It's wise to check the condition of your PC ports regularly to ensure optimal performance and connectivity.
It's wise to check the condition of your PC ports regularly to ensure optimal performance and connectivity.
Recently I’ve been weighing whether to play my multi-platform titles on my PS5 or on my PC. It feels like the availability and quality of ports are declining. Consoles seem much less troublesome now, but on PC they often don’t run smoothly—sometimes taking weeks for a fix. Still, I enjoy PC gaming because of the customization options and upgrade possibilities. There’s a lot I appreciate about that setup. While I’m hopeful it might last another decade or more, assuming no removal or broken compatibility, it’s hard to ignore if the games won’t work. What do you think?
I think there are significantly more PC games available than just the newest, poorly optimized big-budget titles. You might find better enjoyment in older games that offer more engaging gameplay and reasonable performance needs. At first glance, I suggest checking out Borderlands 2 and 3, Nier Automata, Black Mesa, Saints Row 3 and 4 (excluding the 2022 version), and of course Skyrim with plenty of mods. Recently, I purchased Elden Ring and installed Honkai Star Rail, a free-to-play gacha game. Rather than focusing on the latest AAA releases, consider revisiting your collection of older PC games.
They're about as bad as they always were, there's just been a couple high profile examples of them being bad. There's also some pretty recent examples of some very good ports, Spiderman Remastered for instance. Usually the ports get fixed eventually, sometimes it doesn't. Consoles usually just work, though even then there are some examples of the console port being terrible and never getting fixed (Cyberpunk, for instance). I'd say there really is no right answer to this, there are legitimate reasons to go for console gaming rather than PC gaming (cheaper up front, higher profile exclusives, "it just works," etc.) and there are legitimate reasons to stick with PC gaming (cheaper in the long run, more customizable, more games available, not that many broken PC ports, etc.). It really is just personal preference which you'll go with. Personally, I'm so heavily invested in the PC market that it doesn't make sense for me to jump ship, plus with most of the ports I want to play I wait until they're fixed before buying and playing.
It's understandable to feel discouraged when new titles seem unreliable on PC. Fingers crossed patches will resolve the issues, but it's frustrating to see games released in such a state. The situation can be confusing and unsettling.
I already have the PC (though I don’t know the best specs—i7-10700f with a 3070 and 16GB RAM), so the lower cost doesn’t always matter. Have they always been this problematic? Why are more people criticizing them lately? Also, if they’re consistently bad, why do some people accept it?