Personal computers also became a contender for the gaming
market during this time. What made PCs a popular choice for gamers over the
typical consoles?
Simple, PC’s had more options. Maybe not more games to play,
but they could hold bigger games, and have better graphics. However with better
hardware came higher prices. So the casual gamer at that time normally bought
the cheaper consoles since they just wanted to play games. This holds true
today. However for the Hardcore gamer, like myself, we want the highest end
quality gaming. That means the best graphics, the highest Frame’s per Second, and
the ability to mod games. These are what pushed PC’s up to be real competitors
for consoles. Open device verses a Closed device.
Movement on a PC was
easier as well. Moving with a mouse is far better than moving with a D-pad on a
gamepad, thus making First Person Shooters far easier to aim and allowing for
newer game types that weren’t possible with the consoles at the time. Real Time
Strategy and Turn Base Strategy were two genres that cropped up also because of
the mouse. PC’s could have far more buttons, about 342 worth of buttons and
buttons combinations making games that needed typed commands to move and
interact in the game possible.
PC’s have far more space then consoles. You do not need to
fumble around with clunky cartages that stopped working after a few years. You
got eight-inch floppy disk and then later five inch that took up next to no
space. This meant you could store more games in less space. These floppy desk
had more space than the cartages and thus meant could store larger games on
them, more advance and deeper lore RPG’s, and massive mazes like FPS’s.
Since PC’s had interchangeable hardware, soundcards, video
cards and motherboards, they could be updated sooner and easier than Consoles.
This meant as a PC gamer you weren’t tied to one hardware setup. You could pick
and choose the brands you wanted and mix and match parts to get the most power
for your buck. This is also the PC’s biggest weakness. It can’t hold the value
as long as a console can. While this is a weakness for selling your old PC, on
the flip side this is nice little fact for people trying to by low end PCs.
