Ok kids. I'm over 40 years old. Unlike 99.99999999999% of you, I grew up with a full arcade in my house. What the fuck is that? A full-size slate billiard table, a regulation ping-pong table, two pinball machines, six upright arcade cabinets, and a foosball table. I was played Pong on an original Pong console when they were new and popular. I've gamed on just about every home console available in the 1980's. I grew up on text adventure games that were hand programmed, even programming some myself. The majority of my gaming pre-teens was done on a Commodore 64. If there was a game available on the C64, I likely played it. In my late teens, that became PC gaming. My first PC purchase, as a teenager, was for Space Quest. I was buying PCs and upgrading computers to play games long before the majority of you were sperm in your daddy's testicle.

The cost of PC Gaming far out strips the vale of console gaming. You may be able to mitigate the costs, you may be able to offset some of those costs, you can deny it, and you can justify it all you want. It doesn't change the fact AT ALL that dollar for dollar, quid for quid, ruble for ruble, the best value you can get in gaming is via a console. Even if you include the cost of Xbox LIVE to play games on an Xbox 360.

Unless having a powerful computer is a necessity of your education, career, or business, there is no reasonable justification for frequently upgrading your PC or buying new computers in and effort to play games. It's fiscally less responsible than buying a new car every three years.

Less games, add up the value of all the PC hardware you purchased for gaming over the past 12 years, and then the value of your console hardware. Compare.

The more gaming you do on consoles, the lower your PC computing needs are (for the average person), therefore the lower your costs in general. The more PC gaming you do, the higher those costs and the more frequently you spend it.

Bottom-line, if you want more bang for your buck, there is no better value for gaming than the console.

Console gaming is better because its trendy and society thinks its cooler then PC gaming :P

But really the exclusives are nice.

Oh. Over 40 huh. That changes things. I would recommend a cheap(er) tablet and console for people over 40. Heck i'll even recommend the stripped down red wii only offered to us Canadians (i don't know why us). Can't wait to be 40 and overcome my desire for $5,000 computers.

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This is when you buy a PC at the wrong time.
My  PC can run Battlefield 3 on Ultra Settings with ease - I bought it 2 maybe nearly 3 years ago.
It did cost me ~ 1000€ and had the best stuff(from the normal price segments) that was available.Of course i didn't buy my PC in a local store.I bought the pieces and put them together myself.
This PC isn't nowhere near maxed out - I will have no problems with Games 2-3 years INTO the Next Gen.After that Multiplats will probably start to really get to look better and new console hardware will be used efficient.
In my case i don't care - I will buy Next Gen anyway but if you're a smart PC Only User you have to pick the right time to buy the stuff.
There is this time in a Console Cycle where you can be sure there won't be coming anything out in the near future that will make you angry cause you wasted money on weak hardware.Its all about recherce and a little bit of experience.
Good Gaming PCs aren't expensive and thanks to cheaper Games over Steam you make the money back over time.The days with expensive PCs that cost over 7823623 are long gone.
Cause if you reach the point in a console cycle where you can be sure there won't come anything really impressive anymore prices on the PC market start to drop cause no one needs the new hardware anymore.Sometimes there are Games like Battlefield 3 that really push Hardware and show the difference and possibilites between Consoles and PCs but this is a rare case in these days.
Comparing and looking stuff up helps a lot too - Console Only Fanboys are often delusional and think their stuff looks good or developers are giving their all.They mostly don't - They hold back a lot cause they know most Console Gamers in these days even think Call of Duty a Game with an Engine from 1999 looks good cause they don't know what really looks good.They have no reference level and this is why Developers can do this.They don't have to push anything in terms of power.Sometimes there are of course some of them who still have honor for example DICE.
Games like the 360 Version of Witcher 2 don't even reach the Low Settings on PC - Same goes for BF3 or a modded Skyrim.Yeah Skyrim looks beautiful but they didn't even consider to try anything.They went with a low Res version for all platforms and let the PC Mod Community do the rest to show the difference at the end.

Hmm, since like, 2006 I've been gaming on mid-range laptops and gotten TONS of great half-old PC games from game stores since even great PC games usually fall in price pretty fast.

I guess PC gaming is what you make it cost-wise.

I am of the opposite mentality.  I got tired of the endless upgrade cycle associated with PC gaming. 

I have put together my own computers as well, I got tired of that too.  I don't mind upgrading a PC, but I much prefer to buy one with a warranty attached to it first.  I'm more about getting value out of a PC rather than sinking money into one.

tagging

that calculation is wrong?

let's say you want to play games on ultra or high settings with a new pc and want to buy a new one if new games only run between low and mid settings, you could easily do that with a pc for 1k every 4 years or something. it obviously depends which res you want to play but since we talk about pc vs. console we shouldn't talk about 1600p or something.

my pc did cost around 1k 2 years ago and i play battlefield 3 on ultra and the witcher 2 with everything on highest settings except ubersampling and also metro on high settings. if i am ok to get down to only mid setting with my pc (which will be still better as the same games on console) it will be enough for the next 1-2 years (ok with next gen console and maybe a big jump also for pc this will last maybe less as it would if i would have bought a pc one year earlier)

so even if it would work out bad i would pay maybe 3k in 9 years but probably less.

and since i would buy a pc even without gaming i can take those costs i would have away from the full costs for my pcs.

so my calculation would say i pay maybe 1.5k more as i would do without gaming for my pcs in 10 years.

since we get a new console every 7 years or something i only have to calculate my gaming pc costs as 7/10 which makes it 1050 bucks

now there is a lot of other stuff to consider, how many gamepads do i need over the years, do i have to pay for xbox live, costs of the games and whatever else but i'm sure for me, pc and console gaming (only speaking about one console per gen) is almost the same for me financially.

that was only fast out of my ass but i'm sure it wouldn't be more expensive for me. if i wouldn't buy a pc without gaming it would maybe look different but i do.

and sure, if you always want to have the highest possible settings in let's say 1080p running with 60fps it would be different but that wouldn't be fair to use as comparison because that would be much much better as console graphics then and not only better.

PC Gaming is usually associated with tech-nuts. So you'll probably want to have the latest high-end video cards and stuff. This is pretty expensive....

For someone who doesn't care about graphics AS MUCH as PC enthusiast, console gaming is the best option.

I don´t really like PC gaming but I just had to make an exception for Amnesia The Dark Descent, and I´ll have to make another for the game called Outlast (thanks for the heads up, CGI).