Heh, that Borderlands 2 price has honestly changed since I posted that comment! I wouldn't have posted that price if it wasn't correct at the time - weird. Anyway, anyone can see the current prices of CURRENT games on the store. You know you can also buy discounted games on the console stores right, or buy them for next to nothing when they're past their prime?

It's totally irrelevant anyway. Whether you're having a £15 game locked to your account, a £30 game, or a £1 game, it's the same restriction. What my point was, before the excuses came raining down, was that Steam are using the same type of restrictions for their customers, and have been doing so for some time now - this is a fact, not an opinion. People who have been purchasing games from Steam, with full knowledge of this have no right to rage about Sony and MS doing the exact same thing. If anything, the people paying Steam, and supporting its sales model have encouraged other companies to do the same, as they can see it's been successful.

"You must be a lot of fun at parties."

And there we have the first personal attack.

Not interested in a school-yard name calling match. Goodbye.

Forgot to add, Apple have also been doing this since their store opened. Have you ever tried to give away an Apple store game/app? Or sell an old Apple PC with OSX on it that you upgraded from the store? You can't, as it's locked to your account. It's almost worse with OSX, because you're likely selling the old Mac for a new one which will have the same OSX version on it anyway, making your old purchase totally useless, unlike a game which you could at least continue to play.

You didn't add the caveat "old games are sub $10", you just stated that steam games are sub $10. This is demonstrably incorrect. You might as well say "Ford cars are better than BMWs because they cost under $100", and not mention the fact you're talking about some 20 year old junker (mandatory car analogy completed!)

I tend to buy current titles, and I'd bet that's where the vast majority of game companies (and Steam's) revenues come from. Whether you do or not is totally irrelevant - the fact is, Steam sell the latest games for £30 or more, and prevent resale, or gifting after the game is used. Yes, I could only buy old stuff from 2011 to play on PC, but then I could also buy old "bargain bucket" games for the console too. The fact is that what Sony and MS are proposing to do is almost EXACTLY the same as what Steam have been doing for ages. I'm sure that eventually someone will find a way around the copy protection with the consoles, as they have with every prior generation.

With all this said, I'm a PC gamer, not a console gamer (though I've owned most consoles) but I don't kid myself that Steam are any better than any other company out there. They exist to make money; they're not your friend, or anyone elses. Everything a big company does, it does to increase its profits. There's no moral compass involved.

I can't understand why anyone would buy a console at the moment (prior to the next generation units becoming available). Even the bargain basement PCs will offer a better gaming experience than an old PS3 or XBox. When you consider how old those systems are, and the fact their tech wasn't exactly cutting edge even when they were launched, they're an incredibly bad buy.

Some people somehow think that consoles are a cheaper option than buying a gaming PC, that they have to upgrade. The fact is that console owners will (in general) pay more for their games, which more than offsets the initial saving. Added to that, a gaming PC will offer superior graphics, gameplay and sound, and probably won't need upgrading for almost the entire lifespan of a console. Of course, people DO upgrade PCs though; not through necessity, but because they have the option to. A console owner doesn't have that option - they're stuck with what they bought. It's as crazy as if a computer manufacturer started soldering their units shut so they couldn't ever be upgraded. None of them would ever do that though... heh.

"No, because the steam games are sub $10."

I'm on the UK Steam store right now, and unless the US version has a totally different pricing structure, all current titles are way over "$10".

Borderlands 2 = £29.99 ($47.11)
Call of Duty Black Ops 2 = £34.99 ($54.97)
Devil May Cry = £29.99 ($47.11)

So basically you're lying, and I'm surprised your comment has been flagged insightful. Not only that, but trying to justify Steam's system because you can get around it by criminal means (in the eyes of the games companies) is ridiculous.

What sort of MB are you using that's loaded with DDR4?

Mac users are used to getting shafted. That's the biggest difference.

Why on earth do people cripple their own gameplay by using a gamepad with a PC? Unless you're playing a terrible console port that's unusable with a keyboard+mouse, it's like playing with one hand tied behind your back, and the other hand in an oven glove. Just ridiculous.

I'm not saying external peripherals cannot be used with mobile devices (a lot of my work involves building custom hardware to interface with Android devices), I was remarking on the ridiculousness of his argument. I.e. he's been playing for "years" yet seems unaware of the controller options, thus assumes that tilting a tablet is the best way to control a driving game...

You know what's even more intuitive for steering a car in a driving game? A steering wheel. If only someone sold such things to plug into consoles and PCs...

??? What commercial game have you played from the last 10 years that required that kind of configuration? The standard keybindings are very well known now. WASD+mouse to move about, [space] (usually) to jump, numeric keys to change weapons, etc. There will always be defaults. Just like most games now will automatically choose the graphic settings during the first launch. Of course these can all be overridden if desired, just like consoles allow the player to change the key bindings (as I recall). Of course there's little point in allow graphics options on a console - it's pretty much doing what it can.

Since researchers discovered that people freeze up when they see too many choices. From this page:

Preferences can confuse many users. Take the famous too many clocks example. A significant number of test subjects were so surprised to have 5 choices of clock they couldn't figure out how to add a clock to their panel. This cost of preferences is invariably underestimated by us technical types.

This is a completely different use case. This is someone's first exposure to an unfamiliar UI. I don't "freeze up" every time I launch a game because there are graphic options somewhere under a settings menu. The same way I don't "freeze up" when I open my wardrobe and choose a shirt and tie. your type of thinking lead Apple to the 1-button mouse.

Here's one: http://www.rahulsood.com/2010/07/console-gamers-get-killed-against-pc.html It's the reason PC and console players are segregated - it should be easy-ish for MS to allow the Xbox live service to handle games running on the 2 platforms, but they won't do it as it'll cost them sales in Xboxes. Nobody would want to play on Xbox if they're getting humiliated all the time by PC gamers ;-)

Looks like I forgot to add the quote tags in a few times - heh!

Of course they do - the person who bought the hardware to get a better gaming experience. I've spent a lot of money on my gaming rig, and believe me the gaming experience is WAY above anything a console can deliver. While your console is struggling along at 1024x720@30fps, I'm playing the same game at 6014x1200@{whatever the pegged fps is} with much more detail, more effects, and higher quality sound. You might as well argue that everyone should just buy the cheapest, shittiest car they can find because it'll crawl up to the speed limit, so why do you need anything better?

Please tell me you're joking. Have you compared the speed of a PC loading a game from an SSD RAID / RAM disk, to a PS3/Xbox grinding away with an old optical disk, and so little RAM it can't cache anything worth a damn? I DO also own an PS3, I hadn't used it for anything much except playing BlueRay disks for over 2 years (it's now been replaced by a dedicated BR player) The last time I tried a game in it, I honestly thought it had frozen each time it tried to load a new level. On my gaming rig, there's no waiting - ever. Last game I can compare between PC and console was Skyrim. On the console there were huge delays while loading - on PC, there was nowhere near enough time to read anything on the "did you know" type screen before the level loaded. If you haven't noticed the HUGE difference here, you obviously haven;'t played a game on a proper gaming PC in a few years.

Games are only expensive if you buy the expensive ones, and most of those titles cost the same on PC.

So you mean if you buy any current games they're expensive on console? That's about right. PC games are cheaper on Steam. Check it yourself.

Console updates happen by pressing "ok". Easy enough for kids, no headaches for adults.

Last time I tried, this is how it went:
Insert game - "Your system needs a software update, please exit the game and update..."
Exit game, scroll across to the "System" tab, navigate up (for some reason the software update is above all the other options), choose "Software update"
"Checking..." (finally) "A software update was found, would you like to install?"
Press Yes, "Please accept these new terms and conditions", click through
"Would you like the system to shut down after updating", press Yes.
(update takes 20 minutes)

On PC? Updates happen in the background, automatically install as the machine is shut down.

Which is easier?

Please provide any evidence of this. Or is it just something you made up while writing this reply? Maybe you're just not aeware of the modding communities for a lot of current games. Or you have no choice because you're stuck with a 7 year old piece of locked down tech that's incapable of handling this content.

Nobody wants to play with keyboard, mice, 10,000 buttons and macros. They want to lay on the living room floor or sit on the couch with a controller.

Sorry, how old are you? 12? Keyboards don't have "10,000 buttons". People (well, adults) don't necessarily want to lay on the floor to play games. Personally I like playing my games at v.high resolution, every visual effect enabled, surround sound, instant load times and no screaming little XBox brats in my ears. It's worth the cost. The fact you keep stating absolutes ("Nobody does this, nobody does that") suggests you're a child living in his own little bubble, peobably without the means to have a choice of gaming platform. You're therefore arguing from a position of ignorance.

The fact is that the keyboard+mouse is the better control system for FPS'. Having to use clumsy analog thumb-sticks is a handicap right from the start. Add to this the far higher level of detail and higher framerates, and this is why PC players cannot join console players online. The console players are annihilated and humiliated.

If consoles lose favor, it'll be to more open consoles or tablets that have solved the input problem. Touch devices suck for anything not designed for touch.

Wow, thank you captain obvious!

The fact is that consoles are just a cheap and cheerful way to play games on old hardware. The games companies and PC players hate them because they hold progress back. Companies have to plan their game engines around the limitations of these ancient, low powered devices, and so porting to fast PCs often adds a lot of expense.