When you work in the world of video games and technology you’re destined to get press releases. Some of them can be useful. Most of them are the equivalent of white noise. And then you get things that are just plain weird.
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Early this morning, Crucial decided to announce to the whole wide world that “the gaming debate is over” — and that the PC is by far and away the most superior platform.
You know, the platform that Crucial exclusively makes and markets products for.
But rather than simply saying you could have a more broader gaming experience with fewer restrictions and greater pixels, Crucial has obnoxiously decided to insult console gamers instead.
“It’s true that consoles are simple and easy to use, but what’s more fun to drive, a commuter car or a sports car? Commuter cars are basic, but sports cars have more power — that’s the difference between consoles and PCs,” Mathew Luu, APAC marketing manager for Micron Consumer Products Group, said.
Sure. Most PCs have substantially better hardware than consoles, if you’re willing to spend a fraction. That glosses over the whole aspect of how developers can often talk to the hardware in consoles on a far lower level than they can on PC. (Mind you, that is changing somewhat with DirectX 12 and Vulkan, and it’s a whole other topic for another time.)
But better hardware doesn’t automatically create a better experience — and it certainly doesn’t mean games on consoles and the people who play them aren’t as hardcore. That’s a little too nuanced for Crucial, though.
“The way Crucial sees it the usual console ‘advantages’ are actually disadvantages as consoles are simple and designed for recreational gamers, but that’s no secret to serious gamers.”
As someone who spent decades predominately playing games on PC, it’s worth pointing out that the platform also has many excellent multiplayer games utterly ruined by cheats. There are tons of games that simply don’t work as advertised. There are plenty of games that simply aren’t playable because the audience isn’t there. And let’s not talk about bugs spawned from new drivers or operating systems.
The whole release, as you’d expect, is a shameless plug for Crucial’s hardware. They’re even honest enough to admit it outright, in the hope that people will talk more about their products.
But I’m not going to do that. Because you can promote your offerings without flipping the bird at millions of gamers who have done nothing wrong. You can sell a hard drive or a RAM module without being derogatory to the people who discovered and continue to enjoy gaming through endless hours in front of a TV and a console.
And you can do it without playing into the obnoxious premise that one gamer is better than another because of the platform they choose to play on. The internet is filled with enough of that absurd bullshit already.
Comments
9 responses to “Crucial Says PC Gaming Is Better Because That Totally Won’t Make Them Money”
You do realise that this type of article is exactly what they wanted by stating PC is better, right?
I’d never even heard of Crucial before this let alone know what they make…now I do.
this 100%, any publicity negative or positive is still publicity.
If you build your own PCs or have been a tinkerer for a while you’ll have come across Crucial. But also what you said is precisely why I refused to mention what they were trying to spruik.
The context for why you know a brand can be really important.
Personally I’d buy for quality and don’t really care if they make stupid statements.
I’ve gone to the lengths of picking parts for my PC, getting prices etc but have never actually built one because my current PC was built for me as a surprise present and now I’m still saving for my next PC.
Despite my research into parts I’ve still never come across Crucial. Maybe it’s the places I browse, MSY tends to be my first stop followed eventually by ebay. By the time I get to ebay I already have a specific part in mind and I’m not browsing.
I’ll avoid MSY just because of too many issues with their customer service. Will never forget when ASUS issued a global recall on their motherboards for the Sandy Bridge fault and then MSY tried to tell customers that they wouldn’t honour warranty if they couldn’t reproduce the fault.
Either way though, you’ve raised awareness of them and driven at least one visitor to their page, proving their advertising campaign is successful.
Wow, as someone that works in the journalism/marketing/PR/communications field, media releases like this make me fucking cringe.
That’s also coming from someone that owns both a decently powerful gaming PC and a PS4. I expect this kind of thing from r/pcmasterrace, not an official media release from a professional company.
They are just trying to flaunt the platform which they make money from which to me is no different than say Holden vs Ford – each company touts their product is superior.
Until consoles fully implement keyboard/mouse or something better than keyboard/mouse comes along PC gamers will generally speaking win out over console controller gamers. This has been studied. Also the fact that consoles require aim assist mechanics or increased weapon damage.
Case in point – PC master race is a valid description.
You know what? I am a casual gamer. There, I said it.
I love games. But dammit, I’m more or less an adult, and I’ve got stuff to do. I don’t want to spend hours and hours of my life every night becoming mediocre at League of Legends. Video games are a thing I do for fun. I’ll play Ratchet and Clank until it’s done, but once I have I probably won’t touch the Playstation again until Uncharted’s out, and then it might be months until I get another game. And when I put those games into my PS4, I like to not have to think about whether or not my video card’s good enough or if I’ve got enough RAM or whatever. I’m fine being a casual gamer. I don’t drive a sports car to the station in the mornings either.