Biggest advantage PC have over consoles is not graphx, it's

something that almost everyone ignores as if it was insignificant but it's HUGE. People only want to talk about graphics which are great and of course the PC is the best but it's supposed to be the best if you invest in expensive hardware.

But there is something else that is a huge advantage that is never mentioned here. And that is something that I think is the most important factor that gives the PC a huge advantage over all of the next gen consoles.

That is backwards compatibility. If you own a PC, you can play games all the way back to the original diablo, fallout and even games such as morrowind without any problems.

Not only that, but you never lose your entire software library every few years when a new gen appears. I have over 100 games on steam and it's just awesome that I can go there and play anything I want and now that the next gen is here I can just add next gen games to my library.

With consoles, if you go to the next gen you have to really lose all your previous games because no one is going to have that much hardware connected to their tvs. You're not going to have a 360, X1, PS3, PS4, PS1 and Xbox just to play older games. And I didn't even include the Nintendo consoles.

But even if you did have all those consoles, you would still have to be switching all sorts of disks around on all the consoles to just play those games.

With PC there is no disk swapping, everything is in my hard drive and I can just switch seamlessly between games. Everything is compatible and works just so great.

Oh yea and the graphics are better too.

cool story bro

Is it technically backwards compatibility with PCs?

But where are all the GOTY?

That's a lie, well I'm sure most don't but many do. I still own literally dozens of consoles although I admit that at this moment only 4 are connected to my TV while my Dreamcast is connected to an old CRT moniter. :P

no it's bottlenecks, virus and cheaters

^mad cuz bad.

Forgot how those things are exclusive to PC :(

That is not quite true, new pc-hardware and new operating system makes old games not work, but ya if you put your soul into it you may get it to work but not without anyproblems.

Your old console games dont disapear when a new generation console come, and you know you can keep all your old consoles. Sure you dont have all connected to TV but if you ever want play you can spend those 3-5min to connect them.

Yeah, it's true.

It's nice to be able to easily jump back into older games. Especially with stuff like GoG.

I highly doubt most people care about playing old games. But either way, that advantage is about to be wiped out by Playstation Now.

I hope that now with x86 the PS5 would be able to play PS4 games natively but I know deep inside that they will come up with excuses like: people doesn't care about BC at the same time they are selling us the same old games again and the idiots buying it. So much irony it hurts.

The GOTY, it's all about the GOTY

It is since both the OS and hardware changes. Still keeping backwards compatibility with really old games is no small feat.

Plenty do. All you have to do is look at what people are playing at steam.

Yes, because instant access to any game you've ever purchased and the ability to make them look better with higher resolutions, anti aliasing, mods and more is clearly on the same level as being able to pay to rent games you already owned.

Yup, plenty of older games still being played a lot

Dude I could play most of the old PC games on my laptop... it's really not that big of an advantage at all.

Yeah,with game rentals

Dat milkage

why just last month i played wing commander, descent, freelancer, quake 2, unreal - among many others!

its probably the single best thing about the platform in my opinion.

What kind of logic is that? Is not an advantage because you can play PC games on your laptop?

And the PC is not in charge only for its own games but even of console games. A lot of people that have missed the past generations are playing those old PS2 or N64 games on PC.

did you even read the sentence?

you know how many people game? taking a sample out of steam isn't representative at all. i'm talking about in general.

lol worthy

truly system wars quality comment. XD

you just described the advantage

I love how the PC people get so defensive. His thread was about BC being the biggest advantage. Now that's lol worthy

It's pretty well known that a lot of PC gamers still fire up older games from time to time. Or in fact play older games passionately still (CS 1.6, Age of Empires II, ...)

I was showing the steam list as an example of PC gamers. As this thread is about PC BC.

Then it would be even bigger since most of the old games don't exist on steam at all.

Plus even at that steam list, a lot of games are not ancient but many are 3 or 4 years old. If PC were to be like the consoles and the new version launched last year nobody would be able to play 99% of those games in that list.

@R4gn4r0k: Yeah. I still enjoy playing games like Theme Hospital and Little Big Adventure 2 every now and then.

if consoles have it its a huge amazing thing.

if pc has it, its worthless and noone cares, even though PC has more gamers/sales/games.

Absolutely. There are just some older games that don't have an equal, like Theme Hospital.

I have yet to find a replacement for Age of Empires or Rollercoaster Tycoon.

Also, don't you ever want to check out the roots of a game when playing certain games, especially the ones you enjoy, i.e. previous games in the series or older games ?

Playing Bioshock made me want to check out System Shock.

Playing Assassin's Creed made me want to go back to the Prince of Persia games, like The Sands of Time, which I still hadn't finished.

Or am I alone in this ? :p

I miss PoP.

Xbox 360- BC with XB software (most if not mistaken).

PS3 - BC with PS2 & PSX software.

PS4 - PS now will allow for streaming of PS3 software. There is still a rumor that there will be some sort of PS2 & PSX emulation.

If this proves to be successful.. expect M$ & Ninty to offer something similar.

Wii - BC with GC software.

..what exactly are you getting at. Oh and I still own most of my older consoles.

The answer is mods.

I still play a number of old MS-DOS (DOSBox) and Amiga (Amiga Forever) games.

Crusader: No Remorse and Battle Squadron. Heck. Some games from the 90's still run natively such as MS Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too far.

PC gaming sucks because I don't like RTS or MMO. That is 99% of the game library. Using WASD for movement is idiotic. You will never change my mind.

You know what else provides backwards compatibility? Keeping your older consoles.

Rather have 10 consoles worth of games on 1 unified system, with better gfx and modded online mods + save modes + any controller.

Superiority.

That's not backwards compatibility. That's just backwards, to have all your games spread across several systems.

@Jankarcop:

...and not able to play any of the console exclusives (Mario Galaxy, Zelda, Forza, ratchet and clank, LBP, ect..)

..superior my ass! A true manicore is the only "superior" gamer.

You better watch out with those two before someone brings up Dolphin

Please, provide me with your Data

I thought you were going to say MODs. Mods in the PC gaming community are the shit, you can completely change a game add to it or whatever you want. I want multi cam titans in titan fall? sure why not.

There's one advantage I have in PC gaming that no ammount of console gaming will ever offer to me (and i'm serious when I say I never truly owned a console before nor felt the urge to have one just yet)

The PC is an open platform, it is what you want to make out of it, a custom gaming experience is easily one of the best things that has happened to me in my gaming career, sure my current PC can't outdo consoles (running on a now outdated GPU), but I can actually run the majority of games and I can even tweak them to get the best perfomance possible, not to mention the whole custom experience lets me peacefully find that sweet spot where I can game to my heart's content

No offense to console gamers but... I have yet to run into an exclusive that makes me go out of my way to get a console

Did I mention I can game with a controller on almost any game just in case I dont' feel like WASDing my way through? :D

Then why do I have trouble playing my disc copy of Half Life?

@lostrib:

Nintendo licensed it's games to this dolphin?

:O