Even though I've been a PC gamer since 2011, I've always had a PlayStation on the side. Whenever a new PlayStation came out, I'd be quick to buy it for nostalgic reasons, since my dad got me hooked on the PSOne and then the PS2 when I was a kid. I barely used it, though, mostly for console-exclusive releases that either never made their way to PC or arrived too late. So far, I've probably played a total of five games on my PS5 in the last six years, with the last one being Ghost of Yōtei, but I still don't regret buying it.

That might sound strange coming from someone with an RTX 4090 because, from a hardware standpoint, my PC is miles ahead. And it's not just about frame rates. I get better control over my performance with DLSS, ultrawide support, and higher graphics presets. But despite all that, I still feel like my PS5 gets one thing right, and I get reminded of it every time I boot it up: gaming just feels effortless. That's not the kind of experience I get whenever I launch a game on my PC.

PC gaming's control is a double-edged sword

You're spending more time tweaking settings than enjoying a new game

We all love how much control PC gaming gives us, and honestly, that's one of the biggest reasons many of us moved away from consoles in the first place. Being able to tweak settings exactly the way you want is part of the appeal. In fact, I used to enjoy this process in my early years as a PC gamer when I was a teenager. But back then, we didn't have ray tracing, upscaling, or frame generation. I just had to nail the custom preset to get the frame rates I wanted, and that was it.

Now, upscaling alone is a rabbit hole that can completely change how a game looks and feels, depending on what preset you choose. I'm so tired of having to decide between Preset L and M in DLSS 4.5. Then you have frame generation, ray tracing, Reflex, VRR, and a dozen other settings that can take hours of trial and error before the game finally feels "right." So when a new game comes out, I end up spending almost a day monitoring performance with MSI Afterburner in the background before I actually sit back and enjoy the story.

The PS5 skips the setup ritual

If anything, I'm just deciding between quality and performance modes

With my PS5, gaming is a lot simpler, and it took me a while to actually appreciate it. I'm just waiting for the game to download from the PS Store, knowing very well I can get right into it without worrying about anything else. The only decision I usually need to make is whether I want the game to feel smoother at 60 FPS with the performance mode or prioritize visual detail at 30 FPS with the quality mode. You'd think that, as a PC gamer, I would choose the performance mode every single time, but that's not the case.

Almost every time I've sat on my couch to play AAA single-player titles on my PS5, I've picked the quality mode. Yes, 30FPS is annoying, but I'd rather enjoy that extra detail when I'm gaming on my OLED TV. But that's not my point. Once I've configured this setting, there's really nothing else I need to mess with. Some games, like Ghost of Yotei, support ray tracing, but it's not something I bother with on a console. I'm not benchmarking performance because I know exactly what I'm getting, and, more importantly, I'm not trying to work around optimization issues or driver updates.

Yes, my PS5 is no match for my PC

But all it takes is a poorly optimized game to ruin the "high-end" experience

At the end of the day, I'm still gaming on my PC almost all the time. Unless there's a new console-exclusive or console-first release, my PS5 mostly just sits there collecting dust. That's why I've only played like five games on it in the last six years. I mainly play first-person shooters with a keyboard and mouse on a high-refresh-rate OLED monitor, which is exactly where PC gaming shines. My RTX 4090 lets me chase 200+ FPS in competitive titles, and that's not something even the PS5 Pro can deliver. Even in demanding single-player AAA games, I can get triple-digit FPS at 4K once I enable DLSS upscaling and frame generation.

That said, just because my GPU can brute-force high frame rates doesn't mean the experience is always smooth and consistent. There are times when I get 100+ FPS, but the game still feels stuttery due to poor frame pacing, shader compilation issues, or poor optimization. That's what frustrates me the most about modern PC gaming. You can spend thousands of dollars on an RTX 5090 build and still run into performance issues because the PC version wasn't properly optimized. With the PS5, this is rarely ever a problem because developers already know the exact hardware they're optimizing for.

The PS5 is a constant reminder that gaming is supposed to be simple

Maybe it's just me getting old and not having the time or patience to deal with all the new DLSS presets, optimize performance, or troubleshoot every little issue I've faced recently, but nowadays, I value simplicity a lot more than I used to. Don't get me wrong, I'm not old enough to consider ditching my PC anytime soon because it still gives me the best experience when everything falls into place. At the same time, I can't help but feel PC gaming has become more complicated than it needs to be in recent years. And every time I turn on the PS5, I'm constantly reminded how much simpler gaming can be.