PC

PC Gaming is always ahead of consoles in terms of hardware power and reliability; the sheer number of games the PC has in comparison to consoles makes you think that PC Gaming would obviously be the most popular choice of all time, however, a lot of people prefer the feeling of being able play to play video games in a more comfortable and casual environment, such as playing from the sofa in the front room.

PC gaming began as the most popular type of gaming because the only system that could play the best video games at the time was the PC. A lot of video games were designed and developed for PC in mind so PC managed to hold the market for gaming. However; when consoles started to become a lot more advanced the market shifted to cater towards them instead of catering towards the PC. Over time less and less companies cared for the PC as much as they cared for the console; because the console market was booming.

Generally, PC can run any game better than a console if it has better hardware installed. PC is a very flexible system because you can upgrade your parts as much as you want; as long as you have the money to do so. Having advanced hardware allows for users to alter the settings on their video games and be able to run them at different graphical settings; whereas with consoles you cannot do this. A lot of game developers find this a pain for their development process; as they have to design and develop different settings in terms of graphics and CPU usage for their games, from  Low through to Medium and then to High settings (and sometimes Ultra settings.) whereas with consoles, developers only need to design one setting and implement it through the console’s hardware.

Over time PC has become more than just about hardware dominance over consoles. Eventually developers who still invested their time and effort into the PC began making casual arcade games that were usually found on Console systems. Games such as Bejeweled began to be come very popular amongst PC gamers and so people who enjoyed the casual lifestyle of the console began migrating over to PC with it’s increase in casual titles.

In 2009, a few Cloud Computing services were announced targeted specifically at video games. These services allow the graphics rendering of the video games to be done away from the end user, and a video stream of the game to be passed to the user. Experts think that this market will grow nine-fold by 2017, reaching 8 billion dollars.

Conclusion

Generally; the hardware of PCs is constantly getting better and better, with new more powerful hardware being released every year it is impossible for a console to compete with the sheer power that a PC is capable of. However, as most cannot afford this expensive lifestyle, consoles continue to dominate the gaming market however PC is still an extremely popular system amongst gamers with PC exclusives such as Minecraft keeping the system popular.