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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> lately I just got tired of sitting in front of the same screen I do my work on

Living room PCs are also a thing. Boot directly into Steam, with a Steam Controller to play mouse games with the gamepad, and it's mostly a fine experience, and it gets better every year. Added bonus, you can run games at much better framerates and resolution than a console ever could. And "upgrading" is not needed that often. I have a 3 years old card that is still running most games at high details, even recent ones.

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You do still run into the same problem that using a controller on a mobile device has: when you're using a minority input device, many games are not designed for you. The top-selling PC games are not best experienced with controller, even a Steam Controller. You can very easily find yourself buying a game that claims controller support yet really does need a keyboard and mouse.

With a console, you know every single game on the system is made for your exact use case. And I say this as a mostly PC gamer with an Xbox controller plugged into his PC.

This is a very dated point of view. Look at the top 2017 PC games from Metacritic [1]. Almost all of these were designed for a controller because they are console ports. And in terms of hardware support the Xbox controller is the de-facto controller on PC, the drivers ship with Windows and it has a massive install base. Steam controller is a failed gimmick.

[1] http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/year/...

Thinking that PC games are limited to the top releases on Metacritic is ignoring literally all the value PCs bring to gaming. There is a massive long tail of games that aren't on that list but are very popular PC games nonetheless.

If I played with a controller exclusively, I'd have to give up Cities: Skylines. I'd have to give up Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft. I'd have to give up Civilization. I'd have to give up Factorio. I'd have to give up Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. There's no way I'd be able to map all of the controls of BeamNG Drive or Euro Truck Simulator to an Xbox controller.

That's a lot of sacrifices being made. After all that, what's the point in having a gaming PC anymore? And that's not counting that eventually you'll have to plug in a mouse and keyboard to do Windows Updates or something else that the OS will make you do that isn't controller compatible. Might as well just keep them plugged in, no?

You are ignoring the context of the discussion, which is to compare PCs to consoles in a living room. The gp comment explicitly said he gave up PC gaming as he did not want to play at a desk. And my point is that PC gaming is so damn good that even if you ignore a bunch of amazing games by limiting yourself to a controller you are still left with a huge library of games that are generally cheaper to buy and run best on PC, especially as they age.

Yes, the out-of-game UX is worse on PC. Steam makes it easy with Big Picture Mode but other clients do not, and sometimes Windows needs babysitting. You can get a small wireless mouse & keyboard or a combo like this [1]. I use an app [2] that lets me use my phone as a touch pad and a keyboard. It also lets you minimize & switch between windows & shut down the PC. When you install a new game client configure it to remember your password. When you install a game put a link for it on the desktop. The core flow is pretty good but yeah sometimes there will be pop-ups to update drivers or install updates or something else. I still think that the major performance and price benefits offered by PCs are well worth it. I am also not a fan of modern console UIs which are increasingly show more ads.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014EUQOGK

[2] http://www.remotemouse.net/

You can avoid that risk by buyIng games that are clearly labelled as controller supported in Steam. As in, the keyboard is never required. For games where you would typically require a keyboard the Steam controller's flexible mapping tool makes it easy to map many keys on the controller. I can even play keyboard intensive games like warhammer40k DoW3 with it.

And the Pc world is all about choice. I can decide to grab a Dual Shock 4 or Xbox360 controller instead of my Steam Controller and it will work just as well. You just cannot expect any kind of flexibility on consoles: they are built to be disposed off a few years down the road.

>>> And the Pc world is all about choice. I can decide to grab a Dual Shock 4 or Xbox360 controller instead of my Steam Controller and it will work just as well.

If I have learned anything in decades of PC gaming, it's that the controller never worked properly.

Yes, but that's partly because of badly programmed games as well. Some games assume you will use a Xbox360 controller and nothing else and therefore make it hard for you to use anything else. Steam with their new Steam Controller API makes it easy to simulate a Xinput controller with about any controller out there.

The fixed platform is the winner for consoles though. Just playing Dark Souls 3 on my pc, played the first two on the consoles. I have to run an xbox controller emulator because it only supports the xbox pad, and I have a ps4 pad. You just don't get this stuff in console land.

> You just don't get this stuff in console land.

On a PS4 it's just impossible to use a Xbox360 pad or vice versa on an Xbox. Being able to use ANY pad is great on PC, even if you need one or two extra steps. At least the possibility is there.

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