Dump Your Consoles

I know what you’re thinking “Wait, did he just tell me to get rid of my game consoles?” yes, yes I did. Before you start freaking out “Toby, why would you say something like that?” “Toby, you just talked about yesterday how video games could actually pay off for you” I know. Let me explain, I’m not telling you to stop playing games or anything. No, instead I’m telling you why you should upgrade to a PC.

FPS

FPS stands for Frames Per Second. If you’d like to get into a better understanding of what that is Click Here. To put it short though FPS is a frequency where images pop up on device. You can see this in computer graphics and videos. Every second you’re seeing a certain number of frames. More frames means a smoother experience which in exchange makes everything pop out and more beautiful. If you’d like to really see the difference make sure you have a display that’ll put out 60 fps and check out this video. This video is showing you 30 and 60 fps running on a few different games. Can you see a difference? 60 fps is a much more fluid and alive experience.

 

 

Now what does this have to do with consoles? Well up until recently the Wiiu, Xbox 360, and PS3 all ran in 30fps respectively. A PC on the other hand depending on your hardware can run the game at anywhere between 60 or even 120 fps! Really there isn’t a limit to how many frames you can run at as long as your display supports it and your computer can handle it. However too much of anything is never good. Hit to many frames and chances are you’ll get a headache, so try to keep it around 60 – 120.

However, on the consoles side of the argument they are getting better. The PS4 PRO and Xbox One X both can hit 60 fps, on select games that is. Even Nintendo’s Switch barely hits 60fps on select games (which for such a tiny device is very impressive).

 

Hardware

Alright, now if you’re like me you want the most brilliantly stunning immersive experience you can get while playing a game. You want to be completely captivated by it. Escaping the real world for another has never looked so beautiful. A good example is The Witcher 3, below I have provided two pictures of the game. One in Ultra Settings and one from and Xbox one. Look at the characters hair and clothes, do you see how much more alive it is? The greenery is almost life like while the other isn’t textured enough. The sun shine lights up through the trees’ leaves and makes individual shadows for each one. It’s stunning to see how far technology has come in just a few decades! Ultra-settings mixed with high definition and 60+ fps makes for an experience you’ll never forget.

Can you tell the difference? The one on top is ultra settings on my pc while as the bottom is what it looks like while playing on a console. Look at the difference in shadows and clarity of the game. Even the bushes and grass are heavily downgraded.

The Xbox 360 was around for 8 years and never got any hardware upgrades. On the other hand a PC can be updated whenever you want to keep up with the latest and greatest performance. If you’d like to check out more comparisons here is a video by a Candyland comparing DOOM (2016) PC vs PS4 vs Xbox One.

 

Keyboard and Mouse

Now I’d grown up on consoles so playing with a controller was completely natural to me. It wasn’t until I’d built my PC and bought a few games to play on that I’d realized how big of a difference there was. Playing with a controller is very useful for fighting games like Tekken and Street fighter or even games like Sonic The Hedgehog, Final Fantasy, Rocket League, and Dark Souls. For basically any other game though nothing beats the combination of a keyboard and mouse. Here’s a quick run down: Keyboards have so many various buttons that you can button map (button map is when you take a button and move it to another position) anything you want to any key. This gives a lot of people different play styles or even whatever works for them. Mice also have pin point accuracy and are much more responsive then joysticks. Controllers don’t usually have button mapping to any games and when they do it’s more like different options. Option A, B, and C are all different. What if you don’t like any of those set ups though? Too bad! You’re now stuck with playing a game with bad controls. This really comes down to personal preference though as you can still play a PC with an Xbox one and PS4 controller.

 

More than just for games

In the current generation of consoles, you can do a lot more stuff with them. Browse the web, watch videos from select apps, and even stream your games on platforms like twitch. However, nothing beats an actual computer. I mean look at me, I’m currently using mine to write this blog post. There’s so much more you can do though. For instance, video editing, keeping track of all your online data, making games, learning computer coding, or even making music. A computer is what a lot of our world revolves around today so why not gain access to more than just games? Having somewhere as a main hub of learning is one of my favorite things about my computer.

 

Exclusives

PC is widely known for having thousands of exclusives over consoles. While Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo have exclusives it’s just a hand full compared to the rest. On PC other people can make games and host the games on their own websites or various other sites that host games. This allows a wider audience of people to gain access to this game.

Due to most consoles of the past generations not being able to really record footage without certain equipment, most early video game youtubers played strictly new and upcoming PC games. This led to a surplus of indie games getting a lot of attention due to the publicity of big youtubers like Pewdiepie, Markiplier, and Tobuscus.

 

Paying for Online

Since the introduction of the Xbox there has been paid online services. A whopping sixty dollars a year to play online. Eventually Playstation also started doing this and even now so is Nintendo. Nintendo’s pay to play online services begin in September of this year for twenty dollars a year. That’s much cheaper then rival companies. Unlike the current console generation PC is a free to play online platform for all.

 

Steam

Now I mentioned Steam in my last blog post. Steam has sales every week on hundreds of game titles from more popular to lesser known. Every season though Steam has a big sale where almost every game in the steam catalog goes on sale for anywhere between 30-90% off. When browsing Steam sometimes you can get popular games like Dishonored 2, DOOM, Dying Light, and Rainbow Six Siege for more than half off randomly within the week.

 

Mods

Modding has it’s own huge community of people who are using their talents to create great content for everyone. Modding is when a person modifies a game’s code to add their own creations into a specific game. A great example is Skyrim. Skyrim is a medieval open world RPG with lots of dragons and magic. There’s a great mod that I’ll link right Here where the creator of the mod made all the dragons into Thomas the tank engine and friends. It’s great for a good laugh! There are plenty in this community that have done amazing work with their skills. While yes consoles do have “modding” now there isn’t really a community for it neither have any games really allowed it yet. The few that have haven’t gone well or they hold to many restrictions that don’t allow the community to do what they want.

Now I don’t think you should go out and dump your consoles or anything drastic. I just see a lot uniformed people who come up with crazy ideas about computers. I love computers and wanted to write a quick and informative post about what makes computers stand out from the rest of the competition. Computers have so many everyday uses and the fact that they’re the best place to play games just make them a plus. So, what do you think? Do I have you convinced, are you already on Amazon looking to buy or build a computer?

Thanks for reading! If this was informative and something you enjoyed please make sure to leave me a comment below telling me what you liked about this post. Also I’d like to know what you play on and why?