Would you pay extra for an easy PC gaming experience?

[Jesus_Phish]

I feel that support in general is a rip-off and generates bad will with consumers if the ripping off is blatant and in your face. Case in point: $100 premium for retail windows for "support" which involves calling clueless employees probably given half a week of MCSE training.
Suppot would be comprised of hardware vendor support (usually lifetime or 3 years), and an online forum which more or less would give you an ongoing dialogue with a group of people intimately familiar with your hardware.
The online services would also be ongoing. Things like mods, game fixes and configuration tweaks would be available for two generations so about 8 years more or less. Ideally this vendor would release a new configuration every four years rather than every two minutes like Dell,HP etc.



basically the company's employees would regularly be posting fixes and/or mods for games. So you'd be able to cut down on your browsing time dramatically. Also, any downloads would be pre-configured for your system, so you won't have to go back to a forum asking about an issue you might be having with the mod/config tweak. Kind of like gold farming on WoW, just for PC tweaks.

Got you. When I say support, I mean it being "Built into" the package of buying the PC. I also agree that addon support for software or hardware is generally a massive waste of time or money as you only ever end up wasting time talking to someone on a phone reading from a screen and pushing some buttons based on your responses.

I'd go for something like this. At those prices and the handiness of being able to quickly find out what OC settings I need for GTA4 and what settings I need for Crysis 2 or what tweaks I can make for excatly my system in one location sounds good. However, if it wasn't that I'd be pissed. If I got a machine only to be told "these are the settings for this graphics card, adjust for your own accordingly", I wouldn't be a returning customer.

It does sound like a lot of work however and not something I could see a company accomplishing, but I've obviously not looked at any logistics to it other than thinking, there's going to be hundreds of combinations of hardware out there. There's hundreds of packages of software. How can you test them all?

Don't forget that for Macs, it's a limited field. There's pretty much one type of hardware and you don't get nearly as much software. Everything that's on Mac through their store is approved before it hits the user. There's a very limited number of variables.

Now how is one company going to be able to provide the same level of "hassle free" with say, every game on Steam?

[Sparkasaurusmex]

No way to this. I'd rather pay less and build it myself. Hell, I'd honestly rather pay more and build it myself.

[JimDigritz]

In a word, no.

The reason is basically because you are trying to retrofit a business model into a dissimilar market niche.

The Apple customer base want a walled garden. They appreciate that Apple have taken away the boring (to them) problems of compatibility and interoperability.

Consoles have also fitted into this niche.

The PC gamer by their very nature do not want pre-packaged solutions. If they did they would use an Xbox or PS for gaming. As an example, my friend is lovely but she is computer illiterate. She was convinced to spend £2,500 ($4,500) on a Mac with Cinema screen when I know damn well she only uses the machine for web browsing, accounting and emails. That said, for her, the perecived support structure that Apple provide is worth the money. If she had bought a generic PC in Dixons for £600 she would have the anxiety of ownership.

PC gamers are, in the main, tech savvy and want the best experience for their buck. The relative 'failure' of products like Alienware and Dell gaming PC's shows me that we are more like the piston heads who spend hours replacing and fitting perfectly good car parts with slightly better after market items.

I would however welcome any better configuration tools to help spec and upgrade my PC. Generally the mobo is the heart of the PC and generally the mobo manufacturers are a decade behind most consumer tech companies in their support. It has only been a few years since I remember trawling through Abit or Gigabyte's Taiwanese website trying to find the correct USB driver - with everything badly translated into pigeon english.

[mashakos]

The PC gamer by their very nature do not want pre-packaged solutions. If they did they would use an Xbox or PS for gaming.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/foru...l=1#post215182

[Danny252]

As I see it, people who want to do all sorts of silly overclocking and squeezing out 2 more FPS already know how to do it and don't need to pay someone... uhm, whatever that is in squid (why are you quoting dollars on a UK-based gaming forum?). For everyone else, that money is better spent on getting some slightly shinier components. Why buy a £450 computer from someone who's tweaked it a bit and hopefully made it a bit better, when I can get a a £550 computer?

EDIT: you're conducting this same discussion over at QT3 as well. You need to get a hobby. Try video games.

This.

[Jesus_Phish]

To the guys telling him he needs a hobby, do you not possible think perhaps he's fishing around to see if this would be a viable business for him to set up and thus is casting a larger net than one forum to get feedback?

To the "just get a console", if you really think that's a solution I fear for your impression of PC gaming.

@Mash, on more consideration, I'd probably be less inclined to buy a "box" pc from someone. I enjoy making them. However, I would definitely pay for someone to take care of the tweaking/OC part of it for me and my hardware because I'd much rather just play the game than have to spend perhaps an hour or two online figuring out the best injector or .ini configurations to use.

[mashakos]

As I see it, people who want to do all sorts of silly overclocking and squeezing out 2 more FPS already know how to do it and don't need to pay someone... uhm, whatever that is in squid (why are you quoting dollars on a UK-based gaming forum?). For everyone else, that money is better spent on getting some slightly shinier components. Why buy a £450 computer from someone who's tweaked it a bit and hopefully made it a bit better, when I can get a a £550 computer?

1) you seem to not know the impact overclocking has, probably because you don't build PCs to last more than 2 years
2) it's not lego, not everything fits homogeneously. Shinier bits that don't match up properly make for a lot of sad face. That example of a budget system with a low end gpu and a 256GB SSD I read elsewhere was perfectly appropriate for this point.

[Internet]

I think this is a good idea that's far too late because PC hardware just isn't that important anymore and the software components are already being handled (except for emulation which is far thornier legally than your system suggests).

Game settings adjustment - what for? Most games are pretty enough and run fairly well. The settings I do change are things like alpha and mouse sensitivity; they're personal preferences that differ with each game.

Fixes - Are nice but Gog already sells compatible games and Steam automatically patches games if you chose for it to do so.

Mods - all well and good, but Steam is already putting that together in the workshop. It's not complete yet, but it's getting there.

Emulation - far thornier than it sounds. The courts shut down a streaming service that played a purchased dvd of the media it was streaming.

Hard to find hardware - It would be better if it was standard. I prefer using adaptors to using specialized cables, and using neither when possible.

Overclock profile - Again, what for? Maxing out performance is kind of silly when games aren't nearly as taxing as they used to be relative to the power of computers. Computing power is going to keep going up for a while, and the incentive to make games that meet it is diminishing along with returns. If anything it should come preloaded anyways.

Upgrade packages - A nice idea, but games are hardly coming out that require upgrades. I expect to get one PC for the next console generation, and there might not even be consoles in the generation after that. This is not 2000, where radical graphics changes were happening every year. Few applications use all the power we have now, and the indie rise means this is extending to games too.

Support staff - This is a good idea, but computers are getting easier to use and need less support now then ever. This is not the windows 95 BSOD days. Time would be better spent creating a diagnostic program that simply explains 80% of crashes and hardware failures in simple English. Hardware failures are the usual stumpers, and I feel like most of them display some symptoms before they fail.

This is an extremely niche idea at best. Someone who wants easy gaming, doesn't want a closed ecosystem, cares deeply about performance, but doesn't want to fiddle around with it themselves. There's a slim chance it could work selling this kind of service to people who want to switch to Linux for gaming but aren't comfortable with it.

I would however welcome any better configuration tools to help spec and upgrade my PC. Generally the mobo is the heart of the PC and generally the mobo manufacturers are a decade behind most consumer tech companies in their support. It has only been a few years since I remember trawling through Abit or Gigabyte's Taiwanese website trying to find the correct USB driver - with everything badly translated into pigeon english.

Absolutely this. Upgrading is ridiculously now as long as you don't need to change or know anything about the motherboard. CPU-z helps with the info, since SATA removed pin configurations motherboards are the last remaining pain in the ass.

[db1331]

I would say no. I might be crazy, but things like picking out my own parts, building it myself, updating drivers and BIOS...that's just fun to me. I can't tell you how enjoyable it is to see the look on the face of any strictly-console gamers that come over and see my rig. I had to tell the last guy I game on a PC three times before he understood I wasn't saying "PS3". He said he didn't even know you could play games like Assassin's Creed or CoD on a computer. I showed him my setup, and he asked where I bought my computer. I told him I built it myself. From his reaction, you would have thought I had built my own Large Hadron Collider in my spare bedroom.

Also, mashakos, I sent you a PM, in case you don't see a notification :-)

[mashakos]

I would say no. I might be crazy, but things like picking out my own parts, building it myself, updating drivers and BIOS...that's just fun to me. I can't tell you how enjoyable it is to see the look on the face of any strictly-console gamers that come over and see my rig. I had to tell the last guy I game on a PC three times before he understood I wasn't saying "PS3". He said he didn't even know you could play games like Assassin's Creed or CoD on a computer. I showed him my setup, and he asked where I bought my computer. I told him I built it myself. From his reaction, you would have thought I had built my own Large Hadron Collider in my spare bedroom.

cool. I remember those days! I actually remember exactly when it happened: I showed an avid Fighting game fanatic Rival Schools running on Bleem at 1024x768 and bilinear filtering. He was literally speechless for an hour, heh. Then he kept asking a lot of questions about building PCs :)
That changes over time though. As the old saying goes "poor people have more time than money, not so poor people have more money than time". You might find yourself in a situation where a friend is showing you their new yacht. Custom made PC ain't gonna be that impressive then :-/

[mashakos]

T@Mash, on more consideration, I'd probably be less inclined to buy a "box" pc from someone. I enjoy making them. However, I would definitely pay for someone to take care of the tweaking/OC part of it for me and my hardware because I'd much rather just play the game than have to spend perhaps an hour or two online figuring out the best injector or .ini configurations to use.

that's the catch: you really can't get super customised downloads to work without a hitch if your system doesn't match up to the tweaker's test systems. For the whole thing to work there has to be some standardisation in the base hardware components. The upshot would be that the configuration for a given price range would be the best possible config the manufacturer's team could put together.

In short:
-If you want a hassle free experience you have to stick with one of the preconfigured models.
-If you customise the builds yourself, you forfeit the benefits of the "seamless" user experience offered.

That's why as a whole this whole service would be free and open to everyone.

[popej]

Not for me. Building, breaking, tweaking and fixing my PC is part of its appeal to be honest. I also have an irrational hatred of any 'hand-holdiness' and mass market appeal as its partly responsible for the present 'situation' that video gaming finds itself in. (Obviously this utterly subjective).

[Nalano]

I've now read the last two pages and I still have no idea what it is the OP is suggesting.

Apple appeals to people who don't understand computers, and even then Apple computers have a very small market share of computers overall (their phones and tablets are the only things making deep inroads). A car example would be things like Mini Coopers or VW Bugs that are sold to people who think they look cute but otherwise don't know jack about cars (and end up paying a premium for maintenance due to the scarcity of MiniCooper and VW dealerships and parts vendors).

Is the suggestion, instead, that people would like to pay for custom building and after-market part installation? We already have that method. There's a lot of companies out there who make money assembling computers to users' specifications. I myself have three computers from CyberpowerPC.

Or is it individualized consulting about how clients may overclock and upgrade their computers? A lot of technicians freelance that on the side already, although anybody in the market to tweak their computer like such is likelier than not to do their own research. What, then is the suggestion?

[Mohorovicic]

PC gaming is already piss easy. So no.

[lordpiggsworth]

Definite no for me, hate the idea of closed platforms and I've been twiddling with computers for nearly twenty years so anything other than something a little fiddly that might take a bit of extra work but will ultimately be worth it is kind of a step backward. Some kind of paid "tailored experience" kind of misses the point when the main reason I use a PC is because I like how I can tailor it myself for my gaming and/or work needs.

[archonsod]

Funny thing is Apple's support is one of the worst in the industry to boot.

I wouldn't be willing to pay for it. But then I wholeheartedly support the idea of requiring a license to use a PC in the first place, which would render much of it moot.

[Namdrol]

This is probably the wrong place to ask, as people who frequent PC gaming forums are not normal (in a statistical sense). It would surprise me greatly if there werent a fair number of videogame players who would like the benefits of a PC, but have no desire to build and/or tweak stuff, but you wont find them here.

Having said that, actually selling it to them would be pretty hard because anything connected with Microsoft PCs is going to be a hardsell to those who like to plug and play.

Now if apple came out with a MacGamer a la MacPro, I'm sure that would sell. Hell, I'd probably buy one just because of love the aesthetics of the mac pro.

apple_mac_pro_computer_desktop_used_ww_f.jpg
MacPro_7.jpg

[Nalano]

Hell, I'd probably buy one just because of love the aesthetics of the mac pro.

Die, heathen!

[mashakos]

I've now read the last two pages and I still have no idea what it is the OP is suggesting.

Apple appeals to people who don't understand computers, and even then Apple computers have a very small market share of computers overall (their phones and tablets are the only things making deep inroads). A car example would be things like Mini Coopers or VW Bugs that are sold to people who think they look cute but otherwise don't know jack about cars (and end up paying a premium for maintenance due to the scarcity of MiniCooper and VW dealerships and parts vendors).

Is the suggestion, instead, that people would like to pay for custom building and after-market part installation? We already have that method. There's a lot of companies out there who make money assembling computers to users' specifications. I myself have three computers from CyberpowerPC.

Or is it individualized consulting about how clients may overclock and upgrade their computers? A lot of technicians freelance that on the side already, although anybody in the market to tweak their computer like such is likelier than not to do their own research. What, then is the suggestion?

The suggestion is for a PC with all the potential unlocked from the start. I'm saying this out of my early experience with the Amiga, where I got a joystick, a two button mouse, a GUI based OS, a popular AAA game (Double Dragon), various software packages and even a few scene demo discs with the purchase my parents made. That was one hell of a way to get introduced to PC gaming.

That doesn't exist anymore outside of a Mac and iLife, and even then you don't get gaming in the mix. I think it would be great to bring that kind of experience back to the PC.

I never once suggested that the solution would be non-customisable or mediocre. The configurations would be carefully selected and tuned for the benefit of the consumer, not the reseller.

EDIT: Wouldn't mind a PC bundled with one of these awesome 4kb scene demos to showcase the innovation happening on the PC, as well as a scene demo editor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxfmxi-boyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSVQJBzwQXw

[Nalano]

The suggestion is for a PC with all the potential unlocked from the start. I'm saying this out of my early experience with the Amiga, where I got a joystick, a two button mouse, a GUI based OS, a popular AAA game (Double Dragon), various software packages and even a few scene demo discs with the purchase my parents made. That was one hell of a way to get introduced to PC gaming.

That doesn't exist anymore outside of a Mac and iLife, and even then you don't get gaming in the mix. I think it would be great to bring that kind of experience back to the PC.

See the part that is bolded? That part is false. We have companies that specialize in nothing but gaming machines, with all the bells and whistles. Hell, even standard name-brand manufacturers bundle games with new machines. This all is beginning to sound like acute research failure on your part.

As for tech demos, have you seen the software nVidia cards come in? Half their shit is basically that.