Valve: Why the PC is the future Comments by Oli Welsh

And finally, let's face it, you can keep going on about how PC games are supposedly "deeper omg" (read: fiddly crap that's fun if you enjoy MS Excel), but 9 out of 10 of all the best games each year, not to mention of all the best games ever, are on consoles.

Oh, the bitter tears of console-only gamers with inferiority complex. Delicious.

@unclelou: funny, as I recall all these debates are usually started by PC geeks with an inferiority complex. ;) Nearly all the most highly rated games are on consoles, and none of your sarcastic comments will change any of that. And really, who's surprised at this when genres on the PC are mostly limited to FPS, RTS and standard dragons&elves type RPGs?

I'm not a console only gamer btw. The PC has its uses. Starcraft was pretty fun. ;D


Console players interact with the software via something like 8 buttons, a 4-way D-pad and two analog twiddle sticks. PC gamers interact using a mouse (usually with at least 5 buttons), plus a keyboard with over 100 buttons... plus, optionally, a joystick or other device.

Ever heard of KISS? And I don't mean the band.

Keyboards were created for work, and are a stupid way to control something that's supposed to be fun. Unless you think your office job is actually fun. Which, if I read some of this crap, isn't all that far fetched.


Those problems - they've magically gone away.

Hahaha, that's funny. Your whole post you spend grasping at straws. You've said absolutely nothing that negates any of the issues that exist. "Honestly, this sounds like a bunch of overweight comic collectors telling me how easy a quarter gauge steam engine is to run" puts it very well indeed.

Yeah yeah, whatever, you keep telling yourself that. :)

120 million gross for WoW alone. If you can find me a console game that does those kind of numbers then please share. The difference is that console gamin companies look at 1/4ly returns while PC gaming companies like Blizzard and Valve have a long term strategies, but that is because of the PC Model that allows for that type of growth. The problem stems from trying to use the same business model for Consoles to PCs and Vice Versa. I love HALO 2 & 3 but I know one day the power will be taken away from us because it's not up to the gamers to decide when the life of a game has reached it's end but rather companies who see it as being too much of an expense. This is why the view how both business models have to be evaluated to see what works for either. If the makers of Crytek were more focused on creating a game that was more community friendly then they'd see bigger returns but they wanted a blockbuster GTA IV #s and were disappointed by the returns. Problem was their strategy with it was all wrong. PC devs can make money on consoles and vice versa just different strategies have to be used. to PC gaming is dead is really silly, as long as there are PCs there will be PC games and players who want them.. can't really say that about consoles, Turbo Graphix, NEO-GEO, Dreamcast to name a few.

@Smoothnoodle: "To understand truth requires some level of intelligence. Be patience."

Too right. Which begs the question why you posted about something you clearly know nothing about? I'm not just a gamer, I'm an IT professional. And everything you wrote was some of the worst armchair-technician bullshit I've ever seen.

Yeah yeah, whatever, you keep telling yourself that. :)

As much as I'd love to say this is all me me me, I'm not making this stuff up by myself, honest! Check Metacritic, don't take my word for it. ;)




to PC gaming is dead is really silly, as long as there are PCs there will be PC games and players who want them..

Ah, but nobody's saying that! Just like nobody's saying cellphone games are dead. After all, as long as there are cellphones there will be cellphone games and players who want them...

But PC gaming is not the future either, regardless of what a PC focused developer would like you to think.

Your whole post you spend grasping at straws. You've said absolutely nothing that negates any of the issues that exist.

Good point, apart from the fact that I am directly responding to your previous criticisms of the PC as a gaming machine, all of which I am telling you, and anyone else who swallows this rubbish, are either wrong or easily dealt with. It's a fact that you can build a PC that games comparably to a current generation console for a similar cost and end up with vastly more flexibility, it's a fact that technical problems are usually easily avoided and easily fixed, it's a fact that there is no "upgrade cycle" on a PC, it's a fact that games run unoptimised on a powerful PC better than they run optimised for a console. How does this fail to negate these "issues"? I could rephrase all that again but there's no point; you're apparently not interested in listening, simply in repeating a series of myths with no grounding in fact or common sense.

Running to Metacritic to prove how much better console games are is not going to help you either; even though you're apparently ignoring what I said about quality being subjective, last time I looked Metacritic appeared to be English only, mostly US, Canada, UK and Australia, all of which are console-favouring markets, while PC-favouring markets are generally not English-speaking countries. Not to mention it's about as authoritative as Wikipedia, really, and doesn't seem to have a non-platform specific list of Tha Official Bestest Games Evar which would actually show what you seem to be saying.

Do you really think it's sensible to apply KISS to a machine that makes millions of calculations per second, whose software is comprised of layers and layers of code and generally takes 1-2 years to make? That's both consoles and PCs, by the way. I like complex games, and for them, to paraphrase Churchill, a keyboard and mouse is the worst input device apart from all the others.

PC gaming is the future. PC gaming is practically the present. All the current consoles are little different from modified PCs with the versatile bits hobbled, and the next generation will be even more alike with PCs.

If the PC is the future, then why is it the only platform that Valve hasn't released the Half-Life 2 and Episode One high-def packs on?! SORT IT OUT GUYS!