PC Gaming – Is it Really Dying?
The 7th generation consoles such as the PS3 and XBOX360 are now considered household names in modern gaming. These consoles, featuring very powerful GPUs specially designed by nvidia for the PS3 and ATI for the XBOX360, as well as powerful CPUs, generate pixel perfect frames and smooth frame rates at large screen dimensions. Not only are these consoles useful for gaming, they can also be used as media players with their ability to connect to the internet to download or stream videos. Even the PS3’s Blu-ray accepts Blu-ray discs to play movies.
Does this mean PC gaming is near extinction with the introduction of these powerful consoles?
One may think that PC death is in fact looming in the distance but it is far from the truth. PC gaming is and will always be the most powerful gaming platform. With its ability to be upgraded by replacing aged components such as memory, CPU, and video cards with more modern technologically superior models, the PC will always easily outperform the PS3 or XBOX360.
Another factor that makes PC gaming extinction impossible is the inability of consoles to successfully incorporate some popular gaming genres into their platform such as real time strategy games or MMORPGs. Seriously, how can anyone play Starcraft 2 or Company of Heroes with limited controls using a console? How can consoles compete with the ability of the PC to process more data in games which is especially useful in MMORPGs which have thousands of players in its environment?
Although buying a gaming PC is expensive and requires frequent upgrading to keep up with the new technologies, PC games will always remain cheaper than console games. This is because PC game developers do not have to pay royalty taxes to Sony or Microsoft for developing a game for their platform.
Although PC gaming is expensive to maintain and does have many disadvantages compared to console gaming, it still remains the most powerful, the most technologically advanced, and the most useful among all platforms.