I spent part of 2008 taking polite shots at PC foibles like Microsoft's halfhearted initiative, the that plagued Vista for the better part of 2007 into 2008, PC gaming's dwindling stable of A-list exclusives, and the now impossible to miss short-term-gains mentality that's dropping eggs in low-risk baskets labeled "World of Warcraft" and "The Sims."
So here's my last minute about-face defending the PC as a viable games platform, and a friendly rejoinder to Techradar's
1. PCs are scalable. Sure, it's a glass half-full or half-empty proposition, because component upgrades often vandalize (and scandalize) your wallet. Question is, would you rather have a platform that can play nearly anything, past to present, contingent on do-it-yourself propensity? Or be locked into a restrictively governed molding that's only changed out once every half-decade or so?
2. PC games are endlessly manipulable. Another "your mileage may vary" point, because tinkering's not for everyone, and plenty of people just want something that works. On the other hand, if you've only played on a console, you've been prowling around in visuals that barely shadow the game's tricked-out PC sibling. And while stuff like is accessible on NVIDIA-derivative consoles, don't expect to ever look as gleefully dissolvable on a PS3 or Xbox 360 as its physics-enhanced PC version. Also: Two words = mod scene.
3. PCs ape consoles in emulation. Here's a point often missed. PCs can be nearly any past-tense console, by hook or by crook. Miss stuff like Rare's ? The original tag-team ? ? ? No need to track down a moldering Atari 2600 or original NES or 's original arcade box. Just find and a stack of ROMs, or a Flash or Java site like running scads of these in ostensibly legal emulation (including save-state options!) and you're golden.
4. PCs can be anywhere. If you're living in the 1970s, you think computers still hunker in lightless basements, or converted linen closets, or musty shag-carpeted attics. I've never parked my PC anywhere other than a desk/armoire/piped-and-fluted-hybrid in a living room within cabling distance of my Dolby-fied flat-screened piece-de-resistance. Swapping between a desktop LCD and your likely larger living room variety is a snap, not to mention that doing so offers more audio/video playback options than any of the console manufacturers.
5. Keyboard and mouse beats all. We've yet to see an interface as intuitive and broadly commanding, including (without question) Nintendo's Wiimote and nunchuk.
6. PCs do gamepads, surprise! Take that, all you blinkered QWERTY mockers. Got an Xbox 360 controller? Plug it into your PC and games like and adapt instantly. What's more, I dare anyone to invoke a console's comparably foggy web browser and tap out a response to this point cycling through detached-panel ASCII symbols and frantically pulling triggers, one tedious sequential character at a time.
7. Consoles go kaplooey, too. I'll see your "blue screen" and raise you a "red ring" or two (or 33 percent of total, if were accurate). Just leave your pity for PC gamers at the door, because consoles are just as prone to bellying up when something short circuits in quality control. (Because, hate to break it to you, consoles are PCs too!) And memo: Game-breaking creepy-crawlies and PC-style firmware updates and patches have consoles on the hook these days, too.
8. Consoles could vanish tomorrow, but PC gaming is forever. Planning to solve for the unified theory of everything while lounging on your sofa in front of you new 50-inch plasma power-gobbler? Chances are, not so much. Feng Shui your heart out, you still need a place to spread the tree-ware and focus without distractions. Vive la PC! In the end, PC gaming soldiers on in part because the business-to-casual range of what we're all up to, day-to-day, remains wildly PC-centric. "And it plays games too?" There you go.
9. PC games are stylistically unbounded. It's like : Anything consoles can do, PCs can do better. Seriously. There's nothing consoles offer that PCs (and PC games) can't, and that's strictly a one-way street. Anything that requires fast-switch precision movement's out the window on 360, Wii, or PS3. Real-time strategy games are a joke a console, and while certain types of tactical third-person shooters work well enough, a decent mouse/keyboard gamer will repeatedly roast someone panning around with a pair of comparably clumsy thumb-sticks. Don't get me started on the complete lack of console support for serious simulations and wargames.
11. PC games cost less. I'm not saying it makes a lick of sense (it doesn't) but Epic's Gears of War cost 60 bucks when it debuted on the 360. When it hit the PC with brand new content, that price dropped to $50, and that's still the going rate for PC A-listers. A $10 delta may not sound like much if you only buy a few games a year, but even two games a month is pushing $240 -- enough to fund a new Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii every 365 days.
12. Online PC matchmaking is free. I realize , and analysts claiming Xbox Live offers something unique simply wrong. It's worth remembering that online PC matchmaking and multiplayer are, and always have been free. It's not a luxury item, it's not a special service, it's not a value proposition -- it's an entrenched and completely reasonable customer expectation.
13. Piracy ain't just a PC problem. Console piracy rates barely scratch the PC's numbers, but the former's aren't exactly waning either. It's the popularity derivative, stupid. The more people playing console games, the more the scene lasers in on a console's proprietary padlocks, the more increasingly end-user-friendly workaround hacks and mod-jobs and firmware-fooling pre-insert ROM disc tools flood the market. While there may be cash to grab short-term by switching gears, therefore, abandoning the PC over piracy rates may be yet another iteration of the "grass-is-greener" myth.
14. PCs excel at family-hotseat-group-play, too. First of all, was working the lines long before the likes of . Second, sure, there's stuff like and, you know, on tap, but they're still a tiny fraction of the broader number of family-friendly party games you can pull up (many for free) and play on your PC, whether piped through an office monitor or jacked into your Dolby-plasma master-lounge-center.
15. PC display screens trump living room TVs. The old CRT/NTSC disparity's finally disappearing now that HDTV and 1080p's got a foot in, but I'll still see your 1920 x 1080 max lines of resolution and raise you while you're waiting for market momentum to clumsily foist the Next Big Thing on entertainment centers (while ironically bleeding the life out of picture quality by compressing the living you-know-what out of on-demand digital video). Okay, so picture quality's not as big a deal these days for non-videophiles, and graphics bickering is pretty 1990s. Still, I needed a 15th point, so there you go!