5 Reasons Why PC’s Are Superior At Gaming Than Consoles

By Michael Moore on Wednesday, July 31st, 2013

I can already feel the hate directed at me through some of your computer screens, but nevertheless I am standing strong with my points. I believe… no screw that. I know that PC’s are the ultimate gaming machines which offer the ultimate gaming experience. Here’s why:

1) Graphics

Don’t look at me like that, you all knew this point was coming. Because it’s true, it’s a fact. PC’s have the best graphics and there’s no doubt about it. It’s science… sorta. But seriously, i’m actually confused as to why people still own consoles nowadays, or potato-face renderers as I call them. Why pay so much money for a machine that makes your games look crappy? The reason for console popularity is probably just down to 12 year olds who buy two games a year – Call of Duty and Fifa. “But the prices for PC’s are massive!” I hear people say, well this brings me to my next point.

2) Price

When prices are discussed within PC gaming, everyone seems to flip their shit and declare how pricey PC’s are. This is actually as true as you want it to be. People overlook that you can get great gaming PC’s for the same price as the next-gen consoles. So my question to you, the hardcore gamer who owns a console, is – why pay the same amount of moolah for a far inferior machine when you can get a PC which has everything enhanced and upgraded?! Seriously PC’s are years ahead with the likes of Steam and other sites, there shouldn’t even be any competition.

3) Customization & Mods

There’s so much customization on PC. Tons. Almost every game comes with additional settings to fit your playstyle that you wouldn’t find on a console. You can even get an xbox controller if you’re not the mouse using type. But then again using the mouse offers more precision and accuracy if you’re playing shooters than the controllers and their “wiggle sticks” do.

But onto PC mods now. They’re probably one of the highest selling points for PC’s, they appeal to everyone and they’re as fun as hell. Wanna play as Spider-man in Just Cause 2? (pictured above) Done. Wanna use lightsabers in Skyrim? Why not. They’re all free, and the Steam community always want to share. God bless them and their work.

4) No Worrying About Change

Money Making Machines

Simply put, there’s no squabble with dicks like Don Mattrick trying to get you to buy their latest money-maker. Years pass by and you still don’t have to change a thing about how you play your games. Console gamers will be in an indecisive mess over the next couple of months thinking about which console suits them better and which is cheaper. Whilst PC gamers don’t have to care, they can just sit back and laugh (with popcorn too).

5) Exclusives

It’s no secret that PC gamers are treated to the best exclusives out there. Titles like Arma 2 and Natural Selection 2 are some of the best PC exclusives, not to mention that there’s loads of great indie’s that start out on PC like Thomas Was Alone and gradually expand to the wider market of consoles. Besides getting the best exclusives, sometimes us PC gamers don’t have to worry about which console will have better exclusives because they will go to one console and PC anyway.

My favourite example of this is EA’s upcoming game Titanfall. It’s gonna be a great game and it won a hell of a lot of awards at E3, but it’s treated as an “Xbox exclusive”, seriously if you want this game and don’t want a crappy Xbox, get a PC. Here’s a link to my PC, it’s the same price as the next-gen consoles and it works great.

I hope I didn’t offend you as much as it felt I did, thanks for reading. To finish this article i’m going to redirect you to something awesome.

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Michael Moore is Unleash The Fanboy’s main video game guy. Today is also his birthday. You can find him on Steam and on Tumblr.

S#!T Talking Central

Jeffrey Alexander

I think 1,2 & 4 can cancel each other out often…The system you showed plays current gen games with better settings but may not have the graphic advantage with Xbox One/PS4. To ensure that (#1) you need more money (#2) and then the changes (#4) come more often than a 5-10 yr console life cycle.
Yes, you can keep upgrading to stay ahead of THAT curve, but thats’ #2 again…
The unfortunate side of development is that consoles will always be the benchmark that games are made around. You’ll have your Crytek games for sure, but the majority want to develop with ability to support as much as possible, so that means a certain limit to what they are going to do as to not alienate a specific market. That’s business for you.

(Ultimately though, yes PC gaming is in a lot of ways better for those who want to stay on the bleeding edge, consoles make it a much more plug-and-play experience though)
- Gilgamesh
  
  Amen to that!
Mike Jones

the overwhelming majority of games are ported onto pc’s,and their performance not only suffers but some mechanics are quite wonky due to the transition….yes mice are better for aiming in a shooter,but a m&k are outclassed by controllers for fighting and racing games,so its a moot point….then of course you have the convenience and user friendly nature of consoles,if someone isnt familiar with pc building and general maintenance,their rig might as well be speaking chinese if something goes wrong…so why not just enjoy what you enjoy,and let others do the same instead of trying to be the end all be all on whats “superior” have a nice day 🙂
- Handwipe
  
  There’s pros and cons to everything, but author’s 5 points are all true and yes, PC gaming is far superior to consoles even though you can still have fun with a console. Even the games ported to PC without much effort are way better than the console version if only for the high resolution, 60 fps, and better controls. Just accept it and move on.
  
  PS: I just want to add a 6th reason why PC gaming is better: m/kb offers way better control for the majority of games. I have a xbox controller which I simply plug into the usb port for the rare game that actually benefits from it like a racing game but for everything else I always go back to m/kb. Gamepad is simply too inaccurate, unresponsive, and clunky.
  - Matt
    
    Mouse and keyboard is inherently clunky as well… plus no force feedback. I play BF3 with a controller… I have superb control in the vehicles though playing as infantry is rather hard due to the lack of aim assist but I’ve gotten used to it.
    - Handwipe
      
      You just proved my point: unless you are trying to drive something there is no point in using a gamepad. Mouse and Keyboard is far superior especially if you are trying to compete online. Even for games like GTA4, Saints Row 3, Sleeping Dogs, I still use the keyboard for driving because the rest of the game plays like crap with the gamepad and I don’t want to switch back and forth. The fact you use the gamepad for BF3 is absolutely ridiculous but I’m not going to complain, it makes it that much easier for me to kill you online. Even if you had aim assist you would be at a severe disadvantage with a gamepad.
      - Matt
        
        GTA 4 with a keyboard… I just cringed. hahaha.
  - Mike Jones
    
    youre taking an opinion and presenting it as fact,just as the author did…people like that are impossible to discuss anything with…so meh
    - Handwipe
      
      Everything the author said is factual. Everything I said is factual. Nothing was opinion based. If I said ” The Last of Us sucks” that would be opinion and you could try to call me a PC fanboy. But I didn’t say that.
      - Mike Jones
        
        you say m&k offers better control for games,which is true for some genres,not all…and alot of people use controllers on pc because they dont like the feel of m&k,so if something isnt universal or if its a matter of preference,its an opinion and not a fact….
- Matt
  
  Building a PC and maintaining it is not that hard. I was 8 when I tore my first one apart and put it back together with no prior knowledge. I’m not saying I didn’t have any hiccups along the way… I learned real fast not to go through the Win32 folder deleting stuff to make room on my hard drive.
  
  I’m still trying to figure out what game runs better on console than it does on PC? I don’t think there is one… Maybe your computer needs an upgrade or two; If it’s a dual core athlon with a 9600 then I can see where your coming from.
  
  Wired 360 controllers hook right up to a PC with no problems… I use one to play BF3, GTAIV(icenhancer), Mortal Kombat 9, and Farcry 3. Most games adopt the controller layout straight from the consoles.
  - Guest
    
    Hey, could you send me a link to buy a wired controller? I haven’t a clue about where to get a good one.
    - Matt
      
      They sell them at Wal-mart if you have those where you live. If not try Amazon or Ebay but only buy officially licensed products. I’m sure Madcatz and Logitech wired controllers would do just as well but the quality isn’t as good.
  - Mike Jones
    
    while i appreciate that you,1 of the 7 billion people on earth,took quickly to pc building…thats hardly the case for every person on the planet….and i was merely saying that the performance suffers on console to pc ports as opposed to games built for pc,not so much that any console game runs better overall than a pc game
    - Matt
      
      Hahaha… when put like that it makes me feel that the intelligence level I possess isn’t as common as I think it is. That explains a lot of what I see on TV.
      
      I tend to think of PC building in the same ways as sticking a cartridge into a NES… it’s plug and play for the most part. Hardest part is gauging whether you’ve used enough thermal paste or not. I don’t do heavy overclocking though as I don’t like the risk factor involved with burning up a i7 or a 8350 and being $200+ in the hole. OS wise… there are so many programs that do the work for you so as long as you have the basics (I’m going the free route) such as AVG Free and CCleaner that turns routine maintenance into a 1 click process. Just don’t look at a lot of porn and be weary with what you download and you’ll be fine.
      - Mike Jones
        
        well its not so much you being a genius,but you said you started at 8 and anything one picks up at a younger age is retained alot better so yeah im sure it does feel pretty elementary to you at this point….but someone who is in their 20’s or 30’s will have a steeper learning curve trying to get it all down…and if were going for what the author was talking about as in having a pc that is far superior to consoles and not just on par or slightly better then it requires you swapping out and upgrading parts quite often so its not just routine maintenance at that point
Axe99

There are cases for PC gaming, but this article has too much fanboy warbling and not enough fact. Addressing each point:

1) Depends on the PC. I had a AMD 8150 with a GTX 550, it output graphics that were on par with the 360 and PS3. Cost a lot more than them as well, but we’ll get to that in point two ;). Check out the Steam hardware survey and you’ll see a substantial proportion of machines that are used for Steam are actually less powerful than current-gen consoles, let alone next-gen. The PC elitists here are a little like clueless ‘ole Marie Antoinette being out of touch and telling the peasants that if they don’t have bread they should eat cake ;).

2) Patently not true. A decent PC graphics card (let’s say a GTX 660 or AMD 7850, to put it in ballpark with the cards powering next gen) will cost you half the price of a next-gen console alone, and you’ll only be looking at 2GB of on-board RAM. So in the remaining $200 you think you’re going to get 6GB of 2133 Mhz RAM (closest you’ll get to GDDR5 for your main RAM on PC atm), a decent processor, a hard drive, an optical drive, a motherboard and have someone research the right parts and put it all together for you? It is absolutely true that PCs can be more powerful than consoles, but it’s also very much true that you pay more for it – 2-4 times more for equivalently powerful hardware.

3) Agreed, mods are a plus – flexibility is always good. However, after thirty years of gaming on PC, beyond some of the world maps on various Civs, I’m yet to find a mod that’s materially improved my gaming experience. They’re far more likely to corrupt my save data and break the game, requiring a re-install and re-start. Mods are a bit like flight sims (which the PC is also great for) – they’re tops, but they’re very niche.

4) Riiiigggghhhht – because PC hardware and operating systems _never_ change. You’ll never need to worry about Nvidia or AMD trying to sell you their latest and greatest, and we’re still running on Windows 3.1. It’s actually quite the opposite – there’s _less_ pressure to regularly change on console, not the other way around, and there’s less constant pressure to upgrade. That you can upgrade is a plus of PC (one you’ve oddly not mentioned), but suggesting that Nvidia and AMD aren’t trying to sell you annual hardware upgrades makes me wonder whether you actually are a PC gamer ;).

5) PC does have great exclusives, but ArmA 2 is most definitely not one of them – it’s a clunky and surprisingly un-sim shooter, with horrible AI, often questionable physics and confused level design. Oh, and it’s also available on the Xbox 360 ;). The best PC exclusives are the likes of Civilization, Paradoxes grand strategy titles, anything from Blizzard and a few other random odds and sods. Natural Selection 2 is solid, but it’s one of literally hundreds of arcade shooters available these days, and hardly something to crow about. Before being announced for PS4 as well, Planetside 2 was something far better to crow about. Personally, the DCS games rate highly for me as well, but, like many PC exclusives, they’re pretty niche.

Of course, your other point here about the exclusive coming to PC anyway sounds a lot like you’re only looking at half of the next-gen console debate. You’ll never see Killzone, Uncharted, Heavy Rain, Beyond, Last of Us, Warhawk, Starhawk, Resistance and a bunch of other PS3 exclusives on PC. You won’t even see Fable 2, or the later Gears of War games. On the other hand, more and more PC games are finding their way to console. As for the indies, many of the big indie titles started on console first and then came to PC, whether it was Castle Crashers, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, Shatter, Braid, Papa and Yo, Tales from Space, Guacamelee or many others. While Thomas Was Alone started on PC, it’s DLC was first available on the Vita ;).

A good way to highlight exclusives is to look at the games of the year over the last few years. You could play all of them if you owned consoles, you couldn’t if you only owned a PC.

Then there are the points you don’t touch on. Briefly:
– driver incompatibilities and other tech issues – if you like gaming on PC, get ready to search support forums for that obscure download your machine needs to run your latest game. It won’t happen every time, of course, but it will happen far, _far_ more often than on console. Just look at the difference in thread/post count in PC tech support forums compared with console games.
– the default gaming controller is an office productivity device, with one analog axis. Yes, gamepad support is improving, but it’s far from ubiquitious and suicide in online shooters. Digital movement (one walking speed, hold down shift for running, lol) feels horrendous after you’ve used an analog stick to move. Mouse/kb fares far better with strategy games, of course, but for shooters and action/adventure titles, it’s clear that the input device was not designed with gaming in mind. And then there’s the whole point-and-click casualness of using a mouse for aiming in an FPS – it’s just too damn quick and easy – I prefer my shooters to feel like shooters, not point-and-click adventure games on speed. It’s a personal preference thing, of course, and many PC gamers prefer the more casual and accessible nature of the mouse, but there’s a lot to be said for analog sticks when it comes to aiming in shooters.
– hackers – are far more prevalent online in PC games (comes with the accessibility for mods and the like). They’re on console as well, but a far greater issue on PC.

Of course, gaming on PC isn’t all bad, but it is by no means ‘superior’ to gaming on console, particularly if you just say ‘PC’ rather than ‘expensive, fiddly, high-end gaming PC’. I personally game on both, and would recommend both to any enthusiast gamer out there. PC does strategy and sims best, action games tend to work better on consoles, and pick your device to play shooters on depending on your control preference :).
- Matt
  
  You wrote a lot… I’m going to number as well for each point.
  
  1) I was rocking a 1055t @3.5GHz with a 550ti… it was able to push BF3 with mixed medium/high settings in 1080p while I could max the game out in 720p without AA. It looked better than 360 or PS3 and I could adjust it to either look good or have better FPS. I gave it to a friend when I upgraded to my 680 but that GPU was pretty decent for $120. Seeing as there are millions of people on steam that survey is skewed by just how many people there are on it… I’ve got steam on the family computer which is an athlon II with a 8500; it’s hardly meant for gaming but it can run half life 2 and CS:S. I bet if Origin released their survey results they would have a higher amount of more conventional gaming rigs.
  
  2) Were paying an arm and a leg for it now… but next year it will be cheaper. Personally I don’t mind paying to upgrade every 4-5 years… it’s better than waiting for new consoles to release and I never lose the ability to play my previous games. As for the amount of GDDR5… I highly doubt 2GB dedicated is going to be a problem for 1080p for a while. GPU’s with 4gbs+ are meant for multimonitor setups pushing 2k+ resolutions. An easy fix if it does become a problem is to set the texture quality down and turn off AA. I doubt the GPU in the PS4 will really have the grunt to make use of more than 2-3gbs of that GDDR5 anyways… things change so we’ll see but I think there will be more emphasis on what the CPU is doing along with all the recording and facebooking going on in the background.
  
  3) Mods are a love/hate kind of thing. Icenhancer ENB config has done a lot to revise GTA IV for me… Skrim is a f****** headache.
  
  4) Welcome to capitalism… They are in the business to make money. There’s nothing you can do about it but pick sides with your wallet. Never let gimmcky effects like TXAA or PHYSX (more niche than gimmicky) force you into upgrading. DX11.2 is just Microsoft trying to get people to upgrade to windows 8… They can have it; I’m going to stick with Windows 7 until something better comes out. That’s the mentality you need… upgrade at your own pace, not theirs.
  
  5) I have no input here… I’ve just fairly recently upgraded (within 2 years) to a proper gaming PC from having consoles my whole life. I still use a controller on my PC and I know this is going to sound like blasphemy but I just don’t like mouse and keyboard, so I usually pass on games without proper controller support.
  
  I agree with all you other talking points… hacking is everywhere and driver support is a little shady at times; speaking of which, Nvidia has just now released a proper driver and it’s in beta… I was stuck using 310.xx for the longest time because the other updates broke BF3 which I found ridiculous. There are up an downs to each platform… I prefer PC due to the better value of not losing your games when you upgrade. Consoles do get better exclusives though they are getting more and more washed out… I definitely wouldn’t use Heavy rain for a reference at all considering that game bored the crap out of me. I replayed it making up my own dialog as a drunk abusive father on barbiturates, a gay rapist cop, and a transgender surrogate mother of 5… hahahaha. Don’t ask.
  
  Once PS4 drops down to $150-250 and gets a good lineup of games that I can get for cheap then I’ll most likely pick one up.
  - Axe99
    
    Don’t disagree with everything you’ve said, you’ve presented a far more balanced view than the article ;). Some thoughts:
    
    – PC RAM has been limited to mainly beefing up visuals, as most games have been limited by console RAM configurations, and it’s much harder to scale physics and AI to RAM without messing up the gameplay than it is to just scale up the visuals. Once we move past the ‘cross-gen’ hump and everything’s being made for PS4/XB1 and PC, we’ll see a lot more RAM dedicated to AI, physics and whatnot. We’ll also see prettier visuals, but as you say, they don’t need all of that RAM for the looks – but there’s a lot more to gaming than how a game looks (Stardock are on record as saying having to write games with low RAM specs has really limited their capacity to develop gameplay).
    
    – Not suggesting that AMD and Nvidia shouldn’t be competing for our attention (nor that we should become a communist economy, lol) – the author, however, suggested that companies pressuring for hardware upgrades was only a console thing. An odd thing for a purportedly PC gamer to say!
    
    – No shame in not liking mouse/keyboard. Nothing wrong with liking it either, and I haven’t found better for strat games, but for action, sports, shooters, fighting games, brawlers, racers, flight, RPGs and a bunch of other genres, it feels like a step backwards for me.
    
    – Deffo don’t get a PS4 at launch unless there are games you want to play on it at launch, that are worth the price of console + games. I prefer everything bar strategy on console, so for me I’ll be hitting BF4, AC4, Watch Dogs, Killzone and Knack on PS4, but if I wasn’t a Killzone fan, and didn’t get the irrates playing action games on PC, I’d wait and play the multiplats on PC (I’ve got an i7 and a GTX 660, so I’m well above minimum spec for most things at the moment).
    
    Either way, good gaming :).
    - Matt
      
      Well… were ready at least. The AI and Physics are good talking points… anyone and everyone is all about the graphics. I know AI is tied to the CPU so it’ll be interesting to see how improved things will be over what they are now.
Gilgamesh

I play on PC and Xbox 360 (mainly on PC) and I think that PCs are better at gaming mostly for the same reasons. BUT, when you say that you can´t understand why people play on consoles you show just how close minded you are. Two words: SPLIT SCREEN. What happened to those days when people would get together and play some competitive videogames (like Soul Calibur, FPS, Smash Bros Melee, etc…). It seems that nowadays most gamers are antisocial basement-dwelling loosers and those loosers can´t tolerate others having different opinions. Consoles are for people who play whith others in the same room. Not everything revolves around you or your circumstances. I use my Xbox when I invite my friends to my house (yes, they actually get up and walk) or I go to their house or even with my brothers (yes, hardcore gaming brothers actually exist). This point also applies to Call Of Duty: try to have a gaming night with people in your howse and play Battlefield. Long live Split Screen, Consoles and also PC gaming!
Gilgamesh

And the author won’t dare to discuss this in the coments because he is simply not smart enough to change his point of view to a more nuanced one (this is my opinion). I think this article is just to create controversy and get people to read his opinions, a lot of crappy internet writers do that.
- Michael Moore
  
  Well excuse me if I had to sleep last night. Sorry but i’m not up to discussing this, I could, but then it would go on forever and then we’d still have our own opinions and differences after it. No point.
sharms

Modding is an important point. Best part about gaming. PC’s are the best for sure. Get an HDMI cable, a PC Rig, and an Xbox controller.. and away you go: gaming in the living room on HD TV.
Tom Ratcliffe

Michael is right, PC’s are for gamers but consoles are for spoilt kids! Don’t get me wrong I play PS3 but consoles can’t compare!
- Kati Danner
  
  you sir are a dumbass
  - Mart Mart
    
    Ahh yes, insult someone rather than support a decent argument.
Dojomi

Nahhhh….consoles are more fun a lot of times. Yes you can go through a bunch of bullcrap to try and hook up your PC to the TV and get controllers working so you can play with friends. But that’s the problem. PC versions have some advantages, but those come at the cost of tons of bullcrap. Some games just wont run well on anything less than the absolute latest and best PC available. One example (but by no means the only)…I tried to get The Witcher 2 to run on my fairly high end PC when it came out. Settings, drivers, screen resolutions, graphical shader what-the-hell-ever settings, reading forums to get it to work. Tons of bullcrap and it still always sucked. I bought the Xbox360 version when it came out and, well what do you know…instant fun. I could just play the game, no bullcrap required.
Callum Drew

“It’s no secret that PC gamers are treated to the best exclusives out there. Titles like Arma 2 and Natural Selection 2”

Really? Those games are good but nowhere near as good as console exclusives like MGS4, HALO reach, Uncharted, Last of us and Red Dead Redemption.
This guy really is fanboy scum of the highest order.
Kati Danner

you sir are a dumbass also