Is it just me, or are the advantages of PC gaming diminishing?

[GameShrink]

I would also say that don't buy the hype about the next gen consoles until we see their performance and cost. I like the fact that the console audience here is almost taking as a given the following for the next gen machines, specially after yesterday's flood of benchmarks and reviews of the Zen 2 and Navi HW.

Click to shrink...

Did I fuck up by installing a new motherboard last year?

Paying someone else to plug components into your PC; that's a luxury expense. No reason your average person can't do it themselves. Installing a new motherboard or CPU are the only potentially challenging items, and even then, YouTube will get you all the info you need.

Click to shrink...

I think you're vastly overestimating the abilities of the average person, especially when it comes to tinkering with a valuable machine where each component must be compatible with the others and when ensuring compatibility/optimization requires cross-referencing multiple manuals.

 

[Deleted member 8196]

Your right, esp with cloud gaming coming up, everyone here will have to defend pc though because they spent alot of money on their rigs

The more money you invest into something the more defensive they will be

Click to shrink...

yikes lol

I don't people need to defend their rigs against the cloud lol

 

[thebishop]

Yeah I think PC has been in decline relative to consoles basically since the PS2/XB era. Going back to the NES/SNES/N64 period, PC was generally 1-2 generations ahead of console. It still blows my mind that PC had fully voiced games in 1993 when Nintendo still can't be counted on to have full voice. But as Sony and MS consoles got more competitive with cutting edge graphics, virtually all developers target development to the widest available hardware spec. Games that can only be played on PC are increasingly rare. For a while we had the "can it play Crysis?" meme, but today there is no Crysis.

A few factors have "saved" PC:
- no-barrier to entry game development. So PC players are already past the Day-Z/Rust persistent survival genre, while console players are just starting to get a taste.
- streaming and competitive gaming have gravitated to PC
- Free to Play genres have typically been PC-centric, thinking Mobas, TF2/CS:GO, Battle Royale

The big problem I have with PC (as someone with a decent one) is that it's just a poor user experience relative to console. Valve has been trying to turn Steam into a fully integrated system with features expected on Playstation or Xbox. But major publishers and other newcomers are fracturing the experience by not only making their games exclusive to an external storefront, but also building them in such a way that they don't play nice with Steam's launcher. So even if you add Apex Legends as a "Non-Steam Game", when you exit, it doesn't properly return back to Big Picture Mode. You have to pick up a keyboard and alt-tab back to the UI. There are tons of small examples like this add up to a broken PC experience.

I'd love to get to a point where PC is *better* than consoles as a user experience while retaining all the great aspects of PC as an "open" platform. At times that seemed close, but right now I feel it's going in the wrong direction. I primarily blame Epic, EA, Activision, and Ubisoft for these bad trends.

 

[marcbret87]

PC is still a time sink of tinkering to get many games running smoothly. Its graphical advantages are diminished because people don't tolerate troubleshooting glitches like they used to. Personally, I once loved that feeling of victory when I discovered it was enabling multitexturing that crashed my game due to the Glide API. Figuring that shit out and building a PC was part of the fun!

Now I have a job and family. I just want to play the damn game.

Click to shrink...

I used to think that, but I've had a Gaming PC for over a year and I very rarely had to tinker. Only on some occasions when I wanted to play some old game which might have some compatibility issues.

 

[Dog of Bork]

If you're upgrading only once every 4-5 years, there's a high chance you'll need to upgrade more than one component. New GPUs can mean a new power supply, for example.

And a lot of us are paying for installation as well. In my area, that's a choice between Micro Center (inexpensive, but an inconvenient location) and Best Buy (via Geek Squad, very expensive). If you're installing multiple components, you start coming close to $800 for the full upgrade.

Click to shrink...

Since I bought my PC in 2012, I've only upgraded my GPU, motherboard, and CPU. My power supply has more than enough headroom to last until it dies. An extra $20 for a larger PS can save you $100 in the future if you need more power.

I strongly recommend building your own PC and installing new parts yourself. It's trivially easy and saves hundreds of dollars.

Also, any costs involved with upgrading are more than offset by not needing to pay for online, cheaper games, and not buying new consoles every 5 years.

 

[BadAss2961]

Got into PC gaming to play games at their best possible settings and performance. That aspect isn't going away.

 

[z1ggy]

PC is still a time sink of tinkering to get many games running smoothly. Its graphical advantages are diminished because people don't tolerate troubleshooting glitches like they used to. Personally, I once loved that feeling of victory when I discovered it was enabling multitexturing that crashed my game due to the Glide API. Figuring that shit out and building a PC was part of the fun!

Now I have a job and family. I just want to play the damn game.

Click to shrink...

Many games such as...?

 

[Mauricio_Magus]

I see it the other way around, there is less and less reasons to own consoles and so many more reasons to go PC.

 

[Kormora]

Ironically its the opposite for me. Microsoft's stuff will now all be on Windows so there is zero need for an Xbox.

 

[Border]

Have fun trying to play games at a locked 60FPS or better on a console.

 

[Biggersmaller]

Completely disagree with this statement. Almost all games I buy for PC automatically detect settings and run great. I can't remember the last time I had to do more than update graphic card drivers to get a game to run good.

Click to shrink...

Many games such as...?

Click to shrink...

Most recently I was troubleshooting Age of freaking Empires II HD crashing for my dad last weekend. We were going to play online and I literally said to him:

"I have had zero issues. It's not the game. There is something wrong on your end."

My Dad was like "LOL - yeah no kidding."

He was right. It was a dick thing to say. I discovered on some rando forum that deleting his profiles and saved games out of Steam solved the issue. What the underlying issue was...I had no idea. To be fair the whole fix took maybe 30 minutes and we played for a long ass time, but people simply don't want to figure that shit out anymore.

 

[Graven]

Free online, potential 60 fps(or more If you have the rig)and ultimate backward compatibility.

The good still justifies It imo.

 

[Deleted member 15428]

Preventing me from cheating in a single-player PC game won't encourage me to buy the console version, so PC keeps its advantage.

 

[MrBob]

I have a 1080p 24in monitor in my office and a 4k 55in TV in the living room, and just this weekend I decided to hook my desktop up to my TV.
That fact that I've been amassing free/extremely discounted games for years leaves me with an enormous library across the various launchers (which doesn't really bother me, though having everything under one umbrella with a Big Picture like UI would be nice. Might give Playnite a shot). Most games are running at 4k 60fps+

The ease of use for consoles is really hard to beat, but I've been a PC gamer since Wolf 3D shareware days as a young lad (~1993?), so I'm pretty used to jank and fiddling with stuff until it works. Apart from exclusives on consoles, I'll probably be playing most things on my PC going forward.
Also fighting games. Might have to move a smaller monitor into the living room for that, input lag on my TV is no bueno.

Now I just need to solve the issue of M+KB games in the living room. Maybe a TV dinner tray or something? XD Those lap boards I've been seeing I'm not completely sold on yet...

Click to shrink...

Go buy an Xbox one controller wireless adapter and a small wireless entertainment keyboard and you can simulate a lot of the console experience with the PC. The entertainment keyboard is just there to navigate around windows with a keyboard and mouse while you can use your Xbox wireless controller to play games like you would on a console.

Corsair also makes a wireless keyboard/lapboard combo and just add a wireless mouse and you can play mouse key games on your TV too.

 

[marcbret87]

I like Sony exclusives. I think I'm fucked.
But I'm interested.
Questions : How much do I need to spend to build a Beast PC now?
And how much for a good laptop for gaming?

Click to shrink...

Well, depends on how much money you want to spend. A laptop for gaming I think isn't really a good investment, unless you really value portability above all. I guess something like Ryzen 5 3600 ($200), GTX 2060 Super ($400), Motherboard ($120), 16 GB RAM ($140), Power supply ($80) and the rest of stuff is about 1000 dollars in total.

 

[exodus]

I think part of it is that it used to be a lot cheaper to build a PC that could outperform consoles. For the same price as a console, you could build a pretty fast PC last gen.

Now, for the price of a Pro or X1X, you're not going to be able to build a competitive PC.

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

Yes, and the advantages of PC will shrink even more next gen.

 

[LavaBadger]

I think you're vastly overestimating the abilities of the average person, especially when it comes to tinkering with a valuable machine where each component must be compatible with the others and when ensuring compatibility/optimization requires cross-referencing multiple manuals.

Click to shrink...

I don't think the "average person" is buying a bunch of PC components for the purpose of assembling a PC. The "average person" is only buying a console, or more likely, just playing games on their phone. They're not considering buying a PC, and if they were, they'd be looking at a prebuilt one.

That said, I've built 2 PCs now, and at no point did I have to "cross reference multiple manuals" to do it. You look at the manual for your motherboard, and you find the slot you plug the component into, and you do it. There are some mistakes you can make (Putting ram in the wrong slot), but they're rarely high risk even if you do it wrong. And once again, watching a YouTube video would save you from any of those mistakes.

If you're a person who wants high performance, but you're not interested in building a PC yourself nor buying a prebuilt PC, but are also still wanting to buy your own components for some reason and have someone else assemble it, you're paying for a luxury experience.

 

[GhostTrick]

One important thing you forgot OP:
Backward and forward compatibility.
While some people are begging for patches on PS4 Pro and One X, I know that 99% of my games will support my new hardware with higher res and framerate in a way or another.

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

yikes lol

I don't people need to defend their rigs against the cloud lol

Click to shrink...

They do, multiple little clouds will fly through there windows and Fire red lasers at there rigs.

 

[Shalashaska]

I feel like the only real blemishes on PC gaming recently are the high prices for components, proliferation of launchers and exclusive games, and HDR being a mess.

The strength of PC gaming has always been it's openness, and consoles will never catch up in that regard.

 

[Leviathan]

Better graphics and power, a solid chance of getting most games at some point, centralized hardware for all my media types, superior control options for basically all genres but driving/piloting games and some action games, compatibility with controllers when I need it, and Steam.

I can't speak to what anyone else is looking for in their gaming experience, but any non-PC game that isn't made specifically for the Switch is at least something of a disappointment and a general downgrade in experience for me. I'm as happy with PC gaming as ever, despite Epic's expensive efforts to interfere.

 

[z1ggy]

One important thing you forgot OP:
Backward and forward compatibility.
While some people are begging for patches on PS4 Pro and One X, I know that 99% of my games will support my new hardware with higher res and framerate in a way or another.

Click to shrink...

Its amazing to me to install my 1998 Fallout 2 copy ❤

 

[Conkerkid11]

PC is still a time sink of tinkering to get many games running smoothly. Its graphical advantages are diminished because people don't tolerate troubleshooting glitches like they used to. Personally, I once loved that feeling of victory when I discovered it was enabling multitexturing that crashed my game due to the Glide API. Figuring that shit out and building a PC was part of the fun!

Now I have a job and family. I just want to play the damn game.

Click to shrink...

What year is this post from?

 

[Mudo]

Nah the indie scene is still huge on PC with tons of things you can't play anywhere else. It's all about the games!

 

[maximumzero]

Upfront cost of hardware is a major bummer. It's practically impossible to build a PC that's anything but a web browsing machine for the $200/$250 cost of a Xbox One S when Windows alone costs you $100.

PC is still a time sink of tinkering to get many games running smoothly. Its graphical advantages are diminished because people don't tolerate troubleshooting glitches like they used to. Personally, I once loved that feeling of victory when I discovered it was enabling multitexturing that crashed my game due to the Glide API. Figuring that shit out and building a PC was part of the fun!

Now I have a job and family. I just want to play the damn game.

Click to shrink...

This has always been a major hangup for me. It's fine to enjoy tinkering with graphical settings if that's your jam but I'm forever riddled by anxiety over min-maxing my graphical details and framerate on PC Games and it slowly eats me inside.

 

[thebishop]

Account sharing far better on console... That is literally the only advantage i can think of, And maybe HDR.

Click to shrink...

imo Steam account sharing is pretty good/generous.

 

[RM8]

Nah the indie scene is still huge on PC with tons of things you can't play anywhere else. It's all about the games!

Click to shrink...

This can't be stated enough. If you're into indies, PC is your platform. I literally can't keep up with the incredibly cool and creative looking indie games coming out all the time that never make it to consoles.

 

[GhostTrick]

In any case, those people talking about diminishing advantages:
Wake me up when emulation, full bc and forward compatibility (which means no need for patches from publishers), open mods support (without the need of the publisher hosting it on a platform), free online play, framerate/visual options and full controller mapping and support is a thing on consoles too. Then we can have a talk

 

[Strikerrr]

Did I fuck up by installing a new motherboard last year?

Click to shrink...

If you have a Ryzen CPU board, you should be fine to upgrade since all Ryzens use the same socket. You may need to update your motherboard's BIOS to get it fully compatible, but it should work.

 

[Dog of Bork]

It's wild to me that people think consoles are suddenly going to catch up to PC capabilities. Seems like people who have no idea how gaming on PC really works are just buying into new gen hype.

 

[pswii60]

Did I fuck up by installing a new motherboard last year?

Click to shrink...

Probably not.

If you installed an AMD motherboard for last year's Zen processors then you can use it with this year's.

If you already installed an Intel motherboard then a 9900k will still offer better performance on most games than even compared to 3900X thanks to the per core processing advantage. And it's likely to be discounted soon.

So if you're looking to upgrade your CPU with your existing board then you won't be left behind either way, this year at least.

 

[Deleted member 11626]

Games are always cheaper, sooner on PC. Online is free. Graphics options are still vastly superior to the paltry offerings of a handful of console games. My PC is quieter than my PS4 or PS4 Pro ever were.

And y'all gotta stop acting like you can't just boot right into a game like a console does. If multiple launchers is a problem, use Playnite. I'm all for playing how you want, but the best consoles can't touch a good PC. You might make the argument over the cost of parts, but games fall quickly in price on PC.

 

[BlueManifest]

yikes lol

I don't people need to defend their rigs against the cloud lol

Click to shrink...

It's the truth, pc people go crazy in here if anyone says something against it, I figured that was the reason

 

[Dog of Bork]

It's the truth, pc people go crazy in here if anyone says something against it, I figured that was the reason

Click to shrink...

If you speak nonsense you'll get responses calling that out lol

Lots of low-information posts on the current state of PC gaming in here

 

[Biggersmaller]

What year is this post from?

Click to shrink...

PC gaming requires more troubleshooting than console gaming. It's not even close. Again, it was part of the charm for me when I had the time.

Just scroll through this:
Hardware and Operating Systems

Of course, individual games have their own boards for people solving compatibility issues.

 

[exodus]

I like Sony exclusives. I think I'm fucked.
But I'm interested.
Questions : How much do I need to spend to build a Beast PC now?
And how much for a good laptop for gaming?

Click to shrink...

What are you targetting?

4K @ 60fps?
1440p ultrawide @ 100fps?
1440p @ 144fps?
1080p @ 144fps?
1440p @ 60fps?
1080p @ 60fps?

The higher up on that list, the more you're going to have to spend.

I'd personally recommend shooting for 1440p @ 144fps with a variable refresh rate display. You'll get fairly good image quality along with a refresh rate that will put 30-60fps console games to shame.

Does form factor matter? Do you want a tiny case, or can you afford more floor or desk space for a bigger case?

A very rough price estimate:

PC:

Ryzen 3600 - $200
X570 Motherboard - $185(could save ~80 by going with an older board and updating the BIOS)
16GB RAM - $80
GTX 2060 Super - $400
1TB NVMe drive - $150
Case - $80
PSU - $70
Windows 10 - $100 (or $40 if you're willing to go with grey market areas)

Total: $1265

Optional peripherals:
Mouse - $50
Mechanical Keyboard - $50

You can get a 27-32" 1440p, 144Hz monitor with FreeSync (research and make sure NVidia supports that particular monitor) for ~$400-600.

 

[real2]

There is diminishing returns, but the fact that I don't have to worry about having the old console hooked up to play certain games is important to me. There are games for example on last gen that aren't available on current gen (Microsoft has done a great fucking job with their backwards comparability-it's not perfect but it's better than Sony's approach).

 

[1.21Gigawatts]

It's also the best starting point for VR at this stage. PSVR has good software, but it's extremely dated and doesn't have nearly the amount of creativity and exclusive stuff as PC VR. I bought a PS4 Pro recently for VR, and it was great, but I regret not putting that towards a better PCVR experience due to how much worse PSVR is.

Click to shrink...

I thought PSVR was a good entry point,(especially for 199€) but I went on Oculus Quest because of mod support for Beat Saber. I probably would have never spent 450€ on a VR headset had I not tried PSVR and had I not known that it will be worth it for Beat Saber alone.
I still keep PSVR for Wipeout VR, though. Thats just too good to give up.

 

[z1ggy]

Most recently I was troubleshooting Age of freaking Empires II HD crashing for my dad last weekend. We were going to play online and I literally said to him:

"I have had zero issues. It's not the game. There is something wrong on your end."

My Dad was like "LOL - yeah no kidding."

He was right. It was a dick thing to say. I discovered on some rando forum that deleting his profiles and saved games out of Steam solved the issue. What the underlying issue was...I had no idea. To be fair the whole fix took maybe 30 minutes and we played for a long ass time, but people simply don't want to figure that shit out anymore.

Click to shrink...

So one game then? Your personal experience? I had zero issues in the last 5 years so...

Games on console dont crash as well? Some of you talk like todays consoles are bullet proof and they arent. No more plug and play, when i bought my PS4 it took a while to set it up, same with some games that needed endless updates before running up.

 

[Conkerkid11]

PC gaming requires more troubleshooting than console gaming. It's not even close. Again, it was part of the charm for me when I had the time.

Just scroll through this:
Hardware and Operating Systems

Of course, many games have their own similar boards of people solving compatibility issues.

Click to shrink...

What kind of troubleshooting are you talking about? I'm mostly seeing posts in that board about recommendations for PC components.

I thought you were talking about troubleshooting individual games, which has everything to do with how well that game was made for PC. For the most part, modern PC games don't require any troubleshooting.

Meanwhile, my Xbox One needs to be power cycled in order for it to recognize my wi-fi network, because if it's left asleep for long enough, it can't connect to any wi-fi networks, and I had to install custom firmware on my router and disable WPS due to it causing PSN to IP ban me.

 

[nbnt]

Uhm what, if anything it's the other way around. Consoles have fewer exclusives these days than ever before, it makes them pointless if you have a PC which, on top of its other non gaming advantages, gets access to decades of liberaries, past, present, and future.

 

[delete12345]

- That's not related to PC at all, lol. As it is, I play online games for free on my PC and not on my Switch. That's the present situation and there's no reason to believe it'll change anytime soon.
- Yup.
- It's not hard whatsoever, there are standards (xinput/directinput). This is not a problem in 2019 - heck, it was not a problem when I switched to PC in 2011. And if you think outside the box, you can play any game with any controller regardless of developer support. I could play Mortal Kombat 11 with a Nintendo 64 controller if I wished, developers have nothing to do with this. More options will never be worse.
- There are plenty of games that make bank on PC, and I'd say very few console games make the money LoL makes, to give an example. Console games are not sustainable themselves which is why monetization in $60 games is getting out of control.
- It's not related to backwards compatibility. Playing old PC games on modern computers is backwards compatibility, playing Switch games on a computer is not.

I'm honestly never going back to (only owning) consoles.

And I didn't even mention performance, indies, modding, etc.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, and I already apologize for not realizing most of the arguments are, well, not related, in a prior post before yours.

 

[DigSCCP]

It all comes down to what are your priorities when you look at PC Gaming OP, I´m with you but for my own reasons.
I basically realized that around 2012~2013 and for me the main reasons are :
- Lack of AAA and or high profiles exclusives : there was a time when I nedeed a PC to play The Elder Scrools, Witcher, Fallout, Crysis, Half Life and others. I know there is a lot of good exclusives out there on the PC market nowadays but with the excpetion of RTS they are not the kind of game that would make me go back to the plataform
- Evolution of consoles when it comes to Online MP : there was a time that if you wanted to play online games you had to go to PC. Those times were long gone.
- Personal Gaming Time : there was a time when I had a PC Gaming, a PS and a Nintendo plataform. Now I don´t have time to fully enjoy one single plataform and if I´m going to choose one I´ll always choose that has more content that pleases me and with the lack of high profile exclusives on the PC scene it ill never be my main choice, or even the second one at this moment.
- Diminishing technological gap : Yes, I know that from a hardware perspective the even mid specs, or even low specs, are more than enough to go 'agaisnt' the base consoles...but when it comes to software where are the games taking advantage of that and offering real increments over consoles versions ? I´m not talking about resolutions or better filters ( this was never the main reason why I used to play on PC, even tho were great bonuses ) I´m talking about different modes, IA patterns, and things that to me really changes the experience ? Even at the end of last gen we still had cases of games like BF offering more players on MP modes on PC only. I don´t remember seeing any of these this gen, maybe I´m wrong cause I don´t follow the PC scene for a long time so feel free to correct me if we have these cases. The only game that feels to break this barrier is Star Citizen.

Of course that for those looking for a experience on PC gaming looking at shared games with consoles at a higher quality/perfomance and/or doesnt care about the lack of high profiles exclusive games there is no better time to jump in and there is a lot of positive aspects for the current era of PC Gaming over the past ones. But for me not so much. I miss Civilization tho = (

Funny enough one thing that lately has catch my eye back on the PC Gaming scene is not the traditional experince that I can already have on my console, but VR ! The VR PC scene feels at this point exactly like what the old 'traditional' PC gaming offered to me : unique software based on the possibilities that hardware gives. I´m looking closely to the PCVR scene and waiting to see how Sony goes with the PSVR2 and how devs will jump into it. If there is a gap between what next gen - or even current ones that are already a gen leap over current PSVR - PCVR offers and PSVR2 and this means I´m going to miss some high profile VR games I can totally see myself investing on a PC rig and PCVR hardware.

 

[dennett316]

If anything the advantages that consoles had over PC gaming is being eroded and consoles are just PC's with different walled gardens. As much as people decry the situation with exclusives on the Epic Store, at least you don't have to buy another PC in order to be able to play said exclusives, it's just another launcher.
Backwards compatibility is better on PC.
Flexibility in terms of control schemes and peripherals is better.
Customisation options of every aspect of graphics, sound and control is better.
Modding is less restrictive.
Multi-functionality of a PC beyond just gaming. Consoles offer Netflix and other limited apps, but PC can offer a lot more.
Free online play.
Games can often receive fanmade patches that fix bugs and other game issues and provide support WELL beyond the time a developer can dedicate to a game.
Games are generally cheaper and can be had cheaper in sales than console counterparts most of the time. Console makers are getting better with this, but there's still a long way to go.


Consoles offer more support for physical media, but even this has been eroded to fuck with the proliferation of mega-patches required to get games to usable states. Megadrive games will work for decades...good luck trying to play Tony Hawk 5 on a PS4 in 5 years time, or any other game that needed significant patching.

 

[alekth]

It has been PC for me this gen, rather than the other way around. Different launchers can be an inconvenience, but then again same applies to different consoles. I think half of it was the availability of more JRPGs on PC, the other half being me losing a lot of my interest in them. Another big part is that I simply don't have the patience and time to invest into getting good (and enjoying) any aiming with a gamepad, so kb/m it is for those games. Will give the Steam Controller a go soon, to see about that and couch playing, but that will obviously be PC only anyway.

Otherwise my PC is still on a Haswell CPU, although I have upgraded GPU twice (wasn't much of a loss, first one went into my mum's PC, second one I sold for enough not to care).

I paid for PS+ for a while, it wasn't really worth it for me. PC games also still seem to have the better deals, and indeed something about paying for online irks me.

 

[TaySan]

Nah especially for the high end. Nothing on the consoles compared to the capabilities of an 3900x or i7 9900k system.

 

[Mad_Rhetoric]

Yeah they are diminishing a bit, but dont say that too loud around here lol

 

[Norml]

Only time I wanted a PC was when Crysis 2 was around. But now they don't even have an exclusive powerhouse that makes me want one ,and haven't since then.

 

[thebishop]

Yes, and the advantages of PC will shrink even more next gen.

Click to shrink...

Yeah I agree. Especially if Stadia takes off, the claim to better graphics on PC might only be true for the highest-end players. Stadia is basically going to launch with a 1070Ti performance level and can scale up from there. So if you have to own a 2080 to claim the best visual experience, I don't think that's justifiable for the vast majority.

When the current gen launched, it was pretty easy to build a PC that out-performs PS4/XB1. The Bitcoin craze killed that, and while PC prices are more reasonable now, AMD/Nvidia have focused their engineering on high end innovations with prices to match. We're stuck in a no-mans land where most cards are overkill for 1080p and insufficient for 4K.