Dreakon13

Well then, you're in luck! Hellblade is a game. 😀👍

The unfortunate thing about the console vs PC debate is that both sides (if they care enough to debate in the first place) are usually pretty stubborn and unwilling to bend from however they view the platforms. It typically devolves to "PC games can look better", then "yeah but consoles are cheaper", then "yeah but you can buy games for pennies on Steam so it evens out", then "yeah but PC's are more complicated and prone to issues", then "yeah but I haven't had issues"... and it spirals out depending on how ignorant or irrational the people arguing are, or how aggressive the conversation has gotten. These are all things I'm often guilty of too... so I'm not pointing any fingers. At the end of the day... the people who objectively think their platform is better, or one platform is best, are missing the bigger picture. From comfort, to game preferences, to graphical preferences (everyone wants better graphics; some people feel they need it and 60fps+ and others couldn't care less), to want/need for simplicity, interest in customization, to financial barriers... there are perfectly reasonable (if presented reasonably lol) points to be made for and against both. EDIT: At the core of the debate, it's a matter of preference and peoples personal situations... so it's a flawed debate from the get-go. Like most debates. I like the PC vs console debate though, I find it interesting to try and see if I can get someone to understand my views or if they can get me to understand theirs... as frustrating and childish as it usually becomes. It helps that I've been on both sides of it.

The PS4 is the latest system, by Sony's own admission the Pro is an expensive niche extension of it targeting a certain demographic with disposable income who don't mind spending more for a better experience in the same games. Think of it like the GTX 1070 vs 1080, or the 10 series vs the Titan X Pascal. Big, powerful, more expensive, almost entirely unnecessary for the average user. I find it kinda funny that you'd go from the PS4 Pro to the PS3 and never even consider the standard PS4, that can play all the latest games as well as anything. My understanding is certain popular engines like Unreal or Unity make it pretty easy to port games across platforms. I'd personally be weary of any "easy button" when it comes to something like that, common sense should dictate it still takes a gentle touch to port/optimize said games properly. Custom-built or more in-house, proprietary engines... depending on what platform(s) they were ultimately built to develop for... I'd venture are a different beast.

You lost me when the crux of your point suggests you need a PS4 Pro to play the latest games. 😏 PC games are absolutely finicky with certain televisions/setups. My "cheap cables" shouldn't prevent the audio from coming through my television for one game when 95% of the rest work fine. Some games just aren't well equipped to handle more than one monitor... but that's my point, for all the customization and flexibility that PC offers, you're limited to what the games you play can actually manage. I'll take a streamlined console over mixing and matching "supported features" with every new game I buy. But that's just my preference. You're literally saying optimization is as easy as flipping a switch. If that were the case, the developers "laziness" wouldn't matter. It's more complicated than you're making it out to be... which is generally the flaw in any PC vs console argument... people tend to over (or under)-embellish.

Like anything, if it becomes bad enough the market will even itself out. If the grind is painful enough, the game handicapped enough, the game will review poorly and be subject to the mass abuse of the internet. Companies don't want that. If people buy the game, buy (or ignore) the microtransactions, genuinely have fun with it, it reviews well... I think people who condemn any form of microtransactions need to search their souls and ask the question "is it really that bad or am I just being kind of irrational about it?"

Why would microtransactions matter in a single player game? There's no "competition", it's not a paywall for actual game/story content (ala DLC)... why would you invest more real money into it? Are you just concerned that you might be dense enough to get conned into participating? Because there's a simple solution to that.

PSN has nothing to do with the second hand market. And Steam prices for a new game is the same. The Evil Within 2 would cost me $60 either way. Bold: What do you think dev kits and Playstation specific API's are for, if not allowing developers access to tools that can improve their games? Proprietary technology isn't only hardware. Underline: You have no idea the specific "settings" a console is at, I sincerely doubt they adhere to a PC ports presets exactly. So here, let me refute that point. You're wrong. My laptop is a lower mid-range (Core i5, 8GB RAM, GTX 950) and doesn't run newer games as well as the PS4, not at least without taking the resolution down a few notches at least. Bold 2: First of all, the person I was quoting said a $300 PC, $500<>$300. Second of all, a $500 PC would still be low-mid range even for a budget gaming PC. Third of all, in what sense would a $500 PC last longer than a console? Console lifecycles are ~6 years at least of guaranteed gaming (the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X doesn't change that). You honestly think games wouldn't out-grow a PC with budget parts in that amount of time? Fourth of all, if you're building the PC from scratch, you have to factor in more than the graphics card, CPU, RAM... you'd need a motherboard, you'd need a case, you'd probably want better than the stock cooling (especially if you're going with crappier cheaper parts), you'd need an HDD, mouse and keyboard, monitor (not comparable to a consoles TV, everyone has a television, few people have monitors laying around; even if you used a television with your PC, a lot of PC games are finicky with standard TV's as I mentioned before). And lastly, if you're upgrading the PC, it's not a $500 PC anymore. Italics: Lazy devs will struggle more, with more difficult tasks. Optimization is difficult, especially for games that weren't originally designed to scale. Quit trying to make 2+2=5 for the sake of arguing... this is pretty simple.

The PS Move controllers and Wii Balance Board are very, very niche accessories that a handful of games use at best (and not very good ones at that). Some games on PC literally don't properly support mouse and keyboard. Legitimate games, not gimmicky motion control crap. Mouse and keyboard FFS! The lifeblood of PC input devices. That's not "I can't play Horizon Zero Dawn with my PS Move controllers" bad... that's "Horizon Zero Dawn doesn't properly support the controller my console came with" level of bad. It's beyond reason. No one in their right mind builds a gaming PC with used parts, and even if you did, building from scratch... $300 will still get you a toaster. And again, even if the PC were better... the games on PC require significantly better (not just a little better) hardware for the same visual output and performance as console due to the complicated nature of optimizing a game for hundreds of different hardware setups. Consoles can squeeze a lot more juice out of their meager specs since developers can pull off a lot of neat tricks to get things working with their simpler, standardized hardware configurations and default settings everyone runs by. If you throw too much customization into the mix, suddenly things get tougher. Games run worse. That's why Final Fantasy XV had issues with the Pro patch causing things to actually run worse. Optimization is tricky, adding more complications to the mix rarely makes it better. With sites like eBay around and the general region-free nature of the PS4 discs, you aren't limited nearly as much as you're making it out to be. If you're concerned about currency conversion and regional pricing, Steam isn't much better in that regard. Sales or not.

The Steam Link is horrendous. I tried to make it my "gaming on TV" solution and there was so much latency with the wireless (in the same room) that it was completely unusable. If I wired my PC to the Steam Link with an ethernet cable, it was perfect but kinda defeats the purpose and only works out of the box for games with Steam overlay support (so games you purchase on Origin, uPlay, GOG, etc need to be run through Steam and may not work). There are workarounds to get it to broadcast your desktop and technically work with everything, but that becomes a colossal pain in the butt after a while since you need to set it up every time to turn a game on. And who knows when some goofy bug or glitch might prevent that from working. This is kind of a microcosm of the problems with PC though. Preaching the benefits of "having options" only works as well as the games that support them. Soon you just find yourself being forced to make concessions with every new game you buy... because this one doesn't support gamepads, that one doesn't support mouse and keyboard, or this one doesn't support the Steam Overlay, or that one doesn't like acknowledging my TV as a second monitor, or this one is poorly optimized so I can't get over 25fps anyways, or that one's VSYNC doesn't work properly, or this one doesn't like my brand of speakers, or that one doesn't like my brand of video card, etc, etc. Push through enough shit and you realize maybe the simplicity of the console isn't all that bad. Especially if you prefer wireless gamepads and gaming on a TV anyways... something you know every game on the PS3/4 can do... and you like it when games just work.

Rocket League is pocket change compared to most games out there. Whatever your laptop is, you aren't getting those kinds of framerates in The Witcher 3, The Division, Just Cause 3, Batman Arkham Knight, etc. You can set those games to 640x480 with all the bells and whistles turned off and you won't get 144fps. It just doesn't work that way. That "slightly more powerful PC" that you somehow built for $300, will be obsolete for everything besides Rocket League and the indiest of indie games in a year or two. If it isn't already. Keeping in mind that console games are built to be optimized on lesser/standardized hardware while PC games aren't... so even if this hypothetical PC is technically better, games will more often than not run worse. I'm not saying you're wrong, a lot of it boils down to personal preference. If you prefer your $300 laptop, hunched over a wired-in keyboard and mouse playing nothing but Rocket League... by all means. But "getting 144fps in Rocket League" is far from proof of PC's superiority over anything.

I question this. Bundles are generally rife with older games, indie titles that weren't all that expensive to begin with and crap games made to be bundled. I don't think games drop price "faster" on PC... with the second-hand market (keeping in mind no such thing really exists on PC outside of underground key resellers), I can find often newer games on console cheaper quicker than PC (see: the time I bought Prey for over 50% off before it ever even got its first Steam sale, which was only even like 33% off). If you wait long enough however, the PC retailers sell older games for pennies. So it's not that the prices drop faster, they drop slower... but those patient enough are rewarded with some outstanding deals.

Because a PC capable of 144fps in all games (ignoring most games have framerate caps or too poor of optimization to handle it) with no obnoxious fan noises wouldn't cost a small fortune.

At one point, I was big into PC gaming, at another point I was big into console, then PC gaming, now console... I struggled for a while trying to figure out which platform was more worth investing in to me. So many people told me "both" but I stubbornly landed on console anyways for a variety of reasons personal to me... I prefer physical copies of games (something that has been a rarity on PC for years), I prefer gaming on a couch/recliner vs. my computer chair/desk, I prefer gamepad to keyboard and gamepad support is more common but still spotty on PC, etc, etc. There is no objective answer to which is better, people are usually too far up their own asses to try and see both sides. For every "PC games are cheaper" argument... I can point out console games that I bought for well below PC prices (even on sale) thanks to the second-hand market, and I'm not limited to special sale periods to do it. For every "PC hardware is more expensive" argument, you have to give them credit that PC games typically transcend console generations/upgrades by running the same games at higher settings, with higher resolutions while we're stuck with $60 remasters years later. I say gamepad is better, so-and-so says mouse and keyboard is better. I say my $600 recliner is more comfortable, they say their $600 PC gaming chair is more comfortable. I say discs are better, they call it clutter.

I'm surprised it's still around. I played it briefly when it first came out (in North America) around 2005 I guess. Seemed like a cool game, but felt pretty chintzy compared to other MMO's that were around at the time.

My guess is that you're fine. My old PS4 was absurdly loud from day one, but played games fine and lasted years. I was in the same boat, a lot of the time it was fine but certain games would make it blow a hole in the wall. Way more than my brother's PS4 playing the same games. While the old PS4 is still working, I picked up a Slim to replace it because I was fed up with the noise. My Slim seems better in that regard, though I haven't really gotten much time in on it yet. I think the wild fans are just common in older model PS4's. Not necessarily a sign of it dying, probably not of overheating either. Maybe just a wonky sensor is throwing things off. Luck of the draw. Better to have too much fan noise than not enough I suppose.