PCs can be legally opened for cleaning, upgrades, and repairsLet's face it. If your device relies on fan cooling or has vents, it's going to get dusty and eventually very hot. If it contains circuit boards, it's going to be susceptible to power surges and other electrical problems. It doesn't matter who builds the products or where it comes from. No electronic device is invulnerable. Luckily for you, you get to handle things yourself if/when your PC has a problem with an individual part. Consoles aren't so forgiving. If you clean it yourself, the warranty is most likely void. If a part fails, you have to send the entire thing in and wait for it to be sent back. Sometimes you can even continue using the PC while waiting for the individual part to be replaced! Things like RAM cards, hard drives, graphics cards are good examples. Get a PC and you won't have to be afraid of voiding a warranty ever again as long as you're not physically violating the warranty agreement for the part.
Repairing is frowned upon with the XBox most of all.
An intact warranty or a working device? It’s not a PC, so pick one or the other.PC parts have longer warranties and the warranties are on a per-part basis; not per-device!Each individual part that you view online has a warranty policy directly from the manufacturer that you can see a summary of. Many parts (like Patriot RAM) even have
lifetime warranties. Once you receive the PC components, you'll see that a copy of the warranty (with instructions) is included. If the part goes bad within the warranty period, (1-3 years, sometimes lifetime) the company will mail you back a functional replacement. In comparison, a console requires the entire device to be sent in...
sometimes after you've already paid more money for the warranty! Disassembling it to send them the defective part would not only be difficult because the warranty would instantly be invalidated on the console, but also because the part is useless to you outside of the device (from a warranty standpoint, they won't honor it or even acknowledge the part belongs to their console).
You can experience beautiful studio-quality voice communication for free using a PCWith consoles, Steam, and Skype, cell phones, etc, your voice communications are routed through a server and relayed to the recipient.
Mumble doesn't do that, it goes straight from point A to point B, which means less latency and less stutter (assuming you're hosting the Murmur server). On a PC, you have the option of hosting a Mumble (or TeamSpeak) server. Mumble is free and open source, and allows you (the server host) to set the bandwidth cap as high as you want. Both the server and client are very lightweight, but if you feel that hosting it yourself won't work you can also rent one. TeamSpeak is also an option, but Mumble is open source and nearly identical. As the host, you can decide how many rooms the server will have, the maximum occupancy, and much more. Just make sure that you port-forward if you host a Mumble server (Murmur) yourself. Oh, you could also
join our Mumble server!
All platforms have their own exclusives but PC has thousands more than any other.Due to the healthy, open, and competitive PC market, independent developers tend to gravitate toward the PC. Console companies are generally hostile toward independent developers and not nearly as many can so easily make their game available to console markets. With things like
GOG,
Steam, torrent sites (No, really! Indie developers and artists have used ThePirateBay for distribution on many occasions), and
Desura, developers have millions of PC gamers they can reach without spending a single dime. To play every console exclusive, you would have to buy both consoles anyways (yes, the largest argument is 'console' exclusives not 'PlayStation' or 'XBox', just 'console’)... which puts your price point over that of a PC. Not to mention,
consoles are what trudged in and created the exclusivity issue in the first place, hoping that you'd reward them for it and buy into their cancerous ecosystem. In a situation where you have a choice of many, pick the best of the group: PC.
You can use any controller with your PC, not just one single model like with consolesFirst off, mouse and keyboard is the
best possible input in terms of accuracy. PCs have so many possible input methods, I can't even count them all. You've got Leap Motion, controllers for PS3, XBox 360, SNES, NES, N64, wheels, joysticks, you name it. Console controllers are a close #2 in gamer preference on the PC. Some games (like Super Meat Boy) can actually be easier with a controller. You can plug a
console controller right into your PC and be on your way. Very little configuration is needed, it just kind of works on its own after it's plugged in. This is a lot of fun when you use emulators for console titles. Isn't freedom of choice a beautiful thing?
PC is the king of legacy game and software supportThanks to emulators and the raw power of modern PCs, you can run any game or application. See our
guide to emulation! Your PC can run games from DOS, Mac OS, Commodore, NES, SNES, N64, PS1, PS2, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista, you name it. Emulators are also known to offer better control configuration (including support for
any controller) and graphical options that make it look better than its original platform. Games and applications from old-ish (1990+) PC operating systems will require a virtual machine or
DOSBox. Old console games will require an emulator. Did I mention the emulator and game ROMs are
free? See
this video (6:00 - 7:40) from TekSyndicate for a more in-depth explanation.
Here's the latest XBox 360 emulator progress and
here's the latest PS3 emulator progress.
You can turn one PC into many and multiply its value by "terminalizing" itBefore you even begin reading:
this is a diagram of what it looks like. There are software solutions out there that can essentially add a
terminal to your PC and allow a second user to play games or browse in parallel to whatever you're doing without even interrupting each other. All you need is a second keyboard, mouse, and display. You can turn your single PC into up to 6.
SoftXPand is the only software I know of that can do this on Windows, however. For Linux, you have
multiseat.
With a capture card, you can pull video output from another PC or console into a display or window on your main PCPCs are capable of a lot, and they can save you a lot of money. One such popular method among PC gamers to access their console without buying a dedicated display is to just send their video into the PC and display it on one of their monitors. It saves power, money, and space.
A PC can be used to donate spare computational power toward the betterment of mankind... or your walletSeti@Home, Folding@Home, World Community Grid, and many others, are all a few of the many options you have available as a PC owner. All you do is install their clients, hit "Start" and relax. Whenever your PC isn't in use, it uses your otherwise idle CPU to perform small workloads and submit back to their larger projects. You can help cure cancer, find extraterrestrial life, assist in drug research, and many other things. Check out our folding team wiki page! This same compute power can be put toward Bitcoin/Litecoin/Dogecoin mining as well, earning thousands per year in some cases.
PC gaming is strong and growing, and it's not going anywhere for the foreseeable futureFor those of you that worry about the possibility of jumping onto a dying horse, worry no more. The PC is profitable,
stable and even growing (in some sectors) in market share
every year. Not only is it growing worldwide, but
the only areas it has left to win a majority gaming marketshare in is Canada, the US, and Mexico. So, if you want to go with what's the healthiest for you and the industry... go PC. The misinformation about PC "dying" is typically spewed by angry people that want to recruit others into the ecosystem that they decided was best (probably just because they were already trapped in it). Developers (the people who make the games that drove you to choose a platform in the first place) also prefer PC, because they don't lose half of their profits to manufacturing and exorbitant fees. Lastly and most importantly, gamers are switching back. Ultimately because
the PC is cheaper, more open, customizable, easier to fix, and capable of so much more.Consoles are no longer the industry innovation leadersBack when the SNES/N64/PSX came out, it was a different time. Now, it may seem that consoles are to thank for graphical fidelity making leaps every eight years, but they're not. The reason gaming takes a leap forward every time a new generation of consoles come out is because they're what was holding it back in the first place. Think about it: 70% of the target audience of any given game will have to be playable on continuously aging console hardware. That means that the developers have to make sure that their game will run on said machines, with or without the features they desire. Many of their ideas and features they could have implemented are thrown out the window because the hardware simply can't handle it. As a result, the developers are forced to sell a stripped-down product. Of course, PC users will most often get a better product if the same title lands in their hands, but it's never exactly what the developer originally expected. In some rare cases, the PC port is terrible... but only because the developers are unable to allocate as much time and money to the PC branch of the project. There's a line they have to draw somewhere in between the capabilities of the console and the capabilities of the PC. A fine example of this would be Crysis, a game which launched on consoles
four years after it was released on PC. There have been occasional instances where the developer will rebuild the game (graphically) from scratch to make sure that the PC version fulfills their vision, but even that is rare. So... the less people that are purchasing consoles, the less of a stranglehold Microsoft and Sony will have on the industry. The more people that are on PC, the more wiggle room the developers have to make their game the best it can be. If you enjoy seeing games get better, go with a PC.
Hardware companies and game companies make more money from PCs than they do consolesYes, it's true. Even at full price on a console,
developers make more money from it being sold on Steam for 75% off. Why? Because developing for PC has no per-sale royalty fees, no development kit fees, no submission fees, and no cost of physically manufacturing/shipping/stocking their finished products. Your money goes straight to the developer's pocket, and the game directly onto your PC. Hardware makers earn much healthier margins on PC as well, since they aren't relying on eventual-profit-by-volume under some tremendously long-term supply contract for Microsoft or Sony. If you care about
saving money for yourself, go with the PC. If you care about funding developers and keeping your favorite games flowing, go with the PC. If you care about the hardware companies like AMD and nVidia that make modern gaming possible, go with the PC. Once again, consoles exist only to suck money out of developers, hardware companies, and gamers. It's plain as day: Sony and Microsoft don't care about anything but money. If they really cared about improving the state of gaming, why are they sucking every possible entity dry at every possible stage of the process? Literally, for the love of gaming, go with a PC.
Used game sales are more destructive to the industry than piracy and salesAccording to Lionhead studios, this is
true. At least for them, anyways. It makes sense that this would affect all console developers equally, though. This won't be an issue much longer, however, because the console industry is beginning to restrict used game sales to the point where your physical game is more like a receipt than an actual game.
Piracy is actually more of a problem on consoles than it is on the PC
There's a lot of undeserved misinformation flying around, usually sounding something like, "PC gamers are a bunch of pirates"/"PC isn't getting this game because they're all pirates"/"Developers did this or that because they're punishing them for being pirates". In reality, as concluded by Intel's research,
the majority of piracy you see today takes place on consoles! The massive drop in piracy can likely be credited to easy, cheap, and even free distribution methods and services such as Good Old Games and Steam. Judging by Intel's research, it looks like the only people who really claim piracy is a massive problem on PC are the ones who are known for terrible DRM or hate it purely out of jealousy toward Valve (EA, Ubisoft).
Most of the screenshots and gameplay you see on "next-gen" advertisements are actually from a PCSee the image below? That's Microsoft XBox team themselves at a popular game convention using PCs to demonstrate how "good" the XBox One looks! If the XBox team themselves are incapable of convincing you that PC is superior, nothing will. Seeing as
all console games are developed on PCs and then skimmed down for consoles, it's only natural that they use footage from the best-looking system to try and sell their product. Sony and Microsoft both know that the truth is far from pretty, so they source their media from a high-end PC rather than a console. They think you'll forget by the time you buy their system anyhow. They don't care about it actually looking good, they just expect you to forget by the time you pay them upwards of $500 for everything. The question is, will you let them?
Console gamers are not the common enemy. Console gaming is.They give you an inferior system, charge you money for it, and make you hold on to the pieces of junk for 8 years before they give you the option of (measly) upgrades. When you take into account the business strategy of Sony and Microsoft (not so much Nintendo), you'll find that it's all just one big greedy systematic ripoff of uneducated consumers.
They're holding your favorite games hostage. on their closed platforms because they know you'll buy into it. If everyone went with a PC and disregarded this disgusting behavior, these developers wouldn't be so easily convinced to support these "next-gen" consoles.. So, do yourself and the industry a favor and go with a PC. It's open, it's cheap, and it's damn powerful. Your best interests are always at hand, no matter how arrogant some of us may seem. For anyone that's offended, I am truly sorry... but if you're going to get offended over this guide then you probably had no intention of giving PC a chance in the first place. Just remember:
PC gaming is superior to console gaming, but the gamers themselves are neither superior or inferior to one another: they're just people with varying degrees of understanding.
