I wonder if anyone will ever start one of these things when they aren’t actually biased in a particular direction. Since I actually like both, I’ll give a full rundown of strengths and weaknesses of each and actually inject some level of intelligence into this thread. For those of the tl;dr mindset, there’s a quick 2 line summary at the bottom.
CONSOLE STRENGTHS:
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Much lighter entry costs for machine to play games on. Even though PS3 and 360 started out at $500+, that’s comparable to the price of a subpar PC gaming rig. They both quickly dropped the price after the first year, and Wii started out at $250. Getting a console and a cheap laptop can be a much more effective purchase than trying to get a gaming laptop.
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If a game is designed for a console, then that console can play that game. NO FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS NEED TO BE MADE.
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Everyone will be able to get the exact same experience from a game as everyone else who played the game. No cases of “LOOK AT THOS AMAZING GRAPHICS THAT R THE ONLY RESUN 4 BUYING THIS GAEM oh, wait, you have to run at minimum settings and will still end up with framerate equivalent to a slideshow. Nevermind.”
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Encourages playing multiplayer games in person which fosters much better communication and interaction than even perfect voip manages.
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Steadily growing developer focus, much of which is the driving force behind many big name titles which usually are developed for some combination of PC+Console.
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Longer Lifespan (except for specific cases like RROD) Average lifespan of my various gaming consoles ranges from 10 - 20 years and counting while still working. Average lifespan of any PC or laptop I’ve used is roughly 3 - 5 years max.
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Games are all designed to fit a control layout that is specifically mapped to your hand. Every button is directly at fingertips and a new setup can be learned in minutes with minimal experience instead of weeks even after years of experience.
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Games can be designed to take advantage of console specific features, like motion controls, which add to the players involvement in the game and contribute to a fresher gaming experience (when used properly)
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Stricter quality control. Though recent trends bring this point into question, console games are still typically expected to work perfectly from their initial release and without requiring any patches.
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Play right away. Again, some console games do require an installation to take place before the game can be played, but most console games keep this to a minimum, and often can be played within a minute of inserting the game.
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Specific genres work best. Action Adventure, Platforming, and Racing games, as well as 3rd person shooters typically benefit far more from the analog and at-fingertips controls that Consoles implement.
CONSOLE WEAKNESSES:
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Non-upgradable. There is no way to simply upgrade to play games for newer systems. An entirely new console is expected with each new gaming generation. You will also likely never see any graphical improvements of your games over time.
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Pricier games. PC games are usually at least $10 cheaper than their console counterparts, and usually get “download only” releases that reduce the prices of games even further
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Limited/nonexistent developer tools support. Console rarely if ever have tools for user created custom content for a game unless the game is specifically geared towards that (Like Little Big Planet) and unlike PC games, when a console game doesn’t specifically support modding, there’s no simple way for users to create that support themselves. This also means that any beginning developer has the much greater cost of the official developer tools kit to pay for before they can get in on the game.
COMPUTER STRENGTHS:
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Upgradable. Instead of needing to buy a completely new PC, it’s possible to JUST buy the specific parts that are keeping your PC from playing the games you want to play. This point is rarely true for laptops though.
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Old games still work. You can’t plug your cartridge of Legend of Zelda into your Wii and get it to play, you have to pay for the Virtual Channel version. I can still play Baldur’s Gate and Quake on my laptop.
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More customizable controls. Where consoles typically require you to follow a preset control settings, you can usually change bindings for nearly every command a PC game has. Every key on a keyboard can potentially be used for SOME sort of action, no matter how insignificant. Provided you can hit any key on your keyboard in a moments notice, and without looking, it negates all need for navigating command menus, which would require 2 or even more button presses. Many PC games that have a console port are also capable of using a USB gamepad which can let the controls work like the console, or even as a combination of controller and mouse. Almost no console game has ever had support for keyboard and mouse.
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Developer tools support. Valve has already shown that with access to the tools, indy developers can put out games just as good as the pros. They can put them out for free too. Even if users don’t have access to the original tools, many find ways to use or modify games for new experiences, keeping PC games fresher longer, and increasing teh value of the game you get when it gives you access to both the original game and 5-100 free games that run using its engine.
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Downloadable Content Support. Console games are slowly beginning to pick up on the importance of this feature. When a game is supported with DLC it improves the value of the game over time. Unfortunately most console DLC support is limited to PAID DLC. Many times PC games will have access to DLC for free that the console version would only have access to by paying, and in many cases doesn’t even have access to the DLC at all. A strong example of this is Team Fortress 2, which has received or is receiving free updates for all classes as well as 3 or 4 more general updates that add numerous features to the game. The console version is still limited to the original release.
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Free games. There are literally hundreds (possibly millions if you include flash games) of free games available to anyone with an internet connection. While the majority of these don’t even come close to the quality of a full fledged PC or console title, there are a handful of games that do.
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Scalable graphical settings. When you first buy a game, you may have to turn the graphics down to bare minimum to play, but unlike console games, as you buy or upgrade to a stronger computer you can expect to see improvements in game performance and allow extra features to be enabled. PC games can actually improve with time.
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Cheaper games. As pointed out in the console weaknesses, PC games are typically cheaper than the same game for a console. PC games are also often packaged to be purchased directly for download, which cuts the price down even further.
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LAN Support. Play together, but still get your own screen.
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Patched games are “eventually” better. While the initial release of a PC game may end up filled with far more bugs than a typical console release. PC games have better support for patches, which allow broken PC games to eventually be fixed, whereas a broken console game is almost always going to stay broken.
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No disc play. Many PC games support full installations that negate the need for a disc to be present in order to play the game. This allows for much greater convenience for switching from one game to another.
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Specific genres work best. PC games are awash with various First Person Shooter and Real Time Strategy games that rely heavily on the mouse, while many Simulation (flight sims, sim city, etc) and MMOs (World of Warcraft) have numerous options that require multiple key bindings to be used and have trouble being effectively implemented with the limited number of buttons that a gamepad has.
COMPUTER WEAKNESSES:
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Knowledge is required to upgrade. This is a moot point if you have a laptop. If you do have a PC though, you’ll need to crawl through your pc specs and usually a website that specifically checks your computer hardware in order to tell you what potential upgrades you can make. At that point you need to know the difference between 2x 512MB laptop PC2100 DDR and 1x 1GB desktop 4200 DDR2. That’s just for RAM, which is considered a relatively easy upgrade.
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Archaic input development. Though devices like Novint Falcon bring a lot of potential to the table for PC gaming, they will never gain widespread support as barely a fraction of a percent of all PC gamers will ever get this device, and because not many gamers have the device, not many developers will include support for the device. Vicious cycle ensues. Ultimately no PC game will ever include solid support for any feature other than keyboard and mouse unless a console makes it mainstream first, leading to the gameplay experience itself feeling stagnant.
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Not ALL old games work. Even though Baldur’s Gate and Quake work fine, I’m having a hell of a time getting Thief 3 to run properly on my PC. There’s some sort of bug that has cropped up that endlessly loops the opening cutscene unless I first completely restart my computer and don’t play any other game before running the Thief 3 game.
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Waiting before playing. Even the most basic installation for a PC game can take at least minutes if not hours to finish.
NEUTRAL POINT:
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EXCLUSIVE GAMES. Without Emulators (which are of debatable legality) PC only gamers would never get to play Mario, Mariokart, Zelda, Metroid, Starfox, Metal Gear Solid, Little Big Planet, God of War?, Shadows of the Colossus, Ico, Okami, Ace Attorney, Kingdom Hearts, Pokemon, and numerous other console specific games and/or series. Even with emulators, PCs will have a fair amount of trouble playing numerous Wii, DS, and possibly even PS3 games that actually make effective use of their console specific features, motion control being one of the biggest hurdles.
Likewise, console only gamers lose access to big titles like WoW, Baldur’s Gate, Crysis, STALKER, Civilization games, Age of mythology, Empire games, Diablo games, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Warhammer, torchlight, demigod, Sims 3, Spore, hearts of iron 3, Arma 2, battle forge. Many of these are essentially FPS or RTS and require the mouse as the primary means of effective implementation. While the Wii remote offers a similar level of control, developers have yet to take advantage of this, possibly due to not wanting to deal with the effort of scaling the PC version down for the Wii’s hardware.
Ultimately whichever platform has the games you want to play will dictate the one you will enjoy more. -
Legality shmegality, emulators can do ANYTHING. Provided you aren’t concerned about legal issues, and your computer is powerful enough, there are pretty much emulators for every console in history and rom sites that give you free access to every game ever made for any country EVER. In many cases the games can look even better than they did on the console they were designed for.
However emulators aren’t PC exclusive. Even the Wii has support for NES, SNES, Sega, GBA, and N64(solid, but not perfect just yet), and I hear there’s a team working on getting a PSX emulator out. I’m not talking about Virtual Console, but rather the homebrew scene, which is actually incredibly easy to use. This option also makes it far more likely for you to have a suitable gamepad to get the full experience of the original game.
After looking over all these points, I can this all down to 2 pretty simple attitudes:
PC Gamers - Knowledge is Power. Power is Fun. Don’t take my Power.
Console Gamers - I have to work just to have fun? I just want to play.
Though I do agree that PC gamers have some pretty significant advantages when it comes to free games, customization, and especially development support, I also feel that it is actually consoles that are pushing most of the mainstream innovation in the gaming industry. PC games in general still suck at supporting any kind of control combination besides 3 button mouse and keyboard and that’s even WITH the parallel pc/console development process. Only Nintendo and to some extent Sony have managed to make motion control a standard, and while the games that have taken advantage of it properly may be limited, there would never have been any way at all for games using those controls to be developed for a PC game.
