WHY I LEFT THE MASTER RACE

My entry into the magical world of gaming was through a Pentium III computer back in 2001. Ever since that, I had been an avid supporter of the "Glorious PC Gaming Master Race". I remember falling from my chair laughing at how bad GTA IV looked on my friend's Xbox 360 compared to my PC. Last year, however, I left the Master Race and joined the dark side of the consoles by buying a PS4. It wasn't an easy decision to make but these are some of the key points that triggered it –

Saturated Hardware Market

The first time my PC Gaming experience started going sour was when my PC got outdated and I needed to buy a new one. I was dumbfounded by the abundance of hardware options in the market. Intel kept releasing new processors every year with negligible improvement in benchmark tests. However, each generation of processors were specific to particular models of motherboards so my choice of processor would also limit my choice of motherboard. On the other hand, there was AMD whose processors, despite having more cores and higher clock speed, kept lagging behind in benchmarks. There was also the dilemma of choosing between the existing DDR3 and the then-upcoming DDR4 memory.  Overall, building a new rig seemed much harder than it had to be. 

Absence of a Unified Marketplace

PlayStation and Xbox have a single, unified marketplace for their users. Sadly, this is not the case for PC gamers. Besides Steam, there are several other marketplaces such as EA's Origin, Ubisoft's Uplay, GOG, and Microsoft's very own Windows Store. Even though the presence of multiple marketplaces ensures competition and often rewards us with great discounts, managing so many accounts can get a bit tedious. 

Inconvenience of Trading Games

Most DRM technologies assign the Serial Number of the disc to a particular account so it becomes near impossible to trade retail games on PC. Digital downloads can be shared through Family Sharing or giving away the login details of your account, none of which are very convenient methods. 

Lack of Quality Exclusives

While the PC does have some great online games up its sleeves, it doesn't have much to offer for those who prefer a single-player experience. Microsoft is trying to solve this issue by releasing Xbox One exclusives on the Windows Store but there aren't enough system sellers just yet. 

Optimisation Woes

In recent times, there have been some abysmal PC ports despite repeated postponements. Sometimes games don't run smoothly despite meeting the system requirements. Bugs, glitches and crashes are more commonplace in PC versions compared to their console counterparts. Even though the developers are mostly at fault here, their clumsiness can be justified by the difficulty of optimising games for PCs having innumerable hardware combinations compared to consoles which generally have a fixed configuration. 

Nony Khondaker is an introvert with immense passion for tech and music. Feel free to send your constructive feedback at nonykhondaker@live.com or follow him on twitter.com/NonyKhondaker