Having not always been a PC gamer, my loyalties once lay with consoles and like most of our kind I would have fought to argue how they were better or that they had more potential as a system for gaming. But four years ago, I made the transition into PC gaming via Azeroth. I came to realise that I had been wrong and although console gaming did have potential, it didn’t touch on the kind that PC gaming.

There isn’t enough in the media to properly enhance this view; for every ten console adverts that exist there is about one for a PC game. When you think about it, the reason behind this is because the most prominent PC games have been around for years; anything born from Blizzard, Counter Strike, Team Fortress for example. Games solely made for PC, at least in terms of the mmorpgs’ and fps’ have a certain longevity that console games lack. The brilliance of online gaming is that the player can always rely on other players to keep content new and refreshing. You will come up against players that are 10x harder than any insane setting on GoW so it feels like a progression. You get better and better and there’s room for improvement.

However, gone are the days where once you’ve completed a game that’s that. Consoles have taken on the most appealing factor of PC gaming: online play. This improves a games’ replay factor substantially. One of the best examples of an online game is World of Warcraft. I have loyally stood within it’s realms for four years now and the only downside I can see to the game (aside from the subscription fee) is the aesthetics of it; it still uses such an outdated engine that shows the age of the game which might put off some players whereas consoles constantly update their games and their graphics. But in terms of games that are released over all platforms, choosing which platform to invest in shouldn’t be a tricky decision. As most loyal patrons of Steam would agree, if you’re going to play a shooter then go for PC, for precision a mouse and keyboard will get you further without a bullet to the head than a pad could.

PCs are also generally a better piece of hardware to run a game on; the potential is endless and as long as you have the right kind of PC then the benefits flow as smooth as an in-game river on an i7 processor. But, herein lies the problem, as it’s more expensive to keep a PC running at 60fps. There was a point where my PC would only run the newest games at 4fps despite everything I tried. This means having to constantly spend to keep you rig up to speed. So it’s understandable that people would want to make the transition from PC to console for those reasons, it does mean you may have to update your hardware every year or two instead of paying a solid sum with a warranty as you would do with a console.

Then we come to the issues of dlc; I hate it. I find this to be most common products of modern console companies (especially Microsoft) as an obvious attempt to make more money from the initial release. If a customer buys a game, why must they be forced into paying more for content? This is made even worse when this content is necessary to the game (more often for maps or weapons). Even though downloadable content has been around in consoles since the days of the Dreamcast, it has recently popped it’s head up drastically on Xbox and PS3. This is why again I feel that PCs have the upper hand; with user modified content. An advantage more readily available to that of PC gamers and again I use WoW as an example and all I have to say is ‘curse’. Any add-ons or bots are at your disposal for free as they are created by players, for players and this is a much better way of utilising additional content; it should not be controlled by your credit card.

Consoles may be taking over PC gaming since the merging of online play into their own but they still have a long way to go in order to put themselves on a par with PCs. As it stands, the RPG still belongs on PC and even though CoD has bought in a mass following for console online shooters, credit is still due with the original PC shooters. Console gaming is a lot more cost effective in the long run, which may be why dlc is becoming widely used to keep the money flowing into the company. This is all coming from a person who has all the competing consoles and despite this, I will always put my money into my trusty PC.