Value of consoles versus PC, post PS5Pro edition *spawn

[pjbliverpool]

Windows is a horrible experience on anything but a KB+M and dealing with driver updates, the Xbox Store breaking all the time, and game configuration is not fun.

I'm pretty sure most PC gamers consider the game configuration aspect a positive rather than a negative. I'd say if you don't care for it then just leave everything at the installation defaults which on a reasonable system will be fine most of the time. But for me personally, the tweaking and testing of settings and performance is at least as much fun as the gaming itself.

As for Xbox Store, yeah I think we can all agree it's best just avoided if possible!

I do still maintain that you can have a good console like couch experience on PC once the initial setup has been done. i.e. as per your video, trying to get things installed, configured and setup for that couch experience without a keyboard and mouse would be a total non-starter. And even after setup, it's not like you'd never need them again.... but if properly setup (which granted takes a level of PC know-how in the first place) then for normal day to day gaming it can be largely pick up and play with a control pad. If you want to delve into the more advanced aspects of PC gaming from there, e.g. modding, emulation, overclocking etc... , or any non-gaming functions then yes of course you're going to need a proper desk setup.

 

[iroboto]

I do still maintain that you can have a good console like couch experience on PC once the initial setup has been done

Steam BPM is a nice step up for couch experience. But as someone that has spent a lot of time with PS5, Xbox, Nintendo, as well as Steam BPM. The dedicated console experience on couch is a couple deviations better than Steam BPM. I always find myself going back to playing games off my monitor because you often find yourself using the PC for things other than games. And that experience of switching in and out of BPM and multiple monitors etc, it's just not the same, and I can't justify or hide a big ass PC case by my TV, though I'm sure I do better than most people in this regard with my 30ft hdmi cable. But it's just easier to stay in non BPM, and work off your desk, and consoles are just a breeze to use anywhere.

 

[RobertR1]

@pjbliverpool game ready profiles in drivers, at least for nvidia, will auto tune the game to the hardware capabilities. No need for the average user to even tinker

 

[oliemack]

I'm pretty sure most PC gamers consider the game configuration aspect a positive rather than a negative. I'd say if you don't care for it then just leave everything at the installation defaults which on a reasonable system will be fine most of the time. But for me personally, the tweaking and testing of settings and performance is at least as much fun as the gaming itself.

As for Xbox Store, yeah I think we can all agree it's best just avoided if possible!

I do still maintain that you can have a good console like couch experience on PC once the initial setup has been done. i.e. as per your video, trying to get things installed, configured and setup for that couch experience without a keyboard and mouse would be a total non-starter. And even after setup, it's not like you'd never need them again.... but if properly setup (which granted takes a level of PC know-how in the first place) then for normal day to day gaming it can be largely pick up and play with a control pad. If you want to delve into the more advanced aspects of PC gaming from there, e.g. modding, emulation, overclocking etc... , or any non-gaming functions then yes of course you're going to need a proper desk setup.

I've yet to see such a system but I'm certainly open to it! The best experience right now under Windows seems to be using Steam Big Picture, which is a pretty good interface, but then you have to grab the M+KB for anything that involves tweaking settings or anything in Windows.

Bazzite/SteamOS is similar obviously but that layer of settings tweaking can be done within the Steam interface, which basically makes it a great end to end solution where a keyboard is very rarely needed.

 

[trinibwoy]

But people see these videos on social media of these £5000 PC's and think that's what it costs to have a great gaming PC.

The people who care enough to spend a few hours doing research or asking questions online will quickly learn that’s not the case. I don’t think most people with genuine interest in pc gaming would think the cost of entry is $5000.

Either way console gaming and pc gaming are still pretty different experiences today. Expensive consoles will just cause people to buy fewer consoles. It’s probably not going to cause some mass defection to PC at least until PCs can offer a console like experience.

 

[Daozang]

Steam BPM is a nice step up for couch experience. But as someone that has spent a lot of time with PS5, Xbox, Nintendo, as well as Steam BPM. The dedicated console experience on couch is a couple deviations better than Steam BPM. I always find myself going back to playing games off my monitor because you often find yourself using the PC for things other than games. And that experience of switching in and out of BPM and multiple monitors etc, it's just not the same, and I can't justify or hide a big ass PC case by my TV, though I'm sure I do better than most people in this regard with my 30ft hdmi cable. But it's just easier to stay in non BPM, and work off your desk, and consoles are just a breeze to use anywhere.

A dedicated PC for the living room is fine and simple once you set it up.
Once you start doing other things with it, change monitors, audio outputs etc, then things start to get messy...
I personally don't mind it, (that's how I use it), but I do understand the frustration it can bring.
There are many games that will for example, not detect a new monitor resolution, and will try to output an ultrawide res (the last resolution it was launched with) to a 4K receiver...

 

[trinibwoy]

I've yet to see such a system but I'm certainly open to it! The best experience right now under Windows seems to be using Steam Big Picture, which is a pretty good interface, but then you have to grab the M+KB for anything that involves tweaking settings or anything in Windows.

Bazzite/SteamOS is similar obviously but that layer of settings tweaking can be done within the Steam interface, which basically makes it a great end to end solution where a keyboard is very rarely needed.

Yeah my living room setup is in a node 202 and I love it for all the obvious pc benefits. It’s even smaller than the current consoles. However it’s far from perfect. Big Picture is nice but it’s no console interface. With consoles you can do everything from the same streamlined consistent UI. With windows, not so much.

Microsoft really needs a SteamOS equivalent UI.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A dedicated PC for the living room is fine and simple once you set it up.
Once you start doing other things with it, change monitors, audio outputs etc, then things start to get messy...
I personally don't mind it, (that's how I use it), but I do understand the frustration it can bring.
There are many games that will for example, not detect a new monitor resolution, and will try to output an ultrawide res (the last resolution it was launched with) to a 4K receiver...

Actually I can weigh in on this because each week we meet up round a mates and play coop games, often on an emulator on his PC. And sometimes we have stupid issues getting controllers detected, or Windows doing something different and just being slow and stuttery. He's even bought a PC just for the living room with nothing on it but Windows 11 and PCSX2, but even since then a couple of times there's been a bit of faf before we could start playing. Hmmm, I'm remember that a little wrong as certainly one of those times is was PCSX faf, not Windows faf.

Still, we have for years been 'gaming' on a living room PC, either dedicated 'console' or a media player one (no work stuff or productivity), and it definitely hasn't been 100% smooth with more issues than experienced on console.

 

[Charlietus]

Actually I can weigh in on this because each week we meet up round a mates and play coop games, often on an emulator on his PC. And sometimes we have stupid issues getting controllers detected, or Windows doing something different and just being slow and stuttery. He's even bought a PC just for the living room with nothing on it but Windows 11 and PCSX2, but even since then a couple of times there's been a bit of faf before we could start playing. Hmmm, I'm remember that a little wrong as certainly one of those times is was PCSX faf, not Windows faf.

Still, we have for years been 'gaming' on a living room PC, either dedicated 'console' or a media player one (no work stuff or productivity), and it definitely hasn't been 100% smooth with more issues than experienced on console.

There are also problems that drove me crazy that don't really have easy solutions. Like the intermittent stuttering caused by the Xbox one controller that I was using with a Bluetooth dongle. I spent weeks troubleshooting that stuff.

Or the time where Fortnite and Apex had abysmal performance compared to my hardware, while all other games were running fine.

I gave up on that one.

On Console you don't have so many of the options that a PC gives you, but at the same time you have the peace of mind that everything works and you can't really do anything wrong.

Anyone that says that one platform makes another useless either hasn't experienced both or is a platform warrior

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Or the time where Fortnite and Apex had abysmal performance compared to my hardware, while all other games were running fine.

Yes. On Reddit for these games you get support requests, "since last patch performance has been awful," etc. That's at least something the fixed-hardware targets don't have to worry about. If performance is dreadful for one, it's dreadful for everyone and the game gets patched. But on PC you might just be unlucky, and no-one can explain what causes these freak issues other than "it's complicated"!

 

[pjbliverpool]

A dedicated PC for the living room is fine and simple once you set it up.
Once you start doing other things with it, change monitors, audio outputs etc, then things start to get messy...
I personally don't mind it, (that's how I use it), but I do understand the frustration it can bring.
There are many games that will for example, not detect a new monitor resolution, and will try to output an ultrawide res (the last resolution it was launched with) to a 4K receiver...

Actually I can weigh in on this because each week we meet up round a mates and play coop games, often on an emulator on his PC. And sometimes we have stupid issues getting controllers detected, or Windows doing something different and just being slow and stuttery. He's even bought a PC just for the living room with nothing on it but Windows 11 and PCSX2, but even since then a couple of times there's been a bit of faf before we could start playing. Hmmm, I'm remember that a little wrong as certainly one of those times is was PCSX faf, not Windows faf.

Still, we have for years been 'gaming' on a living room PC, either dedicated 'console' or a media player one (no work stuff or productivity), and it definitely hasn't been 100% smooth with more issues than experienced on console.

I would argue (and I did in an earlier post in this thread) that emulation falls under the category of "doing other stuff" outside of core gaming functionality. Or as I described it above "the more advanced aspects of PC gaming". Expecting unofficial emulation of older consoles to work as smoothly as a native console experience is a step too far IMO.

As @Daozang noted, it's the initial setup on PC that's complex (and certainly requires a keyboard and mouse). But once setup and provided you are using the PC purely for gaming in the same way you would a console (i.e. not flicking back to desktop to do some browsing, not using mods, not applying RTX filters, not using multiple monitors etc....) then it can provide a quite similar experience.

To give a more real work example, most people would presumably be playing anything between say 1-5 games at any given time, and new games would cycle into that group fairly slowly while old games cycle out. On PC, getting those 5 games installed and configured to work exactly as you want them (unless you just accept the defaults which may be sub optimal but for the most part fine), as well as any subsequent games that cycle in, plus setting up your game interface, setting up any background stores to auto start/auto download updates etc... is going to be the relatively fiddly part which needs a keyboard and mouse. However, if after that, all you are doing is firing up the PC, starting those games, playing them, then shutting down the game/PC [repeat], and literally nothing else, then there should be little difference between that and the console experience using something like Steam BPM or Playnite full screen.

Installing new graphics drivers or Windows updates, installing and configuring new games, yes sure, a keyboard and mouse is better for these things and a console is clearly simpler. But I don't subscribe to the idea that they are particularly complex tasks. For the most part these days they are a couple of mouse clicks and a short wait.... and that's it.

As soon as you start doing anything beyond the basic console experience though, that's when things can get complex on PC.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I would argue (and I did in an earlier post in this thread) that emulation falls under the category of "doing other stuff" outside of core gaming functionality. Or as I described it above "the more advanced aspects of PC gaming". Expecting unofficial emulation of older consoles to work as smoothly as a native console experience is a step too far IMO.

Yes, and I highlight the problems of emulation as different. However, the operations of the PC are still the PC experience. The emulator is just functioning as a 'game' on top of that. USB being awkward, background downloads, or services, or whatever is going on, is all Windows.

As @Daozang noted, it's the initial setup on PC that's complex (and certainly requires a keyboard and mouse). But once setup and provided you are using the PC purely for gaming in the same way you would a console (i.e. not flicking back to desktop to do some browsing, not using mods, not applying RTX filters, not using multiple monitors etc....) then it can provide a quite similar experience.

That's where we differ on opinion. I've never had a console tell me my copy of the OS isn't legitimate and I need to phone support to use my hardware. I've never had my PC fail to boot because this time around the BIOS decided to try to boot the USB hub as if it was storage, and will keep doing that until I power it off, remove all USB devices, power it on and then plug them back in, where it'll be fine for a number of weeks/months before deciding to be awkward once again.

Windows still has operational issues.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Oh, another random thing, I was developing my game in Unity the other day and the mouse was moving around in a way I couldn't understand. Then I noticed that while wiggling the left stick of my DS5 controller on the desk connected via USB, my finger was resting on the touch-pad and it was functioning in Windows! So there's some way to get mouse functionality on the controller on Windows via DS5, maybe also DS4, but I don't know what. Just tried launching Steam and that doesn't do it. Maybe you need a game to access Steam Controller for it to kick in?

But usability of PC as a console would be easier with a well-designed controller with a trackpad built in. Maybe try a DS5 instead of an XB controller?

 

[MistaPi]

I could be wrong, but I think most people that buys a PC to game on a TV with a controller would buy a PC that are much more power hungry than a console. At least for me that was the choice, I did not see the point in a PC unless it was powerful enough to do a lot more (IQ, graphics, framerate) than a console. I am saying this because today we should look at every decision with regards to environmental and climate impact and because of this I went for a console (it’s not the only reason). And I probably don’t have to fire up my 1500W AC as often in the summer.

I don’t feel morally superior or look down on people that don’t think like me about this or anything, but for me, I feel a little less shameful about my hobby as a gamer. It’s not like I’m gaming on a XBS-S and a small TV and I might even buy a PS5Pro. At least from the form factor it does not look that power hungry. I also buy my games digitally and I don't use rest mode.

 

[Daozang]

Actually I can weigh in on this because each week we meet up round a mates and play coop games, often on an emulator on his PC. And sometimes we have stupid issues getting controllers detected, or Windows doing something different and just being slow and stuttery. He's even bought a PC just for the living room with nothing on it but Windows 11 and PCSX2, but even since then a couple of times there's been a bit of faf before we could start playing. Hmmm, I'm remember that a little wrong as certainly one of those times is was PCSX faf, not Windows faf.

Still, we have for years been 'gaming' on a living room PC, either dedicated 'console' or a media player one (no work stuff or productivity), and it definitely hasn't been 100% smooth with more issues than experienced on console.

I don't have any experience with console emulators, so I can't comment on that (other than, it's one of those choices a pc gamer has)...
But I've had many dedicated living room pc's (from back when you couldn't upscale DVDs any other way), and from a point forward I had little to no problems.
One other thing is the mouse/keyboard.
I always used them, as I find them an important combo for most shooter games, and I wouldn't do without them.
But I can certainly understand if someone doesn't like having a dedicated surface for a m/k in his living room!

A pc is what it is.
It can do many things, arguably a good amount of times, better than what a dedicated device can.
But that comes at a cost, that being, literal cost (as in money) and ease of use.
It's getting easier and easier, but it will take time before (if ever) it's as easy as a gaming console, dedicated bd-player, streamer, etc.
Do I think the difficulty or the occasional troubleshooting is that bothersome? No...
But I'll say this, the older I get, (after 20 some years of troubleshooting at work), I find that at home, I want things to just work, even if I'm missing a bit of quality here or there.
Except for frame rates... I need Davros to teach me how to get past that obsession.