10 Console Gaming Trends That Were On PC Forever

The last few years have seen a lot of innovation in the gaming landscape. As consoles become more robust machines, offering all sorts of new features, they're able to give their players all sorts of new opportunities and options. However, for every new marvel on the PS3 or Xbox 360, there's a legion of PC gamers yawning because they've seen and done it all before. As a platform, the PC has been the one to break ground on all sorts of trends that are only now seeing light of day on the consoles. These are the 10 most prominent console trends that have been on the PC forever. 

Multimedia Centers

Where It Started: PCI Graphics Cards (1993)

When Consoles Got It: PlayStation 2 DVD Playback (2000)

Why It's Big Now: Netflix Streaming, Zune Music Pass, TV on Demand

A big part of the reason Microsoft got into the video game space was to help see through a vision of having an always-connected device attached to the family television. That vision has almost come to fruition with the Xbox 360 able to stream movies and music across a home network, with the PlayStation 3 being a fantastic blu-ray player, and with more users accessing Netflix through game consoles than any other device.

However, all of this is old hat to the PC which has been able to do all of the same ever since composite RCA cables were installed on machines. There were a bevy of computers capable of this when they were largely sold in prefabricated like Apple's machines, but it was the inception of the PCI graphics card that made it truly accessible.

High-quality picture could be streamed from any desktop to a TV through standard inputs and, thanks to the versatility of the home computer, it could run anything from movies and music to fully-featured web browsing long before you could even watch a DVD on your PS2.

User-Generated Content

Where It Started: Lode Runner for Apple II (1983)

When Consoles Got It: Excitebike for NES (1984)

Why It's Big Now: Little Big Planet, Infamous 2, ModNation Racers

Developers love the idea of creating user-generated content systems because it absolves them from the responsibility of designing additional levels and maps post-release. These most frequently take the form of level editors like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Little Big Planet and ModNation Racers.

Though this is a trend being adopted mroe and more by modern developers, it actually got its start on the PC, even before the modding scene blew up with Doom and Quake. Long before all of these games was Lode Runner on the Apple II, allowing players to create their own missions for the game and pass them among friends as simple save files. It was efficient and is likely responsible for many fledgling game designers in the era.

Independent Development

Where It Started: PC Gaming Shareware (Late 1970s)

When Consoles Got It: Xbox Live Indie Games (2006)

Why It's Big Now: Braid, Bastion, Super Meat Boy

The locked-down, content-controlled environment of console game development has kept independent developers out of the marketplace for a long time. That changed in 2006 when Microsoft launched the Xbox Live Indie Games channel for the Xbox 360, allowing anyone to develop and publish their own titles with the XNA development studio. It finally gave single-man studios an opportunity to find an audience for their games and make a little money in the process.

Independent development has always existed and flourished on the PC though. Right from its inception, most developers were dorm room programmers working on passion projects and releasing them as shareware decades earlier.

Passed around computer labs on floppies like DJs spreading underground mixtapes, the original indie game marketplace was a network of enthusiasts armed with a passion for gaming and the altruism to pay for quality titles. Those independent developers eventually grew into some of today's biggest names in gaming, all from humble beginnings with a drive to see their vision created without the help or funding from a publisher.