1. PC Gaming Has No Exclusives
Now, when you think “exclusives,” you probably think of Mario, right? It’s true that PC gaming does not have the latest first party titles from console manufacturers, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own great exclusives. Let’s name some of them:
Dota 2, one of the most popular MOBAs in the world. It’s also a huge record-breaker in eSports, with an $11.4 million prize pot for The International in 2015. League of Legends, its close rival, is also a PC exclusive, and while the third of the big three MOBAs, Smite, is seeing a port to consoles, this port is coming a full three years too late. Star Citizen may still be in alpha, but the graphical prowess and the sheer size of the game is something said to be unprecedented. It’s a game that takes true advantage of the PC platform and all it has to offer.
ARMA 2 and 3 are hallmarks of military sim games due to their real-world accuracy to modern combat and their advanced engine. The real reason these games are in the spotlight, however, is for titles like DayZ, fan-made mods that spawned from them and revolutionized the survival genre. Golden indie titles, like Undertale, The Stanley Parable, A Hat In Time, and many more!
A lot of major multi-platform titles either made their name on PC or are better on PC. The Witcher series started on PC, only moving to consoles with the second and third games which can still be pushed further on the PC than on consoles. Two major multiplayer titles, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2, are actually multi-platform, too. However, both of these games are still regularly receiving major content updates from Valve … content updates that their console counterparts don’t receive. Even for multi-platforms, PC is generally the best platform to be playing the games on, for more performance, prettier graphics and more features. The hottest new titles, especially in eSports, tend to get their start on PC, and PC has no shortage of availability of classic games, like the original Half-Life, games that changed the industry for good.
2. PC Gaming Is Only for Mouse and Keyboard
Another popular misconception is that PC games are only good for using mouse and keyboard. While it’s true that mouse and keyboard is the most dominant input method on PC games, especially for strategy titles and first-person shooters, games that greatly benefit from the control scheme, mouse and keyboard is far from the only supported control method on the PC platform. In fact, this might surprise you, but just about every gamepad you can think of is supported on PC. Xbox 360 and One controllers are supported right out of the box, with most PC titles released in the past decade supporting them. Other gamepads, such as a PlayStation 3 pad or a GameCube controller, can be made to work with a PC, too, as long as you’re willing to install the necessary drivers and buy the necessary USB adapters for the pads. I have two controllers hooked up to my PC – a 360 pad for most controller games and a GameCube pad for Gamecube and Wii game emulation.
3. PC Gaming Can’t Be Played on the Couch
Actually, it totally can. You can use a device like the Steam Link or a modest HTPC to stream content from a big PC into the living room, or simply bring that PC into a living room and hook it up to the TV with an HDMI cable. There are various solutions available for navigating a desktop environment from the comfort of your couch should you want to. If you don’t, you can use something like Steam Big Picture to bypass the desktop interface entirely, interacting with your PC only through a controller-friendly method! Now, I’ll admit that this does take a few extra loops that you wouldn’t otherwise be jumping with a console. But let’s face it: you’re bringing PC-level power and customization to your living room TV and couch. Isn’t that sick?
4. PC Gaming Is More Expensive Than Console Gaming
You see that image above? It could come cheaper if I chose to cut out the operating system (you’re more than welcome to run a Linux distribution instead), but there you go. That build has components that perform better than both the PS4 and Xbox One right in the same price range. Here’s a link. Okay, then. That’s the hardware and the OS. What about the games? There’s plenty of competition in online storefronts on PC. Prominent choices include Steam, GOG, Origin and more. These stores competing with one another on the same platform means that the sales on PC are very regular and very major, featuring huge price cuts on even the latest software.
That’s just a random sale, by the way. Winter and Summer Sales are legendary on the PC platform for discounting games anywhere from 50 to a whopping 95 percent. They aren’t just random indie titles either! A few years back, I purchased “Batman: Arkham Asylum” and “Arkham City”, at the time $60 each, for less than $10, with all of the DLC for both games. Yeah.
Conclusion
While they aren’t accurate now, in the past a lot of these arguments rang true. Prior to the release of the Xbox 360, PC gaming did not have a force like the 360 controller to really solidify the gamepad’s place on PC, which is why some earlier titles require adjustments to be played with them. When the PS3 released, it had hardware much more powerful than what was available in even the best PCs at the time – its infamous launching price even had Sony taking losses from every unit sold. PC hardware was much more expensive back then, and the online storefronts that are so prevalent today weren’t around to keep the price of PC games significantly lower than their console brethren. With time, however, these things have changed. Exclusives are plentiful on the PC platform, though they always have been. In the past decade, the PC’s weakness in controller support and hardware pricing have been alleviated, and with the rise of in-home streaming solutions and home theater PCs, PC gaming is finally making meaningful strides toward the couch, a domain previously dominated by the console. The above misconceptions still exist due to the new debates around framerate and resolution (thanks to the new console’s relatively low power in comparison to mid-range PCs), and these misconceptions aren’t helped at all by the deceitful marketing around pre-release game footage and prebuilt PCs. That being said, it should all be clear now. Is there anything you feel I missed or that I should cover in the future? As always, leave a comment and let me know what you think.
