are pc games more than console?

Nilrem

ITonyI wrote: »

Yup It's all handled via the Steam client and downloads in the background. Even if you choose to play another game, Steam will pause the download, then resume it again as soon as you stop. It's made PC gaming so much more convenient in the last 10 years or so.

I love that ability

You can also download a game or games via steam on one PC, then copy the relevant steam folders to a flash drive, or portable HDD, and copy them back onto another PC to the correct place, as Steam looks to see if the files are there before it starts to download.
You can also do partial installs from Disc and it'll pick up the download from where the disc stopped, which has been handy in the past (before I got my current connection I had a new game that the disc wasn't working fully, it got to about half installed before not reading any more, I took the disc out and told Steam to continue and it finished the install by download).

You can even back your entire steam folder up to a second drive (or copy someone else's steam folder), and then install steam on a PC, copy the contents of the folder over, and it'll work out what games are on your account and already there the next time you start steam up It will have to reinstall them of course, but little or no download required for most of the games when done that way
I've done that a couple of times with my machine when building a new one, and for friends*.

I love Steam as a content platform, it makes the Origin and Ubisoft platforms look like badly thought out copy cats (I'm not sure if Ubisoft still expect you to pay an extra to be able to redownload stuff after a fairly short time).


*My current steam folder is around 400gb, so the ability to throw it over to a spare drive is sometimes handy.

Johnmcl7

Nilrem wrote: »

I love Steam as a content platform, it makes the Origin and Ubisoft platforms look like badly thought out copy cats (I'm not sure if Ubisoft still expect you to pay an extra to be able to redownload stuff after a fairly short time).

*My current steam folder is around 400gb, so the ability to throw it over to a spare drive is sometimes handy.

You can now download as many times as you want with Ubisoft but with two small caveats:

- you may not be able to download the game at all unless you have incredible patience
- you can't transfer the game to another PC, you must redownload it every time

I made the very stupid mistake of buying a couple of games on Uplay (Assassin's Creed IV, Splinter Cell Blacklist) not realising what a complete waste of space Uplay was. It somehow downloads at a trickle (around 60KB/s) but completely maxes out the connection donwloading huge amounts of data even though it's not actually getting the game data. Ubisoft technical support are utterly hopeless so I've taken it as an expensive lesson never to use Ubisoft again - even if I did get it downloaded I'd still have to do so again if I ever need to reinstall.

I'm generally not a fan of Steam for its inability to handle errors and other annoying issues but I do appreciate it more having used Uplay and Origin. At least it generally works and it's easy to transfer the content allowing me to use a low power 24/7 server to download the content and then move it to the power hungry gaming machines.

I do love the Steam sales and the likes of the Humble Bundles, it's great being able to buy a large selection of games for a small amount each and admittedly I don't get much playtime out of lot of them but I've come across some real gems this way.

I'd say for normal prices though that PC games are usually 10-15 pounds cheaper as they tend to be around the £25 mark if the console version is £40.

John

Nilrem

It sounds like Ubisoft have improved a bit, and I can finally delete the cache for my uplay games (every time it downloaded I copied the pre install files off).

SusieQT_2

If you're interested in PC gaming and saving money, here is a great site that I use a lot!
You can filter it to show you various things, and also you can set up a watch list

Percy1983

As a general trend when a new release comes out it will be less than £30.00 where consoles are generally £40.00+.

Disc copies never drop as low as steam/humble bundle but you can sometimes get good deals.

As mention if you internet is slow just be patient, I remember re-downloading my entire libary once was about 700gb! that took a while.

fridgeracer

google: steam powered / steam gaming platform. for PC gaming this is THE best place to go to for vast majority of new and slightly older releases. downloads are fast and always use your maximum DL speed, and offers on some games cloud saving for free.

https://www.gog.com - also an online game store that links your purchases to your account but focuses on selling old PC games that most of the time would not work on a modern PC today, except they mod them to work on modern PCs. many games as cheap prices.

TokyoMaru

Get yourself on Steam, always sales going up there. There's also a lot of various places to get steam keys such as bundlestars.com... You can get like 6 games for £3 or something..they aren't always that good but I've found a few classics on there.

JP4672

Got my new gaming PC in March and I don't think I've had to pay more than 30 quid for a game since :P Seriously, the expensive part of PC gaming is building the thing. As soon as you've spent money on that, pretty much everything else bar peripherals is cheaper, especially buying the games. Steam has AWESOME sales basically everyday too, which helps.

Percy1983

JP4672 wrote: »

Got my new gaming PC in March and I don't think I've had to pay more than 30 quid for a game since :P Seriously, the expensive part of PC gaming is building the thing. As soon as you've spent money on that, pretty much everything else bar peripherals is cheaper, especially buying the games. Steam has AWESOME sales basically everyday too, which helps.

Depends what you want to play with, I use a 360 controller on mine, which of course is as cheap as a 360 controller.

criboo

If you buy games from places like Fast2Play they will be significantly cheaper than console games. This includes brand new games.

For instance, the Witcher 3, not due out until next February will be around £50 on PS4/XBOne whereas Fast2Play are offering Steam key pre-orders for something around the £23 mark. Same for Watchdogs, or SouthPark (£19), or any other big game... take what it is on console and half it at least.

I bought every GTA game on PC to date for £6 from there...

Everyone says Steam is cheap, but this place sells Steam keys much cheaper than Steam does!