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Comment by douche | Hacker News Reader

It's the way it's always been.

I'm hoping this is the last generation of dedicated gaming consoles from the big three. I think the time of that idea has passed. At one point, dedicated graphics and sound hardware on consoles gave better performance and quality than you could get on an equivalent PC, but those days are long over. I'm getting a little sick of gimped PC games, that are held back by console limitations. I could get a RaspPi and have enough power to play a surprising number of games.

I've got a Steam Link and a length of ethernet cable that almost cost more to tie into the switch at my desktop, so I certainly won't ever be buying a gaming console.

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I will commit heresy here and quote someone from NeoGaf[1] directly:

"PC gamers don't understand the purchasing habits of the console market. Your typical console every-man is buying <6 titles a year. All at full price. All on day one. From a brick and mortar store. They don't care about shopping around, they don't care about sales, they don't care about indies, and they don't care about PC exclusives. They're not going to build their own PC. They're not going to troubleshoot or mess with settings. They don't care about mods. They're not going to research shit.

For that motherfucker, of which there are millions, there is no cost benefit to moving to PC gaming.

You're all imposing your own habits on the mass market - which is what the OP was talking about - and wondering why everyone doesn't see things the way you do. You are not the mass market.

Nevermind the irony of the same people who complain that AAA publishers either outright ignore and put no effort into PC gaming while bragging about buying their products on launch day for fractions of their full price."

[1] http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1156919

Personally, I work at a games company, making games(for both consoles and PC). I have literally every gaming system at home, and a really powerful PC. And in my humble opinion - consoles are the way to go. Take Witcher 3 - both me and my significant other were playing it at the same time. Me on PC, while she played on PS4. She was a good 5-6 hours into the game, while I was still fucking around with my drivers, overclocking the GPU and CPU, going into bios every 5 minutes just to make sure I definitely have a locked 60fps experience. Did I get it in the end? I did. Was it worth it? No. Any new game I would rather get on a console and not have to worry if my experience on PC will be good or not. Obviously for you(or anyone else) it might be worth it, I would never try to convince anyone otherwise - play on what you really like.

> Take Witcher 3 - both me and my significant other were playing it at the same time. Me on PC, while she played on PS4. She was a good 5-6 hours into the game, while I was still fucking around with my drivers, overclocking the GPU and CPU, going into bios every 5 minutes just to make sure I definitely have a locked 60 fps experience.

I've never has this issue when playing games on PC? Usually I can just buy a game, wait for the thing to download and get on with playing it within 10 minutes of it being installed. Usually I change a few settings such as resolution and I put it in windowed mode, and maybe reduce some graphics settings, but that's it. I very rarely have to mess with drivers, and I've certainly never had to overclock my CPU or GPU, nor did I have to enter the BIOS just to play a game. And if the game isn't at 60 fps? Who gives a shit, as long as it's a playable 30 fps or more then I'm happy just playing the game. PC gaming for me isn't about the superior graphics or framerate, it's the fact that I can have a game on one monitor whilst having easy access to a web browser or IRC on another so I can do something during loading screens. It's the fact that I can mod the game to add new features, especially in strategy or management games.

I think having a PC encourages that practice though. On a console, I pop the disc in, play. On a PC, I notice the screen does tear a bit(the game runs at 40-50gps, so no v-sync) so I go into settings and try to play a bit to make it work nicely. While I am at it, I might as well overclock my GPU a bit. Since I am doing that, I might order a new fan from Amazon. Oh, actually, Nvidia released beta drivers which are said to improve the performance a bit. Hmmm they do, but now my PC crashes randomly. Maybe I need to go into bios and increase the voltage on the CPU so it's more stable. Wait, I was going to play that game, wasn't I? It's late now, I'm going to bed.

That's literally my experience recently. I also bought Batman Arkham knight on PC(which was famously broken on that platform) and ended up installing it on a seperate SSD just to make it run smoothly, and actually spent quite a while looking at trace statements and driver forums trying to make that game run in an acceptable way. Meanwhile, everyone who had it on PS4 just played it. But again, I'm not trying to say that consoles are any better. I'm saying that they have a place on the market and to think they will disappear is a bit foolish.

Your experience at the end there makes me kinda glad I game on my iMac nowadays (booted into Windows, of course) instead of continuing to build PCs like I used to. It's the retina 5k model with the best GPU option. It's plenty fast if I play at half-res (2560x1440) or less.

My frame rates are Fine, Just Fine for all the AAA titles... Not always 60fps but good enough. But the fact that I can't tweak anything in the bios, there's only one good driver, and I definitely can't overclock makes it feel more like a console in that regard. And I can just concentrate on playing games.

(Apple took a while to come out with Windows 10 drivers though, but that was my only negative experience.)

They will continue to exist because most people want a gaming appliance that always works and works the same way at their friends house etc. etc.

> It's the way it's always been.

Only after 1983's crash.

The 2600 came out in 1977, six years before the crash. 1983 is 32 years ago, I think that's pretty close to "the way it's always been."

For people of my age, no.

I'm old enough that my first console was a Colecovision in 1981, and I'm ok describing locked consoles as "pretty much the way it's always been."

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