Skyrim - X360 Timed Exclusive For Two DLCs

Yeah, sure… Spending 3 hours building my system and 1 hour installing and tuning up my OS once every two years is really annoying. And to play using my self-build PC is so pathetic…

Sorry if this is a bit long. Had too much coffee this evening.

I think what he was getting at is that consoles are a plug-and-play gaming solution while a gaming PC requires a bit more technical familiarity and thought to get right. They are also more of a luxury item than a console even is in that they require larger initial investment and more frequent replacement or upgrades. Plus most parents aren't going to buy something they themselves feel they don't understand enough about to purchase properly configured and to keep working as a gift.

Basically the idea is that consoles have won most of the market over because most peope just don't want to have to deal with what they perceive as excessive effort for marginal benefit they would get from a gaming PC. Also, most people hate their computers (except mac users, but then we'd really be talking about a niche gaming market.)

Part of the handicap facing the PC gaming market is also one of its principle sources of strength. For quite a while there was relatively strong competition between CPU manufacturers Intel and AMD as well as GPU designers AMD and nVidia - these competitions are not quite as even as they once were. This competition in a marketplace which largely viewed their products as imminently replaceable has means constant and massive growth in hardware power. Consoles on the other hand are not viewed as quite so replaceable by either the market or the manufacturers; so while they benefit from the advances made in PC hardware they only introduce these improvements when they beleive they absolutely have to.

The end result is that the PC is capable of being an indisputably superior platform in terms of hardware but also unstable in a number of ways. The user base represents an array of varying hardware configurations that is impossible to fully test products against and the ability to own a top of the line system is ultimately fleeting. Games must therefore be made to scale across a wide range of capabilities and run the risk of hardware specific compatibility issues.

Users must either accept having to run games on ever lower graphics settings (though still probably ever improving quality nonetheless) as newer games come out while their system represents performance increasingly further from the highest end of the spectrum; or they must frequently upgrade and/or replace systems to chase the improving technology. Really though I think the quandary is primarily psychological as I have 4 year old system that still runs games that look better than they do on my xbox 360 - even though I have to turn many settings to medium or even low. Still that initial investment was quite a few times more expensive than a console system.
 
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3 hours building your system? Perhaps.

1 hour installing drivers, browsers, document readers, packaging programs, transfer bookmarks, setup mail, configure and tweak your desktop and your everyday applications? … Riiiiiight and I'm sure you ran a marathon in 15 minutes yesterday too, right? :rolleyes:

I have been building and upgrading PC for almost 20 years and I've never been able to do a complete OS reinstall in less than 8 hours total.

Consoles are definitively hassle free no question there.

However you can also setup PC in 2 - 3 hours if you only want to play games on it. The 8 hours you mention is to play games and do zillion of others stuff on the PC.
 
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Consoles are definitively hassle free no question there.

However you can also setup PC in 2 - 3 hours if you only want to play games on it. The 8 hours you mention is to play games and do zillion of others stuff on the PC.

True. I just never considered the option that anyone would spend a lot more money and time on getting a PC that is basically just a console.

And I totally agree with jhwisner by the way :thumbsup:
 
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