As the topic titles says, give your opinion on why a PC/Console/Handheld is better for gaming than a PC/Console Handheld.


Extreme Coder

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A PC will always be the best system to game on. A console has few advantages to the end user, but many to the manufacturer. To the user it must be a low hardware price and ease of use. To the manufacturer it is less piracy and a cut of all the games sold.

No console have ever done what a PC is not able to do better.

What finally matters for consoles is the games. Exclusive deals with game manufactures is everything to a consoles success.

I'm not a big gamer so I just use my PC to satisfy my needs. And I find it's great. However, I used to love to play my old Super Nintendo back in the day. That and an original Playstation (which was barely used) were the only consoles I've owned. So I have to go with the PC.

That's quite true. Nintendo produces some of the finest games which are only available on their handhelds and consoles.

I think consoles are inherently better simply because of the controls.

With a console, because the controllers are the same, the game designers don't have to worry about how your specific wheel,joystick,controller,mouse/keyboard is designed and configured. You'll always have consistent gameplay across every system. Also, you don't generally have to install games for consoles (there are a few exceptions), as you do with PCs.

No installation also means no updates. Developers must deliver a non-buggy product or risk losing sales. PC games often ship very buggy and people deal with it since they can just download updates...

The only real advantage I can see for PC gamers is that the graphics are better for new games if you're willing to shell out a couple thousand for a serious gaming machine every year or two. Many people don't seem to understand that graphics != gameplay though. Consoles simply have better games and a wider selection of titles to choose from (Solitaire or Bejeweled don't really count on the PC side).

Handhelds are just a couple generations back from consoles and share most of the characteristics that they do, except Nintendo should stop remaking all of their handhelds. Do you really need 5 different Gameboy Advances?

I think that depends on what you started with. I was going to say just the opposite - I like PC for the controls. I never owned a console game until I was in my 30's. We were too poor to afford console games when I was a kid.

Or maybe they hadn't been invented yet....

I actually started on a PC. When I was finally able to afford a computer, the first games I played were Battleship and Win, Lose, or Draw, both for DOS. The actual machine had to insert the 5.25" DOS boot disk first, and then the game after that (old!). I moved on to an Apple II, where I played Sherwood Forest and some other games. Then back to DOS with a lot of really fun 2D action/adventure type games. I started with SMB/DuckHunt about here on the NES (first console), then on to SimTower/SimCopter on Windows, with quite a few other good games in-between.

The one thing I've picked up on is that the games felt different depending on the keyboard layout, the model of joystick, the model of mouse, and the sensitivity that was set. Also, the speed of the computer affected how a game felt too. Think of how different a FPS feels depending on the speed of a computer and the settings you use. If you've played one for any length of time, you'll know that there's a huge difference and that it takes time to reaccustom yourself when something changes.

Consoles just take out that uncertainty so the gameplay doesn't change if you change systems or controllers (they're all the same). The only discrepency I can think of was with the N64 and the expansion card that let you be able to run games like DK64. Still, I didn't notice a difference for the other N64 games I was playing at that time...

Agreed.
That's why consoles or handhelds are the way of gaming for the future. Everybody has the same device, it's going to work EXACTLY the same for everyone, no complaints of crappy drivers, or anything such.

i would say that the wii is very good, the controler just makes it amazing...

other than that, i believe that the pc is the best option, mainly since im a rts fan, but also because it has better flexibility

True.
FPS or RTS games are best played on a PC, although there are some exceptions to this rule

Always played on a computer. First with the C64 then Amiga500. I'm also a rts fan, and rts games are almost impossible to play on a console. You need a keyboard and mouse.

It does depend tho, on what sort of gaming experience you are looking for, for example, the pc will give you the best gaming experience you can afford, provided you buy the right hardware, E.G. proccessor, graphics card e.t.c. Thats kinda obvious tho.

Whereas the console will give you games games and more games, they wont do as much as a pc will, but then neither will your pc if you just use it for games :P. Take the 360, thats now got media center built in to it, audio, video, tv streaming. And has 3 proccessors (technically 2 but..) to process graphics, audio , gameplay and whatever else you need. (btw, when i say 2 i mean 1 dual-core processor and GPU)

And then there's the Wii, thats just awesome! Great gameplay experience and anyone and everyone enjoys it. The graphics are quite good, but the 360, ps3 and high spec pc's will quite easily beat the wii. At the end of the day though, graphics arent always essential to have a great game. (getting hit in the face is fun tho!) (crazy mum cant play baseball :P)

So yeah, it pretty much depends on what you want really.