If you’ve ever been involved in a PC gaming debate regarding its pros and cons, especially as of late then you’ll know that most of the time it boils down to hardware. Sure I’ll give it that, the ability t swap out a graphics card, processor, hard drive and even adding more memory is a big deal. But more often than usual a huge pro is overlooked and that my friends are a shame since I consider it the single most important component of PC gaming.
So what are you referring to?
Pricing, to be exactly the pricing of games on the platform. Sure the PC has it’s a fair share of $50 and $60 dollar games, I won’t deny that. However on top of this and OUTSIDE of Steam (we’re not talking about Steam today), there are literally hundreds of places where someone can pick up a title for pennies on the dollar, they just have to look.
A perfect example is one I recently stumbled onto. I spent a little less than $110 dollars over the past week on several titles, all of which are upcoming games. Which games you may be asking; Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor ($22), Gauntlet ($12), The Witcher 3 ($18), Aliens: Isolation ($28) and The Evil Within ($30). That’s four titles out of five that are carrying a $59.99 price tag if I was to get them on the PlayStation 4/Xbox One. And this is just upcoming games.
If I was to focus my attention on games that are already released I can tell you for a fact that I can get just about any recently released title for under $25 dollars and these are 100% legit games that I can add to Steam, Original or GOG. Even PC exclusive hit titles such as Divinity: Original Sin is not immune, I can get that now for less than $20.00 at the moment. Everyone likes a deal, right? Who doesn’t like spending less to get more?
Why is it a big deal?
Let’s be real, shall we? Not many people have a disposable income and most games are so damned expensive they either force gamers to miss out on some good gaming, wait for a sale (Black Friday/Steam Sales) or resort to neglecting themselves or others of basic needs (Don’t laugh, this happens a lot) and that’s a shame. The industry has gotten so far that in many ways it’s a racket. How do most companies expect their titles to fly off the shelves or servers if we can’t afford them or in most recent releases we can afford them and they are just so buggy or poorly optimized that we end up not wanting to play them yet having spent a good chunk of change on them? I’m looking at you Ubisoft and that piss poor port you call “Watchdogs“. I’d feel remiss if I didn’t educate my fellow gamers, console and PC gamers alike if I didn’t make this information known.
Is there a downside to this?
Well, that depends. Are you someone who owns both a PC capable of playing games at a decent performance level? If not then I definitely would not recommend you picking a PC title over a console title if it’s going to end up as a bad experience for you. This route requires a bit of resource since PC games always have three requirements for playing games; Minimum – The lowest of the low settings, Recommended – This is the recommended requirements to run the game optimally per the developer, Optimal – The best of the best and you MUST have a kick-ass PC rig to run them at the highest setting (unless is a sub-par port, nothing will save you from them).
And lastly, you do have to do some work to find them. They may be fantastic deals but you have to know where to go to get them, it’s sort of like how you know where the best restaurant in your town is while no one else expects the place to be decent. You’re either going to stumble and find the places on accident, via word of mouth or a posting on an internet forum or article post. Yes, you do have to work it to benefit but trust me the deals are definitely worth the time spent. So yeah, I think the pricing of games on the PC is a huge draw. You may see things a little differently than I do but if saving money while getting the games you want is a bad thing to you, then I don’t know what to say.
