Next Gen Choices

[BobTD]

What system is better is often a question about opinion. And any opinion you have is based on personal experiances, good solid reason for your preference. So if you love the xbox or playstation, thats fine. That means you have been having fun on those consoles. And having fun is what matters.

What I want you to consider, is the idea that you could be having more fun. I'm not going to insult you by saying my choice to play on the PC is better than yours, that would simply be me trying to push an opinion on others. No one likes that.

And if I have a signature that says "glorious PC gaming master race" that's humor (and humor is largely based on skirting the edges of social acceptance). To be honest I play on consoles as well for those JRPGs and and must have exclusives I enjoy so much.


So back to the business of convincing you that you could be having more fun.


First lets look at short term and long term planning, specifically what has happened and what will happen with graphics, and a lot of other hardware to be honest:




This chart shows that the last gen had the same GPU power for over ten years. Some PC gamers grumble that this holds back tech advancement. Weather or not that is true, the interesting part of this graph is that it has been really, really easy to build a better computer than the last gen console for quite a while.

Here is a chart for next gen:

new-consoles-raise-the-bar.jpg

The difference here is that when the last generation of consoles came out they actually rivaled PC gaming potential, and computers were a lot clunkier than they are now as well. By that I mean it would have been hard for me to plug an xbox controller into my PC, today I can play skyrim with the keyboard and then hit a button and be using a controller 1 sec later. (if my control is in reach)

Now the next gen tech comes out and there is speculation that this gen could even last longer than the last, but PCs have raced on ahead in terms of power already.

But that is just the technical aspect of gaming, lets talk about exclusive content. Thats a strong argument for console gaming in some respects. However the truth is almost everything eventually makes its way over to the PC. Almost, because last gen there where many differences between consoles and it was a nightmare to port some games. So sometimes the cost was not justified. In fact the PS3 architecture was a proprietary in house build that was nothing like most computers or the xbox360. With this next gen that will not be the case:

amd-aiming-to-smooth-ports-between-pc-and-console

Because AMD hardware is now the architecture of the xbox and playstation, consoles now have a lot more in common with PCs than ever before. And if there is money to be made porting to all systems that will generally happen, meaning less console exclusives.


Now lets talk about PC exclusives.

There are more than you would expect, and that list is only going to keep growing. Considering entire franchises such as "Total War" never see a console port, simply because these games are constantly pushing the limit of computing power. Talkinga bout pushing the limit:


xbox-one-and-ps4-are-far-too-limited-for-what-we-re-planning-1198420

Why yes the Oculus rift will be PC exclusive (se link below the video). If you watched that video, that was them a while ago, when I followed their kickstarter they asked for $250,000. They raised 975% of that. $2,437,430, almost ten times what they asked for. In total funding they now (to my estimate) have raised over 80 million:

Oculus Rift Makers Raise $75 Million in New Funding

Also lets not forget that most of the games for the Oculus Rift will be PC exclusive. Here are the games I'm most interested in:

Star citizen

Hawken


full list:
List_of_games_with_Oculus_Rift_support

How about Esports? The largest and fastest growing esports are centered around PC gaming. LOL, Dota2, even starcraft2. PC is dominating in this field.


The LOL world cup prize was over 2 million dollars. So there is definite growth in the competitive gaming scene. But the top five prize pools have all been for PC only games.

If none of this convinces you that you might just have more fun joining the PC community, at least I can say I tried. But I want to also mention that when we are all playing The Elder Scrolls Online, we will both be paying for the internet, the game, and a $15 subscription fee. But only you will be paying an additional fee to play that game on a console though xbox gold or playstaion network pass.

So go ahead and buy a console if you think its a better value. But the question you should ask you is what platform is going to be the most fun.

-sincerely your, the glorious pc gaming master race.