Hawkeye said: Which would you prefer- A. $2000 console with $40 games B. $350 console with $60 games there is your answer. PC gamers pay through the nose for hardware but better control and graphics and customization and get decent prices on software. Console gamers get much cheaper hardware but slightly more expensive software.

This argument is a complete fallacy. If you wanted to build a decent gaming PC, it would actually cost between $500 - $1000 to build from the ground up, and much less to upgrade to be able to play anything on the market at reasonably high detail and HD resolution.

Reasons why this argument is rediculous:

Most people need to own a PC anyway for email, word processing, etc, so the base PC cost should not be factored in to the 'gaming' cost.

If you purchase or already own a modern PC for those tasks, you can cheaply upgrade it to be a gaming PC.

Because you purchase a good PC for daily communication, organization, work, and other tasks, the only cost that should be factored in is the cost to UPGRADE your home computer into a gaming PC (unless you are building a 'gaming-only' rig).

You can easily upgrade a modern PC with a Video Card & RAM for between $200 and $300, this is sufficient to play any game on the market with higher detail and resolution than the HD consoles can offer.

So, if you already own or plan to purchase a modern PC, it is actually CHEAPER to just upgrade the PC to a gaming machine than to buy a separate console for that task, AND your games will have better graphics than their console couterparts.

@Timmah!

Well said. PC Gaming is simply cheaper than HD Console Gaming.

Double Fallacy. Yes if you buy a new computer you can "upgrade" it. But many people (incl. me) simply use their old PC for a long time. And upgrading a 4 year old PC is useless. Mine doesn't have PCI Express, old RAM thats's more expensive now than new one and if you want a fast processor you can throw out the complete motherboard and buy a new PC.

So with my existing 4.5 year old PC I had two possibilities:
:
a) buy a PS3 and play from my couch on my 32" LCD I have anyway: 600E
b) buy a new computer that would be more powerful (~800E) incl. a new monitor (~300E) because the old one is sufficient for emails and browsing but too small for a good gaming experience.
(I am not even factoring in my desire for a BluRay drive for my TV or I would have added another 800E but I wouldn't have bought one at that price)

Of course your mileage may vary. In the end it comes down to how you want to play price depends on many different things.

We had guest lecture at Uni from the guy directed Fusion Frenzy as well as loads of crap games (Can't remember his name, but he was a total geek) and we could ask questions at the end. One person actually asked this and he said it was to do with several factors, I can't remember all of them, but he said publishing on consoles has more costs attached to it to use certain technologies etc... Which the PC doesn't.

FYI my question was "Which is more difficult to produce, in-house games or Commisioned games?" he said "Commisioned games were twice as hard."

Hawkeye said: Which would you prefer- A. $2000 console with $40 games B. $350 console with $60 games there is your answer. PC gamers pay through the nose for hardware but better control and graphics and customization and get decent prices on software. Console gamers get much cheaper hardware but slightly more expensive software.

 

what kind of crazy ass high spec PCs do you build??? Mistershine would love your business!

This retarded debacle will go on forever. I should ask, who here owns both a console and PC gaming rig? I for one, as stated, have 3 comps and 2 consoles, XBox 360 and a Wii. If anyone who posted above has a current console, Wii, X360, or PS3, you have discredited yourself because, just as I, you have spent tons on Gaming regardless lol. (Shio), I know I can count you out, because I assume you would blow your own brains out before buying a console lol. I do give you props for your stout defense in the face of the continuing and increasing number of Console to PC gamers the PC community is facing. Some of my best friends feel as you do. I for one can honestly say I play my Laptop more than my Consoles currently, but I still Love and Loath them......same difference.

Its also fantastic that GPUs have now caught up to CPUs in terms of keeping up with the process nodes.

On the AMD side - We have the RV770 - $200 ~1billiion transistors - 1 Teraflop
In 7-10 months - We'll have the RV870 - $200-250 2-3Billion transistors - 2+ Teraflops expected, built on the 40nm process.

The Cell 234+RSX 300+ have about ~550 million transistors.
The 360 Xenon - 165m + Xenos/EDram -330 ~500 million transistors.

So if you could build a PS3 into a chip - it would be smaller than the RV770. Amazing.

I can explain exactly why a PC game costs less

See, when I play a console game, I expect that game to work. I'm willing to go with patching online aspects, since obviously if I can access the online content, I can get online to patch that, and online where you have other people futzing around with things can introduce a lot of unforeseen variables, but for the offline part of a game, I expect it to work and not have to patch anything for it or find any fixes to address problems with the game freezing up.

PC games can be mostly designed, and often come out with numerous patches that fix all sorts of different things in order to get them to play properly.

 

When I play a computer game, I usually go into it expecting to freeze or have the game hang on me at LEAST once per individual game. Even more for more recent games. For a console game, I would find this completely unacceptable.

Slimebeast said: The license fee to console makers is the only valid reason to have a slighlty higher price, but not $100 for console versus $60 for PC games like it's here in Sweden. Yeah, I believe it's because they can get away with it...

 

I second that :)

Kyros said: If you purchase or already own a modern PC for those tasks, you can cheaply upgrade it to be a gaming PC. Double Fallacy. Yes if you buy a new computer you can "upgrade" it. But many people (incl. me) simply use their old PC for a long time. And upgrading a 4 year old PC is useless. Mine doesn't have PCI Express, old RAM thats's more expensive now than new one and if you want a fast processor you can throw out the complete motherboard and buy a new PC. So with my existing 4.5 year old PC I had two possibilities: : a) buy a PS3 and play from my couch on my 32" LCD I have anyway: 600E b) buy a new computer that would be more powerful (~800E) incl. a new monitor (~300E) because the old one is sufficient for emails and browsing but too small for a good gaming experience. (I am not even factoring in my desire for a BluRay drive for my TV or I would have added another 800E but I wouldn't have bought one at that price) Of course your mileage may vary. In the end it comes down to how you want to play price depends on many different things.

Um, you completely missed my point. I said "IF YOU PURCHASE OR ALREADY OWN a modern PC". Just because my point does not apply to you does not make  my argument false. This is one of the most asenine debate methods out there, and you used it flawlessly . My point was not that it's cheaper for everybody, just that it's cheaper if you already have or are purchasing a MODERN PC. The "Yeah, well not EVERYBODY can..." argument always falls flat.

Most of the people I know have a PC that could be upgraded for this purpose.