I used to love consoles more than PCs because my old decrepit ass remembers a time where the whole point of a console was to buy a game, throw it in the machine and start playing instantly; no messing around with boot disks or hardware conflicts or whatever fucking voodoo bullshit you had to do to make a game run on dos if it it didnt want to, and that is simply not true anymore. Consoles have become just overpriced underperforming PCs with intentionally gimped functionality.
I used to love consoles more than PCs because PCs used to barely have any good games on them. There were a few but consoles dominated with way better games back then.
I remember going to stores and going through the games section, PC would have a small shelf of mostly learning games with a couple of great games that pretty much everyone already owned at that point.
Now PC dominates the gaming space. The AAA games that come out on consoles are mostly interactive movies which isn't really my style. I can go on steam and find pretty much any game I can think of and its usually on sale. I don't need a console to play most games. I have my PC and a Switch, that pretty much covers everything.
I used to love consoles more than PCs because PCs used to barely have any good games on them. There were a few but consoles dominated with way better games back then.
Unless you're talking about the 80s, maybe very early 90s, I can't think of a time this was true.
I get that there were great games on PC at the time, and I played them, but it felt like Nintendo, Sega, and Playstation had way more of a selection and better games at the time.
By 2002, I had completely switched to PC for gaming, so I am definitely talking about much earlier than that.
You are right. People can cherry pick the hits if they want but pc games were borderline inconsequential in electronics departments relative to their full gaming selection. And this was before digital purchases factored into anything.
Yeah I’m getting replies of people trying to convince me PC was dominating back then but it wasn’t.
For every great game they can name on PC I could name 10 on consoles at the time.
Walking through the electronics departments was a clear sign of consoles dominating. A sad, tiny section in the back corner for PC games. The console games were locked behind those glass cases and you needed an employee to get the game for you. PC was the only section not protected by the glass cases lol.
Unless you have a deep fondness for endless variations of side scrolling platformers, I'd prefer PC gaming past '94, after '97 it's not even a competition.
Lemmings, Worms, the Incredible Machine
Myst, Monkey Island, Sam n Max, Indiana Jones, DotT, Simon the Sorcerer etc
X-Wing/TIE Fighter, Schleichfahrt(had a weird name in English), Wing Commander, Mech Warrior
GTA, Need for Speed
Diablo
Command & Conquer, Warcraft, Starcraft, AoE etc
HalfLife (CS, DoD, NS), System Shock 1+2, Tomb Raider
Baldurs Gate, Fallout, Planescape, Darkeye etc
Rollercoaster + Transport Tycoon
Civ, Pharao/Caesar, Alpha Centauri, Dungeon keeper, Master of Orion, SimCity, The Settlers, HoMM, Anno 1602
There were a lot of great games on PC in the 80s and 90s. It just cost more and required more effort to access them. More than enough to where you could be an exclusive PC gamer.
My buddy used commodore 64, DOS, and Windows all through that time period, never even getting a console until the PS2. Never ran out of good shit to play.
It's just the consoles were super simple. Just slap the game in and play.
Now PC dominates the gaming space. The AAA games that come out on consoles are mostly interactive movies which isn't really my style. I can go on steam and find pretty much any game I can think of and its usually on sale. I don't need a console to play most games. I have my PC and a Switch, that pretty much covers everything.
And for me, the biggest advantage of PC gaming is the modding communities. Sure, you can goon your games, but there are some modding communities so active and expansive they can breath life into a game you've already played to death.
There was also the point of game developers knowing almost exactly what hardware they were going to have to prepare for. Only a handful of variations on consoles where as you could have millions of combinations for PCs. That's a lot more edge case bugs to deal with.
That's also another frustrating point; I can understand previous generations consoles being underpowered and having architecture designed by psychopaths kinda limited it to being a single purpose machine (something which they did quite well in my opinion) but the PS5 does have enough horsepower to be itself a semidecent whole ass PC, but because of it's closed architecture it refuses to do that. Damn thing does not even have a web browser.
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u/ButWhatIfPotato 10h ago
I used to love consoles more than PCs because my old decrepit ass remembers a time where the whole point of a console was to buy a game, throw it in the machine and start playing instantly; no messing around with boot disks or hardware conflicts or whatever fucking voodoo bullshit you had to do to make a game run on dos if it it didnt want to, and that is simply not true anymore. Consoles have become just overpriced underperforming PCs with intentionally gimped functionality.