Advantages to PC gaming

Inspired by the "drawbacks to PC gaming" thread, obviously.

I'll start.

Games are almost always cheaper than the console versions of the same games.

You are offered freedom and flexibility in your hardware choices. You can keep the costs down and still play the game at a decent level of graphics and performance (read: better than on current gen consoles), or you can spend way too much money and get an incredible level of detail.

You are able to change graphical settings based on personal preferences. On consoles, if a game is set to run at 30 fps at most, that's all you'll ever get. On PC, you can change the settings to let the game run at a higher framerate, if you think this is more important than having extra flashy explosions, for example. In console games, the developers decide for you whether performance or graphical detail is most important, and you can't do anything to change it.

There is a huge amount of retro games available for you, if you are the kind of person who enjoys this. Especially if you went for the "reasonably priced computer" route, the software library for Windows PCs is very big.

You get access to a very comprehensible digital store by the name of Steam.

Practically all games support mice, which in many games offer a very high level of precision. In games where it makes sense, gamepads are also often supported.

I like that a lot of PC games support modding. I am no graphical artist (I suck at art in general) I do greatly enjoy the work that many people bring to the table to make games look even better. Then there are those buggy as hell games like Fallout and Skyrim where the community works together to make comprehensive patches. Lots of custom maps for multiplayer as well. These things all keep great games alive and forms a sense of community over the long haul for some games.

Mods for sure.

The vast majority of my favorite genres (4X, TBS, Grand Strategy, Sim/Tycoon) lean toward being PC exclusives.

No having to avoid games because I ran out of space on my console. This is the reason why I don't play my 360 very much anymore; I ran out of room and I don't want to fork over $100 for a hard drive upgrade. This wasn't an issue back in the old days of console gaming but it seems to be increasingly common. I never run out of room on my PC because I have soooo much more space, and it's much easier to delete/reinstall stuff if I ever do.

Vibrant indie scene.

Steam :love: Gaben!

The fact that your game library is only limited by your curiosity

The mob of digital retailers angrily competing for my dollars with suicidally low prices.

Forget cheap, there's super high quality games that are free like dota, lotro, planetside.

Every platform has its indie devs, but pc has a culture of people working on and releasing projects with no expectation of monetary gain at all, going back to stuff like Graal.

The community aspect of really feeling connected to a worldwide phenomenon on one hand or the ability to form a really tight knit group, I cant think of anywhere else that exists

And the social features. My Steam profile isn't just my gamerscore, its a page filled with reviews, screenshots, and videos, which then go out into the game hub where you can see what every one's doing with that game worldwide.

Oh and continuity. I'm proud of the shiny 9 on my Steam profile. ^_^

These are some of my proudest Steam moments:

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That last one is actually from when Hux visited me. Yeah, this is what we do when we're together IRL :shobon:

Man... everything.

Since I put my PC in the living room, I almost never touch my PS3.

Having a true HTPC setup is so liberating. I can play my whole Steam library on the couch, a lot of them even with a controller. But I can do the classic keyboard+mouse, too. The versatility is amazing too. Media playback on the other devices is relatively streamlined but there's still a lot of hacking you have to do to support stuff the manufacturer didn't build in. Not so on the PC.

The amount of games available is staggering too. My PC is an NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, GameCube, PS1, and PS2, with all of the video output scaled appropriately to HD resolution without losing the old-school charm. I can play all of the PC classics easily with GoG, and stay current on all of the modern games with Steam. Plus there's no subscription fee for all of the great Steam services (though I'm never ever online, lol).

I'm hoping to do a new build this year to make it even boot as fast as a console via an SSD with Windows 8 but that depends on the money situation. But that's another big point - with the proper knowledge and a little investment, I can make my PC the console I've always dreamed of. It's not fixed and static. I don't have to worry about shipping it off if the hard drive dies or the blinkenlights tell me it's broken. It's mine to do exactly what I want to do. It's fantastic.

Exactly what Stu said. It's mine to do what I want to it. I'm always tweaking stuff and adding things. It's my little monster that's been evolving since I first built it in 2006 (I don't even know if anything but hard drives are left of that build)