Why we choose PCs?

[Big Gates]

Dear Steam Community,
If you use Steam you choose to play games on PC(or sometimes Steam Deck).
So my question is: Why you choose PCs over a playstation or xbox?
Is it for example the Valve games like Counter Strike, Left 4 Dead etc.. which you can play only on PCs.
Or is it something else..?
I want to hear your opinion.
Thank you!

[404]

Higher frames, better visuals just all around better and i prefer Steam over PlayStation and Xbox.

[Electric Cupcake]

PC gamer all my life, but I also liked consoles up until the Playstation 3. Taking out backwards compatibility, shoehorning in unwanted social media garbage on the home screen with no way to remove it and removing linux compatibility ruined it for me.

But Xbox was even worse. Aside from those lopsided controller abominations, the entire XBL ecosystem was rotten. They banned people for hacking things to change the color on their pre-set avatars and popularized worthless social media crap like gamer score and achievements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CapGWzI5Mo

Back in the glory days of Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament and IPX connections, it was every player's god given right to make their own skin and design their own maps and game modes without any "curating" ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. EVen if immature players were running around battling as giant penises, on a battlefield shaped like a penis.

To clarify, I'm more apathetic towards Achievements, but since they've contaminated most other platforms, I've been seeing more and more kids complaining when a game doesn't have any, and talking nonsense like Achievements add replayability. A great game is great on it's own merits, and remains replayable for all time. Suggesting there's no point to playing without achievements is an insult to the entire gaming medium.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

I started with PC and it`s been fine for me entire life. Never really felt the need to get a console or something else. You stick to what you know well and building your own PC is a good bonus compared to some console that is held together with spit and bubblegum.

[Haruspex]

Longevity of my library.

I started my Steam account in 2004 when I bought Half Life 2. In 2004, I also had a Gamecube. Today, I can still launch and play Half Life 2 on modern hardware and play it. The only way I can play my Gamecube games (legitimately) is if I kept a 23 year old piece of hardware around in working order.

On PC, I still have access to and can play 20 year old games, and I fully expect that in another 20 years I'll still be able to play those now 40 year old games. (Probably from the retirement home at that point.)

In those same 20 years, Nintendo, for example, has launched and subsequently killed four different digital distribution platforms. Imagine if every 5 years or so your Steam library completely reset, forcing you to sometimes repurchase games you've already bought. That's console gaming.

It goes back further than that even. I can plug a cheap USB floppy drive into my Steam Deck, grab some 3.5" floppy disk game I still have stored away from when I was a kid in the early 90s, and play that game on my Steam Deck perfectly. That's like if you could plug an NES cartridge into your Nintendo Switch.

Consoles are temporary.
PC is forever.

[Castyles]

Freedom, mostly.

Freedom to do whatever the hell that you want with your games, for starters.

Back then the only REAL modding that console players were able to do (at least as far as I know) was on the PS3 with just one game: Unreal Tournament 3. Save editors shouldn't really count unless they're sophisticated enough to appear as modding tools, such as the case with the Borderlands series.

The PC players, on the other hand, were able to edit their game files WAY before any of that. We're talking DECADES before, here.

Freedom to play anything that you want without having to clutter your entire room or literally throw away money because them greedy suits don't wanna add backwards compatibility to their new, shiny, toy in order to sell all the games that you already own, to you, a second time.

Through official means, the exception to that was the first PS3 that could play PS1 games, the X360 with SOME Xbox games and the Xbox One which was also capable of playing SOME X360 titles - and such feature only came after many customers pretty much BEGGED for it. I believe the Wii was also capable of playing SOME Gamecube games, as well.

And, lastly, freedom to go beyond gaming. With consoles you're only able to play and listen to music, for the most part. PC offers all of that and more.

[Fajita Jim]

Instead of repeating the points above:

Some genre just aren't represented well or at all on consoles. Their Civilization games are laughable, you'll get nothing like Company of Heroes or a proper Total War, to say nothing of heavy military sims (flight, naval, tank, etc) and good ole 'grognard gaming'.

Plusbettergraphicsperformancevisualsmultiscreentoo

[Iron Knights]

PCs by average numbers today are 3x the machine a console is and offers unparalleled options in gaming like: Save On Demand (if not ported from heatbox), Better Graphics and Audio. Also the planned obsolescence is fairly new to PCs and is still rejected, while consoles you pay $500 every 3 years for a new one. While PCs were always pretty much solitary game machines, Consoles were not, you could play with the whole family on the same TV. How many consoles and games allow that today ? It's all Single Multiplayer. MS even locks you out of playing games if the account is not the one registered with them for that console.
Face it, the Age of the Heatbox Ended, ~2012, the Age of the PC has begun.

[Faiyez]

If you champion freedom of expression in gaming, you can't be on a console. Not even Valve can be considered to always uphold that ideal, but at least you are not locked to one store front if you are on PC.

[VisciousFishes]

PC for one reason - I can either be gaming or using it as a creation station.

As well as what the others said about library longevity but mainly because my gaming pc is a complete media studio. Audio editing, video editing, photo editing, 3d modeling, etc.

[Set-115689]

Pcs are more versatile. Not just for gaming.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

PC = because I can be doing 10 different things.
Xbox / PS > Just to play a game = You're joking right?

I've used PCs for TV and Music since before the Internet. I rarely have owned a TV in my life. I'll pay for fast internet, but I'm not paying for TV services, that's just dumb. My PCs could do all that Online since the mid / late 90s. I use my PCs for lots of things; not just Games, Music and Videos (Shows/Movies) but tons of other stuff. No I don't spend $2000 on a PC just to play some games.

[_I_]

xbox/ps can multitask just very poorly
you can run spotify or voice app to listen to music in background, or chat with friends while gaming

but there are many hoops to go through to control them during games
pc is so much easier to do that,

[Electric Cupcake]

PS3 and 360 tried their darnedest to be a central, universal living room multimedia gadget in their own way. But really, they didn't even support .ogg. And even back in the early 00s, there was no excuse for that.

[Lone Wolf]

more control over games i.e. settings and that and programs i can run with them i.e MSi after burner and the likes.

[_I_]

xbox one tried to be a dvr replacement, but completely fail at that too
(input/output way to laggy for anything you need responsive controls for, but was ok for tv)

they do record local gameplay, and can upload to cloud, but shows or whatever can only be played locally