I find the console vs. PC gaming fanboyism curious (not talking about those that merely have a preference, but rather those that evangelize their choice to the world).
In the PC gaming world, it seems that game studios push the envelope of graphics technology to the point where if you want to have the best visual experience that the latest games are capable of, you're going to be on an expensive treadmill of upgrades (particularly video cards). I find it more than a little ludicrous that a $300 video card I buy today is going to be an expensive doorstop in 1-3 years - if my goal is to be able to get the most out of current games. Not only that, but on timescales slightly longer than that, your video card bus isn't going to be able to fully support the latest gear, which results in a need to upgrade MB / CPU / RAM / etc to stay current.
I fully realize that there are plenty of serious gamers that accept this as the price to pay for the best gaming experience. Meh, it's not for me. I just don't spend that much time gaming, and it's not that important for me to be able to run games on super-ultra-high quality settings at native resolution. So I got off that treadmill - when my desktop system (which was decently spec'ed for gaming when I built it a couple of years before) needed upgrades, I gave it to my son, and bought a reasonably fast laptop with middle-tier 3D video hardware. It runs Skyrim OK, and it runs all of my older games just fine, and I can take it wherever I want, hook it up to my LCD TV, or whatever. The luster of new gaming titles has worn off somewhat - in terms of gameplay, there seems to be a real dearth of innovation, and that really has driven me to not care much about new titles (excepting Skyrim, being a big fan of the TES series).
About the same time I replaced my aging gaming rig, I bought a PS3. You know, with as much criticism as PC gaming fanboys give to the console crowd, you can say one thing for sure: new titles aren't going to force you to upgrade. They have to target the hardware that exists, not the moving target that is PC hardware.
Yeah, visually speaking, console titles lag behind the best of what you can attain on a PC. From my perspective, I don't care - if a game has engaging gameplay, the eye candy is secondary, and if a game is all eye candy, I'm going to get bored with it very quickly. I still occasionally play the original Civilization (now over 20 years old), and other titles that aren't quite so aged (XCOM, Diablo 1/2, Starcraft, TES3, TES4, and a few others). I still have titles on the PS2 and original Xbox that get a lot of play as well - and I don't really think I'm missing out on much.
I'd probably still play some titles on my N64, or even my freaking Atari 2600, if they hadn't stopped working eons ago. I had C64 and Apple II games that I'd still play if I had the hardware to run them.
IMHO, good gameplay wins, and no amount of eye candy can make up for it.
P.S. One thing I will say for consoles - there are genres (such as FPS games) that IMHO, suck on consoles. Likewise, there are genres that work better on consoles than on the PC.
All IMHO, YMMV, and all of that.
In the PC gaming world, it seems that game studios push the envelope of graphics technology to the point where if you want to have the best visual experience that the latest games are capable of, you're going to be on an expensive treadmill of upgrades (particularly video cards). I find it more than a little ludicrous that a $300 video card I buy today is going to be an expensive doorstop in 1-3 years - if my goal is to be able to get the most out of current games. Not only that, but on timescales slightly longer than that, your video card bus isn't going to be able to fully support the latest gear, which results in a need to upgrade MB / CPU / RAM / etc to stay current.
I fully realize that there are plenty of serious gamers that accept this as the price to pay for the best gaming experience. Meh, it's not for me. I just don't spend that much time gaming, and it's not that important for me to be able to run games on super-ultra-high quality settings at native resolution. So I got off that treadmill - when my desktop system (which was decently spec'ed for gaming when I built it a couple of years before) needed upgrades, I gave it to my son, and bought a reasonably fast laptop with middle-tier 3D video hardware. It runs Skyrim OK, and it runs all of my older games just fine, and I can take it wherever I want, hook it up to my LCD TV, or whatever. The luster of new gaming titles has worn off somewhat - in terms of gameplay, there seems to be a real dearth of innovation, and that really has driven me to not care much about new titles (excepting Skyrim, being a big fan of the TES series).
About the same time I replaced my aging gaming rig, I bought a PS3. You know, with as much criticism as PC gaming fanboys give to the console crowd, you can say one thing for sure: new titles aren't going to force you to upgrade. They have to target the hardware that exists, not the moving target that is PC hardware.
Yeah, visually speaking, console titles lag behind the best of what you can attain on a PC. From my perspective, I don't care - if a game has engaging gameplay, the eye candy is secondary, and if a game is all eye candy, I'm going to get bored with it very quickly. I still occasionally play the original Civilization (now over 20 years old), and other titles that aren't quite so aged (XCOM, Diablo 1/2, Starcraft, TES3, TES4, and a few others). I still have titles on the PS2 and original Xbox that get a lot of play as well - and I don't really think I'm missing out on much.
I'd probably still play some titles on my N64, or even my freaking Atari 2600, if they hadn't stopped working eons ago. I had C64 and Apple II games that I'd still play if I had the hardware to run them.
IMHO, good gameplay wins, and no amount of eye candy can make up for it.
P.S. One thing I will say for consoles - there are genres (such as FPS games) that IMHO, suck on consoles. Likewise, there are genres that work better on consoles than on the PC.
All IMHO, YMMV, and all of that.
