Price.

Let's consider that I buy the latest and greatest console on day one and it costs $700.  For that initial investment, on day one thru day three thousand, six hundred and fifty two, I can buy the latest and greatest game with no additional hardware purchase required.  I don't need the latest and greatest CPU.  I don't need the latest and greatest GPU.  I don't even need to add more memory.  The console I bought ten years ago will play any new game I buy for it.

Let's say 10 years ago I bought a PC capable of playing Halo: CE.  The top-end PC with a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 w/1GB of RAM, a 200GB HDD, and a GeForce4 Ti4200 w/128MB RAM.  It costs me $3,500.  2008 comes around, I really want to play Crysis.  Well, my CPU is too small.  I might have enough system memory, but I'm at the minimum.  I really should have twice that.  In addition, my video card is woefully inadequate.  The problem is that my motherboard doesn't support the very minimum CPU and my BIOS can't be updated to support it.  So, I'm stuck buying a new PC. 

So, not only am I out the price for my top of the line in 2002 PC, but there really isn't much I can reuse.  Now the good news is that while  the top of the line PC is roughly the same price as my top of the line in 2002 PC, I get a LOT more PC for that money.   Which is cool!  I'm sporting a dual core CPU, 4 GB of RAM, two 250GB SATA HDDs in a RAID 0 array, and a 512MB NVidia GPU.  Sweet, now I can play Crysis.  Two games, and I'm only out about $6,080.

PC Gaming is making so much sense now.  It's so worth it and we haven't even gotten to Skyrim!l!

FUCK!!!  I need a Quad Core and and a 1GB GPU just to meet the recommended level?  Son of a bitch!

Well, this time we are going to get the creme de la creme.  This will last FOREVER.  Certainly through Gen8 of the consoles.

I7-3960X OC'd at 4.2GHz, 2-NVidia GTX 680s w/2GB of GDDR memory, 3TBs of SATA3 HDD space, 32GBs Quad Channel DDR3 memory and a Blu-Ray drive...FUCK!!!  I GIVE UP!!!!  $5200!!!  This.  This is why console gaming is better than PC gaming. 

Regardless of whether your console survives for 5 or 10 years, your initial investment of $700 is the same at the end of that period.  There is no need to upgrade the hardware to play a game.  The hardware you purchased on day one will play a game you purchase 10 years later.  And if a game does require next generation hardware does come out, your initial investment is still cheaper than the top-of-the-line PC.

The value of  console gaming cannot be matched by PC gaming.  Sure, you get top of the line graphics, but at what cost?    I agree and understand that my example is slightly over the top, but the reality is that the prices aren't all that off.  And while one might be able to upgrade individual components for less, it still costs money.  More money than that initial investment for a console.

PC Gaming is not a cheap endeavor, especially if you want to be able to keep up with the latest games and best level of graphics.  Console gaming gives you the most bang for your buck no matter how you factor in the costs, and no matter how you justify your PC purchase. 

Well the games are definitely cheaper, but you're definitely right about something.

If you're going to buy a PC you most likely won't get a cheap ass one, because if you did you'd need to replace ALL parts in a few years. So you're going to get a more expensive one that is more future proof and yet after some years you're angry that you can't run the games at full details and you buy a new CPU because on its own it's not that expensive..... and then you buy more because the GPU now sucks compared to the new CPU and so on.

So yeah PC gaming is not really cheap. Though it can be worth it.

I bought a completely new PC in 2009 for 700€ ($900 incl. tax). Because Skyrim didn't run as good I bought a new GPU (GTX 580) for 200€ ($260) even though my old one (4890HD) was still pretty good. Now I'm also buying more RAM for 35€ ($45). But then I'm thinking that my CPU (E8400 dual core overclocked to 3.6GHz) sucks compared to the other parts and even though I don't plan to replace it, I probably will next year or in two years.

And obviously the power consumption is much higher, which doesn't help in these times.

Valid point, but at the same time the actual games is where you save the money I guess, if you do decide to be the sleazebag that thinks industry owes you something, you will proceed to pirate every new release that hits the platform, being on PC it's a lot easier as compared with maybe 360 - fair enough, you have to modify your 360 for it, which you can easily, but then you run a high risk of it getting the banhammer every time you get on live.

If you do decide to take the legal route, the games (Well in EU at least) can be obtained for much cheaper through Steam, with the constant sales and like the Steam sale last week - which featured Borderlands 2 & Dishonored at £15 amongst many other titles it's a pretty cheap endeavor. Also the precision of keyboard & mouse is VERY hard to beat with the controller, along with the much better graphics due to more progressed hardware etc. But as an initial investment console is so much easier, and with not having the hassle to upgrade anything further to get the latest games at their best possible (on the set console) is pretty easy entertaining notion.

First of all, I played Halo CE not even on a P4 and it ran full speed. It's called you go AMD, and it costed nowhere near 3500 dollars so that's full of shit.

Second of all, why would you get a 3960X for gaming(that shit is NOT for gaming, that's for powerful personal workstations for certain professionals that want to work at home) when you can pick up an Ivy Bridge or a cheaper Sandy Bridge CPU? a Core i5 is perfectly fine and i7 is pretty much overkill unless you use your PC for things other than gaming. Not to mention anybody who SLI 680s are fucking idiots when cross fire scales better, even if you want 100% PhysX support, you'd only get maybe 1 or a 690 then get a cheaper Nvidia card for PhysX, not to mention you are suppose to get SSDs which have dropped in price by A LOT recently to Raid-0 2 of them and nobody buys a fucking blu ray drive unless the person is a complete idiot. You also don't need a Quad core to run Skyrim, 1GB GPU is so common that you can find one for like 50 bucks or less, that's how much I sold each of my old 4890s for months back, and people I sold them to are very happy with those.

I had a 360, I still have a PS3, and I have a Wii. Oh and recently a Wii U, if I'm a real gamer that enjoys games in general, the hardware total is definitely not cheap for console gaming, especially counting the added cost of XBL Gold I had to pay for 3 years which added another 100 USD to it. Unless you have an absolute end all console gaming box that runs everything from all companies with no hidden cost like Gold, the price argument is dumb especially if you've been using XBL Gold for the past 7 years.

Finally, who the fuck uses a PC for pure gaming only, I usually run a game while having other shit going on at the same time, you get a PC for multi-tasking goodness, all your emails and social networks are all in those browser tabs and you'd have access to them immediately.

That's... not even remotely correct.

A $700 PC you buy at the same time as that $700 console will run all PC games through the exact same time period as your console. Not at maximum settings... but at greater then console settings.

damn, still running an E8400? O_O; That's impressive, Core 2s bottleneck like bitches.

Unless you pirate games, PS2, and WII games too with emulators.
I don't do this, but obviously, that will skew the favor. But ofcourse the xbox and wii are easy to pirate too, but a bigger pain.

PC gaming is more expensive, however your numbers are skewed. I mean I've spent probably around 2200 dollars on PC's built 2 computers over that span. I gave the old one to my brother and he can play basically every game witcher 2, etc, at low-medium settings 1080p which still and has looked better than current gen consoles since forever.

My current system can run crysis, hitman, witcher 2 on a tweak between highest and second highest. Plus since I do Solidworks CAD engineering I'd have to have it anyways... but obviously not everyone does solidworks.

Anyone that buys 2 680 gtx's has money where money isn't that big of a deal for them. The 660 ti will probably be more powerful, than all next gen consoles, just like the 8800 gt was when it came out. I'd say face value PC gaming is double the cost of consoles.

But at the same token, you'd probably buy a computer anyways which is 500-600 dollars. If you add 500-600 slightly more than a console, you get a machine that blows away current consoles. However power consumption can cost more.

Obviously if you must have MAX anti-aliasing, MAX on games that can't really be run efficiently yet, etc, it'll cost you fortune. And your stats are correct.

But, I still own all 3 consoles too :P.

But at the same time you likely didn't bother enough for these games or you'd have already bought them at launch.
I would never wait half a year for a game I really care about, but it's nice nonetheless in case you've missed them.
You could buy them used however, which isn't that easy for PC games.
And new games on Steam are always more expensive than at retailers... in Europe at least. (Only talking about PC games here)

I'd hope that the next consoles will offer optional keyboard & mouse controls for all games (at least in singleplayer). I know PS3 theoretically supports it already but only UT3 makes use of it. Sony and MS should play the pioneers here and introduce them into their games.

So, saving 742% on hardware isn't worth spending 33% more for a game.  Got it!

I'm not suggesting that somewhere in your response you aren't agreeing with me, I'm just saying that saving 33% per game versus spending potentially 742% more for hardware doesn't really make sense.

For the cost of the computer I priced out at the end, a person could buy 75 full-priced console games.  If you divide up those 75 games over the past 7 years, that's over 10 games per year.

The amount saved on 75 games ($1500), just barely pays for the initial investment you decribed above.  The problem is that over that same 7 year period it's unlikely that you'd be able to play a brand new game on a 7 year old computer. 
 
Note: I'm making the assumption that a full-priced PC game is $40.  Mileage may vary by where you purchase your game and whether you purchase it on sale.   

Actually to me the most single reason why console gaming is better (well was before patching was allowed to happen), was the fact the game worked out of the box due to compadibility. Which made it easy for non technical people to use.

PC game depending on your hardware etc.. could crash or not play at all. Non technical people at this point would get frustrated.

Saying all that some of my favourite franchises are on PC haha.