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THE GREAT DEBATE What leads people to gravitate towards gaming on PC or console, and why?
Console. PC. To some, mostly grandparents and parents that aren’t particularly tech-savvy,
those words still mean nothing. That number is shrinking. To many players, the debate over gaming on a console such as the Playstation 4, Xbox One, or Nintendo Switch, or on a personal computer means a lot. But what, exactly, does it mean? What are the differences between playing on console or PC? Is one unarguably better than the other?
Many games are exclusive
to PC or a certain console, so
it is very important to take into
account which games are
playable on which platforms.
If someone desperately
wanted to play Halo 5, for
instance, they would need
an Xbox One, or for God of
War they would need a PS4.
Some games, whether industry
titans such as Overwatch and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or lesser known freebies like Warframe or Trove, are available on multiple platforms. Very few games, however, permit cross-platform play.
Cross-platform play is where, in a multi-player game, a group of friends could be comprised of people on multiple systems—perhaps a couple of people on PC, someone on their Xbox One, three people sharing a PS4, and someone borrowing their brother’s Nintendo Switch—playing the game with each other. This sounds like something
that should be available regardless, and for some games, it is. The main reason that the vast majority of games are not cross-platform is an outdated policy by Sony, the corporation behind Playstation. That may, however, be soon to change.
Whenever change occurs, someone— or something—has to blaze the first trail before others can follow. Change may already be in the process of happening
Story by Rhiannon Drysdale
there are those that argue the opposite front. Few gamers play on both, but those that do often have a preference.
PCs are multipurpose, allowing one to do far more than just play. When it comes to console, anything beyond gaming is difficult, to say the least. However, the best gaming PCs can cost thousands of dollars in order to run the newest games, and moderately good ones still cost two to three times as much
as any console. Maintenance is more difficult on PCs, especially if one attempts to build their own—but as a general rule, there is typically a larger community of players for any given game on PC as compared to the same game on console. Overwatch, for example, has an approximately 69:31 playerbase split between PC
and console.
In the end, it comes down to two main
factors: personal preference and budget. Some might choose a system based on what their friends play, while others might prefer a multipurpose, more expensive machine or a cheaper, more specialized one. Generally, though, budget has the biggest effect, as buying a high end PC generally is not worth being in debt for months on end.
There will always be those who sing the praises of console, and those who subscribe to the superiority of PC. In the end, it should always be the player’s decision—after plenty of research.
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there, as in October, Sony finally relented with regards to one particular game. Regardless of personal opinions on it, Fortnite is the first game where players on PS4 can play with friends on other systems, and more games like Rocket League have already begun to follow.
Now that Sony’s restrictions are slowly being rescinded, However, for the time being, the vast majority of games cannot be played with people on both console and PC, and so the debate continues. There are those that vehemently insist that PC is and always will be vastly superior to console, and