Consoles vs PC gameing thread.

[Moach]

i say - if you want cheap, fast tv-like gratification by "canned experience" gaming without having to bother with anything more technical than where you plug the hdmi cable on the flatscreen, go consoles.... :dry:


as you can see, i don't fancy that all too much...


can't hook up a Saitek x252 simpit with pedals and a spacenavigator for RCS to a console... bummer...

can't find many good simulation titles for console..... dang...

can't make mods for console games.... c'mon!

can't play Orbiter on a console... well, that's the kill shot right there :lol:



it's all a choice really... PC's are more the hobbyists way of gaming.... consoles are, well... in the lack of a better word - toys :hmm:


and you know - i grew up playing SNES and N64 and was rather enthusiastic back in the day... yet, once i got well involved with PC games (and making my own), i find consoles just can't hold a candle

it does take some more patience tho... kids (of all ages) who forget to take their ritalin would prefer consoles for that, i figure....


but laptop is a no-go... anything with decent hardware costs more than certain motor vehicles and heats up like it's on reentry - plus, the portability boon only goes as far as the battery can survive (not long under the abuse of gaming) - so, save yourself a buck and get a desktop

...and stick to "classics" when on the move (i got simcity, starcraft and a bunch more on my laptop)

 

[Keatah]

That's the other bane of PC gaming. Mis-matched software vs. hardware. In nearly all cases it's the software that becomes bloated and bogs down the system. New software is a huge driving force behind the perpetual upgrade cycle.

In consoles, devs are under orders to try to stay within the capabilities of the hardware. With a PC it's all over the map! Sometimes you can even get a hardware/software combo that runs too fast! This was especially true of the early directX games. You couldn't do a major upgrade lest the game run too fast. WipeoutXL was a game that I had running way too fast after an upgrade.

A stuttering console is unacceptable to management of the companies that produce both both the hardware and software. It's also a concern for the drones selling it in the stores. It is something that is avoided like the plague.

With the PC.. Who gives a damn?? The blame is always placed with the user for not having the correct hardware. Always.

 

[garyw]

Why is anyone even remotely close to being offended here? They're only video games!

That said, games I play are typically quite old/low end graphically (on that note, I'm getting back in to Dwarf Fortress,) so this mid-end laptop I need for school is sufficient. For anything else, there's used hardware el cheapo.

Same here. I rarely play games anyway so I don't see the point of a console. To me a game must have some depth and be fun. Thats why it's called a game after all and many games these days are all about the visuals and little about the content.

 

[Keatah]

This is a discussion of the gaming hobby. Anyone getting offended is taking it way way too seriously! Also be aware that the nature of folk visiting OF - we will be preferring the PC platform over consoles anyways. So the whole discussion is biased from the get-go. Just as consoles would be favored in a poll being conducted in a Pokemon or Transformers gaming forum.

I suppose I can be happy emulating past consoles on my PC hardware. I don't get into the Xbox or PS3 scene that much. But they're fine and fun to play at my buddy's get togethers.

Playing Orbiter is a solitary activity, not many people are interested in playing with spaceflight dynamics. It's just too hard and too complex.

I remember the first time I jammed on orbiter back with the first version in 2000-2001 I thought it was too complex and promptly resigned it to my archives, a curiosity to be forgotten. But then I came back to it a few months later and read through the manual carefully and methodically. I took the next two evenings to familiarize myself with the mechanics of how things "fly" in space.

Orbiter quickly became one of my 3 favorite sims, the other two being MSFLTSIM, and XPLANE.
It is just as natural to pilot an orbiter vehicle as it is to fly xplane, or a real-life PC-12.

The learning curve with orbiter is really steep. And this is what will turn people away from PC gaming. PC gaming is automatically associated with complexity and difficult-to-follow rules and regulations. For many PC games this is true.

All that aside - I find playing Space Invaders equally rewarding and as easy as conducting a maximum performance aerobraking maneuver combined with plane change.

There's nothing quite like beginning and ending your first re-entry sequence successfully. As the flames die down and hull temp drops, you know you MADE IT! Same goes for many of the other beginner's milestones like a circular orbit, or a first docking. And those big steps fade to baby steps when you learn trans-x and other navigation mfd's.

What I've recently started doing is playing Orbiter as multi-player on one single system. You become the Captain and find yourself a co-pilot. This is a real blast! You can work on the higher mission objectives and control the shape of the expedition. You delegate tasks like takeoffs and landings to your co-pilot. You practice cockpit management.

It's also exciting because you must complete the mission profile. So there is suspense in letting someone else fly a big portion of it. You take on the role of the flight instructor! The success of the mission ultimately still depends on you and how well you can teach.

Playing Orbiter this way adds an entirely new dimension, one that cannot be duped with "multi-player" over a network. It's almost like the Atari 2600 all over again, just on an adult level.

When I was a kid we'd do this with Star Raiders. One of us would operate the joystick and pilot the ship, and fire the phasers. The other would operate ship systems like shields and the galactic chart and manage fuel. We could collaborate on how to best complete the mission.

When gaming in LAN, this type of gaming is not possible. Well, sure, you can form a team and take out an installation or something. But it's not the same. Trust me on it. NOT THE SAME! The camaraderie and interpersonal activity is totally erased in the LAN-party environment.

 

[RisingFury]

You've obviously never seen gaming laptops.

Sure I have. Alienware 2000 dollar monsters. Do you know what kind of PC you get for 2000 dollars?

 

[Moach]

That's the other bane of PC gaming. Mis-matched software vs. hardware. In nearly all cases it's the software that becomes bloated and bogs down the system. New software is a huge driving force behind the perpetual upgrade cycle.

In consoles, devs are under orders to try to stay within the capabilities of the hardware. With a PC it's all over the map! Sometimes you can even get a hardware/software combo that runs too fast! This was especially true of the early directX games. You couldn't do a major upgrade lest the game run too fast. WipeoutXL was a game that I had running way too fast after an upgrade.

A stuttering console is unacceptable to management of the companies that produce both both the hardware and software. It's also a concern for the drones selling it in the stores. It is something that is avoided like the plague.

With the PC.. Who gives a damn?? The blame is always placed with the user for not having the correct hardware. Always.

that is a fact... it was more so a couple of years back, before the big consoles took back the lead on graphics (for a while there)


things have become a little more stable nowadays... i suppose that's partly due to the fact that graphics have reached a point at which further improvement is only achievable at a production cost much higher than it's worth, for the majority of cases

plus, the industry is gaining some maturity now - and programmers are indeed getting better at optimizing code for run-time demands...


dunno about others, but as a game programmer myself, i always shoot to have the fastest-possible runtime code (to an unhealthy extent, possibly)

that's particularly concerning when you develop with Flash.... the damn thing had NO graphics muscle up until last month (when "molehill" went public) - and even so, there's so guarantee the poor chump trying to play on his parents PC can rely on a half-solid GPU to bash it...

so there's no such thing as "too optimized"... i always imagine my code having to run over and over again each frame.... i might be going mad from it (crud, i tried to make my own programming language, i'm there already) - but that's the way to make games :lol:


i wouldn't worry too much about the "must upgrade" pressure.... i mean, it'll always be there, no doubt - but i think we're past the worst of it nowadays

 

[agentgonzo]

Sure I have. Alienware 2000 dollar monsters. Do you know what kind of PC you get for 2000 dollars?

I didn't say it was a cheap. But you said it was a joke and underpowered etc. I was correcting you.

 

[Keatah]

I know folks that have spent $3,500 and more on those gaming laptops. And still had mediocre experiences!

Portable systems will ALWAYS lag behind a full-size rig. This will only change when they STOP making the big rigs.

The best gaming is always done on a large screen with good audio. And that necessitates a box, screen, speakers, and input. Besides, when I'm out and about, there's a reason. And I can assure you that reason is NOT to be huddled behind a PC playing games.

Sure, it's a novel thing to build a nice rig, and do quality gaming, AND then discover you can bring it with you in the form of an Alienware. It's cool!! But it gets old real fast. This whole mobile-computing thing is really getting out of hand!

I took the lady out to Moscow Ballet this past weekend and some woman was doing angry birds on what appeared to be an iPad. And 8 seats down, this other person was texting or doing some sort of messaging. And this is at a serious professional performance! My god!! Put that ing away! And these are not exactly 20 something college kids either!

I was hoping some LANboi would have fired up Counterstrike. I can assure you that $2000 Alienware would be parted out for parts!

 

[RisingFury]

I didn't say it was a cheap. But you said it was a joke and underpowered etc. I was correcting you.

Compare the same price laptop to a same price PC. Laptop fails miserably.

 

[agentgonzo]

Compare the same price laptop to a same price PC. Laptop fails miserably.

Yes, you pay for portability. Try and lug a PC across London on the underground. PCs fail miserably.

I never said it was perfect or better-for-gaming. I was just saying that it's you can have a very good laptop that can beat the pants off most PC rigs. You just have to pay through the nose for it. And that money buys you easy portability.

 

[Ghostrider]

Portable systems will ALWAYS lag behind a full-size rig. This will only change when they STOP making the big rigs.

Which is only logical - you can fit a lot in a full-size tower case. Can't to the same with a portable.

Unfortunately, it may well happen that full-size rigs could disappear.

 

[Wishbone]

Compare the costs of paying for back surgery after hauling the desktop PC in a laptop fashion...

 

[Ark]

Unfortunately, it may well happen that full-size rigs could disappear.

I'm not particularly afraid of that, as long as people are still buying full-size gaming rigs they aren't going anywhere. It's like the Small Block Chevy, even decades after GM stopped building them, there is a tremendous aftermarket community that manufactures new and improved parts for them.

Even though computing in general seems to be trending to locked-down, Fischer-Pricey tablet interfaces, as long as people still buy full-size gaming PCs, the hardware isn't going anywhere. Right now the hardware is cheaper and more accessible than it's ever been.

 

[Ghostrider]

Even though computing in general seems to be trending to locked-down, Fischer-Pricey tablet interfaces, as long as people still buy full-size gaming PCs, the hardware isn't going anywhere. Right now the hardware is cheaper and more accessible than it's ever been.

The problem here is threefold...

One, how many people do buy full-size faming PCs, and of those, how many will still buy them in 3 to 6 years time when tablets have become cheaper and more widespread? If the PC-buying crowd falls under a critical mass, the hardware will not be sold anymore because big retailers will want to use their space to sell other, best selling merchandise. There may still be dedicated outlets, but if the manufacturers do not see the money in it, they'll stop building the hardware and that will be it.

Two, the real money for publishers is in consoles. We're going to see more console-exclusive titles, and way less PC-exclusives. This will step down the demand even more. We need more killer apps for full-size machines.

Third, the hardware people love locked-down devices. Easier to keep under control. Once those devices become the norm, where will be the incentive to support hacker-friendly machines?

 

[Keatah]

It seems (to me) that much of pc gaming from the Voodoo days up till a few short years ago has been about gamers chasing graphics card hardware. I personally think graphics are pretty much right where we need them to be. I see little need to go further. I am quite content to see minor evolutionary changes and tweaks from now on. Maybe I'm just an old fart.. but.. There's tons and tons of un-used potential in the hardware as it stands.

In terms of resolution and color we're about right where we need to be. I want to see better gameplay, more involved A.I., better worlds, more dynamic worlds. This means more CPU power and more memory. Not more GPU power. And intel seems to be on the right path to providing that.

Stop and think for a second. How much graphics power does Orbiter use? And how well does it simulate what it's supposed to simulate? I digress..

The industry always proclaims that cooler and lower-power hardware is always coming out. But the opposite is happening. While the power budget per circuit element is indeed dropping, they are using more of those elements. So the net power consumption increases in the final product.

Intel ran into this problem with the Pentium Prescott fiasco a few years back. They could not reduce the power-per-transistor vs the amount of transistor-count-increase in a positive manner. The result was a fireball of a failure. And nVidia and ATI are at that point and have been for many years.

It would be wonderful to have a design as elegant as the core i3,5,7 be present in GPU's. But the graphics card mfg's are still twaddling with that Prescott mentality.

I think the industry needs to slow down just a bit and focus on some efficiency for a while. There's no reason we need a 250 watt video chip. With some forethought and logical thinking we can get that same level of performance with 1/4th the power consumption!

It is what it is, who am I to argue?

 

[RisingFury]

Yes, you pay for portability. Try and lug a PC across London on the underground. PCs fail miserably.

I never said it was perfect or better-for-gaming. I was just saying that it's you can have a very good laptop that can beat the pants off most PC rigs. You just have to pay through the nose for it. And that money buys you easy portability.

Compare the costs of paying for back surgery after hauling the desktop PC in a laptop fashion...

Yea, just in case you can't go without gaming for the 20 minutes you spend on the train, so you haul your PC with you every day.

Unfortunately, it may well happen that full-size rigs could disappear.

Not while I'm alive.

 

[Keatah]

Compare the costs of paying for back surgery after hauling the desktop PC in a laptop fashion...

awhh act like a MAN and carry that PC proudly on your shoulders! Strengthen them muscles on the way to those 10 hour marathon gaming sessions!

---------- Post added at 09:02 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:37 AM ----------

The problem here is threefold...

One, how many people do buy full-size faming PCs, and of those, how many will still buy them in 3 to 6 years time when tablets have become cheaper and more widespread? If the PC-buying crowd falls under a critical mass, the hardware will not be sold anymore because big retailers will want to use their space to sell other, best selling merchandise. There may still be dedicated outlets, but if the manufacturers do not see the money in it, they'll stop building the hardware and that will be it.

Two, the real money for publishers is in consoles. We're going to see more console-exclusive titles, and way less PC-exclusives. This will step down the demand even more. We need more killer apps for full-size machines.

Third, the hardware people love locked-down devices. Easier to keep under control. Once those devices become the norm, where will be the incentive to support hacker-friendly machines?

Well --

1 - The last 20 or 30 PC's I've paid a house-call to, for fixing stupid things like desktop configurations or loose cables, dumb things like that.. They've all been mini (or boarding on micro) cases. Picture something like 3x thick laptop. Or a set-top-box.

2 - Killer Apps may not be made commercially for big box pc's in the future. We may be relying on opensource or one-man-projects for that "special" application. Look at Orbiter! Would any commercial publisher attempt something like this nowadays? MS tried with SpaceSimulator. But it was a failure in that it couldn't support itself. It couldn't make enough sales to justify shelf space. No pun intended.

3 - I have somewhat mixed feelings about locked down stuff.
Simply put, it is good in a way in that provides stability and reliability. If a box cannot be tweaked by the user to fix a problem it will then be returned to the store. And that means lost profits. A company will do its best to make it right so as to avoid those returns. You benefit by getting something that works correctly. You also get consistent standards, especially if a company wants to establish an ecosystem. This is best demonstrated by an Operating System such as Windows or MAC OSX or whatever. Or like I mentioned earlier, iTunes. iTunes has next-to-nothing in terms of mods and plugins. But it has been consistent since 2000! And that means something!

I feel that as hardware continues to develop in the future we're going to see integrated graphics catch up to where we are today with performance. It may take some years, but it will happen. There will be a time when we don't need any more performance from our GPU's. Who knows when. But it will happen. It has happened with soundcards some time ago.

Look, Apple is already building the SSD right into the motherboard and eliminating that component as a separate item. I have no problem with that. It's nice to eliminate the weight of the connectors and housings and screws and shields and brackets that a conventional hard disk uses. Besides, unless you're sentimentally attached to your laptop and intend on keeping it more than 10 years, the lack of a replaceable hard disk is not an issue. If you get a 256GB drive, by the time you want more, you'll also want the new one with a 24-core CPU and Octal-SLI, won't you? I would have a problem if I couldn't put my data on it easily though.

Well, hardware is becoming less important. Computing, today, is all about your data and what you produce. Hardware is more than powerful enough to run day-to-day productivity apps and most games. And I'm ok with that. What I don't like is the direction some operating systems are taking.

What *I* personally require is the ability to use all my data in a free and versatile way. Which now going beyond the scope of this topic.

Game consoles are about the most locked down hardware and software platform you can work with. Limited I/O and less freely-available documentation.

What computing and gaming needs is a Renaissance. We are bogged down in the internet and commercialized social networking. We need to move beyond that. The internet is not a good thing as it stands right now.

 

[agentgonzo]

awhh act like a MAN and carry that PC proudly on your shoulders! Strengthen them muscles on the way to those 10 hour marathon gaming sessions!

One of my friends did exactly that for the LAN party this weekend. Made a custom-fit leather-and-rivets constructed back-holster for his case. Monitor in a hard-shelled suitcase-with-wheels and clothes etc in another trundle-case. Got all the way across London on the underground and down to the south coast on the train with it all without much bother. Just a bit tiring doing the stairs at the train station. I truly impressive sight!

 

[Izack]

Yea, just in case you can't go without gaming for the 20 minutes you spend on the train, so you haul your PC with you every day.

It's not for gaming on the train, it's for having your own rig at the other end of the line. So, for going to LAN parties like mentioned above, or visiting friends for a few days. Actually consoles are somewhat good for this also.

 

[orb]

Shall I rename the thread to "Laptops vs. desktops" (they are PCs after all, so they should be in the same team on this thread)?


Back on topic. I've never owned a gaming console, and I don't intend to buy one, but currently I have 3 active PCs: a desktop, a laptop, and a netbook, on all which I can run Orbiter. Why wouldn't I buy a gaming console? Because generally I spend only about 5% of the time spent by the computer on playing games. For me personal computers need to be multipurpose, and PCs (desktops and laptops) are such, while gaming consoles are generally just for gaming.