Console Wars Thread! PS4 vs. Xbox One vs. Wii U Fight!

For the ~7M PS4s sold, do you think if those people purchased PC gaming machines, they would have PCs more powerful than the PS4? Would they all be getting Titan Blacks?

 

Does anyone play ghosts? I swear I get punished for having a good internet connection. If I throttle my PS4 to 1.5mbps and my upload to 768kbps, I my kill death ratio goes through the roof.

 

Price and timing plays a huge part in this though. By the time the consoles are released the specs are already behind the latest technology.

Also changing things up at the last minute and adding newer hardward would likely be the biggest headache as well as a move too costly to try to pull off.

Each can have their pros and cons but again thats up to individuals. If there was no PS4 but only an X1, i'd go with my PC all day because Im not interested in any of their exclusives and its for sure that the multiplats will be better looking on the PC.

 

There are millions of people with a gaming rig more powerful than a PS4. There are over hundred million console users. If people gamed on PCs instead then the install base for high end PCs would def be in the tens of millions. That is large enough to warrant the production of cpu/gpu demanding games.

It's irrelevant though because casual gamers are the majority and playing on a desktop is not ideal for them. I am not saying casual gamers are a bad thing either because without them the big budget games would not be possible. And consoles played a role in destroying the negative connotations of gaming. There was a time when gaming was viewed as nerdy but now people from all demographics play.

 

Can I see a link/source on how you concluded this?

It would not necessarily surprise me, though depending on semantics, I think the numbers might differ (i.e., is a 7870 with 2GB of GDDR5 more powerful than a PS4?).

I still don't think it follows that, if you didn't have consoles, people would suddenly be buying high end machines. In general, consoles still are quite powerful for their price tag, and it is difficult to outperform* them for the same price tag (especially in places like Europe and/or if you buy things at MSRP). Someone who bought a PS4 for $400 isn't going to buy a PC with a Radeon 7970 most likely. There appears to be a nice value proposition at around $100-$150 more, and sure some people might just go for that, but I think it is wrong to assume every PS4 owner would end up with a PC more powerful than PS4 (especially powerful enough to makeup for the DirectX overhead, among other things).

* I know, you'll say that PC gaming is cheaper due to no online fees and cheaper prices for games, but the general gamer will likely not think that.


I get what you're trying to say, and I love PC gaming. I'm excited about Steam machines, Mantle/DX12, etc., which will essentially make PC gaming even "cheaper" compared to consoles (now you can get console-like efficiency with PC hardware, and possibly without the expensive Windows license). Having said that, while I think console might limit PC games a bit, I think you should also recognize that a large portion of PC gamers are not exactly using high end hardware (nor would they, even without consoles). Even if we have the assumption that ~7M PS4 users bought 7970s (or whatever), perhaps a PC developer decides to target the 5770 as their "minimum spec," since that will add another 30 millions potential users (pulling that number out of my ass, but I assume you get my point there). Diablo 3 is made to work on a Pentium D 2.8 GHz and Radeon x1950 Pro (with ~1GB of RAM). It is those machines that are holding back PC games too, not just consoles (and in fact, consoles are a way for developers to move beyond those old specs, if desired). Respawn actually had to bloat the PC version of their game just so old dual core machines could run the game without too much of an issue (this was a horrible implementation IMO and could have been handled better, but it illustrates my point about PC developers targeting old PC hardware, often less powerful than consoles).

 

The reason why publishers switched from PC to Console is because of piracy. If the majority of PC owners purchased their games instead of pirating it, PC gaming would remain lucrative. As it is, there are lots of people with pirated Windows, games, software etc. This is especially prominent in third world countries.

This is why developers try to implement drm in their games, but PC gamers do not want it. If anything, I would point to all the people who pirate games as the reason why consoles are more popular for publishers.

 

That wasn't an insult (unless you somehow equate being told you're wrong to an insult), the truth hurts. Re-read your own posts. Anyway, done discussing this with you.

 

You're saying that if consoles didn't exist, people who are console gamers right now would tend toward buying higher-end PCs. Possible.

But you can just as easily argue that it could swing the other way. Maybe those console gamers would mostly buy PCs with less graphical muscle than current consoles. Consider for a moment how poorly PS3 sold at the $600 price point, and how PS4 is now clearly outselling XB1, no doubt in part due to a $100 price difference. Keeping it relatively low-cost is key to a lot of people. And these are mostly the same people who probably won't have much interest in upgrading their hardware until they need a completely new machine.

You might also lose a lot of people completely on the most casual end of the spectrum to mobile games and browser games. A desktop is a distinctly better option than a laptop for gaming... and yet for a lot of people, that laptop is the only computer they have (not even bringing tablets into the picture, which obviously are even less powerful). And laptops are both more difficult and more expensive to keep upgraded. Not to mention gaming laptops tend to have a high failure rate, in my experience. And it's a much bigger headache to get a new computer set up than a console.

I think when you're getting to the end of a console lifecycle, then it's easier to say that perhaps consoles are "holding developers back." But at this particular time, there's no way PS4/XB1 are the ones holding things back. Older PCs are doing that.

 

That's not what I said at all.

Steam releases hardware info from their users. Don't have time to look it up but if you do the math then it adds up to millions. It's still the minority though.

 

Haha yeah, I was actually looking at the Steam hardware surveys since that was the only thing I figured you could pull from. I was curious to know what hardware setups you used to demonstrate gamers with systems more powerful than the PS4. I can see a few million at the very least (I think?).

 

That's how I interpreted the below. Not sure what you meant, if not that.

IF
People gamed on PCs instead of consoles
THEN
Many more people would have high end gaming PCs.

Unless you have a very different definition of "many" in this instance, seems like the same basic sentiment to me.

There would be more high-end PCs, yes, because some subset of people would swing that way, but unless you consider PS4-level "high end", I don't think it would be "many".

 

I've built three high end gaming PC's for myself and never benchmarked anything. Why are you wasting time benchmarking?

The closest I have come to benchmarking is running Prime95 on a machine used for programming because it had to be fast as hell.

Benchmarking is for enthusiasts, not gamers.

 

Haha, love this episode of The Final Bosman:
<div style="background-color:#000000;width:520px;"><div style="padding:4px;"><iframe src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:arc:video:gametrailers.com:21fe30ab-60a3-4897-a4f7-00e231e9a06a" width="512" height="288" frameborder="0"></iframe><p style="text-align:left;background-color:#FFFFFF;padding:4px;margin-top:4px;margin-bottom:0px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><b><a href="http://www.gametrailers.com/shows/the-final-bosman">The Final Bosman</a></b><br/>Get More: <a href="http://www.cc.com">Comedy Central</a></p></div></div>

 

A Pokemon tie as Titanfall. I like it.

 

Has anyone hacked a XBone or PS4 and tried to play a PC game on them through something like Steam?

Maybe its not possible but it would be interesting to see it in action. If people buying consoles knew that through a hack they could switch between their native set up, and then use Steam's service, it would change things a bit and horrify MS and Sony no doubt!

 

You *might* be able to hack it to run a PC OS, but I'm not sure you would be able to easily switch between both. Sony and MS would likely patch it, and you would either have to stick to old firmware (not allowing for access to new services and games), or you'd have to give up the PC OS.

I'd imagine the PC OS would be pretty buggy, and it would be inefficient in several ways (a similarly priced PC would perform better I think). I'm not sure how desirable that would be, especially with Steam machines. The only nice thing would be switching OSes, but like I said, I don't know how long that would be viable.

 

Sounds like a lot of headache for little return. I imagine whatever drivers the modders manage to throw together will suck.

 

A minor update on XBO sales/shipments:
http://www.microsoft.com/investor/E...s/PressReleaseAndWebcast/FY14/Q3/default.aspx
They shipped 1.2M XBO consoles to retailers in the quarter, which puts that around 5.1M I believe (they were at 3.9M at the end of 2014). This mirrors the "over 5M" number they gave around the release of NPD numbers earlier.

 

I'm tired of hearing "shipped" numbers from them. Spinnnn. What are the actual sales to customers?

 

Shipped doesn't mean sales