I’ve always been a console gamer - but here are five reasons I now love PC gaming | indy100

A stock image of a man playing on a gaming laptop

iStock

I'll be completely honest - I've been gaming for 27 years since I was three-years-old (you can do the math on that one) and I've always been a bit intimidated by the PC platform. Okay, maybe I've not been intimidated by PC since I was three exactly, but you get the idea.

I was afraid of how much more complicated I thought it would be compared to consoles, all the things I'd need to set up to get games running properly and having to build another gaming library on a new platform.

But recently, I got an Acer Predator Helios 16 AI with Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU and 32GB of RAM.

And I've not looked back. Having the PC platform has been such a welcome addition to my overall gaming experience for five key reasons that spring to mind.

1. Having a number of things in one place

With consoles, you have that one specific storefront and that's it but on PC, there's Steam, Epic Games, GOG, Xbox, EA and loads more all in one place.

Playing older games is so much easier too - it's opened up so many possibilities and opportunities of being able to revisit games that I loved growing up that would otherwise be trickier to do so.

Speaking of having things in one place, while this may sound obvious, it also allows me to use it for other things than just gaming too. Being a console player, I have a separate laptop, but having a gaming PC puts absolutely everything in one place for me.

I'll be honest, I've noticed performing other tasks away from gaming using the capacity of a gaming PC allows me to get things done much faster too due to better performance over my normal laptop.

2. Better performance

Games on consoles usually hit a max of 60fps, or 120fps in rare cases with a supported screen. But on PC, they can go far beyond that. 120fps is usually considered the minimum here.

For example, I've had Fortnite and Valorant running around the 200fps mark and it's just insane. It seems they have the potential to go higher than this too.

PC features much more advanced AI integration to upscale images, making the quality more clear this way, as well as boosting performance to levels consoles could only dream of.

An official image of the Acer Predator Helios 16 The Acer Predator Helios 16 is the PC I've been using of late / Acer

3. Multiplayer does not cost any extra

Getting into playing the games themselves, one big bonus for me is not having to pay anything extra to play games with multiplayer modes online.

Having to pay a subscription fee to play online across PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo consoles has become the norm - and that's after you've bought the console itself, the games you want to play and having an appropriate TV / screen to play them on.

But on PC, it isn't. And it's so refreshing. Plus a number of storefronts regularly give out free games on a timed basis so it's not like you're missing out in that regard either.

4. Mods

This is pretty much exclusive to PC at the moment but being able to use mods gives all kinds of useful benefits, from giving brand new experiences and content, tweaking certain settings within games and even fixing buggy ports.

Communities can also extend the life of games that developers may have moved on from.

5. Much better accessories and peripherals

The quality and quantity of accessories and peripherals available on PC is far greater than consoles - and by that, I mean things like controllers, steering wheels and, of course, keyboards.

Being completely honest, the PC platform alone will never fully replace consoles for me - if I want to pick up and play for a short while or of course play console exclusives, then that's where I'll be heading.

But PC perfectly compliments what I've been missing out on in my gaming experience and having a gaming laptop also helps perform other tasks such as video editing much quicker.

I'm happy I got there in the end.

Elsewhere from indy100:

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.