This reminds me that recently I was arguing with my best friend about PC vs Consoles, we both work on IT so we both have monster rigs that should run anything no problem, well he's a PC Master Race guy, I have a huge PC past, in fact I started gaming on PC for like my first 5 years of gaming exclusively, began decreasing my gaming on PC when RTS started to go to shit, because of Steam pretty much stopped, I hate Steam (three bad experiences in a row) and with the advent of MOBAs and the ridiculous amount of garbage on par with mobile games I actually stopped altogether, I've even bought some games on GOG but haven't played any of them.

Anyways, those facts, that I work on IT, have a monster rig and was big into modding my games, to the point I sometimes spend way more time modding a game rather than playing, and still chose to game on consoles rather than PC irks my best friend to no end.

Well we argued for hours, me trying to explain that I hate tweaking around because it drives my OCD out of bounds and completely ruins the experience, yeah it gets the game to look and perform amazing but only after it has ruined the whole experience for me, that spending 10 hours researching and adding mods to a game to later find out that process was more fun than actually playing the game (I'm looking at you Skyrim) leaves you with a terrible feeling that kinda wants to make you stop gaming altogether, at the end we pretty much agreed to disagree.

Just like like a week later after that, he got The Witcher 3, with his rig not only he should have been able to run the game flawlessly but run at the highest settings possible, and well it did run, kinda, the framerate was just awful and eventually the game hang-up at a cut scene, keep in mind this isn't Ubisoft or Rocksteady, CD Projekt is mainly a PC developer yet for some reason the game didn't run properly on his monster rig, it probably was a really stupid and simple solution, it usually is, it doesn't matter I didn't care, I just laughed at him and left. Then I know it bothered him for days that I didn't ask what was the problem, TBH I was curious but I know it was eating him inside that I didn't ask, so I never did.

The joke's on me though, because now I have to get Dragon's Dogma for PC, maybe I'll wait a year for some great mods to come by, God the character creator is already amazing in that game, imagine with mods, hopefully someone creates a mod so all three pawns are mine and I don't have to use someone else's.

Exactly, pc games being cheaper is not true, at least not in Canada. It's more the other way around.

Today I picked up The book of unwritten tales 2 for ps4, new physical copy CAD 19.99, on Steam CAD 38.69
Finally decided to give The crew a try, limited edition CAD 19.99, on Steam CAD 29.99
My kid bought NHL 11 for ps3 for a dollar and there were tons of dirt cheap 2nd hand ps3 games available.

Even digital games on psn are cheaper in Canada atm than their Steam counterparts.
For example The vanishing of Ethan Carter CAD 21.99 on Steam, CAD 19.99 on psn

And new AAA releases, always the same or more on Steam at release and identical for physical copies. (Except the pc physical copy is worthless after you activate the game)

PC gaming can be cheaper if you buy humble bundles and get the good deals at Steam sales. Find a good game store and you have those deals year round.I guess you can go into the grey market and buy cd keys for less. Still doesn't beat the resale value on console games.

My oldest NAS HDD is now 6 years old and I had no need yet to switch it out. It still runs pretty much as smoothly as the first day. The Spinpoint F1 I was using before however is pretty much lying on it's deathbed and has lost much of it's performance along the way.

Data Centers normally use SAS (Serially Attached SCSi), not NAS (Network Attached Storage), although due to the price of the former I caould see why some would use the latter, especially in less performance critical servers. Still, the 6 years apply to SAS as far as I know, so it's not entirely comparable.

Yup, i agree. I have built my own PC aswell and its a nightmare. You need to do alot of investigation and be extremely careful not to make a mistake or you will end up having to spend more money (and between that and unpredictable stuff like how strong a power source you need and how many wires/entrances of parts and cable types. What goes where and the sort aswell).
Not only that but the whole argument is flawed in the sense that games don't have a stable performance on PC's. It will always depend on the mix of the hardware and every specific software.

So... no, PC is good in its own way, but it will never be the mainstream platform for gaming. Theres way too many barriers and frustrations. If that is the conclusion i agree completely. Can't beat the confort and security of a console.

I agree that PC gaming is superior (at the right price) but the 400$ "console killer" builds that are all plastered over youtube and forums are bullshit.


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Chazore said: I find it really strange when people want to jump into PC gaming and their immediate thing to build on is a lower spec to that of a console, this will always be my response: The first time I got into building my own PC afew years back I knew beforehand the extra costs that were going into building a brand new rig, I knew I;d have to buy a keyboard, knew I;d have to buy a mouse, an OS etc, i knew all that because for the longest time that's what I;ve always seen being sold in stores both online and general eletronic stores where I live, not once have I suffered an epic braindead moment where I thought I lived in a world where none of those items were sold seperately and that PC's were always 100% pre-builts, even my folks who admit they are total ludites know that building your own PC requires seperate parts, that's why they go buy their own laptops and tablets because they know building one from scratch is not for them. PC gaming isn't the sort of shoe that fits everyone, same with console, handheld and mobile/tablet gaming, I hate tablet gaming and the prices and included specs of all tablets and phones because I have a different set of expectations and the same goes for what my wallet allows. PC gaming is essentially expensive to start with if you want a good build but it makes up for that with cheaper games, mods and all the toehr trimmings that PC gaming has going for itself, your build will be as good as your wallet allows, go for a cheaper build and don't expect to run everything on high let alone ultra, run at medium and expect to go with high and maybe 1080/60, go with high/enthusiast and expect to run most if not all settings at ultra and run at 1080/60fps and for older games DSR to 2-4k and get 30-60fps with added visual quality. The way you make it sound originally is that PC gaming doesn't really have much going for it except those enthusiasts who just love building their own rigs, you mention that you respect a corp who does it all for you and yet life isn't really meant to be about getting everything handed to you on a silver platter, the fact you actually went out and bothered to learn about what you were getting into was a good place to start though since some people end up jumping in and then shitting on the platform base rather than their own knowledge/money. I'll always see myself gaming mainly on my PC though seeing as how over time I've adjusted to how to build one, how much to spend on parts I want/need and looking at deals on where to buy games I want and at the end of the day I do want quality and the ability to mod my games and frankly PC gaming does offer both of those in huge quantities that isn't really on a comparable scale as a prebuilt console built at a cheaper price, those that like to think older hardware>new are simply lying to themselves.

I'm actually one of those people who'd be fine with console power, largely because I prize having a lot of storage to work with with a fast enough storage medium. The hard drive on my PC that my dad had bought is the reason behind me really considering building my own during the summer break.

Trust me, I have a lot of luggage from my older PCs - at least 50GB of anime and games, not counting music - and I'm certainly not going stop collecting because of TPP breathing down by back.

The other reason is, well, do I need it?

The most graphically intense game I've played on my PC is Civilization V, and I don't think that compares to the AAA games some people play on their PCs.

On top of that, the games I play simply don't need that much power, even relative to what I mentioned earlier. I know Osu! certainly isn't close, and neither are the various Japanese doujin games I play.

I don't mean to argue with you, but I'm just saying my use case is different.

I would still go a bit above those specs. Since you're waiting until the summer break, some better hardware will have dropped quite a bit in price, so an  entry Level Intel Core i5 (4460 or similar) and a AMD Radeon R9 370X or even 380 won't be much above the pricetag of more lowly hardware but much more futureproof.

Got a bad ass PC, still buy consoles, just enjoy it better.

Custom logic boards, chipsets, components and economy of scale describe in a nutshell how consoles provide the performance they do at the modest price they command.

I'm not really sure why it remains an exercise to see if a PC builder can produce a gaming PC for the same MSRP as a console that performs similarly or better, other than to support the opinion that one gaming platform is better than another.

The reality is it's the scalability of PC gaming that gives the platform its strength, and that strength lies in the upper echelons as far as cost of build is concerned, not in the low to middling range. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but if I choose to build a gaming PC as my primary platform of choice, I'm not looking to do so by trading economy for performance.

As far as the eternally upgradable PC concept is concerned, every component in a decent PC has a "freshness" dating and past a certain age, one is typically better off starting from scratch. Components like the PSU, HDD, case and optical drive that are typically the only components reused after a major rebuild (new CPU, new motherboard, new RAM, new video card) don't add up to a huge amount of cost savings and should even be replaced with better components as they become available.

Yes, I realize. I think I'd have a lot of fun playing those PS3 ports, but it surely can't hurt to upgrade just a bit to be able to handle the PS4 ports.