Xbox 360, I’m one of two people in the world who doesn’t care about modding. The other person lives in the Amazon and has never seen a computer game or a white person.
I here this from time to time… but it makes no sense to me. In EVERY household that I äm familiar with (my own, friends, family, etc) its the TV that gets bogarded. The PC sees a lot less traffic because of tablets, smart phones, etc.´I think my wife would throw my ass out if I started doing any large portions of my gaming on the TV.
We have multiple TVs, but only one PC.
I hadn’t even heard of the mods till the recent thread.
Elder Scrolls games without mods are like mint ice cream without chocolate chips. Sure, it is still tasty, but so much better with the extra kick.
Don’t like mint ice cream. How much for a decent gaming computer? I’m perfectly happy with my bare bones laptop that runs the Internet just fine. I can not justify the costs of an expensive computer just to play games. Especially since I’ve been burned before. I’ll stick to consoles.
A computer that can play games like a console? a few hundred bucks. You cna probably build one yourself for the price of a brand new, best model console. Except, it would be a PC, not just a gaming box.
But if you were going PC, I dont think most people would want a “console” experiece. 1080p gaming, 60 FPS, better graphics etc, will run you closer to the $600 to $900 area.
PC gaming tends to be cheaper in the long run as well. If I were to have stuck to consoles not only would I have missed out on some incredible PC games, but my current 300 game library would have sent me to the poor house. Not that it didnt cost me quite a bit, but thanks to entire publisher catalogs being on sale on Steam, Gamefly, GOG.com, Impulse, Amazon, etc, it was a tenth fo the price it would have cost me if I were a console gamer.
course thats going to come down to just how many games you tend to play.
I think the barrier to entry on the PC is knowledge of PCs and the higher initial cost. Not sure what to do about the latter, console have BILLIONS of dollars being spent to subsidize the hardware. Its incredible that PC gaming is as popular as it is (largest market vs any single console about 75% of entire console market and thats not counting casual gaming on the PC) and yet no one is spending that kind of money promoting PC gaming or subsidizing hardware.
Steam appears interested in doing somehting about the former issue. They are apparently coming out with a set of specs for a PC guaranteed (I dont know the nature of the guarantee) to work with all the latest games and of course, Steam. They are also adding a TV friendly version of the Steam software.
So people will be able ot simply look for the Steam symbol and have that PC work right out of the box with all the latest games.
It would be cool if they had some sort of subsidizing feature too, like offer steam bucks for people who purchase such systems.
How much for a laptop that does the same?
Fallout: New Vegas killed me off regarding Bethesda games and consoles. So PC it is. And since getting into WoW (very late to the party), SW:TOR and Skyrim, I am more of a PC gamer these days.
I think the latter ($600-$900) figure is more accurate, and that’s leaving out the monitor. My local shop sells a budget gamer PC for $790, no monitor, no OS. I can pick up an Xbox for a lot less (under $200 on eBay) and hook it up to the TV.
I tend to agree, especially because I’m a fan of a few freeware games, notably Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. However, you’re overlooking the fact that you can also buy, legally and with a good deal of confidence, console games second-hand, not to mention the trade-in scheme game shops run.
I think you’re drawing too big a distinction between the platforms here. The marketing for console games that are also on the PC is helps sales for the PC versions, right? Why wouldn’t it?
I cut the bit about Steam, but will note that it’s not universally beloved. I don’t have a problem with it myself, but it’s not uncommon in a thread devoted to a PC game for somebody to bitch about Steam.
In a perfect world, or maybe just a world where I was more affluent and could devote more time to games, I’d probably play PC games almost exclusively. I’ve owned a few consoles over the years, and while they were good, they tend not to have the sort of games I like best. Console ports of strategy games have been weak.
But it’s not a perfect world for me and I have a lot of other considerations than “what would give me the best gaming experience”? My stepson is going to want an Xbox because that’s what his friends have. We only want to have one desktop in the house-- I’d like another one, my wife doesn’t-- so monopolizing it is a potential problem. (Following the suggestion that I run the PC on the TV would really cause issues.) The desktop we do have is old, I’d like to get a new one, thought hard about it when Civ V came out, but there were other things to consider, like everything else that costs money. Glad I didn’t now, because Civ V wasn’t very good compared to Civ IV BTS from what I’ve seen of it.
I’ve been pretty pleased with how well the Xbox does, really. Yes, there’s longer loading times. If you actually count how long it takes, it’s about 15 seconds or something. I can play on the couch and not tie up the desktop. It just works and I don’t have to dick around with drivers and patches like I used to. The selection of titles is good, I can pick up the games cheap if I shop around, and it’s easy to play with somebody else offline.
Yeah, I’ll get back to PC gaming someday. For the time being, like a lot of gamers, I’m happy with a console.
I’m not implying pc gaming is for everyone. But it is the superior experience. 15 seconds every few minutes adds up, not to mention that it’s often much more than 15 seconds. Look for mass effect 2 loading times pc vs console and you’ll find a vid or two that will have you laughing. A single transition from one level of the same ship to another took over 40 seconds vs .5 on the pc. This a transition that had to be taken MUTIPLE times in a single play session.
Personally, again people might want different things out of their games, I play games like mass effect and skyrim to be immersed in a cinematic experience. Jaggies, pixelated textures, fog worlds due to short view distances, low detail meshes, lighting models that are almost a decade old, and chugging along at 20 to30 fps completely takes me out of the experience.
But that superior experience isn’t for everyone, for various reasons, some of which you’ve mentioned.
I can’t play FPS with joystick, so PC it is for me. I also love to customize my games with mods.
Then there’s just no talking with you. 
It’s not uncommon in a thread devoted to bacon for somebody to bitch about bacon. It’s the internet. You’re always going to find a group who’ll bitch about anything, and think themselves superior for it. Nothing in life is liked by 100% of the people.
Personally, I was an early adopter of Steam, and I love it.
It’s a Catch-22: You probably could build a computer with equivalent specs to an Xbox 360 for around an Xbox 360 price. The issue is that it likely wouldn’t run most modern games. The Xbox 360 is old, old hardware and stuff that’s obsolete by PC standards and game developers aren’t developing for ten year old PCs these days. PC gamers are looking for a “better” experience and games are designed around that and for more expensive systems.
Better make it “one of three.” Then again, I’ve always been a big fan of vanilla ice cream so “plain vanilla” suits me fine.
I have it for ps3 simply because it’s the system I play. My computer may (big may) be able to handle a scaled down version, but the playstation will certainly handle it and has done an admirable job. No major glitches aside from a couple of freezes and an NPC that now has two clones of himself standing right next to himself.
Graphics just aren’t that important to me anymore. I play Skyrim and Fallout and Mass Effect because they have amazing, engaging stories. The graphics are secondary to that. I’m playing Morrowind on my PC and while I notice the bad graphics, they don’t detract from it being a phenomenal game.
I’ll stick with my 360. My couch is more comfortable than my (folding metal) computer chair, and I can play my 360 after my wife goes to bed, unlike the in-bedroom PC.
So… the ‘others’ are just a buncha jokesters I’m guessing?
Maybe they’re just smart enough to read the source code and run it in their heads. 