Skyrim's PC Requirements Are Reasonable
 This is what a PC running Skyrim at max settings looks like on the inside. Bethesda has officially announced the PC requirements for Skyrim. Surprisingly, even the recommended specs are mostly standard fare on your average off-the-shelf PC. Recommended Specs Minimum Specs Although I’m surprised that my Macbook either exceeds or at least meets the recommended settings, I still am likely going to end up with a console version of Skyrim because I plan on popping it in my console and playing it within 4 hours of buying it instead of waiting for it to install and having to activate it on Steam. Unfortunately jumping through those kinds of hoops has been precisely what has turned me off from PC gaming almost completely. Source: Bethesda Blog |
They’re reasonable because it’s Xbox 360 lead (six-year-old tech) and Bethesda isn’t taking advantage of current PC hardware. They’re using Directx 9, for christ’s sake.
Dunno what to say about installing. If you preferring play on console, more power to you, but the Elder Scrolls games are one of the great modding platforms; I know people who don’t even like Bethesda’s work who buy it just for all the awesome mods that get made. These are everything from additional quests and models to complete overhauls (most famously Obscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul, which fixed the broken leveling system, redid the treasure list, added a living flora and fauna system, and a million other things).
The PC will never be able to compete with consoles for ease of use, and consoles can’t compete with PC games on customizability and value.
Mind you, this is all academic if you’re playing on a Mac (Apple willfully abdicated the gaming market to Windows).
Bah I forgot about the glorious mods.
Both camps definitely have their merits, but I prefer to be able to just play a game after I buy it.
If I got it on my Mac I’d be playing it on my Windows partition.
Also: if I wasn’t able to use console commands, I would never have been able to finish Oblivion. There are quest-breaking bugs in every Bethesda release, and being able to respawn a dead NPC or mess with the quest log in console is really useful. Honestly don’t know why console commands can’t be implemented on consoles. Maybe Microsoft/Sony won’t let them?