote is largely drivel though. Gamers will game on what they want to game on. And both Xbox 1 and PS4 have gotten tremendous early responses. PC gaming does very well too. So why does Nvidia have to try and stir the pot? I understand the need to market your product but, there seemingly has been a consistent effort to pre-emptively downplay consoles that's never been there prior to this generation, for obvious reasons. I mean it seems like they've gone after the big three more than they've gone at AMD.

 

[TyphoonStruggle]

Those, selling your consoles to buy a PC with nVidia GPU in it, don't hurry just yet.
nVidia made a new discovery:

The Future of Gaming is Android, Says Nvidia
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-amazon-android-fiscal-third-quarter,25026.html

The industry doesn't like Microsoft's and Intel's stranglehold because of Windows and x86, respectively. Since anyone can license the use of ARM CPU's and Android is free, we will only get more competition on those platforms.

I suspect it is only a matter of time before AMD begins making custom SOC's for android. (In case you haven't noticed, AMD have been unable to compete with Intel for like half a decade.)

 

[Seanspeed]

This is a great post .

This OP quote is largely drivel though. Gamers will game on what they want to game on. And both Xbox 1 and PS4 have gotten tremendous early responses. PC gaming does very well too. So why does Nvidia have to try and stir the pot? I understand the need to market your product but, there seemingly has been a consistent effort to pre-emptively downplay consoles that's never been there prior to this generation, for obvious reasons. I mean it seems like they've gone after the big three more than they've gone at AMD.

Because I think they feel that PC gaming is liable to really start striking more into the mainstream and want to push for that, help it happen and take advantage of it once its there. Steam machines are set to try and really make a dent into the 'living room gaming' market and I think Nvidia would very much like to be along for that ride, for instance.

Also, as an aside, another great positive for PC gaming that I never see mentioned - loading times. I hadn't played on a console in quite a while but have a PS3 on hand today and my lord is it slow. lol

I'm not even playing my PC games off an SSD, either. Could be even quicker. Consoles have snails-pace loading by comparison.

 

[Tygamr]

This argument is silly. A platform that has all Nintendo's, Sony's and Microsoft's games on it doesn't exist. In order to play Halo, TLOU and Mario you either need to spend a lot of money on hardware or constantly buying and reselling consoles which isn't too practical.
That's ignoring the fact that you have to become mysteriously oblivious to multiple genres to claim that PC doesn't have an exclusive library that matches any of the competing platforms...

I didn't say there was any such platform. My point is, when you have three consoles that have very well regarded exclusive franchises VS PC (which has exclusives as well, but they generally don't generate as big of a buzz, and quite a few 'PC exclusives' end up on consoles, like Diablo III) choosing one of those consoles can be more appealing. But here's the thing- I was talking about myself and why I won't ever game exclusively on PC. Not why people should buy consoles over PCs, or why consoles are better or anything like that. Just talking about me, and how I mostly prefer first party exclusives on any console to third party games (which is pretty much what the PC has got).

 

[jim-jam bongs]

I didn't say there was any such platform. My point is, when you have three consoles that have very well regarded exclusive franchises VS PC (which has exclusives as well, but they generally don't generate as big of a buzz, and quite a few 'PC exclusives' end up on consoles, like Diablo III) choosing one of those consoles can be more appealing. But here's the thing- I was talking about myself and why I won't ever game exclusively on PC. Not why people should buy consoles over PCs, or why consoles are better or anything like that. Just talking about me, and how I mostly prefer first party exclusives on any console to third party games (which is pretty much what the PC has got).

Uh nobody owns the platform, so by definition all it has are third party games. It also has more exclusive content than any other platform, about 30 years worth at this point, most of which will never be on consoles. Do you play buzz or do you play games?

At any rate, you're presenting a false dichotomy. It's not "give up gaming on everything but PC", it's "add a PC to your gaming setup". As an enthusiast, it's a great platform with a lot to offer.

 

[Clarkus Darkus]

Personally I feel some console gamers just don't want too educate themselves onto PC gaming, Or they just don't want switch from the routine of putting a disk in and away they go. I mention PC gaming to friends and it just go's right over there heads to the point where they actually think its embarrassing to game on a personal computer.

Some like digital storage for games, Some like selling there games to fund new ones...Both have advantages/disadvantages, I personally game on console, Few games played on laptop like outcast and the other odd horror but I don't game that much, few hours a week.

So I don't think gaming at its highest fps or resolution or mods etc even resonate with some folk, The wiiU struggles to sell in the UK, not sure about the Ouya and very much doubt the alienware x51 sells a lot which is a SFF console type similar to what will be offered with the steambox.

 

[SparkTR]

I didn't say there was any such platform. My point is, when you have three consoles that have very well regarded exclusive franchises VS PC (which has exclusives as well, but they generally don't generate as big of a buzz, and quite a few 'PC exclusives' end up on consoles, like Diablo III) choosing one of those consoles can be more appealing. But here's the thing- I was talking about myself and why I won't ever game exclusively on PC. Not why people should buy consoles over PCs, or why consoles are better or anything like that. Just talking about me, and how I mostly prefer first party exclusives on any console to third party games (which is pretty much what the PC has got).

There are entire genres containing plethora of games that exist on PC that don't exist on any console, if you want one platform with the most to offer in exclusive content it's the PC. Getting a PC in companion to, say, a PS4 would give you leagues more non-overlapping content than buying an Xbox or even a Wii U as a companion.