The world as a whole clearly does not agree.
What? Your games patch themselves when they’re not even running? WTF?
Steam regularly downloads patches and updates when it’s left on in the background.
This doesn’t hold true for all games of course but, as digital distribution becomes the norm for PC gamers, this sort of thing is more common.
Of course they do. Why would they need to be running? His Steam client has to be running, but the game certainly doesn’t.
Because in spite of all the PC technophiles on this board, it would still be a deathtrap for a mass market device.
Sorry. Maybe next console cycle. And I mean POST the one that’s “coming soon” because it’s not going to happen for that one.
The fact that the PC is the largest gaming platform world-wide, I think the word, as a whole in fact agrees with me.
Again, you are suffering from sample Bias. There’s nothing more convenient than opening up your browser and playing a game.
And additionally for the benefit of multiplayer gaming, Steam will not download game updates if you are in a game that was launched from Steam. It unfortunately doesn’t know if you are playing a multiplayer or single player game, so it just plays it safe and doesn’t download if you’re playing any Steam game.
If you don’t want game updates downloading at any random time, just close Steam.
I haven’t had the need to do this in a while, so it may have changed, but all Steam does is pause the download when a game launches; you can just alt-tab out and resume the updates, then go back to gaming.
I believe you can also opt out of updates on a per game basis. And you can resume downloads if playing a single player game by ALT+Tabbing to Steam and hitting “resume”.
So I think this whole thread can be pretty much boiled down to:
Steam is awesome.
You and I have gone around in circles on this point many time, but I just want to point out again that depending upon on how you measure the numbers, either side could come up on top on any given day.
I would argue that there’s basically no reason for consoles to exist if not for ease of use, so their very existence pretty much disproves your point.
That would not imply a massive imbalance in numbers, which is what Airk was essentially asserting.
I’m not so much saying that they aren’t easy to use, but rather, than the PC is in some ways easier (in other less so).
I gave examples as to why my day to day gaming on PC involves a lot less hassle than console gaming.
It’s just that to get to that point you need to know about things like PC hardware.
So I guess the real difference is in how easy it is for Joe Schmoe to say “I want a gaming PC/console” and be able to have one by going to some retailer.
Getting the console is easier, but in terms of the actual day to day of using it - I think a PC beats console.
And? Am I Airk? You know I don’t subscribe to the “PC gaming is dying” argument, but you also know that I think consoles surpass the PC in sales/money/however you want to measure it.
Things you have to do to game “seriously” on a PC:
#1) Get a PC that meets the system requirements of every game you might ever want to play, or be prepared to upgrade it
#2) Keep your drivers up to date, but not TOO up to date, lest someone release a driver that causes problems with game X.
#3) Leave it on all the time, or tolerate patches happening when you might want to play a game.
#4) Wait ~5 minutes for the thing to boot up if you don’t leave it on all the time
#5) Deal with the foibles of virtually no games actually having been tested with your exact configuration. (My favorite one remains the fact that I have to manually kill a process for my personal firewall everytime I want to start Fate of the World.)
#6) Accept the fact that basically no one is going to support your device if it fails.
Things you have to do to game “seriously” on a console:
#1) Have a console. They’re all pretty much the same, so you really don’t need to shop around. The absolute worst you can do here is getting a hard drive-less Xbox, which might, theoretically, require you to pay the difference in cost to acquire a hard drive later.
#2) Occasionally tolerate brief updates to your games or longer updates to your system, the latter of which are generally advertised in advance if you care to keep track.
#3) I guess sometimes you have to change disks too.
Again. Your technophile bias is preventing you from viewing this the way the average consumer does. Pretend the average gamer is only slightly more technical than your mom, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of why consoles continue to be easier for most people to use. The three “hurdles” for the console are just easier for people to deal with. They’re all used to changing discs in their DVD player already, so it really doesn’t make ANY difference to them that if someone invites them to play a game, it’ll take more than 5 seconds to get there. They’re never even going to stop to think “gee, I wish I didn’t have to change discs”. They never have to fiddle with the ingame settings because a game runs slowly on their aging video card. The world is not and probably NEVER will be at the point where “you just need to know about PC hardware”. In fact, I pay less attention to PC hardware now than I did five or ten years ago, and the average PC user still pays zero attention.
Is it POSSIBLE to be a PC gamer and have the whole experience at come close parity with a console? Sure - though a lot of that is due to adapting your lifestyle to the requirements of the platform. And it’s really very little like what the average person experiences.
Never, EVER underestimate the power of ease of use. People want an appliance. Consoles approach that, the PC really does not.
This makes no sense. Are you playing Borderlands 2 on your PS2?
Implying this is a common occurrence. And as I mentioned updating takes place in the background.
Heard of sleep mode? And updating issues are a constant source of consternation to console gamers, if forum boards are anything to go off of.
Sleep mode. And lol? 5 minutes? I just timed my PC at 15 seconds. That’s faster than the xbox 360.
Dell not going to support the PC you bought from them?
They can’t fiddle at all. And so they end up with games that have frame rate issues, look like @ss and run at sub-HD.
Seriously, most of this stuff is so trivial or not an issue that your list sounds like someone complaining about making coffee in the morning. “FIRST you have to get the coffee… THEN you have to open the bag unless you have some magic bag opening device…”
#3 makes almost no sense to me since, as mentioned, game patching doesn’t interfere with game play since the patches will automatically pauses when you start a game (unless you’re trying to play the title actively being patched but you can’t do that with a console either).
I don’t have any issue with consoles. My kids has a PS3 and he likes it just fine. I prefer my PC – not least of which because, for what he spent on MW3 and Skyrim, I have twenty wide-release professional game titles.
Mentioning Skyrim reminds me… on the rare occassions I get a game that doesn’t work right out of the “box”, I go online and find a solution. Someone tells me to edit an .ini file or to update a driver. When Skyrim is a $60 buggy mess on the PS3, you just suck it up and deal with it for five months until it’s patched because that’s your sole option. Personally, I’d rather go through the sacrifice of spending fifteen seconds adding a line to an .ini file but I understand that alone scares people off.
I have no idea how to edit an .ini file. I’ve tried asking around about how to do this and similar things. While I get friendly advice, it all assumes that I have prior knowledge of stuff. After going through a series of questions and answers, and getting nowhere, for a week, I give up and go play something else.
It’s like my XBox 360. When I called in for tech support, the CSR kept using words and phrases that I didn’t understand. I had no clue what the “dashboard” was. To me, a dashboard is something that’s in a car.
As a matter of fact, I’ve pretty much given up on playing new games. I’m tired of fussing with a game for two hours, or two days, just to learn how to fix it. I’ve got a PS2, I’ve got a NES/SNES clone, and I have an XBox 360. The XBox never gets used…and I was very excited about getting it, I was ready to love it to pieces.
I just want to play my games. I want good gameplay, I don’t care if a game isn’t the prettiest game ever. M.U.L.E. was graphically quite primitive, so was FFVI, but both had amazing game play.
Bottom line, when I want to play a game, I don’t want to have to sit down, do research, ask questions on a message board or wait for a CSR to apologize and then engage me in active listening. I just want to put the game disk or cart in the console or computer and play the game. If I want to work at something, then I wouldn’t be wanting to play a game. I know that some people enjoy the challenge of finding just the right tweaks. But that’s too much like work to me.
I hear solitaire with real playing cards is fascinating. Really, Lynn, that post sounds worse than a complaint that your VCR is still flashing 12:00.
The Dashboard is the start screen your Xbox 360 shows after you power it up. The fact that you don’t know that means you never bothered to ask the rep after he started talking about it as MS is very proud of the 360’s dashboard.
To edit an .ini file, you open it up in notepad and edit it as you would any other text file. For example, you might change the line in the file that says “PLAYINTROMOVIE=TRUE” to “PLAYINTROMOVIE=FALSE” because you’re tired of having to watch the intro movie.