It’s The Time Old Fight Of PC Vs Console For Video Games

It’s that time-old question of which is better for video games. Let’s pro & con their ability to run our video games

My original plan for this article was a thorough explanation of pros and cons of our preferred video games platforms. I could never finish it though because at the end of the day gaming is a lot of things but it should be fun first and foremost. Some people like mouse and keyboard over a controller. This doesn’t mean one is better than the other for video games, it just means some people have different tastes. With that said, let’s talk about the pros and cons on both sides.

I grew up a console gamer for my video games and still like to play on PS4. Around 2012 I really got into PC gaming though. It was very daunting starting out and having to learn the pitfalls created by computer parts manufacturers having totally crap naming schemes. Price be a clear representation of performance right? Wrong. At least for what most people use a computer for and not just video games. I remember wanting an Intel system really bad but seeing some of their processors being on the wrong side of a thousand dollars I quickly started researching AMD and ended up with a quad-core FX-4300. For gaming, all you really need is a decent modern CPU with four cores.

This is probably the biggest upsides to PC gaming; you can always upgrade. Anything you need on a PC is completely modular almost like adult LEGOs. Want to go from 1080p 30fps to 1440p 120fps? Simply drop some cash and get a new graphics card. Most people might try and say new stuff comes out and makes the old stuff obsolete but Intel hasn’t shown a performance bump and nearly five years. Not to mention how long it took AMD to get back into the CPU market.

The second best thing about PC gaming is the video games. I picked up all three BioShock titles for $7, and when the remastered versions came out I received those upgrades for free. The same thing happened with Skyrim and a lot of these remasters. Plus if a game you love doesn’t get a remastered you can most likely MOD it. Look at Fallout for example. People can make Fallout: New Vegas look like it came out for the PS4.

Even though some think it’s illegal, you can also emulate video games. It’s the most backward compatible platform you can buy. I can play DOOM from 2016 one minute and be playing the original DOOM in just a few clicks. It’s why I have truly fallen in love with PC gaming.

PC – Pros

• You can always upgrade when you notice a drop in performance
• You are able to play at higher framerates and higher graphical fidelity
• More precision with mouse and keyboard
• The video games are very cheap
• No paid subscription fees to play online

Let’s not leave the consoles out of the video games war here. If it wasn’t for the consoles PC gaming simply would not be as great as it is today. It’s almost like good and evil; you can’t have one without the other. Nintendo pretty much saved the industry after the crash and Atari helped bring video games into homes everywhere. This has been built upon throughout the different generations on top of all that and coming full circle the latest generation of consoles are pretty much mini gaming PCs.

Everyone can remember a friend bringing over their console and a handful of video games or a friend in the group’s older sibling had the latest console so you all went over and played on it. It is the perfect entertainment for the living room. If you look at video games from the start of a generation versus how they look at the end of the generation you’ll be amazed how much optimization can be achieved. Take Grand Theft Auto IV, and GTAV. The prior looks like crap and the latter one blew me away with how vibrant it was.

One pro that could also be a con is exclusive video games. This is slowly changing with Microsoft releasing their games on the Windows 10 store, but usually, the games aren’t good enough alone to justify paying for the console. I really liked Horizon: Zero Dawn though I probably wouldn’t buy a three hundred dollar machine just for it. This could be attributed to a lot of things like over saturation in a market place or simply that video games locked to a certain system won’t have as wide of market share like a Call Of Duty has.

Console – Pros

• A stable platform to develop for and play on
• Consistent performance
• Exclusive video games to the platform
• Better local play
• Usually much smaller than PCs

I tried to keep this article from running on too long considering how much discussion can be derived from the topic; and how debatable it can be there is more than enough to talk about. I hope everyone has fun reading this article and playing whichever video games they like to play on whatever they like to play them on; even mobile. Let me know what you think below and I’ll see you next time.