Curious.

by Leisandir , Virginia, USA, Wednesday, February 20, 2013, 09:25 (4294 days ago) @ narcogen

Can I ask why?

I was sort of peeved when MS bought Bungie and they switched from making games for the Mac to making games for the Xbox.

That meant I either had to start buying Xbox(es) or find something else to play.

I thought I'd pull a dirty trick-- buy an Xbox and ONLY Halo-- eventually, if everyone did that, they'd be forced to release on other platforms!

Except... the Xbox wasn't all bad, and there were plenty of good games to play.

Aside from 360 reliability-- which is and continues to be a HUGE issue (one I had in reserve just broke last week, way out of warranty, already repaired once) what is the objection that PC gamers have to the console? Is it the expense? Living room space? What?

PC gives me more flexibility. I'm comfortable at a desk, two feet from my screen with a headset. I don't have to split my screen when I play with my wife. I can easily alternate between web surfing and gaming, listening to music, and communicating with my buddies (I know all of those things are possible on console, but it's a lot more convenient on a computer). I already have a pretty high-end gaming machine, and it's going to keep for years to come; a new XBOX is going to be an investment of several hundred dollars. I can easily access Indie games, demos, and information. I'm not restricted to the community that Microsoft pushes with Live; I can participate in Steam, Origin, or ignore the artificial communities entirely and just use Skype or Vent to keep up with my gaming buddies.

Consoles are trying to become PCs with every ounce of strength. Microsoft's redesign of the Dashboard and their vision for W8 are clearly intentionally similar, which I take to mean that they want to blur the line between gaming machine and personal computer. We already have modular consoles with "premium" features (bigger memory stores, for example). It won't be long before other components can be swapped out, and then there won't be much difference left.

Games which are developed with multiple platforms in mind have proven to be able to be of high quality (see the latest XCOM). Afterthought ports have historically sucked. I dream of a world where game developers push out their software on every available platform and don't hamstring themselves by focusing on one, then disseminating.

Just as an aside, I own a 360, Wii, and PS3, but the only one of those we got anywhere close to release was the Wii. My computer is something I will always have because I use it for things other than games.