For a long time I was a champion of closed systems. Growing up with a Nintendo GameCube and a GameBoy as the only computing devices in my house (we got our first actual computer when I was in the 7th grade), so systems that are locked down seemed perfectly natural to me. I had one device that did one thing really well, (I will fight to the death for GameCube vs PS2), and that made perfect sense to me.
Fast forward to when we did start to get more open systems (hand me down HP laptop, iPhone 3, etc.) and suddenly I had access to hardware and software that could do a lot of things that I didn't understand. Even with these minor gains I can remember arguing with a good friend of mine about why the core concept of PC gaming was stupid. Those were for work.
Because the family computer wasn't great, and those were dark days for both PC and mobile gaming I couldn't really get my fix there. I'd say that started to change when I got my first computer, a Dell Inspiron 13 with a whopping 1TB hard drive. With no GPU and a Core i3 I couldn't exactly burn up games (the first Assassins Creed made it overheat even on low settings), but I had a semi-open OS to mess around with, and, more importantly, easy and unimpeded internet access.
That's when I started to educate myself. Maybe I just have bad luck with iOS, but my iPhone was less than friendly to me, and so I started investigating the alternative, Android, which I prefer to this day. I shortly wanted a tablet and got a Google Nexus 7, and that blew me away. If my iPhone didn't work, the most I could do was turn it off, kill apps, and hope for the best. I never had any major problems with my Nexus, but even if I just wanted to try and goose out more performance, there were actual programs I could get, changes I could make, and I could even go alter code if I so desired. I liked it so much that I switched to an Android phone when my chance came up.
My next tech adoptions were my old friends, game consoles, specifically a 3DS and PS4. I knew I liked PC gaming pretty well by that point, or at least the idea of it, but the ability to play the games I wanted to (the big AAA games) still required better hardware than I could afford. I don't regret those purchases, but my time in college has thoroughly transformed these views.
Going into my Freshman year at Mines, I had every current console but the Xbox One, and got a phone upgrade to an iPhone 6+. Those were huge mistakes. Obviously PC and a smartphone are basically essential for being productive in the modern atmosphere, but I also got to the point I just prefer having one or two devices that do whatever I want, and you know what? My PC will do that, but I can't say the same about a console or an iPhone. I've already explained my gripes with Apple, so I won't say anything there, but let me focus on the entertainment side of my needs. What platform has every streaming and digital purchasing system available? PC. What system can provide the cheapest and largest quantity of games? PC. What else can PC do? Whatever I want. I can do my work there, I can mess around with math and science stuff, whatever.
That's why I got rid of all of my consoles but my PS4 (which I only keep because I can use it for streaming in my dorm, unlike my Chromecast (that's a room problem, not the Chromecast). Honestly, I'm considering just getting a long HDMI and occasionally getting up to hit play on my laptop. I'm back to Android because I can mess with it however I want (and because my OnePlus 3 is literally incomprehensibly good value to me). I guess this is half just a reflection about how I went from a console devotee to wanting a one-stop shop, beyond just my growing preference for game genres that function better on PC, but I don't actually expect anyone to make it this far anyway, so whatever. Go Microsoft and Google, I guess?
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