Why don't PC makers make PCs like consoles?

[Fifty]

Why do you need a $9000 video card to be able to play 15 year old games, yet an xbox 360 can run contemporary games?

Why, when you want to play a PC game, do you have to spend at least 8 hours tweaking settings to get it to work?

The only advantages computers have over consoles is 1) keyboards/mice, 2) internet, 3) microsoft word.

Why is this the case? Why is it so easy for companies to make a console that can work just fine with good graphics for 1/20th of the cost of making a PC that can barely play games that are 60 years old? Is the "versatility" (that is, internet and word) really worth it?

DISCUSS

 

[Genocidicbunny]

A console has a set specification to which developers must adhere. If their game does not adhere to these specifications it will either not work at all, or if it does, not very well. This would kill the developer in the market.

A PC on the other hand has a much bigger variety of hardware, with some hardware on the high end, some on the low end. This allows a developer more freedom. It can create problems as well for those behind the curve (such as yourself.) This freedom allows for software manufacturers to force progress in hardware, unlike with a console which relies on a specific manufacturer to update it.

This brings me to another point, which is that a pc architecture is a lot more open, so pretty much anyone with half a brain and a bit of programming skill can make a game, program, etc. With a console it is not so. It costs a lot of money just to start developing a game. Then you have the approval process, the marketing costs and so forth. The pc is also much more versatile. You watch videos on your computer right? Up until the last generation, this was a task that required some technical wizardry on a console.

You also cite cost. How much does a 360 cost you now? 250$ for one that has a hard drive? Wanna play multiplayer? That'll be x$ per month. Wanna play with a friend or two? Pony up for another controller. Want another game that came out a couple months ago but is still popular? That'll be 50$. Suddenly your 'cheap' console is 450$ and all you've got is 3 games.

For a pc, the only part that majorly impacts gaming performance anymore is the GPU. Pretty much any modern cpu you get in a regular consumer desktop can play games to some degree. The only thing that's lacking is a video card. You can get some really nice ones for under 100 USD now. A video card that will allow you to play at HD resolutions on high settings (which look 2x better than any modern console) will set you back about 200 USD, less than the cost of a console.

It is also exremely difficult to make a successful console. Millions go into RnD for the console, and all that provides is one option for the consumer. A pc part manufacturer gives you a lot more variety for that money, in terms of how many configurations you can have. It is also an extremely expensive proposition to actually sell a modern console. This generation, only Nintendo sold their console above cost of production, from what I remember. Both Microsoft and Sony were initially losing money on their consoles. This fact alone means that you have very little competition. A big company with a huge bank account will be able to outcompete you 99.9% of the time, even if they take a loss doing so.

Modern consoles are also blurring the lines between a traditional console and a pc. the 360 has some media center capabilities, the Wii can surf the internet and the PS3 can run linux. Even then, they are limited in the scope and variety of applications that can be run on them. A console has its function, and a pc has it's own. Sometimes the two intersect, but for the most part they are still different.

 

[plarq]

PC is not a very nice platform for entertainment because of compatibility problems.

However, it's a very good platform for pirated entertainment. Crack as you wish.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

PC is not a very nice platform for entertainment because of compatibility problems.

However, it's a very good platform for pirated entertainment. Crack as you wish.

I can play pirated content on my 360 so much easier than on a pc. With a pc I need to download it, find a crack, make sure the drm isnt doing me in. If its a multiplayer game, maybe find a cracked server.

With a 360 I swap out the firmware, put in a game of my choosing and off I go. Sure I run a risk of getting banned from Live, but its no worse than the risk I run with pirating anything.

EDIT -- Just because I know how to do it doesn't mean I do.

 

[Mise]

Things are converging now anyway, as more and more consoles adopt PC hardware and driver standards.

 

[Maniacal]

You don't need a new or expensive GPU to play 15 or even 5 year old games on the PC. The x-box needs a hard drive for backwards compatability, the PS3 doesn't have any except the one early version.

I have never had to spend 8 hours getting a PC game to work, or even an hour. Mroe often than not I don't have to do anything, I do check the options but that is simply to see what I can change and max it all out. My PC is NOT new, while most of the parts are less than a year old since I bought them, they are not top of the line and it is all 'out of date', yet I can run the newest games with high graphics.

 

[plarq]

I can play pirated content on my 360 so much easier than on a pc. With a pc I need to download it, find a crack, make sure the drm isnt doing me in. If its a multiplayer game, maybe find a cracked server.

With a 360 I swap out the firmware, put in a game of my choosing and off I go. Sure I run a risk of getting banned from Live, but its no worse than the risk I run with pirating anything.

EDIT -- Just because I know how to do it doesn't mean I do.

Did you also download and install all possible codecs for audio and video encodings, and bittorrent your hard disk to death?

 

[GVBN]

CCCP together with Real alternative and QT alternative plays virtually every video and audio, or you could just install a player with built-in codecs like VLC. Torrenting doesn't damage the hard drive

 

[plarq]

CCCP together with Real alternative and QT alternative plays virtually every video and audio, or you could just install a player with built-in codecs like VLC. Torrenting doesn't damage the hard drive

Well, I'm using gstreamer in Linux, and mplayer in Windows (William Wong's complilation).

Torrenting doesn't damage the hard drive per se, it is the constant read/write in large chunks that damage the hard disk, having a huge cache or downloading to a ram disk helps.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Torrents don't read/write in significantly large chunks. Depending on your torrent client, they will either pre-allocate a large chunk to write to, or write piece by piece in a quite fragmented manner. I havent seen a torrent use pieces bigger than 4MB though, which is pretty damned miserly for a HDD. And even if the read/writes are increased on the drive, it is not in any way that is significant. Lets just consider the MTBF for a hard drive. Lets take a modern Seagate drive because a lot of people use their drives.

A Barracuda ES2 has a MTBF of 1.2 million hours according to Seagate. Lets just consider that the given figure is bull and its more like 600,000 hours. Okay, thats an enterprise-class drive, a consumer drive is probably rated at a lower MTBF (data for which is not published) so we will go with half of an enterprise-class drive. 300,000 hours for MBTF it is. Lets count how many days that is: 300,000/24 gives us 12,500 days. This is fairly meaningless, so lets go for years (we'll not count leap years for our own sake):
12,500/365 ~= 34.25 years.

Even if due to constant torrenting you suffer a 10% decrease in life, you're still looking at over 30 years of life for the hard drive, on average. I'm more inclined to say that constant torrenting may have up to a .1% decrease on your hard drive life. That leaves you with a bit under 34 years of hard drive life.

In other words, stop writing poo poo and read up on the topic.

What do you mean by

Did you also download and install all possible codecs for audio and video encodings

I just use CCCP with MPlayer and VLC on my machine.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I like freeware games and it would be kind of difficult to have freeware games on consoles, if they have to pay big licensing fees and stuff. And it might put a lot of smaller companies out of business and all you end up with are big companies and the big companies will get lazy and put out crappy games for the casual gamer, and then since there's little competition things get worse and worse.

Also, computers are better for multitasking and things. And with a console, you're kind of "locked in" and can't switch the console with a different one without getting entirely new games, while with a PC, most games will work with different processors and things so if you sell your computer to get one with better hardware, there's more compatibility than selling an Xbox to get a PS3 or something.

This is just an opinion. And I probably paraphrased someone else without realizing.

 

[Fëanor]

Even though the MTBF figures are practically meaningless i would certainly agree that HDD wear from "torrentting" is not something to worry about, most people will replace their HDD every 5 years or so for something faster and with much more capacity and thats long time before their old HDD will fail from the wear caused by "torrenting".

 

[croxis]

The hidden costs with consoles is a big one. I wager Wii would be the worst with the wiimote, nunchuck, motion plus... Also consoles games tend to run $10 more than pc games.

And they do make pcs like consoles, they are called Macs.

Consoles also have the same upgrade issues as a PC. I can't take my FF VI made for the SNES and play it on a 360. It can ONLY be played on a SNES (or the nifty S/NES on thinkgeek). Computers have the advantage over consoles here. Get ahold of an old game? You have a chance of it being able to play on a modern system.

 

[civ_king]

The hidden costs with consoles is a big one. I wager Wii would be the worst with the wiimote, nunchuck, motion plus... Also consoles games tend to run $10 more than pc games.

And they do make pcs like consoles, they are called Macs.

Consoles also have the same upgrade issues as a PC. I can't take my FF VI made for the SNES and play it on a 360. It can ONLY be played on a SNES (or the nifty S/NES on thinkgeek). Computers have the advantage over consoles here. Get ahold of an old game? You have a chance of it being able to play on a modern system.

I am confused by this statement, the fact you can basically plug in the computer then name the account and you are good to go?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Pretty much. Mac's compared to your traditional pc are much easier to set up and get going.

Too bad you can't play games on them out of the box.

 

[civ_king]

Pretty much. Mac's compared to your traditional pc are much easier to set up and get going.

Too bad you can't play games on them out of the box.

Very much so, but in the Time it takes to install XP and your game you still might not be done setting it up (on the Windows machine)

 

[Genocidicbunny]

It takes me about 30 mins to get Windows on my machine and in a state where I can install the game.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I don't think you can multitask on consoles, or can you? As that's a big advantage.

 

[Fetus4188]

This is equivalent to calling NASCAR lame because go-karts are much easier to use.

 

[warpus]

NASCAR is kinda lame, but point taken.