The whole "PCs aren't that expensive compared to consoles" argument

[TheBritish]

I don't have much to add to this argument except;
that I spent £450 on my computer 5 years ago. (Home built.)
I upgraded the graphics card and processor last year for a total cost of £170
I can play "most" games on max settings. The only case where I can't is because my DX10 card doesn't support DX11. Crysis I can play at max settings (albeit with the 20-30fps which they consider acceptable. Have to tone it down a bit for a full 60fps on the action scenes.)

So, in the last 5 years my PC has cost me maaaybe double a 360, but I get to play all games looking prettier, pay less for my games and if I really wanted to, I have the adapter to use my 360 pad on the PC, so I lose nothing from the console. Oh and it does a lot of other stuff too.

If I could I'd only have my PC, but console exclusives (and now Ubi's DRM) put me off.

 

[Imat]

Now, price. Here's what I'm getting (mostly from newegg.ca as they had the best prices and selection I could find):
Power: Rosewill Xtreme Series RX750-D-B 750W - $89.99 on sale
Motherboard: MSI P55-GD65 LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - $167.99
CPU: Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - $208.99
RAM: G.SKILL ECO Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) - $126.49
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD5850 1GB - $298.88
Mouse and keyboard: Logitech wireless keyboard and good 8 button (programmable) laser mouse - $108.88
OS: Windows 7 Home 64 bit - $108.99

Total: $1020.22

You're paying way too much for RAM...I got 4 GB for $20...Yours may be faster and all that jazz, but mine can easily run anything out there today, so...

Also, do you need a wireless keyboard and an 8-button mouse? I wouldn't even count that in the cost of the PC, considering you didn't count the cost of your first PS3 controller separately. They're added peripherals, not necessary for the function of the machine (Assuming you didn't destroy the previous mouse/keyboard).

I'm assuming you could probably recycle the power supply from your old compy, unless it doesn't support your new hardware (Unlikely if you bought it new last time).

You may have shopped around a lot, but I spent $500 on a PC last year that will last several more years playing top-end games without a problem. I searched for around a week until I found the perfect combination of hardware. I think you cut out too early, and that makes me sad because now others will see your costs and think it average. I've spent $500 on average, and the only reason I don't use my old compy now is because my family wanted a machine at home while I was at college. Also my old mobo didn't really have SATA space, and I got a TB...

 

[XoXoButterflyXoXo]

computers are really expensive, that's why I only play strategy games on mine.

 

[xbeaker]

I love my PC, that said...

I think the OP did a very fair comparison. Everyone who is saying "I can build it cheaper" .. yeah, you can. But you will have an inferior machine, that can't run the latest games and have them look as good as the 360 or PS3 (yes, you will) the consoles are not more powerful then a PC. But they do out perform them because the software is written to exclusively take advantage of the hardware. No concernes about how much video memory you have, how much RAM you have, what brand of GPU you are using, etc..

I have all the current consoles, and most of the past generations as well. I have been building my own machines since around '93. The PC is the more expensive route. Yeah, you can upgrade the video card to keep it relevant. A. we are not talking about upgrades, we are talking start-from-scratch. B. Sometimes those video cards cost as much as an entire console.

The consoles have a longer lifespan as well. A state of the art computer has about a 4 year lifespan for gaming. That means if you got a top end systems today (not a $600 job, I am talking $1600 beast of a machine) you will need to upgrade or replace that system in about 4 years to be able to play the top end games at above the baseline settings. My $400 360 improves every year as the developers learn to tweak more power from the limited hardware and is 5 years old... with at least another 2 years to go. I have built and given away an entire computer since getting the 360.

 

[TheBritish]

I love my PC, that said...

I think the OP did a very fair comparison. Everyone who is saying "I can build it cheaper" .. yeah, you can. But you will have an inferior machine, that can't run the latest games and have them look as good as the 360 or PS3 (yes, you will) the consoles are not more powerful then a PC. But they do out perform them because the software is written to exclusively take advantage of the hardware. No concernes about how much video memory you have, how much RAM you have, what brand of GPU you are using, etc..

I have all the current consoles, and most of the past generations as well. I have been building my own machines since around '93. The PC is the more expensive route. Yeah, you can upgrade the video card to keep it relevant. A. we are not talking about upgrades, we are talking start-from-scratch. B. Sometimes those video cards cost as much as an entire console.

The consoles have a longer lifespan as well. A state of the art computer has about a 4 year lifespan for gaming. That means if you got a top end systems today (not a $600 job, I am talking $1600 beast of a machine) you will need to upgrade or replace that system in about 4 years to be able to play the top end games at above the baseline settings. My $400 360 improves every year as the developers learn to tweak more power from the limited hardware and is 5 years old... with at least another 2 years to go. I have built and given away an entire computer since getting the 360.

Just a note on that last point... PCs get tweaked to take advantage of hardware too. I can run sayyyyy Crysis on it's lowest settings on a mid-range computer from 10 years and it'll look better than anything that was designed for it at the time (I actually probably -couldn't- run Crysis on it, but the point it there! )

 

[SilverUchiha]

OS: Windows 7 Home 64 bit - $108.99

I dunno if this applies to all community colleges (and colleges in general) but at least at my local community college, if you're a student, you can buy Windows 7 at a HUGE discount price. They encourage you to uninstall when finished, but no one ever does.

OT: I prefer PC over console (until the Wii's controls are improved and game selection is noteworthy). The only reason is FPS games (and all First Person games) are better on PC. I hate dual-analog gameplay. I don't wanna go back to that crap. I could care less about graphics or custom maps or anything else. It's just shitty game controls that FPS games for Xbox and PS3 use. Wii has an opportunity to be better... it just has shitty games that aren't going to utilize those controls well... I am not trying to completely berate Wii... I have one. I'm just disappointed it doesn't live up to what it could be.

 

[dsmops2003]

Ok, so I have this PC which is about 2 years old now, and a while back the video card fried so I decided I'd try out console gaming and bought a PS3 which has given me a LOT of really really fun gaming time. However, I decided it's time to fix my PC which has led me to completely overhaul it.

During this time, there's been a lot of PC vs Console threads and remarks. A particular standout was the "PC Elitism" thread which had an enormous amount of posts. Let me make my opinion clear though, I really like PC gaming and I think it can generally be better than consoles because it's so much more versatile and often more powerful too. That said, console gaming is great because it just works along with any game you buy, it's not very expensive, any peripherals will also work, and there's plenty of console only developers making some great titles.

Still, I think there's 2 main reasons why people will chose console over PC and they are 1. Price 2. Complexity. I've spent several days now studying PC hardware for my upgrade and I've finally made some final decisions. The only thing I'm recycling from my old system for now will be the hard drive, monitor, and speakers. Maybe the case but we'll see.

There is a lot, and I mean a lot of options out there for building a PC. It's taken hours of reading reviews and asking for help on forums and checking out guides to come up with the right parts that are high quality but also not on the expensive side. I think this whole aspect of PC gaming is detrimental to it's popularity with the general masses. Not a bad thing per se, but you can hardly blame people for choosing a super easy to set up console over PC.

Now, price. Here's what I'm getting (mostly from newegg.ca as they had the best prices and selection I could find):
Power: Rosewill Xtreme Series RX750-D-B 750W - $89.99 on sale
Motherboard: MSI P55-GD65 LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - $167.99
CPU: Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - $208.99
RAM: G.SKILL ECO Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) - $126.49
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD5850 1GB - $298.88
Mouse and keyboard: Logitech wireless keyboard and good 8 button (programmable) laser mouse - $108.88
OS: Windows 7 Home 64 bit - $108.99

Total: $1020.22

Or in other words, more than 3x as much as my PS3 not including the taxes and shipping, and also I'm going to have to put all this together and get it up and running on my own which saves money. It seems to me the cost and complexity of PC gaming is quite prohibitive. I can understand then the pride of putting together your own gaming rig but I don't think it really qualifies one to bash on consoles. Consoles are great! Easy to use, easy to set up, cheap, games are guaranteed to work right off the bat... It's a good situation to be in.

So, PC gamers: Be proud of your PC, have fun with it, and accept that there's a great alternative to PC gaming.

A higher clocked dual core chip performs better than a lower clocked quad core chip. You could be spending way less and getting the same results. Also buy a solid state drive for your operating system and your programs. Keep music and other personal data on regular HDDs. Downgrade to XP since you are not going over 4GB ram and save money on 7. You probably alray have a disk from an old pc or from a friend.

AMD Athlon II X2 255 Regor 3.1GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM3 $73.99
MSI GF615M-P33 AM3 NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE Micro ATX AMD Motherboard $54.99
Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model 996659B $124.99
Galaxy 95TGE8HUFEXX GeForce 9500 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card $51.99
OCZ Onyx OCZSSD2-1ONX32G 2.5" 32GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $99.00
CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V $74.99
Logitech MX518 8 Buttons 1 x Wheel USB Wired Optical 1800 dpi Gaming Mouse 39.99.

Thats $520 for a decent gaming computer thats is more useful than a console because you can actually get work done on a pc and not on a console.

Use old case, regular ass keyboard, and get an xp disk from a friend.

 

[xbeaker]

Just a note on that last point... PCs get tweaked to take advantage of hardware too. I can run sayyyyy Crysis on it's lowest settings on a mid-range computer from 10 years and it'll look better than anything that was designed for it at the time (I actually probably -couldn't- run Crysis on it, but the point it there! )

Yeah, but that is pretty much my point.. you can run games on lower end machines.. if you turn the settings down. I have never had to turn down the draw distance and turn off the shadows and the high res textures on the PS3.

That is not tweaking the code to take full advantage of the hardware, that is lowering your expectations to get it to run at an acceptable lever because of your hardware.

Mind you one of my great joys in building a new machine is going back to games that I had to turn the graphics down to play and seeing them again in thier full glory!

 

[Estocavio]

Its a matter of what you want - I have a PC and an 360 and they both serve me when needed

 

[ethaninja]

Yeah but if you stuff up your PS3, you have to get the whole thing replaced. Plus they are static and wont be getting better till the next release. With PC's you can upgrade them bit by bit, slowly working your way up to a monster machine. Besides, it only cost me about 600 bucks for a computer WAY better then any console out there.

 

[Plurralbles]

actually... a decent gaming PC goes for $600.

And how DARE YOU include optional stuff like gaming keyboard and mouse! You have to pay for extra controllers on the PS3! And you can spend $40 to get a decent KB and mouse.

And you didn't have to completely overhaul it, but that computer will STILL last you longer than the PS3. You'll just have to format every once in a while.

Basically, you were biased for the PS3. That PC RAPES the ps3.

 

[TheBritish]

Just a note on that last point... PCs get tweaked to take advantage of hardware too. I can run sayyyyy Crysis on it's lowest settings on a mid-range computer from 10 years and it'll look better than anything that was designed for it at the time (I actually probably -couldn't- run Crysis on it, but the point it there! )

Yeah, but that is pretty much my point.. you can run games on lower end machines.. if you turn the settings down. I have never had to turn down the draw distance and turn off the shadows and the high res textures on the PS3.

That is not tweaking the code to take full advantage of the hardware, that is lowering your expectations to get it to run at an acceptable lever because of your hardware.

Mind you one of my great joys in building a new machine is going back to games that I had to turn the graphics down to play and seeing them again in thier full glory!

I remember playing Far Cry on my old computer at middle settings, then playing it again on a new computer on full settings with the updates they released to make the graphics better and it was really like playing a different game. Had a totally different feel to it now everything wasn't all sharp bright colours

 

[Jamieson 90]

A PC works out as a better investement, Regardless of whether you game or not it is likely you will need some sort of personal computer for browsing the internet or doing school/work projects etc.

A PC also fucntions as a Music and DvD player.

All you need is a few upgrades to make your standard PC a gaming PC so its not that costly. Consoles have all sorts of hidden costs that really add up.

4 controllers at £20 a pop.
All the wires and adapters for HD Tv's etc.
Games at £50 a pop.
Xbox live to play games online, even more expensive if you already have a bog standard PC for browsing the internet so your paying for 2 ISP's.
Any upgrades, bigger harddrive more memory etc.
buying MS points if you don't have any etc.

Consoles are probably easier to use but you are getting seriouasly ripped off with all the little costs that add up etc.

Just to give you an idea of the cost, I could go and buy a Xbox 360 for £180 or a PS3 for £250 and thats after they have been our for a couple of years. You buy 2 controllers and say a couple of games lets say 4 and you have easily spent a lot of money, £180 (xbox 360) + £40 (2 controllers) + £200 (4 games) = £420 or £490 for the PS3.

On the 4 console games if you had the PC equivilant that would save you around £40. If we were to talk about consoles as they just come out then you can easily add £60-70 to the overall cost making the total close to £600 and for every game you buy the cost keeps going up, for every game you buy a PC one would have saved you £10, If you own a console count your console games and then x10 to see how much you could have saved.

Just my thoughts anyway.

 

[Daimes2000]

I don't know how you spent $1000 on an upgrade, as I just built an entirely new rig for that much. What you also don't take into account is long-term reliability. In five years, if the 360 and PS3 are still going strong (as the two companies say they will), then we PC gamers will be enjoying a whole new generation of graphics while the console gamers are stuck with the same mid-range quality. And in ten years, when the PS4 and Xbox 720 are released at a $600+ price point, we can get a new $300 video card and have graphics superior to both consoles.

Then, of course, you have a lot more flexibility with PC gaming in terms of modding and etc. There's a lot of value in both PC and console gaming, if you know where to look. It's all about consumer research and understanding.

This. Also the OP seems to forget that his PC also provides MUCH more power than his PS3. Mind that you can now play games with 1.) more detailed geometry 2.) higher resolution textures and 3.) higher quality shaders and filtering (AA, AF) on 4.) FullHD resolution rather than 720 that is offered by the PS3. Those points relativise the prize of a PC.

 

[REPLAY13]

my rig cost me about £350 (not including monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers) and can play most games on high or max settings.

 

[xbeaker]

actually... a decent gaming PC goes for $600.

And how DARE YOU include optional stuff like gaming keyboard and mouse! You have to pay for extra controllers on the PS3! And you can spend $40 to get a decent KB and mouse.

And you didn't have to completely overhaul it, but that computer will STILL last you longer than the PS3. You'll just have to format every once in a while.

Basically, you were biased for the PS3. That PC RAPES the ps3.

And a decent gaming console goes for $99. If we are going to be fair, people are talking about deals, 'borrowing' a friend's copy of the OS (piracy by any other name..) etc. well you can pick up a used 360 for $99 with a 20gig drive.

 

[razormint21]

PC gaming is definitely more expensive than Console gaming.

-A PS3 wont cost you above 400$, an entry level rig that plays DX10 games on low to mid settings will cost you at least 500$

-A console will definitely last for the generation it's in, and even longer when developers decide to make inferior ports of games in order to make more cash. PC hardware gets obsolete very fast, even if you get high end devices. Especially if you can't make the same dedication and investment by hardware enthusiasts who MAY use the PCs on something else besides gaming.

-PCs are harder to maintain. If you're the sort that makes your own setup, i bet you're aware of how much the maintenance of cooling devices and hard drives cost. And what more of busted components. If you're the type buys ready made game rigs, i bet you know how much those companies charge. If a part of a console gets damaged, it could be repaired or replaced for a reasonable fee. If the fee is not as reasonable, there will less guilt buying a new system. ASSUMING YOURE REALLY A GAMER.

-PCs consume more power than consoles. NO ARGUMENT.

-Consoles are accessible to anyone. Games can even have multiplayer on the spot. PCs need to have LAN and routers set up. While this is easy for most, we're talking about costs right?

-Game companies had made it so that online gaming in consoles is as intuitive to the PC. The system of pay to play is no hassle really.

-PC games are cheaper than most console games, true. And you can even argue that PC games are easy to pirate compared to PS3 games, but so could 360 and Wii games. (no bias on this, kinda just added this for completeness)

In conclusion, Console gaming is definitely cheaper. Im not saying that PC gaming is inferior. Im just saying that, if you're not as rich as enthusiasts or as motivated, but still love playing video games, you can still opt for console gaming. Why force a hard choice on yourself eh?

 

[xbeaker]

PC gaming is definitely more expensive than Console gaming.

-A PS3 wont cost you above 400$, an entry level rig that plays DX10 games on low to mid settings will cost you at least 500$

-A console will definitely last for the generation it's in, and even longer when developers decide to make inferior ports of games in order to make more cash. PC hardware gets obsolete very fast, even if you get high end devices. Especially if you can't make the same dedication and investment by hardware enthusiasts who MAY use the PCs on something else besides gaming.

-PCs are harder to maintain. If you're the sort that makes your own setup, i bet you're aware of how much the maintenance of cooling devices and hard drives cost. And what more of busted components. If you're the type buys ready made game rigs, i bet you know how much those companies charge. If a part of a console gets damaged, it could be repaired or replaced for a reasonable fee. If the fee is not as reasonable, there will less guilt buying a new system. ASSUMING YOURE REALLY A GAMER.

-PCs consume more power than consoles. NO ARGUMENT.

-Consoles are accessible to anyone. Games can even have multiplayer on the spot. PCs need to have LAN and routers set up. While this is easy for most, we're talking about costs right?

-Game companies had made it so that online gaming in consoles is as intuitive to the PC. The system of pay to play is no hassle really.

-PC games are cheaper than most console games, true. And you can even argue that PC games are easy to pirate compared to PS3 games, but so could 360 and Wii games. (no bias on this, kinda just added this for completeness)

In conclusion, Console gaming is definitely cheaper. Im not saying that PC gaming is inferior. Im just saying that, if you're not as rich as enthusiasts or as motivated, but still love playing video games, you can still opt for console gaming. Why force a hard choice on yourself eh?

- Your girlfriend will never kick you off the Xbox because she has to check her farm.