I’m an avid PC builder. I built my first PC nearly 20 years ago as a teenager with the help of my mom, and I fell in love with the whole process almost instantly. I was already a PC gamer at the time, having largely ditched consoles in favor of hogging my mom’s computer whenever I had the chance.
As you may have gathered, I absolutely love PC gaming. So why do I increasingly understand people who just buy a console instead?
Launch day troubles are getting to me
So, we’ve established I’m a PC building fanatic. I get genuinely excited when someone in my circle needs a new PC, because it means I’ll get to indulge in picking out the parts and putting them together for them. Writing about PCs for a living is genuinely a dream come true..
But lately, it’s hard to deny that us PC gamers just get the short end of the stick sometimes. Let me explain.
I’d been thinking about this already, for reasons I’ll describe below, but what prompted me to write this was my recent experience trying to play Borderlands 4 on launch day. I’m a fan of the previous games and was excited to dig into the latest iteration, but alas — like many others, I had launch day problems. And Borderlands 4 is not the only game where PC gamers better sit and wait for a week or two (or longer) before they start playing.
I have a solid PC, even though I haven’t upgraded to the latest generation of the best graphics cards. My RTX 4080 Super is powerful enough to handle recent AAA titles, and yet, in Borderlands 4, my entire rig was unable to deliver good performance. Stuttering, crashing, and shockingly low frame rates — that was all that greeted me when I bought the game and tried to play it as soon as I could.
I wasn’t the only one. Steam shows mixed reviews for the title, with gamers complaining about being unable to play on high settings, poor optimization, and various issues. The PC port appears to rely on frame generation to get players to a playable state, too. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford suggested turning on DLSS as a solution for one of the players who complained about performance. Said player had an RTX 5080, which is a high-end current-gen GPU.
Fortunately, the game studio pushed a patch that seems to have fixed most of the problems, but the launch day disappointment remains.
Borderlands 4 wasn’t the only recent title to struggle with its PC port. Forspoken is another title that was widely criticized for the performance of its PC port at launch. Meanwhile, as reported by GamesRadar, Oblivion Remastered started out well, but recently, gamers have been complaining about crashes and poor performance.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Many games are poorly optimized at launch, and that’s just the first problem PC gamers have to face.
Plug-and-play? Yeah, right
Let me preface this by saying that this one isn’t exactly a problem for me, but more of an issue for PC gaming as a whole. Scratch that — it’s partly a problem for me, too.
What’s the problem, then? It’s that PC gaming is quite unapproachable compared to just buying a console.
There are two ways to get a PC: either build one yourself or buy a desktop computer. I’m obviously a fan of building, although I’m coming around on prebuilts (for much the same reasons why I’m starting to give console gaming a little credit). I realize that for many, PC building is difficult to get started with.
First, you have to pick out the correct components. If you know your way around AMD, Nvidia, and Intel (and maybe you’ve even heard about the unexpected Nvidia and Intel partnership), then you’ll be fine. But if you’re not sure which component goes where and how to buy a graphics card, you’ll have a lot of research on your hands.
Then there’s actually putting it all together, which I know can be an intimidating process for beginners. There are loads of helpful guides on how to build a PC, but you’re still the one handling all these parts, some of them potentially worth above $1,000.
That brings me to my last point: PC building isn’t cheap. There’s no beating around the bush here, it’s only getting pricier by the year.
Graphics cards are largely responsible for this development, as they’ve been overpriced this entire year, and even when they’re not selling above MSRP, they’re expensive to begin with. A solid gaming PC will cost you $1,000 and up for a budget desktop, and that’s more than any console.
On the flipside, you’ll get way better performance out of most titles — provided that the game actually works, that is.
PC gaming needs to get easier
Thanks for indulging me as I ranted about the state of PC gaming. Truthfully, there’s no way I could ever abandon PC gaming and building — it’s too much of a passion for me to just drop it like that. But I do think that changes are needed.
Building a desktop PC gives you many things that a console can’t. Potentially higher frame rates, the option to all sorts of games, and the latest developments in tech, including frame generation and ray tracing. Let’s not forget frame rate caps — consoles have them, and PCs don’t. It all comes down to your computer’s components (well, and whether the game even allows for higher frames, that is).
On the other hand, the barrier to entry goes up every year. It’s pricier, and it’s anything but plug-and-play. You’ll be researching and building your PC much longer than it’d take you to go out and buy an Xbox or a PlayStation. And even if your settings won’t be the highest they can be on console, you likely won’t even notice.
I’ve lost hope for cheaper PCs; that’s not going to happen. However, with frame generation tech, you can get away with a much cheaper computer and still play at high settings. If I were faced with the choice of buying a gaming console or a budget PC, I’d always choose the PC.
But, as much as I love computers, I have to admit that I’m biased. If not for my love of PC gaming and building, I think that at this stage and at these prices, I might have had to reconsider. And trust me, coming from me, that’s a serious complaint.
