Personally. I'm of the opinion that PC gaming has not done anything to separate itself from console gaming in a while...….Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, Smash and more....Sony has UC, LOU, Spiderman GT, Horizon, GOW etc.....The last time when someone said, have you played NOLF or Return to castle Wolfenstein or Doom or Halflife, F.E.A.R, SOF, SWAT, Max Payne and the list goes on seems lost in time.....Even Hitman at one point, you could only play on PC....Then there were some unique titles like...I.G.I...…...I find even before that, PC had some cool games like Stunts by Mattrick, 2D gems like Slordax, Dangerous Dave, but PC as a whole has lost is savor where unique and exclusive software is concerned……..There's a reason why many PC guys just port beg for console exclusives at this point....
Hardware wise, I think PC has the advantage. However, it still boils down to software, because taking COD and running it at 8k does not make the experience different to what consolers experience.....So a very tiny minority of high spending PC gamers can boast 2080ti's, large 4k monitors and fast NVME drives, but none of that hardware is really being utilized per spec and no games are being developed ground up for 2080ti's, farless with a 2080ti with a 9900KS or 3950 Ryzen with 32GB of ram and a fast NVME drive......The truth is, boasting about the gains in resolution and framerate you get after spending so much, with no appreciable differences in the gaming experience and the visuals is not worth it.....Can someone honestly tell me that playing COD on consoles and playing COD on PC bears such a stark visual difference that it's a world away? Such statements are just hyperbole at best......Same with Farcry, some of these games even look good on low settings, so the gulf from low to ultra in terms of what you see nowadays and what you need to see to play is very minimal......As it stands on the heightened rez and fps people like to boast about; according to steam surveys, 1080p gaming still dominates in PC circles.....and I know the hardcore and anonymous hardcore on forums still pretend that they are all gaming with high end rigs, but the truth is most gamers don't even have rigs as powerful as consoles or perhaps now, just the GPU equivalent of an XBONEX.....
Which gets me to exclusives......These are so important...It is what separates one platform to the other and the same applies to PC...….Suppose XBOX was not releasing all their games on PC, what would have happened then...…...PC needs more than just COD or Farcry with Sliders maxed out.....Perhaps that ship has sailed and PC gaming was not managed properly....Piracy hit PC gaming hard back then and many devs did not get the returns they deserved......Maybe there was an exodus of devs on PC as their main platform as a result....What's the point of working hard and doing a visual benchmark like Crysis, when so many will just pirate and come boast of it's visuals online, meanwhile the devs flounder, see Crytek, always on the brink of bankruptcy, Witcher devs finally having a hit when they finally had a simul console release, their sales were outrageous and they saw major success for the first time....It again speaks to the fact, there might be many PC's out there, but not as many gaming PC's, not as many 2080ti's out there that play at 4K, since the majority of these games sell much better on consoles......
I think consoles was a very good thing for gaming, there was lots of piracy on PS2, but that was nipped in the bud from PS3 on for the most part (and yes, I know PS3 was jailbroken)…….Thing is, so many sales were on PSN, you got games for cheap on weekly PSN deals, there's really no need to pirate, you will play the games cheaply soon enough, but at least there's more incentive to keep devs employed on consoles, as hard and fickle an industry that gaming is. Games sell more there on day 1, GOW guys, Spiderman guys, LOU guys know that things will be allright as long as they keep making quality titles people want to play, hence why they focus on the quality.....
I must say, I own a gaming PC too....I think steam was very important for PC gaming, many like to hate on Big Gabe, but I'm so glad there is a place where I can consolidate all my PC games....So in as much as people say they want an open platform, which is a great thing.....It's great not to have a million launchers installed and I get the majority of my games and build my library in one place......Even EA sees that and will be bringing their games there as well.....
There's more to discuss obviously, but in a nutshell....I think console gaming is less of a hassle, you boot up and you play and it will get even more so next gen with quick loads, finally a very good CPU, so 60fps remains consistent across the next generation....Lets be fair here, we are going to see a new wave on innovation and gameplay, AI, visuals etc...and in as much as PC releases many powerful graphics cards and many top end CPU's......Consoles dictate the evolution of gaming....It makes sense that devs focus on consoles because a much larger base of people are going to have 12TF consoles as opposed to a couple of thousands with 2080ti's or 3080ti's......The huge advancements in graphics only come when a new gen console arrives......Also, someone should work on making all old Steam adapt to 16:9 resolutions, make it automatic instead of persons having to tinker with ini files....I also think that if a game is being sold on the steam store, it should work, it should boot, many games don't boot...…....PC can be great, but it can also be a hassle as far as accessing your games......Some don't boot, some are missing textures, some need old files, some games need modding…...Many hardware and software incompatibities exist.....Your AV software make games run worse, drivers are always hit and miss, spectre can be an issue, everybody disables gaming mode on PC.....In essence there's a lot of work to be done and my biggest issue, when people go online, they don't want to play robots or cheaters.....I just don't understand why someone can get gratification in cheating to win......Leading the boards by some ridiculous number or having a bot play SF or something for you....Its too easy to do that on PC....There are guys who are involved in great work and good modding work as well, but still I think devs should ensure that their games boot if it's being sold....Should be a law...
