I don't know why people always assume you have to have a high end pc. Yes if you want to play the latest ultra demanding games with the best graphics at 4K then yes you need a super expensive rig but surely the whole point of PC is there are PCs at every price level and the cheaper you go the lower resolution you play with less detail in the graphics. I paid £130 for a mini pc based on a Ryzen 7 5700U from aliexpress. It's about 9x the cpu performance of Switch 2 and has a GPU gflops of about 2 Teraflops. Nothing amazing but decent enough for a lot of games and it plays emulators well up to 4K Switch etc. It's only consuming about 15-25W and based on a laptop chipset but not thermally or power throttled because of better cooling and no battery of course. There are no online costs and many free games like Epic weekly free games plus other games are incredibly cheap compared to console. I've had my steam account for what seems like 20 years and can still play the games I first bought on steam at the beginning. I consider PC gaming incredibly cheap but then I don't tend to go for top end pc hardware just hardware good enough to run the games I want to play. The phrase 'Diminishing Returns' comes to mind where you can pay huge sums of money but are only getting marginally improvements. I've seen videos online where people have taken an old PC off a skip and stuck in a graphics card like a RX 580 purchased cheaply from ebay for £40 and they are having a great experience pretty much playing the latest most demanding games albeit at 720p with very low detail levels. Older games look great. RX 580 has about 5-6 Teraflops of GPU power, more than some entry level gaming laptops you can buy today. An old i5 chip from a LGA1155 motherboard is still delivering 6000 or more CPU passmark score, that's 3x the CPU performance of the Switch 2.

You can get into PC gaming pretty much for nothing with a pc from freecycle to maybe £10k if you want the very best rig available or anywhere in-between. I guess the real debate is where is the sweet spot for value and what configuration of PC you want. I had a conversation with someone the other day who had never played a single PC game on a desktop PC. He has always had laptops and I guess mid-range laptops, sometimes discrete graphics and sometimes mid-level IGPUs but has been happy gaming on those. There are about 2 billion PC gamers in the world according to recent estimates. Hence the huge economies of scale and ultra competitive pricing of game software. People owning high end rigs are probably a tiny minority.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19dMQILFQ-o

It entirely depends on your gaming preference and habits. If you actively play a ton of multiplayer games that aren't f2p, consoles would be quite expensive because online mp requires paid subscriptions, which are pretty expensive and not worth it if you're not interested in the free monthly games.

If you don't play a lot of non-f2p mp, and you're not afraid of used physical game trading, then consoles remain a whole lot cheaper. Great physical game collections can be found at super low prices. You can buy, finish them, then sell them at the same price you bought. But most people just don't bother.

I am not a PC gamer, although I wish I was. But with PC gaming, I believe part of the beauty of it is in just how much more freedom there is, including pricing. Simply put, you have far more options. If you want to make a machine on a budget, you can. If you want the top of the line rig that can destroy a small nation with the push of a button, you can do that, too. So the answer to the OP is... it depends.

I don’t upgrade my PC very often - in fact, until last year, I was still running a 10 year old setup with an i7-4790k, DDR3 RAM, and the only somewhat modern part being a modest RTX 3070. Despite its age, it still outperformed my PS5, while doubling as a multipurpose workstation.

Yes, you’ll usually spend a bit more upfront on a PC, but it can pay off in the long run, but that depends on your situation.
One of the unusual things to have occurred in the console space is the notion that you have to pay a fee to play your last-gen games on your new hardware (I think this is the case with some games on the Switch 2?). A bizarre concept as a PC player... Then there is the fee to play games online. Gradually these costs which you don't need to deal with on a PC can make a difference.

If you want the latest or close to latest PC gaming is likely going to become more expensive especially if the market keeps getting worse.

So its not just consoles that are gonna be marked up in price but components and even pre-built PCs.

I replace my computer every 5 years so the investment of buying a computer somewhere around $1,000 to $2000 is worth it.

You can get more bang for your buck if you go into PC gaming due to the fact that the number of games will always exceed whatever console along with the fact that configurations of games varies depending on when they were released, you could likely buy a mid tier computer and still be able to play a decent number of recently released games (albeit lower resolution and graphics) but you have a huge library of games from yesteryears you can get into that most cheap systems these days could run. 

A lot of MP oriented centric games arent even that demanding (PUBG, Fortnite, Minecraft, etc).

Also along with that, there's several more places where you can buy games or get games - such as Humble Bundle and Fanatical which offers bundles of games at great rates. 

Sites like Humble, Fanatical, GamersGate, GreenManGaming, IndieGala, Gamesplanet, etc provide competitive pricing especially if you've been a longtime member like for an example, I get 20% additional discount on top of whatever discount the game has across all platforms if I buy from Humble and GMG who provides a substantial amount of discount for pre-orders of games if you are a "Gold" rank member like I bought FF Tactics Digital Deluxe Edition for $46 instead of the full $60.

Then you also get a ton of free games such as from EGS, GOG and if you are on Amazon Prime, you can get Prime Gaming giveaways which give free keys for EGS, GOG, etc.

Console gaming is still a viable option at least for me as long as the libraries are connected which I hope b/c continues across all the console makers.

I live in the UK too and you can absolutely get a nice one for 1k Pounds. It might not be outright great but still good.

I used to be a PC gamer and yes, you have as many options on PC as you would like.

But then I got less and less time for gaming (and tinkering with PC) so all the benefits of PC rather became a hindrance. PC is great when you play a lot, consoles are better if you just play something occasionally. No need to think about configurations, graphic options, wondering if it would run better if you upgrade one thing or another, no distractions from alt-tab, no Windows OS to navigate around.

It's a balance with PC. You can get pretty far with a budget machine, but then you need to be aware what the bottleneck is and what you can run comfortably and what will take effort and compromises to run. Of course console on a budget is still cheaper, refurbished consoles beat budget PCs. 

You can go high end making it easy to run everything out now, but that's far more costly than a console and you'll be spending more time at finding good parts on sale. Plus more frequent updates if you want to stay at the top end. 

Economically the HW is not really comparable since if you want to compare it with a brand new $1000 PS6, then you should compare it to an equivalent brand new pre-build PC. And if you want to compare console gaming to a budget PC, then you should compare it to refurbished console prices. 


Where the big savings on PC are is in the games. There's much more competitive pricing on PC, far more sales, far more cheap games, you can run everything old. So if you're into 'retro' gaming / not interested in the latest GPU busters, then a budget PC will give you far more to play for far cheaper than 2nd hand console game prices. 

So it comes down to how much do you value / price your time at. Just interested in playing the latest AAA blockbuster for a couple hours a week, might as well stick to consoles. Dedicated box, resume from standby, you're back in the game in seconds.
Interested in multiplayer games, couple hours a day, don't mind tinkering with settings now and then, go PC. Free online, cheaper games, the investment in the hardware will pay itself off easily.


One more point is convenience. Console under the TV is still more practical (and more acceptable by a spouse ;) than a desktop. PC is still mostly geared on you sitting close enough to read all the small fonts. Sure you can boot straight into Steam big picture mode, but now and then you'll have to fiddle with Windows and other settings. 

And one other big pro for PC is mods of course. The last game I spend tons of time on PC (gaming laptop) was FS2020. I upgraded to 32GB ram for it to run better, balanced the graphic settings with my laptop's capabilities editing the configuration files to fine tune, switch options literally on the fly (while flying) to adjust depending on terrain and altitude. (steady and what kind of frame rate is up to you).

Then several add-ons to follow my journey along with Google maps. (I even used an add-on to replace Bing maps with Google maps in the game as Google maps has way better detail in Canada, made the game twice as sharp, but that's also depending on where you fly) And my favorite aircraft was a free mod from FlyByWire. Their A320 was the most realistically modeled plane (at the time at least) where you could follow the start up procedures to shut down procedures at the other end exactly as irl. Practially all the buttons in the cockpit worked as intended.

That was worth the crashes, having to restart for memory problems, long loading times, frequent tinkering and fine tuning (and having to do it again after each monthly update changing things) simply because I was flying every single day. So all the 'extra' stuff didn't feel like much.

In contrast, the game I played extensively before that was Elite Dangerous. I can't get into that anymore as I fell behind in updates and my gaming laptop fell behind the game as well, doesn't run well anymore. There's no quick jump in for an hour or so, got to basically start from scratch again. At least with consoles you can be pretty certain a patch isn't going to break the game on your hardware. (Not that it happens often on PC, but it has happened a couple time to me, as well as some games simply refusing to run without a clue why. Be prepared most of the 'help' on PC forums is: User fault, you're trying to run it on a potato)


So yeah it can go both ways. Depends on your time and affinity / willingness to deal with the technical stuff. The more you know, the more efficient and cheaper builds you can make instead of gamble on a pre-build machine. Where you soon find out, got to upgrade the PSU if you want a more powerful GPU, but that can use faster RAM as well, now the CPU in the bottleneck. However the budget 3060 PC I bought my youngest 4 years ago still handles everything he plays very well and that cost as much as a PS5 Pro + disc drive at release. Was still twice as much as a base PS5 though.

I don't think there's any significant difference between the convenience level of my living room PC and the consoles there. It boots into Steam Big Picture mode by default, and Windows doesn't really force me to do anything outside Steam, aside from occasional setting checks at startup after some updates - no big deal. I also have some other game launchers/clients installed there, so I might have to switch to them from Steam from time to time, but that's my choice, and it's also no big deal. I don't think I've had to fiddle with Windows and stuff ever since setting up the whole thing.

A couple of gotchas though. I had to build the damn PC, and I hope I never have to build a Mini-ITX PC again! Not sure if I could have bought a pre-built small-form-factor PC, but I didn't, because it was hard enough to find a case that fit the spot I had available in my living room. Admittedly some other Mini-ITX case might have made building the PC easier, but I can't know for certain. Regardless, for small PCs, I'd recommend seeing if there's pre-built ones available unless you like tinkering. Another gotcha is that I originally skimped out on the SSD, and it was utterly unusable as an OS disk after initial good impressions. Shame on you, Kingston NV2! Anyway, if you're building a proper PC for modern games, that shouldn't really be an issue, because you shouldn't skimp out on the SSD. I got the issue because I wanted a gaming PC for my living room to play some of the less recent games I have, and I even used one of my old GPUs for that PC.

You're just proving my point about 'convenience' ;) Console will always be more plug 'n play than PC.

Yeah after you have it all build, set up and working, then it can be comparable. Although updates are still less intrusive on consoles, it's easier to manage installed games, plus everything is made / already set up for the supplied controller. 

But sure, if you stick to Steam you can get very close to the same experience. Steam does most (99%) stuff for you nowadays and most modern games configure themselves for your hardware and scale quite well.

Not all of course, for example my gaming laptop can not handle Stalker Heart of Chernobyl on its lowest settings, while it could run FS2020 on its highest settings (and beyond through config files). Input lag and wild frame pacing make Stalker unplayable. It's coming to PS5 soon, so I'll play it on that. FS2024 is coming to PS5 as well, with VR2 support next year. Much easier to wait for that than build a desktop to use PSVR2 on and configure PCVR settings for FS2024 based on what and where to fly.

Pat of the 'convenience' is also peace of mind. Or rather, with consoles you simply accept what you get. Besides adding an SSD, there's no fomo of maybe it will look / run better / be more fun with a better CPU/GPU, different settings, adding mods. The paradox of choice.

Had I bought a pre-built PC, it would have been very close to console levels of convenience, I suspect. I don't have a recent console, but at least on my PS4, updates are way more painful than on PC. I don't like to keep my PS4 in standby mode when I'm not using it, I'd rather turn it off completely. Hence when there's updates, I have to install them manually. On PC, it happens automatically when I turn off the device. Game updates are even worse on consoles, because I have no reason to turn on the device when I'm not playing games, so updates are always something that try their best to hinder me from playing. On PC, it's usually automatic while I do other stuff. I suppose if you use PC only for gaming, it might not be any better though.

Controllers are an interesting point. For the most part, they're not really an issue on PC, but some games don't handle controllers too well, and Steam Input for my DualShock 4 sometimes just stops working, and I have to disconnect and reconnect the controller again. Not a huge deal, but it's definitely something.

Game performance is definitely a valid point. I don't think it's exactly been a huge issue for me personally, but I can see how it could be to some. I usually have a pretty good idea of what to expect, knowing my hardware, but it's probably trickier if you don't have as much experience with PC stuff.

For me personally, consoles are infinitely more inconvenient. Since I use a PC for other stuff as well, I can just start installing games whenever I think I want to play them in the near future, and when I actually get around to it, the game's been downloaded and installed while I do other stuff. Updates usually happen automatically or at least don't get in the way. On consoles, I have to separately turn on the console, install games, monitor downloading updates, and turn off the console once everything's done - like I said, I don't want my consoles in standby mode. Then when I turn on the console to play some games, the console might have an update that I have to find a suitable spot for to install. At least game updates haven't been a common issue for me, but that might have something to do with me usually playing games in a fairly mature state (i.e. way after release). And if I want to look up some guide or something? A huge pain on consoles, Alt + Tab away on PC. The same goes for all sorts of minor inconveniences too, because consoles do what they do, and if you want to deviate from that in any way, there's usually limited opportunities. Mouse and keyboard is also way more convenient for certain genres but hardly an option on consoles. There's inconveniences on PC as well, but for me, they're quite predictable and don't really get in the way. On consoles, I feel like my hands are tied. Most of the time, it's not really an issue, but sometimes it really is.

I get why people think console gaming is more convenient, and I'm not going to say PC gaming would be better for everyone. But for me, PC gaming is definitely way more convenient overall. I definitely get why that might not be the case for everyone though.