Consoles becoming PCs: Alienware

Due to the changing architecture of consoles, most notably the PS4 and Xbox One, PC hardware development company Alienware has said that home consoles are more like PCs than ever before.

“If you look at what Sony and Microsoft are doing, they’re taking PCs and putting them into the living room. It’s an AMD CPU, it’s an AMD graphics card, it’s a standard desktop hard drive. It’s unbelievable,” said Frank Azor, general manager at Alienware.

It’s the first time that both Microsoft and Sony’s consoles are using very similar architecture associated with PC gaming, the X86 architecture.

“You’re installing games now instead of running them off the disc, because that’s the right thing to do; you’re downloading games digitally, which we’ve been doing on PC for years; they’re integrating certain TV aspects and stuff, well, ten years ago we started experimenting with media centre,” explained Azor.

Azor also elaborated, saying that PC is still the preferred gaming platform, and is the reason why console makers are shifting their hardware closer towards resembling PCs.

“That tells you that the PC is the gaming platform of choice out there, there is nothing out there that’s better. You look at what they’re [consoles] trying to do and they’re becoming more and more like PCs.”

The Alienware general manager also believes that while consoles will become a threat to PCs, the PC will always deliver the most popular games.

“Look at the most widely played games out there, League of Legends, World of Tanks, I mean these are the most widely played games in terms of hours played in the industry. And up until this week those were exclusive PC titles.”

Azor also mentioned that the upcoming consoles are essentially very similar to Alienware’s own X51.