I don't know all about this PC Master Race stuff. Basically, I wanted my kids to have to maintain, build a system to play games.
When my kids were young Minecraft JUST came out. They both learned A LOT about modding early. If they were stuck on consoles they probably would have missed out on all that.
> I don't know all about this PC Master Race stuff.
It comes from a 10-second throwaway line in a gaming review from 2008 that's actually taking a dig at PC gamers liking overly-complicated RPGs [0], at about 0:53 to 1:03 [1]:
> While quickly it becomes obvious is that Witcher is very much a PC-exclusive game which are typically designed to be as complex and unintuitive as possible so that those dirty console-playing peasants don't ruin it for the glorious PC-gaming master race.
Then there's about 20 seconds more of him listing out the ways this game is overly complicated.
Nintendo games with 4+ player multiplayer is actually a great time with family and friends. In general I think Nintendo makes social games that are intended for the living room, which is harder to find on the other consoles, and almost impossible on PC. I say this as someone who mainly plays on PC and has LAN parties at home.
Consoles can be social devices. PCs can be isolating devices.
There are social games on PCs, meant to be played by a bunch of people with controllers, available on e.g. Steam. The ones I know of tend to be more teen-and-older oriented in their themes and levels of violence though.
They do exist but are they the best single screen multiplayer experiences? Even indie developers of the genre target Nintendo platforms because they know Nintendo draws that audience. They are the only local-multiplayer-first AAA developer.
maybe it's because I never had a console as a kid, but I just don't really see the appeal of multiplayer splitscreen games. if I'm going to budget a block of time and travel to be in the same physical location with people, I mostly just want to talk with them. if we're mostly going to be playing video games, I could just stay home and have the full screen area. overall, it strikes me as a relic of the times when internet multiplayer was much less reliable.
PCs also make fantastic consumption devices! The games are usually cheaper, there's a much bigger variety, you can get all kinds of stuff from all sorts of countries, and even 30 year old stuff still runs on Windows lol.
I grew up programming PCs in the 80s and 90s but when I look back on it, I didn't really tinker much inside the boxes even though I have mistakenly thought that I did.
Dad installed a Sound Blaster Pro I purchased in like 5th grade after I went to bed so that I wouldn't screw up his work PC.
Past that, I don't think I even upgraded RAM or a hard drive until I was in my 20s, mostly because they were just too expensive.
Had an NES, though. I turned out fine.
But I would have hated my dad if he was like, "no NES for you!" while shoving a screwdriver at me.