For months now I've been living under the premise that consoles are for gaming and PCs are for work. There are quite a few benefits to this and usually very few (if any) disadvantages. I'm by no means trying to stir the pot of PC gaming versus console gaming (people will argue about anything), I'm just trying to explain why I slowed and have almost stopped playing games on the PC.

The first and most moving reason I game from a console and not my PC is money. The economic impact of constantly upgrading a computer is exponentially larger than the one time purchase of a console and games for that console system. These days the latest graphics cards cost more than the two hottest console systems (Xbox and PS2). Throw in a GameCube and you're almost breaking even in terms of cost of the card and cost of the consoles. Did you know that the human eye at most can only see sixty frames per second? So what good does it do you to have 250 FPS in Quake 3? The other side of that coin is when you're not dumping money on more RAM, bigger hard drives, faster processors, and better graphics cards is that you'll have more money available to buy console games. Some of the larger IDE drives available on the market today will cost the price of a console system or four recently released games. This is a remarkable numbers based argument for console gaming. As I mentioned this is the key reason I ceased gaming on my PC.

What good is 250 FPS?

One of the biggest benefits of PC gaming up until recently was the fact that you could play games online. I was one of the lucky few that got to beta test Sony's network adaptor for the PS2. I quickly realized that console gaming online was going to be huge once I began the beta test. What did this do for PC gaming? It leveled the playing field. There is now no reason to buy a game for the PC because you can't play it online on a console system. Adding Internet connectivity to the console is slowly starting to open up a wealth of opportunities for your entertainment center. Sony's controversial PSX offers a wealth of hardware in one box as opposed to that same hardware being broken up across several devices including the PC. There are more advances on the horizon that will potentially add a full-fledged PC to your entertainment center running a commercial quality operating system. Could that be the end of the typical brown box PC or even the sleek Dell desktops?

Quality control is another fine argument for console gaming. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have the final say in what games are released to their respective consoles. You won't find games that are an utter embarrassment to the publisher and programmers of that game on the major consoles like you will on the PC because anyone can produce a game for the PC. The openness isn't there but at least you know that even the worst console games are better than the worst PC games. With consoles you don't find yourself installing patches and new drivers like you do with a PC. I found myself spending almost as much time playing games on the PC as I did downloading and installing new drivers for my graphics card and motherboard chipset as well as patching the PC games I was playing. Sure, you can inch out every ounce of performance from your PC hardware, once a week it seems, where on the console the performance you see in your console games will be the same from the first time you play it to the last time you play it. The biggest compelling fact of PC software in general is code bloat. Ever notice that the console you bought two years ago has games with better graphics than it did two years ago? This is because programmers have to become more creative with their code and a lot less sloppy. You don't find console games getting worse over time because they need more robust hardware; you find them getting better because the programming gets better. This allows you to have more storage space available on your PC because you don't have games that require gigabytes upon gigabytes of hard drive space to function as their designers intended.

Ah... PS2 goodness.

Comfort is another reason I like console gaming over PC gaming. Console controllers are more ergonomic and sometimes allow for better control of the gaming experience than a mouse and keyboard do. I know I'm like most people; I have a TV bigger than my computer's monitor. I don't sit as close to my TV as I do my monitor but this allows me to sit on my nice, big, comfortable couch and game as opposed to my leather executive chair (which is comfortable enough for me to fall asleep in but I would never once consider spending the entire night in it like I would my couch). I will hand it to PC games in terms of sound quality. It is significantly cheaper to get a truly immersive sound system in a PC than it is in an entertainment center. The $300 dollar home theater in a box systems are starting to provide decent quality but they are still much more expensive than an Audigy 2 and a set of Logitech Z-640 speakers.

There are probably more benefits to gaming on a console than a PC that I haven't even fathomed yet. These are all very valid reasons to spend more time gaming on a console than a PC. Keep in mind that this is my opinion and my logic for my decision. You're more than welcome to sit in front of your PC and game until your eyes bleed and you get carpal tunnel syndrome. I'll be sitting on my couch gaming until I pass out with fully functioning eyes and wrists.