By Anthony Dusold

  I have written a couple of game reviews for The Tide in the past, but I never really wrote about platforms (ex. Xbox, PlayStation, PC, etc.). I have an Xbox One, and have recently built a gaming PC. This article is based off of my own experience and knowledge of the gaming community. So, let’s break it down...

1. Control of Your Hardware

Generally, the majority of PC gamers have made their own PCs. There are even some YouTube tech channels that create project after project of PCs.

Whether you built your own PC, or bought a prebuilt PC, you will always be able to upgrade your own PC. Just slide the door off, grab a screwdriver, and change one part for another! Generally, PC gamers tend to upgrade their graphics cards. For example, I would switch out my GTX 1050 and replace it with a GTX 1070. But there are other ways to upgrade your PC performance. This includes adding RAM, switching out your processor, or any part in your PC you desire to upgrade!

  2. Developers Favor this Platform Over Others

  Every platform has exclusives. Xbox has Forza and Halo, PlayStation has Uncharted, while PC has a ton more! Steam has a ton of AAA titles that consoles have as well. However, there are also a lot more popular titles that Valve (the company that owns Steam) puts on their service. These include: Counter Strike Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life. Now, I may be wrong about Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike being on PC only because I have heard they’re also on consoles, but I haven’t seen any of them in the Xbox store (on the Xbox) nor in a Gamestop. But I am aware that there are a lot more games on Steam than any other service.

  3. PC is ALWAYS Backwards Compatible

  Since the platform PC will just always be PC, it’s possible to buy a game from 2005 and still play it in 2017 and beyond! Although Microsoft has their own backwards compatibility on the Xbox One and Sony is starting to do the same with their PlayStation 4. It took both companies a while to decide to make older games backwards compatible, and even from then on, it also did take some time for the shear majority of the games to become backwards compatible. There are still a lot more games to be made backwards compatible, but PC is PC. There won’t be a “newer generation” of PC like the Xbox and PlayStation because -- like I said before -- PC gamers don’t need a new machine just to get some upgrades, they can always switch out and upgrade the hardware as they please. Once you have that game, that game is playable for as long as you like!

4. Steam is a FREE Service

  Although there are other services like Origin and Battlenet, Steam is THE GO-TO service to buy your games and play online with others! But unlike Xbox Live and Playstation Network, Steam does not require you to pay a certain fee for a consistent time for their service.

5. It is Generally Cheaper To Build A PC Than to Buy a Console

  My PC costs around $450 (estimated), when the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 was unveiled, it costed around $500 to buy one. Although the price of the consoles were bumped down over time and eventually reached $250-$300, we’re still talking about when they were released. If you want to start off with a budget of $500, you can have a better performing PC over a console! My Xbox can play games generally at 30 FPS, which isn’t bad but we can do better on my PC which generally runs my games at an average of 60 FPS. FPS is an abbreviation of Frames Per Second, and it works like this:

    For each second you get an amount of Frames, which are pictures that switch really fast to the next picture in order to make a video! Movies that you see in the Cinema run at 30 FPS, that means for every second of that movie is shown there are 30 Frames (or pictures in simpler terms) that you watch!

6. You can Plug and Play with ANY Controller You Like!

  You might be asking me “Isn’t it hard to play on mouse and keyboard?” In a way, yes! But FEAR NOT! You can simply plug in any controller you like! Just simply take a USB to Micro USB Cable (like the one that you use to charge your Android Phone) plug it in the back of the controller and your PC and have a WONDERFUL TIME playing CSGO!

99% of everything is a Pro for PC gaming, and is at least one step ahead of consoles in every single category! And, if your PC is worse than a console, remember you can ALWAYS upgrade your PC hardware!