PS5 vs. PC mini-rant

[JAB]

Well this video came up in my feed of comparing a PS5 vs. a gaming PC,
at the same price point, and being intrigued, I'd thought I'd watch it.

What a absolute load of tosh. If your sole criteria is pure performance
of course the PS5 is better. The clue is in the name 'gaming'. That's
what I mainly use a PC for and it's pretty important to me what games I
can play. A PS5 isn't value for money if most of the games I want to
play aren't available for it.

It honestly felt like one of those videos from a fanboy (yes you get
them for PC's as well) that had set it up just to come to the conclusion
of loo how smart I am as I have a PS5 and you have a PC you bunch of
losers. I'm going to make a video of whether gaming on the go is better
on a Steam Deck that it is on a PS5. I wonder which one will come out
the winner.

Well now I've got that of my chest back to preparing for tonight's game
of Call of Cthulhu.

[Spalls Hurgenson]

On Thu, 30 Nov 2023 14:21:48 +0000, JAB <no...@nochance.com> wrote:

>Well this video came up in my feed of comparing a PS5 vs. a gaming PC,
>at the same price point, and being intrigued, I'd thought I'd watch it.

You forgot to link the video ;-)

>What a absolute load of tosh. If your sole criteria is pure performance
>of course the PS5 is better. The clue is in the name 'gaming'. That's
>what I mainly use a PC for and it's pretty important to me what games I
>can play. A PS5 isn't value for money if most of the games I want to
>play aren't available for it.
>

In the PS5 vs PC battle, in absolute performance the advantage STILL
lies with the PC. The consoles major advantages are in price and
convenience. A $500 PC is unlikely to outperform a PS5, and you will
almost never need worry about viruses or device drivers on any of that
sort of nonsense on the Playstation

(although even there the advantage is decreasing; $500 PCs are
surprisingly capable, even if they aren't quite up to the level of
modern consoles, and long gone are the days when you could just slam a
cartridge into a console and start playing immediately).

But PCs have other strengths that - at least in my opinion - make them
the superior platform. They are multifunctional devices, not just
machines designed for games. Even if you own a PS5, you'll probably
STILL need a PC... so why not just spend that extra $500 on purchasing
a better computer in the first place? And compatibility on the PC is
amazing; not only is there a larger range of NEW games on the
platform, but pretty much the entire backlog of old games can be still
be played too (and most of the backlog of games on other platforms
too).

So yeah, of course a $500 PC isn't going to compete with a PS5;
there's no way it can, since the price of the hardware of the PS5 is
subsidized by Sony. But those equations start to change pretty quickly
as the price of your PC goes up, and even a $500 PC is still pretty
damn good given how much it can do. And, sure, I get the appeal of the
convenience a console offers... I just don't think that adds enough
extra value.

But what do I know, I'm a long-standing member of the PC Master Race.
;-)

[JAB]

I didn't link the video as I didn't want anyone to go through the pain I
had to endure :-)

As for you other points, that's what irritated me about it. Completely
ignoring the strengths of the PC in favour of the strengths of a PS5.
Each of them have their pro's and con's and then it's up to the
individual to decide which one is best for them.

For me it's somewhat of a no brainer to go for a PC.

[Mike S.]

On Thu, 30 Nov 2023 10:52:41 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:

>But PCs have other strengths that - at least in my opinion - make them
>the superior platform. They are multifunctional devices, not just
>machines designed for games. Even if you own a PS5, you'll probably
>STILL need a PC... so why not just spend that extra $500 on purchasing
>a better computer in the first place? And compatibility on the PC is
>amazing; not only is there a larger range of NEW games on the
>platform, but pretty much the entire backlog of old games can be still
>be played too (and most of the backlog of games on other platforms
>too).

The oldest PC game I ran on this computer was Wizardry 1: Proving
Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

And as far as other platforms go, I run C64 games on this PC.

[Justisaur]

Let's not forget if you want to play any games online you need to pay
Sony $15 a month toll fee to allow you to on top of internet and hardware.
It was 5 years between the PS4 and PS5 so that's an extra $2100 during
that time. Sure there's discounts for paying a year at a time, but then you
can't save money by only paying it when you are playing online games,
and there's other benefits like being able to pay a large catalog of old
game for free. However that's a lot of cash to make your dream PC or
upgrade more often than once every 5 years without that toll.

If you go for the absolute minimum and per year it's $80 a year, so $400
total, even at that price you're looking at $900 for the life of the machine,
which I can build a decent game computer for, especially if you count
upgrading with parts from my previous one. I also went over a decade
on some of the parts, 7 years on others, and between 2-5 on graphics
cards.

You can also emulate a ton of older consoles on a PC, and the there's a
catalog of over 50k games on Steam right now.

The only reason I'm even considering one is the online games, being a
lover of DS co-op, the cheating is rampant on PC, there's still exploiting
on a PS, but supposedly isn't as bad. That and some exclusive older
games, like Demon Souls, though I understand that can be emulated
fine on a PC if I really wanted to. I would never only have a console
though.

- Justisaur

[H1M3M]

JAB wrote:
> A PS5 isn't value for money if most of the games I want to play
> aren't available for it.

PC exclusive games are a no brainer, but when it comes to multiplatform
games, it's a different story.

The issue right now is when a game is available on both PS5 and PC, but
PS5 is the original version and the PC port is flawed: Bugs, no
optimization, shader stutter everywhere...

Many people are fairly pissed off after buying GPUs that in theory
should make the PS5 look like an Intel Celeron, and discovering that the
AAA game they want runs worse than on a PS5.

When you can't even guarantee that the game is going to run correctly, a
PS5 feels more like a safe option, even if it is like playing with a
tabasco lubed dildo up your arse: The game runs well, but you have to
pay for a sub to get basic features, no savegame backup to a external
drive, an UI designed by a blind monkey... And HDCP 2.4 deciding that my
AV receiver is too old and I can either buy a new one, or plug the
console directly to the TV.

[Spalls Hurgenson]

On Fri, 1 Dec 2023 14:18:07 +0100, H1M3M <wip...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>When you can't even guarantee that the game is going to run correctly, a
>PS5 feels more like a safe option, even if it is like playing with a
>tabasco lubed dildo up your arse: The game runs well, but you have to
>pay for a sub to get basic features, no savegame backup to a external
>drive, an UI designed by a blind monkey... And HDCP 2.4 deciding that my
>AV receiver is too old and I can either buy a new one, or plug the
>console directly to the TV.

Although there have been plenty of instances of console games being
equally poorly optimized. There's no guarantee that all your games
will run fine on the PS5 just because it's a console. I'd say the
percentage of poorly optimized games is the same between all the major
platforms; it just happens to stand out more on PC because the
platform has less standardized hardware (so poor optimization is more
obvious on lower-powered PCs), and because PCs have a /much/ larger
library (so there are, numerically, more poorly optimized games on PCs
than console, just because there are so many more games available).

But, again, I have my biases on this topic (and don't bother to hide
them) so take anything I say with a grain of salt. ;-)