It’s this old nutshell again, but we discuss the main points as to why we believe consoles have an advantage for gaming compared to the good old PC.

Before we get started, I would just like to say I used to be a hardcore PC gamer before I came to the realisation of the following points, also PC gaming is a thriving market especially if you love the ability to modify your games. These points are meant to assist not dictate.

Price

To have a gaming rig to play the latest games in HD you need to spend quite a lot of money, about 5 times the cost of a gaming console. Not only that you need to factor in the price for an operating system and HD graphics card that also outputs sound in HD or an HD sound card if you want to experience 7.1 DTS HD surround sound . The games may be a bit more expensive on consoles if you buy new, but the trade-in market is much bigger so you will be able to recoup some money back if you require.

Ease of use

Often if you want to play a game you will just want to pop in the disc and away you go. With a PC this is often not the case, with PC games you will need to install the software and resolve any conflicts. You will also need to change many more settings and install the latest graphics or Direct X drivers. A PC often takes longer to load a game then what a console would when you factor in the whole boot-up process.

Local Play

Most console games provide the ability for more than one person to play on the same system, but how many PC games do? If you want to play your friends simply buy some more pads and chuck in your favourite game, if you want to play with more than one person locally on a PC you will need to buy additional peripherals install the drivers and tweak the settings, providing the game supports local play in the first place.

The console will also most likely live in your lounge making a family centric media center not just for you tucked away in your room, this makes the console a more social platform especially for parties.

Your Wife

So you spent days perfecting your warrior and have focused for hours to delve deep into the last dungeon of the game, right at the point you are about to reveal the secret of the last scroll you wife turns up and demands use of the PC so she can visit her Facebook.

If you have a PC for gaming, you will need to consider buying a netbook, laptop or additional unit as because the PC is used for more than gaming then it is likely other members of your family, your wife, friends or kitty will want to use the PC for some other purpose.

Out of the Box Features

Things like VidZone allow you to turn you TV into a personalised music channel, NetFlix allows you to stream on-demand HD movies and the BBC iPlayer means your wife can watch that episode of Eastenders she missed. Consoles these days offer other features ensuring it is rooted in the living room to make it the ultimate media centre with the option to stream movies from NAS devices or PC’s so that it really can access a wealth of media in an instant.