Topic: PC Gaming

Brilliant answers there @JaxonH, much appreciated. 👍

@Yoshi2 I always see it that consoles are for people who don't care about the faff and just want games to work for them. As a generation goes on, the console will be falling further and further behind (until a pro model comes out or something), but it is the job of the developer, not the consumer, to make sure the games work on the intended platform. So as long as someone is okay with playing games not pushed to their absolute limits, you can easily pick up the launch console and ride it through to the end of a generation.

With a PC, you might have higher up front costs, but that PC is going to last you longer, and be able to push games further and for longer, too with a far greater suite of granular options to tailor your experience for your machine, and you can upgrade it part by part, to save money that way over time. However, this is all on you, not the developer.

If this isn't of interest to you, then stick with the safety of a console, as things don't always "just work" on a PC. But if you are the kind of person who indulges in a mid gen refresh (if there will even be one this time with the chip shortages), it actually might be cheaper long term to look at getting a PC spec'd up. However, buying a prebuilt from say Currys, is going to be far more expensive than just sourcing the parts yourself and either building it yourself or getting someone to build it for you.

Yeah, getting your 1st PC is expensive, @Yoshi2 ... But I notice a lot of those are PC Specialist, so you'd get better overall prices from them direct They're ideal for people who wouldn't know where to get all the parts separately &/or be comfortable putting them together
What sort of games are you going to play on it if you got 1 ....?

You don't necessarily have to spend a fortune to get into PC gaming. Almost all the games you could run on a $4000 PC will also run on a $400 one, just with somewhat pared back visuals.

Most PC gamers don't have very expensive or particularly modern systems either. The most popular graphics card in the latest Steam survey is the mid-range and six year old GTX 1060. You've got to go down to the seventh spot before you see a 30-series GPU and it's a mobile one.

A lot of what you're paying for with pre-built gaming PCs is bling too, and they're often slapped together in ways that can hamper performance and make them prone to failure. Building your own, or at least getting someone to put one together for you, out of standard components will serve you better in the long run.

That's not to say that you're wasting your money if you drop thousands on a PC. You can get unparalleled graphics that consoles won't match for another generation yet if you're prepared to spend big. It's just not the only way to go and there are gaming PCs for pretty much any budget.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/05/playstation-predicts-...

Judging by Sony's predictions it seems PC ports are ramping up this fiscal year. We already know about Uncharted Legacy of Thieves collection but it also seems we're getting Returnal soon:

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/05/rumour-ps5-exclusive-...

There'll likely be more in the time window too.

We're almost at a point Switch + PC can get you 99% of 3rd party games, 100% of Nintendo exclusives, 90% of PS exclusives and 100% of Xbox exclusives, all with gyro aiming and hybrid gaming across the board.

For some reason my PS4 doesn't want to consistently want to connect to the internet, so if Sony were to release Sackboy or Ghost of Tsushima on PC I'd be very happy.

I have to say that the PC gamers in this community are a really nice, decent and laid back bunch. I've encountered a lot of snobbery online over the years reading posts by PC elitists who deem consoles to be thrash etc.

I'm not one of those consoles owners who'll lie though, aka. if I could afford a good gaming PC I'd chose it over an Xbox. But in saying that I still appreciate the Xbox as it provides access to the latest games at a cheap rate.

@Matt_Barber

Thank you for the advice. 👍

@Grumblevolcano

I've noticed a lot of anger within the PlayStation community about PS exclusives going to PC, not sure what that's all about. Nearly all Xbox games can be played on PC as well and it has never bothered me.

Spider-Man Remastered and Spider-Man Miles Morales coming to PC on August 12th and Fall 2022 respectively.

https://blog.playstation.com/2022/06/02/marvels-spider-man-se...

@Grumblevolcano FINALLY! I'll get to experience them after years of waiting.

@Grumblevolcano YES! I really wanted to play em but don't have a PS4/5 (Nintendo fanboy).

@Grumblevolcano
I already have the PS4 version, but I might double-dip and get myself a PC copy. Playing on a PC is so much more convenient for me.

Lots of people will be happy about Spider-Man I imagine? You guys are winning big time thanks to Sony’s strategy. It’s one of the best PS4 games I’ve played, and one of the best superhero stories I’ve ever seen. It’s just such a well made game with tremendous performances and gameplay. You’re in for a ride.

Yeah, I'll get them eventually....

Best part of Spiderman on PC is Steamdeck makes it portable. Not the ideal portable experience obviously (bulky with low battery life) but it's still better than nothing.

Idk why but I could never get into Spiderman, despite being obsessed as a kid. Every time I play I lose interest after a couple hours. It's extremely well made, maybe it's just the whole "being locked to a single screen" thing. Or maybe it's just that it follows the same template as so many other games, it doesn't feel as interesting. It's basically Batman Arkham but swinging around the city instead of gliding and grappling.

I'll definitely buy on Steam though, if nothing else to show support and encourage more PC ports.

Despite having a dozen or so games sitting unplayed in my Steam library, I went ahead & bought LEGO Star Wars: the Skywalker Saga (though most of the games I have are JRPGs of some sort, & I don't want to get started on one only to be burnt out by the time XC3 launches).

Pretty hyped about Spiderman, definitely one to add to the list. I probably need to find the time to actually sit down and play some games though before I spend more money on games I'll never play. On PC I seem to always end up getting games and then just.... not playing them.....

Pretty much always just something quick on the Switch, Cities Skylines or some other random strategy game at my desk/on my laptop or Disney/Netflix/Youtube. Having a PC hooked upto my TV permanently has certainly helped but not quite as much as I thought

.... but I'm pretty sure I could get into Spiderman... surely....

In before Bayonetta 3 comes out the week before

i also have such a setup. so damn nice. i can sit at the desk or lay on my bed to use my PC. got an all-in-one media keyboard. only flaw is that the tv has no adaptive sync and it is an old plasma so the visual experience is far inferior to my 144hz monitor. but i genuinly play on my bed now most of the time except for some specific games.
one of the many advantages of PC gaming is that you can also have a console-like experience quite easily

So I've decided to do something about the storage situation amongst my PCs. I seem to have somehow got to the point where I seem to be doing the thing I tell people not to do. Stuff stored on portable storage devices rather than doing it properly. The PC I had hooked upto the TV? Its game library was running off a cheap portable Sandisk "portable SSD". Which.... I tested and was slower than a 2.5" HDD in sequential reads..... like 300Mbps (yes, b not B)

So I went down to the PC shop today and picked up a 2TB SATA SSD for what is effectively my "main gaming PC". Moved all the files around and after playing a little bit of a game noticed something. I'm not getting random stutters in the framerate anymore. Also, 2TB? Even with the size of some games these days that's a fair chunk of storage. I currently have a 1TB mechanical HDD in my main PC (not the HTPC), I suspect that'll be the last HDD I have in a PC

Obviously with the exception being network storage. I currently have a NAS with 6TB of usable storage (4x 2TB drives) which is getting pretty full. My intention is to replace it with an old PC running TrueNas. I have a i5-4590 with 16GB DDR3 which should do the job. Then drop a couple of 8TB HDDs in there. Storage problem solved with room for expansion. Want more storage? throw in another 8TB drive. Wand some GPU power for video encode? Throw in a GPU. Networking? There's space for 2.5Gbps cards, or 10Gbps if I don't want a GPU

I could also have some fun playing around with a Steam Caching server. Although the value of that might be pretty limited given I am not 100s of people at a LAN and I don't tend to download the same game more than once. Could be a fun project but