My friend bought a top spec SLI computer with 3GB of ram, two 6600GT' s, and a 3.2ghz processor about 3 years ago. Today it cannot run the top of the line games at high settings without extremely noticeable slowdown. .
Why your friend bought 3 gigs of ram is beyond my comprehension, but his rig is far more than competent to handle top tier games. Furthermore, just because he can' t run at highest settings doesn' t mean he can' t run at normal settings or above normal settings. Every game released today looks excellent on his PC and it plays well on his PC. His computer is not struggling to play Stalker or Oblivion, and you know this as fact.
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Console gaming being cheaper is not the case. With a high end PC I get something that can run hundreds of applications with the utmost efficiency. While consoles are moving closer to media centers, they don' t come close to comparing to PCs. If I were to evaluate the sum total useage I got out of my computer besides gaming, it would easily devalue my consoles.
You mention this, and mention the same idea again a couple times in the post, and you are right, but you forget one key thing. A properly pieced together $700 computer can run almost any of the applications you are talking about. So yes, computers can do much more than consoles, but you don' t need a high end gaming rig to do the vast majority of what computers can offer. Therefore, IMO, you are better off buying consoles for games, and keeping an efficient but cheap computer for everything else they can' t do. .
Computers as a server? As a graphics art program? Multitasking with Powerpoint animations? Clear DVD playback? DVD burning? There are plenty of programs that need high end processing speed, high ram, good video cards and sound cards. Games are the clearest explanation as to why high end stuffing is needed, but they are far from the sole reason.
I love PC' s, but by no means do you need anything more than a basic rig to take advantage of everything besides gaming. Unless you are an engineer or designer, and then its part of your business, not a convenience. .
Well, again, I beg to differ. As a college student I run into many reasons why I would need a high end computer. The above reasons still apply. If I want to download music, create a flash animation, attach it to a powerpoint, and act as a game host server, I' m going to need some serious muscle.
Did I say they did? I said racing games are a big thing for me, so that pushes me towards consoles. I also believe you are too quickly giving PC' s the edge for genre offerings. .
Well, racing games have had a pretty strong presence on PCs for a long time. Trackmania was recently released and Sega Rally Revo is coming out. Most racing games should be released for the PC, games like Colin Mcrae, NFS, and others fit the bill as well.
PC' s are often lacking in " adventure" games to consoles. Now we can counter that saying PC' s have RTS games in spades, and consoles have few, if any. So they cancel eachother out. .
These are generalizations that don' t fully embrace the point I' m trying to make. Certain genres are assumed for certain platforms, and you' ll find a majority of one genre not sharing spaces. But it' s impossible to deny that PC games have the greatest expanse over the gaming world. Just go to Metacritic and look at the different games that are released and compare them to the console offerings. And I just don' t mean genres, I mean original games and completely different gametypes. It' s a free world on the PC side, whereas the console world has expectations that need to be met.
Consoles have turn based RPG' s like FF etc, whereas the PC has next to none. PC' s have MMO' s to counter that, so they cancel eachother out again.
Consoles are generally much more enjoyable for sports games, and have a larger of such titles.
Consoles have a much much larger selection of racing games.
Consoles now have many of the PC' s FPS games(PC has a few exclusives as well), and a few of their own, so I would say, other than not having a mouse and keyboard(soon to change), they are on even footing(yes some ports end up bad, I admit it).
PC' s were late to get huge blockbuster games like GTA, and the whole Tony Hawk series.
Both the consoles and PC' s both have widely loved classic titles, but I would give the edge to the consoles thanks to so many differing design approaches among the brands, and the sheer amount of titles.
I could keep adding, but I will leave the rest to others.
Feel free to add to the list, and post what you think good comparisons are, but I think you are dead wrong claiming the PC has a larger array of genre' s.
Look, buddy, you' re simply making generalizations, and it' s not that I don' t agree with some of it. It' s that your assumptions are getting in the way of factual evidence. Please go to metacritic and look at the assortment of titles. See if they are franchises/licenses/knockoffs and you' ll have the answer.
It' s a fact that the PC gaming market embraces more unique ideas due to its open nature for development. You can say that the PC doesn' t have a game like FFX, and while it' s not really true, what really makes it irrelevant is the fact that FFX is a dime a dozen game on the consoles, whereas a game like take Command: Second Manassas is a game that is unlike any other save for Sid Meier' s Civil War series and that' s anywhere including the PC.
A game like Trackmania is unlike anything else, yet Dirt is just another in a long line of offroad racing titles. They are different, stand on their own feet, but they aren' t intellectually different in a way that Trackmania is.
So don' t get down to petty and simplistic generalizations. Analyze the different market structures and come to a logical conclusion. Development for the PC, in nature, is open book, whereas for the consoles it' s a much more confined arena where established ways of going about business take precedent over wildly creative ideas. In fact, the wildly creative ideas coming out of the console world are typically things that originate in the PC market or they come from previously established developers who made their publishers so rich that they don' t have to answer to the man. In the PC market, meanwhile, any joe and lucy can conjure up a game and release it with success dependant on a number of factors exclusive to the PC. How could the Ship do so well? That' s not another multiplayer game, that' s a completely inventive title.
And yes, things are changing. The Wii' s development kit cost and Xbox' s download service as well DX format are allowing for smaller developers to get their piece without selling out to the big boys. Even the Playstation is allowing for creative ideas to come over the pipeline. But it' s impossible to argue that what the consoles have right now is near the same level of freedom of creativity that the PC has.