Computer games VS videogames, today
We all know about the enormous success of consoles in recent years; console gaming has gained a popularity and a market penetration that is stronger than the movie industry in North America. Consoles have many clear, obvious advantages that make them the obvious and easiest choice for gaming - at launch, they offer great performance, superior to any average PC, at relatively low costs; they are incredibly easy to use, even easier than a DVD player or a VHS; they rarely put you in front of software errors (with some games like Morrowind for Xbox being scary exceptions); console games have usually a really low learning curve that makes them accessible to all kind of users; you can rent console games in almost any civilized area of the world. All these reasons, together with the formidable marketing strategies of console manufactures, make consoles the first choice for any gamer.
Personal Computers have well known disadvantages. With a PC, you are sure that sooner or later you will have to update drivers, install new peripherals that will cause some troubles, tweak your system to play a game more smoothly, and so on. But it's also true that many of these problems occur because many PC manufacturers assemble PCs that aren't optimized at all for gaming, or because nobody told you that nowadays, a new PC designed for gaming requires a graphics card with 128 MB of Video Ram to run well the latest games.
There are manufacturers that create PCs optimized for gaming, and we were lucky enough to find in one of the best manufacturers of PCs optimized for gaming, Alienware, our sponsor and friend. We contacted them because we knew of the quality of their PCs, and Alienware kindly accepted to accompany us throughout this year by providing us with the machine needed to make these PC games special features possible and more enjoyable. We will have a review of our powerful but affordable Alienware machine soon - a perfect example of gaming machine - as part of these PC games features.
In discussions between console fans and PC fans, there are some arguments that both parties use to bring water to their mill. You'll often hear PC supporters saying that PCs are more powerful than consoles. This is not always true, especially near to the time of a console launch. The PlayStation 2, using a true next-generation technology, could deliver performances at its launch that owners of a computer were just dreaming, just for three hundred dollars. This said, after a couple of years from its launch, even the most advanced console will be surpassed in terms of power by any good multimedia PC. But consoles also have the advantage that they give developers a unique and universal system to develop for; when developing a game for PC, developers must take into consideration that their game will need to run on an infinite variety of PCs, mounting different combinations of CPUs, graphics cards, RAM, HDD, sound cards, and so on. That's why console games like Metal Gear Solid 2 or Halo still hold well against the most recent PC games - they are games developed and fully optimized for a unique system that will never put you in front of hardware incompatibilities. That's also why games developed towards the end of a console's lifecycle look much better than the ones released at launch - the hardware remained the same, but developers learnt to take fully advantage of it. Of course, after some years from the release of a console, PC games boast technologies that only a good PC could run - a game like Half Life 2 is a triumph of amazing AI, extraordinary graphics, groundbreaking realistic physics, and more. Also, one should never forget that PC games run at higher resolutions than most console games, also thanks to the best quality of the image offered by computer monitors.
We talked about some of the obvious advantages of consoles that make us love them, we talked about points where victory of one party over another is impossible to determine, so it's now time to talk about some of the advantages that make PC gaming unique, exciting, and the true land of the creative gamer.
The first obvious and biggest advantage of PCs over consoles is that you will use them for much more than just playing games. It is also important to keep in mind that a PC optimized for gaming is a PC that will do wonders with any kind of software you may need to use. If the latest games run well on your PC, then resource-consuming programs like 3D Studio Max or Photoshop will work well too. In other words, a solid gaming machine is also the best machine to study, work, and unleash your fantasy.
The second advantage is that computer games offer a level of customization that wouldn't be possible on consoles and that simply isn't part of the most common console games' philosophy (just a few console games, like the excellent TimeSplitters 2, include level editors). It's interesting to notice that many of the best and most popular PC games give players the chance to create their own content, from in-game objects to whole levels. What's truly exciting is that sometimes, players who have built great levels for popular games like the original DOOM, Unreal Tournament, and many others, have been noticed by the developers of the game and were hired by professional development companies. Computer games often give you the chance to use your creativity, your fantasy, to create an experience that I consider deeper than in most console games.
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The third advantage is that PCs mean freedom. Consoles are often compatible only with proprietary software and hardware, so you basically always have to follow the rules of console manufacturers. This sadly actually happens also with a PC, if we consider that most PCs come with a Microsoft operating system pre-installed, but also thanks to that land of freedom called the Internet, you can always find alternative ways to solve your computer issues or fulfil your needs, if you know how and where to search. There are thousands of free programs that you can find for your PC, not to mention that you can enter a new world of computer freedom if you decide to make the big step and install Linux on your machine.
