How Much for Next Gen Consoles?

[mouselock]

There are all sorts of rumors floating around that the PS3 is going to be $499 and the XBox 360 is going to be up there too, far more expensive than launch prices for this generation. I realize the tech for these things is expensive, but it was expensive when the last generation was released as well. I just don't see an increasingly growing (and mass) market putting up with the idea of a $500 game system, and I think the makers will decide market penetration is more important than keeping margins even on hardware. What say the rest of you?

[Wholly Schmidt]

Anyone have any history of launch prices handy? Just curious what they've been in the past. Xbox and PS2 were both $300, right? I seem to recall the Dreamcast launching cheaper, was it $200? Prior to that, I really don't remember the prices of consoles at launch, other than that the Saturn was something like $400ish.

[mouselock]

Anyone have any history of launch prices handy? Just curious what they've been in the past. Xbox and PS2 were both $300, right? I seem to recall the Dreamcast launching cheaper, was it $200? Prior to that, I really don't remember the prices of consoles at launch, other than that the Saturn was something like $400ish.

I believe the DC was at least $250 when I bought it. I know the Genesis was $200ish when it launched, and I believe the SNES was similar in price as well. The Saturn launch was just horribly done all around. And the 3D0 was something like $700. Heh. (I should dig out my 3D0. I should also point out that I got it at the "bargain" price of something like $400 with software. I should probably also go and hide after admitting that, although Gex was still a cool game, and the version of Dragon's Lair on the system was nice as well.)

[Dirt]

The Nintendo was $149.99 back in '87.

[fuzzyslug]

A week or so ago, the guy behind the counter in EB quoted us a price of $499.99 from his computer terminal. My guess is this just EB covering their ass for when they begin to take preorders. You can lower the price. You can't raise it.

My guess would be around $350, with the hard drive. I just can't imagine either system coming in at $500. If Microsoft tried it, they'd lose the chance to grab any marketshare before Sony revisits the market. If Sony tries it, it would give Microsoft the chance to gauge them in price. If they both do it, everyone will still be playing their PS2s two years from now. Even I don't think I can stomach that price and I own every system under the sun.

[VegasRobb]

The Nintendo was $149.99 back in '87.

Wasn't that the same price of the Atari 2600 on release ... in 1978ish?

[Jason Becker]

There are all sorts of rumors floating around that the PS3 is going to be $499 and the XBox 360 is going to be up there too, far more expensive than launch prices for this generation. I realize the tech for these things is expensive, but it was expensive when the last generation was released as well.

The tech in the Xbox360/PS3 is well above what the PS2/Xbox was when they launched though. Plus you have the talk of things like PVR abilites as added features(wether that many people want the extras who knows). I just don't see how these systems launch at $300 and Sony/MS not loose tons of money.

[mouselock]

There are all sorts of rumors floating around that the PS3 is going to be $499 and the XBox 360 is going to be up there too, far more expensive than launch prices for this generation. I realize the tech for these things is expensive, but it was expensive when the last generation was released as well.

The tech in the Xbox360/PS3 is well above what the PS2/Xbox was when they launched though. Plus you have the talk of things like PVR abilites as added features(wether that many people want the extras who knows). I just don't see how these systems launch at $300 and Sony/MS not loose tons of money.

I haven't seen anything indicating either system had PVR abilities. Play back stuff recorded elsewhere, yes. Record stuff locally, though, no. That would require a HD on both systems at launch to use as a selling point. Sony hasn't committed to one period, and the 360 one is tiny if you include PVRing with everything else.

I would expect $300 to lose them hardware money. However, common wisdom is they've both done that on multiple systems in the past in order to achieve market saturation and get money on the back end from more licensed games selling. That still seems like a viable plan to me. I think even at $350 they'll find uptake drops off significantly. Though I suppose they could launch at $350 and try to sell out to the early tech geek adopters and plan to drop to $300 very quickly. $400 would be the kiss of death without some really compelling heretofore unannounced features.

[Boss]

Recent console release day prices...

3DO $699.99
Atari Jaguar $249.99
Sega Saturn $399.99.
Sony PlayStation $299.99
Nintendo 64 $199.99
Sega Dreamcast $199.99
PlayStation 2 $299.99
Xbox $299.99
Nintendo Gamecube $199.99

Those are the most relevant ones. A price of $399.99 is not unprecedented but it is $100 more than last generation's release price. If the game prices go up to $59.99 or more, you're going to be spending at least $500 or more if you buy at launch. Personally, I think that's far too high to continue the trend of at least a million sold before Christmas when launching in November. That's especially true when the Xbox 360 games simply don't look that much better than those on current gen consoles.

[Marcus]

I highly doubt either will launch above 350.
Highly.

[Boss]

I think you're wrong. I think $399.99 is the price point and the reason we didn't hear a price at E3. It's less than six months to the launch of Microsoft's console. Pricing should have been announced.

[Justin Fletcher]

I think you're wrong. I think $399.99 is the price point and the reason we didn't hear a price at E3. It's less than six months to the launch of Microsoft's console. Pricing should have been announced.
I hope you're wrong. I think that price point will hobble sales for the 360 in the holiday season and will waste the market lead Microsoft has over Sony. I'm a big Xbox fan, but even I know that Microsoft can't afford a lackluster launch with the PS3 debuting only a few months later. I'd say the majority of consumers don't care enough about the extra functionality of any of the new consoles to be willing to pay extra money for it. They just want a kick-ass game system that won't break the bank. At $300 each, the softcore might consider getting both consoles. At $400, they'll decide between the two.

[Marcus]

I dunno I prolly am but I am betting 350 is the sweet spot this time around.

One thing I would say though is that I could see sony going 400 just looking at the price of the PSP, but I have always said that almost all sony prodcuts are over priced.

I can also see MS setting the Bar at 300 just to try to undercut Sony as much as possible before the ps3 launch.

Larger installed user base > short term profits.

[Mattc0m]

Okay, I do have a question. I was going to start my own topic, but I figured it was relevant enough with this thread.

Suppousively, the Xbox 360 is going to have really high-powered specs. Like high-powered enough that all the demos at E3 were running at "one third speed" - I thought what they were using were pretty darn expensive as well.
Now, also, I heard this generation was suppoused to be the one where MS would make money off hardware sales. I believe this came from a Time Magazine quote from Bill. I don't remember to be exact, so someone please clear that up.

How can the Xbox 360 (or PS3 for that matter) price their consoles competitively with such high-end specs? XBox 360 is a step up from everything that Xbox was, yet weren't they losing 1 billion a year on hardware sales? How can the Xbox 360 be any more affordable?

I'm just curious, really. It just doesn't add up in my mind, but I'm probably missing something.

[Marcus]

They dont make money in the short term. They make more towards the end of the prodcut life cycle.

Short term they almost always lose money ( except for nintendo before the gamecube ). Hardware revisions / manufacturing improvments help profits by a large margin.

EDIT : I am pretty sure that if they would have priced the Xbox so they would have broken even they would have had to price it at 499 or something close to that ( perhaps it was 429 or something I cant remember off the top of my head).

[Kevin Grey]

Gamespot story about PS3 likely being $370 equivalent in Japan:


http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/24/news_6126410.html

That's the same price that PS1 and PS2 debuted there so it could translate to $300 in th US.

[RobotPants]

The PSP came out at $249 and isn't it doing insanely well? $499, while expensive, doesn't seem all that outrageous for a next-gen system with supposedly more power than any current PC's. Lots of people pay $200+ for a graphics card alone, so I don't see why a little over twice that is that unreasonable for an entire gaming system with a GPU that's better than anything out now. I'm not saying anything about how sucessful/unsucessful a gaming console at $499 would be at launch, just that it doesn't seem ureasonably expensive for what it is.

[Midnight Son]

I can't see how they can get the initial price below $399 based on the hardware that's involved in the PS3 and Xbox 360. I'm waiting for the 2nd or 3rd price drop anyway. And if the games are $70, I'm looking for a new hobby.

[Supertanker]

I'm expecting $299, which still means $500 with controllers and games. Anything over and I'll wait for a price drop. I'm still holding out on the PSP since I haven't seen anything on there worth the initial $400 to me.

[TitoLandrum]

If it's much more than $300 dollars, I'll be fully converted to a PC-only gamer.

And I am surprised the price isn't out yet. That makes me wonder if it is something that may not be palatable to alot of gamers. Or maybe microsoft doesn't want to tip their hand to Sony.

[Jason Cross]

I think pricing wasn't announced because they're feeling each other out for how much they can get away with.

The PS2, by the way, cost almost $400 when it was launched in Japan. That was the US equivalent price.

Anyway, I think they're looking at $299 or $349, and trying to decide which one to go with. They'd like to do $349, but not if "the other guy" is going to undercut them, y'know? At least until the supply ramps up.

I honestly don't know how Microsoft is going to pull it off. The system actually should cost less to produce on the front end than the original Xbox did, because they own the IP and get the chips built themselves, DVD and hard drives are cheaper, etc. Plus, their chips are smaller than the PS3's, and I think they're actually not much larger (in terms of square millimeters) than the original Xbox's CPU and GPU. But trying to launch in three territories within 4-6 weeks of each other? I just can't imagine they'll have a million systems or more for each of them, with enough resupply to handle demand.

[mouselock]

The PSP came out at $249 and isn't it doing insanely well?

The PSP market is entirely different, though. It's effectively working at creating it's own market, or maybe tapping into the high-end gizmo market. It's obviously not trying in any way to directly compete in the hand-held gaming market. I don't think the PS3 will have that luxury. (Others would argue about the PSP doing insanely well, too. ;) )

[Xaroc]

If it's much more than $300 dollars, I'll be fully converted to a PC-only gamer.


I don't get this at all. Even if you lag way behind the curve you are going to spend well over $500 on a gaming PC in a 5 year span. I know people with athlon 1.4s and gf3s still and even if they had put nothing else into their pc over 4 or 5 years they had to drop $1500 on them to get them in the first place. If they wanted to stay semi-current during that time it would mean probably at least one $1000 upgrade. So for 5 years to stay just semi-current requires spending $2500. Why is more than $300 too much for something that will last for 5 years?

-- Xaroc

[Dirt]

DVD's took off when they became cheap and affordable and everybody realized that it was feasible to create their own library of movies. CD prices haven't gone down in 15 years and sales haven't gone up in a few years. I don't know how Sony and Xbox can believe a $10 increase in games at launch are going to fly well with the general gaming populace.

[Dirt]

The Nintendo was $149.99 back in '87.

Wasn't that the same price of the Atari 2600 on release ... in 1978ish?
I can't remember. I had one but my parents bought it.

[sluggo]

The price for Microsoft is obvious: $360.

[Marcus]

DVD's took off when they became cheap and affordable and everybody realized that it was feasible to create their own library of movies. CD prices haven't gone down in 15 years and sales haven't gone up in a few years. I don't know how Sony and Xbox can believe a $10 increase in games at launch are going to fly well with the general gaming populace.

I agree 100% with this. Its pretty insane when you can get a new release DVD for 15.99 and the soundtrack is almost the same price if not higher.

Hell with the PSP games I flat out refuse to buy one if its priced higher then 39.99. There is no way in hell I will pay 50 bucks for a portable game even if it does have nice pretty graphics. Its just retarded. ESP if its a port.

IMHO the console market is pretty volatile and any price increases will not be taken well.

[TitoLandrum]

I don't get this at all. Even if you lag way behind the curve you are going to spend well over $500 on a gaming PC in a 5 year span. I know people with athlon 1.4s and gf3s still and even if they had put nothing else into their pc over 4 or 5 years they had to drop $1500 on them to get them in the first place. If they wanted to stay semi-current during that time it would mean probably at least one $1000 upgrade. So for 5 years to stay just semi-current requires spending $2500. Why is more than $300 too much for something that will last for 5 years?

-- Xaroc

I see what you are getting at, but what I said with the notion that I'm a PC-gamer first and a console gamer 2nd. It was by no means implying that the console route is the more expensive route b/c they'll raise the price above $300. I am unwilling to give up my pc-game addiction so I live with the cost of PC upgrades, but I might be able to give up my consoles if it means I have to fork over an extra $200 dollars on release day. For me, I have a mental barrier that if I have to fork over more than $500 on release day, I have to think twice. Especially when I break out the console less than once a week.

[jpinard]

If the price is $400+ and if games really are $60 a pop... I guarantee high-end publishers and developers losing their shirts. They're banking on bajillions of sales of XBox 360's adn PS3's... and it ain't gonna happen at $400+ disposable income isn't keeping up with necessities (food, gas, & bills).

Ironically I see this as a boon to the pc, as development costs are more reasonable. IF we're to believe the dev's and publishers who keep saying the cost to develop next-gen games for X-Box 360 and PS3 are astronomical... they will have to sell ungodly amounts of games to make up that cost. $60 per game and a console that's over $400? Not going to happen in today's U.S. market unless people stop buying gas and food... In fact, $60 per game will drive record amounts of people to gamefly and Blockbuster... increasing the amount of no-sales due to re-used games. Even EBGames reselling technique isn't as detrimental to them as a Gamefly or Blockbuster since on average a game is used by 2 people, vs. Gamefly and Blockbuster's infinity...

[Phil_Stein]

Going from memory on some of these

Atari 2600, circa 1978 was listed at $199, but I think it commonly sold at $149. Didn't come down to $99 until ~82

Intellivesion, circa 1979 was listed at $299, commonly sold at $249

Colecovision, circa 1982, was, IIRC, $249

Don't know about NES

SNES and Genesis were, IIRC, $199 at launch, in 88-89

3DO, infamously, flopped at $700 launch circa 1992.

Atari Jaguar flopped at $300 launch circa 1993.

In 94? Saturn launched at $400, Playstation launched 3 months later at $300. N64 launched a year later at $250

PS2 launched in 00 at $299. In 01' X-Box also launched at $299, GameCube $249.


Inflation means that a price of $200 in 1982 is equal to almost exactly $400 now.

So basically, every successful console has launched for the equivalent (in '05 dollars) of $300-500.

[mouselock]

So basically, every successful console has launched for the equivalent (in '05 dollars) of $300-500.

That's a bizarre figure to throw in there, though. Unless someone can provide me with $200 1982 dollars that are magically worth $400 now, it's still going to cost me $400. And I think for a piece of electronics that sits in your entertainment center that's a tough price to swallow. It puts it in the category of either major appliance (which it's not) or high-end geek gear (which it may well be, but that's 180 degrees away from the marketing Spin both MS and Sony have been putting out there).

All of this, btw, supposes people who have SD telivisions won't see "HD" and suspect it's not worth owning the console if they don't have an HD TV (which effectively throws the price of their system purchase up by a few hundred dollars, depending on how they evaluate the need for a telivision otherwise.)

[Xaroc]

I don't get this at all. Even if you lag way behind the curve you are going to spend well over $500 on a gaming PC in a 5 year span. I know people with athlon 1.4s and gf3s still and even if they had put nothing else into their pc over 4 or 5 years they had to drop $1500 on them to get them in the first place. If they wanted to stay semi-current during that time it would mean probably at least one $1000 upgrade. So for 5 years to stay just semi-current requires spending $2500. Why is more than $300 too much for something that will last for 5 years?

-- Xaroc

I see what you are getting at, but what I said with the notion that I'm a PC-gamer first and a console gamer 2nd. It was by no means implying that the console route is the more expensive route b/c they'll raise the price above $300. I am unwilling to give up my pc-game addiction so I live with the cost of PC upgrades, but I might be able to give up my consoles if it means I have to fork over an extra $200 dollars on release day. For me, I have a mental barrier that if I have to fork over more than $500 on release day, I have to think twice. Especially when I break out the console less than once a week.

Since you are a casual console gamer I can see where you are coming from. I am not sure what the magical price point is for casual users especailly parents and other gift buyers around Xmas. For people who currently play pc and console games a lot the outlay should be much easier to justify for the reasons I mentioned above.

-- Xaroc

[JD]

When the Xbox was released in Europe, Microsoft expected people wouldn't mind spending €480 on the system. (That was about $450 around that time.) Man were they wrong. Of course, the situation is different now that Xbox is an established brand and whatnot plus the line-up wasn't that great. The PS2 launched at around €430, but I don't know the initial sales numbers before the first price drop. I do think it was a rather slow start though.

-Julian

[stusser]

So MS is trying to reach a billion households launching at $500? How do you reach a billion sales with a high price point? Answer: you don't.

Either the billion number was total bullshit, (which of course it was anyway, the world's population is 6.5 billion, most of which eat dirt for dinner, 2 billion people have no electricity in 2005), or they'll launch at a much lower pricepoint with tons of value-added features available. My guess is a little bit of both.

[DennyA]

I predict $399, falling to $299 by the second holiday season.

[Jason Cross]

So MS is trying to reach a billion households launching at $500? How do you reach a billion sales with a high price point? Answer: you don't.

Either the billion number was total bullshit, (which of course it was anyway, the world's population is 6.5 billion, most of which eat dirt for dinner, 2 billion people have no electricity in 2005), or they'll launch at a much lower pricepoint with tons of value-added features available. My guess is a little bit of both.

Uh, no.

1. They never said a billion HOUSEHOLDS. They said a billion CONSUMERS. A great many consumers would occupy households with other consumers, in these strange logical units called "families."

2. MS never said they expect it to be the xbox 360 alone that does this. It was an "industry wide" statement. The industry as a whole can reach a billion consumers, worldwide, in this next generation. Naturally MS wants to lead everyone there, be the market leader, that kind of thing.

3. What, you think the launch price is where it's going to stay forever, and that they'll rack up all their sales at $500 (or $399 or $299 or whatever)? Are you just trolling now?

[mouselock]

Uh, no.

1. They never said a billion HOUSEHOLDS. They said a billion CONSUMERS. A great many consumers would occupy households with other consumers, in these strange logical units called "families."

2. MS never said they expect it to be the xbox 360 alone that does this. It was an "industry wide" statement. The industry as a whole can reach a billion consumers, worldwide, in this next generation. Naturally MS wants to lead everyone there, be the market leader, that kind of thing.

As for 1, that's still a shitload of people. Taking the spurious Stusser statistic of 2 billion don't have electricity, that's stating that they expect video game consoles to fully be incorporated into the lives of 1/4 of the world's population. I have trouble coming up with enough affluent countries with ample disposable income to make this happen, unless we assume a near 100% buy-in. I don't foresee any game console, either singly or in combination, reaching all 250 million Americans, for instance, and right next to Japan we have to be the #1 target audience.

As for 2, they sure as hell implied the shit out of it if they didn't say it.


3. What, you think the launch price is where it's going to stay forever, and that they'll rack up all their sales at $500 (or $399 or $299 or whatever)? Are you just trolling now?

Name a console that's debuted at disproportionately more than the last generation and gone on to sell well. In practical terms, there's no way to price high out of the gate and still go on to sell well; all the expectations and anticipation is set by achievability out of the gate. If the consoles are priced so high someone figures that they'll "never" get one due to expense, they quit following the games, quit caring about the hype, etc..

Affordability at release is crucial. They can probably ratchet things up by another $50. $100 is pushing it, but maybe they can make that case. More than that and they're shooting themselves in the foot.

[stusser]

A representative sample of google searches hold up the 2 billion w/o electricity thing.

Anyway, like mouselock said, 1 billion people is 25% of the entire world's population with electricity... and there's lots of people who do have juice in their wires but zero disposable income for frivolities like $500 game consoles. It's just a totally insane number that has nothing to do with reality.

[Qenan]

If it's much more than $300 dollars, I'll be fully converted to a PC-only gamer.


I don't get this at all. Even if you lag way behind the curve you are going to spend well over $500 on a gaming PC in a 5 year span.

For patient PC gamers, the games themselves are dirt cheap. For kids, this matters a lot -- my wife routinely buys games for my daughter, but none of them ever cost more than $10 (a lot are cheaper). Sure, they're a few years old, but she doesn't mind...

Psychologically, I think it's a lot easier to justify PCs, at least in my family. My wife would say an XBox is "just" a gaming machine, but PCs can be used for other purposes that she values more highly. I doubt my situation is unique. Ergo, if console prices approach PCs, they are in big trouble.

I'm guessing $349. At that price I think they can sell them, although many customers will wait for a price drop or two.

[stusser]

The _majority_ of the utility of my current xbox is streaming downloaded movies and TV shows from my desktop PC over SMB. I very very rarely play games on it. If the xbox360 has the ability to stream high definition divx/xvid/mpeg4 movies with AC3 soundtracks as well as just plain ol' MP3's built in with no DRM bullshit and a great smooth intuitive interface, I'll buy one as a media center.

I literally don't care about the money, it makes no difference whatsoever to me whether it's $350 or $500. I wouldn't buy it for the games, because I don't really dig console games. But I'm clearly not their main audience, so I guess we'll see.

[Dirt]

Which is why Bill and Steve are going to try to bank on the X-Box as more than just a game machine, from what I've heard it's going to meld Web-TV too.

[stusser]

Yep I saw the presentation and I'm all for it.

Also, I'd like to drill the girl with the backpack.

[Jose Liz]

If it's much more than $300 dollars, I'll be fully converted to a PC-only gamer.

And I am surprised the price isn't out yet. That makes me wonder if it is something that may not be palatable to alot of gamers. Or maybe microsoft doesn't want to tip their hand to Sony.

I thought it was common to pay $500 for videocards that last less than 1 console gen.

[Wholly Schmidt]

Yep I saw the presentation and I'm all for it.

Also, I'd like to drill the girl with the backpack.
Then we're definitely talking more than $300.

[stusser]

This may come as a shock to you, but nvidia and ati don't make money on their 6800ultras and x800xt platinums, they make money on their 6600s and x700s. They're called mainstream for a reason. The enthusiast segment projects a huge mindshare but is a very small marketshare.

[Jose Liz]

I don't follow the PC market. 6600 GT is $200. How long will you be able to play top games at a decent resolution with the $200 card? Is it over 5 years? Or closer to 3?

[stusser]

That number is deceiving. Nobody pays $200 for a video card, just like nobody pays $500 for windows. In fact, nobody buys video cards at all. The card comes with their dell and the case is never opened.

The market for aftermarket computer hardware is so incredibly small in comparison to OEM sales that it could almost be written off as a rounding error.

[mouselock]

I don't follow the PC market. 6600 GT is $200. How long will you be able to play top games at a decent resolution with the $200 card? Is it over 5 years? Or closer to 3?

With superlative quality? 3 years seems reasonable (assuming the rest of the PC is suitably up to date). With acceptable quality? 5 is more likely. There's a strong parallel with consoles. In 5 years the 360 and PS3 will be old hat and clunky.

The real issue is, despite the obvious overlap on these boards, we're not the target audience for current generation console systems. The target audience is generally people who wouldn't be caught dead considering spending $1500 to upgrade their computer to play games; as such, they're looking at a $500 XBox 360 vs. a $500 Dell and going "Why the fuck would any sane person pay $500 for a game machine when they could just buy a computer for that?"

[Xaroc]

I don't follow the PC market. 6600 GT is $200. How long will you be able to play top games at a decent resolution with the $200 card? Is it over 5 years? Or closer to 3?

Top end 5 years ago was a geforce 2. While I am sure it could "run" HL2 or Doom3 you wouldn't be seeing the game as the designers intended it. 3 years ago top end was a geforce 4. It could probably run todays games reasonably with the details turned down at lower resolutions. The 6600GT is probably good for 2 years tops assuming you have a decent cpu with it seeing as it is only a midrange card.

-- Xaroc

[Aleck]

The price for Microsoft is obvious: $360.

That would actually be rather clever.

Never gonna happen, but clever.

[Jeremy Johnsen]

Why not start at $360 and drop to $299 the week before the PS3 launches? That combined with Halo 3 may cut into PS3's numbers.

[Toddy]

If it's much more than $300 dollars, I'll be fully converted to a PC-only gamer.


I don't get this at all. Even if you lag way behind the curve you are going to spend well over $500 on a gaming PC in a 5 year span. I know people with athlon 1.4s and gf3s still and even if they had put nothing else into their pc over 4 or 5 years they had to drop $1500 on them to get them in the first place. If they wanted to stay semi-current during that time it would mean probably at least one $1000 upgrade. So for 5 years to stay just semi-current requires spending $2500. Why is more than $300 too much for something that will last for 5 years?

-- Xaroc

Sort of true--it's ridiculous to say that you *need* to spend $2500 every five years to stay current with PC gaming hardware, but I accept the "it's expensive" point --but you get more out of a PC than just games. A 360 will be nothing but a game-playing device for 95% of the buyers, no matter what sort of spin Gates wants to put on the home-entertainment angle.

Also, because of the licensing issues, console games are usually $10-20 US higher than their PC equivalents right now. Toss in the price increase said to be on the way with the new consoles, and you'll likely see this gap widen. If you buy a reasonable number of games per year, this can add up fast. You could easily spend $200-300 more per year on console games than you would on PC games. Add that up over the five years you're talking about and you pretty much bridge the cost difference separating a modest gaming PC and a new console system.

[jpinard]

I think Brett nailed it. yes we sink more than that into a pc... but no matter what MS and NOW SOny is trying blow... these things are for playing games only. I'm not going to pay my bills on a PS3, nor am I going to load up MS Word on my XBox 360. And nope, I'm not going remove the red-eye on a PS3, nor create a birthday family DVD slideshow on the next X-Box.

Until they make these things a stinkin PC on a TV... they're just a machine to play games. IF MS and SOny think people want to use their X-Box for more than games and music, then they believe their own marketing magic. Id' think people here are smarter than that too, but then again, there's a crapload of people who actually think the 2 terabyte quote from Sony means, it's almost as fast as a real supercomputer. What's unreal, is the amount of supposedly smart people who buy into this marketing BS.

Ironically, if MS and Sony want to get more "use" out of their consoles, theyy're going to have the EXACT same problems we have... software issues, games that need patches, poor frame rates. This has already reared it's ugly head with game releases... and guess what folks. the more X-Box live and Sony's online servive get ramped up... the more excuses people have to release buggy unfully tested software.

You can't have it both ways. A console with the versatility of a pc, or a pc with the only focus as a gaming machine without accepting the inherit problems that exist with an open system. In this respect Nintendo is DOES have a clue with the Revolution. They're not overbilling it as the next pc. It's just a little tv console gaming machine.

[Dave Long]

They can easily launch at $399.99 this fall and then drop the price to $299.99 at E3 next year if necessary or when PS3 launches.

I suspect that Sony's "Spring" launch means spring in Japan and not here in the States. That probably puts them in September or November in 2006 for the US. Their system is likely to be $399.99 also so if Microsoft has a year headstart at that price and then counters with $299.99 next fall, that's a good move for them.

I think Nintendo's Revolution will be $199.99 again, just like Gamecube.

--Dave

[mouselock]

They can easily launch at $399.99 this fall and then drop the price to $299.99 at E3 next year if necessary or when PS3 launches.

--Dave

They can easily launch at $2599.99 this fall and then drop the price to $2.50 for E3. I don't think that's going to be very healthy for business either.

I certainly think if MS wants to get a head-start on selling into households ahead of Sony, they'll have to price more aggressively than that. (Or come up with a killer reason why they don't need to.)

[Xaroc]

If it's much more than $300 dollars, I'll be fully converted to a PC-only gamer.


I don't get this at all. Even if you lag way behind the curve you are going to spend well over $500 on a gaming PC in a 5 year span. I know people with athlon 1.4s and gf3s still and even if they had put nothing else into their pc over 4 or 5 years they had to drop $1500 on them to get them in the first place. If they wanted to stay semi-current during that time it would mean probably at least one $1000 upgrade. So for 5 years to stay just semi-current requires spending $2500. Why is more than $300 too much for something that will last for 5 years?

-- Xaroc

Sort of true--it's ridiculous to say that you *need* to spend $2500 every five years to stay current with PC gaming hardware, but I accept the "it's expensive" point --but you get more out of a PC than just games. A 360 will be nothing but a game-playing device for 95% of the buyers, no matter what sort of spin Gates wants to put on the home-entertainment angle.


Brett you need to spend $2500 to stay semi-current with pc gaming over 5 years. To really stay up to date you have to spend a lot more. If you are willing to run everything on low at 800x600 you can squeak by with $1500 for 5 years but that is still way more than even $500.

Also, are you going to try and pop something like Gears of War into a 5 year old pc and expect it to run? The upgrade you would have to do just to run that game would far outstrip the $3-500 you spend on an Xbox 360.


Also, because of the licensing issues, console games are usually $10-20 US higher than their PC equivalents right now. Toss in the price increase said to be on the way with the new consoles, and you'll likely see this gap widen. If you buy a reasonable number of games per year, this can add up fast. You could easily spend $200-300 more per year on console games than you would on PC games. Add that up over the five years you're talking about and you pretty much bridge the cost difference separating a modest gaming PC and a new console system.

Well there is also the fact that there are games on consoles you can only get on consoles. Things like Phantom Dust, Resident Evil 4, Mercenaries, Forza, GT4, all the Final Fantasies, etc. So the fact that PC games are generally cheaper is only important if you don't want to play games you can only play on a console and there are a large number of them.

-- Xaroc

[steve]

Brett you need to spend $2500 to stay semi-current with pc gaming over 5 years. To really stay up to date you have to spend a lot more.
This is just crazy talk.

Does every gamer really think they need to be able to play every game at 1600x1200 with 8x AA just because their neighbor can? It's some kind of crazy hardware competition. (And if you buy an Xbox 360, will people need to buy a $5K plasma screen because someone else has one?)

If you have a 2-3GHz CPU, there's little reason to upgrade anything but a videocard, assuming that's the bottleneck. And if you have an LCD, you're probably only looking at running games at a maximum resolution of 1280x1024. At that resolution, a 6800 Ultra is a luxury.

Unless people go nuts with multithreaded games in the next year or so, anyone with a 2-3GHz processor could probably get nearly five years out of it (assuming they got it in the last couple of years). The max CPU requirements nowadays are still in the 1.5GHz range, and that's about a five-year old processor. If you buy Athlons, you have/had a CPU upgrade path for quite a while. Incremental improvements are usually expensive, but it's still an option that costs less than $2500. You might spend $300 on a videocard and some RAM and you're in okay shape.

Well there is also the fact that there are games on consoles you can only get on consoles.
Well duh. There are also PC games that are only available on PCs, and some still cost less than console exclusives. I doubt Heroes of Might and Magic V will be $60.

Consoles have rentals, which I think is the better way to offset console game costs.

[Jason Becker]

Brett you need to spend $2500 to stay semi-current with pc gaming over 5 years. To really stay up to date you have to spend a lot more. If you are willing to run everything on low at 800x600 you can squeak by with $1500 for 5 years but that is still way more than even $500.

No you don't. I havn't spent that much over the last 5 years and I've had 2 games I needed to reduce to 800x600 to play. DOOM3 and Halo. D3 I guess was having a ATI card and Halo just ran like crap no matter what you had it seems.

[Jose Liz]

Top end 5 years ago was a geforce 2. While I am sure it could "run" HL2 or Doom3 you wouldn't be seeing the game as the designers intended it. 3 years ago top end was a geforce 4. It could probably run todays games reasonably with the details turned down at lower resolutions. The 6600GT is probably good for 2 years tops assuming you have a decent cpu with it seeing as it is only a midrange card.

The other posts show why I only mentioned videocards. If this post is true (it wasn't questioned, so I suppose it is), spending $500+ dollars over five years JUST ON VIDEOCARDS is expected if you want to keep up with the latest games. I don't see how this makes a $400 or even a $500 console such a ridiculous price.

Well there is also the fact that there are games on consoles you can only get on consoles. Things like Phantom Dust, Resident Evil 4, Mercenaries, Forza, GT4, all the Final Fantasies, etc. So the fact that PC games are generally cheaper is only important if you don't want to play games you can only play on a console and there are a large number of them.

An increasing number of AAA games are $50 even for PC: Half-Life 2, Doom 3, San Andreas, Chaos Theory, etc.

[mouselock]

Top end 5 years ago was a geforce 2. While I am sure it could "run" HL2 or Doom3 you wouldn't be seeing the game as the designers intended it. 3 years ago top end was a geforce 4. It could probably run todays games reasonably with the details turned down at lower resolutions. The 6600GT is probably good for 2 years tops assuming you have a decent cpu with it seeing as it is only a midrange card.

The other posts show why I only mentioned videocards. If this post is true (it wasn't questioned, so I suppose it is), spending $500+ dollars over five years JUST ON VIDEOCARDS is expected if you want to keep up with the latest games. I don't see how this makes a $400 or even a $500 console such a ridiculous price.


It's not true. Spending $200 or so on a video card in the middle of a cycle (after the initial computer outlay, of course), will give you approximately the same amount of time of viable life. At first you'll get far better graphics on the newest games, just like a console, and by the end the graphics will be lagging behind.

The difference is that PC gamers tend to be much more snobbish about what they'll accept, and want all the bells and whistles without any trade-offs, and since they can get them, they often do. On the console the trade-offs are determined (especially near the end of the system life) by the programmers. Is a little slow-down worth better lighting? It is if they say it is! Maybe you'll just be okay with somewhat lower detail models than the current state of the art in order to push some other feature higher. Etc...

The functional lifespan of a computer bought with near (but not utter) cutting edge technology these days is very similar to that of a console. The console is still way cheaper, but for the most part the only thing you have to upgrade to get back up to speed on computers is video cards these days. If you don't demand stupidly silly resolutions and 8xAA with 16x AF, which has very marginal image quality returns for very large cost outlays, it's probably cheaper to keep a computer up to date for a while than to buy a new console every time it comes out.

[Xaroc]

Brett you need to spend $2500 to stay semi-current with pc gaming over 5 years. To really stay up to date you have to spend a lot more.
This is just crazy talk.

Does every gamer really think they need to be able to play every game at 1600x1200 with 8x AA just because their neighbor can? It's some kind of crazy hardware competition. (And if you buy an Xbox 360, will people need to buy a $5K plasma screen because someone else has one?)


Steve if you put $1500 into a machine 5 years ago (1.4ghz athlon and gf2 or 3 with hard drive, sound card, case etc.) and then dropped another $1000 on it like 2.5 years ago (9600, 9700, 9800 new cpu, memory, mb, keep the hd and sound card etc.) you are not running Doom3 and Half-Life 2 at 1600x1200 with 8xAA. That is crazy talk. You are probably running them both at 1024x768 at medium quality which is staying semi-current.

Look at this:

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0LDk=

Doom3 9800 pro (bottom of the page) playable resolution 1024x768 settings medium. I am not even sure you could get a 9800 pro 2.5 years ago.

I am giving the benefit of the doubt of a fully up to date machine 5 years go so it would last as long as possible then a reasonable upgrade in the middle. If you go lower than that then you are running current games even crappier. If you add in another upgrade for right now you are driving the cost up or just spreading it out a different way. In any event, no matter how you slice it you are going to pay far far more than $500 over a 5 year period which is my point.

-- Xaroc

[Jose Liz]

9800 Pro launched a bit over two years ago (March 2003): http://mirror.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2003/4615.html

The difference is that PC gamers tend to be much more snobbish about what they'll accept, and want all the bells and whistles without any trade-offs, and since they can get them, they often do.

This seems true.

it's probably cheaper to keep a computer up to date for a while than to buy a new console every time it comes out.

Xaroc keeps bringing this into question.

In any case, X360 with three cores, an extremely advanced GPU, 512MB memory w/o OS demands, will probably run games better than a decent 2GHz PC, 512MB RAM, 6600 GT. The question is for how long?

[mouselock]

it's probably cheaper to keep a computer up to date for a while than to buy a new console every time it comes out.

Xaroc keeps bringing this into question.

In any case, X360 with three cores, an extremely advanced GPU, 512MB memory w/o OS demands, will probably run games better than a decent 2GHz PC, 512MB RAM, 6600 GT. The question is for how long?

My impression of Xaroc's position is he has far more stringent qualifiers for what makes a game play decently on a computer than the equivalent console gamer would. Also, the whole argument falls apart if you throw out the upper 1% graphics-whore type games on PC and look at the field at large. Whether or not you consider this fair I would expect to vary, but certainly there are plenty of good games of the same genre that simply don't bang your hardware nearly as hard as Doom3 or whatever the most currently uber normalmapped lightsourced polygonal love-fest shooter of the week is today. (No offense meant to shooters or anything, but they are the driving force for computer power upgrades these days.)

The interesting thing about this generation of consoles is that it looks like it's just going to walk all over PCs to begin with, which gives them a better head start than previously. (Generally it was a matter of comparing apples to oranges, as consoles had some nifty tricks but low resolution and no AA/AF, etc.. that seems to be, on paper at least, untrue this generation.)

I don't think it's reasonable to argue that a single console isn't a cheaper way to play games than a PC. Even if you only upgrade on the exact same cycle for the exact same relative performance, that PC will run you 1.5-3x the cost of a console. However, always before you could be assured that if you bought that PC halfway through you'd get, on average, "technically" better games (higher graphic specs, etc..). That's a lot fuzzier this time, and even if true would seem to demand a significantly higher price point to pull off.

[stusser]

Nah, it's exactly like last generation. Xbox1 was announced with better than geforce3 specs before the geforce3 was released and PS2 was announced with holy shit that's incredibly fast speed (remember the emotion engine) that never materialized. It's exactly like last generation.

[jpinard]

Nah, it's exactly like last generation. Xbox1 was announced with better than geforce3 specs before the geforce3 was released and PS2 was announced with holy shit that's incredibly fast speed (remember the emotion engine) that never materialized. It's exactly like last generation.

I kept saying that too, but no one seemed to remember... amazing how things change but stay the same.

[TitoLandrum]

Those people that have all three consoles, say the launch prices jump to 399 this year, do you still buy all three or do you have to weigh your options and only choose 1 or 2? Would a lower price tag on a Nintendo leave Sony or Microsoft as the odd man out?

[Xaroc]

it's probably cheaper to keep a computer up to date for a while than to buy a new console every time it comes out.

Xaroc keeps bringing this into question.

In any case, X360 with three cores, an extremely advanced GPU, 512MB memory w/o OS demands, will probably run games better than a decent 2GHz PC, 512MB RAM, 6600 GT. The question is for how long?

I don't think it's reasonable to argue that a single console isn't a cheaper way to play games than a PC. Even if you only upgrade on the exact same cycle for the exact same relative performance, that PC will run you 1.5-3x the cost of a console. However, always before you could be assured that if you bought that PC halfway through you'd get, on average, "technically" better games (higher graphic specs, etc..). That's a lot fuzzier this time, and even if true would seem to demand a significantly higher price point to pull off.

If you upgrade on the exact same cycle and want as close as you can get to the 360 you are going to have to outlay $2000+ for a crazy SLI powered machine with a 4ghz chip in it. If you upgrade in the middle of the cycle that machine will cost less but you had to have something to play games on in the meantime that is nowhere near as powerful so whatever you are spending for that has to be factored in. So I still think $2000-2500 for a midrange machine plus upgrades or a really high end machine over a 5 year span is reasonable. You can slice it up anyway you want, it is still expensive even for a frugal gamer to stay fairly current.

-- Xaroc

[stusser]

I spent roughly $1400 on my gaming box over the past 3 years. Currently an athlon64 at 2400Mhz with 1gb ram and a gf6800gt.

Oh, and two 2001fp 20" LCD monitors. They're included in that number. Computers aren't very expensive. $2000 over five years is about right, I'd say.

But I always have a really top of the line computer. You'll be able to beat an xbox360 for $600 6 months after it's released. A year later, twice as fast for your $600, and so on.

[Xaroc]

Those people that have all three consoles, say the launch prices jump to 399 this year, do you still buy all three or do you have to weigh your options and only choose 1 or 2? Would a lower price tag on a Nintendo leave Sony or Microsoft as the odd man out?

I like enough xbox and ps2 titles that I will still buy both the xbox 360s and ps3. $399 is a lot but honestly I will play enough games on both of them to make both purchases worthwhile. The fact they are going to be released at least 4 or 5 months apart helps too. If they were released at the same time I would probably get one of them first then wait a few months for the other.

-- Xaroc

[Shadarr]

Consoles are cheaper than PC's. Period. My computer cost about $1500, and since then all I've upgraded was the hard drive and ram. My Gamecube cost $500 including accessories and two games. I've had both of them for about the same amount of time, and the Gamecube cost a third as much.

The difference is that my PC gets used for all sorts of things besides gaming. I need a computer, I don't need a console.

[Talisker]

Those people that have all three consoles, say the launch prices jump to 399 this year, do you still buy all three or do you have to weigh your options and only choose 1 or 2? Would a lower price tag on a Nintendo leave Sony or Microsoft as the odd man out?
I own all three, and I'm planning on buying all three of the new ones, too; however, I'll predict I'll spend about $200-250 for the 360 & PS3, and $150 on the Revolution.

Obviously, I won't be picking 'em up at release -- but, that's fine by me, 'cause it means there'll be plenty of used games, budget titles, and "greatest hits" releases by the time I buy. For reference, here's what I paid for my current consoles:

XBox -- $175 (used)
PS2 -- $199
Gamecube -- $149 (incl. ZeldaWindWaker)
GBA-SP -- $99

(PSP -- not yet; $199 maybe, $149, probably, $99 definitely)

[jpinard]

Andrew... you really think the PSP will come all the way down to $99? I'd agree with the main boxes... but I really don't see it ever coming down that low... even at resale price.

[Xaroc]

I didn't mention it but I will probably buy the revolution whenever it hits $99 like I did for the GameCube. I also think the PSP could hit $99 but it may be two years from now.

-- Xaroc

[jpinard]

I didn't mention it but I will probably buy the revolution whenever it hits $99 like I did for the GameCube. I also think the PSP could hit $99 but it may be two years from now.

-- Xaroc

Really? It has 20x the tech of GB SP, and it still sells for $80!

[Kevin Grey]

The difference is that my PC gets used for all sorts of things besides gaming. I need a computer, I don't need a console.

But how often do most people need to upgrade their computers? Unless they are regularly doing intensive tasks like video editing, a 3 or 4 year old computer is going to be able to browse the web, pay bills, use IM, word processing, etc just fine. I don't see much of a need to upgrade the PC these days outside of gaming.

[Mano]

I reckon I've spent about $5-600 since 2000 to upgrade my pc. I can play all the latest games, granted at the lowest settings, but I'm used to that so it doesn't bother me any ;P. The majority of my time spent on the pc sure isn't gaming though.

I think it quite likely that MS will launch at around $449, leave it there till sales plateau in a month or 2, then drop it down to $350ish, and once the new PS is ready to come out, drop the price beneath theirs.

Since, at least I'm assuming, most people who would buy the new xbox at 400 will still buy it at 449. They get a decent return at that rate, plus, when they do drop the price to $349, that $100 off makes a larger impact in the consumer mind than if they priced it at $399 initially and dropped it to $349, hence creating a stronger desire to buy it since you know, it's a $100 dollars cheaper ;P Also, since with MS having a lead in the market because of their earlier release, Sony presumably knows that they won't be able to sell theirs at a premium and will likely set their price at $350 to match the current xbox price. Ms, having already having maxxed sales at the $350 point by this time will be in position to further reduce the price to get more customers.

So basically, I'm betting that sony will end up likely releasing at $350 They could drop it to meet the new xbox price, but I'm thinking that since the newness factor of their console will be able to sell at that premium to certain segments, and in 1-2 months they'll drop the price to $300 to match MS after sales level off at that price point.

But hey! who really knows? Not me ;P

[Jason Becker]

Look at this:

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0LDk=

Doom3 9800 pro (bottom of the page) playable resolution 1024x768 settings medium. I am not even sure you could get a 9800 pro 2.5 years ago.


-- Xaroc

Your "cherry picking" that example(i.e. an ATI card running DOOM3 since its well known Nivida runs it better). I'm in that situation with the game with my 9500 Pro, but then if I turn on HL2 I can run at 1024x768 with all the DX9 options on, it loks great and runs smooth, since ATI is favored there.

PC's are more expensive than a console to keep them up to date for gaming, but they arn't as expensive as some people want you to believe.

[Talisker]

Andrew... you really think the PSP will come all the way down to $99? I'd agree with the main boxes... but I really don't see it ever coming down that low... even at resale price.
I don't know for certain -- I'm just saying that if it does, and I haven't bought one already, I will then. (I'll bet it will hit $99 eventually, though -- probably 2-3 years from now)

[Xaroc]

Look at this:

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0LDk=

Doom3 9800 pro (bottom of the page) playable resolution 1024x768 settings medium. I am not even sure you could get a 9800 pro 2.5 years ago.


-- Xaroc

Your "cherry picking" that example(i.e. an ATI card running DOOM3 since its well known Nivida runs it better). I'm in that situation with the game with my 9500 Pro, but then if I turn on HL2 I can run at 1024x768 with all the DX9 options on, it loks great and runs smooth, since ATI is favored there.

PC's are more expensive than a console to keep them up to date for gaming, but they arn't as expensive as some people want you to believe.

Ok so now you're cherry picking with your example because HL2 favors ATI. The point I was trying to contridict with that example is Steve saying that with the estimates I was giving you could run everything at 1600x1200 with 8x AF and I showed an example that contridicted that. Here are some Far Cry numbers to further back up my point:

http://www.firingsquad.com/print_article.asp?current_section=Hardware&fs_article_id=1467

With a 9800 or 9700 pro You are at @30fps at 1600x1200 with no AA or AF on (probably not playable considering you are going to dip into the teens a lot) go to 2x/8x and you are at 20 which is definitely not playable. Your 9500 pro is at 51 fps at 1024x768, definitely playable but also definitely middle of the road in terms of graphics quality. That is with no AA or AF turned on at all.

I am sure you can adjust the estimate a few hundered dollars one way or another if you cherry pick examples and somehow pick out the exact best hardware at the exact best time but it isn't like I am off by $1000. And I am definitely not picking hardware for today that is going to run things at 1600x1200 with all the details up. That requires a $400 or $500 graphics card or two.

-- Xaroc

[steve]

You are probably running them both at 1024x768 at medium quality which is staying semi-current.
I suspect the majority of gamers play at 1024x768, but I could be wrong.

I tested a dozen or more videocards (both old and new) a few months ago. A $100 GeForce 6200 benchmarks at over 40FPS at 1024x768 without AA and with high detail in DOOM 3 (it won't do as well in other games, though). You get 85 with a $180 6600GT. If you have a Radeon 9500 or 9600, or any of the crap 5-series NVIDIA cards, it represents a fairly significant upgrade for a (relatively) reasonable amount of money.

I don't think anyone denies that PC gaming is more expensive, assuming you never add in the cost of TVs and 5.1 sound systems. (Each of which, like your PC, has other uses.)

But I totally think the cost of upgrading is overstated, particularly when people throw around "thousands of dollars" every few years. A couple hundred bucks every couple of years for something specifically game-related should be adequate for anyone who doesn't require that they always be on the bleeding edge or to run everything at 1600x1200.

[Ben]

Uh, I bought a 2.6 Ghz Dell for like $800 2 years ago. I put in a $200 9800, got a $220 monitor, and it can handle everything I've thrown at it.

It looks like I'll get another year or two from it as well. $2500? Unless you are the sort of person who buys Alienware and $500 videocards(an idiot), no way. You need to buy a $600-1000 computer every 5 years and you will probably need to throw $300 in video cards and RAM at it during those 5 years.

[Xaroc]

You are probably running them both at 1024x768 at medium quality which is staying semi-current.

I suspect the majority of gamers play at 1024x768, but I could be wrong.



You said that was I describing was some sort of uber setup that could run everything at 1600x1200 with 8x AF. I pointed out two examples that didn't bear that out in a big way. So what I was describing can play modern games at 1024x768 and that is as you say the majority of gamers, therefore not some extreme edge case. So in other words you were wrong.

-- Xaroc

[Daly]

Attempting a minor thread rerail here - (early) word is that both should be around the $300 mark.

$299.99 (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9204)

[Xaroc]

Uh, I bought a 2.6 Ghz Dell for like $800 2 years ago. I put in a $200 9800, got a $220 monitor, and it can handle everything I've thrown at it.

It looks like I'll get another year or two from it as well. $2500? Unless you are the sort of person who buys Alienware and $500 videocards(an idiot), no way. You need to buy a $600-1000 computer every 5 years and you will probably need to throw $300 in video cards and RAM at it during those 5 years.

Ok ben let's do the math. 1220 + 300 + ram (100) = $1620. Even if you accept that this will work it is still withing a few hundred dollars of my $2000-2500 estimate. Also, I don't think that 3 years from now even with a new video card you will be running modern games at an average level with a 5 year old cpu. I know a 1.4ghz cpu from 5 years ago would be a very limiting factor in todays games. So add in a new cpu and mb (even a reasonably priced setup) and you are right around $2k.

-- Xaroc

[Lee Johnson]

In fact, nobody buys video cards at all. The card comes with their dell and the case is never opened.
You're just making this stuff up, aren't you? :?

[Jason Becker]

Look at this:

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0LDk=

Doom3 9800 pro (bottom of the page) playable resolution 1024x768 settings medium. I am not even sure you could get a 9800 pro 2.5 years ago.


-- Xaroc

Your "cherry picking" that example(i.e. an ATI card running DOOM3 since its well known Nivida runs it better). I'm in that situation with the game with my 9500 Pro, but then if I turn on HL2 I can run at 1024x768 with all the DX9 options on, it loks great and runs smooth, since ATI is favored there.

PC's are more expensive than a console to keep them up to date for gaming, but they arn't as expensive as some people want you to believe.

Ok so now you're cherry picking with your example because HL2 favors ATI.

Well Duh that was my whole point.




With a 9800 or 9700 pro You are at @30fps at 1600x1200 with no AA or AF on (probably not playable considering you are going to dip into the teens a lot) go to 2x/8x and you are at 20 which is definitely not playable. Your 9500 pro is at 51 fps at 1024x768, definitely playable but also definitely middle of the road in terms of graphics quality. That is with no AA or AF turned on at all.Xaroc

So what? AA and AF are minor upgrades in graphics quality compared to the cost increase in the card needed to run them effectivly. You arn't missing out on how the game was intended if you don't run those. Saying "only" 51 fps as middle of the road makes no sense. If you can play the game smoothly without turning all the graphics options down low then your seeing the game in its intended look. I can still do that with the vast majority of games out there. with "outdated" quipment.

[Jose Liz]

Uh, I bought a 2.6 Ghz Dell for like $800 2 years ago. I put in a $200 9800, got a $220 monitor, and it can handle everything I've thrown at it.

So, $1000? And it was brand new? I highly doubt that this can run games quite as well as a brand-new console. Even at the definitely-not-happening price of $500, the console is a bargain. In five years, you're going to invest $400 on a videocard + RAM? 2.4 GHz will hardly be sufficient. And surprise: another console will be out that will undoubtedly own the even newly-upgraded PC. That console will most likely represent a bigger leap in graphics than you would get with that $400 uprade.

This thread can be summarized by stating "consoles are incredibly more price efficient for playing games than PCs, so complaining about their price is silly."

[Qenan]

Attempting a minor thread rerail here - (early) word is that both should be around the $300 mark.

$299.99 (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9204)

At $299 they will sell very well indeed...

[Xaroc]

With a 9800 or 9700 pro You are at @30fps at 1600x1200 with no AA or AF on (probably not playable considering you are going to dip into the teens a lot) go to 2x/8x and you are at 20 which is definitely not playable. Your 9500 pro is at 51 fps at 1024x768, definitely playable but also definitely middle of the road in terms of graphics quality. That is with no AA or AF turned on at all.

So what? AA and AF are minor upgrades in graphics quality compared to the cost increase in the card needed to run them effectivly. You arn't missing out on how the game was intended if you don't run those. Saying "only" 51 fps as middle of the road makes no sense. If you can play the game smoothly without turning all the graphics options down low then your seeing the game in its intended look. I can still do that with the vast majority of games out there. with "outdated" quipment.

I will paste this back in since you seemed to have missed it the first time:


The point I was trying to contridict with that example is Steve saying that with the estimates I was giving you could run everything at 1600x1200 with 8x AF and I showed an example that contridicted that. Here are some Far Cry numbers to further back up my point:

You were getting on me about a reply to Steve's point. So we can just let that be now. Your point is that 1024x768 with nothing on is fine for you and I don't think I ever said any different.

You also seemed to have missed what I was talking about "as the designer intended". Here is the quote:


Top end 5 years ago was a geforce 2. While I am sure it could "run" HL2 or Doom3 you wouldn't be seeing the game as the designers intended it.


I don't think anyone would argue with that statement.

-- Xaroc

[Ben]

I would argue that PC gaming is of similar expense if not less. Just like you can't count your TV and couch as part of the cost of console gaming, if nobody made games for the PC I would have every part of my current PC except the graphics card.

Xaroc- You are including a $200 video card and a $300 video card in with your math. I've spent $1220 total. I was saying hypothetically you could drop a similar amount to get a good system.

And 3 years from now, probably not, but my PS2 definitely can't play Doom 3 or Half Life 2.

Processor speed increases have slowed to a crawl. When I bought the 2.6 the fastest Dell sold was a 3.0, I think. It's screamed all the way up to 3.8.

I checked and the 2.6 was bought in January of 2003. So it's more like 2 and a half years. $800 29 months ago buys a perfectly reasonable machine with a handful of upgrades.

[stusser]

For $300 if it supports the video streaming media center stuff (and not just WMV, I need xvid/divx/mpeg4/etc) I'll get one on release day just for the fucking around with it factor.

[Qenan]

Very good point. The time period for a processor to double in power has increased, and that has effectively made PC gaming get cheaper. Future processor improvements seem to rely heavily on multithreading -- until/unless this becomes a bigger feature in games, the pressure to upgrade is mostly limited to a new video card every 2-3 years. If you go with middle of the road options, you can do quite well at a modest overall cost.

That doesn't make it cheaper than a console. But I would still own a computer, so the cost of gaming isn't quite as high as it might appear. And the obvious utility of PCs makes them more palatable to our non-gaming spouses... at $300 I can probably make a case for one console. At $500, forget it.

[Xaroc]

Ben I will say I agree with one part of your post. CPUs have slowed down a lot in terms of increasing in power.

-- Xaroc

[Shadarr]

But how often do most people need to upgrade their computers? Unless they are regularly doing intensive tasks like video editing, a 3 or 4 year old computer is going to be able to browse the web, pay bills, use IM, word processing, etc just fine. I don't see much of a need to upgrade the PC these days outside of gaming.
I don't see much of a need to upgrade period, because ever since I got a GBA (and subsequently a GameCube) I haven't bought much of anything for the PC. Games that are cross-platform are generally written for the consoles, and there isn't much on the PC that I'm dying to play. The last game I really got into was Evil Genius. I picked up Locomotion, but the bad press its gotten has left it shelved in favour of older 'cube games like Super Monkeyball and Pikmin. At this point, I'd say I'm more likely to get one of the new consoles than to upgrade or replace my PC, simply because there's more chance of a must-play game like Resident Evil 4 coming out there. Civ 4 could be great, or it could just be another disappointment.

[Wholly Schmidt]

Couple things:
I would argue that PC gaming is of similar expense if not less. Just like you can't count your TV and couch as part of the cost of console gaming, if nobody made games for the PC I would have every part of my current PC except the graphics card.
Ok, the couch? Come on. No one's factoring in your desk and chair with the computer. As for the rest of your computer, would you really have the same setup you had in 1990, for example, if you didn't play games? Cause I can still play my Xbox on the TV I bought in 1990 (or 1980 just about) with nowhere near the impact on my gaming that using a computer from that era would have on you. And even if all you ever do is print out text documents on a dot matrix printer with your computer from 1990 (don't know if that's even right for when we had dot matrix printers, don't care), it would certainly take more than a new video card to get you to gaming now. Same goes for a computer as recent as 5 years old. Just dropping a gaming video card into an otherwise unsuitable-for-gaming PC will not solve everything.

Xaroc- You are including a $200 video card and a $300 video card in with your math. I've spent $1220 total. I was saying hypothetically you could drop a similar amount to get a good system.

And 3 years from now, probably not, but my PS2 definitely can't play Doom 3 or Half Life 2.
Well you're just picking games that are at the end of a console lifespan. Games that you can/will be able to play on the Xbox for that matter (though I wouldn't be surprised to see HL2 pull a Dreamcast-HL1).

It's that curve of console to PC quality comparison that is the crux of this argument, and I think it's the most often abused by both sides. Sure, maybe you can build your own PC and keep it current for approximately the same amount of money as maintaining a current console in the same time period. But that's going to be the PC that plays all the latest hits at medium detail, low resolution, etc. The one where you can't say "Look how much better Doom 3 looks on my PC than your Xbox!" On the other hand, yes your console costs over the life of some guys computer were a third of what he put into his machine, but his machine was the one that was eclipsed by a brand new console for all of about a month before he was back to playing the same games you were with higher resolutions and more effects, etc.

You can go either route, there's nothing wrong with either way, but because of the differences it's always going to be very hard to get people to agree on whether consoles or PCs are more expensive.

[Kevin Grey]

And 3 years from now, probably not, but my PS2 definitely can't play Doom 3 or Half Life 2.

But your Xbox can (assuming you owned one).

[Ben]

Kevin- My Xbox probably can't handle Half Life 2(given that we are near the end of it's lifetime and no FPS on it looks nearly as good), and I'd say Doom 3 looks worse, but that may be the monitor and DVI vs. TV and S-video more than the games.

Wholly- But when figuring out how expensive gaming as a hobby is you have to consider that I would've bought pretty much the same computer EVEN IF NO ONE RELEASED PC GAMES. Maybe only 512 RAM and I'd have a crappier video card, but running Windows XP on a computer from 1990 would be a bitch. I would still want to watch movies and surf the internet and use applications and everything else.

In terms of thinking "How much extra will I have to spend to play games on my PC/Xbox360/PS3", the relevant figures are video cards vs. systems, with the slight twist of consoles requiring more accessory purchases.

Unless you guys would be all using 486s. Maybe Windows 3.1 was a lot better than I remember it.

Jose- This November will be the first time a console can run a game that's prettier than anything my computer can run. It's not incredibly more price efficient. You have to spend $400 every few years no matter where you want to go.

Who just buys the base system? Extra controller(s) and memory cards don't come cheap.


Oh, and ancedotally, the failure rate of PC components is much lower than consoles. More importantly, I am qualified to troubleshoot and solve most of my PC problems. When my PS2 starting breaking down I had to buy a new one.

[Kevin Grey]

Kevin- My Xbox probably can't handle Half Life 2(given that we are near the end of it's lifetime and no FPS on it looks nearly as good), and I'd say Doom 3 looks worse, but that may be the monitor and DVI vs. TV and S-video more than the games.


HL2 has already been announced for Xbox before the year is out and was at E3 I believe.

[steve]

To be fair, I wonder what machine it would take to run Half-Life 2 with moderate texture detail at 640x480, since that would be similar to running it on an Xbox.

I'm guessing it wouldn't take a $2500 system, or a $400 videocard, to run at a decent framerate.

[Toddy]

Brett you need to spend $2500 to stay semi-current with pc gaming over 5 years. To really stay up to date you have to spend a lot more.

This is just crazy talk.

What Steve said. I've barely spent that much in the past five years on my *two* PCs, and both can run anything contemporary with all or almost all the bells and whistles (my secondary machine is dragging a bit in the post-HL 2, DOOM 3 era, but it handles everything else I've thrown at it). I play games for a living, too, so I have to have a main machine that's fairly close to cutting edge.

And like Steve said, if you bought, say, a P4 2.4 and a $200 video card in the past year, you should be pretty much good to go for 2-3 years total. PC gaming can be pricey, but it really doesn't have to be these days. And again, you will save money with every game purchase. Of course, you can make this up with more rentals, but if the game is really good and you're a fairly hardcore gamer, chances are you're going to still buy a lot of games.

But this is really the stupidest fucking argument ever. Console and PC games are so different in feel and character that we might as well be comparing cars with toasters.

[Wholly Schmidt]

Wholly- But when figuring out how expensive gaming as a hobby is you have to consider that I would've bought pretty much the same computer EVEN IF NO ONE RELEASED PC GAMES. Maybe only 512 RAM and I'd have a crappier video card, but running Windows XP on a computer from 1990 would be a bitch. I would still want to watch movies and surf the internet and use applications and everything else.
Alright, I sort of mistook your point earlier, I think I got what you're saying now. Sorry for that.

[Toddy]

One more thing -- that article linked to here just quotes Allard as saying that MS is looking at something in the neighborhood of $300 as the opening price for the 360. To me, if I can read the weaselly marketing-speak correctly, that means at least $300, but less than $400. So I'm thinking that the $360 MSRP rumor is going to probably be pretty close to dead-on. I can't see it being under $300, even $299.99, if all MS is saying is "neighborhood" of $300. If $299 was even a strong possibility at this point, I think the rumors about the system going for less than $300 would be all over the place right now.

[bago]

Ben I will say I agree with one part of your post. CPUs have slowed down a lot in terms of increasing in power.

-- Xaroc

Actually the truth is quite the opposite. CPUs have been expanding in power amazingly fast, but memory has not. CPU's are doing this through parallelism, which means on the other side of the bus your hit for accessing main memory is multiplied.

A dual proc 3 ghz machine can run over 600 l1 cached instructions in the time it takes to non-sequentially fetch from main memory. Optimization has been turned exactly on its head.

Doom ran so great because they pre-calced the Z of every wall in a btree, and were able to fetch the answer from memory faster than it could be calc'd. Nowadays you could calc the answer a hundred times faster than it would take to non-sequentially visit every node in the btree containing the answer.

Procedural rendering takes advantage of this fact, and that's why MS patented it for the xbox 360.

Nowadays scheduling is your biggest perf blocker, which is why people might finally start switching over to risc, so that scheduling is controlled by software instead of hardware.

[Xaroc]

Brett you need to spend $2500 to stay semi-current with pc gaming over 5 years. To really stay up to date you have to spend a lot more.

This is just crazy talk.

What Steve said. I've barely spent that much in the past five years on my *two* PCs, and both can run anything contemporary with all or almost all the bells and whistles (my secondary machine is dragging a bit in the post-HL 2, DOOM 3 era, but it handles everything else I've thrown at it). I play games for a living, too, so I have to have a main machine that's fairly close to cutting edge.


Which is exactly my point in the past 5 years you bought 2 PCs because you had to upgrade in that 5 year period. My argument is cost of ownership to play current games for the platform over a 5 year span. Thanks Brett, you are saying exactly what I was arguing all along.

-- Xaroc

[steve]

Which is exactly my point in the past 5 years you bought 2 PCs because you had to upgrade in that 5 year period. My argument is cost of ownership to play current games for the platform over a 5 year span. Thanks Brett, you are saying exactly what I was arguing all along.
The issue people took was with the specific, "Brett you need to spend $2500 to stay semi-current with pc gaming over 5 years. To really stay up to date you have to spend a lot more" comment.

I think people have generally shown that they could spend a lot less than $2500 over five years. I'd say about $1000 is the bottom-end, which isn't chump change but hardly the equivalent of buying a 6800 Ultra videocard every year.

[Xaroc]

Which is exactly my point in the past 5 years you bought 2 PCs because you had to upgrade in that 5 year period. My argument is cost of ownership to play current games for the platform over a 5 year span. Thanks Brett, you are saying exactly what I was arguing all along.
The issue people took was with the specific, "Brett you need to spend $2500 to stay semi-current with pc gaming over 5 years. To really stay up to date you have to spend a lot more" comment.

I think people have generally shown that they could spend a lot less than $2500 over five years. I'd say about $1000 is the bottom-end, which isn't chump change but hardly the equivalent of buying a 6800 Ultra videocard every year.

While I am extremely sick of this debate you aren't getting by on 1k in 5 years to run things at average resolutions. People keep thinking I am talking about buying a single machine and that is not true. I will admit $2500 is somewhat high, which I quickly pointed out early on, but it is far closer to $2k than to $1k. All these I upgraded 2.5 years ago for $800 and don't count the video card or anything else I put into it, and by the way I didn't play PC games for the 2.5 years before that because it cost me nothing examples don't fly.

Moving foward you can't predict what is going to happen so I went backwards. Seriously, show me any combination of $1k worth of computer equipment that was up to date across the last 5 years. It is just not possible.

-- Xaroc

[Marcus]

Need is always subjective.

[dogbert]

If $299 was even a strong possibility at this point, I think the rumors about the system going for less than $300 would be all over the place right now.

Nope - before they formally announce a price, it's better for them to err on the higher price for rumours. That way when it comes in lower, it makes it looks like more of a deal.

[steve]

While I am extremely sick of this debate you aren't getting by on 1k in 5 years to run things at average resolutions.
I'm not totally sure I get what you're saying, but if you bought a socket A Athlon 4-5 years ago (I'm not sure if they debuted in 2000 or 2001), you could theoretically have upgraded the processor to an Athlon 2800-3200. You could have gone from 256MB to 1GB of RAM, and from whatever videocard you had to something like a 6600GT today.

I know that's what I did; I spent about $600 in 2000 or 2001 for an Athlon 1800, a motherboard, and RAM to upgrade another system. Then a couple of years later, I upgraded the CPU to a 2400 for about $120, and the RAM to 1GB. I sold it to a friend, and it's still running games fine at 1024x768 because she spent $200 on a 6600GT. The CPU still isn't the limiting factor with most games.

I'm not sure what "average resolution" means, but there isn't a $200 videocard that hasn't been able to handle most games at whatever the current "average resolution" was (800x600 five years ago; 1024x768 today). In each of those five years, you've had a less expensive mid-range choice.

[stusser]

Yep... CPU speed is less and less of a factor as time goes by. My computer from two upgrades ago, an athlonxp at 1800Mhz with a 9700pro and 512MB RAM, could run half-life2 at 1024x768 just fine.

[jpinard]

Yep... CPU speed is less and less of a factor as time goes by. My computer from two upgrades ago, an athlonxp at 1800Mhz with a 9700pro and 512MB RAM, could run half-life2 at 1024x768 just fine.

Unless you're playing Falcon 4 or Combat Mission...

[Xaroc]

While I am extremely sick of this debate you aren't getting by on 1k in 5 years to run things at average resolutions.
I'm not totally sure I get what you're saying, but if you bought a socket A Athlon 4-5 years ago (I'm not sure if they debuted in 2000 or 2001), you could theoretically have upgraded the processor to an Athlon 2800-3200. You could have gone from 256MB to 1GB of RAM, and from whatever videocard you had to something like a 6600GT today.

I know that's what I did; I spent about $600 in 2000 or 2001 for an Athlon 1800, a motherboard, and RAM to upgrade another system. Then a couple of years later, I upgraded the CPU to a 2400 for about $120, and the RAM to 1GB. I sold it to a friend, and it's still running games fine at 1024x768 because she spent $200 on a 6600GT. The CPU still isn't the limiting factor with most games.


The XP 1800+ debuted in around October of 2001 which is almost 2002. Which is also less than 3 years ago. Ok we are at at least a grand for that machine over less than 3 years. So yes if you want to say that you can keep a machine current for 3 years with $1000 then I totally agree.

-- Xaroc

[steve]

The XP 1800+ debuted in around October of 2001 which is almost 2002. Which is also less than 3 years ago. Ok we are at at least a grand for that machine over less than 3 years. So yes if you want to say that you can keep a machine current for 3 years with $1000 then I totally agree.
And I'm guessing that someone who spent that $1K won't need to spend another $1500 over the next two years; in fact, it's probably good for at least a year, maybe more, as-is.

So I win!

[Xaroc]

The XP 1800+ debuted in around October of 2001 which is almost 2002. Which is also less than 3 years ago. Ok we are at at least a grand for that machine over less than 3 years. So yes if you want to say that you can keep a machine current for 3 years with $1000 then I totally agree.
And I'm guessing that someone who spent that $1K won't need to spend another $1500 over the next two years; in fact, it's probably good for at least a year, maybe more, as-is.

So I win!

Again, I said over the past 5 years not past 3 years and not some mythical 2 years from now. You still neglected to include whatever the cost was of the machine before the 1800+ which I am certain had to be somewhere in the $600-$1000 range. So we are again looking at well above $1k closer to $2k which is what I am arguing. I overstated my original position but you have also made some claims that are exaggerated as well. It isn't $2500 but it isn't $1000 either, can we just agree it is somewhere in the middle and be done with this?

My original point in all of this was that pc ownership is significantly more than console ownership to stay current over a similar time and buying a console if you keep a pc up to date is probably not a giant expense. I still say that is true.

-- Xaroc

[steve]

My original point in all of this was that pc ownership is significantly more than console ownership to stay current over a similar time and buying a console if you keep a pc up to date is probably not a giant expense. I still say that is true.
No one said otherwise.

But there was plenty of exaggeration of PC upgrade costs.

[Xaroc]

My original point in all of this was that pc ownership is significantly more than console ownership to stay current over a similar time and buying a console if you keep a pc up to date is probably not a giant expense. I still say that is true.
No one said otherwise.

But there was plenty of exaggeration of PC upgrade costs.

As well as plenty of selectively undershooting of them as well.

-- Xaroc

[Jason Becker]

You got called out for your overly high claims of PC ownership for gaming Xaroc. Just because you have bought into the "you have to keep paying for these new CPU's/video card all the time" talk from hardware sites doesn't make it true.

[Ben]

Xaroc- You can't just ignore that the people would have a computer anyway in your costs.

[Jose Liz]

Yea, but you only need so much RAM, and a crappy videocard for most functions.

[Shadarr]

Yea, but you only need so much RAM
I'll assume you mean you can only buy so much RAM before you max out your motherboard, because otherwise you're just talking crazy.

[Ben]

Jose- Yes, but RAM is cheap(and has useful non-gaming applications) and if you buy a $150 video cards every 2-3 years you'll be able to play any game you want at entirely acceptable performance.

[Ibbz]

Yea, but you only need so much RAM, and a crappy videocard for most functions.
Ignoring the ram comment (Cause more ram is always good, regardless of application), you could spend $400 over the last 5 years buying 2 mid range video cards that would easily play any modern games. Considering just about all the other components can be used for non gaming uses, PC gaming isn't as expensive as it may seem. Coincidentally, Longhorn will also require a respectable video card, so its more than just games that will use them in the future.

[Marcus]

(Cause more ram is always good, regardless of application)

Thats simply not true and you should know this.

[Nick Walter]

(Cause more ram is always good, regardless of application)

Thats simply not true and you should know this.

I almost posted the same thing but let it pass. Yes in a computer geek factoid cock fight you would have totally won because it is possible to give a system more memory than it can usefully do anything with. In a more pratical real world sense, I bet 95% of people currently running WinXP would benefit from a memory upgrade so Ibbz's statement is true enough in practical terms.

[Jose Liz]

Man, I was going to say that a $150 card (Geforce 6600) couldn't run the latest games, but I saw some benchmarks and it does Doom 3 at 1024x768 at 30FPS+. BUT, Doom 3 is made for Nividia. I couldn't find how it handled HL2.

But this card was just released. What was 2 years ago $150 card? And if the latest one is barely running the new games at acceptable performance, I bet the old one isn't cutting in at all.

Edit: 2 years is WAY too long for a $150 card, see: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/e-vga_e-geforce_fx_5600_ultra/page7.asp (5600 Ultra was released two years ago).

[stusser]

Two years ago the $200 card (not $150, a little bit more) was a 9700nonpro, which could easily be overclocked to 9700pro speeds. A great little card, I had one... just checked my email invoice, $198 on 3/31/2003. The 9700pro could run doom3 medium quality at 1024x768 0aa/0af no problem, and makes a very respectable showing in hl2. It's roughly 10% slower than a 9800pro.

Alternatively you could get a 9500pro for $150 or so, and those could be hacked into 9700pros also, but with a less than reliable success rate.

[Jose Liz]

But the 9700 Pro is a 3 year old $400 card... I thought that we were including only cards that launched at a budget price.

[Ibbz]

(Cause more ram is always good, regardless of application)

Thats simply not true and you should know this.

Perhaps I should have added - 'within reason'. (I wasnt referring to people adding another 1gb of ram if they already have 1gb. I doubt games would benefit much from this either)

As Nick pointed out, a user with 256mb's can benefit from an extra 256, not to mention anyone who uses photoshop, any sort of 3d animation or someone who just loves multi tasking can certainly utilize more.


Jose,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=Go&DEPA=0&type=&description=geforce+6600gt&Category=0&minPrice=&maxPrice=&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

6600GT's for less than $200.

Benchmarks:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2297&p=10

Half life 2 at 50+ fps at 1280*1024 with 4xAA/8XAF.

2 years ago, a 9500 Pro would cost less than $200 and easily run games that appeared then:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/tyan-tachyon-g9500pro_6.html

[Kevin Grey]

Two years ago the $200 card (not $150, a little bit more) was a 9700nonpro, which could easily be overclocked to 9700pro speeds.

Come on now- if we're looking at what a casual user could be considered to have in their PC then things like overclocking should be left out.

[Jason Becker]

Two years ago the $200 card (not $150, a little bit more) was a 9700nonpro, which could easily be overclocked to 9700pro speeds.

Come on now- if we're looking at what a casual user could be considered to have in their PC then things like overclocking should be left out.

Yes it should be. But you can still play todays top graphics games(i.e. DOOM III/HL2) fine with a card like that.

[Ben]

Jose- What from the thread has lead you to conclude we were only dicussing cards that launched at a budget price?

Running Doom 3 at 800x600 with all the options turned down will produce a similar quality experience as Doom 3 on the Xbox.

And the 9500/9600 Pro was a $150 card two years ago. It could certainly handle both D3 and HL2.

[Chris Nahr]

My GeForce 5900XT played Doom 3 and HL2 just fine...

[Jose Liz]

Ben: I'm not sure. I just thought there would be too many variables otherwise.

Anyway, this thread has been incredibly informative. While it still seems that buying a $200 videocard every two years or so is required, it isn't much more expensive than console gaming, which I thought it was.

[Shadarr]

I must have lost the thread of the conversation somewhere. Were we not comparing the cost of a PC to the cost of a console? Because regardless of whether you ever upgrade it, a gaming PC costs more than any console up front. Even if you buy four Wavebirds and the biggest memory card you can find.

[Wholly Schmidt]

I think the PC gamers lost the argument by default when Ibbz broke hscroll.

[Midnight Son]

A PC may cost more than consoles, but it does so much more! It used to be mostly for games, but now it's indispensable for running my business, online banking and stocks, web browsing, PoRn!, and so much more. I'm sure that the next-gen consoles would like us to do all this on them in the living room, but I'll keep my PC's, thank you.

[Desslock]

One trend is also clear - PC prices, even for high-end gaming machines, have dramatically declined over the past 10-15 years. A top gaming machine, with the top processor, used to be $5k-$6k. Now a fully loaded PC with a 6800 ultra is under $3k, and you can get a very decent gaming machine for $1,000 or less. So while PC prices are higher, and always have been, that difference is less than it ever was previously.

That's especially true as a console ages -- an xbox is what, around Cdn. $299, and has a p3 700 and geforce 3+ processor? For not a lot more than that you can get a p4 2.8 and radeon 9800 (excluding monitor/tv costs), a far more capable gaming machine.

[Dave Long]

That's especially true as a console ages -- an xbox is what, around Cdn. $299, and has a p3 700 and geforce 3+ processor? For not a lot more than that you can get a p4 2.8 and radeon 9800 (excluding monitor/tv costs), a far more capable gaming machine.

So just because the hardware is "better", it's a "far more capable gaming machine"?

This is why PC gamers are very elitist IMO. They're so wrapped up in specs and MIPS and RAM that they can't see the games under all the silicon.

--Dave

[Desslock]

That's especially true as a console ages -- an xbox is what, around Cdn. $299, and has a p3 700 and geforce 3+ processor? For not a lot more than that you can get a p4 2.8 and radeon 9800 (excluding monitor/tv costs), a far more capable gaming machine.

So just because the hardware is "better", it's a "far more capable gaming machine"?

This is why PC gamers are very elitist IMO. They're so wrapped up in specs and MIPS and RAM that they can't see the games under all the silicon.

Sheesh, I was solely talking about the capabilities of the hardware and relative prices.

You, of all people, should realize that certainly agree that there's different types of games on the different platforms, and if you like those types of games, that'll be a far more important factor in determining which you like than the hardware capabilities.

But the fact is that you can currently get a PC with far more powerful hardware, capable of presenting games at much higher resolutions, polygon counts, framerates, etc. - 3 to 4 times as powerful - than current consoles for nominally more.

That'll change big time with the new console releases, however, when the situation will be radically reversed.

[Toddy]

Or they can, but they simply prefer the flavor of games available for PC over those available for console. Tomayto, tomahto.

[Toddy]

Which is exactly my point in the past 5 years you bought 2 PCs because you had to upgrade in that 5 year period. My argument is cost of ownership to play current games for the platform over a 5 year span. Thanks Brett, you are saying exactly what I was arguing all along.

Uh, no. I bought the two machines, and am running the two machines simultaneously, because I wanted a home LAN setup for gaming and for net stuff. It had nothing to do with getting caught in this crazy upgrade pricing you're talking about; I've put a lot less than $2500 US in each machine over the past five years.

[Ibbz]

I think the PC gamers lost the argument by default when Ibbz broke hscroll.
I'd imagine the newegg link is probably the cause of the trouble, but i'm sure you'll survive ;)

[Dave Long]

Sheesh, I was solely talking about the capabilities of the hardware and relative prices.

You, of all people, should realize that certainly agree that there's different types of games on the different platforms, and if you like those types of games, that'll be a far more important factor in determining which you like than the hardware capabilities.

But the fact is that you can currently get a PC with far more powerful hardware, capable of presenting games at much higher resolutions, polygon counts, framerates, etc. - 3 to 4 times as powerful - than current consoles for nominally more.

That'll change big time with the new console releases, however, when the situation will be radically reversed.

I know. I felt like trolling. :)

Though there are folks that go down that road often on messageboards and that I talk to even at work. They just see the hardware and nothing else. The games are like an afterthought. That drives me bonkers.

There certainly are reasons to have all the platforms, though I think if I was forced into choosing right now, I'd probably go with a console because there just aren't enough high quality PC games that aren't rehashes of the same old genres, themes and playstyles to make it a primary platform for me.

--Dave

[bago]

Consoles don't have a HAL. This is important.

[TheRock]

I am the typical techy and buy every console when it comes out and then sell them all and buy them again a year later when there are newer games and then sell them again.

The only genre that is good on a console IMHO is sports. I've never liked the FPS's (hate the controllers) RPG's (hate the kiddie/anime type RPG's, like Morrowind and Kotor on the PC) NO STRATEGY/WAR GAMES.

That's the problem for me. I play strategy/wargames almost exclusively anymore and obivously Combat Mission, War in the Pacific, Supreme Ruler, etc... etc... are not, and probably will never be, truly represented on a console. And I love tabbing out and checking my fantasy baseball scores online or downloading porn between games of Raven Shield!

[Marcus]

OK...

[Marcus]

wtf internal server error my ass.

[Marcus]

My bad.

[Chris Nahr]

OK...?

[Matthew Gallant]

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/mtv/mtv_movie_awards_arrivals_2004_photos/lil__jon/mtv2.jpg

[Qenan]

This thread must be done.