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Why play games on a PC and not a PS5/Xbox X?
- Thread starter maflynn
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I game on a PC instead of a console because I would rather avoid the monthly subscription fee for Xbox game pass since gaming on a PC doesn’t require a monthly subscription fee to play games online. Aside from that, a gaming PC can be used for many other things besides just gaming. That said, an Xbox or PlayStation can definitely prove more valuable if you were looking to save money as buying/building a gaming PC can be expensive.
I like to mod games. Those are the ones I'll put the most hours in. So, it makes sense to game on PC.
I also prefer strategy games which only really work with a keyboard and mouse. So, they usually just end up on the PC.
While I'll also play ported console titles. I see no reason to buy a console. As it's just an added expense. Theres been a few exclusives I'd have liked to play. But there are too few to get me to waste the money.
At least those were my reasons. I don't game much now. Usually it's just some old 8/16 bit game when I do play them. As modern games just take way too long doing mundane tasks like searching aimlessly for items or grinding for hours to build up stats. Plus most of the new games have online components which don't allow modding anymore.
I also prefer strategy games which only really work with a keyboard and mouse. So, they usually just end up on the PC.
While I'll also play ported console titles. I see no reason to buy a console. As it's just an added expense. Theres been a few exclusives I'd have liked to play. But there are too few to get me to waste the money.
At least those were my reasons. I don't game much now. Usually it's just some old 8/16 bit game when I do play them. As modern games just take way too long doing mundane tasks like searching aimlessly for items or grinding for hours to build up stats. Plus most of the new games have online components which don't allow modding anymore.
It really depends on the games. I will still buy a PS5 for my kids, but I'll still play on it because I like their exclusives. But if there is a multiplat game comes out that I want play, I prefer playing it on PC. I have the option to play with KB/Mouse and/or Controller. I've also grown to love playing on a 3440x1440 widescreen. It's like when I shoot with my wide angle lens... I capture more details of the surroundings... not just on the subject. Since I do photography/digital content creation as a side job, I mostly use my PC for productivity... but f you are only looking at playing games, the next gen PlayStation or Xbox are great.
I just posted new my gaming/productivity rig in the picture gallery forum:
View My Current rig: full specs in post...
Just built it last Saturday. Worth a look... It's animated, and you can see my unique custom gaming chair. I'll just say... you don't need a rumble controller for game immersion.. LOL
I just posted new my gaming/productivity rig in the picture gallery forum:
View My Current rig: full specs in post...
Just built it last Saturday. Worth a look... It's animated, and you can see my unique custom gaming chair. I'll just say... you don't need a rumble controller for game immersion.. LOL
I was a PC gamer for years but switched to Xbox Series X for quite a number of reasons. It was a very hard decision (along with deciding between PS5 and Xbox) but here are the reasons a big part of me wanted to remain on PC:
* The ability to build the exact hardware you want and not be stuck with the same thing for an entire console generation
* The flexibility to basically use any kind of input device, peripheral, monitor, etc you want.
* Related to the above... you prefer keyboard/mouse. Yes, Xbox supports keyboard/mouse for some games but the support is very limited.
* You have a wider game selection especially if you're into old games, are willing to use emulators, etc. Sure, consoles have their own exclusives but it has become more common in the past few years to also release them on PC; this more so applies to the Xbox side but even Sony has released some older PS exclusives on PC. PC also has their own exclusives that generally don't go to consoles (e.g. MMORPGs, games that really need a keyboard/mouse).
* Mods
* If you're already a PC gamer, you most likely already have a huge collection of games you've never played thanks to Steam and whatnot and don't want to rebuy them on a console.
* You like to tinker.
There is another big reason that didn't apply to me but applies to lots of others: you might need the PC for other things so it makes sense to spend some more to use it for gaming as well. I need to use a laptop for work so I didn't use my PC for anything other than gaming any more.
Thanks to this new generation of consoles, I really prefer console gaming but I completely get why PC gamers prefer PCs.
* The ability to build the exact hardware you want and not be stuck with the same thing for an entire console generation
* The flexibility to basically use any kind of input device, peripheral, monitor, etc you want.
* Related to the above... you prefer keyboard/mouse. Yes, Xbox supports keyboard/mouse for some games but the support is very limited.
* You have a wider game selection especially if you're into old games, are willing to use emulators, etc. Sure, consoles have their own exclusives but it has become more common in the past few years to also release them on PC; this more so applies to the Xbox side but even Sony has released some older PS exclusives on PC. PC also has their own exclusives that generally don't go to consoles (e.g. MMORPGs, games that really need a keyboard/mouse).
* Mods
* If you're already a PC gamer, you most likely already have a huge collection of games you've never played thanks to Steam and whatnot and don't want to rebuy them on a console.
* You like to tinker.
There is another big reason that didn't apply to me but applies to lots of others: you might need the PC for other things so it makes sense to spend some more to use it for gaming as well. I need to use a laptop for work so I didn't use my PC for anything other than gaming any more.
Thanks to this new generation of consoles, I really prefer console gaming but I completely get why PC gamers prefer PCs.
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Interesting perspectives. I have a gaming laptop with an egpu, it handles everything I throw it, but I also have a PS4. Once I got my Razer, my PS4 usage dropped to the point now that I've not used it in months.
I've been somewhat tempted by the PS5, and that got me thinking. Why??? Especially now, its 500 bucks, which is expensive, the economy is slowing down, and I feel maybe money in my bank account will be better then in Sony's. The rarity of available the PS5 has worked in my favor, as it removes the impulse of seeing it and buying, though its hard to impulsively spend 500 bucks.
I'm probably looking to get cyberpunk next week and that's what sparked my thought process and wondered what/why others do with their game playing. I was thinking, of getting the cyberpunk game for the PS5, but now I'll probably just sit on the sideline and keep playing on my PC
I've been somewhat tempted by the PS5, and that got me thinking. Why??? Especially now, its 500 bucks, which is expensive, the economy is slowing down, and I feel maybe money in my bank account will be better then in Sony's. The rarity of available the PS5 has worked in my favor, as it removes the impulse of seeing it and buying, though its hard to impulsively spend 500 bucks.
I'm probably looking to get cyberpunk next week and that's what sparked my thought process and wondered what/why others do with their game playing. I was thinking, of getting the cyberpunk game for the PS5, but now I'll probably just sit on the sideline and keep playing on my PC
My last console was the SNES. Unless you count the 32x add-on for the Genesis. I just liked computer gaming more. Roommates had the PS2 and Dreamcast. So, I played those a lot for a while. But haven't felt the need to buy another console. There's just more freedom with PC gaming.
I like playing all games, PC or console, but I always gravitated towards consoles. My reason is that the games that come out for the console are already optimized for what the console can handle. I just want to get in and play it to the best that it's able to. If I buy the PC version, I need a beast rig or I need to fool around with the settings to get it to run its best while looking its best, etc. I just don't want to deal with it. That and it seems even ancient PC games never drop in price or discount. Could be a 5 year old game and they pretty much charge full price for it.
The "next gen" versions of Cyberpunk won't be released for many months, so if you got it now for the PS5/XSX you'd only be playing the PS4/X1X version, albeit with higher resolution and better framerate.
Plus, unless you were in on the original pre-orders, you can't actually buy either of the new consoles, other than by paying somebody a huge bounty on Ebay.
I'm tempted by Cyberpunk on PC, but given most previous CDPR games, I expect it will be buggy to begin with and vastly improved by patches over the next six months / year, by which time the consoles might be widely available. I'm going to wait.
Here is the opinion of someone who only recently resumed playing videogames in the past six months after 20+ years of basically ignoring videogames.
PC games often have better support for non-gamepad input devices which basically translates to "mouse and keyboard."
Until the new consoles arrived, PC GPUs also provided adaptive sync/variable rate refresh to prevent tearing. Arguably, PCs still do a better job at this.
HDR is a similar topic.
PCs are better able to handle latency issues. While I am not one, the esports extremists rely on this.
Right now Nvidia hardware ray-tracing and DLSS blow doors on anything AMD/Radeon and the new game consoles have. This is evident in certain games like Control which is fabulous on a high-end Nvidia-driven PC.
There's also the total cost of ownership, particularly the content. PC games frequently go on sale. Hell, I'd say between occasional Steam sales, Epic's free weekly games, and Xbox Game Pass (for PC), the PC gamers have a cheaper entry into a larger library of content.
Despite console exclusivity, it appears that much of it eventually ends up on the PC platform. Can you play the Halo franchise on PlayStation? I don't know since I don't own one, but I know I can play a bunch of them on my PC. I know for sure I can play Resident Evil titles on my PC but not my Mac.
There's also the VR aspect. While my Oculus Rift S is a dead end, playing Half-Life: Alyx on it is fantastic. Star Wars: Squadrons also has good VR support. Oculus/Facebook is moving to a standalone model but there isn't any strong move by Sony nor Xbox to include newer VR technologies into their new consoles to my knowledge.
One thing I do not have clarity on is the ability to mod games on PCs versus consoles. One example would be something like uh, a "wardrobe alteration" for Lara Croft. 😜
Other more substantial projects would be community content like the recent definitive release of Black Mesa by the Crowbar Collective.
While I have zero interest in streaming myself, from my casual observation, many of the Twitch/YT streamers appear to be on PCs. Maybe it's an easier platform to stream from?
However, I did buy a PlayStation 5 DualSense controller. It was widely reported that PC support would be coming soon and today there are two parties that quickly offered DualSense PC support. The Steam developers have DualSense running in a beta version of their PC desktop client; I expect this to be released to the general public before Christmas. There's another PC group that supported PS4 DualShock that has worked on driver software for DualSense. That's also live.
It remains to be seen if PC game developers can take advantage of PS5 DualSense's advanced haptic feedback and adaptive trigger support but right now it looks like DualSense will be the gold standard for videogame controllers for years to come.
So for me (a newcomer to the videogame world) it looks like A.) PC videogame pricing, B.) PS5 DualSense gamepad support, C.) large Xbox Game Pass content library and D.) Nvidia RTX hardware ray-tracing and DLSS makes PC gaming the choice head-and-shoulders above either console platform.
Of course I could be completely wrong as a newbie to all of this. Videogames only came to my attention from COVID-19 and the idea that maybe I should train for the zombie apocalypse.
PC games often have better support for non-gamepad input devices which basically translates to "mouse and keyboard."
Until the new consoles arrived, PC GPUs also provided adaptive sync/variable rate refresh to prevent tearing. Arguably, PCs still do a better job at this.
HDR is a similar topic.
PCs are better able to handle latency issues. While I am not one, the esports extremists rely on this.
Right now Nvidia hardware ray-tracing and DLSS blow doors on anything AMD/Radeon and the new game consoles have. This is evident in certain games like Control which is fabulous on a high-end Nvidia-driven PC.
There's also the total cost of ownership, particularly the content. PC games frequently go on sale. Hell, I'd say between occasional Steam sales, Epic's free weekly games, and Xbox Game Pass (for PC), the PC gamers have a cheaper entry into a larger library of content.
Despite console exclusivity, it appears that much of it eventually ends up on the PC platform. Can you play the Halo franchise on PlayStation? I don't know since I don't own one, but I know I can play a bunch of them on my PC. I know for sure I can play Resident Evil titles on my PC but not my Mac.
There's also the VR aspect. While my Oculus Rift S is a dead end, playing Half-Life: Alyx on it is fantastic. Star Wars: Squadrons also has good VR support. Oculus/Facebook is moving to a standalone model but there isn't any strong move by Sony nor Xbox to include newer VR technologies into their new consoles to my knowledge.
One thing I do not have clarity on is the ability to mod games on PCs versus consoles. One example would be something like uh, a "wardrobe alteration" for Lara Croft. 😜
Other more substantial projects would be community content like the recent definitive release of Black Mesa by the Crowbar Collective.
While I have zero interest in streaming myself, from my casual observation, many of the Twitch/YT streamers appear to be on PCs. Maybe it's an easier platform to stream from?
However, I did buy a PlayStation 5 DualSense controller. It was widely reported that PC support would be coming soon and today there are two parties that quickly offered DualSense PC support. The Steam developers have DualSense running in a beta version of their PC desktop client; I expect this to be released to the general public before Christmas. There's another PC group that supported PS4 DualShock that has worked on driver software for DualSense. That's also live.
It remains to be seen if PC game developers can take advantage of PS5 DualSense's advanced haptic feedback and adaptive trigger support but right now it looks like DualSense will be the gold standard for videogame controllers for years to come.
So for me (a newcomer to the videogame world) it looks like A.) PC videogame pricing, B.) PS5 DualSense gamepad support, C.) large Xbox Game Pass content library and D.) Nvidia RTX hardware ray-tracing and DLSS makes PC gaming the choice head-and-shoulders above either console platform.
Of course I could be completely wrong as a newbie to all of this. Videogames only came to my attention from COVID-19 and the idea that maybe I should train for the zombie apocalypse.
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Wait for Steam sales. You can get all sorts of pretty recent high quality games for $5 to $10. Sometimes the entire series of a game or a big bundle for $10. Just load up your wish list on Steam. As they'll pop up for sale randomly.
Using the Steam wishlist is absolutely the way to go.
Some of my purchases from the Steam Autumn Sale:
Some of my purchases from the Steam Autumn Sale:
- Death Stranding $30
- Halo: The Master Chief Collection $26
- Star Wars: Squadrons $25
- Grand Theft Auto III Trilogy $9
- Max Payne $3.50
- DOOM Classic Complete 2012 $4.50
Another thing to note, console game businesses expect to make their profit on content sales.
This is a very old concept. They sell their basic console hardware at cost or slightly above. They make their profit from game sales (and accessories). Even Nintendo back in the early Nineties admitted this about Super NES.
By contrast, the PC gaming world sees hardware and software sales as separate worlds.
I do not know enough about the economics of the videogame industry to make guesses on how much of a consumer dollar goes where but for sure, the console videogame manufacturers are more like Apple/iPhone ecosystem than the PC gaming industry.
What is really perplexing to me is the streaming side which is where most of the gaming world will end up.
I have a POS $180 Windows PC with Intel HD 500 integrated graphics at home. Abysmal performance. However with Nvidia GeForce NOW, it will stream 720p gaming on my ghetto DSL connection. The image quality is acceptable but for sure performance is bandwidth constrained.
So the future of gaming might end up being more about network bandwidth and less for hardware performance.
GeForce NOW isn't strictly a PC thing. It's also available on Nvidia Shield and a year from now should be a macOS/iOS thing (via web browser, etc.). I have the GeForce NOW Mac client on my mini 2018.
This is a very old concept. They sell their basic console hardware at cost or slightly above. They make their profit from game sales (and accessories). Even Nintendo back in the early Nineties admitted this about Super NES.
By contrast, the PC gaming world sees hardware and software sales as separate worlds.
I do not know enough about the economics of the videogame industry to make guesses on how much of a consumer dollar goes where but for sure, the console videogame manufacturers are more like Apple/iPhone ecosystem than the PC gaming industry.
What is really perplexing to me is the streaming side which is where most of the gaming world will end up.
I have a POS $180 Windows PC with Intel HD 500 integrated graphics at home. Abysmal performance. However with Nvidia GeForce NOW, it will stream 720p gaming on my ghetto DSL connection. The image quality is acceptable but for sure performance is bandwidth constrained.
So the future of gaming might end up being more about network bandwidth and less for hardware performance.
GeForce NOW isn't strictly a PC thing. It's also available on Nvidia Shield and a year from now should be a macOS/iOS thing (via web browser, etc.). I have the GeForce NOW Mac client on my mini 2018.
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I prefer the freedom of the PC, plus the mods as you mentioned, more mod flexibility, and prefer keyboard/mouse to a controller.
From what little I know of cyberpunk and what people are saying, the early adopters/beta players say that the game is almost unplayable unpatched, BUT there's a 43gb patch which fixes most of those headaches. I'm taking a break from fallout 76 for the time being, and this game may fit the bill.
As for PS5 availability, yeah I see they're impossible to find. I'm not paying scalpers, if anything I'll wait until after the holidays. Spending 500 bucks on something that can play games that my laptop can is harder to justify. I'm more in the mode to save money as we get beyond the holidays so dropping 500 bucks is may not be feasible for the time being.
For the games I've played where I had them on the PS4 and PC, I found I had more freedom on the controls, such as selecting weapons via a hot key instead of using a selection wheel - in a fps, if its slower to switch weapons that can have dire consequences. Also the fast save seems more consistent on a pc, where I hit f5 for instance.
HDR is *terrible* on PC. This is one area where consoles utterly crush PCs.
Even if you can find a monitor that genuinely supports HDR rather than some gimped 8-bit fake HDR, the way it's implemented in Windows is notoriously bad. I have a decent-ish 10-bit monitor but I usually leave HDR switched off because it causes so many problems. For example, Windows renders on-screen notifications such as the volume bar in non-HDR, so every time that pops up in a full screen game, the monitor blacks out while it switches modes (a very common issue).
It's a real pain getting full screen apps to work in HDR, and not all games support borderless windowed mode. Plus, if you do get it working it's a pale imitation of the HDR you'll get on a good TV with local dimming zones or OLED. A lot of PC games just leave HDR off the menu entirely, despite including it in the console versions.
You probably want to turn off Dynamic Tone mapping on your monitor, if possible.
I a mac user and also like flight sims when I game. I have been using xplane11 on my mac, but want to get the new MS flight sim 2020. I tried the beta on bootcamp on my mac and the hardware it not up to the task. So for the price of a xbox it makes sence for me to go that route rather invest in a PC rig for just on app.
Consoles are made for gaming... It easier to have 1 machine for all tasks.. Plus, you'd be limited to one platform for gaming and on what titles there are available
Not all titles come out cross platform for every game. There are fe wgames i wouldn't mind seeing on PC< but their only for PS or Xbox for example.
Not all titles come out cross platform for every game. There are fe wgames i wouldn't mind seeing on PC< but their only for PS or Xbox for example.
Outside of Playstation, there aren't really any exclusive games any more. That I play.
I feel much more comfortable with computers and I can be on my own upgrade cycle.
I don't necessarily want a one thing runs everything machine but if I want whatever the newest graphics card or whatever it is, I enjoy the ability to do it and move on.
I feel much more comfortable with computers and I can be on my own upgrade cycle.
I don't necessarily want a one thing runs everything machine but if I want whatever the newest graphics card or whatever it is, I enjoy the ability to do it and move on.
The bigger issue is that cloud gaming is well on its way here.
In a few years, I'll be able to play AAA gaming titles on some POS tablet provided I have a fast Internet connection.
I've tried GeForce NOW on a ghetto $200 Wintel PC. I think it was Metro Exodus that I tried but the bottleneck was my network connection, not the Intel Integrated 500 iGPU.
Indeed, and so much so, you can justify a M1 Mac, if you can play those games with sufficient frame rates via the current streaming services.
I'm still leaning towards getting a console, not sure which
I've not been paying close attention, but can you expect to play games decently on a M1 with integrated graphics? What broke the Mac as a gaming machine for me in 2016 was, well I retired and would not be traveling for a living, but more important, $3k for a MBP to get dedicated graphics, was a bridge too far, not going to pay that. And at home, I'd be playing games on my PC.
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I'd consider it acceptable for light gaming. From what reviews I've seen FPS is acceptable on low to medium settings on new games. Although another issue is how many games get ported to Mac and are recent enough for 64 bit x86 support. Not many are ARM native yet. I haven't looked into Crossover performance for Windows games.
I'd say it would be nice for playing a game when not at home. Otherwise I'd want a regular gaming desktop.