Until the next World War when satellites fall from the sky and the internet gets knocked out.  Than it's the NES time to shine.

Looking at pre-build gaming PCs, 5 years into the generation.

PS5 now costs CAD 580, PS5 Pro CAD 960

Cheapest pre-buit atm

Acer Desktop PC - Black (Intel Pentium N6005/512GB SSD/8GB RAM/Windows 11) CAD 599, I don't think that keeps up with PS5... 

Acer Nitro N50 Gaming PC - Black/Red (Intel Core i5-14400F/16GB RAM/512GB SSD/GeForce RTX 3050/Win11) CAD 899 (CAD 400 off atm, reg 1,299)
CyberPowerPC Gamer Master Gaming PC (AMD Ryzen 5 5500/16GB RAM/1TB SSD/AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT) CAD 1,160
ASUS TUF Gaming T500 Gaming PC - Solar Eclipse Grey (Intel Core i5-13420H/16GB RAM/1TB SSD/RTX 3050) CAD 1,199
MSI Codx R2 Gaming PC (Intel Core i5-14400F/32GB RAM/2TB SSD/GeForce RTX 5060) CAD 1,399
HP OMEN 16L Gaming Desktop PC (AMD Ryzen 7 8700F/32GB RAM/2TB SSD/GeForce RTX 4060/Windows 11) CAD 1,499

So yeah you have to build it yourself to get similar for PS5 Pro prices or find a refurbished gaming PC.
Although that first one on sale atm should be able to keep up with PS5 but you probably want more storage and RAM.
PS5 Pro is rumored to be equivalent to a RTX 4060, although few games actually make use of the Pro's extra GPU power. 2tb SSD is nice though!


That's the thing with consoles vs PC. PC components still drop faster in price or rather get replaced with better ones while the console stays at the same configuration and is now actually going up in price :/

And yep, at the launch of PS6 that will be the cheapest configuration. Plus PC always needs a little more overhead with the OS and split memory. 

Gaming laptops are okay - people get them because you can either dock them and play them portable (which is the main reason why people buy them).

For me, its not worth it - laptops are underpowered compared to desktops and more expensive, which is why I havent bought a new laptop at all for myself since my last one which is from 2014.

I dont have a reason to buy a laptop even for multimedia or multipurpose reasons cause my iPhone does that for me. Even when it comes to emulation, my iPhone does it fine.

My gaming desktop I only use for gaming, dont even open up the browser lol.

Annual multiplayer subscriptions have completely nullified the price difference.

If you need a PC and the latest AAA games too then it's always better to plow the console and 5yrs of multiplayer subscription price into a GPU instead.

Cost isn't an issue if you plan for the long term, you don't need to upgrade every year, two years, three years.

Case in point...I have a Ryzen 5950X which I have had for the last 5 years. - I am running everything and running them better than the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 and currently building a new Ryzen 9950X3D PC.
And this PC will likely be used for another 10+ years even during the PS6 era.

...Case in point I have a Phenom 2 x6 1090T PC which I built in 2010 which PREDATES the Xbox One and Playstation 4, 15 years ago... And with an old Radeon 6600XT GPU which filtered down from my other PC it's playing some modern games just fine like Baldurs Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077 and more.

And take another step backwards... I still have my Core 2 Quad Q9650 PC from 2008 (17 years ago) and it's playing Black Myth Wukong, even if it's 30fps.

...But the biggest hindrance with my 1090T and Q9650 PC's isn't so much the CPU performance... It's actually the instruction sets which prevents SOME modern games from even being able to boot and the Ram bandwidth, my Q9650 even without the CPU and GPU at 100% is just bottlenecked by the old DDR2 800Mhz Ram. (I have a new motherboard with DDR3 support, just haven't gotten around to swapping it yet.)

And with Frame-gen being a thing now, it's going to prolong the life of those systems.

Otherwise...
1) PC games are cheaper.
2) PC accessories are cheaper.
3) PC online is free.
4) You can get free PC games. (Epic store)

And that completely removes the cost factor over the long-term. Especially as consoles are more expensive today than they have ever been as Microsoft/Sony no longer subsidize their hardware to the same degree that they used to.

So yeah, for the PS5 Pro, building a PC in the same price range is absolutely possible.

For the PS5 proper, it's not easy to do so due to a lack of entry-level GPUs these days. A PS5-equivalent GPU, if produced on today's architectures and nodes, should cost well below $200, but there ain't any GPUs on the market right now that cost less than $249 MSRP, and APUs with a capable GPU are too expensive to consider. If they would produce entry-level parts again, then a PS5-equivalent would be very possible nowadays, too.

If you shop around for the PS5 Pro, like you shop around for PC parts, you can get it cheaper as well, for example



PS5 Pro also has 2Tb SSD. But it's indeed getting close, that is in Germany...


It also depends where you live. When I try to duplicate that system on newegg.ca it's not possible. (like for like I mean)
An entry level system (just components) starts at CAD 1,587 (PS5 Pro is CAD 960)


Some puzzling and I get to a CAD 1,094 system, CAD 180 of that is Windows 11 though, no gamepad included, nor keyboard, mouse and only 650w PSU

Without the OS you're under the PS5 Pro price. But that GPU is also significantly below the PS5 Pro.
The cheapest RX 9060 XT (CAD 410) here brings it to CAD 1,205, or CAD 1,025 minus OS.

If you wait for sales, mix and match, already have an OS you can bring over, keyboard, mouse, gamepad available, you can build it cheaper.

So much more convenient to just walk into a store and walk out with a box that works within minutes of setting it up ;)

There's a lot of you have to look at when you compare console with PC gaming. If you build a PC and buy an expensive monitor for it and compare that with a console which you don't buy a TV for because you would own the same just for movies, it's a completely different picture as if you buy an expensive TV for your console but would already own a monitor and a cheap PC for other purposes and you only would invest some more to your PC and maybe screen.

That's just one thing people don't mention very often in comparisons beside the obvious stuff like the storefronts, free games, online services, longevity of the console/PC and so on...

It also depends when you buy your console. Those who bought a PS5/Xbox at release had many more years of full games support as those who bought one this year.

PS5 DE in 2020 was a ridiculous value for the money. It cost $400 including a $70 DualSense. Unbeatable power per buck.

As for subscription costs... Most Playstation gamers don't subscribe to PS+, and many of them only play F2P and single player games. As I said earlier, the value of PC and console gaming go up and down depending on your gaming and purchasing habits. Since the PS4 launched, I only subscribed to PS+ for a total of like 4 months (for Destiny 1, The Last of Us Factions, and Tekken 7). Multiplayer is hardly a factor to me. I downloaded a few games to take advantage of PS+ (Oddworld and Rocket League are two that I can remember).

I have a PC (GTX 1060 6GB, Ryzen 3600, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB NVMe SSD), and the only multiplayer game I played on it was FFXIV and expansions, which did require paid subscription.

Simply put, your question has no universal answer. Your habits and what you want from a game system are the deciding factors, so only you can answer this question genuinely.