What's worse is that game play ITSELF is dumbed down to meet the YouTube audience that tends to buy consoles for gaming over PCs. - Akiva Moskovitz

So - Amber, Random Time Lord

Can't afford to PC game. - Amber, Random Time Lord

Another complaint: console gamers don't care about immersion so console games don't bother which is why console UIs are always so 'game-y'. Dragon Age is really fun but the UI might as well be the front panel of a microwave for how evocative and related it is to the setting of the game itself. - Akiva Moskovitz

@Amber, you can pretty much just drop a $150 nvidia or ATI card in any PC with a PCI-express slot and enough RAM, done deal. cheaper than a console since you already have the PC - and if you don't mind lower resolutions or visual quality you could go down to $75 instead - mjc

WASD going on here? - Josh Haley

Preach it, Akiva. I hate console gaming. - Jason Huebel from Android

Don't already have the PC to do that. Haven't you heard my crappy computer rants already? It was just cheaper to get a hold of the console. - Amber, Random Time Lord

Hahahaha...This rant is so funny. Microsoft comes up with one of the best ideas in gaming in a long time (unified achievements) and you pooh pooh it? Hilarious...Why not diss the steering wheel while you are at it. PC vs console gaming is a no-brainer for me...can't do PC gaming on my 55" TV. - Alex Scoble

I think the controls are fine. You can use mouse-only or a combo of keyboard/mouse. The interface is MMORPG-like so blame WoW for that. Some games on PC's aren't as immersive due to the controls. There's no equivalent controls on the PC to moving the sticks to change the pace of running/walking/sneaking. - Rodfather

I would have to disagree. I hate PC gaming, I just can't use the controls on a keyboard. I'm an old Nintendo-Atari-Sega guy. Last game I played on a PC was a DOS game called Prince of Persia. It just isn't the same without my Playstation 3 and my 47 inch HD television. - Faraz Mullick

Alex, why can't you do PC gaming on your 55" TV? My ancient 42" Sceptre 1080P TV accepts VGA... been gaming on it for 4 years now. I prefer my 22" IPN panel Del monitor to it though. - Adrian

Home theater PCs are either expensive or underpowered...You can't put a regular PC in a home theater...they are way too loud. And personally, I find console gaming to be much more seemless, and way more immersive...oh and Xbox 360 Achievements are awesomesauce. In short, I completely disagree with Akiva. - Alex Scoble

I loved gaming on a PC (keyboard + mouse FTW) but I could never justify the costs keeping up with the hardware. I feel like I get my money's worth out of my PS3 (and Xbox 1) before that. - Matt Mastracci

I do agree somewhat console gaming ruining PC gaming. The interface for Fallout 3 PC was basically the same as the console. Such a pain. - Rodfather

LOL, I still use the all-aluminum Lian Li case I've had for 6 years or so. I've managed to stuff a Core i7 into it. It's fairly quiet but the aluminum cases are not as quiet as a dedicated HTPC case. Frankly doesn't bother me. Mouse / keyboard is still the control paradigm to beat (except in racing / flying / platform games of course). - Adrian

Consoles should natively support keyboard/mouse gaming for every game. If you can't beat that with a controller, buy a keyboard and mouse. ;) - Matt Mastracci

I agree with Matt, I can't justify regular hardware upgrades any more. Not to mention having to deal with windows, which i hate. It wasn't that long ago that was on the console-bashing bandwagon, but the games and consoles have come a LONG way. - dthree

Mass Effect would have been a much better game had it been designed ground up for the PC. - Adrian

I've never really been a fan of BioWare RPG's. I still think the best were PC RPG's with an isometric view. Fallout 1&2 for example. Dragon Age seems ok so far. - Rodfather

*fistbump Akiva* You tell 'em mate - Mo Kargas

I play both console games and PC games, though I'm not really a big gamer. I don't really feel like game play is dumbed down or like I'm an idiot for playing console games, but whatever. I'm really commenting to say that I play PC games on my television all the time. In fact, my PC is broken so everything I do on a PC I do on the 'family' one hooked up to the television. We have an I7 with 12 GB of RAM and a 280GTX or whatever video card and it's completely silent. The case is rather large (not sure if that was just Ben's choice of cases) but it's quiet. - joey

It bothers me that media PCs or consoles are in the living room. I would have thought we'd all be using rack-mounted hardware in media closets by now. :( It sucks to have piles of boxes hooked up to a TV with spaghetti wires all over the place. Clearly some companies are missing opportunities. Console controls should work equally well with PCs, and they should all be RF. - Cristo

Cristo, you're welcome to come set up a media closet for me :) - joey

joey, I would do it. Unfortunately it's still really, really hard. I'm still trying to figure it all out. - Cristo

To this day can't play any sort of first person shooter on the consoles. The controls are just no match compared to keyboard / mouse combo that I've had years upon years of experience on. That's sadly all I can contribute to this discussion. - Jon, the Beartato of FF

Oh, PC gaming. How I remember the love that I felt for you when realising that even though I was well above "minimum spec", the new game still ran like a turd in treacle. The discovery that I would need to update pretty much everything in order to just support the graphics card and RAM upgrades just made things even sweeter. And -oh!- all those commands to remember! Thank $DEITY I have 101 keys, plus shift & control keys! Phew! Wait - what - you mean I can have just as much fun with a 'console' and a controller that lets me recline on the sofa and play games while being fed grapes by my concubines (*)? For 10% of the cost of a PC that I will not be forced to upgrade every six months to play the latest and greatest at a decent frame rate and resolution? And where the developers get, what, two or three hardware platforms, max, to develop for, forcing them to concentrate on making a game *FUN* (**)? Oh, what - you mean these console things can have USB and/or Bluetooth in them, supporting mice and keyboards for more complex control requirements? (***) Well, damn, sign me up for that! ((*) - one of those facts may be complete fallacy. (**) - Does not include most movie tie-ins and anything including the letters 'FIFA' (***) - See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... for one example. And that's a PS2 FFS.) - Andy Bold

Alex, your argument is voided by your use of the word 'awesomesauce'. - Akiva Moskovitz from BuddyFeed

I don't hate consoles, but they hold nothing to the graphics of a PC. ;) - Spencer

Also, I've yet to see any proper refutation of my points. The fact that not one of you has refuted being called a juggalo is seriously concerning. - Akiva Moskovitz from BuddyFeed

i cant afford buying the best of the best when it comes to pcs. sure, the console systems are not as flashy but i still enjoy them for what they are, mind you, i have a soft spot for old SNES games, so...... mind you i play WoW . those kinda games are hard to replicate on a console machine. BUT. WoW doesnt require HUUUGEE processing power to play. i think that's the trick with pc games. make more games that don't require lots of hardware to enjoy. remember the good ol fun days of the lucasarts adventures?? - Terry O'Fee

Hey, did you guys have fun modding Fallout 3? Oh, wait, you can't! You're on a console. Oops, sorry! - Akiva Moskovitz from BuddyFeed

and?? :P - Terry O'Fee

mind u, im not much of a fan of these ipod touch/iphone versions of games coming out these days. playing doom with a touchscreen just looks silly :P - Terry O'Fee

I game to enjoy myself. PC gaming is a chore - you have to build a PC, maintain it, patch it, defrag it, buy new hardware for it, run anti-malware on it, etc. Consoles are simple: put a disc in, and enjoy playing a game. I don't want to mod, I don't want to brag about headshots, I certainly don't want to play online with a bunch of assholes. I just want to play a game. Consoles are WAY better at this simplified experience. - Sparky

I don't know what SAF means. - Glen Mistletoe from iPod

Glen, suck a f&^$. - Rochelle

How did this not pull on my Favorite's best of day. This is like best of millenium - Matthew DeVries

This post has a lot of acronyms. - Rochelle

Sparky, are you still living in 1999? I don't have to maintain a PC, patch it, defrag it, or run anti-malware on it. I just boot up, slip the disc in, and go. It's zero maintenance, zero fuss. Perhaps this could be because it's a MacPro and I do nothing on the PC side except play games but even when before I bought the MacPro, I haven't had a need to perform serious maintenance or even defrag a PC in a long, long time: the days of XP and FAT are long gone. But, thanks to game publishers having to make their graphics look like crap so that they can also be used on consoles, you no longer have to update your PC anymore; you can use your four-year-old card to play brand new games because it has a similar chip to what's in the Xbox 360. YAY! Thanks, consoles, for making sure gaming can't evolve! I LOVE pixilation and HATE anisotropic filtering! YAY! - Akiva Moskovitz

The absence of Madden on the PC is what finally pushed me over the edge to pick up an Xbox. It sorta seems to me like PC and console are *almost* complementary: I can't for the life of me play an FPS with a controller, but there are all kinds of "family"/kids games I've never think of buying on a PC, and live head-to-head sports on the big screen TV just isn't very PC friendly. I'll take both, thanks. :-) - Ken Sheppardson

I'll respectfully disagree; I don't miss the "buy a new game/upgrade your hardware" cycle -since purchasing my Xbox360, I haven't had to purchase and install the latest, greatest video card, or add more memory to my console in order to enjoy the latest, greatest games. Personally, I think Achievements are a nice way to mark and track progress through a game, and I admit, I've become addicted to hearing the "Achievement Unlocked" sound as I'm playing through a game. - Andrew Terry

Achievements are the Satan of video gaming. It made me quit WoW. I couldn't walk anywhere or open any door without fucking alarms and popups and crazy shit "YOU HAVE OPENED YOUR 5,406 DOOR?! - Matthew DeVries

Akiva - you just made a point by stating that you use a Mac Pro for gaming. That's a $3000 machine vs. a $200 Xbox 360. It's a machine you have to deal with, install, run updates on, etc. - Sparky

You all know this topic is a religious war, no one wins, and you leave scorched earth in your wake? Just checkin'. - Ed Millard

I'm a life long PC gamer, and I love them but they are pretty flawed. The constant push for more gear is certainly a flaw, also leads to rich gamer advantage. The push for stunning visuals is bad too and seems to afflict all platforms. They end up shorting game play, and driving up game costs. I still love and play ugly Battlefield2 but the cheats you have on PC's seriously damage it. I have a PS3 IBM gave me with Madden 2010 but I just don't like. Football is not a game designed for computers. - Ed Millard

I could almost see playing football on a computer if you had 22 people playing. It would probably be chaos in practice though. If you actually had a team of 11 people who practiced and worked together and played competitively against other teams like that it might be really interesting. - Ed Millard

I play with consoles these days mostly, but I have nothing against PC gaming when the hardware is up to date. I wouldn't blame the consoles for dumbing down the games. I guess the reason is money: console games aren't pirated as much so releasing/optimizing for them first makes sense business-wise. About achievements: if they are reasonable, they encourage me to play more. For example, they motivated me to play more Fallout 3 than I otherwise would have played. - Jemm from fftogo

Sparky, well, I failed to mention the fact that I have a gaming PC here that I built out several years ago that would trounce my MacPro in gaming. Only reason why I use the MacPro for gaming at all is because I want to play on my 24" LED Cinema Display rather than my years-old 22" Samsung LCD. And that old machine required no maintenance at all: again, the days of XP and FAT are gone; if you don't use IE, you don't have to worry about malware; and if you don't download pirated software and cracks, you don't have to worry about virii. In fact, I haven't run an anti-virus solution in probably five years or so. Furthermore, you suck. - Akiva Moskovitz

Ed, you're right, this is a religious war that no one can win. It's also trollish comment-bait. Occasionally, I like to rile up the natives (and by occasionally, I pretty much mean daily). - Akiva Moskovitz

Ed, you do make a good point, though: I don't want to sacrifice game quality just for stunning visuals. However, at least on the PC, you have the option for stunning visuals. Because of consoles, the cutting edge of gaming has been seriously dulled. A good example of this tug-of-war is Oblivion which was clearly console-oriented game but also had ground-breaking graphics at the time. Yes, great graphics and open-ended game play but ever notice how nearly every dungeon used the same recycled graphics over and over again? They had to cut costs somewhere so that's where they did it. So, yeah, good point. - Akiva Moskovitz

Akiva, I figured, LOL. Nothing wrong with that. Religious wars are always entertaining to watch at least up until the crucifixions start, and some people are even in to those. - Ed Millard

As a proof that it isn't always about pretty graphics, I offer this challenge: as soon as you can play a game like Hearts of Iron III on a console, I'll buy in wholesale. But as long as consoles promote arcade-style play (and I mean arcade in the sense of simple gameplay as well as in the traditional sense of playing to earn prizes/achievements) as well as bottleneck PC gaming, I'll be against them. Notice I never said I hate consoles and I do appreciate their place in gaming (heck, we own a Wii), I just hate the fact that they're crippling PC gaming (and I mean this on more fronts than just graphics). Also, Sparky sucks. - Akiva Moskovitz

Akiva, the fact that you used the word 'juggalo' was my favourite part of the post. How could I refute that? My 'juggalo name' is Cutty the Clown, by the way. - joey

joey, hm, I wonder what my juggalo name would be. - Akiva Moskovitz

Stunning visuals are expensive to develop. They are great for the immersion, but me I like games for strategy, tactics and competition. The visuals don't add anything to that. Seems to me like too many companies are marketing games just based on "stunning visuals" because they've run out of ideas for the actual game, and too many players fall for it. - Ed Millard

Akiva, not sure consoles are exactly crippling PC gaming. As others have suggested the PC's openness is its own worst enemy. Not sure "piracy" is entirely it but it is certainly rampant and is punishing developers. For multiplayer games the cheating you have on PC's is really killing them, it sure hammers BF2 and Call of Duty. Not sure how rampant it is on consoles but I assume its either a lot less to non existent. - Ed Millard

Okay, let me make this easy for all of you: if you agree with me, you're right; if you disagree with me, you're wrong Wrong WRONG!@@@@@@@@@@@@!@#!!! - Akiva Moskovitz

I'm willing to let Akiva have his Alex Scoble moment.. just because - Rodfather

Every once in awhile, the hero should enjoy the exploits of his sidekick. - Akiva Moskovitz

Tell 'em, Akiva! Fuck yeah PC gaming! - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Back to the very first response from Amber, I'm not stupid, I just can't afford to get a PC that can handle full-blown games yet. Maybe I'll reach that level when I replace my circa 2003 HP Pavilion that barely works. And sort of like what joey said, I'm not a very serious gamer, anyway, and I don't think I'm an idiot for using a console. Perhaps some people are, but I'm not. All I have is a PS2, anyway. I don't think that's peeing in the pool for current games so much anymore. I tend to buy used console after the next generation has come out. - Kamilah Gill

OK, I think Akiva just had the Nero, "Crucify all the console gamers" moment.... - Ed Millard

Kamilah: Here I am with a system from 2003, with a crappy video card, 1GB RAM, and a single-core P4. And yet I can play lots of great, full games on it. Cost is an excuse. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Chris, my computer has just gotten hopelessly full of stuff that slows it down. I defrag it, run virus detectors, etc. and it just acts really stupid all the time. I might get it to function well enough if I go through and painstakingly clean out everything in it, but I don't think it's worth the effort. I just need to start over with a clean slate. - Kamilah Gill

Not willing to go for a reformat and reinstall, eh? - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Console FTW because (1) I refuse to run Windows and (2) I refuse to upgrade my PC every 6-12 months. That said, game developers need to realize that we can plug in a keyboard and mouse on our console - at least I can plug one in the PS3, don't know about the Xbox - make that a controller option already and and get rid of dumbed down interfaces!!! - Haris bin Ali

Yeah, you can plug one in on a 360 as well... There's a folding panel on the right-hand side, similar to the cart slots on old consoles, with some USB ports inside. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Ok, first of all cutting-edge PC gaming is a hobby, not a thing for the casual gamer. Most gamers build their own rigs. That's part of the hobby. If you don't enjoy that, then by all means stick with consoles, no problem. Yes the gear is pricey but if you play it right you can updgrade incrementally as needed. Certainly consoles have their place and have brought the 3d gaming experience to the masses, but at the cost of watering it down in terms of graphics and game design. That is the problem here. Two worlds that should be separate are now merging. - Adrian

The last time I seriously gamed on a computer, it was on a Commodore 64. If WoW was on a console, I'd totally switch over. - Victor Ganata

Hey, don't knock the C=64. There are some games for the C=64 that I still play today through emulation. :-) I still love Tower Toppler and Bubble Bobble. - Jason Huebel

Jason, there's a C64 emulator for Android. ;D - Adrian

The Commodore 64 isn't a console. But it does remind me: I need to find a Commodore 64, a 1571, and a 1581. I still have nearly all of my discs from back in the day. Same with my Apple ][e and Amiga collections (I do have an Amiga 500 upstairs). - Akiva Moskovitz

I still play Phantasie and a few other C64 RPGs. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Akiva: There are pretty decent, annual shows in Toronto and Chicago for Commodore fans. Toronto's is next month, at that. - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

Toronto's a far distance from me. Ebay's a lot closer. - Akiva Moskovitz

I still have all my C64 and Amiga disks too. I hope they still work. - Rodfather

@Adrian Shouldn't the focus be on the games themselves rather than the hardware/OS they run on? Console gaming lets me do that. PC gaming does not. - Haris bin Ali

AMIGAS SUCK!! - Internet's Tad

And with that...TAD SIGNS HIS DEATH WARRANT !! - Mo Kargas

OH YEAH? WELL TAD HAS A SQUEAKY VOICE. - Akiva Moskovitz

@Haris sorry but that's not the case. The focus has been on simplifying the games with the console tech as the lowest common denominator, so even if you have a higher spec pc the game design itself is limited by the console tech, and not just the graphics. - Adrian

well the differences between a pc game and a SNES/genesis game compared to a pc game and ps3/360 game are a little different. i go into game places now it's usually a wall one side of ps stuff, a wall of xbox stuff, a section of wii stuff and the pc games waaaay on the back wall. - Terry O'Fee