The pc lives its best moment as a video game platform

Video game fans have lived very different times in recent decades, today the PC is the preferred platform for most gamers because of the great options it offers in terms of flexibility. In this opinion piece, we review all the changes of the last twelve years that have led the PC to become the queen platform for video games.

We review the changes in the industry that have led the PC to become the queen platform

Currently we can find components on the market that allow us to assemble a PC for video games for a very contained price, something that was not so easy a few years ago. When Playstation 3 and XBOX came onto the market approximately 12 years ago, they did so by offering features that were well above the computers of the time, especially in the case of the Microsoft console that was the pioneer in including a GPU with unified shaders, Something that has become standard after the arrival of DirectX 10. Xbox 360 also included a triple-core processor with the capacity to handle up to 6 threads, something impressive at a time when PC processors were starting to bet on both. nuclei.

At that time, the consoles had an approximate price of 500-600 euros, a very high figure for this type of platform, but let's not forget that their benefits were above the most powerful and expensive computers, making them the best option for video game. Let's also not forget the fact that game consoles attracted many of the developers exclusively, so the available catalog was far superior to the PC.

A huge change begins in the PC world

We were at a time of clear domination of game consoles on the PC, but it was also the beginning of a change whose consequences have been enormous. 2006 was the year of the introduction of unified shaders to PC graphics cards, the first of them was the impressive GeForce 8800GTX from Nvidia that had a huge power and far superior to what there was until then, this concept of unified shaders also It allows video game creators to squeeze much more the potential of the hardware so we had a much more powerful and at the same time much more usable product, a devastating combination.

2006 was also the year of the introduction of Intel Core 2 Duo processors, a revolutionary product that almost doubled the performance of previous Netburst-based processors and marked the end of AMD's golden age, today it seems like a lie, but the Sunnyvale had more powerful and efficient processors than Intel's before 2006. In 2007 quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad processors were introduced, once again greatly increasing the performance of PCs of the time. In 2008 AMD's quad-core processors, the Phenoms, arrived at a time when little David was still able to fight Goliath, albeit in a rather shy way. While PS3 and Xbox 360 continued with their hardware that had been revolutionary in its arrival on the market but that was gradually being surpassed by the PC world.

At this point we have stagnant consoles and on the other hand the PC that was improving its possibilities every few months thanks to the arrival of new components resulting from the fierce competition between AMD and Intel and AMD and Nvidia. This made developers start to look at the PC when creating their video games, the catalog of games available on computers began to grow exponentially. Over the years, the difference in performance between the consoles and the PC was increasing, so the most demanding players began to migrate to a platform that offered them many more possibilities, and it was also possible to mount very powerful computers with a price below 1000 euros.

2013 was the arrival of the replacement of PS3 and Xbox 360, it was the year in which PS4 and Xbox One were released, although with a very important difference compared to its predecessors. Both consoles came with features and specifications that were not cutting edge, rather they were typical of mid-range computers and far inferior to the most powerful components that were available for the PC. With this we come to a time when consoles are no longer the most powerful platform at the time of their arrival on the market, if we add to this that it is impossible to update them and that the evolution of the PC continues unstoppable we realize that the PS4 and Xbox One hardware are numbered.

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The fact that the consoles have mid-range hardware means that to equalize them we no longer need a high-end and very expensive PC, thus opening up the possibility of mounting more or less equivalent equipment for prices around 500 euros and even much higher equipment for about 600-800 euros. Another change that does not do consoles any favors is that their life cycle has been much agreed, PS3 hit the market in 2006 and PS4 did it in 2013, so the generation has lasted 7-8 years, a span of time. which has been widely agreed upon in the current generation. Less than four years after the arrival of PS4 and Xbox One we already have PS4 Pro on the market and Xbox Scorpio will be very soon, we are also beginning to talk about a possible arrival of PS4 in 2018.

The PC is currently unsurpassed

Therefore, we are currently in an era when consoles are no longer the most powerful platform, their life cycle has been shortened a lot and their exclusive games are less and less. On the other hand, we have the PC with an immense catalog, backwards compatible with the games of previous years, its cost is increasingly affordable, it allows us to update it to improve its benefits and it serves us for many tasks other than playing. We also have to add that PC games are usually significantly cheaper and their online gaming service is free, unlike consoles where you have to pay.

Our opinion is that consoles have lost much of their appeal and the PC is an increasingly better platform: same or more games, better performance, free online, a very affordable wreck, cheaper games…