But why add that cost when most PC gamers don't need that optical drive at all? Shall we also add the cost for an external or bigger hard drive to all consoles because sooner or later they need that additional space?

Because you can't properly control a PC without a kb/m, which never works out the way you want from a couch. You'll either deal with low quality wireless equipment, finding a place to use your mouse, dealing with cables running from the tv to you, or some combination of that. It works, but it would ruin the experience.

Yeah, I'm also playing some games on my MacBook Pro Retina (some kind of i5 an Intel Iris graphics) but the experience isn't all that great. Cities Skylines runs good at the start, but once my city grows larger, I can't get beyond 20 fps even on minmal settings (720p). Kerbal Space Program also struggles very hard when I build a spacecraft with many many parts on them. Civilization 5 runs quite decent, but in later stages the loading times are killing me. I sometimes wait more than 3 minutes for a turn to end! I thought Fallout 3 should run very well, but have you tried to play that game with Windows 8 or Windows 10? It won't work. It simply won't work for whatever goddamn reason.

Games do run somewhat, but it's far from optimal and I don't think game developers will take care of old hardware too much. In 2007 I bought a GeForce 8800GT (refresh), which was quite a good graphics card at the time. I was very pleased to run Crysis at high settings and stuff like that. But afterwards I never bought new parts or a new desktop computer, I went with notebooks instead. When I tried to run some newer games around 2010 I already had trouble running new games like Bad Company 2 or Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit with high settings at Full HD. Most of the time I had just to switch to medium settings and 720p to get at least solid 30 fps. The games didn't look THAT much better than on console and that was with a relatively expensive graphics card from 2007. It was that time when I just switched completely to console because I didn't care about graphics anymore anyway. So I never tried to run games from after 2010, but I bet for example Tomb Raider or Metro: Last Light won't run all that good on a GeForce 8800GT. I played those games without any problems on the PS3 and they actually looked pretty good!

Now if I imagine to buy a middle-class or entry-level graphics card, I just can't possibly imagine that they will be enough for EVERY game for the next 5 years or so. Maybe I'm wrong, what do I know. But only with a console, I can be absolutely sure that I can run any games that will release throughout the generation. 

That's all of course my personal opinion and I don't want to say that PC gaming is bad or anything. I just don't think it's the best idea to buy a cheap build and then think it will have better looking games than the consoles for all eternity. If you really want to play on PC that's fine, everyone has their preferences. I just think that you should invest a little bit more.

That 8800GT should have kept up well with the Xbox360 + PS3 in these games in usual 7th-gen settings (1280x720) or even at 1680x1050:

View on YouTube

View on YouTube

And keep in mind that video recording in the background was quite demanding on older PCs, so the performance without recording was often a lot better. So here is one video captured without FRAPS distorting the real performance:

View on YouTube

Look people, it's gonna be hard to build a cheap PC, alright?

Think about it like this:

When it comes to consoles, you're paying a pretty reasonable price for a console, controller(or two), and any possible goodies that come with it. Plug in a TV or monitor and you're good for the next couple of years.

For PC, "affordable" PC's won't always give you the best results. That's why PC's are more expensive. Sure, they can reach astonishing prices of up to $2,000, but it'll give you great performances for the years to come.


So it's really a budget thing. If you can't spare 800+ bucks for a computer, then get a console, it's more worth it than a PC the same price,

if you can spare that extra cash, then do it. it'll be worth it.

I use a wireless keyboard and mouse from the couch on a daily basis for my HTPC. There is no noticeable input lag. Hell before I made this HTPC half the time my gaming desktop was connected to my television and I played plenty of games on it with the wireless keyboard and mouse. It is no more a problem than a wireless controller. 

That is very subjective. For me, my $700 PC with an i5 4690k and a r9 280x surpasses the consoles big time in gaming, and I also get to use it for my schoolwork/browsing the web/etc. Much more value overall and worth more. 

Sorry, I didn't mean it like that ;D

I was referring to prebuilt computers( mainly gaming ones).

Look at Steam Mini PC's for instance. Affordable, but not as great of value compared to PC's that may be more expensive,

if it cost 700 dollars then I'd expect it to perform better, otherwise it's a piece of crap if it cost that much and underperforms against a ps4. lol

He specifically had $800 as his metric. :P But he restated that he meant prebuilt PCs.