Best Platform for Gaming

[The 1-2-3 Killam]

Over the years there have been multiple ways of playing video games. Some people have always stuck to computer gaming, and refuse to play anything on a console. Others are hardcore XBox fanboys and will never touch a Playstation or Nintendo product to save their lives. The question is simple...which platform is the overall best for video gaming? Do you play certain types of games on certain systems, or are you faithful to one company alone? Is there a system from the past that, in your opinion, was the absolute best for gaming?

***

For me, I was raised with a NES and a Genesis. I played the original Sonic the Hedgehog and the Duck Hunt/Mario Bros. combo game for hundreds of hours... Later on my family became pretty exclusively Sony fans, and got each of the three home consoles close to their release. Now that I'm grown and buying my own systems...it's a different story.

I'm the weird egg that only likes to play shooters on the XBox 360. I can't stand CSS or TF2 and I've never been able to get good at either of them, or shooters on the PC in general. But I can rock MW2, Halo: Reach, or any shooter on the 360. I think they feel natural, and above all I won't play them on a PS3. I think the bumpers are TOO sensitive, and over-react to my very touch.

On the other hand, I prefer all RTS, top-down, and pretty much any game that isn't a shooter on PC. I play Skyrim on the PS3, and a whole lot of exclusives. But traditionally I'll just build up my Steam library and play things the "old fashioned" way. I think a mouse and keyboard just seems to work better for almost 90% of games...

 

[Davi323]

I think it depends on the genre of game. I am the opposite of you when it comes to shooters. I cannot stand shooters on a gaming console. I absolutely need my mouse and keyboard in order to play them effectively. I am old school, I grew up playing Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, etc on the PC, it just feels more natural (and a hell of a lot more accurate) than a game controller does. The PC also excels at the simulation type games. I have been playing The Sims 1/2/3 & Sim City franchises on the PC since they came out, tried some of the console versions, and found them utterly lacking. Flight Sim on a game console vs. PC with better graphics/flight stick joystick? Fuggedaboudit. Knights of the Old Republic on the XBox? Lame. PC? Amazing!

But, you just miss out on something playing a sports game on a PC. I have owned many different versions of Madden for the PC, SNES, N64, Gamecube, PS2, etc, and while I enjoyed the fact that on the PC version I could use replacement rosters and playbooks, and create my own custom graphics for teams, it just never felt "right". I would get bored quickly with my PC Madden, and then buy the exact same game for the Playstation and play it ad nauseum, never getting bored. It's just a different feel to it.

 

[Spunky]

I pick the console. For an overall experience consoles are by far the best. Easy set up, no upgrades required, more comfortable because you can sit on a sofa/lazy boy, I prefer a controller to the keyboard and mouse so that as well.

Of course depending on the situation there are going to be better options and worse. If you want to play a game at it's best then 9 times out of 10 your going to want to get it on the PC. Handhelds are perfect for when your on the move, whereas Mobiles shine if you need to just kill a few minutes. Consoles are the obvious choice if you want to relax and play after a day at work.

 

[wwfoldschool]

With me, i'm more of a console gamer, mainly the PS3.
The reason for my PS3 are for a number of factors.
Blue-ray disc's.
Built in memory (HDD, upgrade able)
Built in Blue-ray player.
Looks sexy ( the slim one any way lol )
Its very quite.
plus more.

Now i use to own a 360, i even owned an xbox one before, im not saying these are rubbish etc. I use to love playing Halo one on the xbox, midtown madness was a brill game i use to enjoy too lol.

I loved the 360 controller, it fits neatly into my hand lol.

But i just think the PS3 ticks most, if not all the boxes.
I sometimes play pc games, like the Sims 3, or Runescape ( lol )
And now im looking to start a retro collection, starting with the sega master system / mega drive, because these two was the main consoles i was brought up with.

But like a lot of people say, it's all down to what type of game you want to play shooter's etc.

 

[Captain Morgan Freeman]

My platform of choice would be the console but that's simply due to being more exposed to consoles then any other platform. Ive owned a Nes, Snes, Ps1(personal favourite), ps2, xbox360 and just recently got a hold of a ps3 second hand. So ive basically always gotten one generation of console to keep me busy over the years.

The only time i play games on my computer are slow paced games like Football Manager and Rome Total War part of that is because you can't play them on any other platform so i played them on the PC out of necessity really. Aside from those two and the odd mario or Phoenix wright game on the ds i do all my gaming on whatever console i have at the time regardless of genre. Platform, RPG, FPS, beat em up and RTS there's always been a good enough selection of these games on the consoles to keep me interested. I could never get used to first person shooters like doom on my computer as i found the keyboard and mouse too awkward for aiming but that's what 14 years of using controllers does to you i guess.

 

[RyderFan111]

I think PC, mainly because it has been around for so long.

 

[Dagger Dias]

The best platform for gaming is older consoles, it always has been for me. Call me oldschool but there's something to be said for sitting in your favorite recliner on your days off with a corded controller playing by yourself against the computer. Games were more enjoyable back then. Now it's more about graphics or online gameplay. I was never a big fan of most PC video games and have not played too many. They just never interested me, and once online gaming became a big thing, I was even further turned away. The good old days of the SNES and the big white original Game Boy will live on forever primarily due to how there was more to games than graphics, achievements, or online crap back then. They had much higher quality and have stood the test of time. I was a hardcore Nintendo fanboy up until recently, I've branched out more into the Xbox 360 these days rather than the Wii. I primarily prefer RPG's and older consoles though, and I doubt that's going to change.

 

[TheOneTheyCallOn]

For my money its PC gaming that's tops

A computer is up-gradable, chances are when a new game comes out all you would have to do is upgrade your current set up if it isn't already suited to running the game already, also upgrading a PC a lot of times is much cheaper then buying a new console.

Some games such as FPS (and this is merely personal opinion) are much easier to control with a keyboard and mouse - wasd ftw

Chances are your PC is already hooked up to the internet so there is no reason to have to pay extra for things like LIVE

 

[Trill Co$by]

For me, it's 360 & PC gaming. I used to play the PS2 and even the Gamecube back in the day, but when the original Xbox came out, I was hooked on it. Not just because it was new, nor because of Halo. In fact, my first favorite game on Xbox was San Andreas and being able to have your own custom music play on the radio. I thought that made San Andreas way more fun. I also liked games like Raw 2 and a lot of other multi-platform games. It also didn't hurt that my friends all had a regular Xbox too.

Then 360 came out and I was hooked even more. Xbox Live became phenomenon for my area, and for a while it was the only form of gaming I would play regularly. I mean sure, my brother had a PS3, and I played some games with him, but with games like Perfect Dark Zero and Conquer being re-released along with Gears of War 1 and Halo 3, I found 360 to be a much more powerful console in terms of what the games could put out.

Then, one day, I was on the computer when I found out about games like City of Heroes, City of Villains, Champions Online, and even a few Star Wars games that were PC exclusives, and I gave them a try. Personally, I think City of Heroes is the best hero game out there. Fuck DC Universe! The amount of customization for the game in City of Heroes is amazing, and with CoV as well as Champions Online, Cryptic further upped the ante with customization.

So for me, when it comes to down to it, the best platform for gaming is the 360 and the highly underrated PC, which as of recently, is making a STRONG come back.

 

[X]

Anyone who doesn't pick the PC isn't being objective with the question. There is not a single gaming console in history to have ever had the same power, hardware, and sheer customization ability that a PC has for gaming. Nothing even comes close, not the PS3 or 360, nothing. I mean, consoles are great, sometimes you want to play with a controller and it's obviously much more social, but it doesn't matter what the game or console is, it's always going to be better on a PC. Simple as that. Video game geeks call PC gamers the "master race" for a reason.

 

[Ty Burna]

PC is the superior platform as far as performance and it's not even close.

Take a look at the specs for an Xbox 360:

-3.2 GHz PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon
-500 MHz ATI Xenos (Further research says it can reach 240 GFLOPS, which is a pretty standard way of determining performance since they don't show the amount of memory for the graphics chip.)
-512 MB of GDDR3 RAM clocked at 700 MHz with L1 cache of 32/32 kb and L2 cache of 1MB

Now take into consideration the Xbox 360 is close to 7 years old. The hardware for the most part hasn't changed in 7 years. Now take a look at my current gaming PC:

2.8 GHz AMD II Phenom x4 overclocked to 3.4 GHz
ATI Radeon HD 6850 256 bit 1 GB GDDR5 775 Mhz overclocked to 900 Mhz
16 GB of DDR3 RAM clocked at 1066 Mhz

Pretty much what I'm getting at, my gaming rig blows the 360's specs out of the water without lifting a finger. When games are properly designed for the PC, the graphics are crisper, better performance, better load times, just generally overall it just looks better.

There is no proprietary anything when it comes to the PC platform, I don't need a special disc drive to install game, and if my disc drive goes out, it costs $20 to replace it compared to having to send a 360 in to get fixed and spending a lot of money for shipping and repairs. Those repairs will take quite some time as well according to past experience, meanwhile I can order the replacement part and have it in within a week.

When it comes to consoles, you need to wait years before you get an upgrade in hardware. The abilities of the 360 have been maxed out for some time, and only an upgrade in equipment will allow game developers to really push the envelope anymore. This is why you hear the old cliche when discussing PC's "Yeah but can it run Crysis?". Crysis was designed specifically for the PC, and it was made to push the graphical capabilities of the PC at the time. Compare CoD on a 360 and Crysis on a PC, and you will truly see the difference of designing a game for the PC rather than a console. Game Developers have far more room to play with for performance and graphics on a PC.

Now there are some issues that need to be addressed with all this. Game developers 95% of the time develop games for the console first, and then come up with a half assed port to the PC. This is infuriating as the graphics are still limited to the consoles at this point. Sure the port may give you the ability to increase graphics performance, but the gain is not nearly as much as it should be. Skyrim looks absolutely beautiful on my PC, and far better compared to the 360 version, however if they had designed Skyrim for each platform individually, the PC version would likely have been even better performance wise.

Another issue is that many game developers believe that PC gaming does not bring any money in. Back in January 6th, Steam announced that sales had increased 100% for the seventh straight year, boasting over 40 million users and delivered over 780 petabytes worth of data. Let me break away from the doldrums of my lecture and say that's fucking insane. They have doubled sales every year for 7 years, and 40 million users. That's the same number of users on Xbox Live, the difference is most people just use Xbox Live to play games, people use Steam simply to purchase games. So that all being said, is it really a good idea to treat PC gaming as a second cousin when you have the same amount of people on Steam (and note this is just Steam, that's not counting EA's Origin and simply purchasing games outright from a brick and mortar store, or Games for Windows)? Take a look at Blizzard, they rake in so much money that they can afford to simply take their sweet time developing games for the PC. Diablo 3 has been in development forever, yet by the time they're done it's going to be a smash hit. PC gaming is starting to hit its stride and perhaps game developers will catch on and start actually designing these games to fully implement on the PC rather than just porting games over. Maybe we'll start seeing games like Crysis fully designed to utilize the massive performance advantage the PC has over consoles.

Oh and did I mention the keyboard and mouse is still an amazing combination for games? FPS gamers on a PC still swear by them to this day. Now you think just a simple keyboard and mouse is all you need, but if you want that edge depending on your type of game, you get a mouse with a quick response time, high DPI, and of course customizable buttons. Keyboard wise you can get a mechanical keyboard which improves response time, or if you're an MMO player, grab a keyboard with multiple buttons for macros and automate so much of your attack cycle with the press of one key. The gaming keyboards and mice that are out there are tremendous, and as an owner of the Razr Deathadder mouse and Logitech G15 keyboard, I can tell you that there is a big difference between gaming peripherals and a standard keyboard and mouse.

Overall the customization and performance of a PC puts it's capabilities far and above a console. It will be interesting to see the new generation of consoles if they will try to take advantage of the major advances in components that are available or if they will continue to put lesser hardware inside of them. Even if they do up their hardware to a current gaming PC level, PC's will just develop better hardware shortly after and once again their specs will decimate the consoles.