I’m a gamer. Unlike the vast majority of gamers, however, I game on a PC. I’ve been gaming on a PC for nearly 20 years. I’ve invested hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars into gaming hardware over that span to run the latest releases at resolutions, framerates, and detail levels that would make your eyes bleed, and I’ve done it without a second’s hesitation; in fact, I usually do it with a smile.
So you’re going to have to trust me when I say that the consoles are killing gaming.
When I say “consoles”, I’m referring to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3. For my purposes, they’re interchangeable, so I’m just going to call them “the consoles.”
When the consoles released in 2005-2006, they were heralded as the next generation of gaming, and for about six months, they were. At launch, the Xbox 360 and PS3 were superior to anything else you could buy. Then NVIDIA and ATI/AMD, who built the graphics processors that powered the Xbox 360 and PS3, put those same processors into PCs, and the consoles have been behind the curve, technologically speaking, ever since.
There have always been two big knocks against PCs as gaming platforms: support and cost. The fact that many hardcore gamers, myself included, choose to build their own PCs has been a source of great consternation to developers, in that the nearly infinite number of component configurations can render even the most thorough testing and well-executed support system moot. When id Software’s RAGE came out last year, it was plagued with driver issues on PC that made the game unplayable; on the consoles, due to the fact that every console runs the same hardware, it ran fine. Moreover, even the cheapest gaming PC can’t compete with the $250-ish price tag of the consoles; $250 might buy a single component of a good gaming PC, with high-end gear being significantly more expensive.
So, what exactly do PC’s bring to the table that consoles don’t? Raw power and future-proofing.
When the consoles first arrived, everyone ooh’d and ahh’d over gaming at 1080p, or full HD. Today, while 1080p is the “standard” resolution, it’s not uncommon for some gamers to run multiple monitors at 1080p resolution. I’m pretty sure if you tried to make an Xbox 360 run three monitors at 1080p simultaneously, it would burst into flames in protest. Moreover, the graphics hardware powering modern PCs is seven generations ahead of what powers the consoles. One need only look at the recently released Crysis 3 to see the difference between the two.
Having played Crysis 3, I can confirm that it is possibly the greatest interactive entertainment experience my eyeballs have ever experienced. The rest of me thought it was rather “Meh”, but my eyeballs are still singing “Hallelujah”. It’s firmly entrenched on the edge of the Uncanny Valley; any more realistic, and it would become disturbing.
Now, all that horsepower isn’t just useful for graphics; more power means better, smarter AI. It means more options for storytelling, as increased storage sizes let developers create branching narratives that change and react to the player’s actions. It means the promise of bringing worlds to life isn’t just a slogan, but a reality.
Of course, all that power comes at a price. Hardware changes quickly, specs always rise. A game you bought on the day the consoles released will run the same as a brand new game you bought yesterday. On a PC, that may not necessarily be the case. However, unlike the consoles, you can always upgrade. Whether it’s just a single new component or replacing the whole system, the fact remains that it’s easy to do so. Even if you can’t run the most brand-new game at the highest settings, the fact remains that you COULD, and it makes all the difference in the world.
So, this brings us back to the statement I posed at the beginning of the article: consoles are killing gaming. But why? It sounds like the consoles and PCs both have their ups and downs and fill specific niches; what makes consoles so destructive?
Three words: lowest common denominator.
The consoles are the benchmark. There are far more console gamers than PC gamers, and so long as that equation remains true, developers will continue to dumb down multi-platform releases to fit the aging consoles’ performance budget. Even the new PlayStation 4 was met with an underwhelming response, as it brings nothing to the table you can’t already get, today, on a PC. It’s reasonable to assume the next XBox will follow suit. The WiiU isn’t even worth mentioning. PCs, meanwhile, will continue to get faster, but the games will improve only a little, as they’re still being held back by their lesser bretheren.
Ultimately, as gamers we find ourselves torn between convenience and purity. Consoles are convenient; they take out all the things most people don’t like about PC gaming. PCs, on the other hand, are the purest depiction of the developer’s vision for the game, and capable of startling fidelity.
So, is there a third path? Something that combines the convenience of console gaming with the power of a PC? There have certainly been attempts to do so. Ultimately, the greatest stumbling block to the PCs path to gaming dominance is the nature of the PC itself; open, infinitely configurable, and impossible to plan for. The fact that the strange brew of operating system, driver, hardware, and software works at all is a small miracle; whether or not it could ever be sufficiently standardized to the point of commodity is another question entirely.
Yet, there is hope. Buoyed by the success of Steam, the ubiquitous PC gaming platform, Valve Software is developing a “Steam Box”, which aims to do for PCs what the consoles already do, without compromising performance. If anyone can do it, Valve can.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some extremely good looking aliens to go kill.
