| Adinnieken said: Please, show me the numbers that prove that PC gaming is less expensive and a better value over a 10 year period. I beg you! Prove me wrong, since you obviously know more than I do. I will GLADLY capitulate to anyone who can prove to me that PC gaming is less expensive and a better value over a 10 year period. Just do the math and show me the numbers. |
The first gaming PC I ever built was in 2001 and it was used by me in high school. Because I used it work school work and games, I never considered it to be solely a gaming device. Then as I upgraded, I took this system to university. Notice the pattern - the desktop PC I use for work and games. Now I also use it to work from home some days because I find it easier on the eyes to be productive on a 37 inch LCD PC monitor than doing work on my laptop. To me a desktop PC serves as a universal productivity device that happens to be an awesome gaming machine with a quick GPU upgrade. I would still own a desktop regardless since it's SO much faster and cheaper than any laptop.
Regardless of the above whether you use a PC for school/work + games or not, as others have mentioned to you, the time prior to 2008 was a time of exponential increases in CPU hardware. Since then everything changed. A core i7 920 cost $284 in November 2008 and that CPU overclocks to 3.9-4.0ghz on stock voltage on a $30 Cooler Master 212+ Evo. That CPU @ 4.0ghz will not bottleneck you even if you have a $500 HD7970Ghz/GTX680. Prior to this time, CPU speed increased roughly 2x every 18 months. This stopped after Core i7 920 @ 4.0ghz. Even Core i7-3770K @ $325 today overclocked is not that much faster than an i7 920 @ 4.0ghz. So that means since 2008, there was no reason at all to upgrade your CPU+motherboard+RAM. My CPU upgrades have been very affordable over the years since I buy bundles at MicroCenter and resell them 2 years later with minimal losses.
The only cash outlay expected was SSD (if you wanted to benefit from other things you do on the PC like browing the interent with 100 tabs open in Firefox, opening documents/multi-tasking, using Adobe Photoshop, etc.) and a GPU. If all you did was use the PC for games, you don't even need an SSD upgrade if you are that cost conscious. The more games you purchase, the cheaper PC gaming becomes. PC Perspective has a good chart (although I don't agree with $150 x 2 penalty for consoles for accessories as that's optional):
Also, you are assigning no value at all to the fact that PC building happens to be a hobby like modding cars, or decorating your house. It's not simple a comparison of $xx on a PS4 vs. $yy on a PC. Some people get a satisfaction out of building their own system, customizing it, choosing parts they want. For them, it's fun. This article explains this aspects well:
http://kotaku.com/5944356/its-time-for-me-to-be-a-pc-gamer-again
Finally as I said, you are not assigning any value to superior graphics on the PC when you pick and choose superior components. If you just want PS4 level of graphics, you can easily build a PC like that in 2013 and it will last a long time. Here is something you didn't realize, if you don't have a PC, you have to do work on something if you are a professional and for many of us that means either buying a more expensive laptop or trying to find a job where the employer gives us a free laptop. Thus it's also not as simple as looking at it as Console costs $xx and PC costs $yy and thus desktop PC is more expensive (even though it's not true based on price of games along over 8 years).
If you don't need a PC for work and prefer laptops over desktops, I could see how owning a console + laptop + desktop PC could get expensive. The main point I wanted to make is NOT that it's cheaper to own a PC over a console but that your cost difference is exaggerated. If PC gaming is significantly more expensive, than the gaming experience is superior as well. You can't have it both ways. For example, if you wanted the same level of PS3/360 graphics, well HD4850 can still provide you this to this day and it cost $199 in 2008. The same will be true next year as as a $200 HD7950 should easily last 5 years if all you want is similar level of graphics to PS4.
