Just a few months ago Microsoft and Sony brought us into the “next generation” of gaming with their new consoles. Playstation 4 and Xbox One pre-orders flew off the shelves (yes Gamestop puts pre-orders on shelves, don’t ask). They were bought up by eager gamers ready to see higher fidelity visuals and deeper gameplay brought to their living rooms. This has yet to happen. Xbox One takes a lot of grief in the console fanboy war for only being capable of putting out 720p resolutions in games such as Battlefield and Call of Duty Ghosts however Playstation 4 is only able to put out 900p in Battlefield itself. Is this what we were expecting? We for years have salivated over high gloss screen captures in Game Informer or on IGN.com showing our favorite games running at full hd with all sorts of graphical improvements. I may be unreasonable but a screenshot from Battlefield 3 taken at ultra settings on PC shouldn’t be blowing away what these consoles that just released less than 6 months ago are capable of. Both the new Xbox and Playstation boasted about their processing power and how these systems would rival the graphics of modern computers and I have to tell you folks, that is just not true. In fact those statement’s were so misleading they’d make a politician blush. They promised us high quality graphics in a set top box and what both companies have delivered is 30 frames per second and less than full Hd visuals. I will say that Playstation does do a bit of a better job than it’s competitor as far as graphics go but it does nothing that rivals what PCs have been capable of for about 4 years now. So what’s the solution you ask? Given the title of this article you probably already know where I’m going with this and are readying your list of reasons that PC gaming isn’t for you. So let’s go through the list of the most common rebuttals to gaming on the trusty old desktop and see if I can remove some of these misconceptions for you.
1. “PC gaming is too expensive.“
“A good gaming computer costs thousands of dollars” is one complaint I hear frequently. Well, that is false. Yes you can easily spend a 1,000$, or much more, building your rig but you can also build a very respectable gaming system for a lot less. For around 800$ you can throw together a rig that will blaze past a Ps4 and instantly have a game library of endless games. Yes that is still 400$ more than a Ps4 and 300$ more than the Xbone, that is true. However I just bought an Xbox One (my little bro has one so I picked one up, it got returned) and let’s quickly go over my purchase at Best Buy (who has an awesome return policy and I love them for that). I bought the core system which ran 499$ I also picked up a year of Xbox Live with a sticker price of 60$. Given the fact that there are 3 kids in my house I also grabbed an extra controller, tack on another 60$. Two games later and a charger for the non-rechargeable batteries the thing came with and I’m up to 836$ with tax and some bundle discounts. Then there’s peripheral devices. Wireless full-surround headsets aren’t even available for the new consoles yet but let’s factor in the prices from their older siblings. A pair of respectable full Dolby surround wireless headphones for last gen consoles are STILL 269$ msrp from Turtle Beach. A pair of Logitech g930s, a comparable and honestly superior device, has an msrp of 159$. A full surround system for your Pc actually costs less than a sound bar does for your tv and it sounds a lot better. So yes technically Pc gaming is a shade more expensive to get into but in the long run it may very well be the least expensive option for these and reasons I will talk about shortly.
2. “I can’t trade my games in.”
Why would you want to? I can understand wanting the newest game and being broke but those trade in places are gonna take about 6 of your games before you have enough trade to get your new copy of Titanfall. Unless of course you are trading in something that is relatively new and in demand itself. Even then it would take about 3 or 4 brand new, in demand, games before you had enough trade to get the new one. If you Craigslist your games or sell them at a flea market or stand by the highway entrance selling them like roses you may get a few bucks more but honestly who wants all that hassle? Also what about DLC? Let’s take Borderlands 2 for example, I’ve been playing that a-lot lately. Borderlands 2 has a ton of post release content. Let’s say you’re a big Borderlands fan and you bought all the DLC. Well now you’re kind of sick of the game, you’ve played it for 100 hours and you want to get a pre-order for the next great thing. Your Borderlands disc is the launch disc not the Game of the Year version so none of the DLC is on it because it’s all stored on your console’s hard drive. Now you’re returning a game you paid 60$ for new and 50$ or more on DLC and you’re getting 10$ store credit. Sounds like a great deal right? That’s sarcasm Nerds, it’s not a great deal, it’s a sucker’s bet. Forget the fact that these trade in places are worse than Aaron’s, Rent-a-Center and payday loans combined and let’s talk about the glory that is Steam for a second. Everyone has probably heard of Valve’s incredible game store and service Steam by now and everyone has probably heard about the absolutely ridiculous sales they offer on an almost daily basis. Every day another game is on discount. Every Wednesday there’s “Mid Week Madness” where more games are put on sale. Then, on the weekends, it’s either a game to play completely for free for the duration of the weekend with an option to purchase that game to play afterwards at deep discount or it’s some other absurdly low priced sale. At the time this was written the Witcher 2 is on sale on Steam for 2.99$, down from a 20$ price tag. Those types of discounts are the standard for Steam. There’s nothing really rare about a game having that much of a price reduction. My point here being; “If you can fill up a game library of top quality titles for under 10$ a pop why would you want to trade them in?”
3. “My favorite games aren’t on Pc”
This is the most logical argument. No GTA5, Red Dead Redemption, Killzone, and many others are sadly not available on your PC (available “yet” anyway in the case of GTA5). This can be a bummer I do agree but it pales in comparison to the other side of this argument which is “there’s a quad-trillion great games on PC that aren’t on console, never will be and some of them are completely free” . StarCraft, Civilization 5 and Company of Heroes are some great titles that remain PC exclusive for the foreseeable future. It’s not just strategy games either. The Arma series, Red Orchestra and Natural Selection are some awesome and in-depth shooters only available on PC. Now let’s take my sister in law’s boyfriend for example. He stops by my house, sees my computer ,and says “I didn’t know Battlefield was on computer”. Yes he really said that. The dude isn’t a Nerd, we’ll give him a break. He’s not in a very small minority with this lack of knowledge though. Go around telling your casual acquaintances that CoD and Battlefield are great on your computer and you’ll be surprised how many of them didn’t even know that was an option.
4. “I can’t game with a keyboard and mouse”
Could you game with a controller when you first picked it up? I had to call Nintendo support when i was 6 to figure out how to press the start button to get a game of Super Mario Bros. going. I doubt anyone else’s first experiences were as novice as mine but try and remember the first time you grabbed a controller in a 3d game. Remember walking into walls and staring off into the sky lost for a couple hours? I bet you do. So yes there’s a learning curve to everything but it’s one worth the effort. Using a mouse especially is just flat-out more visceral than a controller in shooters or any first person game. The ability to stop your cross-hairs on a dime is incredible for immersion and also makes for some seriously wicked head-shots. The keyboard aspect of it may take a little longer to master but once you do it’s so much faster to select weapons, turn your character around or complete just about any in game action due to the sheer number of buttons on your standard keyboard.
5. “I don’t know how to build a computer it’s too complicated”
This is probably the greatest misconception. Yes there’s a lot of jargon involved you may not be familiar with but it takes roughly an hour to learn how to build a computer. In fact the term “build” is one I take issue with. If you’re modifying your PC case to include custom water cooling and make it look like the Deathstar then, yes, you built it. If you just bought the components to a PC and hooked them up in a case you didn’t really “build” anything you just assembled it. I myself have assembled a few computers and can honestly tell you I’ve had more difficulty with pieces of Ikea furniture than I have had popping a processor in a motherboard. If you don’t believe me than have a look at this great video series Newegg.com did a little bit back on the basics of assembling a computer.
6. “All of my friends are on Xbox Live or PSN”
This I can’t debate. You’re friends are where they are. Most of my friends are on the console side of things too. This shouldn’t keep you from the glory of PC gaming though. The fact that most people have an Xbox or Playstation should mean nothing. Buy what you want because it’s a good product not because your friends, who may be more susceptible to advertising, have it. You’ll make new friends on Steam to game with and once your real life buddies see the beauty of those graphics and the smoothness of 60 frames per second you’ll probably start to convert a few of them. In the meantime keep your console plugged in for a quick run and gun session with the mates. Once the 720p resolution at 30 frames starts to make you nauseous you have my permission to turn it off and get back to your copy of Skyrim with 100 mods.
7. “I don’t want to sit at a desk I like my couch it’s comfortable”
Ok, get an HDMI cord then and run it from your computer to the TV. Problem solved.
“But how can I keyboard and mouse on a fraking couch!?” you ask. Well, you don’t. Plug in a wired Xbox controller though and now you’ve pretty much turned your computer into a real next-gen console. I have to say here that not all games offer controller support but almost all semi-recent games that also have console releases do. The other thing to take into consideration is if you’re going to try and play competitive first person games on PC with a controller you’ll probably get scraped. The mouse pointing is just so much more accurate and there’s literally ZERO aim assist. I’d stick to single player and third person games while getting your couch potato on and saving your Battlefield time for the desk.
8. “I don’t want to have to upgrade my computer every year”
Out of all the reasons to avoid the platform this is my least favorite. It is completely untrue and whenever someone says it to me I get kind of offended by the proposition that this person is insinuating I can’t assemble a computer that lasts more than a year. Let me answer this one this way; A GTX 480 retails for about 200$, you can get one on Ebay for 125$ new (depending), it’s 4 years old, and it blows the new consoles away. So no you definitely don’t have to upgrade your computer every year. Having a custom rig can be addicting and many people do constantly buy new parts but that’s because it’s their hobby not because it’s needed.
9. “Computers are too difficult to maintain”
This one is, like a few of the others, has a grain of truth in it. There are issues like viruses, malware, hardware conflicts and hardware failure just to name a few but it’s not the anarchistic wild west it gets portrayed to be. If you get a computer virus that’s pretty much your fault I hate to say it. By now we should all know not to follow links in spam emails, not to except the add-ons with free software and if you pirate than you risk the chance of getting your computer scurvy so I can’t really recommend that either. As far as hardware conflicts go that’s pretty easy to sort out. Just make sure you buy the right stuff when building your computer. If it’s your first build I highly recommend going to a retail store like Microcenter of Fry’s if you have one nearby. Their components sales staff are very knowledgeable and will be more than happy to help you get the right parts for the right rig. They work on commission after all, they don’t want you leaving empty handed. The hardware failure part of this is a bit of a misconception though. Yes disc drives burn out, hard drives die and graphics cards fans can die causing a melt of your card but if and when something like that happens you only need to replace the one faulty part and when you do it will likely be for a newer part that has more power for the same price that you paid for the old one. Compare this to the Xbox 360. My first one that I paid 400$ for died in 2 years, the second one made it a year and a half that one was 300$, the third still lives and it cost me 250$. Over a seven year span that I bought the same thing 3 times with no upgrade to what the device was capable of. Compare this to a decent PC. In a 7 year span maybe I would have burned out a hard drive and a gpu (graphics card) but when i replaced them I would be getting exponentially increased performance with the new hardware instead of forking out money for the same item over and over again. Xbox 360s most common failure was a dead DVD drive. DVD drives cost 20$ yet if the thing died after the one year warranty you either needed to learn how to flash a new disc drive and replace it yourself (not really that easy) or buy a whole new system. A whole new system to replace a 20$ part. Getting pissed off yet? I did.
10. “Graphics on PC suck”
Ok this is the funniest. Also the rarest but I’ve heard it more than a few times. Due to tablets, laptops, smartphones and consoles there is a whole generation who hasn’t even seen a gaming PC running before. Sometimes those people are also the same people who don’t know that many console games also are available on PC. When these two ideologies collide it creates the perception that all PC games are Farmville or Diablo 2. Let’s just say I would be shocked if any of our elite Nerd readers would be in this camp but just in case here’s some screenshots of my modded copy of Skyrim. Yeah, it’s a far cry from Farmville.
