You have gotten away with breaking the following rule far too often this week, not any longer.

Backseat Moderating in the forums will also be treated as spamming, as it will derail the topic and conversation of the thread. You are not a moderator, so if you do feel like a user is breaking the rules, report them and move on. Let the mod team handle moderation.

• Examples of backseat moderating include statements like "Reported." "You should be banned for that." "I give you a week tops." "I've been banned for less." and the like.

I didn't bother to read anything leading up to optical drives being any sort of factor in the console or PC debate.

In short, optical drives are unnecessary in PCs for anything beyond legacy software that is no longer supported by the developer. Yes, developers still give consumers the option of buying installation discs in many, but not all instances, but pre-recorded commercial media remains the primary purpose for any optical drive in a PC. 

The only reason why current gen consoles still have optical drives is differences between PC and console markets. Consoles are consumer devices and are still tethered to physical media although this is right on the verge of changing. It's simply a matter of when the consumers are ready for that shift.

Microsoft effectively tried to force that change prematurely (originally, retail disc copies were essentially installation discs that could not be freely used by any user) and that idea went down like a lead balloon as console consumers saw that as an end to the secondary/used game market. Sony retained the old model and Microsoft was forced to change policy. Both offered the same direct download options (Microsoft's was more generous in allowing family sharing among separate consoles until they had the flip flop), but it was the retail copy policy that made the difference in the minds of consumers. 

Even now, with the advantages direct download offer over optical/retail copies, many consumers still cling to retail copies because of the used game market with a smaller niche attached to collecting media.

By contrast, the PC consumer has already accepted a DD market.

I don't entirely buy the cheaper games argument for PCs. Sure, one can exclusively buy games during Steam's numerous sales and never pay retail price, but no one's going to argue that the crazy sales are only for old games, or games past the initial release period. Whenever I want to play a big title on PC on the day of release, I have a hard time recalling ever receiving anything more than a 10% discount at best.

But, PC is great for building up a large library of games (more than one will ever have time to play as any big Steam user will attest to). 

That said, I've bought stacks of games for console at a small percentage of the original retail price. Inventory sales, re-issued discounted games, used games, even digital store sales allow consumers to do the same thing on consoles. 

I had never considered totalling the cost of console hardware with PC hardware to determine value, but If one had $1000 to spend on game hardware it would mean splitting that budget if more than one piece of hardware was purchased. 

If PC was my primary gaming platform, I would rather spend $400 on a video card than a console. Of course, each console has platform exclusives making the decision dependent upon individual consumer game interests. There are games in each generation that I couldn't play on even a $10,000+ workstation when they were released for obvious reasons. 

The problem on PC isn't anywhere near as big as it has been in the past whilst console games have gradually become as nearly as buggy as PC games. It's at the point where some console games are actually worse than the PC version. Just look at Skyrim on PS3 vs PC. The problems on PS3 never got fixed whilst on PC, if the devs don't fix it you normally have a user mod that fix it for you.

It's also not true that console games get patched faster. It depends on the game and developer but if the developer brings out a patch for consoles and PC at the same time, the console versions need to be approved by the console manufacturer whilst no such bureacracy exists on PC.

Now start buying games on Steam and the more you buy the more you'll be saving over overpriced console games :D

In fact with what i have saved for buying games on steam, i could buy a PS4 and an X1...