If Japan every goes big into PC then it is a serious discussion for me. For now, consoles get ~90% of games I want, while PC gets ~30% I want. Price and graphics are secondary to playing the games I want to play.

It is common due to bad setups. They need to be tied in with the cpu thus the address should be 2^n (base 2). Laptops just throw in more becauase bigger numbers sell to consumers who don't know much.

I do consoles simply because the graphics are good enough and honestly I want to support the gaming industry. There is just to much temptation to pirate any game I can on PC. It's just way to easy to do. So on consoles it's  much harder  and I don't trust anyone opening my PS4 including me to mod it.

So it just works out better that way. Now with steam being released and me being a lot more fiancialy stable then I was before I think I'll go back to PC gaming next gen will see. 

I did study in electrical engineering, taught myself various programming languages starting with Beginners All-pupose Symbolic Instruction Code on the commodore 64, then moved to more "full featured" languages over the years, these days I mostly deal with objective C.

However, my argument is sound and is logical and I shall expand on my reasoning for why.

Is a console running a full featured, multi-tasking OS that has dozens of services running in the background and taskbar?
Are their games graphically at the same or better level as PC games?

If you answered "No" to both of those questions, then you are correct.

Yes a console can pull off better pictures with the hardware it has, only because it does less of everything, resolution, framerates, textures, lighting, shadows, Anti-Aliasing, Texture filtering, A.I and character counts, geometry, OS, API's, Drivers, various services like Steam... etc'.

Over time console developers sacrifice one thing in their game to bolster another.
Lets take the jump from Halo 3 to Halo Reach, which was a fairly dramatic graphics difference really.
Bungie removed: Tessellation on the water, triple buffering and introduced a few new tricks like impostering and texture streaming, the end result is, despite some relatively drastic reductions in potential image quality, Halo: Reach graphically looks better, why?

Because with the newly freed up resources from the removal of the older techniques and additions of new techniques they increased the poly counts of characters, increased the draw distance (Thanks to impostering), used used better lighting and textures.

The console isn't "doing more" the load is still relatively the same between Halo 3 and Halo: Reach from a hardware perspective, but with Reach the developers just allocated resources better so that they were in places where you get the most bang-for-your-buck.

On the PC, you get "The lot". - No cutbacks, just the improvements, which is why in general PC games demand higher requirements than the console equivalent.
Actuall Efficiency only gets you so far anyway, prime example is "Mantle". - I get no performance boosts despite the API's low-level console-like optimisations, low-end PC's can see massive increases.

Pot calling the kettle black.
I could have probably explained my reasoning somewhat better, so see above, but do try and stress less, you will go grey earlier in life otherwise.

The point is, PC's get performance increases as they get older.



Look at the increase Dirt 3 got over time.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6393/amds-holiday-plans-cat1211-new-bundle

Not just bad set-up's, but triple-channel DDR configurations aswell, which was fairly common for X58 users, it made sense to get 3x4Gb kits or 3x2Gb kits for those systems.

Well, you have certainly stirred up some people with this thread it seems. Sorry you have to deal with that. It thought your points were perfectly clear and not offensive to the PC gamers but I guess I missed something judging by the responses.

In any event, I have a very high end rig that I could game on. I need if for work because I do intensive tasks that require a good PC. I have built, I don't know, maybe 5 total over the years and I always put a little extra umph in them just for good measure even though it is more than I need. But I do not game on them. It is tied to my office where I spend an inordinate time working and the last thing I want to do is sit there when I am gaming. I am not going to move my PC to the living room when I want to game. In addition, I just do not want to think about compatibility or adjusting settings and things like that. I can appreciate those that do but I just want to sit on my bed or in a comfy chair in the living room and throw in a game then play.

So for gaming I have always chose consoles. The ease of which works for me. :)

Ikr??????

I think the problem was that I actually did the stupid thing of putting console, PC and VS in the same sentence. I think my biggest problem with gaming on a PC is actually using a mouse and keyboard. Yh yh I know I can use a 360 controller or if i want to bad enough a DS3. But I am just lazy.

You don't have to have 2^n, you just need to have matched sets of RAM.  For typical dual channel RAM you can use matched pairs, so 2 * 4GB + 2 * 2GB for 12GB.  Lots of PCs have this.  For tripple channel RAM (older Intels) you would use 3 * 4GB.  You can'd do 2^n on tripple channel RAM.

As for the GTX 760, I didn't mean that alone is just OK, I meant the $1000 build overall is just OK.  An i5, a $60 motherboard, 500GB HDD, $50 case, etc. are just OK, not great.

Generally for myself I build this kind of PC:

~$330 CPU
~$300 GPU
~$150 RAM
~$100 HDD
~$200 SSD
~$170 Motherboard
~$80 PSU
~$100 case
~$100 cooling
~$60 mouse
~$60 keyboard
~$100 Windows

Total: ~$1750

Why do I spend additional $500~$1000 every 2 years?

1) Sometimes for upgrades.  I like to keep up with technology, especially I program GPUs.
2) Mouse gets worn out.
3) Parts break from time to time.

I used to have Velociraptor drives in RAID0 (so $500 for that), then later switched to a bigger drive + SSD.
I used to have PCIe RAID controller with a larger RAID5 array in my PC, and later switched to a Drobo.  Costs pile on.

But the build is not "ok", it is very good for gaming (what game would that struggle to play at max seetings, 1080p 60fps?). Compared to being the best PC? Then yes, it is ok, but we are talking about gaming not raw power.

Again, your costs are not gaming related, but if anything drive the fact that a PC can be used for a lot more than gaming e.g. work.

Console will always be my preferred choice, Gaming on a 48" HDTV with the comforts of a couch beats sitting behind an office desk, staring at a 25" monitor looking like i'm still at the office xD

And honestly no1 places a big screen on a desk, so no contest there, also couch > office chair. 

Hence "the best gaming experience on offer" isn't just looking at specs, its also looking at ease and comfort.

I work at a Development studio in Japan, so the last thing i want to do home from work, is having to set up a PC game...

Maybe if your opening post was clearer. Please, give a thesis statement for this thread. What is its motivation? I still don't understand. You are making some type of analysis of the discourse found in the PC gaming vs. Console gaming argument, leave a lot of what makes PC gaming appealing out of the picture, and then expect PC gamers to not mention these things? You assume that these extra features are so insignificant they don't relate to real-world costs which make a 1:1 comparison obsolete, and then instead of arguing my point tell me I don't understand the purpose of this thread. So please clarify, what are you trying to do with this thread? You say you don't want to compare consoles and PC's, but yet you do in the opening post. Your intentions don't seem to align with your explication of your thoughts apparently, but maybe you can clarify. 

As far as I am concerned I addressed all of your main points: 

"shoudn't it only be fair to compare a PC that cost just as much and will give you the exact same things in the box?"

No, I explained why. 

"Cause at the end of the day the real comparison is what you can get for your money. If you are comparing the performance of something that costs 4 times more than a console then doesn't that defeat the purpose?"

Let me just change your quote a little bit and tell me if you agree. 

"Cause at the end of the day the real comparison is what you can get for your money. If you are comparing the performance of something (PS4) that costs 2 times more than a PS3 then doesn't that defeat the purpose?" 

Yet people still compare the PS4 to the PS3 when deciding whether or not to upgrade yet. Why? To show how much more they get from the PS4 for its $350 than they do with the PS3 for its $180. How about the PS4/Xbone vs. Wii U? Same thing. But like I said, the arguments you see are contained in a much more encompassing argument and don't preclude themselves to a comparison of screenshots. There are many other reasons for buying a gaming PC and they are considered in the mind of the PC gamer arguing for why they personally believe it is better (sorry you can't make this argument objective, it is by its nature subjective.) 

I addressed all of your main points except this one:

"so if a PC gamer is going to argue with a console gamer, shouldn't they at least consider that that console gamer is most likely not willing or interested in doing all the things that you may have to do to get a great PC rig at the afore mentioned $350-$400"

as I find the last one legitimate.