Er. No you don't.

I have 450+ games on steam.
I don't need to play with drivers/settings to make all my games work, I just download, install and play.

I also don't have a "simple" PC either, I'm running triple monitor, with quad-graphics cards, if anyone was going to have signficant debilitating issues with their games library, then I would be one of the first in line.

Steam also updates games automagically, just like on these newer consoles, in-fact the PC was the first to have such a feature in the consumer electronics world.
And sometimes... Being able to "tinker" can be a godsend.

Lets use Skyrim for instance, it was almost unplayable on the PS3, due to the plethora of bugs, if it was on PC, you may have been able to find a solution, instead you had to "deal with it" untill it was patched, so that "Con" for the PC can actually become a "Pro".

i have a nice pc too like the malloria of console gamers but playstation its just amazing ,, sometimes i game on pc tooo ok and i think its good

1. The kinda "breakdown" you are referring to heer only applies if you are trying to educate someone on what to buy and why. That is not what this thread is about. Yet you keep hammering on it. This thread is about trying to arrive at an acceptable criteria for which the performance of a game could be compared between consoles and PCs. So people don't just take the most powerful hardware you can get with a PC and compare how it runs games to a console with weaker hardware.
   
   So since what we are measuring here is how a game performs on different hardware or platforms, I really don't see the need of having an overall cost breakdown of the long term benefits of using a specific hardware/platform over the other. So I don't know what you mean by I am assuming what-if scenarios, when in truth the scenarios I am postulating would apply to any kinda benchmarking on the planet. Cause technically, thats already how everyone benchmarks stuff.
   
   
2. That was just an example, and one made specifially to prove a point to you. I didn't expect you to take it literally. And you are wrong about me not having any idea of the costs of the rest of the components in the PS4/XB1. Here... unless you can do better of course. Its also common knowlege that unlike with the PS3/360... the PS4/XB1 (at least the PS4) was not being sold at a loss.
   You can clearly see that the cost of the PS4 APu costs arpund $121. Mind you thats a CPU+GPU. This is also why i refrained from using the actual cost breakdown of the PS4 and just rounded up to the cost of the hardware. Cause as I said, so doing will make it unfair for a PC cause it would mean that the PS4 should only be compared with a CPU+GPU that costs no more than $121-$200. I don't know what is insane here. All i keep saying, s that hardwrae of a similar price to what was avaialable at the time of release of the console or of a similar core make up is what qualifies for direct comparisons in performance.
   
   
3. Everything you have said in this point, is true. Very true actually. But only goes to further prove my point and not contradict  it. Its like you are agreeing with me without knowing you are agreeing with me. Yes, better drivers may have come out, you have more options on how to use the hardwrae on the PC. Thats all well and good. Thats what you get for having a PC. Still doesn't change the fact that that is the the right type of PC hardwrae to use when comparing a game running on PC to the PS4. No one is saying that so doing will automatically mean that the hardware will not perform just as well or better. And consoles get improved drivers too... but thats a different matter and doesn't tie into what this thread is about.
   
   If its cheap or not cheap is irrelevant. Thats not what any of ths is about. If you can overclock it or run games as you say on ultra at higher resolutions is also irrelevant. Cause they are true and does not dispute what I am saying.  
   
   Sigh... I can't believe that you don't realize you are actually agreeing with me. But yet just somehow arguing is if you weren't. Honestly you are all over the place taking this to places it has no busines going to. There is a simple straightforard discussion at hand. And regardless of being repeatedly told so, you keep talking like there is anyone arguing with all the other things you are saying. I am just telling you thatthose things don't relate to what is actually being discussed.

I must be really unlucky then. I had major issues when The witcher 2 came out, controller support issues with anti chamber, Fract OSC not starting, Tesla effect video not rendering correctly. Plus random crashes, especially when switching inputs on my amp. Most games do not like the auto desktop resizing windows does when I temporarily switch inputs. Currently Civilization beyond earth is annoying me, half the time it won't start in offline mode. I've got Steam set to offline mode, still it insists on finishing installing yet again, times out after a minute before I can retry. Sometimes it crashes rigth after the initial loading screen, no clue why. When it finally runs it works fine, yet it refuses to minimize on alt-tab and keeps sucking cpu time when paused so I have to exit it to be able to do something else for a minute then restart it again.

Those are just recent ones of the top of my head, and I don't even have a big steam library. I never said all, but it's definitely more work than console games. Skyrim is the worst possible example on ps3, yet it had it's work arounds too, disable autosave and restart after 20-30 minutes and you can play it fine even after 80 hours. I finished the game, wasn't almost unplayable. What was unplayable was Kotor on my PC. I never got past the opening, just would not work.

I'll give PC one thing, when my GPU's hardware T&L chip burned out, some games allowed me to play on by disabling it in the settings. Others turned into a corrupt mess on screen. A console would have to be sent in for repairs.

So 15 pages later....

The sole purpose of this thread is to say that SOME PC users will make comparison screenshots with a PS4, sometimes using hardware that may or may not cost 3-4x the amount of the whole console. And that it's not fair and they shouldn't do it.

...and that is literally it?

1. HARDWARE
Game consoles are a steal at their < $350 price points these days (at least that's what I paid for both the PS4 and Xbox One, individually mind you. $298 for a PS4 thanks to Amazon screwing up, $350 - xbox trade-in - 5% = $254 on the Xbox One with 2 games (A Creed BF + Unity)). PC Hardware, however, has come down greatly in cost. You used to need a $400 graphic card to be competitive with a recently launched game console, now you can do it with a $110 one (though obviously prices go up to $1000-plus). PC gaming is still more expensive initially since you also need a HDD ($50), CPU ($100 - $300), Mobo ($30 - $300), RAM ($20 - $200), Case ($10 - $200), PSU ($10 - $200) and OS (Free - $105). To note, I also received Assassin Creed BF when it was brand new with my graphics card last year (and Splinter Cell) so the pack-ins are nothing exclusive to console gaming.

PERFORMANCE
Console games are generally more optimized since they have direct hardware requirements, but with the games coming out recently, we're seeing fixed resolutions with horrible framerates (Ryse) or other massive inconsistencies. PCs still have the ability to scale and as you said, you can upgrade if you aren't happy. PCs do have a big perk in being perpetually backwards compatible. I play a lot of Wii games on mine that look a lot better than they do on their namesake console, Crysis 3 maxed out still looks better than anything on the next-gen consoles, and Far Cry 3 exists with a stable framerate -- amazed that hasn't been re-released yet.

CONSUMER TYPE
PC Gamers know they have a little more work ahead of them, but Steam Big Picture mode takes 99% of the trouble out. Mixed that with all the games that have built-in Xbox 360 controller support and the excellent Wireless dongle and frankly PCs are basically consoles these days. Also PC drivers have improved greatly over the last decade, you no longer have to tweak and modify things to get them to work right -- things have a tendency to just work, especially in Windows 7 and 8.

Don't want to use your computer as a dedicated console? Wireless HDMI or Steam Stream work beautifully as well. I find fans of all platforms tend to be pretty annoying, the console wars are always flat out pathetic, and the whole PC MASTER RACE crap is silly as hell. The one thing I do like is having keyboard communication instead of forcing voice chat, which I often disable -- that stuff in intolerable on most consoles.

What graphics card did you have that the T&L chip burned out?

Of course I keep hammering about it, you keep missing the point by miles.

It's not about educating soemone on what they should buy or why, it's so you can get a fair representation of all the platforms, it's that simple.  Oranges to Oranges, Apple's to Apple's.
And considering "Price" seems to be the largest reason gamers in this thread have chosen "Consoles" it seems like a good data point to start from.

You know, I'm just going to keep repeating this same horn, so if you wish to keep going around in circles... By all means.

Fantastic, we are finally getting somewhere.
Now do a break-down of a similar-equipped PC.

Then, do a breakdown of the accessories.

Then do a breakdown of the services.

Then do a breakdown on the software.

Then we can apply Performance/Image Quality to Dollars.

If you think I was agreeing with you, then you should have gone to specsavers.

I'm a PC gamer and I upgrade like once every 6 years, I don't get why some people make it out like we HAVE to buy new parts every 2 weeks...

You can't spell consoles without con. The streets have spoken.

That particular problem was a long time ago, I was playing FS 2004 and Everquest at the time. NVidia flavor. Geforce FX series I think.