People often find it odd when I say I don’t play PC games, but it seems rather complicated (and also expensive) to me.
I mean, I enjoyed it back when I had friends with PS, but I never had to set up anything myself. Searching around it seems rather… overwhelming, and I don’t know if it’s actually the case.
- PC seems most versatile, and with the prices, I considered piracy, but I would need a separate computer for security. Hell, I wouldn’t even trust the device firmware on it afterwards.
- So I considered maybe paying the amounts, but I went to check some games and lo and behold, kernel-level anti-cheat. Great, so pirated games might even have less malware in the end.
- Since I’d need a separate device anyway, how about getting a PlayStation. With a disc drive, I want to be able to go future proof and fully offline. Well, about that… apparently it needs to verify the disc drive online. For what? It’s a BluRay drive, either it works or it doesn’t. And then I heard another shitty thing, “most games are released almost unplayable and need updates right away”. So they just release Alpha quality software on the most permanent medium???
So that just sounds like shitty experience no matter what. How is it actually? I’d expect consoles to be least buggy and fully future proof.
The only thing I ever had was a $4 NES bootleg console from AliExpress, Contra was glitched out and Battletank unplayable because they forgot the select button, but ok, $4.
Food for thought:
Regarding prices, PC gaming has a MUCH higher up-front cost but MASSIVELY lower ongoing costs. A gaming PC, especially these days, is going to cost as much as or more than two or three consoles. However, console games are damned expensive and never get any cheaper. PC games often come in bundles that can make them cheaper. Humble Monthly is ~$1 per game most months. Indie games are often released at <$20 and get cheaper if you want to wait. PC games generally get cheaper if you wait. Epic has a free game every week, and steam parapetetically has games go free or into steep discount too. There are also many great FOSS games, all priced as free, most with the option to kick back a bit of cash if you like them. Modding is also generally free, and can turn one game into effectively 50. (e.g. Minecraft is one game. Modpacks turn it into almost a completely new game. TFC based modpacks affectively do it all over again. And a few others do it again. One copy of MC effectively becomes multiple games, possibly dozens.) All that means to get 100 games, you could be looking at a difference between paying ~$6,000 for console games and paying less, but possibly even literally nothing for the PC, depending on what games. It will basically never be more expensive for the PC version, though.
Consoles only win out in two places. 1. You will never get a PC as capable as a console for the price of a console. (At least not unless Valve does something truly amazing with the Steam Machine) so the upfront cost is far lower. And 2. Consoles let you hit the power button and spin up more or less straight into the game. If you are a child, or have one, having access to the system outside of games can break your ability to play games, so a console is locked down to prevent that. That’s not to say they will run perfectly, just that you/your kid won’t be the reason things are breaking.