Topic: Do you think consoles still have any edge over PC?

Hey. I am a PC gamer, but i don't want you to get offended or anything, i just wanted to hear people's opinions from the other side of the barricade. Hopefully, that's all right. For the record, i have owned a PS1 and still have a PS3, so i do have some experience with consoles.

So the way i see it, there are 3 main things where consoles excel over PC, in theory. The first one is the price. Buying a console is usually cheaper than buying a PC. Second, the games work out of the box, without any access to the internet. You can never put your console online and it will still work fine. This is contrary to PC where most retail copies are just Steam/GOG/Uplay/Origin/EGS codes. You can sell the game to your friend, or lend it to them. Lastly, in theory, a console should last you the better part of the decade, while a 7-year old PC isn't of much use, unless you play in 1080p and it was VERY high-end when it was first built.

So even as a PC player, i can see consoles can seem superior to other platforms.

However, i think that these things have become less and less relevant recently. The first point holds up, i can understand that a casual gamer, or a person strapped for cash, may prefer console to PC due to price. But the 2nd and 3rd don't. Technically, you can still never put your console online, but that way you are shooting yourself in the foot because many AAA games require large patches to work correctly. This isn't 2006 anymore. Cyberpunk fiasco aside, it's hard to encounter an AAA title that doesn't have at least a little bit of problems and bugs on day one. If you want to get the best experience for the 40-70 dollars you have paid, then access to the internet is a must.

And as for longevity, well, i think Cyberpunk has proven that this can't be trusted, either. Yes, yes, this is partially on CDPR's poor management of the situation, but it's not like making such a large game as Cyberpunk work in fluid 30 FPS on 7-year old hardware while maintaining 1080p resolution and reasonable graphics fidelity, is an easy task. And i believe that isn't an isolated case, either. There have been a lot of games working poorly on last gen consoles. Even Witcher 3 (and that was half a decade ago) has been said to have been a disastrous launch on last gen consoles, although it has since been fixed.

So what do you think is the selling point of consoles over PC nowadays?

And again, i am not trolling, just curious.

I don't mean to sound dismissive, and perhaps someone else will offer a deeper answer, but -

Cyberpunk isn't the only developer. It's a self publishing single studio (though perhaps multiple teams) dev who have royally messed up and I hope they learn. You used Witcher 3 as another example but that's also CDPR, so that doesn't really state anything further. There are plenty of other developers doing fine work on the last gen consoles. Games don't have to be as ambitious in scale as Cyberpunk to warrant the AAA stamp.

The PS5 was PlayStation's best console launch in history. So yes, consoles still have an edge. It's a moot point to delve into why. I doubt the average person cares.

@wefweew
I still choose consoles over than PC for :
1. Easy to play way. Just insert the disc or cartridge, no need to get frustrated by machine specs for installation.
2. It has physical copy. Perfect for game collector.
3. Long lifespan than PC with careful treatments. I have 14 years old Wii, 10 years old PS3 slim, 13 years old PS2 slim, 14 years old NDS Lite and they are still working perfectly.
4. Exclusive games on each consoles such as Mario games on Nintendo, Ratchet & Clank games on PlayStation, Kinect games on XBOX 360.
Don't even care with AAA PC games that mostly rated 18+ games.
I hate rated 18+ games so console / handheld games are my perfect choices.

@wefweew Price and convenience. Exclusives. There’s also now the Dualsense. It’s an extraordinary controller. There’s nothing like it anywhere else and PC/Xbox will take a while to catch up with it. It’s haptic feedback is revolutionary.

@TheIdleCritic

Well I have heard Fallout 76 worked badly on console. Or that Kingdom Come: Deliverance had issues (a quick google search brought up this: https://www.reddit.com/r/kingdomcome/comments/anzap9/stabilit...

And i know this was nine years ago, but Skyrim was also not very nice on consoles at launch. Same with New Vegas a year earlier.

I don't get why you think you were sounding dismissive, i appreciate your separate opinion, but don't get patronizing about it

So to me, it looks like with an increase in the speed of technological advancement, consoles simply can't keep up. Cyberpunk is the best example, so allow me to repeat it. It was announced in 2012. Active development started in 2016, after Blood and Wine. Original release date was in April, then after 3 delays it was moved to December 2020. 8 years. In that period of time, the PS4 simply grew too old to handle the game.

I understand what you're saying, and arguably the system is indeed too old. Certainly one of the factors in its downfall. But again, a game doesn't have to be as ambitious as Cyberpunk for people to love having a console. It was in development for a very long time, and perhaps the devs weren't versed in keeping up with the times, or as I keep saying - were too ambitious. I watched a Cyberpunk VS GTA V physics video and it seems that you can't simply blame that game's shortcomings purely on the system.

I for one didn't even buy Cyberpunk, simply because it didn't interest me. Even when it was announced. But there are countless other titles on consoles that make it worth having one.

Not everyone is an "elite gamer", and you musn't dismiss the casual market or people who have taken gaming as their past-time but prefer to do so on their couch, in front of a TV, and a use a dedicated machine. Consoles don't need to "keep up" per se - they just need to be great at what they do. And they are. There will always be a market for both PC and console gamers.

The overwhelming majority of games run well enough, some even perfectly, on PS4 - Miles Morales looks fantastic on it, the Witcher 3 after all the patches didn't cause me any trouble. I could go on.

I used to game on PC. I even built my own. But due to work I had to transition over to Mac. I gradually used my PC less and less and ended up selling the parts. I've always had consoles since the Saturn but since stopping PC gaming completely, I haven't longed for it - I come home, kiss my wife, pour myself a whiskey, plop down on the couch and start a game, and I couldn't be happier. The games I play run fine (for the most part), look fantastic, and keep me entertained. I think a huge swathe of people will have a similar sentiment: it's a dedicated gaming machine that you can set up and get into quickly, it's easy to buy games for, it's something the whole family can use (if that's their situation). You buy it, you set it up, it's there waiting for you to come home everyday. Done.

I'm not a Twitch streamer or a pro - my office room at home is minimalist and airy, it has a Mac in it and an office chair, not a gaming one. I share my home with my wife and we have to make aesthetic choices together. I enjoy being with her and no room is cut off, as it's our house, so she needs to like being in each one. The PS5 (previously PS4) is next to the big TV in the lounge, and that's where I sit to wind down in the evenings.

I think my answer is far too long winded but I can't be bothered to go back and read it to edit. All I'm saying is yes, consoles will always have an edge. There are many different kinds of people who game, and having a console just suits a lot of them better.

PC have a massive edge in certain genres. Consoles have a massive edge in other genres. Both are different things that provide different experiences. If you want both then have both.

@nessisonett OP just seems to be focused on the graphical and technical aspects of game.

@TheIdleCritic Then it’s all a bit pointless to compare. Unless you look at first person shooters, mouse and keyboard is far and away better than a controller for accuracy but then you make a sacrifice when it comes to the number of cheaters.

As is pretty obvious, if you have unlimited funds PC’s will always have the technical edge... though PC gamers with real mediocre (or worse) rigs acting all elitist are hilariously naive and or ignorant.

Technical excellence is great and all but I still spend more time on my PS3 and PS4 than my PS5, though that will change over the coming year or so I have no doubt. At the end of the day we are gamers because we like good games... and in that regard Nintendo and Sony have a load of killer apps that will either never be on PC or will get ported years later and take a more than decent rig to run it well.

More often than not my favourite games are Playstation exclusives and from the talk coming out of Sony HQ, they seem to be doubling down on them for the new gen. Different strokes for different folks but for me it’s been Playstation and looks like being Playstation (& Switch) for a while yet.

Consoles are more convenient for me because I have one in the living room all plugged in and ready to go. If I wanted to play on PC I’d literally have to buy it and wait for it to be delivered and urgh what was the question exactly? Final Fantasy 9 is probably the answer.

It's not like games always run perfectly on pc. Batman Arkham Knight i seem to remember was a mess and not even fully fixed in the end. It happens on all platforms, not just on consoles. Both sides have their pros and cons, it all depends on your circumstances and preferences.

I prefer consoles for simplicity, their exclusives, and getting to own physical copies.

Yes PC gaming will always be better in terms of graphics and fps etc, but I honestly just don't care.

@KidBoruto People always overlook the fact that PC has far, far more exclusives than consoles. Most console games come to PC but the reverse doesn’t hold true. Entire genres like grand strategy, 4X, RTS, simulators etc are woefully underrepresented on consoles.

It's easy – to game on a PC you have to deal with something called Windows. One of the biggest reasons for me. MacBook Pro + PS5 + Switch = happy and almost stressless world. The control of the games that I play is also much better on consoles and in the computer/game world I'm always on the "closed ecosystem" side. You don't have to care too much about the technical stuff and everything is working as intended. (Funny part is that I'm capable of building my own PC, and I was a PC gamer from 2001 to 2012, but I just don't like it anymore.)

@nessisonett Sadly none of the PC exclusives have ever interested me enough after looking at gameplay and cutscenes.

@nessisonett Aside from strategy games, they don’t match the production values or quality of console exclusives for the most part. It’s strategy games or a bunch of indie games.

@Jaz007 Well not really, Star Citizen is the second most expensive game ever made and it’s currently in development for exclusively PC. It’s a mess on Cyberpunk’s scale but it’s there.

There’s also the thriving VR market which is a whole lot more active and exciting than PSVR, with Half-Life Alyx coming out this year and proving that huge tentpole releases can stick the landing in VR. Asgard’s Wrath is another heavy hitter AAA VR title.

Mount & Blade 2 is still exclusive to PC and is one of the most fun first person hack and slash games out there. The predecessor is on PS4 for anyone interested.

There’s the retro scene that doesn’t require extra hardware, with games like STALKER, Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, Deus Ex, Thief, Gothic, Risen and Half-Life all proving that proper AAA releases did happen on PC and were massively successful, with some of those having worse ports on PS2.

The first Portal is still exclusive to PC if you’re into puzzle games.

Black Mesa is an officially sanctioned fan remake of the first Half-Life and is utterly brilliant. That entire mentality just wouldn’t be seen with a first party console game and Valve are about as close as you get to PC’s first party.

League of Legends and Valorant are hugely popular online games of completely different genres and neither of them are on console.

There’s the real Touhou series, not the bizarre fan-made nonsense spin-offs churned out on consoles. Some of the best shmups of their generation and only on PC.

It’s an absolute myth told by console players that PC has no big games or exclusives. It’s also an incredibly diverse ecosystem, with games of all genres out there and often having definitive versions of older games due to mod support and unlocked frame rates/resolutions. Consoles have their place and PC has its own place. Comparing the two at this point is nonsense, they complement each other in the same way that PS4 and Switch do.

@nessisonett Star Citizen still isn’t out and is a space sim. It’s big, but it’s one unreleased game. retro games don’t for what we are talking about. M&B2 is still a messy early acces release and I have over a 100 hours in the first one. It’s gonna take forever to become a proper game. I worry that it will ever do it at this point honestly.
League is a sorta a RTS. (I don’t really like that style). VR does have some good PC stuff for sure, but it’s almost a delegate conversation and is so expensive to get into. That’s a league of it’s own because of that honestly.
Tobu is an indie swords for all intents and purposes.
A fan remake and something as old as Portal, which is on consoles through the orange box, aren’t the best arguments. You provided me with one, maybe two or three good example at best here. Compare that with plethora of high-quality and large scale console exclusives and it’s not such a myth. You had to talk about a fan remake and a messy early access game to justify it being a myth.

There will ALWAYS be people who will prefer the console experience over PC gaming

I love how modular and customizable PC as a platform is for games, and more often than not in the case of multiplats, if you have the right specs the best version of that game will be on PC, but it also comes at the cost of having a high learning curve of learning the ins and outs of resolution/performance tweaking, or how to fiddle with aliasing and going into settings and doing all that stuff just so it can run more comfortably in accordance with how powerful your own PC config is

A lot of people don't give a crap about aliasing, or how high their framerate can go or that kind of stuff. Some of them just want to turn on their console, sit on the couch and get right into that experience, and whenever the PC market has attempted to branch into home gaming endeavours like that with stuff like the Steam Machines and the Steam Controller, it usually doesn't end well since nobody can make consoles like console makers can

Also consoles have the advantage with their exclusives typically being an attractive proposition for investing in their systems, especially in the cases of Sony and Nintendo