Dharma Bum

Professor Farnsworth wrote:

Quote:

Once again, I am thinking of buying an Xbox 360. I’ve heard so many great things about this game. I’d rather play it on a PC, but I think I need to eke out a couple more years from my notebook before I buy a new rig, and I would need one to play Bioshock.

While both versions of Bioshock are great, the PC version features exactly all of the problems that drove me towards console gaming. Constant crashes, your dreaded DRM issues, its difficult and time consuming to install, it wasn’t optimized for all operating systems and graphics cards… The list goes on, just do a search for Bioshock on Digg to see the full list of grievances.

PC gamers are kind of used to running into issues like that and seem to have the patience of a Buddha in dealing with all of it, but having played both versions (for free!), I’d definitely say go for the 360 version if you’re going to buy the console anyway. In fact, no matter what game it is, if its cross platform for the PC and consoles, I’d almost always go with the console version. Why? That would be the triple D’s:

Developer tools, developer tools, developer tools.

When a game developer is creating a game for the PC, they have to take into consideration that no two gaming rigs are going to be exactly alike. All of our computer have different graphics cards capable of different tool tricks, different sound drivers, different processors with various amounts of power and perceived power, different amounts of hard drive space, different amounts of physical memory or RAM, different operating systems, different drivers – the list goes on and on and on.

Add into the fact that turning a profit on PC games is very difficult due to the ease of software piracy, and the low install base of people who are dedicated PC gamers, and its understandable why most companies don’t take the time to make sure their game is going to be okay running just as well on a rig that has, say, Windows Vista with dual celeron processors and a nVidia 700 graphics card, as it will on, say, a rig that has Windows XP with a single 3.5 GHZ intel processor with a Voodoo Xtreme graphics card, or, God help us all, any kind of system that runs fricking Linux with a Windows emulator. The time invested is not worth the financial return, so, cross platform games that end up on PCs don’t turn out as well as games built exclusively for them – not that exclusive PC titles are all roses, either, as the above problems plague them, too, but when a game turns up on consoles and PCs, they’re usually limited in content to the best the console is capable of producing, not what computers are capable of.

Consoles don’t have these issues because they’re all identical. When you buy a PS3 or a Wii or a 360, you’re buying a gaming rig that not only doesn’t pose the above challenges to game developers, but they come with personalized toolkits to make developing for the machines easier. Microsoft did this better than Sony or Nintendo this console cycle because their console is essentially a pack of developer tools stemming from Direct X, but game makers still get by very nicely on Sony and Nintendo’s packs since, again, its still easier to develop for just one system with one set of specifications than it is for the multitude and variety of personal computers floating around out there.

The downside to owning a console instead of a gaming rig is that the console can only go so far. The 360 and the Wii are on five year cycles, the PS3 is hoping to stick around for about eight – and then you have to buy another console if you want to get in on the latest and greatest that the world has to offer in terms of videogame content. That’s between $300 and $600 every 5-8 years just on something that resembles a large brick that has to sit next to your television. A smart shopper can probably keep a gaming rig up to date for far less money, but not every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to pop in for a game of Unreal 3 is going to memorize tomes of PC World Magazine just to stay up to date on what kind of disc format is the future of everything forever until next week, when something better is announced. As anyone who has ever seen an ITT Tech commercial knows, computer technology is a constantly shifting industry, and while its almost possible to constantly stay on the forward cusp, investing in a console keeps you frozen in time.

With the fine tuning of the console controller over the past decade, I don’t think that there’s a lot of room left to debate whether the mouse and keyboard is better than a controller. I personally think it depends on what you’re used to, and how well the game developer has implemented and balanced their own controls. Shadowrun, a multiplayer shooter where people on PC can play against people on the 360, has pretty much proven that the field is fairly even these days.

To sum up the pros and cons, in my humble opinion:

Consoles:
+ Games are more stable and play more smoothly
– Games will never look much better than they did at the start of the console’s cycle

PC:
+ Excellent graphics, developers have more freedom to test the boundaries of their skills and your PC
– Games often come loaded with glitches due to difficult development cycle

Personally, I prefer to pick up and go. I’d rather play a game that works every time that I play it than one that superheats my disc drive and melts my computer.

But there we go, I’ve now expressed my feelings on the age old debate of consoles versus personal gaming computers. I am now complete.