The future of PC gaming - What will it take to retire the console culture?

Last week was a pretty special time in my gaming life. After investing the vast majority of my life's savings I became a proud owner of a high-end Alienware PC. My shiny Area 51 PC arrived here on Wednesday afternoon in all its' mind-blowing glory.Getting to run video games on a high refresh rate monitor is an almost religious life-changing experience. I had my doubts of whether the difference is that significant but, having tried it out for myself, I now see the error of my heathen ways; high-end PC gaming is the real deal. Running games on Titan X actually gives you an edge in some games. To my surprise, I discovered that I'm actually better at games now that everything runs in 60 or more frames.  This truly seems like it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

At the same time, starting my foray into the world of high-end PC gaming  has made me acutely aware of one myth I had believed in myself. A part of me had hoped that buying a high-end PC would bring an end to the endless tinkering that every PC gamer is very familiar with. We've all done it, you buy a new game that your computer should not have any issues running and yet something goes horribly wrong. After hours of investigative work on the internet you identify the culprit and conquer the shortcomings of your hardware. A part of me loves this process and solving a compatibility problem can sometimes even be as satisfying as eventually beating the game you're trying to run. Still, at least a fraction of my purchasing decision-making was driven by the faint hope that it would limit my tinkering and experimentation time.

My first week with Alienware has been a lot of great things but I certainly wouldn't call it problem-free by any stretch of imagination. I learned the hard way that SLI (having two graphics cards running in one PC) is a much a blessing as it is a curse. I also realized that, contrary to what that infamous Ubisoft exec stated in 2014, horsepower doesn't really matter if a game is not well optimized. Lastly, I even experienced a glorious game freeze despite my computer dominating the recommended specs. And it was exactly at that moment  that I thought to myself: "If I didn't like solving puzzles, this would have been frustrating as hell".

Why is it exactly that it's 2016 and the quality of the PC gaming experience is as hit-and-miss as it was when the PS1 dethroned the desktop computers in the 90s ? When everything comes together PC gaming is the most rewarding way to experience new games.  However, time and time again we, the consumers, are expected to troubleshoot the products we pay good money for. On one hand publishers are reassuring us how much they value the PC platform but on the other hand even the father of personal computing, Microsoft, can't get one bloody Xbox One port right. When considering this issue we often shrug and blindly accept that PC gaming is at times an extreme sport for only the true enthusiasts. I keep reading that the publishers are aware of the impending end of the console culture. Yet, the same publishers often expect every PC user to be proficient at dealing with the problems created by their own software.

Before we say goodbye to the consoles we first have to solve the ease-of-access question. I find it baffling to say the least that no real concerted efforts have been made to standardize the PC gaming experience for gamers that would love to move on to the PC but are afraid of the extra time commitment gaming on a PC seems to require. A part of ey understands that optimization for the PC is hard. What I can't  comprehend though is the fact that no one is even trying to apply the same standardized best practices found in console gaming to the growing PC market.Valve seems to be the only significant player trying to solve this problem by trying to unify the PC hardware. At the end of the day even they simply lack the conviction in rolling out their Steam Machines. Most importantly, no one seems to have the courage simply come out and guarantee seamless support for a game on even the most robust machines on the market. Instead of embracing or even trying to mimic the plug-and-play mentality that popularized consoles in the 90s, most publishers seem to be reinforcing the anti-consumer "cautiously wait and see" approach that is scaring many people off. Microsoft is a particularly blatant offender here. I keep hearing the same tired phrase being used everywhere: "Your mileage may vary". Instead of creating a line of Xbox gaming computers that promise superior optimization, their novel gaming strategy focuses on creating an impenetrable Apple-like ecosystem with the abysmally implemented Universal Windows Platform.

In short, not providing a standardized gaming experience on the PC platform is a huge missed opportunity that is preventing a lot of people from abandoning consoles for good. The fact that there is not a single PC that can  officially guarantee problem-free gaming across the board is a travesty in itself, especially when we consider how powerful our desktops are getting these days. PC gaming is in some ways the clearly better experience but staying on a console is still a very rational gaming choice for millions of people. Having experienced how fun PC gaming can be at the best of times, I find it really infuriating that in some ways it can still be incredibly obtuse and inaccessible to many. Technology has accelerated to the point where the console model of video game distribution is simply not feasible anymore. It is the PC market's responsibility to open up and welcome the console players with comparable functionality. The fact that such functionality isn't already in place is a little bit of a disgrace in my humble opinion. After all, experiencing the joys of high frame rate gaming should be a viable option for every gamer.

P.S: Just to clarify, I know that I paid 20% extra basically for the Alienware mascot on my rig :P As much as it pains me to be so wasteful I am disabled and I really couldn't find a reasonable pre-made alternative in Sweden that included good accidental damage coverage :P Of course, that doesn't mean I don't love rubbing it in that I HAVE AN ALIENWARE NOW :P However,  please  be aware that me being a douche was not the only reason for this decision :)