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You seem to know what you're talking about, so can I ask a very simple question: Why do people use consoles? I don't get it. Computers are better in every way

You seem to know what you're talking about, so can I ask a very simple question: Why do people use consoles? I don't get it. Computers are better in every way [1], plus you don't have corporations limiting access. [1] The ways: 1. Mice/Keyboard vs. Clumsy controllers. 2. Superior hardware. 3. You already have one, so no new purchases needed. 4. A vastly greater array of games to choose from. 5. Almost always cheaper games.

groby_b 15y ago
Speaking as both an avid gamer and an (ex) game dev: Because consoles are _easy_. You plop them into your entertainment center, and you're done. No need to maintain the latest security patches, find just the right combo of drivers to make it work, etc. Not to mention the wonderful "buy yet another graphics card, please - your previous one you bought 6 months ago is too slow". They also take less space than PCs. "Clumsy controllers" are easy to set up. Keyboard and mouse really require some dedicated space. (Yes, you could pull them out when you need them. It's annoying as heck) From the developers point of view: The game looks and feels the same for every single player out there. I don't need to worry about dozens of graphics fallback paths depending on what hardware you use. So, for everybody involved in the game development cycle, they're more convenient. All your points still hold, but they don't matter in the face of convenience. Not for the average person, at least.
Strom 15y ago
Consoles are much cheaper. They are also a lot easier to use. No need to install an anti-virus, worry about having the latest drivers, or having background programs eat up all the resources and thus receive a bad gaming experience. Also, the time it takes to boot up a console and start playing takes seconds. Booting up an old windows install on a HDD takes forever. Superior hardware on the PC, sure. But it's locked behind a mountain of drivers. On the console, you can get much more direct access. This means that some stuff is actually faster on XBox360 than a brand new 7000 series radeon.
mtinkerhess 15y ago
I'll give this a shot: > Mice/Keyboard vs. Clumsy controllers. For many types of games, I prefer a controller to a mouse and keyboard. On consoles, the controllers are designed to be used to play games. On computers, the games are designed to be played with a mouse and keyboard. > Superior hardware. It doesn't matter, if all the games with a big enough budget to take advantage of that hardware are also coming out on the consoles. Also, developers can leverage more out of the limited capabilities of a console because of their uniform hardware, whereas with computers they have to take into account a range of hardware and that precludes them leveraging those capabilities as much. > You already have one, so no new purchases needed. Many computers aren't gaming rigs. If you don't have a gaming rig, then a new console is a cheaper option than a gaming computer. It may even be the case that it's cheaper to get a general-purpose computer plus a console than to get one specialized gaming computer. > A vastly greater array of games to choose from. Doesn't matter if enough of the games that you want to play are coming out on consoles too. > Almost always cheaper games. But the console hardware is cheaper, so that balances out (depending out many games you buy). And you can get many games that are more than about a year old for $10-20. Not as cheap as a Steam sale, but getting close.
mitchty 15y ago
You might find John Carmack's 2011 quakecon keynote video interesting, he addresses a fair amount of your questions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgYG-_ha28 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgYG-_ha28
hythloday 15y ago
Other people probably answered this better than I did, but I typed it out before I saw, so, damnit, I'm going to post it. :-p I think there are a bunch of differences, which you've mainly seen, but perhaps have a flip-side to them you haven't considered. The only point you have maybe overlooked is tribalism (brand loyalty) - there are people who have been buying Nintendo consoles for literally 30 years. That's quite a bit of marketing momentum. Controllers: I would guess that you're mainly an RTS or FPS player - FPS, at a guess. Certain genres work much better on controllers - fighting games, racing games, and to a lesser extend adventure games. I consider mouse/keyboard strictly superior (by a great deal) to controllers for FPS, but only in a competitive way - for actually playing a game with them I'm indifferent. (Can't say the same for RTSs, of course.) Superior hardware is a double-edge sword. Consoles are generally released with pretty top-end kit (e.g. the 360 launched with 3 3.2GHz processors in 2005, which despite them being in-order was pretty awesome at the time) but of course are overtaken by generalized hardware in time. The PC is an (unbelievably) fragmented market, though, and consoles generally have specialized hardware to make them more compelling (e.g. the 360's shared memory bus between the processors and the GPU). Coupled with additional experience, time you can devote to a single platform, and tooling, consoles hold their own performance-wise much longer than the specs would tell you. Not unrelated to the last point, sure, everyone has a PC, but most people don't have one capable of playing games that look as good as the ones on their console, and maybe don't have the inclination or knowledge to upgrade their PC to a point where they do. Additionally, maintaining a PC is just harder work than maintaining a console, and most people don't have PCs set up to output to their TV. I hate to break it to you, but most people don't care about the choice of games they have...they want to play maybe 3-5 games they know of, and don't care about getting indie games from Steam or independently. Similarly I don't think many people buy enough games (especially considering the healthy console second-hand market) to justify the purchase of a PC on cost.
paulhauggis 15y ago
"Why do people use consoles? " I'm going to guess the #1 reason is ease of compatibility. You only have one set of hardware on an Xbox..but a ton of different types of hardware on a PC. Piracy might also be an issue. Generally, console games are much more difficult to pirate. In fact, After the Xbox 360 came out, I don't know anyone that pirates the games. But everyone I know pirates PC games.

groby_b 15y ago

Speaking as both an avid gamer and an (ex) game dev: Because consoles are _easy_. You plop them into your entertainment center, and you're done. No need to maintain the latest security patches, find just the right combo of drivers to make it work, etc. Not to mention the wonderful "buy yet another graphics card, please - your previous one you bought 6 months ago is too slow". They also take less space than PCs. "Clumsy controllers" are easy to set up. Keyboard and mouse really require some dedicated space. (Yes, you could pull them out when you need them. It's annoying as heck) From the developers point of view: The game looks and feels the same for every single player out there. I don't need to worry about dozens of graphics fallback paths depending on what hardware you use. So, for everybody involved in the game development cycle, they're more convenient. All your points still hold, but they don't matter in the face of convenience. Not for the average person, at least.

Strom 15y ago

Consoles are much cheaper. They are also a lot easier to use. No need to install an anti-virus, worry about having the latest drivers, or having background programs eat up all the resources and thus receive a bad gaming experience. Also, the time it takes to boot up a console and start playing takes seconds. Booting up an old windows install on a HDD takes forever. Superior hardware on the PC, sure. But it's locked behind a mountain of drivers. On the console, you can get much more direct access. This means that some stuff is actually faster on XBox360 than a brand new 7000 series radeon.

mtinkerhess 15y ago

I'll give this a shot: > Mice/Keyboard vs. Clumsy controllers. For many types of games, I prefer a controller to a mouse and keyboard. On consoles, the controllers are designed to be used to play games. On computers, the games are designed to be played with a mouse and keyboard. > Superior hardware. It doesn't matter, if all the games with a big enough budget to take advantage of that hardware are also coming out on the consoles. Also, developers can leverage more out of the limited capabilities of a console because of their uniform hardware, whereas with computers they have to take into account a range of hardware and that precludes them leveraging those capabilities as much. > You already have one, so no new purchases needed. Many computers aren't gaming rigs. If you don't have a gaming rig, then a new console is a cheaper option than a gaming computer. It may even be the case that it's cheaper to get a general-purpose computer plus a console than to get one specialized gaming computer. > A vastly greater array of games to choose from. Doesn't matter if enough of the games that you want to play are coming out on consoles too. > Almost always cheaper games. But the console hardware is cheaper, so that balances out (depending out many games you buy). And you can get many games that are more than about a year old for $10-20. Not as cheap as a Steam sale, but getting close.

mitchty 15y ago

You might find John Carmack's 2011 quakecon keynote video interesting, he addresses a fair amount of your questions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgYG-_ha28 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgYG-_ha28

hythloday 15y ago

Other people probably answered this better than I did, but I typed it out before I saw, so, damnit, I'm going to post it. :-p I think there are a bunch of differences, which you've mainly seen, but perhaps have a flip-side to them you haven't considered. The only point you have maybe overlooked is tribalism (brand loyalty) - there are people who have been buying Nintendo consoles for literally 30 years. That's quite a bit of marketing momentum. Controllers: I would guess that you're mainly an RTS or FPS player - FPS, at a guess. Certain genres work much better on controllers - fighting games, racing games, and to a lesser extend adventure games. I consider mouse/keyboard strictly superior (by a great deal) to controllers for FPS, but only in a competitive way - for actually playing a game with them I'm indifferent. (Can't say the same for RTSs, of course.) Superior hardware is a double-edge sword. Consoles are generally released with pretty top-end kit (e.g. the 360 launched with 3 3.2GHz processors in 2005, which despite them being in-order was pretty awesome at the time) but of course are overtaken by generalized hardware in time. The PC is an (unbelievably) fragmented market, though, and consoles generally have specialized hardware to make them more compelling (e.g. the 360's shared memory bus between the processors and the GPU). Coupled with additional experience, time you can devote to a single platform, and tooling, consoles hold their own performance-wise much longer than the specs would tell you. Not unrelated to the last point, sure, everyone has a PC, but most people don't have one capable of playing games that look as good as the ones on their console, and maybe don't have the inclination or knowledge to upgrade their PC to a point where they do. Additionally, maintaining a PC is just harder work than maintaining a console, and most people don't have PCs set up to output to their TV. I hate to break it to you, but most people don't care about the choice of games they have...they want to play maybe 3-5 games they know of, and don't care about getting indie games from Steam or independently. Similarly I don't think many people buy enough games (especially considering the healthy console second-hand market) to justify the purchase of a PC on cost.

paulhauggis 15y ago

"Why do people use consoles? " I'm going to guess the #1 reason is ease of compatibility. You only have one set of hardware on an Xbox..but a ton of different types of hardware on a PC. Piracy might also be an issue. Generally, console games are much more difficult to pirate. In fact, After the Xbox 360 came out, I don't know anyone that pirates the games. But everyone I know pirates PC games.