PC vs Console Gaming: Which Is Actually More Expensive? – PseudoSavant

if you buy 10 thats £250 for the PC games and £400 for the Console games.

A playstation 3 will cost you £300

A higher end 8800GT graphics card will cost you £150.

It will play all the current games including crysis, Call of duty 4 etc at full at a resoultion of 1680 X 1050. In three years it may not be so great but it would still be usable.
Im not sure why you say the 8800 GT isnt that good because its one of the best value for money cards you can get and has the performance of some of the even higher end cards. since the xbox 360 graphics card is a few years old, its more liekly that its graphical performace would actually be inferior to a 8800GT. but hey, thats just a guess lol.

2GB RAM of ram will cost you £30

Some of your items in your new PC are kind of uneccessary and its seems like your deliberately trying to spend money on the really high end parts and parts that you dont need.

aslo your assumptions are a bit extreme. you don’t need to replace the pc every three years. im not sure what the $250 worth of upgrades are.

and the PS2 is still one of the top selling systems because its so cheap and still has great games being realeased on it lol.

so in my country PC gaming is a lot cheaper

THAT IS THE QUESTION.

There is too low amount of games on the PC, all the good games are on consols now.

Plus, you dont have to wait for GTA IV to come to PC.

I have a PC and will probably upgrade when GTA IV comes to it. Right now I play old consoel games through emulators, but I would love to have a PS3 or X360 I just havent gotten to it yet.

I just wish that the PC-only guys see through there eyes that the consoles are not “evil” or “stupid” etc…..

I think you have some great experience and knowledge. But your ability to grasp an argument is somewhat rudimentary. I suggest prepping for the LSAT or take some classes in pre-law, or just practice some understanding before trying to demonstrate credibility and intelligence.

I get that you’re a smart guy, and that you know your tech. you’ve made that very clear to everyone. But at the end of the day, you’ve made a whole mess out of nothing.

The author is writing from a mass consumer POV, not yours. Get that, and this argument becomes for you the frivolous mess it’s been for me and the rest of us.

Good luck in your quest to “get it”.

I read this article and most following responses because I was on the fence about my own gaming choices, but after reading all this, I can say hands down my mind is made up. As a man with resources, and IT experience…

I have never seen so many self-proclaimed intelligently superior people (I am referring to some of the repliers who toot the PC route) who just missed the point of your article entirely and then proceed to berate so negatively. And because of this, just by personality default,

I’m going with the console, for not only is your analysis sound under the logical PREMISES you set at the very beginning of your article,

but I’m so sick of stupidity.

Excellent work on this and thanks for attempting to present some factual comparison. Granted, some items on your list do not apply to my situation, but i think I’m bright enough to adjust your comparison to my situation and figure out the result on my own. Thanks for doing the leg-work.

Elliot

Its too much of a hassle for me. Apparently it is too much of a hassle for you to convert it to html, so it seems we are stuck in a an Infinite Loop with no facts, just conjectures, assumptions, and personal experiences.

Goodbye

Speaking to the type of games people value, I think that a huge part of why WoW is so big is that it can be played on regular computers (even average laptops). I think the upgrade cycle is a bit much for the “average” consume to swallow.

Going back to the hardware, it is true that if you need a higher end PC for some other reason, the “cost” to PC game would be lower. You could also say that issues that could prevent the other usages would carry a higher cost as well. If I had a high end PC to do my work, what would I do if a new video card/ram/cpu/etc upgrade made it inoperable?

Anyway, all of this would be very situation dependent however.

Personally, I enjoy playing various MMOs, The Sims, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 and a plethora of other RTS titles. Not only do I get more utility out of these games than typical console games, I also find myself upgrading less. Going back to your sunk cost example, this actually raises the cost in terms of prospective updates. Right now I’m running a 8800GTX with 2 500gb HDDs on a RAID 0 with about 4 gbs of RAM and a 2.4ghz core 2duo CPU. This cost about $1600 when it was all said and done. I’m also running a 40″ Samsung HDTV that doubles as a well.. TV. However, I also develop on this machine for work and the TV is extremely helpful.

I do not see myself upgrading much anytime soon considering my needs. When all the costs are factored in, the implicit costs actually outweigh my explicit costs. So, in conclusion I say that cost is personal. To the original poster, I admire the objective analysis of the explicit costs of consoles and PCs. To some of the comments here, it’s ignorant to assume that everyone gets the same gaming experience on every console.

Yoda?!

Anyway alpha, you are engaging in willful ignorance. You are trying to snipe Paul’s points about PCs but most of the time you are actually just re-enforcing them. In the meantime you accept (unseen) his financial analysis of console gaming, which you should really reject, because you don’t agree with his methods or assumptions.

In toto, you’re coming across as kind of a fanatic, and you’re giving PC gamers a bad name. You should probably conduct your own analysis and post it somewhere that console fanatics can spam your comments with overzealous retorts.

BTW, for most/all people (you know people that actually have applications installed) it takes more than 3-4 hours to reinstall Windows and get all of your stuff setup again (applications, bookmarks, settings, etc).

You really shouldn’t be posting on the internet if you have no clue how to break up a spreadsheet and convert to html or just convert in all its big glory (makes no difference). And as far as a financial analysis, the verdict is still out on whether you should be commenting on it as well.

“I do not have these issues you have with games not working, system errors etc.” Oh really? But you say this IN THE VERY NEXT SENTENCE “I have had my fair sure of crashes and BSOD but 90% they were User error or hardware failure.” Who cares what the source of the errors is? As long as I have to fix them, it is a hassle to me

Yes I have had my fair share(spelling correction) of errors, back in the period between 95 and 2001. Recently I have had maybe 1 or 2 (in the past 7 years or so). And yes they were user error most all of them. But I didn’t let that stop me, learned how to prevent these problems and finally mastered the PC software side. I am sure anyone with a degree in this field would be able to do the same, or just 5 years experience or so. But again this article isn’t about hassles.

“You list just over half a dozen hassles (some of which would be repeatedly happen) but then say “No hassle”. Apparently your definition of “hassle” changes towards then of your paragraph. The best part is that you admit it will only last 6-12 months, but when you say it, you act like 6-12 months is a long time.”

This is because I prefer to reformat and reinstall windows every 6 months to a year- this is my personal preference – but in total we are talking 3-4 hours per year maintenance – and install. If you consider that a hassle, then apparently any second of your precious time that is lost is considered a hassle. Clicking a few mouse buttons must be overwhelming … But again we are not talking about which is more of a hassle.

““(1) If you build your computer correctly, (2) flash bios, update (3) drivers, then you should be good for a year or two provided you (4) occasionally clean the registry, (5) defrag HD, and run (6) virus scan” just some more hassles.”

And again I will point you to the article we are actually talking about here..
“PC vs Console Gaming: Which Is Actually More Expensive?”

It is not called “which is more of a hassle?” So redirect and project if you want, but the original argument still stands. PC are more cost effective in the long run then consoles. Prove otherwise you cannot.

I already stated several times that consoles are more convenient then PC’s – But again, this has nothing to do with the article at hand.

I’m sorry, but you can’t properly show what is going on in the formulas in from a spreadsheet if I just show it in HTML. IMO, if you don’t even have Excel installed, you really shouldn’t make comments on a financial analysis.

“I have been building/repairing/diagnosing computers for 25 years.”

That is about the same for me.

“I do not have these issues you have with games not working, system errors etc.” Oh really? But you say this IN THE VERY NEXT SENTENCE “I have had my fair sure of crashes and BSOD but 90% they were User error or hardware failure.” Who cares what the source of the errors is? As long as I have to fix them, it is a hassle to me.

“So I would argue that while you find it a hassle and time consuming to play video games on a PC, I don’t have any of these hassles and it isn’t really all that time consuming either. For Cod4 I simply clicked on install game – for the 5 mins that the game was installing I downloaded all patches and installed them in about 2 mins – and presto I was done. MS auto updates my OS when needed, I spent about an hour + installing windows – flashing bios– and updating drivers when I initially built my rig a few weeks back – That was the biggest hassle – but except for the occasional video card driver update I am set for the next 6 months to a year. No hassle, very little time spent.”

You list just over half a dozen hassles (some of which would be repeatedly happen) but then say “No hassle”. Apparently your definition of “hassle” changes towards then of your paragraph. The best part is that you admit it will only last 6-12 months, but when you say it, you act like 6-12 months is a long time.

“Obviously your experiences has differed from mine when dealing with PC games, but I would argue that is due to User error/incompatibility/ or Hardware failure – In my experience that accounts for 90% of the problems.”

Again, as long as I have to fix it, it is a hassle. I don’t care if it is somehow my fault. And how does saying that it is an incompatibility or hardware failure make it any better? That is exactly the problem, you just admitted it. You know everything in Iraq is going great. It is the war that is the problem….

“Also as you probably know, MS sells their xboxes at a loss.”

Actually, they don’t anymore, and haven’t for a while. The Xbox 1 was notoriously a loss leader, but not the 360.

“Once you factor in these then the PC becomes much more cost effective” the cost of the Xbox 360 does not affect the cost effectiveness of the PC. Their costs are independent of each other.

“(1) If you build your computer correctly, (2) flash bios, update (3) drivers, then you should be good for a year or two provided you (4) occasionally clean the registry, (5) defrag HD, and run (6) virus scan” just some more hassles.