As the title suggests, which was more important to get games where they are today? Early era, arcades were important to get early core gamers PCs gave us doom (blisteringly fast windows based gaming) and quake (fully 3d gaming) and are now in everyone's homes, are on the brink of new technology, but becoming consolified - suggesting consoles are taking over Consoles gave us halo/golden eye, the wii and mainstream/casual gaming and changed the perception of games forever. It also gave us Super Mario. Also, portable gaming was important (gameboy!)
You have missed out a massive step in the evolution of games. The 8, 16 and early 32 bit home computers where most people in their 30s and 40s first experienced gaming outside of arcades. I think these done more for gaming that anything else. The PC only really took off as a gaming platform ages after the 8 and 16 bit home computers proved to have a good gamers following. EDIT: I mean home computers like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore C16& 64, Amiga, Atari, BBC Micro etc, and not early 286,386 & 486 PC's.
Na PC Gaming never really revolutionizes gaming, for one reason: Sticking to the mainstream! If PC developers want to make losts of money they are forced to include support for a very wide range of hardware even if it means degrading the game slightly, look at recent games, most still include support for single core Pentium 4 processors, I think it's time people move with the times, even I have a slow single core but I know I have to stick to older games. Whereas console can afford to bring new features and higher standards by having a console revision every 5-6 years or so meaning improved computational power, improves graphics and improved gameplay. Look at it this way, the 360 is crying out for higher storage mediums whereas the PS3 uses blu-ray already, we won't have blu-ray games on the PC till a good 3-4 years when it is more mainstream. Just my 2 pence
PC,for laying the groundwork-LAN gaming? BBSes, Doom, all that good stuff. Resolution? Wre've had that advantage for years. If consoles had it, they had it after us.
with pc's you saw the advancement of technology and its impact on gamers and standards worldwide. Not saying everyone expects shiny and nice, but the advancements in graphics in the last decade have been insane, and usually the graphics jumps are happening a lot more rapidly with pc games as a pose to consoles, probably because pc hardware is always evolving at such a rapid rate while consoles only have so much power with what they come shipped with.
I can't imagine the 360's HD2k based GPU will stretch further than crysis 2 or FFXIII and the PS3's 7 Series based GPU will stretch even less =\
It's got to be the PC for bringing gaming into the home. I remember playing Defender on the ZX81 because I wasn't allowed to go to the arcade without my big sister...
Its a tricky question really, personally i would say for me it would be PC gaming, But i think consoles are responsible for the endless sequals and dumbded down games for the mass market and seeing as that is where its heading i guess consoles have had a bigger part in this.
I think it's a shame the big software companies (EA, Ubisoft etc.) are less willing to produce dedicated PC titles. Even dropping PC versions from their line ups (for example Tiger Woods on PC - why on earth EA stopped developing this for the PC is madness - it was the best version by a mile) in favor of consoles. As for gaming impact, I think for me it would be the PC. The hours I spent typing in hundreds of lines of code to get my Commodore 64 to say "Hello" was fun too
I would say both pc gaming made it professional while console gaming made it more wide spread and accepted.
Honestly? Consoles. It was the 8 and 16 bit consoles of the late 1980s/early 1990s that paved the way for the modern video game industry. PC gaming has always been better, but it is a little elitist in its console equivilence. It was things like the PSX that moved videogames from geekdom into the mainstream.
Consoles with out a doubt. The PC has never had a pacman, mario, sonic or tetris. Sure we have the PC classics like Doom or Wolf 3D but they have never become as iconic as what the consoles offered. The PC might have the better games but the consoless opened up gaming to the masses by making it easily accessible.
Even though i am a PC man, I'd say Consoles were more important due to the larger target audience in the past. Many many people will tell you they played Streetfighter, Mario, Sonic but not so many will say Doom, DukeNukem etc
