Console Gaming = Zero Problem?

One of the problems that PC Gamers have to live with is you may not be able to play the latest games with all details max out at the highest resolution your monitor or TV has to offer. Even if you have the fastest CPU and GPU, there is no guarantee that you will be able to play your First Person Shooter game at silky smooth 60fps at all time. Not to mention that the game may crash or suffer from some other incompatibility problems.

So, here's my question. If you have a dedicated gaming console, such as PS3 or XBOX 360, can you be absolutely sure that the game you buy for that console won't crash and you will be able play the game with all the details max out with silky smooth 60 fps?

 

Well, with a console version, you have zero access to the game's display options (texture detail, shadows, shaders, etc.). Also, the 360 is native at 720p I believe which is around a 12**x7** resolution, I don't have exact numbers. However, it will guarantee (for the most part) a smooth game performance, but a lot of games are locked at 30fps for consoles and don't use any form of AA (which isn't a big deal to a lot of people). Also, games don't necessarily "crash", but they do lock-up on occasion.

If you are looking for a solution to simply play games with little to no issues about the game running in the first place, then console gaming is definitely the preferred choice.

EDIT: I am in no way trying to say console gaming is better than PC gaming or vice versa, I'm simply responding to his question about if console gaming will present him with a lot less issues than PC gaming which is true 99% of the time.

 

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: No.

But people don't get consoles for the same reasons they play games on PCs. With consoles you'll get a very different selection of games to choose from, apart from certain genres like FPS.

PC has many advantages over consoles, however. Firstly of all, not all consoles run games at 60FPS to begin with; some games only run at thirty. In some games, intense moments will cause frame rate drops, just like on PCs (though this isn't that common). Of a lot of importance to some people is that PC games have arguably the best control scheme in all of gaming (dual analogs will never beat a keyboard and mouse for FPS, or RTS, etc). Also, PC versions of console games often have higher graphical settings that surpass what is on consoles. I remember reading that Bioshock maxed out on PC looks much better than Bioshock on the 360. Console games don't usually crash, but it does happen. And consoles do break (the 360 is apparently prone to problems, from what I've read).

So, I say the short answer is yes, because a console will give you a simpler gaming experience where you don't have to worry about graphics settings, or whether your system will be able to handle the game. Any game you buy you can generally expect to run and run well. But at the same time that's not say that a PC doesn't hold some advantages over a console.

 

How do I know which games is locked at 30fps and doesn't support Anti Aliasing?

 

with a console you can play games at their max settings no prob, but the thing is, you can only do games on consoles, maybe movies yes, but for a extra few hundred you can do way more.

also fps is better on the pc with mouse control,and rts.

 

Short answer--- No.

Long answer--consoles themselves do crash, but not nearly as often--google "red ring of death." Consoles render almost all of their titles at 1280X720 with 0-4X AA and trilinear filtering or 2X AF at most. Overall detail is crippled by consoles lack of RAM (both system and video) Frame rates are usually 30 or 60FPS. Hardly "maximum" settings for a PC.


What consoles do very well is: Simplicity. Consoles remove the need to tweak all kinds of settings to get playable frame rates, acceptable detail, etc. Their titles are also better optimized for their hardware, so that consoles will usually outperform a PC with ~ the same hardware.

 

just putting this out there that not all games are at 720p, you can actually play some of them (which i do) at 1080p and believe me, it is GORGEOUS!!!!

 

I liked how Halo 3 looked on my 1080p screen. Gears of War, BioShock, and Mass Effect also look pretty darn good at 1080p, but I will be the first to admit that a decent gaming desktop can really improve the visual quality far above what is capable from today's consoles.

It doesn't look quite as flashy as it does on the PC (Bioshock), but it is pretty darn smooth for 1080p.

 

it should be noted that 360 games in general run at 1280x720 with 2xAA. This is required by Microsoft to get through certification and only a few games (3 of which I worked on) have gotten around the resolution requirements.

PS3 games do NOT have a minimum resolution requirement.

It should also be noted that "supports" and "native" are not the same thing. A game supporting 1080p is likely rendering to a lower resolution and upscaling either in hardware (360) or software (Ps3).

 

Here's the biggest problems with consoles, and I'm going to use the xbox360 as a reference since I own one..

All xbox360 games that I know of are rendered in 1280x720 resolution, EVEN when on the game's box they say 1080P (1920x1080) that is mearly software upscaling that looks horrid, it's still actually 720p.

If the game runs poor, like some xbox360 games, or you just want to play it at a true higher resolution, on a console your screwed, but on the PC you always know that new technology will come out next year, and you can eventually afford to make that game NOT look soo bad or run soo bad.

In 2 years I'm shure you'll be able to get video cards much more powerful than even SLI 8800GTX's in a single midrange card for about $150.

 

the good thing about the consoles? standardized platform. Makes it efficient and programming is a bit easier

 

I think one of the biggest benefits of pc games vs consoles is the user mods and customization. There are a ton of games out there that were not that good to start with, but via user created maps and modes they have become 100 games in 1 and outlive there normal life span.

Warcraft III is a good example so is Never Winter Nights.

 

personally, im getting both because I can. I plan to get a PS3, and then a gaming pc in the spring.

if your on a budget a console is by far the best choice, and if money is not a problem, get both.

most familys have a tv anyways so you would not need to buy that extra, and if it supports HD then even better.

 

Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 both actually only run at 1024 x 600 (600p).

It will upscale to 720p/1080i/p but true native is only 600p. The dev's wanted to ensure that the game would run at 60fps therefore had to sacrifice resolution to do so. This leads me to believe that the hardware is already seeings its age if dev's can't run a game with the graphics they want at 720P+.

I of course own a 360 as you can see in my sig, and I've experienced framerate issues with many games as well as some anti-aliasing issues (not horrible though, just time to time drops or visual issues). Also, sometimes games will just freeze, but for the most part I haven't had many issues with my xbox. Online I think games lag a lot more than on PC servers. I play CoD2 on my PC now instead of Xbox because my ping on the PC version is always under 50 while on the xbox is over 100. I'm also debating buying CoD4 for my PC even though I already own it for Xbox, i get a lot of online lag. Probably b/c of the dedicated PC servers, so just something to keep in mind.

 

Another example is Nascar Racing Season 2003. Four years after it's release it's still going strong. Another is Grand Prix 4 which was released in 2002 and is still going strong as well. I tend to like PC games anyway over console games. The given genre usually has more depth over their console counterpart.

 

the reason for running at a slightly lower resolution is NOT simple and requires some knowledge of rendering.

The basics are, the framebuffer at 720p does not fit in EDRAM, to achieve said frame buffer ms chose to implement tiled rendering; it renders the screen in tiled sections resolving out to main memory as required depending on the setup.

Of course this isn't without issues nor is it free. It results in certain effects being way more complex than without tiling.

Soo... in order to both avoid the cost of tiling and issues it causes some devs (me included) choose to run at a lower resolution and let the system upscale.

ms set the precedent back on PGR3... then Tony Hawks & COD3 did it.. various others have too.

 

Besides the problems like disc errors and red rings of death, the answer is Yes.

I can speak from experience here, being an early adapter of PS2 around five or six years ago, I had a great time playing on the thing without needing to worry about the drivers, graphic card upgrades and throwing more money into the PC.

 

Zero problems?forget the good times when you insert the disk and play.
New hard disk on consoles serve to download/delete demo and data (= fragmentation with time that cause struttering) and great publisher can release a game even if it's not complete.
For example PS3 , Assassin Creed must be update before gaming :-o (and if i can't connect to internet?) or PES2008 has great lags and they must be corrected by a PATCH? A patch on a console? excuse me but if i worry about patches,resolution and lags and fragmentation it's not a console...they are pc's that seems consoles with all pro & cons...

 

Yeah, that's the issue I am seeing. Consoles should be simple and easy to use, ready to play. Adding a hard drive is a great idea for downloadable content, but already game devs are using it, like with PC, as an open forum to release a game prematurely only to issue a patch later.

As consoles become more complex, they become more PC like. I wouldn't doubt if the next generation consoles has some "upgradeability" like a PC. While it sounds great, I'm sure it will only cause compatability issues eventually.

Consoles have their place, I'm just afraid the console developers are losing focus on what it really should be. I think the Wii proved that. The more crap they add and the more technology the more technical crashes and glitches that they will have.

I own an XBOX 360 and a PS2 and several PC's. My XBOX 360 has been used 80% of the time for HD-DVD movie viewing, 10% as a cheap thrill with the Live Arcade games, and the other 10% actually playing XBOX 360 games for those few games that aren't released on the PC that I would enjoy. I bought PS2 for DDR for my nieces and nephews, and bought God of War for it (although haven't even loaded it up yet).

So in my book PC's are my first preference. Plus with my PC I don't have to kick anyone off the TV in order to play.

I will really think twice before buying the next gen console as the ones I have get very little use. I'm sure if they drop in price like the PS2 did, and they have a few top notch games I want to play, then I'll bite. But the way things are now, it's an overpriced and underpowered PC.

 

Yeah the Xbox 360 was great for me to have in college because I would just use my existing PC monitor as my HDTV via VGA and it was $320 when I bought it from a military base so it was much cheaper for me than a new PC at the time.

But now that I am able to build my own PC, I of course did. There is no substitute