PCS and Consoles Are Exactly the Same

By Ryan Dyce Hunter 

 

Which is better, Console or PC? If you’ve read past those first 6 words we’ve already established you’re prepared to wade through the same drivel repackaged with each new console release every single year. Well I’m not going to support or discredit your arbitrary team allegiance, because Console and PC will, in the near future, be exactly the same.

Consoles are attracting PC Games
If Sony and Microsoft learned anything from Nintendo, it’s that console gamers have kind of gotten over gimmicky hardware. A ninja dildo is pretty useless if all you can do is go bowling with it. So the next gen of consoles needs to sway developers and get good games, lots of them, preferably with online support and maybe boobs. Boobs usually sell well.

There are currently 2 sequels to this game. Just thought you should know.

In-house game development is expensive, slow and risky, (again, see Nintendo), so it makes more sense to sway independent developers and to make games for your system. Even if a developer releases on your rival’s system or on PC first a good title moves units.

With the previous generation of consoles, that was difficult. David Nalasco, a technical marketing manager with Radeon’s GPU business, says, “in the past, consoles have had very unique architectures compared to the PC.” So it costs developers boatloads of money and time to move games between consoles or to PC. But this year things are different. The PS4 and Xbox One will both share the same eight AMD Jaguar x86 CPU cores. These cores are only about mid-range compared to current PC graphics, and the consoles will still look different on screen for the customer, but developers won’t be able to tell the difference.

Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami really could care less which console is better, “When Xbox One was first announced it had lower specs than PS4, but now they’re almost identical, so either will do.” It’d be one thing if this was only how game developers feels about the differences between the consoles, but since these are cores originally designed for use in PCs, it’ll be a breeze to port to there as well.

“One very important statement that Microsoft made last week was when indie developers asked, ‘What do I have to do to develop Xbox One games?’” Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, said. “Microsoft’s response was, ‘Learn how to code for Windows 8.’ That says everything right there.”

How game devs feel about Next Gen Console Wars

It’s like saying Microsoft and Playstation changed their relationship status from, “married,” to, “it’s complicated,” and gave developers permission to sleep around.

The big focus at E3 2013 was on titles like Watchdogs and Assasin’s Creed IV which were planned to be released for everything. Others, like Titan Fall, were hinting at cross platform play between consoles and PC. An even larger number of releases include older games that have been on PC for ages; stuff like Awesomenauts, the Binding of Issac and Minecraft. There were only two major PS4 exclusives, Knack and Infamous: Second Son. Xbox One was the same, touting Dead Rising 3, Ryse and a new Halo title whose only selling point is that it’ll run at 60 frames per second. 

PCs want Console Hardware
There is no easier way to play a game than via console. It’s no wonder console gaming has done so well. It’s a two-step process.

PC gaming is another beast entirely.

PC gaming distributor, Steam has been making leaps and bound to legitimize the platform for years by offering competitive prices, easy access and a large cloud based library of games. But recently they’ve been trying to make the world of PC gaming more accessible and easy to navigate.

Steam attempted to push PC gamers from their office chairs to the couch with Big Picture Mode back in 2012. This update made your entire game library controller accessible and included the standard background floaty particles, ambient music and impossible to use joystick based typing. It looked nice, but it wasn’t enough of an incentive to make users move their computers from the hermetically sealed offices into living rooms where good games might infect other potential customers, a.k.a. friends and family.

The average PC gamer in his natural habitat, in the dark, alone.

That was up until a few weeks ago when Steam gave the PC gaming community blue balls by promising three new updates to, “The Steam Universe.” Sadly, none of these updates involved Half-Life, Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress. Instead, the software company promised to release, of all things, hardware. Little is currently known about the actual specs of the Steam Box console, its operating system, or it’s controller, but so far it seems to follow all of the standard trappings of a next gen console release.

The Steam Box itself has good graphics, but like any console, it’ll be cheaper and less powerful than what you’d find in a high end gaming computer. The controller uses dual track pads instead of joysticks, which crosses the gimmicky peripheral box off the next generation console check list. The new Linux based operating system boasts in house streaming capabilities, connections with "many of the media services you know and love,” and a game sharing option that seems reminiscent of a sharing service Microsoft had planned to release for Xbox One at E3 2013.

By your powers combined…
It’s natural for each of these markets to grab the better parts of the other and it’ll only lead to positive changes for the consumers. PC gamers won’t have to worry about installing and rolling back a million piggybacking programs and drivers to get a 2d platformer to work. Console gamers will finally catch up with better graphics and functional capabilities. Both will get cheaper, become more connected, easier to use and rely less on restrictive or exclusive content.

The truth is, Consoles and PC’s aren’t enemies, they’re siblings, and right now there are about to create some very sexy incestuous children.


Further Reading:
PC World - What the 'console-ification' of PCs means for gamers
Forbes - Why Valve's 'Steam Box' PC-Console Will Be A Game Changer
PC World - Why AMD's next-gen console victories are a big win for PC gamers
The Inquisitor - Xbox One VS PlayStation 4: Game Developers Say It’s A Draw