I have a good gaming PC, Xbox one X, Switch, and a PS4. I rotate through them on a pretty regular cadance (though my PS4 has been pretty dusty lately. I also have a TV in my office pretty dedicated to gaming and isn’t used by anyone otherwise.
For me it comes down to what game I want to play. If I’m playing a FPS then I prefer my PC for better control schemes that are more appropriate to it. If I’m playing something that will allow me to take advantage of my 4k monitors than I’ll also play it on PC. Another consideration is how text heavy a game is, as I really don’t want to read a lot of text from the 10 feet or so I am from my large tv.
That being said, there are plenty of cases I enjoy sitting on my comfy couch and gaming on my TV. If a game takes advantage of having a larger surface then I’ll play there (as long as it doesn’t cause text issues). Or if it’s a platformer that doesn’t take advantage of the extra graphics my PC has I’ll prefer to play it on a console.
My list, for what it is, mostly centers on a few factors.
Tv use. The TV is more or less the domain of my wife and kids. I’d need time she isn’t using it. Which basically means never.
Game style. I mostly am a fan of strategy games. Those are largely PC.
Price. I haven’t updated my computer in 6 years+. I am not trying to keep up with the latest AAA, and games are generally cheaper on PC. Wait a year and get on sale? Yup!
Backwards compatibility. On top of not being up with current AAA, I also tend to play a lot of older games. GOG and Steam do this much better than any console can. And without the need to rebuy!
Infrequency. I don’t game much. 5 hours in a good week max. Hard to justify console costs. Less hard to justify $5 for a Steam sale game from 2015.
Basically if I want a game and it is not PC, I won’t play it. Simple as that. I do have older consoles, PS2 and Wii notably, also SNES. But otherwise? No plans simply because I could never get the TV enough to be worth it.
Why is everyone’s kids still watching TV on TVs? Don’t they have tablets or or phones? None of the younger kids in my life even look twice at a TV unless they’re sharing the space with adults.
Because putting a movie on the TV is slightly more social than the tablet.
Though the close proximity of my son and daughter watching My Little Pony on a tablet could hardly be considered isolating :)
And make no mistake, my wife is the one who dominates the TV. That’s… a whole separate issue. Suffice to say she watches more TV in a normal day than I do in a week.
No argument there. I certainly don’t prefer watching things on my tablet unless I am traveling or TV is unavailable. But my experience is, the kids prefer the tablet small screens all to their own… so much YouTube.
There is truth to that. It is a constant struggle in our house.
Plus side, when my son is misbehaving, the threat of taking his tablet is very effective. In practice this means that he tends to have it for a few days, then lose it for a week. 6 year olds 🤦♂️
This was always my philosophy up to the point where the number of PC games I wanted to play so hilariously exceeded the time I had to play them that buying an additional gaming system just stopped making any sense. But that’s a consequence of personal circumstances, if you’ve got lots of time to game there’s undoubtedly a lot of value in having both.
God, I love Mods. Almost every D&D game I have installed, I use some sort of mod, at least to add more classes and feats to the game.
Mods can remake a game, or even make a game playable. Vampire:. The Masquerade was made playable because of the awesome modding community.
I also like FPS, RTS, TBS and RPG games, and all of them are better with a Keyboard and Mouse.
Finally, so many games, some old, some new, most run on my PC without too much trouble and almost all could be bought for less then any equivalent game on Console.
Also, my kids watch cartoons on the TV, because then I can keep an eye on what they are watching.
*Has lessened over time as consoles became more like PCs with large patch downloads
Many have already said it, but it also goes with the types of games I like (RTS, RPG, FPS) I prefer playing these games on PC. I’ve never truly gotten use to FPSs on console using dual analog sticks…it always feels like performing open heart surgery with crane controls, which is also why they usually have some kind of auto-aim/aim assist function. Radically changes the experience, and IMO, defeats the purpose.
It’s just really annoying. And because of Blizzard’s annoying always-on DRM, I doubt you can even make split-screen work with something like nucleus coop.
Better graphics, better performance, more/better control options, mod support.
I can’t even remember how many years it’s been since I last had installation or startup issues on PC.
The PC can use controllers (including Xbox One, PS4 and Switch Pro controllers) and can do anything that consoles can with them. Plus having KB+M support for game genres that I find control better that way, like FPS games.
While that’s true for hardware, the actual games are cheaper on PC.
