Console vs. pc gaming...

Domingo said:
I'm not a creative designer. I see it as flawed and I think that something akin to the 1-handed controllers will eventually replace it or at least work as a compliment. You're just like someone using their Atari stick and claiming that it doesn't get any better than this! I mean, you have to move your cursor - this stick will be around for eternity! We'll NEVER need more than one button!
If everyone thought like you did we'd still be cruising in Model T's and never innovating.
In terms of full-on replacing a keyboard, for a GAME - I see no reason why we couldn't have a device like the Wii-mote with more buttons. Perhaps even a "power glove" style device that can give each finger functionality.
Just because you can "hotkey" every key on your board doesn't mean there isnt a better way.
I could just make a big flat board with 100 perfectly aligned keys (with no attention to comfort or functionality) and by your logic it's awesome just because it has a buttload-o-buttons.
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putting words in my mouth FTW!!! gotta love it. like LESMAN said most is an opinion but its a FACT in a FPS match, a console can even with auto aiming can be outdone by mouse BOOM HEADSHOT, believe me, ive fought many hackers in CS:s with aimbot and yes majority of time they pwn u, but ive gotten my revenge as well, it takes fast reflexes and practice like anything, but again aimbot is unfair as it gets, next to
j-10whoring carrier on wake island and wondering why USMC gets no flags.
to clear up the words put into my mouth, never said keyboard is absolutely around for eternity, only until some creative or innovative idea is presented and functional, u can complain about things all day, but thats not gonna change them, its gonna take time n money, and a MAJORITY dont see anything wrong with it, other than maybe a few flaws or apperance issues.anything like the Wii remote if wired maybe, but wireless no thanx cant depend on for competetive gaming.and really thats not innovative thats just crossing a console controller over to PC.much like the 360 for PC, lets see u map those keys to a FPS and play competetive.
your words>I think that something akin to the 1-handed controllers will eventually replace it or at least work as a compliment. so by compliment u mean more buttons is better?AT THE END OF THE DAY, it has to be functional, profitable.
 
Uhm, These flamewars suck. kb/m vs sticks. If you can't adjust, just shut up and move on. All you FPS gods would get chewed up by final boss in halo on an xbox. But since the kb/m is easier to use, they would probably be just as good as you in halo for PC. What I want to know is, if you're not making money playing games using a kb/m, what're you really bitching about? I can see pros bitching about having to use sticks for a PC game during a tourney, but you people at home can use whatever you want. again, i'm curious, whats the real complaint?

Anyways, I dont care what medium I use, as long as it works well (Halo1&2, GEARS, GRAW, Oblivion, etc..)

On to the OP. Single player games are useless on PC IMO (HL2 was a sweet game yes, but it'll be alot better IMO on 360.). I always used it for MP only, untill Xbox live came out. If there aren't already more people in more games on Live, there will be soon. I can mute the kiddies and not have to worry about never finding a game( Quake 4 for example). its a win win on live.
 
Final boss on halo? The one that I beat on Legendary? Which one was that... the long drive over the top of the ship? Maybe it was all those switches and grenades I was throwing...
Oh, I know! Those guys that get off the elevator!
[/sarcasm]
And yes, I meant on the xbox. Never saw a reason to buy a game for the PC that I'd had for a long time already on the xbox.

Don't assume that just because I like the keyboard mouse that I can't handle the Dual Thumbsticks of Death, the Double Triggers of Doom, the Deadly Directional Pad, and the Six Devious Buttons of Dangerousness! :cool:
 
I've been a console gamer since I was a kid, and for the past 5 years or so I've been a console and PC gamer. I went through periods where I would sway to one side then back to the other.

To me, there are two main problems with the PC side of things.
1. Frequency of which GOOD titles are released
2. Upgrade cycles

Yes, there are some AWESOME games for the pc, I spent years playing the unreal franchise, cs, bf1942 and cod. But comparing how often good games out of for the pc in comparison to the consoles, it's just kinda depressing.

And yes, you can run new games on a 3 year old system if you turn down settings, but no one likes to do that! Everyone wants their stuff to runs pretty, and it sucks when you've spent $1500-$2000 on a computer that is just over a year old, and you can't even run stuff at 1280x1024 with decent eye candy and framerates.

I've decided to focus back on console gaming for a while, it works for my situation. I built a $1500 box almost two years ago, and played quite a few games on it, but there aren't enough good games coming out quick enough for me to justify upgrading the video card or upgrading to a core2duo platform. And you can say that duh, you've got to upgrade your computer or buy a new one every once in a while. But I'm in college, and my powerbook serves me much better than being tied down to a desktop. And if you're thinking of gaming on a laptop, well if upgrading a video card is a budget problem for you, laptop gaming isn't even a possibility.

So here's where I am. I'm not going to upgrade my pc for gaming. Nor will I likely build a pc in the future with gaming in mind. I just picked up a 360, and am likely to get a Wii in the summer. Consoles lifecycles are longer than PC gaming hardware is, and games come out more frequently for them. But if I wasn't a semi-poor college student, I'd probably keep up with PC gaming, but I just can't swing it anymore.

There is something else I haven't seen anybody mention in this thread. You can now play online with both consoles and PC's, but what about locally? It's fun to have friends over and be able to play games together right there, whereas on the PC you can still do it, but you'd have to LAN it or play online against each other. I mean come on, imagine your sitting there playing a FPS on a console, and someone comes by. It is so easy and so likely to be able to play with them. On the PC, if someone comes by and sees you playing a FPS, the chances are unless they are an enthusiast(which basically everyone here is), you're not going to be able to play with them. That's the end of my rant on that, it's just that consoles make gaming so much more social compared to that of PC's.

Again I'd like to say that I've been both, and would likely keep up both if I had the monetary means, but consoles fit my situation right now.
 
I don't think theres any doubt that a keyboard/mouse combo beats all contollers made so far at First Person Shooter, games, in fact I can't think of many games where a standard PS/Nintendo/Xbox controller is better.

Are keyboards the best they can get? Probably not. But they do improve, you can get keyboards with specific layouts for certain popular games, you can get keyboards where you can position every key on a mat to make any combination possible.

Thats not really the point though, the point is that PC's ALWAYS adapt to new innovations, they allow such a huge amount of addons and upgrades for hardware and have such versatile software that any new technology will be eventually intergrated, the PC's ability to adapt and change to keep up with new innovative ideas is what makes it good.

The "better" consoles get the more they tend towards PC's.
 
Bleh, resummarizing from the last thread on the exact same topic.

The console's advantage is inelastic hardware.

The PC's advantage is elastic hardware.

The disadvantages for both is just the reverse.

No reason a console can't have a kb/m. No reason PCs can't have hardware lock-in.

But that's besides the point, because the fact is that it's not the case. Consoles don't have a kb/m, and PC internals are constantly changing.

The console lets developers make sure their game runs. If it runs on the dev kit, it'll do the same on your console. If a PC game runs on the dev PC, there's too many variables for that to say anything about what it's like on your PC. That's the advantage of hardware lock-in. Cheaper development costs and a clearly defined market.

The PC is continually upgradable both in terms of hardware and software(user-directed). It'll get the best graphics, plus it'll get user-created mods, plus it'll do all kindsa funky jazz besides gaming for you. And that's also the flaw because now the developers don't have a clue what's going on inside your box and they can only try to test for the most popular setups they can think of, and the rest of the players will need to figure something out on their own...or upgrade till it works.

If this distinction of lock-in is broken, then they become identical. But if held in place, the market will just move naturally.

I'm hearing talk of DX10 attempting to implement some standardization so that a developer's implementation for one PC setup should work for any PC setup that's DX10-ready. If this sort of thing is pulled off, then you can imagine how this would affect all the above.
 
kelbear said:
Bleh, resummarizing from the last thread on the exact same topic.

The console's advantage is inelastic hardware.

The PC's advantage is elastic hardware.

The disadvantages for both is just the reverse.

No reason a console can't have a kb/m. No reason PCs can't have hardware lock-in.

But that's besides the point, because the fact is that it's not the case. Consoles don't have a kb/m, and PC internals are constantly changing.

The console lets developers make sure their game runs. If it runs on the dev kit, it'll do the same on your console. If a PC game runs on the dev PC, there's too many variables for that to say anything about what it's like on your PC. That's the advantage of hardware lock-in. Cheaper development costs and a clearly defined market.

The PC is continually upgradable both in terms of hardware and software(user-directed). It'll get the best graphics, plus it'll get user-created mods, plus it'll do all kindsa funky jazz besides gaming for you. And that's also the flaw because now the developers don't have a clue what's going on inside your box and they can only try to test for the most popular setups they can think of, and the rest of the players will need to figure something out on their own...or upgrade till it works.

If this distinction of lock-in is broken, then they become identical. But if held in place, the market will just move naturally.

I'm hearing talk of DX10 attempting to implement some standardization so that a developer's implementation for one PC setup should work for any PC setup that's DX10-ready. If this sort of thing is pulled off, then you can imagine how this would affect all the above.
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in response to the latter discussion of a pc game on dev kit then onto consumers, pretty much why they list Minimum and then the Suggested hardware etc...and as far as upgrading all the time, thats not completely truthful, after ur set into either say 939 or AM2 or Conroe with PCI-Express and have at least 2.4ghz or 3ghz wont be needing to upgrade for a little while, the only thing u would be upgrading is the Video card or newer Sound card or Faster Hard drive, or adding more memory(id suggest 2gb ram is perfect for gaming, if some insist on 4gb, then by all means)
After that ur at a standstill until video cards surpass the PCI-express bandwidth.
 
dotHectate said:
Final boss on halo? The one that I beat on Legendary? Which one was that... the long drive over the top of the ship? Maybe it was all those switches and grenades I was throwing...
Oh, I know! Those guys that get off the elevator!
[/sarcasm]
And yes, I meant on the xbox. Never saw a reason to buy a game for the PC that I'd had for a long time already on the xbox.

Don't assume that just because I like the keyboard mouse that I can't handle the Dual Thumbsticks of Death, the Double Triggers of Doom, the Deadly Directional Pad, and the Six Devious Buttons of Dangerousness! :cool:
Click to expand...

No, Final Boss is a halo team. only a few have beaten them, but never consistantly.
 
LOL, I completely missed that. hahaha
Yea, they would own me for sure. I was only slightly above average player in multiplayer. But those were great times too. Nothing like playing team DM in a crowded room of guys on 3 different Xboxs. Great times. That is one thing that is difficult to re-create, even at a PC LAN party. There's just more involvement on consoles between people. I think it has to do with proximity, everyone is pretty close to eachother... physically anyway, lol.

JSC450 said:
No, Final Boss is a halo team. only a few have beaten them, but never consistantly.
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yea, i agree. its nice being 5 feet from the people your playing. it usually came down to 2 groups of 8 people practically sitting on top of eachother :p and another 6 begging for someone to pass the sticks =]

but the point i was trying to make was, as good as people can be with the sticks, everyone would obviously be better with a kb/m. but for those who constantly bitch about the sticks, im left to think they just can't adapt, which i think just makes them a plain bad gamer. i mean, if everyone, and i mean millions of people, are using the sticks, why is the kb/m debate even brought up unless they cant cope without it?

I have yet to hear one elite console gamer (okay, i guess the halo players are the only ones out there :)) complain about the sticks outside of which xbox controller is better, the duke or the s.
 
dwilson041781 said:
in response to the latter discussion of a pc game on dev kit then onto consumers, pretty much why they list Minimum and then the Suggested hardware etc...and as far as upgrading all the time, thats not completely truthful, after ur set into either say 939 or AM2 or Conroe with PCI-Express and have at least 2.4ghz or 3ghz wont be needing to upgrade for a little while, the only thing u would be upgrading is the Video card or newer Sound card or Faster Hard drive, or adding more memory(id suggest 2gb ram is perfect for gaming, if some insist on 4gb, then by all means)
After that ur at a standstill until video cards surpass the PCI-express bandwidth.
Click to expand...

It's not a performance issue that I'm referring to specifically, it's just one of the issues with developing for non-standard setups. It's probably the easiest problem to address. They can work in scalability so that even low performance PCs can play the game fine. Upgrading usually means better compatibility since the manufacturer can account for problems found in previous models, and the developers tend to spend more time on compatibility for more recent models and work down since recent models will be around for awhile, while older models are on the way out. (Unfortunately, sometimes newer stuff can introduce new problems too, like SLI and NWN2).

The more pressuring issue is dealing with the software end. There were driver issues when each card worked on a seperate set of drivers that the developers had to take into account. At least for video cards, the two big players Nvidia and ATI eventually standardized theirs, which is a relief. Unfortunately, some folks aren't keeping their drivers updated properly, and complain that it's not working. Nvidia released new drivers specifically for big name games more than once, and it's one of the big reasons why they implemented "Game profiles" into their interface to cut down on how often they would have to make a new driver release.

There's lots of ways that PC users modify their setups that can cause game errors because the developers didn't prepare for that particular situation. What's your firewall setup like? Got .Net patched up? Bink video? Netlimiter? video tweaks? Overclocking? Teamspeak/ventrilo? Got a joystick/saitek eclipse keyboard plugged in? All these little possibilities provide room for error. So the developers really have a target market of only those who haven't individualized their computers to the point where the developers haven't prepared for that situation. Those who have made changes the developers didn't account for won't be able to play that game, so decreases the market the developers can sell to. A very basic example is flight-sims. Who can buy PC flight-sims? Only the PCs that have a joystick, since not all of them have one. Some who would be interested in the game won't buy it because they'd also have to pay for a joystick. This reduces the market they can sell to.

How many PCs will be able to run the game as the developers intended? How should they optimize? This is one of the problems they face. This is the reason for the Steam Hardware Survey, those results help Valve find out how to address this issue and how to prioritize. Thankfully they release this information. But as noted above, it doesn't completely solve the problems.

On the other hand, with locked-in consoles, you know what they'll have. As consoles gain upgradability, they'll pick up PC problems. New game accessories that aren't included in the standard package create a submarket. This was an issue with Microsoft in the decisions regarding harddrives. Could the developers depend on the user having a harddrive in their console? This directly affects how they code the game.

So yeah, this is all clarification on my original post.

The PC advantage is also its disadvantage, and the console advantage is also its disadvantage.
 
consoles FTW for the cheap college student. :D

got my 360 core at microcenter for a whopping $200. I live right next door to a public library that has CDs, DVDs and XBOX 360 GAMES! I borrowed:

Fight Night (doesnt work bad disc)
NHL2K
Lego Star Wars
Burnout Revenge
PGR 3.

All free and due in a week! lol. :D

Hey if you've got money and like to spend $3,000 :eek: on PC parts and enjoy buying a $600 :eek: video card (lol @ video cards that are considered a {H]ot deal at $600) every 6 months just to play the same FPS games (Far Cry and Fear) over and over and over and over but with more "eye candy" than I don't have a problem with it. Notice that I'm not saying that PCs suck so just because someone likes console games doesn't make them any worse.
 
It doesn't really matter how good a controller is if everyone is on a level playing ground. The issue is weather a given controller limits the game to the point where a person doesn't find it as fun.
 
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