5 ms·

Why can't you turn on your pc and play games?

ghaff 4y ago
I think there was a big difference between the care and feeding of a Windows system and a console. Not that I really use a Windows machine at this point, but my sense is that there's not a big gap these days.
coldpie 4y ago
Driver updates. OS updates. Driver update broke HDMI. OS update broke my controller config. Steam update broke my controller config. Bluetooth controller randomly unpairs every other week. Game picks the wrong sound device so now it's coming out of the TV instead of my wireless headphones. Some game doesn't work with gamepad so I guess I need a wireless kb/m now, too. Oop game lost focus because of a Chrome update dialog, guess I need to alt-tab back into it, shit the keyboard batteries are dead... PC gaming sucks.
- izzydata 4y ago
  There is no fundamental reason why a PC can't be made to be like a console due to the fact that consoles are just PCs. It's pretty darn simple already, but Microsoft could take it one step further by having some kind of boot into gaming mode that does everything for you.
  - lttlrck 4y ago
    That'd be great but they would still have all the driver luggage.
- amcoastal 4y ago
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > Oop game lost focus because of a Chrome update dialog This is particularly irksome on the Macbook when playing Minecraft because you can't just CMD-Tab back in (because Mojang's UI competence is on par with their optimisation competence) - you have to click out of the not-visible Minecraft and then click on it in the dock. (CMD-Tab only works when it's not fullscreen.)
- dmonitor 4y ago
  Consoles need updates too. Never had a driver update break HDMI, and I can't see how that is a thing in current year. Steam fixed controllers with their controller API. Changing the sound device is two button clicks. Consoles have system updates that remove features. Consoles add advertisements to the home screen. They can only play games approved by the hardware manufacturer, from their store, and pay their 30% "subsidize our hardware" tax. You have to pay $60/yr to use your own internet. You have to use their online chat system. You can't host private servers. You can't easily share your screen or have a second display for social features. You have to use a controller for all games, and if a game doesn't support controllers it just never gets ported. You also can't install mods, do any serious creative work, or emulate games from competitor's systems. Console gaming sucks
  - coldpie 4y ago
    None of that matters to me. I just want to turn the thing on and play some Halo.
  - lttlrck 4y ago
    It's almost as if different people like different things?
ericmay 4y ago
For me it's because then I have to go buy and assemble a PC + another monitor and buy another desk and a set of peripherals. Whereas an Xbox Series X I just plug in to my TV and it works great, especially with GamePass, and it's way cheaper.
sanedigital 4y ago
I'm a working father. I get maybe 20-30 minutes a month where I can play games. Previously, I had a PC that never got turned on except for gaming. When I would sit down to play, I would have to wade through ~30 minutes of OS updates, Steam updates, and then game updates. Every. Single. Time. I got my son a PS5 for Christmas last year. I was able to play and beat Elden Ring over the course of a few months because I could sit down, open the game within ~30 seconds, and then go back to my responsibilities. PCs are great, but they'll never compete with the effortless convenience of consoles.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  > I get maybe 20-30 minutes a month where I can play games. > I was able to play and beat Elden Ring over the course of a few months I congratulate you on beating Elden Ring over a few 20-30 minute sessions. > Previously, I had a PC that never got turned on except for gaming. When I would sit down to play, I would have to wade through ~30 minutes of OS updates, Steam updates, and then game updates. Every. Single. Time. Idk man. To me this sounds like nonsense. I've got a big desktop machine I turn on once every couple of months to check out VR stuff and this doesn't resonate with me at all. OS updates, Steam Updates, and Game updates are very negligible to me. 30 minutes sounds very wrong.
  - ChoGGi 4y ago
    30m sounds about right to me (with crappy internet).
    - zimpenfish 4y ago
      I have good internet and Steam updating on Windows 10 is always 10+ minutes for me (during which time the rest of the machine is mildly unresponsive.)
- yourusername 4y ago
  You could get the same experience by just setting up a power schedule on your PC so it turns on to update the OS and Steam library once in a while. If your son wasn't using that PS5 you would have the exact same experience there with first being forced to sit through updates for both the OS and games before you could get into it.
_gabe_ 4y ago
I don't know about OP, but I've got a pretty powerful PC, and Windows loves to suck up unnecessary resources. The Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) routinely uses 1 whole GB out of my 8 GB of VRAM. That's not cool. So I have to go through a bunch of settings windows then tell windows to turn off all of it's hardware accelerated graphics rendering features for the OS to get dwm.exe to consume a more reasonable (I guess...) 250 MB of my VRAM. Not only that, but windows anti-virus scanner runs all the time and routinely consumes about 20% of my CPU for no reason. I have yet to find a way to turn that off for a specified time period. Consoles are built for games, so you can safely assume they're not going to consume unnecessary resources and tank your games performance. Games are (usually) built for consoles, so you can safely assume the game will be able to utilize the hardware much more efficiently than your PC that it has no clue about all the hardware/system specs. That's just a couple reasons I can think of for not being able to just play a game on your PC, and I'm sure other people have more examples.
green-eclipse 4y ago
Surely a person with the username "spywaregorilla" can understand the annoying overhead involved in owning and running a Microsoft Windows PC.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy I really don't think there's any overhead with running a windows PC...
haunter 4y ago
Not sure why are getting dowvoted. Honestly every MS thread here on HN is a shit show. Maybe I live in a fairy land but I never ever had a problem. Cold boot Windows 10 + launching any game and I'm in the main menu in 50s (and I only have an i7-7700 + GTX 1070). Have a PS5 right next to me and I can't start games faster at all. The claims here in the comments are especially baffling when I assume HN is a very technically capable audience. Maybe I was wrong.
- _gabe_ 4y ago
  > The claims here in the comments are especially baffling when I assume HN is a very technically capable audience. It seems like all the comments are from technically competent people. They seem to indicate that they know exactly what causes the issues and they know how to solve them. Just because you're technically capable doesn't mean you want to deal with Windows BS everytime you want to game, and this is coming from a primarily MS centered developer. I don't own any apple products and I only have Linux installed on a laptop I never use anymore. My desktop and work laptop are Windows. And windows still annoys me to no end when it sucks unnecessary resources, forces updates, makes connecting any Bluetooth devices a major PITA, can screw up your performance if you installed the wrong drivers, and everything else the other comments mentioned.
  - haunter 4y ago
    >doesn't mean you want to deal with Windows BS everytime you want to game See this is what I don't get maybe that's where I'm an exception and in the extreme minority. But everytime? Maybe you need 30-40 mins to setup a Windows 10 PC "properly" to your taste but after that you barely need to touch anything and it will just work. If anything I do agree that Windows has _too many options_ and some of them are overlapping with each other + confusing the user. See the Windows 10 System Settings window when the classic (Win 7) Control Panel also exist AND on top of that you can override all of them with the Group Policy Editor (which imo the best way to handle the system)
- MikusR 4y ago
  That's because they are using macbooks. And only turn their couple year old PC once a year to play a game.
zimpenfish 4y ago
From turning on my PC to being able to play is 1) 2 minutes to get to a Windows login; 2) 1-3 minutes to get to a desktop; 3) 10-20 minutes whilst {Steam updates, GOG updates, Oculus starts, GeForce desktop deigns to launch, etc.} making everything else unresponsive; 4) 2-5 minutes for a game to start - assuming it does, I think I'm currently running 50-50 on Binding of Isaac launching correctly vs just hanging. Minecraft is even worse - starting ManyMC is under a minute (good) but then launching (a medium-ly modded) Minecraft is sometimes 15 minutes of wait. In contrast, the same version with the same mods on my M1 Macbook Pro is under a minute (including starting the launcher.)
- MikusR 4y ago
  Even on hdd it doesn't take 5 minutes to get to desktop.
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    > Even on hdd it doesn't take 5 minutes to get to desktop. FOR YOU. For me, it can (and I am on hdd.) Don't presume that your experience is the experience of everyone - there's literally no way that can be true.
    - MikusR 4y ago
      That means that something is wrong with your setup. Long startup times can be caused by badblocks in waiting on your hdd.
      - zimpenfish 4y ago
        > Long startup times can be caused by badblocks Windows reports (as of yesterday afternoon) no problems with any of my drives. > That means that something is wrong with your setup. Sure, possibly, but I installed Windows 10 on a clean drive in a new PC a couple of years back and if that's "setup wrong", how the hell is anyone supposed to get it right?

I think there was a big difference between the care and feeding of a Windows system and a console. Not that I really use a Windows machine at this point, but my sense is that there's not a big gap these days.

coldpie 4y ago

Driver updates. OS updates. Driver update broke HDMI. OS update broke my controller config. Steam update broke my controller config. Bluetooth controller randomly unpairs every other week. Game picks the wrong sound device so now it's coming out of the TV instead of my wireless headphones. Some game doesn't work with gamepad so I guess I need a wireless kb/m now, too. Oop game lost focus because of a Chrome update dialog, guess I need to alt-tab back into it, shit the keyboard batteries are dead... PC gaming sucks.

izzydata 4y ago
There is no fundamental reason why a PC can't be made to be like a console due to the fact that consoles are just PCs. It's pretty darn simple already, but Microsoft could take it one step further by having some kind of boot into gaming mode that does everything for you.
- lttlrck 4y ago
  That'd be great but they would still have all the driver luggage.
amcoastal 4y ago
zimpenfish 4y ago
> Oop game lost focus because of a Chrome update dialog This is particularly irksome on the Macbook when playing Minecraft because you can't just CMD-Tab back in (because Mojang's UI competence is on par with their optimisation competence) - you have to click out of the not-visible Minecraft and then click on it in the dock. (CMD-Tab only works when it's not fullscreen.)
dmonitor 4y ago
Consoles need updates too. Never had a driver update break HDMI, and I can't see how that is a thing in current year. Steam fixed controllers with their controller API. Changing the sound device is two button clicks. Consoles have system updates that remove features. Consoles add advertisements to the home screen. They can only play games approved by the hardware manufacturer, from their store, and pay their 30% "subsidize our hardware" tax. You have to pay $60/yr to use your own internet. You have to use their online chat system. You can't host private servers. You can't easily share your screen or have a second display for social features. You have to use a controller for all games, and if a game doesn't support controllers it just never gets ported. You also can't install mods, do any serious creative work, or emulate games from competitor's systems. Console gaming sucks
- coldpie 4y ago
  None of that matters to me. I just want to turn the thing on and play some Halo.
- lttlrck 4y ago
  It's almost as if different people like different things?

ericmay 4y ago

For me it's because then I have to go buy and assemble a PC + another monitor and buy another desk and a set of peripherals. Whereas an Xbox Series X I just plug in to my TV and it works great, especially with GamePass, and it's way cheaper.

sanedigital 4y ago

I'm a working father. I get maybe 20-30 minutes a month where I can play games. Previously, I had a PC that never got turned on except for gaming. When I would sit down to play, I would have to wade through ~30 minutes of OS updates, Steam updates, and then game updates. Every. Single. Time. I got my son a PS5 for Christmas last year. I was able to play and beat Elden Ring over the course of a few months because I could sit down, open the game within ~30 seconds, and then go back to my responsibilities. PCs are great, but they'll never compete with the effortless convenience of consoles.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
> I get maybe 20-30 minutes a month where I can play games. > I was able to play and beat Elden Ring over the course of a few months I congratulate you on beating Elden Ring over a few 20-30 minute sessions. > Previously, I had a PC that never got turned on except for gaming. When I would sit down to play, I would have to wade through ~30 minutes of OS updates, Steam updates, and then game updates. Every. Single. Time. Idk man. To me this sounds like nonsense. I've got a big desktop machine I turn on once every couple of months to check out VR stuff and this doesn't resonate with me at all. OS updates, Steam Updates, and Game updates are very negligible to me. 30 minutes sounds very wrong.
- ChoGGi 4y ago
  30m sounds about right to me (with crappy internet).
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    I have good internet and Steam updating on Windows 10 is always 10+ minutes for me (during which time the rest of the machine is mildly unresponsive.)
yourusername 4y ago
You could get the same experience by just setting up a power schedule on your PC so it turns on to update the OS and Steam library once in a while. If your son wasn't using that PS5 you would have the exact same experience there with first being forced to sit through updates for both the OS and games before you could get into it.

_gabe_ 4y ago

I don't know about OP, but I've got a pretty powerful PC, and Windows loves to suck up unnecessary resources. The Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) routinely uses 1 whole GB out of my 8 GB of VRAM. That's not cool. So I have to go through a bunch of settings windows then tell windows to turn off all of it's hardware accelerated graphics rendering features for the OS to get dwm.exe to consume a more reasonable (I guess...) 250 MB of my VRAM. Not only that, but windows anti-virus scanner runs all the time and routinely consumes about 20% of my CPU for no reason. I have yet to find a way to turn that off for a specified time period. Consoles are built for games, so you can safely assume they're not going to consume unnecessary resources and tank your games performance. Games are (usually) built for consoles, so you can safely assume the game will be able to utilize the hardware much more efficiently than your PC that it has no clue about all the hardware/system specs. That's just a couple reasons I can think of for not being able to just play a game on your PC, and I'm sure other people have more examples.

green-eclipse 4y ago

Surely a person with the username "spywaregorilla" can understand the annoying overhead involved in owning and running a Microsoft Windows PC.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy I really don't think there's any overhead with running a windows PC...

haunter 4y ago

Not sure why are getting dowvoted. Honestly every MS thread here on HN is a shit show. Maybe I live in a fairy land but I never ever had a problem. Cold boot Windows 10 + launching any game and I'm in the main menu in 50s (and I only have an i7-7700 + GTX 1070). Have a PS5 right next to me and I can't start games faster at all. The claims here in the comments are especially baffling when I assume HN is a very technically capable audience. Maybe I was wrong.

_gabe_ 4y ago
> The claims here in the comments are especially baffling when I assume HN is a very technically capable audience. It seems like all the comments are from technically competent people. They seem to indicate that they know exactly what causes the issues and they know how to solve them. Just because you're technically capable doesn't mean you want to deal with Windows BS everytime you want to game, and this is coming from a primarily MS centered developer. I don't own any apple products and I only have Linux installed on a laptop I never use anymore. My desktop and work laptop are Windows. And windows still annoys me to no end when it sucks unnecessary resources, forces updates, makes connecting any Bluetooth devices a major PITA, can screw up your performance if you installed the wrong drivers, and everything else the other comments mentioned.
- haunter 4y ago
  >doesn't mean you want to deal with Windows BS everytime you want to game See this is what I don't get maybe that's where I'm an exception and in the extreme minority. But everytime? Maybe you need 30-40 mins to setup a Windows 10 PC "properly" to your taste but after that you barely need to touch anything and it will just work. If anything I do agree that Windows has _too many options_ and some of them are overlapping with each other + confusing the user. See the Windows 10 System Settings window when the classic (Win 7) Control Panel also exist AND on top of that you can override all of them with the Group Policy Editor (which imo the best way to handle the system)
MikusR 4y ago
That's because they are using macbooks. And only turn their couple year old PC once a year to play a game.

zimpenfish 4y ago

From turning on my PC to being able to play is 1) 2 minutes to get to a Windows login; 2) 1-3 minutes to get to a desktop; 3) 10-20 minutes whilst {Steam updates, GOG updates, Oculus starts, GeForce desktop deigns to launch, etc.} making everything else unresponsive; 4) 2-5 minutes for a game to start - assuming it does, I think I'm currently running 50-50 on Binding of Isaac launching correctly vs just hanging. Minecraft is even worse - starting ManyMC is under a minute (good) but then launching (a medium-ly modded) Minecraft is sometimes 15 minutes of wait. In contrast, the same version with the same mods on my M1 Macbook Pro is under a minute (including starting the launcher.)

MikusR 4y ago
Even on hdd it doesn't take 5 minutes to get to desktop.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > Even on hdd it doesn't take 5 minutes to get to desktop. FOR YOU. For me, it can (and I am on hdd.) Don't presume that your experience is the experience of everyone - there's literally no way that can be true.
  - MikusR 4y ago
    That means that something is wrong with your setup. Long startup times can be caused by badblocks in waiting on your hdd.
    - zimpenfish 4y ago
      > Long startup times can be caused by badblocks Windows reports (as of yesterday afternoon) no problems with any of my drives. > That means that something is wrong with your setup. Sure, possibly, but I installed Windows 10 on a clean drive in a new PC a couple of years back and if that's "setup wrong", how the hell is anyone supposed to get it right?