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Consoles will be better than PC!? The reign of PC gaming has been the leading argument when it comes to the performance and amount of freedom that comes with PC gaming over console gaming. However, in the current era of technology, there seems to be more reason to believe that consoles may have an advantage in the future of the community than we might have previously expected. The next gen consoles are coming down the pipeline with specs of what we can look forward to when they make their debut, supposedly next year, as it relates to the next PlayStation and Xbox consoles. These consoles have hardware details that would lead one to think that eventually there won't be the need to have a powerful PC build to have an amazing quality for their gaming experience. Hell, some of those levels of quality seem to be redundant, as on a scientific level, the human eye won't even be able to detect the amount of detail that the game is truly capable of presenting. So with that said, where do we draw the line really? Here are some of the reasons why consoles could possibly surpass PCs for gaming consumers: 1. Price People will go out of their way for good-ass bargains, and consoles are almost always the best way to go if you want a cheaper experience for fairly amazing quality. PCs cost you an arm and a leg usually for a build that can run everything proficiently, without fault and additional rendering. You can find cheaper PCs that are efficient, of course, but at the same time you can find a console cheaper too. Not to mention, PCs take a lot of maintenance and upkeeping that not everyone has the time to really deal with. And fair point, if there's no time to deal with it then why the hell did you get it? Not everyone thinks that far ahead believe it or not. The ones that are pre-built are awesome on a surface level, but are really just deceptions for a lot of what they say they can do and handle, so custom built ones are usually the route people go anyway. With a console, all you have to do is plug it in and enjoy the experience, and for a better price. And eventually when the graphical fidelity of consoles gets to a universally satisfying level, consumers probably won't even consider playing on PCs unless it's just their genuine preference. 2. Gaming Environments You can play your console in the comfort of your living room on the couch, your room while in your bed as you lounge, and even outside if you're into that. You can do that with a laptop sure, but the main convenience in my opinion is the use of a controller. People usually just end up linking their console controllers to the PC so that there won't be a need to use the awkward and confusing PC controls that come with a lot of games. You have to sit up the whole time to play the game, and sometimes that shit gets annoying, especially in the late night hours when you just got from doing a bunch of sitting up and standing up in your daily work life as it is. 3. Social Aspects Playing on consoles just links people together much more than playing on PCs, especially when it's in a real-world situation when someone asks you, "What do you play on?" And more often than not, the common person is playing on some type of console these days. You exchange gamer contact info like setting up a date to play and what not, before parting ways and adding them later. The same can be done on PCs as it relates to Steam for example, but rarely outside of the internet has anyone asked me about my PC gaming handle. Even within the consoles, they have sub-communities that you can join that range from whatever music, art, or entertainment you may like. The consoles are venturing into PC-like functions that really may inevitably overshadow those traditional PC commodities. 4. Release Cycles The last generation of consoles was obviously the longest one that we had. Nintendo was the only company really pushing out different iterations of consoles, as they released the Wii U, immediately followed by the Nintendo Switch. The shift from the Ps3 and 360 to our current gen was pretty much a 10-year gap, however, now there's a time-frame of about 5 - 6yrs between consoles, much like how it was before last-gen. The only real difference is that now these consoles will possess the ability to rival PCs on a recognizable level. The more frequent release of these consoles will allow them to upgrade their tech to a level that stays relevant in our time, at least until the next one comes and absolutely shits on the previous one as usual. PCs are constantly expanding every day. It's like the moment you make the perfect build, it's already old news. These consoles come out and stay relevant for years, and they only grow in their profits and interaction. They remake these consoles a couple of times during their periods of being the current gen (Smaller versions, graphical upgraded versions, more affordable versions, etc.). So now that consoles are releasing in more reasonable spans of time, their hardware will start to peak to the level of PCs. 5. Exclusives The consoles have an amazing power over PCs as it relates to exclusive titles. I don't have to sit here and go down the list of amazing titles that plague PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo. I do however, have to mention that PCs literally have no exclusives that seem to urge people to sit there and say, "Damn, I need to get a PC or I'll never get to play that game!" People practically stampede one another to death just to get the newest consoles, not only at their release, but at the release of their exclusives and bundles for those said exclusives. PCs are capable of emulating and receiving files for games that seemingly exclusive for consoles, and that's just how it is, but it doesn't change the fact that they have to do that to play those games in the first place. Simply because people support consoles just out of spite of specific games and not necessarily the specs of the console, but what happens when there's both good exclusive games AND a level of visual appeal that rivals PCs? A win for consoles. 6. PCs release games later Sometimes it takes forever for PCs to get their ports for games. By the time a lot of them even get ports, the game's life is already passed by. Or at least, the hype and excitement for the game is already in the past. So when PCs get it, it's usually around that time when the energy has died out and just remains in a constant motion until something else of the same scale is released. This industry is very fast, and in turn, so are the people who support it. The PC version will roll around and be breathtakingly the shit, and people within the community will inevitably mod the game to make it look even better, but what does any of that mean anymore? Especially if that charm of the PC will also be a charm of the console. The modding aspect is a different topic in itself, but the point is that, if that's the only real selling point and reason to dip your toes into the PC versions, then I don't see it really mattering to the majority of people out there who just want a simple gaming life and to play with their friends. 7. Cross-Platform Gaming More recently within gaming, there has been more acceptance for cross-play between different consoles, and even with PC. Us, as the players of these games, have already wanted this kind of shit since the start of everything, but of course, money is an important resource for each of these gaming giants. Cross-play is just much more convenient for people on the consoles because essentially, regardless of which console you play it on, the specs of the game are not too far off in most cases, so everyone is on the same playing field. PC gamers when cross-playing either have much more of an advantage, or much less of an advantage. It really is a mixed bag and in the realm of the cross-play for a lot of games that I've noticed, PC is the foreigner. And the divide will only grow greater as time goes on, but obviously the PC versions can be limited and optimized specifically for the reason of cross-play. Not many people will care what you play on, as long as you can play together and that's all that matters really, but the level on convenience of a mutual level is always much better for people who play together on consoles. I won't really include the mobile phone and handheld console gamers who are also capable of cross-play for a selection of games currently, but a lot of the same points can be made for them as well. In short, the community of gamers across consoles specifically, are much more interesting avenues for both companies and consumers. 8. Multiplayer This one is sort of a bonus point, but I felt it sandwich perfectly between the social aspects and the cross-platform reasons. Consoles have a much broader appeal when it comes to playing multiplayer games. It's only recently that single-player games are generating the same amount of respect that they once had and deserve, as companies now steer towards where the money is in the long term, the multiplayer. Consoles get exclusive multiplayer stuff all the time, and that alone just boosts the popularity of the consoles over the PC versions. Especially when those incentives actually make a significant amount of difference within the game. A lot of people, like myself, are against that aspect of pay-to-win in games that should be fair for all players to reach through their own efforts and not their money, but from a business perspective it's only going to help the company when more people support it, as they have. Which, most of those people are console players. That's on a deeper level of subject, but from just the perspective of your average gamer, more people are engaging themselves with the multiplayer aspect of consoles where they can form parties and private chats and form their own groups within those games. It can be done on PC, of course, but it's not being done on PC as often as console. There's a parade of reasons why consoles may potentially leave PCs in the dust with their gaming aspects, as well as how there are a parade of reasons why PCs will keep their position over consoles, but the point of this was to give it a look from some of the main, more debated aspects from the console gaming side of things. The idea that consoles could progress further than PCs is not as far-fetched as gaming enthusiasts may see it to be. Only time will tell, but time is already telling us a lot. If you have any thoughts on the matter, feel free to comment below!

It's time for this talk... Through the many avenues of gaming, there are highly talented creators who will be pivotal in formulating what we consider the future of the industry. As it stands, indie developers in particular are the underdogs who use their ideas to cater to a usually specific audience of gamers, but much like anything, they can grow and evolve. The monster developers that we know today that make the AAA titles that we all seem to pre-order before even knowing much about the game, or the possible downgrades (I'll speak on that seperately actually), we always throw our trust and faith into them because of their track record with games. However, they started off just like the indie developers. I'm not here to really name a bunch of them--as I feel like they all deserve some form of appreciation and recognition for their projects--but when you notice games like Celeste, Dead Cells, No Man's Sky (After the expansion.), Katana Zero, and Cup Head you can understand that even the indie games can be just as fresh and exciting as the ones by major developers. Now a lot of the indie games have a similar kind of aesthetic to them that someone can easily deter as such, yet the same can be said about the bigger games. A lot of the games we put on a pedestal in today's industry are very much identical and pretty much the same kind of game we've been playing forever now, they just have their own settings and usually a higher graphical fidelity as they move forward. Many of them kind of piggy-back off of one another with ideas that aren't as original as we might think. One thing I've noticed about indie games are that the concepts of these smaller teams of people seem much more fresh; usually there's some kind of system or game mechanic that even the bigger games seem to overlook. In fact, a lot of those tend to work better for the indie games. I mean, sure, every game has its "selling gimmick" as I like to label it, and they make up for a large portion of the game's flaws, even when those flaws are game breaking and causes many bugs. There's also that team of indie devs who were previously apart of bigger developers whom decided to branch out into their own thing, so they know the work ethic of being with those companies and apply similar routines to their games, granted often times there's more leniency and not harsh deadlines and that process of development hell that burdens the heavy hitters from time to time. So, as simple as some indie games may seem, I think they're much more authentic to the players than, not all, but many of the games we praise and then eventually forget about. Usually the indie games are overlooked, but then later appreciated, like well, basically an underground cluster of creations that are waiting to reach the surface. The gaming industry itself is tough and ever-growing, ever-changing rather, and standing out is something that will be the key aspect of selling a game if you don't already have a trail of loved games that sold well, or at the very least, caught the eyes of consumers. Many games today, as I've previously touched upon, are carbon copies of one another because people flock towards familiarity over innovation sometimes. I feel like with the new wave of VR gaming that's being pushed as the vision for the next level in gaming, the indie developers will be the ones to push that technology. Hell, even now you can see that most of those games available on VR are by them, and it would be smart for them to hop on it while it's still fairly new and honestly not in its prime by any means, when we consider what kind of games we actually idealize about. The problem with a lot of games today are that, they are cash grabs that milk us of our worth and valuable time. That same game that you just spent all this money on for extra content will just be made again the very next year with little to no changes besides what they probably could of added to the first game with a simple update. These game sequels are simple updates. Alternatively, the games that take like half a decade or more to create are valued because we can sense that the developers took their time and resources to create it in the best possible, polished way for us to enjoy for the years to come, until they surprise us with something else. Indie devs are similar to that because they're creating the games that they WANT to make, not that they HAVE to make out of financial desperation. Let's be honest though, money is a pretty awesome commodity to have for obvious reasons, but the soul and passion shouldn't be sacrificed for greed and instant gratification. Of course, this can also be the case with many indie developers, but no where near as obvious as top-notch developers and publishers. We may not entirely recognize it right now, but indie developers are exactly what we need to keep this industry afloat. If you're anything like me, you become fatigued of, well to be blunt, corporate bullshit and false advertisement centered around revered game titles. Indie games can't help but get sucked into the midst of it all a lot of times, which is unfortunate, but I feel like true gamers will understand what to support and share for the sake of turning this industry around to what it should be for a healthy community of gamers overall. People will always like what they want to like, naturally, but the point is, it shouldn't be forced upon the outsiders of gaming because of majority rule. That's my take on the matter. There's certainly a lot more to be said, but I'll leave that to whoever wishes to engage with this topic so that we can make it a known discussion that should be brought up more often than not, in my opinion. For any indie devs that may stumble upon this article for whatever reason, you deserve all the respect you think you should have, for sure, and keep up the good work, because we'll need you now more than ever!