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Comment by endgame | Hacker News Reader

Consoles are consumption devices. PCs are creation devices.

Nintendo games with 4+ player multiplayer is actually a great time with family and friends. In general I think Nintendo makes social games that are intended for the living room, which is harder to find on the other consoles, and almost impossible on PC. I say this as someone who mainly plays on PC and has LAN parties at home.

Consoles can be social devices. PCs can be isolating devices.

There are social games on PCs, meant to be played by a bunch of people with controllers, available on e.g. Steam. The ones I know of tend to be more teen-and-older oriented in their themes and levels of violence though.

They do exist but are they the best single screen multiplayer experiences? Even indie developers of the genre target Nintendo platforms because they know Nintendo draws that audience. They are the only local-multiplayer-first AAA developer.

maybe it's because I never had a console as a kid, but I just don't really see the appeal of multiplayer splitscreen games. if I'm going to budget a block of time and travel to be in the same physical location with people, I mostly just want to talk with them. if we're mostly going to be playing video games, I could just stay home and have the full screen area. overall, it strikes me as a relic of the times when internet multiplayer was much less reliable.

PCs also make fantastic consumption devices! The games are usually cheaper, there's a much bigger variety, you can get all kinds of stuff from all sorts of countries, and even 30 year old stuff still runs on Windows lol.

Sometimes when you want to play a game you don't want to sit in an office chair at the same desk workstation that you use for your home office.

You can connect a PC to a television (or get a device to stream the game from a PC to a television) connect a controller, and crash on a couch.

It's not for everyone, but it can be a heck of a lot less expensive and some games are simply better with the third-party mods.

> You can connect a PC to a television (or get a device to stream the game from a PC to a television) connect a controller, and crash on a couch.

> It's not for everyone, but it can be a heck of a lot less expensive and some games are simply better with the third-party mods.

This is what I do 90% of my time, I often make my gaming choices based on which games have good controller support

Yep, which is why I was disappointed Steam Link never really gain traction.

Since I grew up on FPS with kbm, I hate using a controller for them, so I'll happily sit at my desktop.

But Steam Link lets me play controller based games on the couch in front of the TV. At least until my wife comes home :)

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