Hi all. Just after some advice. I’m old school when it comes to gaming, think pac man, Galaxian etc.
About to build a new home PC and was wondering if I should have a crack at gaming. Kids are 9 and 12, and whilst I don’t want them sitting on the pc for hours playing games I wouldn’t mind giving them the opportunity.
So I guess my question is, what is a good spec for a pc (budget) and what platform is used for the games and what controllers should I get?
Just after some advice.
Cheers Adam
An Xbox may be a cheaper way to let the kids have a go at gaming, and Microsoft do family management well. Some advantages:
+1 on Shorty's recommendation. More economical to spend $4-500 on an Xbox. With Live, there's lots of free games each month if the kids just like trying different things. The XB1 is also backwards compatible with a lot of 360 games so you can probably pick up a wide variety of games inexpensively.
$4-500 would be steep for an Xbox nowadays unless you're looking at the One X, in which case you'd be best waiting for Series X
Could get a switch but games are pricey.
Unless you're wanting them to play the latest and greatest you could get away with spending around $1k, more depending on the peripherals, and taking advantage of free games from the epic games store and older games on discount from steam, humble bundle and GOG.
You can also get emulators and roms for PS1, PS2, nintendo consoles and older devices. This is normally a gray area legally and is normally acceptable for games you own but noone's checking.
Get switch online and there's a library of NES and SNES games that will keep the kids entertained for a long time.
games are pricey.
depends on what kind of games you want.
If you're not picky, you can get a lot of free games or very cheap games.
epic games releases 1-2 free games every few weeks.
Steam has lots of sales and sometimes few years old games can be as cheap as $5.
Get a pc
Get epic games and get the free games they give out
GTA V is great for 9 and 12 year olds /s
yeah sure. it's very educative game.
Are you ready for kids online to tell you/your children how well acquainted they are with your mother?
PC gaming is the most expensive and confusing upfront. You'll need to research parts in order to find the balance between cost and power. Then ensure they're compatible, use https://pcpartpicker.com/ to do this. Alternatively you can buy a pre-built, techfast have some good builds though some criticise the quality of the parts used. But once everything is setup, it's easily the best platform with choice in controller (or keyboard + mouse!), upgradeable parts, no paywall to access online servers, emulators, and so on. There's also quite a few free games being given out especially by Epic. Most controllers are compatible with PC one way or another but Xbox One is easily the best in terms of ease of setup and use.
Console gaming is simpler and cheaper method. You pay for the console ($300-$500), plug into the tv and you're set to go. You're limited into what is provided (controller, accessories, games) and there's always the online paywall ($80/year PS/Xbox $55 Nintendo). Games are generally quite cheap on Xbox and Playstation (<$20 for many games) but Nintendo retain their value ($50+ on used first party games). You can always resell the games which is an advantage over PC games. Consoles also allow multiplayer on the single console. PC games rarely implement two or more players on a single computer, multiplayer requires each player to have their machine.
Since you're getting a PC anyway, I'd suggest grabbing something from TechFast. Anything around $500-750 will run essentially everything. Higher end games may require lower settings though.
Most games can be played with both keyboard and mouse, but also controller. You can grab something like this wired xbox controller
Download Steam and Epic Games Store. Sign up for the Xbox Game Pass but don't pay more than $1.
Collect free games on the Epic Games Store. Wait for sales on Steam.
If your kids enjoy the gaming experience then I suggest purchasing an Xbox One for Christmas. The games they played via the game pass will be available to them on the Xbox and they'll be used to the controller. You can get second hand ones with games quite cheap now and as others mentioned they have a limited backwards compatible library.
Thanks heaps for the tips guys. Will look at a pc for now as I need one anyway for the home and possibly an Xbox down the track.
Just had a shower thought (I was actually in the shower) - you can actually emulate all of the games you used to play.
You can even play Galaxian in a browser.
Consider a ryzen 5 3xxx based APU which should have enough graphics power to run most games at average quality.
Get 2x8gb ram and it'll run most programs. This should be enough to test the waters and would run you maybe $500 ish.
If you enjoy games and want better graphics and frame rates then you can spend the coin to add maybe a GTX 1060 or better. Limit is your budget.
Depends what game you want to start to expose them to. I still play a lot of old arcade and console games via emulators on my PC - a low-mid spec gfx card with a good CPU (> 2.0ghz) would suffice unless you want to emulate ps2 games and latter - anything older should be fine with a minimum 2ghz cpu. I have a slightly above mid-tier gfx card, gtx 1050ti, because I'd like to decode 4k movies at 60hz to the my tv (which is also my monitor).
If you want them to play hi res, hi poly count 3d games or emulate latter consoles, that'll be an entire kind of setup.
$1k will be a good mid teir, $1.5K better. 50% of cost is the graphics card
Windows to run Steam and whatever else, Epic is giving away GTAV perfect for kids to learn ins and outs of crime.
Controller Xbox one