The Necessity to be Professional

      Marketing these days shows the best of the best for everything. Theres that have "professional" sets that usually sell for a higher than averag price. George Foreman has his own line of electric burger cookers, Michael Jordan has his own brand of shoes, Team Optic, best known for Call of Duty Championships, even have their own edition of Astro headsets. I see this  all over the place these days. There are hundreds of different peripheral manufacturers for "Gaming like the pros". Mice and keyboard setups, stereo gaming headsets, mics without the headsets, literally anything you usually use on a PC has a professional counterpart, and they are usually priced at exorbitant amounts. So I wanted to see what made the "professional" equipment so much better. Here are my thoughts.

       Lets talk headsets to start, since that's the first noticeable peripheral you see when you look at the pro. The Astro A40 headset says "Play like a pro" under the name. Does it really make a difference? I think it doesn't. Now remember, this is just my opinion. Sure it might have an equalizer, and a removable mic, But I don't think it's worth the $150 price tag for PC or the $200 price tag for Xbox One. There are plenty of cheaper choices out there. The "pro" tag adds to the price tag. As far as I'm concerned that's all it does. I would like to remind you that I'm comparing these peripherals to the things I use on a daily basis. I have an XO One from Turtle Beach that I use for the Xbox One or listening to YouTube and Netflix on the PC. I'm not advocating Turtle Beach over Astro. Astro was just the first website I saw when searching google for gaming headsets.

       Lets look at Turtle Beach. Like I said I have an XO One. I bought it when we purchased our Xbox this past year. I think it was on sale or something but we're just going with the $79.99 price tag. The XO Seven is priced at $159.99. That's a difference of around $80, almost double the price. I like how my XO One performs just fine. And looking at the compare option between the two there doesn't seem to be much of a difference. The way I see it, the audio difference between the two would not justify the price difference. Granted the "pro" version of the XO Seven isn't any different in price from the non-pro version, but I still don't see the point of paying almost half of what my system cost just for an audio headset.

       Lets head into the mice and keyboard. For that I'm going to look at the Razer line of products. I use the standard peripherals that came with my PC that I bought from New Egg. It's a refurbished HP that came with a mouse and keyboard, which I use on a daily basis. I don't play many multiplayer games on my PC, for the fact that it doesn't run them that well. But the problem is not my keyboard or mouse, which was free. My computers problem stems from an old video card that I put in from my dinosaur machine. Now, I like Razer peripherals, they look amazing, but they have a huge price gap. The DeathStalker Ultimate is running at $249.99. It would be more in any gamers interest to upgrade control peripherals within reason. But I don't see how anyone can justify a $250 keyboard. Having specific key bindings and macros is nice, but unnecessary to be good in my opinion. The mice are a little more reasonable with the most expensive Mamba Tournament edition coming in at $89.99, but the only real selling point is 16,000 DPI, which I heard isn't really a major factor in gaming. I will link a video at the end that explains it. The video states that too much DPI can become a hindrance.

       If you made it this far, I'm impressed. There has been lots of babbling about different things, and I haven't even hit the major stuff. This is just the most well known peripherals. There's also monitors/TVs, speakers, and lots of others. This is all just from my experience. If you want to look any of the info up yourself here are the sites. For the turtle beach headsets, check it out here. Astro headsets are expensive but can be found Here. Looking for Razer products? take a look at this. Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoy.

Introduction

               Since this is my first blog post I thought I would start by introducing myself. My name is Simon (not really, but I don't feel comfortable giving my real name). I live in a small appartment for now with my girlfriend and son, with a child on the way. My girlfriend and I only recently found out about the new bundle of happiness, but we're both excited. I currently have no job, so I spend most of my days just sitting around the house with my son, who is 19 months old. He's an amazing little guy, and super smart. We had problems with his ears getting infected all the time so he had surgery the other day and he's been very talkative since then. 

         As for my Girlfriend, shes amazing. We have our ups and downs but I love her with all my heart. Not many women would put up with me the way she does. I couldn't imagine what I would do if we seperated, considering I have no where to go and she provides all the financial support. She works mostly morning shifts at a grocery store, and when she comes home we usually watch whatever crime show we can find on netflix or play a game together, unless she wants to play a single player game, in which case I am usually cooking or laying the little one down for bed.

         Like I said, I don't have a job so my day is filled with keeping up with the little one while trying to get in some game time. I enjoy a wide variety of games, ranging from the Elder Scrolls series (including ESO) to the space MMO Eve Online. I like MMO games but I don't usually get into conversations with anyone. I play Call Of Duty every once in a while, mostly for the Zombies mode. We own an Xbox One, Xbox 360 and a PC. My computer isn't the best but it gets the job done.

          I don't really live close to any of my other relatives. My closest family member is about 2-4 hours drive away, which is my mom, grandma, and my moms two sisters and their husbands. I'm very happy to have my mom, considering after everything I did most parents would have probably never spoken to their child again. But after about three years everything was forgiven. But that's a story for another time. Needless to say, even with all my flaws I am a very, very lucky guy.