Gaming

This year will mark the 20th anniversary since my family got its first PC. It was an Amstrad 512, with the 512 denoting 512kB of RAM (the fact that it didn't have 640kB was extremely frustrating as 640kB-only games started coming out - but that's another story). I started playing games like Chomp (a Pac-Man clone) and Nyet (a Tetris clone) on it straight away, and I've played a lot of PC games in the following 20 years. So it's with a lot of regret that I've decided to turn my back on PC gaming and move to console gaming.

My current games machine, a Dell "desktop replacement" laptop, is struggling to play the latest games. I downloaded the BioShock demo, and it was only barely playable even with all the fancy graphical features turned off. So I need a new gaming machine; my choices are:

Buy a new desktop. In general desktops are cheaper and more powerful than laptops but I'd have to play games in the study, which is stifling in summer, freezing in winter and gives me a feeling of disconnect from my family. I also can't salary sacrifice/depreciate a desktop so I'd end up paying the full amount.

Buy a new laptop. I'll probably be buying a new laptop at some stage anyway, but if I want to play games on it for the next couple of years I'd have to get one as large, heavy and expensive as the Dell when I really want something much more portable. And even then it would only be only be "mid-range" at first as far as games go, before steadily declining to "obsolete" over 2 or 3 years.

Buy a console. The XBox 360 and PS3 are cheaper and probably have about 5 years of "game life" left in them (maybe less for the XBox and maybe more for the PS3). The main downside to a console is that I'll want to play it using our large TV and awesome sound system, but I have to compete with Soph for that, whereas I'd have a desktop PC all to myself.

The main reason I've chosen the console option is I'm just sick of the PC upgrade cycle. I've been playing Half Life 2 on my laptop and it plays smoothly and looks fantastic, even with some of the graphics turned down. BioShock had a terrible framerate even though it looked awful thanks to all the graphics being turned off. Games for the 360 or PS3 will look better in 5 years' time as the game developers will be experts at producing games on exactly the same hardware, while PC games would be virtually unplayable in 5 years' time, no matter how kick-ass a system I went out and bought.

Almost all of the big games are on the consoles now. World of Warcraft with its 8 million subscribers has taken hold of a large chunk of the PC market, so most of the game developers are now concentrating on the consoles with the PC only an afterthought.

I'm sure I'll still buy the occasional PC game - I love RTS games, despite being terrible at them, and I'm not convinced of their playability on consoles - but I think my priorities will lie elsewhere.

So now I just have to decide: 360 or PS3?