PS4 is just a shitty PC, why not join us, the PC gaming master race?

Interesting arguments. I suppose it's pragmatism that drives my gaming habits. Economy and access to exciting game content. Consoles provide the easiest solution with large variety of genre choices and a healthy used game market. If I had more money, I would gladly purchase a gaming PC to see contemporary games at their fullest, as the developer envisioned, taking in the depth of the vision fully. Consoles are populist and many sub markets thrive, allowing easy access for all. Discovering the large amount of arcade ports to the xbox 360, has revived my contemporary gaming needs. Why not all the above. Rather than being positioned in a dichotomy, surely there are far more exciting choices when seeing the benefits of all.

My fear with the next gen consoles is that they will be too intrusive in which case the P.C is far more neutral towards getting access to next generation games, though the games themselves are increasingly becoming politically motivated, mirroring real time events, putting you on a particular side which may not be morally healthy. This leads to discomfort and betrays the original spirit of gaming which is to have a healthy escape free of the trappings which encompass our world. To use games as a means to manipulate one's perspective or outlook towards events, well, it's dangerous territory. In the West, we are being increasingly manipulated towards embracing murderous themes and accepting something which would have been shocking twenty years ago.
It's as if today's games flirt with blurring the lines of what's decent. This swallowing of the murder pill, the apathy towards torture under the guise of Hegelian outcomes, cannot be healthy for humanity's self image.

Edit: Surely games have always had death. Traditional gaming themes are and have been based in victory or defeat. Our animalistic nature is to kill. It's an instinct that is shared with other animals on this planet. The argument above, is based on the intrusive nature of manipulating our decency, to alter the principles of our civilization through a gaming device, coupled with other tools that we as a collective, are bombarded with on a daily basis. If we are to rise above animals, to unite under a greater role looking towards the cosmos, then why should games continually pull us down into a perversed animality based on torture and pleasure through violence. I still remember the science fiction age of the 80's and early 90's where hope and exploration were the main themes in popular culture, killing itself focused on the non human, the invader. Some will say that we are under threat and need to be trained in this new human on human violence, merged with next gen, tricking our brains completely as a means to fight a hostile world. This argument extension would take more than a gaming forum to vet.

I don't want to derail the thread, I am simply going further along the lines of intrusion itself. The industry is getting stickier and more focused on teaching values than offering the medium of healthy escape, hence games becoming more like movies, where the gamer becomes increasingly passive, absorbing loads of content. It's a trend towards getting further in your head and frankly, has to look rather attractive to those who use illusions to keep society under hierarchy based constraints.

Yeah, off to pay rent.

 

Very well articulated, thought out and intelligent post(and on teh internetz too!) Lowerlevels


and i agree with your last 2 paragraphs the most.

But, on a serious note, what if we're all just an advanced alien civilization's game of The Sims / Sim City - with their technology in gaming surpassing digital medium and moving into biological and physical medium?

*insert conspiricy keanu here*

 

I don't care if they SAY it - it's the fact that I get kick banned ALL THE FUCKING TIME because I'm fucking good at video games. NEVER happened on XBL.

The console populace is FAR more willing to accept that someone is just BETTER than them than the PC crowd. Mostly because of the difficulty of actually cheating on a console vs a PC game.

 

GOD

 

Thanks for the compliment.

Yeah, I sometimes feel like this is a nightmare planet of stupidity and somehow I arrived thousands of years too soon. The thickness of some people is on par with what one sees in a prehistoric display at a science museum.

 

Consoles are mainstream. They have always been, since snes. Consoles are what most people buy, so they just buy them to be with the mainstream of people and friends. Consoles are in general, also cheaper than building PCs. People don't understand it, so they just get a shit console to be apart of the crowd. Everyone knows PC gaming is much better and more powerful, they just choose not to use it.

It's like, the idiotic money spenders. It is the same reason people buy Beats and Macs.

 

Games tend to be cheaper and reduced faster than console games too, in the uk at least, most New PC Retail release games start at £29.99 and some £34.99 whereas console releases are higher at around £35-£50 mark

 

I edited it soon after, like I said, it's just idiotic spending that happens every day in America. I'm not in the UK, so I can't comment there. People don't like to look at details, they want to b apart of the group. They spend it all to do that.

 

Well, let's not be too harsh. Console systems offer great gaming content that can't be accessed through P.C's. Again, I straddle the line of "both are beneficial to rounding out a dynamic gaming experience". I do think that the main engine that drives consoles though is the consumer base which buys up mainstream garbage but that doesn't effect the great titles that are still available. I think that mainstream product is safe and acceptable as anyone can take access to it. It's designed to please across the spectrum with a minimum level of what passes for entertainment, but again, consoles offer titles that take risks and push the envelope. If anything, mainstream makes everything cheaper as the market has more volume and the secondary markets are more in demand equaling competitive price drops. In a way, Consoles save gaming as it keeps the industry from becoming niche and limited.

On your other point, The "Beats" phenomenon is truly bizarre. Shining proof that we are all monkey hybrids. The other day, an associate saw my P.C laptop and stated "I thought you were a mac guy". I felt insulted. He might as well have called me an idiot who buys overpriced product with a closed operating system made of cute nerf material. If mac was a car the hood would be welded shut. I was given a mac by a former girlfriend and the front end was frustrating, not to mention the lack of software content available.

 

Can somebody please talk about PC Gaming without sounding like a total elitist snob?

 

You do make a good point. And let me say this, consoles will always dominate the market off of sheer mainstream purchasing. Consoles do have great things to offer, like local multiplayer is arguably much better than PC will ever have. But then again, there is NOTHING that the PC can't emulate within due time.
I think PC gaming is not as recognized by the general public. Not as appreciated, I should say.

 

No! I r teh 1337357!!! console gamerz iz totally da noobz0rzzzz



Going back a few years in mainstream game stores the PC section used to be a lot larger, compared to today's off the shelf selection due to the increased popularity in console gaming.

but again, its personal preference / fashion / what your social group are into. i went against the social group was never really into psx / ps2, instead preferring PC gaming and N64 / Dreamcast

but im a rebel, i started on the commodore 64 and sega master system. so its been both since i was able to push buttons.

other people started on snes or some on the psx, some even with ps2's for the younger ones, different worlds different experiences different social climates.

what i really don't get is tablet games... ipads etc. fashion accessories insanely overpriced fashion accessories.

 

Where are people getting this "Like a PC that's x generations old" and "my PC 2 years ago" from?

The CPU is, according to engadget, based on the AMD Jaguar, which hasn't come out yet. They mention GDDR5, which is faster than your balls-to-the-wall overclocked DDR3 by an order of magnitude. They describe the GPU as having 18 "compute units" without much elaboration, so I can't comment there.

So what is this "x generations ago" stuff, other than PC-fanboy rhetoric?

 

hmm, I don't agree. I'm not an idiot and I don't follow the trends, I also understand PCs very well but I buy consoles over a PC. It's not like I'm poor either. I could aford a gaming PC but I don't want one. Simple as that. I am a console gamer and always will be. FPS and those online RPGs do no interest me as much as real shooters, platform and action games.

 

one thing surprises me is a lack of real shmups on the PC platform,

unless im missing them somehow

 

There are a handful, Raptor: Call of the Shadows is one. Not very many though, granted.

 

My statement wasn't directed at you in fact your gaming background is similar to mine. I started on Tandy Computers similar to a C64 the screen wasn't even color it was black and white. Or, Green and Greener. Tapes literal tapes that took 15 minutes to load a few KBs.

Later I got a Master System I loved it.........for a while. In recent times I have no regrets throwing it out.

Then I think our paths branched I went Nintendo and never went back until the Dreamcast came out I skipped the 32 bit generation but played alot of great games through my cousin.

If there is one genre the PC has coming out of it's ass it's Shmups. Mostly homebrew shmups but alot of fucking fantastic homebrew Doujin shmups. Oh and DOS had a ton of great shmups I only recently discovered.

Touhou alone...........both official and fan games should keep you occupied for months.

 

i know i just felt the urge to comment

i miss the seizure enducing loading screens that would flash lines all around the edges while an image loaded line by line aaah thoes were the days... then boom load error or boom syntax error lol.

i stuck with sega but ocasionally fluttered with nintendo's offerings, i did love my N64 though.

 

I'm enjoying my N64. Almost bought OOT this weekend.

 

One interesting thing that I haven't heard anyone mention yet is, since both the PS4 and the Xbox Durango are likely to use x86-based hardware, it will be very easy to tell which one is more powerful. This is different than previous generations, because in the past, consoles of the same generation usually use different architectures or architectures that are modified to the point of being radically different. So it has always been difficult to compare the graphical power of consoles of the same generation. This is different, because the two consoles will likely be using very similar hardware - only one will probably have higher specs than the other. It's possible that they'll be identical, but I think that's unlikely. One will probably be significantly faster than the other, which will put it at a clear advantage. My money is on the Durango being faster, since it's (probably) going to be released later, and will (probably) use an Intel processor.