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Can The PC Prevail? - CBS News

The PC, formerly spurned by hardcore gamers, has gained some respect -- especially as prices for them plunge below US$1,000. Not only is the PC dandy for interactive entertainment, computers have a host of other uses once play time is over.

But there remains a performance gap. PC graphics and game play tend to be lower quality than those of console systems. But with the addition of graphic accelerator cards and new 3D hardware, PCs can bridge the distance and, some would argue, outpace console machines.

Another potential nail in the console coffin: PCs are easier to upgrade than console games. While the average console machine has a lifespan of two years, many computers, if properly expanded, can remain in service for significantly longer.

So while the PC route may run ten times the price, one doesn't need to toss out the entire machine to take advantage of new developments in gaming.

Finally, here's another PC plus: What the stock PC lacks in graphics, it makes up in the category of strategy and simulation games. Many real-time strategy games such as Westwood's Command and Conquer and Blizzard's Starcraft perform much better on a PC, due primarily to the PC's ability to process a large number of tasks at once.

While PC game sales continue to be clocked by the console market, IDSA claims U.S. revenues in PC games still managed to hit the US$1.8 billion mark, up from US$1.4 billion two years ago.

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Written by Ed Huey and Sean Wolfe.

Graphic design by Charles Paik and Fred La Senna

Video & Online Games | Yahoo Answers

Best answer: Microsoft's Xbox One & Sony's PlayStation 4 are exactly the same, it all depends on the Video Games you want. It is up to you and what Exclusives you want, do not listen to the Conspiracy theory hype. the Microsoft Kinect/Sony's PlayStation Camera are optional.

I own both Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4:

Microsoft's Xbox One Exclusive Reviews:

Capcom's Dead Rising 3 was a masterpiece, Visually & Gameplay wise. I didn't have a single issue with Capcom's Dead Rising 3, when I reviewed the Capcom's Dead Rising 3 I gave it a well deserved 10 out of 10 and well worth your purchase.

Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall has No Offline Play capability. So, once The Servers go down. The Game is a rock, Though Titanfall does feature Well done multiplayer experiences with Titans battling beside Infantry and the use of Parkour/Jetpack Mechanics really flesh out the game compared to FPS like Call Of Duty/Battlefield. Which is also helped by the unique map settings that keeps combat close together, which stops the game from becoming repetitive. Problem is, outside the Online Multiplayer Only system. The Game features no protection from cheating, doesn't allow lobby or private matches as well. The Multiplayer 'Campaign' doesn't really exist in the game, The Customization is bare bones and a lot of the Universe during the Multiplayer 'Campaign' is thrown away unexplored. I've also heard PC Versions have major connection issues. When I reviewed Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall, I gave the game a Seven out of Ten. It's not Mediocre, but it isn't really worth the money either in the long run..

Sony's PlayStation 4 Exclusives:

Guerrilla Games's Killzone: Shadow Fall has Brilliant Visuals and is a technical Masterpiece for Sony's PlayStation 4 with Interesting variety during Levels, Killzone: Shadow Fall uses the mechanics within Sony's PlayStation 4 Controller during Audio Logs which are very well done. But there are a few problems within the Game, the Game Mechanics are mediocre First Person Shooter that we've seen a lot before. There are a lot of Wave type levels and a lot of padding through out levels, which is made even more difficult with the Objective Marker that blends into the surroundings. When I reviewed Guerrilla Game's Killzone: Shadow Fall I gave it an Mediocre 5 out of 10, not really worth your purchase.

Ready at Dawn's The Order: 1886 has probably some of the best visuals to date which is helped by the great attention to detail and an interesting mythos, sadly The Order: 1886 ends up being a very short Quick Time Sequence with barely worth while A.I for both Enemies/Allies and an very poor story with no actual ending. Not helped by the fact that 'Collectibles' are absolutely worthless, When I reviewed Ready at Dawn's The Order: 1886 I gave it a less then average 4 out of 10. It's not worth the purchase at full price whatsoever.

Naughty Dog's The Last Of Us Remastered looks fantastic, with memorable characters, pacing and story. Unfortunately It plays out rather Limited and generic. It's a generic story which has been told countless times, with subpar Stealth Missions and it drags on. The A.I also had a habit of either glitching up or abusing their abilities at times, when I reviewed Naughty Dog's The Last Of Us I gave it a well deserved Seven out of Ten. It's not 'God's Gift To Video Games', it's not 'Groundbreaking' simply because it doesn't follow Activision's Triple A Title formula; It's just a good well written game.

Sony's PlayStation 4 also suffers from loading and Hacking Issues.

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Shortlist of Next Gen Exclusives Review Scores W/o Full Reviews:

Microsoft's Xbox One

1. Capcom's Dead Rising 3 - 10/10

2. Forza Motorsport 5 - 5/10

3. Ryse: Son of Rome - 4/10

4. Titanfall - 7/10

5. Sunset Overdrive - 8/10

6. Forza Horizon 2 - 5/10

7. Ori and the Blind Forest - 9/10

8. Halo: The Master Chief Collection - 5/10

9. Rare Replay - 9/10

PS4

1. Killzone Shadow Fall - 5/10

2. Knack - 4/10

3. Infamous Second Son - 6/10

4. The Order 1886 - 4/10

5. Bloodborne - 8/10

6. Helldivers - 8/10

7. Until Dawn - 6/10

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Additional Info:

- Microsoft has released an update which allows External Hard Drives with a USB 3.0 connection, thus allowing Microsoft's Xbox One [Including myself] to update their hard drives to a 2 TB External Hard Drive with ease.

- Rocksteady Studio's Batman: Arkham Knight is unplayable on PC and has major loading and crashing issues on Sony's PlayStation 4 I wouldn't suggest purchasing Batman: Arkham Knight on either system. I had no major issues on Microsoft's Xbox One, which was the only system I finally got to finish the full review with.

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Game Freak's Pokmon Go has to fail, if Pokmon Go succeeds then Nintendo will continue forward much like Konami into The Mobile Gaming boom in Japan. IF The People want Pokmon to remain as it is, they mustn't download or participate in Pokmon Go!

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Additionally I've owned both Microsoft's Xbox One & Sony's PlayStation 4 from release as do The People I know, I've had more issues with lag, hacking, etc and have heard more about lag, hacking, software issues on Sony's PlayStation 4. But, IF Particular users want to attempt to paint Sony's PlayStation 4 as "The Best" then that just paints them as a lying fraud.

https://answers.yahoo.com/dir/index?link=list&sid=396545187

Why People Die Playing Video Games

"He played the game to pass the time: ten hours of uninterrupted questing. Then, mind hazed by the room's thick cigarette smoke and eyes stinging from the monitor's flicks and throbs, he decided to step outside for some fresh air. Feng stood, took three steps then stumbled and collapsed, his mouth foaming."

If that doesn't set a scene, we don't know what will. The words belong to Simon Parkin, author of the new book Death by Video Game, and they describe just one example of a phenomenon that stretches back to the 1980s: People become absorbed in a video game, lose track of time and, sadly, die in real life. (Usually, their in-game avatar follows suit.)

Parkin's study of such deaths -- far from the morbid grave-ticking it might seem -- helps describe why the relatively young art form of video games is so powerful. The Huffington Post spoke with him via Skype to learn more.

Tell me what inspired you to take this approach.

The deaths of people who've been playing video games for an extended amount of time, say two or three days, seemed like an interesting hook into the subject of "what is it about games that cause us to lose our sense of time within them?"

The entire book is not entirely focused on these deaths. That's really almost completely dealt with in the first chapter. And from there, we go into more of a philosophical examination of what is it about the human brain that finds games so fascinating, what causes us to give ourselves to them so completely?

That was the thinking behind the slightly morbid angle.

I was shocked to learn about the man who died playing the arcade game in the bar in central Illinois, way back in the 1980s. To me, and I think many others who might read this book, "death by video game" is better associated with the stereotype of Asian "League of Legends" obsessivesin an Internet cafe. Can you explain why it was important for you to break this stereotype?

There is truth in the stereotype to a certain degree. It's to do with things like the fact that in Taiwan, the cost of the Internet in a cafe is so cheap. That's why most people going to play a game for a prolonged amount of time do so in a cafe.

Within this cafe, the behavior tends to be that everyone is smoking, people have caffeinated drinks, and when you combine that with the humidity of the climate, all of these things come together to increase the likelihood of blood clots, for example. Certainly, there is a higher concentration of death by video games in Taiwan. Elsewhere in Asia, the government has introduced laws to cut down on that behavior.

It was important for me to say, look, this is something that can happen in any sedentary pursuit, even though the Western mainstream media tends to report these stories as if it's something unique or particular to video games. Part of me wanted to say that this is something that can happen anywhere. You can die from a Netflix binge, and I'm sure people have.But there is something unique about video games that I can see in my own life. I'm much more likely to sit and play a game for a whole day than I am most other entertainment activities.

Anyone who's played games as a student when you have a surplus of free time can testify to that.

You write that video games "meet our deeper, more human needs." That's part of the reason why people get so absorbed in them that they don't take care of themselves. Can you explain this idea a bit to me?

When you have so many millions of people engaging in an activity every day, there has to be something there. That medium has to be meeting some sort of need on an elemental level, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it so much. People like competition, people like rivalry: Video games are very good at quantifying achievement.

But there's another side to many video games that isn't about the sports attribute. It's about speaking to the human experience, or holding a mirror up to the systems in which we live in the world.

At a very practical level, many games let us better understand the world around us. An example would be a game like "SimCity" where you take on the role of a city planner, and you get to figure out where to put houses, where you put the industrial area, where you put the business district. You manage things like taxes and how recycling works. Doing that, you gain a greater understanding of how cities function. That's a very practical function.

But there are deeper ways, as well. Games can provide us with a very fair and just reality in which to play. When things aren't going well for you in your own life, when you're not getting a promotion at work or you've just split up with your partner, video games can be very comforting when you assume the role of a character who will progress if you do the right things. And they work with these fair rules where there's always a sense of justice.

The "Game Over" screen from "Resident Evil 2."

Most video games have this aspect of survival to them as well. If you look at the language of games, we use this terminology like "Lives" and "Hearts" and "Die." When you "die" in a game, you lose a "life." There are these elements of human survival. That taps into something very deep and old in the human mind. It gives us a chance to do that in a world where the threats we face in our daily life might be a bit different, a little less elemental.

It seems that video games have transformed so much since the 1980s, when the "death by video game" concept first took hold. Perhaps at the time, "Space Invaders" did seem like a legitimate world for one to get lost in, but now we have incredibly immersive games like "Destiny," say, and we're moving closer to virtual reality being truly accessible to consumers. What do you think about what the future holds compared to where we've come from?

I think the basic things that video games do, they're going to continue doing. Things like virtual reality will very slightly tweak how we experience this stuff. But the first principles of the medium have been established, and we're looking at different permutations of them. If you break them down to the basics, there's very little difference between "Space Invaders" and the latest "Call of Duty." You're still trying to shoot them before they shoot you, you're still ducking behind cover.

You can drive the most expensive car int he world in "Gran Turismo" or "Forza." You kind of see what it's like to be a marine in "Call of Duty." These are obviously aspirational experiences that we get to play through in video games. Virtual reality wil continue that.

What we're starting to see now is designers starting to try to place us in different kinds of roles in life that are maybe not aspirational in order to achieve interesting effects and say things about the world. In the game "Cart Life," you play as a newspaper seller on the poverty line in America. That's not something you'd think most people would want to do. But there's something about playing as that character and seeing what his life is like that has interesting effects. It generates empathy for people who are in that situation. We're seeing a whole lot of games that are starting to explore this rich territory, and we're just at the beginning of that, I'd say.

When you 'die' in a game, you lose a 'life.' There are these elements of human survival. That taps into something very deep and old in the human mind. Simon Parkin

Is that because it's easier for indie developersnow?

Yes. Since Apple's App Store, the barrier for independent development has gone down. Ten to 15 years ago, the idea would have been laughable -- now, you can sit in your bedroom at home, make a game and upload it to Steam or the App Store, and suddenly everyone in the world can play your game.

While the industry is predominantly occupied by people with a computer science background, as the tools are being democratized, people from more walks of life are able to make games. And as that happens, more diverse games are starting to be made.

What areyouplaying right now?

"Beyond Eyes" on Xbox One. You play as a blind girl trying to find her cat.

That sounds uplifting.

I don't think it's a great game, but I do think it's an interesting game, and I'm glad it exists.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-people-die-playing-video-games_55ce184ae4b0ab468d9d22cd