Would you pay extra for an easy PC gaming experience?

Games
1

I was thinking about how Apple computers have such broad appeal and that got me thinking about the key aspects of the mac experience. Number one on the list of course is stability. People talk about quality a lot but I think for computers this is the more significant reason. You buy your mac, then when you need anything you head to the same place you bought your mac from - the apple store. Everything in there is obviously hand picked so that it works perfectly with macs of all ages. Contrast that with the windows experience you would get from purchasing a no-brand peripheral at a local electronics shop or more likely a large supermarket. I can tell you are instinctively typing “windows driver download for XXXX-XX” on your lap while reading this.

Another thing I noticed keeps mac users happy is how apple goes out of it’s way to fill the general needs of their user base. Want to make a video? Here’s an app for that. Want to play around with mixing music? Here you go. Want to produce a unique presentation for a pitch or an online video? We got your back.

and the stuff they’re offering is really well done, and not token giveaway software that will be replaced later on for more expensive “Pro” apps.
…

Anyway, this got me thinking: would you pay a little extra for a PC if the PC manufacturer offered a service specifically to improve the experience for PC gamers?
As an example, for the equivalent of a current 24" iMac plus the added support package, you’d get a gaming PC and free subscription to a network that gives you:
-the best settings for a huge library of games catered specifically for your PC model. The settings would be tweaked to give you the best framerates and later on the best balance between quality and performance once your PC model starts showing it’s age (3-4 years down the line).
-fixes for a huge library of games, compatibility fixes for games from previous generations
-Articles on new game mods, and pre-configured mods to download - again catered specifically for your system. So you would just download and install, tweaking not necessary.
-an online store for emulation gaming. That would include refurbished PS2,Wii,SNES etc. consoles to legally own BIOS, older titles from PS2,Wii,gamecube and others. An iso rip and emulator configuration come free with each game. Only games which work perfectly are included in the store.
-An online store with hard to find or quirky PC hardware like, say a bluetooth adapter that supports keyboards in BIOS, or a LAN HDMI extender. Or even this remote for example if you’re into home theater stuff.
-An overclock profile that you can load directly into your motherboard with a guarantee that it will work perfectly with your PC model
-Discounted upgrade packages for your now ancient machine that have been exhaustively tweaked and tested to match the claim of their specific price level: budget, mid-range, high end.

  • insane amounts of support from the kind of people you would know are knowledgeable about this stuff, and not “trained support staff”

In short, all the things that are great about PC’s but without the hassle of trial and error, loss of money and wasted time.

So yeah, I’m curious: would you be willing to pay a bit extra for these kinds of features or save up, build your own PCs and take your chances?

2

Nope. Not at all. PC’s are pretty much plug and play as they are. The reason I buy PC’s instead of Macs is because I can get the exact configuration which suits both my needs and budget every time. And if I want to upgrade my video card or RAM or hard disk a year or 2 in, no worries. I can just look up the ones that fit my needs best and get them at the best available price. Not be stuck with a preselected list of compatible but overpriced hardware.

If i wanted to give up on flexibility completely and have preset hardware putting me on 3 performance paths, I might as well get a Mac.

Alongside that, my PC doesn’t come with any bloatware. I order it without an OS and do a fresh Windows install. But even if I ordered one with an OS, I would do so from a system builder who doesn’t preinstall <manufacturer’s name here> update, <manufacturer’s name here> widgets, <manufacturer’s name here> help, …

And the moment I choose flexibility is the moment the whole concept of the vendor somehow spoon feeding everything to me goes out the window.

I’m really not interested in that one bit.

Personal opinion of course. But since you asked. :)

Wendelius

3

something about Macs

Erm, no thanks.

4

sure, if you’re comfortable with PCs that’s great. I think this question is aimed at those who don’t have the time/ aren’t interested in putting the effort required to do a bunch of things on PC, but at the same time maybe were once PC gamers in the DOS days when getting a 386 or a 486 was enough to guarantee you could do everything with a PC gaming wise.

5

Oh, let me clarify something!

PCs can’t be locked down the way Macs are. This would be in the lines of giving you a good head start rather than a gimped “branded” machine. How you go about wit hit is up to you: you can maintain it yourself or you can go with the manufacturer’s pre-tested configurations and upgrades.
If you build your own then the whole thing is irrelevant.

6

Erm. I’m not sure you owned one of those. Sure, the hardware side was kinda OK, but only as far as everything ran from the CPU and you had no real choice for sound and GPU. And woe betide you if you did install an AdLib card in the days before plug and play was even a thing. It seems you have forgotten the joys of the autoexec, config.SYS, himem, loading mouse drivers or not, and in what order to put the commands (and having to manually boot into different configs for different programs).

Your rose tinted glasses seem to make you forget that PC’s are actually much more user friendly these days than they have ever been. Yes there is more hardware choice and advice can be helpful, but there was nothing simple about the good old days either.

So no. I’d definitely not pay for it for the reasons mentioned in my first reply.

Wendelius

7

Have to be honest here, was an Amiga user back then so everything just worked, and much better than PCs at that. 4096 colours and stereo sound out of the box bitches! Yeah…

in any case, I do remember that at least you didn’t have to worry that your PC would not be able to run games at all.

8

I think your vision is the same as microsofts, mashakos ;) And no i won’t pay ‘extra’ for that (i can always buy a Mac if i want right?), and as soon as it becomes ‘compulsory’ i’ll be using Linux on my PC most the time. So erm no, back devils, back locking down and monetizing demons…or something.

9

Back in the old dos days getting stuff running could be difficult, you then had different graphic cards and some game Sony ran on some and the different amounts of memory needed. It gave you a grounding in how to use pcs but now days its pretty simple and in fact most people have one even those with limited know how and seem to manage to get online and do whatever it is they do with them.

My last pc was bought from overclockers uk and came with just windows installed no junk or anything else and has worked great, I have added more memory and a graphic card which was simple enough, even e case and space is well laid out and so on.

Certainly don’t want the old days back and for fixed configurations there are game consoles for that these days, you can even browse the web with them as we’ll.

10

no idea what you’re referring to:
PC’s can’t be locked down.
The only Mac yuo can upgrade for gaming is a Mac Pro
the services offered would be free and online so anybody can access them. Difference is, the downloads would be guaranteed to work for the manufacturer’s PCs ootb while it would need tweaking for other PCs.

11

I dont need that type of experience with a PC, for a controled enviroment I already have iOS.
With gaming I have Steam, that is a “distro” (to use linux terms) and it make all the experience click and play.

I dont want the computer to limit what I can do, but to explore what nobody has done yet.

12

Mac sucks. Apple is Crapple. iPhone’s use Samsung chipsets.

Leave my PC the way it is please.

13

I don’t understand how this product would survive in a world that also already contains Apple computers.

14

Have you not used a PC since the DOS days?

99% of the time, the days of having to download some rare driver for who knows what are over. However, this is one of the (few) disadvantages to having one party not control all of the hardware for your system with an iron fist.

If you want someone to prescreen applications for you to make sure they aren’t obviously crappy and/or obviously spyware, please send me a list along with $1.95 per item and I will do so for you. Hell, for $19.95 you can send me a desired function and I will research it for you and recommend the best app for that.

Also a Mac doesn’t offer any of the features in your big list.

Also, as Wendelius mentioned, back in the old days of DOS things were very quirky. I remember buying some game as a young kid only to find out I couldn’t use it because I needed a different kind of cpu.

So no, I don’t think your plan to buy a $800 computer and sell it for $1500 “but now with more support and features” will work. The people that were vulnerable to this tactic already bought Macs.

15

You lost me on subscription part. So, no.

16

a lot of misunderstanding going on in this thread.

it’s actually the complete opposite. If you had an overclocked system, under warranty, wouldn’t you try different things with it?
I think I don’t have the ability to explain it if my OP is not clear to you.

it’s free, so, not xbox live gold

17

I want you to:

  1. send me bios settings for my random motherboard so i can overclock my random cpu to 4.5Ghz. Without increasing fan speeds. I want a quiet system :)
  2. send me 300 configurations that cover all the games that are playable on PCSX2. Also, I’d like you to patch widescreen hex values for all the older PS2 games with no widescreen support
  3. the same for Wii and Gamecube games and Dolphin
  4. set up enbseries for every modern dx9 game out there. Make it look good and run at 60fps too.
  5. Write a bluetooth HID Proxy switcher app so bluetooth keyboards can still work outside of windows, while in Linux or the BIOS.
  6. Prepare the drivers and multibeast config for my radom PC so that I can dual boot windows 7 and Mac OSX

You can do all that for $19.95 a month? You got a deal!

18

Windows 8 offers a pretty seamless gaming experience, at least with Store apps. I’ve been playing Free Flow and Wordament all week.

19

We are in a world where this exists… the folks who are looking for that kind of experience buy Macs.

The rest of the world is still buying PCs, because they work well enough as is that most folks don’t feel the need to pay a hefty premium.

With the comparison you’re making you’re really talking about paying nearly double the cost of a equivalently powered PC desktop. $1,500 for an $800 computer. What’s that $700 buying you?

-the best settings for a huge library of games catered specifically for your PC model. The settings would be tweaked to give you the best framerates and later on the best balance between quality and performance once your PC model starts showing it’s age (3-4 years down the line).

I think most people can manage this. Also most new PC games have an auto-detect that essentially does this for you.

-fixes for a huge library of games, compatibility fixes for games from previous generations

Not worth $700. It’s also been an incredibly long time since I’ve run into a compatibility issue.

-Articles on new game mods, and pre-configured mods to download - again catered specifically for your system. So you would just download and install, tweaking not necessary.

Not worth $700.

-an online store for emulation gaming. That would include refurbished PS2,Wii,SNES etc. consoles to legally own BIOS, older titles from PS2,Wii,gamecube and others. An iso rip and emulator configuration come free with each game. Only games which work perfectly are included in the store.

I’d like to see this, but have no idea what this has to do with being tied to some sort of super-PC subscription plan. If this were actually possible it would exist right now and would sell a la carte to anyone and everyone.

-An online store with hard to find or quirky PC hardware like, say a bluetooth adapter that supports keyboards in BIOS, or a LAN HDMI extender. Or even this remote for example if you’re into home theater stuff.

There’s this site called Newegg, you may have heard of it.

-An overclock profile that you can load directly into your motherboard with a guarantee that it will work perfectly with your PC model

Some system builders already do this for you for a nominal fee. Not worth anywhere near $700.

-Discounted upgrade packages for your now ancient machine that have been exhaustively tweaked and tested to match the claim of their specific price level: budget, mid-range, high end.

Or I could just invest the $700 I saved not buying this subscription and buy a brand new much better system every 2 years.

- insane amounts of support from the kind of people you would know are knowledgeable about this stuff, and not “trained support staff”

This would be useful, but not worth $700.

The one spot I could see your service being attractive would be with laptops, but I think that’s already the reason Apple has had so much success in that market.

20

windows 8 is irrelevant to hardcore gaming isn’t it?