by Rohan

A discussion topic just came up – which gaming platforms do you use? This was relevant because I’m in the bizarre situation of having almost everything it’s possible to play games on. Between my partner and I, we have a Windows PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, 360, PS3, Wii and PSP. (Just missing the DS, and really don’t care)

Obviously, when you have access to all these devices, you aren’t going to spend equal time on each. It becomes a “right tool for the job” situation. So, after now having most of these (except the iPad, which I will discuss separately) for numerous months, just which devices have proven to be the most frequently used ones?

I’ll list them in rough order of use (most used to least) and give some reasons for this.

Xbox 360

There are a number of reasons the 360 is my most used gaming platform. These are:

• The majority of new games tend to either be cross-platform, 360-centric, or 360 exclusives.
• Over-all quality of release titles. The number of times I’ve read about (or seen, if I purchased a copy) PS3 versions of titles that have speed issues, pop-up errors or (amazingly, given the speed of the PS3) a lower resolution than the 360 counterpart makes me far less likely to buy a game on PS3.
• More friends who own them. If a game is multiplayer, I’ll doubtlessly want it on 360. Sure, you have to pay for Xbox Live (and I’m increasingly convinced that this is a rip-off) but I have only a small handful of friends who play multiplayer games on PS3, where-as almost every gamer I know plays 360.
• The controller. I love it. The right weight, the right size for my hands, and the triggers feel good and natural when using iron-sights/triggers in first-person shooters.

Windows

Put simply, not every genre of game is good on console. Strategy games, simulations and even some RPGs (especially those who are almost made by the third-party addon community) are usually better with a mouse, a keyboard and a screen where more information can be displayed without using fluffy graphs and symbols.

So, why Windows? Well, it’s because that’s where most of the games are. Steam may have just come to Mac, and many other titles by the big publishers (Call of Duty, The Sims series, Blizzard’s games, etc) may all have had Mac-native ports for years, but the simple fact is that it’s often the smaller-budget titles that I want to play, and in my experience either big AAA titles or tiny, tiny made-in-a-garage titles are the ones that become Windows/Mac/Linux cross-platform.

The unique games like ARMA 2 or Napoleon: Total War do not. They’re Windows through and through.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I use the Windows machine for anything else, however. I have real computers to produce content, browse the net and do actual work. Can’t rely on Windows for that. That’d be silly. (Steve Jobs told me so)

iPhone/iPad

I won’t go into any detail here about the iPad – I’m going to write a separate article about gaming on the iPad, but suffice to say that there are many times when I’m not at home and want to play something. Sometimes it’s a short train trip, and I’ll play solitaire. Other times it’s a long train trip, and I’ll play Civilization. Other times it’ll be with friends, and we’ll play a pass-around game of some sort – usually a digital version of a board game.

So, why the iDevices?

• Number of available titles. This I cannot stress enough. There are any number of reasons to go for an Android phone over an Apple one. Plenty of arguments for lugging around a netbook over an iPad, too, really. But what gives these things the edge, and the reason I still use them, is the massive, overwhelming quantity of titles – many of which work nicely on both platforms. Also, in most cases, buy once – own on both.
• A well-made, intuitive touch screen interface. I’ve used a lot of touch screen devices, and most frustrate me. I’m not saying the iDevices are perfect (I could write a laundry list of complaints)… just that they piss me off less than every other one I’ve tried. For certain types of games – board game ports, strategy games, etc – this interface is absolutely perfect. Try dragging units around in a turn-based strategy game. Perfect. Sure, it’s not ideal for platformers or shooters, but creative use of the interface can fix that – and game developers are finally doing so. (Oh, and despite saying that, try out Wolf3D or Doom – both of those work wonderfully well on the iPhone)
• The price is right. Not of the devices themselves – that’s debatable. Of the games. You could allocate yourself just $5 a week and you’d likely find 2 or 3 new games (ignoring free ones) every week that would keep you entertained – some for much, much longer than the week itself. And the best part? No long treks out to the shops to buy them – and you have them all on you, all the time. Now that’s convenient.

Mac

I have a Mac Pro. That’s the beastiest, most beef-cake of all the Macs. In fact, it’s about 2-3 times faster (at least) than my Windows machine. But I don’t play many games on it. Despite popular perception, there are actually lots of games on Mac – like I discussed above in the Windows section.

For me, the Mac is doing the ‘real work’ (a edit my film projects on it) and often, while rendering, I’ll switch over to the PC or play 360 on the couch. But it’s grunty enough that often, if I’m monitoring what I’m doing, I will game on it.

More often than not, though, I tend to use it to play old DOS games, or something else on an emulator. In one screen I’ll have whatever I’m uploading to youtube, on another, whatever I’m exporting, and without skipping a CPU cycle I’ll have dosbox there, playing some old classic I never quite finished.

I often wonder, if I was forced to keep just one desktop machine, whether I’d play more games on Mac. And I suspect I would – especially now that we have steam and an ever-widening selection of great titles available.

Increasingly, for me, Windows’ days in my house are numbered.

Wii

I don’t like the Wii. I really don’t. There’s no precision, and almost no reason to ever want to game on it. If you’re playing one of their ‘Wiiware’ arcade or whatever the snot they call it titles that do not use the motion sensors, you’re either stuck using those horrible Wiimotes sideways in order to game (that’s frustrating) or sitting it beside you while using the plug-in ‘Classic’ controllers. Also frustrating.

Then there’s the actual motion-based games. During a party, they often get broken out. Tennis, Archery, Golf, Bowling… that can be fun. When you’re drunk. But honestly, almost no modern titles have made me care about them on Wii. In fact, the only title I didn’t return after buying that isn’t part of the Wii Sports (or Wii Plus Sports) titles was Mad World. And I’m still not entirely sure why.

In short, the Wii is a gimmick that in my experience, people buy, play once or twice, and then forget about. (Unless they’re between the ages of five to eight, or drunk at a party)

Playstation 3

Boy, what a nice bu-ray player! Low load-times, boots fast… that’s about it. This year, I’ve played Heavy Rain, Uncharted 2 (gag) and the Pixeljunk titles on it. Because they’re exclusives. So, why don’t I like the PS3? Well, I’ve largely covered this in reverse in the 360 section, but to add a few points that should already be fairly obvious…

• A piss-weak controller. It’s too light. It’s too small. And using the ‘bumper’ / ’2′ buttons to fire by default? Yuck. Also, there’s the way my fingers seem to slip off the analogue sticks (thank-you, whoever made 360 sticks convex and with bumps around the edges to catch your thumbs on)
• Installing and updating games. Half the reason I switched to consoles for many genres in the first place is because I could slam in a game and play it very quickly. This isn’t the case with the PS3. You get home, excitedly unwrap your brand new game with your grubby little mitts, and put the disc in. Then you get the install. That takes a while. Then the patches. They take forever. In contrast, I’ve never seen a patch for a 360 game that didn’t download and apply in a heartbeat.

So, would I change to PS3 over 360? Sure. These are nitpicks. But as long as most gamers I know use 360, and as long as the non-exclusive titles are weaker on PS3… it’s highly unlikely.

PSP

You’re joking, right? It’s heavy, the load times are slow, the analogue sticks are near-useless, and there’s also a practical consideration. See, it’s just a shade too large to fit in my pockets. So I need to take a bag. But if I take a bag, I have room for my iPad – also a wonderful device to check my email, read RSS feeds and browse the web on. And if I don’t, then I’ll invariably have my iPhone on me.

So why on earth would I want to carry this waste of space around? In fact, I haven’t turned the thing on in 2 years now, really. Wouldn’t shock me if the thing has been broken.

The PSP is a near-complete failure as a gaming device. Not so much when it first came out – it didn’t originally have to compete with the iPhone and various other things-that-do-what-the-ngauge-could-not – but it’s an extraneous device.

Add to this that most games you want to play when on-the-go are either turn-based or very short, and it’s not hard to see why people prefer the DS or their phones.

What about you?

Most of my reasons for going with one console over another are personal preference. The shape of the controller in my hand isn’t exactly hard science. There are often other concerns for people that are just as personal – and sometimes much more practical (or economic).

• What platforms do you use, and why?
• Which the most, and which the least?
• Have you ever sold off a console while it’s still current-generation?
• Do ergonomics often drive you from or to a given platform, like myself?

Tags: consoles, ipad, iphone, mac, pc, platforms, rohan

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 11:09 am and is filed under Article. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.