PC vs Console

My move and settlement to Athens, Greece has finally been completed and I have some spare time to assault your eyeballs with another post regarding the PC vs Console debate.

I was inspired back into the debate by the release of the news that Left 4 Dead will be getting new DLC and the PC will be getting it for free but XBOX owners will pay (XBOX:0, PC: 1). Is this fair? Is there a reason?

Well it’s a big fat no, not as far as anyone can ascertain.

My guess is that Valve, in their glory and wisdom, realise that XBOX owners are a bunch of chumps who will pay for cat flavored peanut butter if there’s an achievement to be gotten, whereas PC owners are a bunch of thieving villanous bastards who’ll just download it from a torrent for free if money is mentioned. Taking this into account, I think it’s more of a cultural issue than anything technical or competitive.

He Owns a PC

What I have come to realise regarding PCs and Consoles is that you really need both. I own Call of Duty 4:MW on the PC and the XBOX360. But the one I play exclusively is the XBOX one. There is only one reason why, and that is because my friends play it there. I don’t play these games for the single player experience, if I did I’d still be playing it on the PC as the graphics are better and the mouse/keyboard combo is far better for me. But I have so many more laughs playing with my friends than being a lonely old git.

MMM, Cat flavored Peanut Butter!

On the otherhand, I have gotten back into my favorite game of all time: Eve Online. Which can only be played on the PC. The amount of pure brainjuice needed for this game is intense and is an experience I can’t get on the pick-up-and-play console. Neither can I go into it just for a dabble as it takes at least 30 minutes to do anything constructive.

2 years ago I would have been predicting the demise of PC gaming but recently I have had an epiphany (it didn’t hurt but thanks for asking). I have started work here in Greece in tech support of home PCs and have a very clear view of the situation in the PC market: XP sucks, Vista rulez. Most clients who have a problem are still running XP on a 3+ years old machine, the few clients I see with Vista and a newer computer I will see only once for a configuation change, not a technical error. And then I tried to remember the last time I had to hack my registry on my Vista computer, or edit the config.sys or do any of the million and 1 tweaks required to get XP limping along for another 6 months. And I haven’t; once my computer was setup, I haven’t had to change anything. In otherwords, it has become as stable as my XBOX360. I turn it on and it just works.

The only time a Vista machine should go wrong is if the dumb-ass user has downloaded a virus, installed a “free” game or any of the other stupidities that PC users are inclined too. Thererfore getting back to the problem now being that of culture. But as a gaming platform, it is still alive and strong and lends itself to games that the console doesn’t, and viceversa.

In conclusion….go get another credit card, buy yourself both platforms and default on the payments and cause another bank to collapse.