Quote from Jakg :

The sort of games I like (SupCom, LFS etc) aren't really on consoles, and as it is when I do play games (which, atm is rare apart from the odd-bit of BF2 with the UKCT guys - and a few CR Dutchies) I like to be able to do it with TS in the background, which pretty much rules out a console anyway.

The latest xbox firmware has proper private group chat now, where as before you had to either suffer a load of shouty kids, or just speak with one other person, you can now have private group chat.

Quote from Gunsmith :

Crashgate3 you seem to strike me as another avid pc gamer, what are your thoughts on Epic megagames?

As in the developer?

I've never played much of the Unreal series - I played the original Unreal Tournament a lot at uni, but never really got into the later UT or Unreal 3. I've found that with online FPS games, I'm so out of practice that it's just not fun to play them as I get killed so much.

I want to try Gears Of War and will probably get it once I upgrade but I'm *really* put off by the whole 'aimed at american high-school jocks' theme to the characters and the game as a whole.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Honestly the only game I've been really, really glad I played in the last couple of years was Portal. That game just shat all over everything and showed that with a bit of imagination the medium can be brilliant. But games like that come along once every few years, because studios don't have the nuts to fund projects like that. So it seems we're doomed (no pun intended) to suffer endless cookie-cutter FPS games for the rest of eternity.

I never played Portal, the last one that got me was Darwinia.

You are right though, there is no imagination any more. It all seems to be about graphics effects and awardable content instead of 'playability'.

Oh ok.

Either way I'm PC fo life because i luvz my hardware.

If I wanted to get an Xbox, i'd need to spend a lot still, though - as i'd need to get a new TV (32" SDTV would be a waste), cheapest being a 24" Dell with HDMI for ~£200, and a set of speaker it could plug into (about £50) in addition to the £150 console...

EDIT - The best games i've ever played have to be Uplink, LFS & Portal. BF2 is fun, but only because of who I play it with, mainly because the game runs like balls and looks ugly

I prefer consoles since... umm... i always liked them better to be honest. I started with the NES and have had most popular systems since then. I aswell had a PC fast enough to play most games, and still have one... it's more or less "fast" (can play Crysis on medium settings) and would play most of the modern games. Thing is, i don't buy the games for PC, if it's available on any console, i'll go for that instead.

It's simply because i enjoy console gaming more... because of reasons previously stated, like sitting in your living room on a comfortable sofa, etc.

If there is a good game which i bought for the PC (happens about every two years maybe), i'll enjoy it... it's not that i wouldn't like to play games on a PC, it's just not as good as on a console.

The point being made about having to use a gamepad for an FPS... it's not really valid anymore IMO. I have never ever tried it, but as far as i know, you can use a mouse and keyboard with modern consoles and almost any game. However, if you have played console games (with gamepads) since many years, you won't even bother anymore with mouse/keyboard (that's how it is for me at least (i'm not any better with a mouse/keyboard)).

Regarding the future, i would guess that PC gaming will become more and more rare. Consoles have made a huge step towards the funcionalities that always have been missing, compared to a PC. As Danowat said... you can watch movies, play music, browse the internet, etc. Heck... with a console i can simply start a voice chat with friends... with great quality (not like being on the phone, but close enough), and i don't even have to install some teamspeak/whatever software. It's all built in and working already.

Look at the sales figures of Fallout 3 for example. It's one of those games that you could say "it'll be better on a PC", because of being able to mod it... having those so called "better controls", etc. But if i remember correctly, only about 18% of the sold copies were for PC.

I don't think i'll ever be without a computer at home... it's such a normal thing to have today. But for gaming... i could live without a computer easily.

Personally, i think consoles are the future of the gaming world.

Quote from jibber :

Personally, i think consoles are the future of the gaming world.

I can see them merging to be honest.

PCs are getting more and more console-like, losing their mysterious, geeky and unfathomable image and conversely, consoles are becoming more like PCs, gaining hard-drives, internet access, ability to be used as a media centre, even the coding and hardware (the Xbox is very similar to a PC hardware-wise).

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I can see them merging to be honest.

PCs are getting more and more console-like, losing their mysterious, geeky and unfathomable image and conversely, consoles are becoming more like PCs, gaining hard-drives, internet access, ability to be used as a media centre, even the coding and hardware (the Xbox is very similar to a PC hardware-wise).

they will still be different and more streamlined then pc mainly cause joe bloggs is actually retarded.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I can see them merging to be honest.

PCs are getting more and more console-like, losing their mysterious, geeky and unfathomable image and conversely, consoles are becoming more like PCs, gaining hard-drives, internet access, ability to be used as a media centre, even the coding and hardware (the Xbox is very similar to a PC hardware-wise).

Consoles are certainly becoming more PC like, however, I am not convinced it's working the other way.

MS are certainly trying to "meld" the two, but it's clear it's not working too well.

if console are the future, it's because it will go down the road as more and more......a PC. well stick a OS and browser it IS already a PC.

I think I might need a console in the future, because my PC is a laptop and it has to be for my professional purpose, and I am more and more keen on seperating my gaming and working platform, first it's better for the system, second it helps productivity.

building a second PC just for gaming would be expensive, and I don't have the space.

But just base on gaming experence between these platforms, I can't really think about much benefit on the console, they have longer loading times, more expensive games, and there are less choice for ninch markets (flight sim, racing sim, indie games etc), initial investment is less, but the surrounding bits (sound system, TV)are going to be costly, while I have an established system for my PC.

Personally, I've always favoured PCs, despite not always being able to run the latest games, and although I've never owned a console that doesn't mean that most aren't console nuts.

I agree with many points raised so far, so I'll just try to add what hasn't been mentioned.

The advantages of PCs over consoles have fluctuated over time, whereas the advantage of consoles over PCs has remained fairly constant.

Consoles have that pick up and play nature, don't require a seperate monitor (assuming people already have a TV), there's not the compatibility issues, and other points people have raised. Although gone are the days where you had to knobble your autoexec.bat and config.sys for individual games and reboot, or run seperate text based config utilities in a fight to get sound working. PCs have evolved a lot too.

PCs, back at the start, I feel offered no real advantage at all. As games progressed, variations limitations of the consoles have been reached. Complex games requiring lots of controls don't work well without a keyboard. From the mid 90s, the resolution of PC games steadily started increasing as monitors and graphics cards improved. It's taken a whole decade but finally, thanks to HDTV, consoles have finally caught up in that regard.

The location was mentioned as being more social for a consoles, but I see PCs becoming more usual to live in the front room as time goes on, so consoles could lose that "advantage".

Patching is a good issue already mentioned, it's good that consoles have caught up in this regards, similarly with online play.

The fixed hardware, while having clear advantages, also has downsides. This only applies to games that are being made for PC as well, and more-so where PC is the lead title (certainly rare now), but open world style games (and tbh modern games in general) are very memory thirsty, and the fixed hardware of the console could be just slightly too little to fit in everything you want in your game. PC hardware being so modular, it's easy just to make the game you want and slap a higher memory requirement on the box.

User generated content has become massive in the past years, something else that consoles are over a decade behind on. I don't see any easy solution to this anytime soon, especially given the previous paragraph.

There are other, less usual benefits to PC gaming. Try getting a triple monitor setup going on a console for instance. Or motion simulators. Or dare I say it: Insim.

Backwards compatibility is another console-weak area, although Sony have made some improvements here. Also the ability to join in and beta test games in development, LFS being the obvious example, but open source ventures like OpenTTD (and no doubt many others) allow you to particpate in a way console gaming never will.

Once they make a console with a mouse, a decent monitor (not a TV screen), that can play games, play music, edit videos, write dissertations, design components, manage company accounts, manage email, contacts and calenders (plus syncing with other hardware), record DVDs, program software (i.e. everything a PC can do) I'll stick with that. A console is far too limited to replace my PC, and I'm not going to spend money on both when one of them does everything.

I don't think consoles will ever "replace" PC's in the gaming arena, or any other arena, but I do believe they offer a much more rounded gaming experiance than they ever used to.

The PC will always be king when it comes to multiple things you mention Tristan, but IMO, thats one of the problems, for me, after a full working week looking at a PC screen and using a mouse / keyboard (which you can incidentally use on consoles, heck, you can even install Linux on the PS3), the last thing I want to do is use a PC for pleasure.

I will address a couple of points, community content, and "indie" games.

Community content, is, IMO, PC's killer app over consoles at the present time, quite how, or if, this will ever be tackled is not clear, however, with most consoles these days having PC based storage soloutions, hard drives, the ability to read/write USB sticks etc, I really don't think it will be long before something along those lines is a reality.

Indie games, once the domain of PC's, now a viable option in the latest firmware of the xbox, community games are now able to be made by anyone, and uploaded to xbox live where gamers can buy or try out these indie creations.

Even the most ardent PC gaming fan must admit, that the future for console gaming does look bright.

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9fzM6FlZRM

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=MKwDUhtVqbU

I bet it'll get ignored.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Once they make a console with a mouse, a decent monitor (not a TV screen), that can play games, play music, edit videos, write dissertations, design components, manage company accounts, manage email, contacts and calenders (plus syncing with other hardware), record DVDs, program software (i.e. everything a PC can do) I'll stick with that. A console is far too limited to replace my PC, and I'm not going to spend money on both when one of them does everything.

This pretty much. I've got a Wii, but that's pretty much only to play Guitar Hero on which just wouldn't work in my PC room (where there's only just room for the desk and a chair) but have absolutely no need for an XBox or PS2/3, as half the games are either identical to or very similar to the games I can get for my PC and the other half aren't the kind of thing I want to play anyway.

Quote from danowat :

using a mouse / keyboard (which you can incidentally use on consoles

I'm interested - how many games support mouse and keyboard? I've known that the console itself would recognise them as consoles have been USB for years, but what about the games themselves?

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I'm interested - how many games support mouse and keyboard? I've known that the console itself would recognise them as consoles have been USB for years, but what about the games themselves?

I read on a COD forum that it is considered cheating, so it must work.

haha, are these people calling it cheating the same people that insist a pad is just as good as mouse & keyboard?

Quote from Crashgate3 :

haha, are these people calling it cheating the same people that insist a pad is just as good as mouse & keyboard?

Well, it's a bit like participating the Paralympics without being disabled in any way.
I don't like gamepads at all

I like to play on PCs because I can do other things at the same time. Browse, set up downloads, listen to music, watch videos, write crappy insim crap in php etc. Consoles don't invite me to do those things, even if they can. I'm still stuck in the 90s when PCs were PCs and consoles weren't

That said, I had a NES once upon a time and it was fun to play games on. Down the line, it just hasn't been my thing

Quote from The Widget :

You read it here first folks. Using a mouse in an FPS is like having two legs.

Hi Bob Smith.

Also, I agree with Dajmin.

Another thing that seems to have been unmentioned here is this, Stratergy Games.

There's a massive chunk of the market that absolutely love a good stratergy/management sim! I switched from my beloved playstation to pc in roughly 1999 when the likes of F1 Manager, and Grand Prix World were about. Tie that in with Sim City 3, and older games like Grand Prix Manager 2 and....

Well if I had been given all those games at the same time I would have had a trouser accident.

Console games just don't have that genre there because their controllers cannot beat a mouse + keyboard.

I would love to grab myself a PS3 if there was more quality driving and management sims.
Like the Formula 1 series of games! It got to 1997 and then it went to shit!
I strongly dislike FPS and these cheap Platform rip offs from movies, so for now, sadly, my PS3 stays off the wish list.


On a side note I found my original playstation (y'know the beautiful, big square one) in my loft recently, and I fell in love with the PSX all over again! The clicking & clunking noise of the PSX's buttons was like a beautiful sound you haven't heard for many years...

As i said... it'll get ignored... or did you see the two videos i've posted?

Why is it always the same argument about mouse/keyboard, while you can use them with modern consoles? Hmmmm....
http://johnfenzel.typepad.com/ ... 007/03/14/the3monkeys.jpg
Anyone?

I have played LOTR a lot on the xbox360 by the way... with a joypad. Worked perfectly fine. I bet the PC version was slightly more comfortable with a keyboard and mouse, but to be honest, it worked just fine with the joypad.

Thing is, apart from sniping and pistol in 1 etc Halo is so damn inaccurate, as it's set up for a gamepad, that I'd guess using a mouse wouldn't have a great benefit. Perhaps moreso in CoD, I don't know.

I cannot say anything regarding that, since i've never tried it myself.

Another point is, you could probably not change the sensitivity of the mouse... however, you can change the joypad sensitivity in most games, so this should work for the mouse aswell then.

It just annoyed me that people always bring up the same point about the mouse/keyboard issue, and somehow ignore the fact that you can actually use them.

Joypads in strategy games are a little clumsy (probably worse when you're used to a mouse and keyboard). It's either too slow to move/select your units fast enough or it's quick and too inaccurate to click the place you want to without circling it first.
And of course, assigning and selecting groups of units tends to be a little clunky as well. This is all probably because they were designed on PC and ported rather than being built specifically for the controller.

But they're working on it. Halo Wars apparently has a fantastic control system. They say they spent a full year getting the controls sorted before they even started on the game, which sounds like a good idea to me. Whether it'll work or not remains to be seen. EndWar had an interesting idea, but I felt silly talking to my units

Quote from jibber :

As i said... it'll get ignored... or did you see the two videos i've posted?

Youtube, german or otherwise, is blocked at work.