Man I'm shocked by the amount of PC gamers, I mean I know there are a lot but I didn't think anyone replaced their consoles with them, I guess being strictly a console gamer leaves me pretty ignorant to anyone elses taste but to each their own I suppose, I just know I could never make that transition.
What Made You Leave Consoles?
I haven't fully jumped from console to PC for two reasons.
1. There are exclusives on consoles I really enjoy. I can never play Red Dead Revolver (yes, the first one) The Warriors, Unreal Championship 2, Crackdown, etc etc on PC.
2. 90% of my friends don't play on PC or even have a PC that can run something like Minecraft on its lowest settings. Diablo 3 was the closest thing that brought everyone to PC, but that quickly faded away once they realized how long it was since they last played CoD on Xbox. They don't know what a Steam is, they have no idea what a driver update does, and they are terrible at using the mouse.
However, I prefer PC if only because of all the indy games. I try to support indy devs a lot by buying the games they make the second they come out, and usually you'll get a gaming experience you can't have anywhere else. I don't have a preference in FPS games of using a mouse or joystick; I'm perfectly capable using either or, nor do I care that much about the improved graphics on PC. Plus, can't play UT2004 on console. =)
I still use consoles but I am using the PC more and more. This is a result of most games look better on my PC, Steam being awesome, and the ease of using a 360 controller in most games now. When the next gen roles around I will probably switch back to consoles unless the mystical Steam Box (Valve has to call the box "The Sauna", right?) comes out and isn't just a living room PC.
With the Xbox 360's inevitable dive into obsolescence, I no longer wish to pay full $60 price for any of its games & buy the PC equivalent of any game every chance I get, especially for discounted Steam games (bought the full Deus Ex: Human Revolution on Steam for around $5 a few months back and Fallout New Vegas GOTY). I still play my old Xbox games, oldest being Mass Effect 3 & my backlog Xbox games, but I don't plan on buying new Xbox games. All new games will go to the PC (a Desktop btw). I'll even keep the Xbox yearly fee going so I can do multiplayer stuff. The exception is Halo. I'll probably get that game for the Console as I like the Halo series.
Once the post next-gen Consoles come out in the year(s) ahead, I will re-evaluate which Console I might use. I might switch over to a PS 3 for Console use.
My biggest gripe about PCs, is that I only have one gaming desktop at one location (I live in 2 different places each week), but don't do much gaming during the work week either, so not sure if I really need another one, though it would be nice to have since I've moved back to PC/Steam gaming. I do have an Xbox at each location, so default to an Xbox during the work week (although to be honest, it hasn't seen a lot of action). For some reason it's difficult to game after an 8-9 hour day of work, but easy to do so on weekends.
@I_Stay_Puft said:
Probably my biggest reason was financial reasons. When I can play some pretty decent games that came out a years to two years ago for 4 bucks on sale from Steam, Amazon Digital Download, GOG, and yes Origin that's good enough for me.
I agree with all of this. I would also add my own reason that since I got into PC gaming around 2006 (I played PC games before but that was when I got my first proper gaming PC), I also had a 360 at the same time. When it red ringed, I had to wait and do this and that to get it back to working condition.
Fast forward to 2009, when my PCs video card died (I gamed on that thing for hours on end and didn't understand dusting), I simply got another (better) card and slapped it in and off I was again. Since then, I've always preferred the PC, but I got no hate for the consoles. Some people are not comfortable/willing to deal with PC insides and that's fine.
For myself, it was a weird transition to switch from consoles to PC. I had been a long time console player, starting at the age of 4 with the SNES and Genesis. My family was simply too poor to afford a PC in the nineties and early two thousands so having a console was the only way that I could game as a kid. The financial situation with my family lasted up to the year 2005, then it started to turn around. Both my father and mother had landed incredible jobs and we saw money that we never had. At the same time, my brothers and I started to make PC friends. They were the ones that have helped us to see that there is more to gaming than consoles. Ironically, my first PC game was World of Warcraft and I could tell you with a honest heart that it was a blissful experience. It took time to fully understand WASD and the mouse. Of course, I had never typed before so it added additional challenges.
I made a permanent switch this year. Now, I had a waiting job (That I hated with all my heart) and was saving up for Borderlands 2. Unfortunately, I had to make a decision that I later regretted. I had chosen the Xbox 360 version so that I could play with my RL friends. The problems in the upcoming days became more apparent and made my mind switch. My best friend is a wielder. He has a very difficult job and often works 12 hour shits. It pays great money and all, but it will leave you exhausted. We could only play together for 2 hours at max every night at 11 pm. I am an early sleeper (about 10 pm when I go to bed). Due to the limitations of the Xbox (plus the freaking XBL gold memebership BS) , the lack of progress with my friends (whom I cannot fault), and just an overall unhappiness with the purchase. I willfully returned it in three days and got a full refund. Later that Friday, I bought it on Steam and never looked back twice.
After some time, I had thought about my decision. I really would have loved to hang out with my friends, but my own personal happiness matters more. I wanted to enjoy the full experience on my PC and I do have a brother who also plays PC games. Thus I am not really playing alone, but it would be nice to talk to other people and enjoy the game.
Would I still play console games? Most likely. Though I will say this with a clear mind that PC is my preferred gaming platform.
Putting obvious stuff like "DAT PERFORMANCE" "DAT RESS" aside.
Upgraded mah PC after years, noticed I didn't need a 9999000$ investment to run current games on my humble monitor setup after all. That was a big jumping point.
I've been gaming on my PC since 2nd grade or so, and only with current gen did I switch to consoles, more for cost reasons than anything. I couldn't foresee that current console gen would essentially stall system requirements ( unless you run 3 120 hz monitors, not judging, I'd like that too ) for 7 years like it did.
If Games for Windows did one thing right, it was pushing gamepad support as an essential feature. Being able to switch between my 360 controller and my trusty kb / m on a game by game basis alleviated my 10+ year gripes with bad console ports ( oh hai , ff7 and 8 ). So that was also a huge factor for me.
Aaaand holy shit, duders, please read OP before bringing out your voodoo dolls. Fucking hell.
@c0l0nelp0c0rn1 said:
Xbox Live made me leave consoles. Steam sales helped, but I was getting super tired of paying $50+ a year just for the "privilege" of playing against others online.
Microsoft should definitely reconsider their strategy next go-round, unfortunately I don't think they'll need to.
With Sony and Nintendo offering free online play now, I think they'll have to.
It was definitely one of the reasons I've stopped using my Xbox too. I'm not much of an online player, I just occasionally want to play games with friends. So having to pay the subscription for the few times a month I might do that, was just ridiculous.
@WolfHazard said:
Man I'm shocked by the amount of PC gamers, I mean I know there are a lot but I didn't think anyone replaced their consoles with them, I guess being strictly a console gamer leaves me pretty ignorant to anyone elses taste but to each their own I suppose, I just know I could never make that transition.
I started noticing a trend towards people playing PC games more around when I started coming to Giant Bomb in late '08. The staff would make more or less snide comments towards PC gaming. Around that time I remember being kind of bummed out about it since that was my platform of choice. But fast forward to today and they're all talking about PC's with a lot less nose turning and a lot more praise. I also noticed that they GB user base were having these same feeling at the same time. I guess people are getting tired (or have gotten tired) of the current generation of consoles and so while waiting for the next generation of consoles to come out, they made their own next gen system come out by building a PC. That makes sense, right? I think a lot of people satisfied their need for some new system by looking towards the PC.
dont like paying for xbox live
Also, consoles used to be good for social couch co op/ multiplayer stuff, while pc gaming was always a pretty solitary experience. Now with the pure focus on online multi theres no longer that distinction.
I've always been a PC gamer first and a console gamer second, but that was bred out of the types of games I like to play and not out of any crazy "master race" mentality. Also, theres a ton I can do with a big beefy desktop other than just play games.
But this looooong-ass console cycle has really pushed me to the mentality of buying PC first and console only if absolutely necessary. When I can play the latest games at higher resolutions and with next-gen art assets with anti-aliasing and filtering, why would I want to go back to the noisy, power-hungry, clunker of a first-gen 360 waiting to die at any moment? I think us 360 owners can also agree that the interface has degraded drastically since launch.
But I'll most certainly be buying a new console when they're released, if only for the exclusives. My PC is beefy, but I feel like the new consoles will bring about another era of console-first programming mentality, and a return to poorly optimized PC ports which will at least obsolete my goddamn $400 graphics card investment, sadly.
Oh, also, I just love building computers. I'd do it for fun if I had the cash for a new build every week.
Though I haven't left consoles entirely, I'm playing more games on my PC than I ever have in the past and recently canceled my XBOX Live Gold account. At this point, I play on PC for three major reasons:
1) Frame rate. Smooth frame rates are the quickest way to my heart in any game, especially if it's smooth at 60fps. With console games, the frame rate can be a bit of an unknown quantity. My PC is good enough that I know any console port I buy will run smooth -- unless the port is jacked up. *cough*DarkSouls*cough*
2) Free online play. This wouldn't matter if I had a PS3, but I'm sick of paying for XBOX Live. The constant ads, the features I don't want, connectivity issues with friends... I never felt like I was getting my money's worth with that service.
3) Steam sales. They're so tempting that I got tired of passing up great deals because my PC wasn't powerful enough.
@c0l0nelp0c0rn1 said:
Xbox Live made me leave consoles. Steam sales helped, but I was getting super tired of paying $50+ a year just for the "privilege" of playing against others online.
Microsoft should definitely reconsider their strategy next go-round, unfortunately I don't think they'll need to.
This is spot on, except for the fact that I never paid for Live because it pissed me off from the moment I realized they were making me pay for online play. So I have been playing online on the PS3 and using the 360 for singleplayer exclusives. But then I realized the PC covers both those areas nicely and for less money. I've always been a PC gamer at the core, but the consoles had me hooked for a couple of years there. I guess getting a wife helped encourage the move back to the PC too, since she likes watching TV a lot :)
@Jams said:
@WolfHazard said:
Man I'm shocked by the amount of PC gamers, I mean I know there are a lot but I didn't think anyone replaced their consoles with them, I guess being strictly a console gamer leaves me pretty ignorant to anyone elses taste but to each their own I suppose, I just know I could never make that transition.
I started noticing a trend towards people playing PC games more around when I started coming to Giant Bomb in late '08. The staff would make more or less snide comments towards PC gaming. Around that time I remember being kind of bummed out about it since that was my platform of choice. But fast forward to today and they're all talking about PC's with a lot less nose turning and a lot more praise. I also noticed that they GB user base were having these same feeling at the same time. I guess people are getting tired (or have gotten tired) of the current generation of consoles and so while waiting for the next generation of consoles to come out, they made their own next gen system come out by building a PC. That makes sense, right? I think a lot of people satisfied their need for some new system by looking towards the PC.
I guess I could see that, it fits in line with me not caring about graphics and being completely content with the current gen consoles, even past gen as I play PS1/2 games all the time too, but my main reason is I don't feel a sense of ownership with games I'd buy on steam or on the PC as I don't get them as a physical object to add to my shelf and collection, which is my biggest problem with it.
@MetalMoog said:
I use my PC for MMO's, Dungeon Crawlers and RTS games. Everything else I prefer to play on console with a controller. Mainly because of the cost of PC's and the constant upgrading of parts to run games at their intended "sexy" settings. Not a big fan of having a diminished experience because I can't run the game as it's meant to be played. The price and constant upgrade path of PC's will forever keep me on the side of consoles primarily.
I'm not sure what you mean. The Console hardware is 5-6 years old, so that means the game designers have to downgrade what it looks on the Console to execute 'how it was meant to be played'. You can get higher resolution on the PC version, even just using 2012's basic technology, compared to the Xbox 360 which I guess came in in 2005-6. And it's not very expensive. My current gaming PC is about 4 years old & it runs games as well as or better than the Xbox & I don't have any issues with it. Further, you can plug a wired 360 Controller into the PC & it works just fine for games that support it (most newer games do, I even customized the 360 Controller to work with Star Trek Online). Having to upgrade to 'cutting edge' PC tech is the part that isn't required. That is just for PC enthusiasts with extra cash or professional gamers (getting paid to game).
Always been a PC gamer tried and true. I grew up with a TRaSh 80 that I got when I was 7. I didn't get a NES until I was 11 or so. Once I got my NES, I was a pretty die hard console gamer. I started to move more into PC gaming in the mid 90's. I played the shit out of classics like X-Wing. TIE Fighter. Any game with a Bullfrog logo on it. I also played the living shit out of Mario World. Link to the Past. Metroid. Any SNES/S Famicom game with the Squaresoft logo on it. By the time the Dreamcast came out, I had a PSX/Dreamcast sitting next to my computer monitor.
Once I entered college and started making decent money, I went pretty much exclusively PC gaming. Despite owning a Gamecube/PS2/XBox/PSP, I found the experiences offered were PC-lite experiences and games I considered "console" games were starting to fade away. The DS kept the console magic for me, with some crazy ass games and metroidvania style games that just didn't exist on the consoles.
That, and I've always found dabbling in mod'ing and map making to be enjoyable. I'm not good at it, by any means, but it's always rewarding to make something and make it work in a game. I still remember 13 year old me figuring out how to use DoomCad. The first time I figured out how to make a working door. A lever. A pressure plate. My first map I shared with my friends. The hijinks I had watching them run for the BFG in the middle of the room, only to have the lights turn off, the ceilings come down, to reveal four cyberdemons... good times.
@Jams said:
@WolfHazard said:
Man I'm shocked by the amount of PC gamers, I mean I know there are a lot but I didn't think anyone replaced their consoles with them, I guess being strictly a console gamer leaves me pretty ignorant to anyone elses taste but to each their own I suppose, I just know I could never make that transition.
I started noticing a trend towards people playing PC games more around when I started coming to Giant Bomb in late '08. The staff would make more or less snide comments towards PC gaming. Around that time I remember being kind of bummed out about it since that was my platform of choice. But fast forward to today and they're all talking about PC's with a lot less nose turning and a lot more praise. I also noticed that they GB user base were having these same feeling at the same time. I guess people are getting tired (or have gotten tired) of the current generation of consoles and so while waiting for the next generation of consoles to come out, they made their own next gen system come out by building a PC. That makes sense, right? I think a lot of people satisfied their need for some new system by looking towards the PC.
Yeah the main issue is DLC. Xbox rarely has a sale on DLC. I can wait 6 months to a year & buy the Steam/PC GOTY edition for $10 or less for some games & not have to pay for the DLC. But go over to the Xbox Live store at the same time you buy the $5 Steam sale version of the GOTY game, and you will see that XBL is still selling the DLC for full price. They never sell it lower, except maybe a 1-day sale prior to the release of the next game in a series. This started happening regularly by 2010 & so it feels like every time I turn on my Xbox, it's got its hand out waiting to be paid. Sales are few & far between. I was thinking about S-ranking Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Fallout New Vegas, but I have the GOTY editions for $5 each on Steam & do not want to pay the $10+ for DLC for either of these games on my Xbox. I'm wondering when Mass Effect 3 will come to Steam, if at all.
I prefer PC overall because of the options, superior hardware, price of games, and convenience of having everything all in one spot, but I never left consoles. I still have a Wii and a 360 and most of my older consoles. Gonna finally get a PS3 in the next couple of weeks then catch up on a whole lot of exclusives. Gonna be busy.
@WolfHazard said:
Man I'm shocked by the amount of PC gamers, I mean I know there are a lot but I didn't think anyone replaced their consoles with them, I guess being strictly a console gamer leaves me pretty ignorant to anyone elses taste but to each their own I suppose, I just know I could never make that transition.
The thread title is a bit misleading. If you read the OP me just like a lot of the people in here are now using their PC as the center for gaming. Consoles have fallen by the wayside as a result. If you stick to playing just on consoles you won't notice a thing but holy shit my eyes were open for the first time when I finally made that switch. What used to be indifference towards the 360 (less so PS3) dashboard has now turned into a mild hate for it just because of how slow the interface and everything else is.
@Colourful_Hippie said:
@WolfHazard said:
Man I'm shocked by the amount of PC gamers, I mean I know there are a lot but I didn't think anyone replaced their consoles with them, I guess being strictly a console gamer leaves me pretty ignorant to anyone elses taste but to each their own I suppose, I just know I could never make that transition.
The thread title is a bit misleading. If you read the OP me just like a lot of the people in here are now using their PC as the center for gaming. Consoles have fallen by the wayside as a result. If you stick to playing just on consoles you won't notice a thing but holy shit my eyes were open for the first time when I finally made that switch. What used to be indifference towards the 360 (less so PS3) dashboard has now turned into a mild hate for it just because of how slow the interface and everything else is.
The other point being is that just about every game is available on the Console
& the prices drop faster. The PC: faster & freer.
@Canteu said:
Consoles come and go but PC is forever.
Canteu strikes!
I grew up on PCs so there was never a switch. My PS3 is very nice for some games but damn it the PC always makes me feel like I'm gaming in the future
System-level performance is a big reason why I only use my 360 to stream media to my living room now. A five-second delay between hitting the Guide button and seeing a menu, vs Alt+Tabbing and immediately being able to faff about with something else.
That and TF2, pretty much.
I didn't completely abandoned my PS3, but my answer is my PC. A year and half after getting a gaming rig I slowly started using my PS3 less and less. In fact, I've become more comfortable using a keyboard and mouse than a controller, which is kind of weird.
@Ravenlight: You can't beat alt-tabbing out of Sleeping Dogs (or whatever else) and into Chrome for occasional forum browsing and then alt-tabbing back.
@BaneFireLord:
You know, you could of got a decent monitor and it would of worked just fine. Hell, I suppose if you bought a desktop, you could of brought both! lol. But for any college student who dorms, I would say PC gaming is much more practical.
As for me, I switched to PC gaming quite a few years ago. I switched mainly because I wanted to play games that weren't available on consoles such as WoW. Over time, I noticed that games were cheaper, looked better, and some/most games could be modded to tweak it to however I wanted, there seemed like no reason for me to keep playing consoles. Plus, there are a lot of really old games that still have sizable communities. I was playing Neverwinter Nights online on a random server where some guy basically built the whole world from scratch back in 2010. I hated playing CoD2, A game I really enjoyed the multiplayer of, and finding next to no one playing it on xbox.
I made the switch recently, PC just has a bit more variety and I found that I was paying for Xbox live but not actually using it. Also games are generally cheaper on the PC and look better.
With controller support being more of a thing on PC it's defiantly made switching easier.
The reason I left PC gaming was the same reason I have always left PC gaming in the last 20 years: My PC was getting to slow and couldn't run any modern games any more. Since I upgrade PCs every 5 years and games stop being usable after ~2-3 years, there have always been holes in my PC gaming history. On top of that upgrading is pretty damn complicated, as it's impossible to find proper technical details on how much an upgrade would actually offer. Benchmark always only compare new cards to other new cards, not new cards vs that five year old OEM card that is stuck in my PC. The confusing graphic card naming and the dozens of different models don't help. And if that new graphics card would work with my 350W powersupply was also a big "maybe" and new definite answer could be found. So long story short, I stuck with console gaming for a while.
So what changed? Not much really. PC gaming is still complicated, but ATI released the HD5xxx series and the HD5670 seemed like a good fit for my aging PC. I still had no idea if it would work with my powersupply or how much faster it really would be to my OEM Geforce. But whatever, I gave up on trying to be the perfectly informed consumer and just I bought it. As it turns out, it worked with my old powersupply and was substantially faster then my old Geforce 7600LE, not just a little, but games I could only run at minimum details in 800x600 now I could run in 1680x1050 in high. So I could finally run some PC games again on my aging PC and the upgrade was just 70€.
On top of that there are some other things that actually let me stay with PC gaming:
- PC gaming now supports gamepads properly, most games have build in Xbox360 controller support and work out of the box, this is a big change to 10 years ago when gamepad support was abysmal and required driver hacks, mouse/keyboard emulation and oher stuff to get things to work
- Steam does automatic patching, so no more trying to find half a dozens language specific patches for that DVD release and then trying to figure out how to install them in the right order, Steam even supports multiple languages per game, so you aren't stuck with some crappy localized version like you sometimes are on consoles
- Indiegames seems to have some traction on the Xbox360 a few years ago, but since then they seem to have shifted back to the PC again
- Humble Indie, IndieRoyal and numerous other bundles happened, reducing the cost of trying some indie game from $30 five year ago to $1
- Steam sales, along with sales on Gamersgate, GetGames, etc. are also drastically cheaper then anything you will find on consoles, even used games on consoles are often 15-20€, on the PC I don't pay more then 5€ for new games
- GOG provides easy access to older games
- consoles now require constant patches and firmware upgrades, thus the plug&play advantage they once had is largely gone
So long story short: Steam and the competition makes PC gaming easy and cheap and the long console lifecycle has kept hardware requirements low. Support for gamepads and HDMI out also means that I can game on a PC like I do on a console. Since that graphics card upgrade my PS3 is collecting dust, every now and then I switch it on, but then I only cringe at being forced to do yet another firmware upgrade and being welcomed with an slowly and unresponsive shopping interface.
One thing PC gaming could still do better is system requirements, they are extremely imprecise and basically unreadable for any regular person thanks to the weird naming of graphics card and CPUs. Why can't Steam tell me: "This game will run with at 30fps on your PC on high settings" or "Sorry, this game won't run on your PC"?
As for the future, I currently don't have any plans on getting a Wii U, Xbox720 or PS4. To much lock-in, to much focus on trying to get a subscription for their online service and nothing that makes them stand out from a PC. Once upon a time I used PCs for X-Wing and consoles for jump'n runs, that separation is no longer there, everybody does now, aside from a handful of exclusives, the same types of games.
I'm essentially ready to make a jump, I just need to get a build sorted out. One of the biggest reasons I'm thinking of adding (i.e. I'm not completely switching) is that the gamepad support along with many console games also being better on PC. One thing that I'm aiming for is having a PC dedicated to my TV. Right now my living room and TV stand are cluttered with games and consoles from the PS3 to the NES, if I can build a PC that can run PCSX2 and Dolphin (preferably in at least 720p) I can essentially declutter everything and only have to keep the PS3 around. Unfortunately I'm having a hard time figuring out which builds would give me all that as well as play "current gen" games at a reasonable level.
@Ducksworth: One thing to know is that if you want to go down the emulator route that you should definitely go with an i7 because it's all about the CPU and less about the GPU when it comes to emulating games.
I'm gonna bump this just to vent a little. That's it: I'm officially done with consoles. At least, Microsoft's (which, by extension, also means Sony's). You want to know why? Language.
I bought Doom II today because I wanted to follow Brad's steps and beat it on Ultra-Violence. Since it's €5 both on Steam and XBLA, I figured I could get it on Xbox Live and get some Achievements along the way. I played a bit, got me some easy Cheevos and went back to the dash and turned off the console. I turned it on again later today and my profile was gone. It was there, but I had nothing on it. No Achievements, no unlocks, no recent games, no nothing. Weird, I thought to myself, because it was perfectly fine on Xbox Live. I deleted my profile from the HDD and redownloaded it. Biggest mistake ever: everything was now on Spanish. And, let me be clear, Spanish translations are a fucking mess.
It seems that the region you have on your profile (in my case, Spain) determines in which language you can access the content on Xbox Live. And there's no fucking way to change it, because you can't change the region on your account. I should have set my region to UK or US if I wanted my games in English, right? Nope, even if I had wanted, I wouldn't have been able to. Microsoft's servers would have detected that I was connecting through a Spanish IP and would have denied my request to login to Xbox Live. Fucking dandy.
I get it: if I accept to invest in Microsoft's walled garden, I have also to accept to play by its rules. And, so far, I haven't had any problem with that. But come the fuck on, for fuck's sake. Seriously? I can't choose to play my games in English? To have my Achievements in English? To have a dashboard that consistently displays only one language, not an abominable mix of two? I see absolutely no reason not to let users choose the language they want independently of the region they live in. It's a fucking travesty that doesn't benefit Microsoft at all. It's just another layer of added inconvenience to the end user.
So, yeah. Fuck Xbox. I'm selling all my shit on monday morning and giving up console gaming for good. I'll still play on my 3/DSes because I love them, but I'm never getting sucked into an Xbox ever again.
@Colourful_Hippie said:
@Ducksworth: One thing to know is that if you want to go down the emulator route that you should definitely go with an i7 because it's all about the CPU and less about the GPU when it comes to emulating games.
Since I'm bumping this thread, at least I'll try to say something actually useful. Unless the emulator takes advantage of the i7's HyperThreading, there'll be virtually no difference between it and an i5. Except in terms of price, of course.
I don't use the PC to game, it's consoles primarily for me. And that's because of a couple of reasons. 1. Say what you will but there is something to be said about the attractiveness of achievements. Sure, Steam has achievements as well but on my Xbox, I have a stable of friends who I can check out and pit my scores against. That's very nice. 2. I prefer the controller. I'm 18. The game that got me into gaming was the original Halo. It was during the era when consoles began to rise and become the primary lead platform for game development. Growing up with console games, I vastly prefer the controller to the mouse and keyboard set up. 3. My PC. It's a decent one but because I'm 18, I don't have the control over what PC I buy. I own a MacBook but the house PC is just that, I share it with my dad. Hence, not only are my PC specs not that fantastic but I rather not have to fight for the PC to play my games. 4. It's consistent. I buy a game for a console and I know it's going to run, mostly run well. PC? So many things to consider. I made the mistake of buying Rage and Battlefield 3 for the PC. My rig was not powerful enough to play those games properly and as a result, I haven't finished Rage and I have not been able to play my most anticipated game of 2011. In a couple of years. I'm ditching my MacBook for a Windows laptop (Because really, I think the Mac sucks). When that happens, and if the PC ports remain at the high quality they have been these last two years, I can see a huge shift in where I game but as of now, the consoles just work. Buy it, plug it in and immediately, I know I can play a video game. It's incredibly simple, and there's something to be said about that.
The PC preference is pretty simple for me. The consoles are old as hell. Even the best looking games on consoles can't really compare to games I'm playing on my PC. That's not to say I'll get rid of my 360 and PS3. There are console games like Red Dead Redemption that are among my favourite games of this gen, and there are still some exclusives I'm hyped for like Halo 4, Last Of Us, and Beyond: Two Souls. But if something is multiplatform then I'm usually getting it on PC. Also, digital distribution for PC games from places like Steam and Amazon is vastly superior to the digital (and retail) experience on consoles. Prices are usually better, it's way more convenient, and all the sales are dope as fuck.
I don't think this is anything new. It's just fatigue from being hampered by outdated tech, this generation is pretty damn long compared to other ones. Consoles will come back around a bit once the new systems are out.
It's the performance for me. I started as a PC guy as a 9 year old building a PC for Quake 2 and Duke Nukem Forever and Zoo Tycoon and loved it then. Mouse and Keyboard forever baby. But after a while I wasn't able to keep up hardware wise for games, and eventually bought a 360. After a long while of that, performance got worse and worse for console games, and eventually with Reach I got sick of it, worked towards getting a cheap gaming PC. Haven't looked back since. Now, I have a GTX680 that pushes Skyrim at max settings with AA and quality AO forced on at silky smooth framerates and its amazing. And I have a 360 pad for games that need it. Best of both worlds. Still have my 360 for the odd exclusive as well. Just played a ton of Forza Horizon over last weekend and I'm super psyched for Halo 4. But PC will never ever leave my life again.
Not getting scammed by Microsoft or Sony for their cheap, crappy, restrictive services and limited exclusives. P2P and host advantage in my multiplayer games, advertisements, and DLC for $60 a year? Uh-huh, yeah, sure.
Mostly play on PC, because better graphics, smoother frame rates, better online play, instant loading times (SSD), better communication options and my PC is always on; it's way quicker to get into a game on my PC than it is any console.
I have a soft spot for the PS3, I'm a big fan of the XMB interface and commend Sony for not constantly making it worse every update and forcing ads down our throats. (Microsoft...)
I can see myself not buying the next Xbox because I think that platform is dead in the water, unless you like Gears of War, Halo or Forza. I'm done with paying for basic online functionality too.
Edit: Steam sales.
My main reason is theres no generation switch, it all flows and for the most part i can still play games i bought 10 years ago without having a ton of systems set up. I still have consoles but i think next gen im just gonna stick with my pc plus handhelds. Also steam has been a big reason as its so nice to have it all right there in the same place.
Frame rates and screen tearing on the consoles combined with the fact that I needed a new general purpose machine are what pushed me towards a new game worthy PC.
I'm not sure I'm going to stick with it though. I work on a PC five days a week 9-5 (for over 15 years now) and I just can't seem to get relaxed when using a PC. The PC environment and work are just too intertwined for me. I thought and hoped that I could push myself past this but I don't know if I can.
The 360 overstaying its welcome by 2 years...Like AC3 and NFS Most Wanted just look bad...I don't see how games are starting to look worse. AC3 has a fantastic story and gameplay, but the framerate is so bad I had to turn on the image smoothing feature in my TV options, which helped but man! The PC version could be a 5 star and the 360 3 Star.
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