PC gaming is the real next-gen and now’s the best time to switch

It’s absurd how impressive Cyberpunk 2077 is on a high-end PC. Starting a fresh game as a corporate drone, you explore an office complex from the future, its meeting rooms boxed in by tempered glass as nearby server rooms glow. In the glass windows, you can see the reflection of everything in real-time, right down to the distortions in the curves, turning NPC faces into funhouse mirror versions of themselves.

Out on the city streets, steam hisses up from sewer grates, holographic adverts light the horizon, and every passing car and shop window reflects the world. It’s a completely different game compared to playing it on a console. Like a free remaster.

Using the OcUK Gaming Inspire rig with an RTX 5070Ti, Cyberpunk 2077 breezes along at maximum settings. Path tracing, which sees light bounce around scenes in real-time, completely transforms the world. At the same time, multi-frame generation uses arcane magic to push the frame rate well over 120fps – up to four times what you get on console – while maintaining a 4K image and all the graphical settings cranked up to max.

The difference between this and playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a PS5 Pro is striking, reminding you of the kind of graphical leaps we used to see between every console generation. These days, though, the real next generation of gaming is on PC.

Sure, the initial cost of a high-end PC is steeper than on console, but console prices are trending upwards because of geopolitics, while PC hardware is currently exempt from tariffs. You’re also building something future-proof — once you have a high-end system, it’ll be good for six years or more, and when it does get rusty, you only have to change specific parts rather than buy an entirely new machine.

Console gaming was the convenience option back when you had to unpack games and fiddle with settings to get anything working on PC. These days, you simply download a storefront like Steam or the Epic Games Store and grab games from there. All the fiddly work is automatic now, and games are often cheaper and more consistently on sale for PC players.

Even setting the right graphics settings is as simple as downloading the Nvidia app, which also gets you the latest drivers, and letting that optimize each title for you.

There’s real magic happening on PC right now, too. Valve recently launched a ray tracing showcase for Half-Life 2, an 11-year-old game, to show how this cutting-edge lighting technology can transform even older titles. Deep shadows settle into the brickwork on each building, giving every texture a sense of depth missing from the original release, and the flicker from fires makes even lonely alleyways feel alive with action as flames lick and light and shadow dance around dynamically.

Even the big console players have taken notice, with Xbox games landing on PC the same day they launch for console, and PlayStation games coming to Steam reliably around a year from launch. Between console generations, Sony and Microsoft have been known to charge for “remastered” versions of older games with slightly higher resolutions and frame rates, but the real remasters are the PC versions cranked up to max. Whether you want to play The Last of Us Part 2 or Forza Horizon 5, a good rig is the best place for it.

It’s coming up on five years since the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S launched now, so Sony and Microsoft are likely thinking about their next machines. Rumors are swirling that the next Xbox will basically be a PC (and it’ll have Steam), but there’s no way it’ll be as powerful as the top-end cards you can already get. The real next generation is already here if you’re willing to make the jump, and it’s easier to do so than ever.