I think some people misunderstand DF's goal here. What they do is a mostly objective breakdown of how things are on the
technical and
visual side of games. Things we can't easily do ourselves because we either don't have access to hardware, don't have the time or means.
Of course PC
can look better, but it's often the question of how much. How scalable is the game? Is its settings on par with consoles or does it allow more and if yes how much?
People bringing in the price aspects although that's not DF's job because you can so that easily by yourself. Just google what a 3090 cost and that should be enough and telling. It's not about that. It's also not about creating parity with a PC that has the power of PS5/XSX because this is not a competition and I think that's what some people get wrong. Because PCs are relatively open there's no bottom end; to stick to a car equivalency one guy used here, it's not like testing a Ferrari against and old Ford, it's more like you race where the ford has fixed regulations and the Ferrari can be upgraded at will... if you got the money. Like everyone in GT7 has to adhere to the PP700 limit but you don't, you can just use your 1200 car. The result is clear without seeing the race.
This is inherently not fair by the very nature. that's not something to be "solved" and not by DF.
However, some games allow more utilisation of said power and some don't.
Everyone knows that a PS5 cost 500 and some GPUs cost that alone. This doesn't need to be pointed out. What I don't know is what graphics settings are possible, what ray tracing features are in and how they look, what performance to expect with
each and
individual settings.
You could then say leave out the console version when it's about PC. but it's not entirely true. first, console people also want to know what performance and visuals to expect, especially with the increase of visual options on console, even if it's only two modes. Also, some console versions aren't that far off from PC because of settings limitations on PC. And for that to show you need the console versions side by side. Let's say Outriders, rather dull looking compared to what's possible; max graphics settings on PC isn't a different league than on PS5 and with all the stuttering going on you may want to go for the PS5 version instead.
Tired of games using perfect reflections for every surface when in real life most reflections are rough and blurry.
The glass window on that jeep was old and dirty yet on ultra the leaves are perfectly shaped and the window seems to reflect perfectly like a mirror.
I remember "that car" in these BF5 RT promotion screenshots. Totally banged up and shot up yet with a perfect black livery so shiny it reflects explosions perfectly.
It works well in Control due to the clean office aesthetics, but it shouldn't apply in all games.
I remember when games gave you that ultra sharp shadows on high settings and blurry ones on medium/low, yet the sun rarely gives this "standing in front of headlights" like sharp shadows, especially when hitting things far off the ground where shadow is casted to or on cloudy days or when it has to travel other mediums first.