Do You Prefer PC Or Console Gaming?

I prefer a console. For me less expensive and more easier to use. Don't get me wrong I wouldn't mind trying PC gaming. But my computer is not the best to play games on. If I do manage to get a decent PC. I would like to check out steam. I heard alot of good things about it.

I finally got cables to connect my PS3 to my monitor (don't like using a TV) so I fired up Red Dead Redemption again and have been taking it real slow like it's my first time, and enjoying it. 
 
And I noticed why I love PC gaming much more.  

• First of all, the controls. Using a controller to move and shoot just sucked my soul out. I so wanted to pull the right stick out of its socket, lay it on my desk and move it WITH MY HAND when I wanna move Marston's silly ass around tight areas, or aim and shoot without having to use aim assist like a chump. 
• Then you have the graphics. It just looks bad compared to the visual sexiness my PC offered me in, say, another Rockstar title, Max Payne 3. It just looks plain bad.  
• And there are not enough options for anything. Not for visuals, not for controls.. 
• Luckily I have dual monitors so I used the big one for the game and the small one for my PC to surf the net. Had I been playing on PC I could've used the instant Steam overlay or alt-tabbed out of the game and surfed the net immediately.  
• The loading times.. Wanna change a single setting? Wait 20 seconds for it to save. Died and want to reload? Wait a minute or two to load. Had this been on PC changes would be so instant I wouldn't even see the loading circle. 
• The game looked so bad that I wanted to google some ENB mods for it. Then I remembered I can't mod PS3 games like I do on PC..

The PC has always been my favourite platform.

I like console style games, I like playing games with a controller. Controllers were designed for playing games, keyboards and mice were co-opted into being used for games.

But man these consoles are getting old. But at least nowadays, console ports work well, and 360 controllers work on PC without a lot of screwing around. So right now I kind of have the best of both worlds, because I got awesome PC graphics and comfortable console design.

I don't play many pc games besides Diablo and some minecraft. I wish I had a good computer so I could play battlefield at highest settings. TNT last night reminded me how damn good that game looks on PC. Hopefully soon.

@AhmadMetallic said:

I finally got cables to connect my PS3 to my monitor (don't like using a TV) so I fired up Red Dead Redemption again and have been taking it real slow like it's my first time, and enjoying it.

And I noticed why I love PC gaming much more.

• First of all, the controls. Using a controller to move and shoot just sucked my soul out. I so wanted to pull the right stick out of its socket, lay it on my desk and move it WITH MY HAND when I wanna move Marston's silly ass around tight areas, or aim and shoot without having to use aim assist like a chump.
• Then you have the graphics. It just looks bad compared to the visual sexiness my PC offered me in, say, another Rockstar title, Max Payne 3. It just looks plain bad.
• And there are not enough options for anything. Not for visuals, not for controls..
• Luckily I have dual monitors so I used the big one for the game and the small one for my PC to surf the net. Had I been playing on PC I could've used the instant Steam overlay or alt-tabbed out of the game and surfed the net immediately.
• The loading times.. Wanna change a single setting? Wait 20 seconds for it to save. Died and want to reload? Wait a minute or two to load. Had this been on PC changes would be so instant I wouldn't even see the loading circle.
• The game looked so bad that I wanted to google some ENB mods for it. Then I remembered I can't mod PS3 games like I do on PC..

I'm enjoying my time with RDR, but seriously, it feels like I went from driving a BMW to driving a Hyundai just to play this awesome game.

How long you've been PC gaming?

Both have different purposes so I like them both equally.

Mouse+KB > controller for most of the games I play so PC gaming for me, once you have a steady job, $300 console vs. $1500 pc doesn't really matter too much, especially when you use the PC for more than just gaming.

I do see the appeal of console gaming though.

I'm a console gamer, I've never found PC gaming to provide me the same kind of ease of use that consoles do (though Steam has helped tremendously) and it's just the way I've played games since I was a child.

Well, I prefer consoles for the exclusives and I prefer a PC with a gamepad for everything else!

i prefer a controller and the tidy package of a console.. but if that can be perfectly emulated on a PC with much better performance and graphics, i'll probably take the plunge.

@Imsorrymsjackson said:

Both have different purposes so I like them both equally.

This.

Neither really. I use my PC to play older RPGs and other older games I missed, in addition to some PC exclusives. Sometimes I will buy recent games on the PC if I think the experience will be better but it usually isn't a substantial enough difference.

I use my console for pretty much all recent games and the exclusives.

I like the experiences of both, but most of the benefits of console gaming can be had on PC - for example I bought Bastion in the humble bundle and played it on a controller whilst sitting on my couch. Not only was it much cheaper but it also ran smoothly at twice the resolution. It seems like most of the GB staff are realising this too and setting up gaming PCs in their living rooms.

Console for me. Just turn it on, put the disk in and your away. No messing about. That not to say I don't haven't enjoyed pc gaming before. I just prefer less hassle.

@AhmadMetallic: I was born in 1992 and started console gaming around the late 90s. I understand your passion for pc gaming. I use to download alot of pc games when I was younger. You've reminded me of alot of stuff that pc can do for games.

I like the one I can play games on.

What have you done...

I love pc gaming mainly for the controls. I like fps and strategy so i really can't do that on a console, and i know fps can be done on a console but it sucks all the fun out for me.

And strategy obviously would not work on a console and on that there is no discussion possible.

And mode-ability and flexibility. I absolutely hate DLC, so with a pc i can kind circumvent that cause some game still have a good community with some interesting add-ons.(I am not as in love with counterstrike as i was years ago, but that game still has so much more content then any of the modern day shooter where i have to pay just for a few maps.

And i am not to keen the way i need to get to multiplayer, don't care for it too much. And graphics are a fun extra.

Also, personally i never got that console gaming is less of a hassle. Loading times along make you wait longer after just a tiny amount of playtime. If i had sit through a loading screen every time i took the elevator in the Normandy i would of just skipped a bunch of dialogue i bet.

I already sit at a computer desk all day for work, so when I get home I prefer to sit back, relax and use a controller. Luckily I have my consoles and PC hooked to my TV so I play them about equally... though sometimes it's a little frustrating when the PC version doesn't have controller support as it's not optimal to use the keyboard and mouse on a couch.

@Sackmanjones said:

What have you done...

Hopefully it wouldn't go there... that said I prefer playing on consoles I like to sit on the corner of my bed or sometimes lay on it like a slob while I play, and it's also more comfortable for other people who sit arround you to watch you play, local multiplayer it's also much more enjoyable on consoles, well that and other reasons not to say I don't enjoy playing on PCs long marathons of Bejeweled 3 have been great.

I'm fairly platform agnostic, but I certainly prefer PC controls for FPS and RTS games, arcade sticks for fighting games, and modern twin analogue stick game pads for 3rd person 3D games.

Most people have pc's nowadays; I don't understand why they don't just skip a console and put that money towards computer buying money.

I switched over to PC gaming a year or so ago and it's been awesome, especially with Steam. The only problems I have are games where performance is terrible even though my computer is fully capable of running it and also not getting a lot of good games like vanquish and mortal kombat.

It always make me laugh when people say consoles are cheaper, sure the initial price is, but when you're saving ~50% on the games, you make that extra initial price back in no time.

@AlexW00d: Not to mention Xbox Live, and crazy memory/storage prices!

PC Definitely. Expanded selection of games, and all of those awesome indie titles. Better control scheme.

@AhmadMetallic said:

@falserelic: I was born in 1991 and I remember playing Commander Keen and Doom 2 around 1996, so, since then.

Newb, I was playing PC games before you were born, hah! God I am old. Also, its time to kickstart a new Commander Keen game...

PC is still king for game variety, and lately there have been really good PC versions of console games. The last time I touched my ps3/360 was for Uncharted 3, which has been a while.

Mouse gives way more precision than an analogue stick, and I prefer to play at my desk. Couch gaming makes me feel like I'm watching something.

Also, the lean key, which no longer exists, but I can continue to dream...

I prefer the console experience, but I like the advantages of PC gaming. So I have a modest PC connected to my TV and I play mostly with a controller, since I'm mostly a single-player guy I don't mind the lack of precision..actually I kind o like it to me it feels more immersion the use of an analogue stick than a mouse.

Still it's kind of annoying waiting for the thing to load up the OS and then Steam and then the actual game but the faster loading times in-game offset that.

Red six, standing by...

I also think that the price is not that much of a point. Prices of Games for sure as Alexwood mentioned.

Sure now consoles are not that expensive anymore but they also only got 1 or 2 years left before probably nothing will be made for them. And you can get a pretty decent pc for an acceptable price. That and my pc is still a pc which i need or could use anyways. That and i don't have a tv, so if i wanted a console that is part of the price for me raising it pretty fast. You can use that as a tv aswell but i use my pc as my tv, There isn't enough to watch for me to have a tv.

But i just saw someone mention local multiplayer. That is way more convenient.

Haven't touched my consoles in a year or two, since I got my friends I game with to convert to the PC world.

Or well, I fired up MGS4/MGO for a little bit a couple months ago, and was extremely turned off when it reminded me of the utterly awful performance and controls. Not even having a steady 30fps is unplayable.

Console.

ive always had both but i prefer PC gaming.. better graphics, keyboard/mouse, cheaper games, more versatile, i like building rigs, mods.. i also think there's a better connection/interaction between pc gamers than there is between console gamers.

Also, its time to kickstart a new Commander Keen game...

@Sweep said:

Red six, standing by...

I gotta admit that pic is kinda funny.

I've always loved PC as it's a platform I have never doubted, just some of the shitty console ports or poorly optimized games that are released are the only things I have problems with when it comes to PC gaming.

I've almost always had both, and I quickly came to prefer PC at a young age- though that's mostly due to strategy being my favorite genre. :)

Also, you can measure the time between a PC thread being made, and the time Ahmad posts in it, in actual heartbeats.

I prefer the load times/mods/options PC offers over consoles.

My TV's right next to my PC, so any time I want to watch a movie or play a game with an xbox controller I just switch it around.

Also my favorite genre of game is RTS. I really don't think it's possible to make a good RTS on console, which wouldn't be much better on PC.

Console gaming, but that's by default since my PC is complete crap for gaming. I prefer a controller, but once again that's just what I'm used to. However I plan on having a good PC one day, so I will be making the switch eventually.

Xbox 360 controllers can be used for a lot of modern games on the PC, all you do is plug it into a USB port and it works. And if that fails you get a lightweight programme that makes is real easy to map a controller to the game.

Half-Life 3 will eventually come out on the PC and spirit us all away to the Promised Land. Ergo, I prefer PC gaming.

I've always been a PC guy, but I still love my consoles.

@Ravenlight said:

Half-Life 3 will eventually come out on the PC and spirit us all away to the Promised Land. Ergo, I prefer PC gaming.

I would love to see half-life 3. Its been so long.

Seems this question is looking for an actual point.

You can look at games, because not all games come out on all platforms so a love of platform could be due to who paid to make game X (or a selection of exclusives) and which has nothing inherent to the platform about it.

You can look at input and output possibilities. PC is a superset of consoles in this respect (as long as you can work hard enough then it can work on PC, 'hard enough' may involve building drivers or even hardware to convert signals for a modern PC).

You can look at price. It's a minefield when trying to create valid comparisons between two very different systems of monetisation, both end up with gamers getting poorer and hardware and software vendors getting richer.

You can look at user experience. The PC can run arbitrary code, consoles can not (or at least make it significantly less trivial, especially when having a connected experience). That's good and bad for PC because mods exist, so do keyloggers, and hacks. Also PCs are a family of compatible hardware with common APIs and countless combinations onto which software runs, that means drivers and potential weirdness but also gives it the range of prices and the ability to 'upgrade' older titles (You want a HD re-release with stereoscopic 3D? Oh, I just got a new graphics card so it turned all my old games into that by alchemy.)

Man, these things are really different, despite sharing a lot of common (different editions, same content) software. Maybe if we had a poll in the original question to get some kind of popularity result from the community. Seems like there is so much different that preference will be a deeply personal thing for every individual made up of a lifetime of choices and trade-offs. *Checks to see if he's managed to carefully tiptoe around any of the troll landmines in this discussion*

Anyway, PC here. Exclusive titles mean I couldn't do without my consoles but in terms of traditional gaming, I wouldn't be heartbroken if reality reshaped itself and the PC was the only thing for gaming (as long as all the devs came along for the ride).

Also, you can measure the time between a PC thread being made, and the time Ahmad posts in it, in actual heartbeats.

Look at the screenshots of Watch Dogs.
 
Do you like what you see?
 
That's basically GTA4 PC with the ENB beautification patch on a computer that was top notch two years ago.