Something I learned about PC gaming...

[esperandote]

700 dlls isn't cheap, specially if you already own a general porpouse PC or laptop.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

I suppose not.

I don't really have anything capable of being a quality gaming pc, although my laptop will play less demanding things (like Red Alert 2 or HoMMIV because I'm a strategy guy) and one of my housemates has a self built monster with some ungodly ammount of processing power that breaks down every week.

Stick to the PS3 then.

 

[Signa]

Money isn't the problem with PC gaming, it's the troubleshooting that turns me off of it. I buy to play, not to troubleshoot. If I buy a game and have to troubleshoot, that's annoying. If there's a problem that takes more than 2 days to fix, that's unacceptable, and I had to troubleshoot next to everything I bought for the PC.

I like this post. Console users are far too willing to throw out the "too expensive" argument and not even look at prices to see how wrong they are about it. THIS argument on the other hand, I can buy, because not everyone has the time, patience, or know-how to deal with the inevitable issues that can crop up while using a PC.

Yeah, I think we can accept that PC software tends to have its pitfalls in gaming. It's just that with a bit of patience we do tend to overcome them, but I suppose it's not for everybody. I myself had a doozy of a time trying to get Fallout 3 to run properly, but in the end it was just software trickery and I worked around it.

Not sure if I can wait on the new ATI releases (since they'll come out here later anyway) to drop the prices of the older cards. I'm getting my EVGA GTX 470 for £200 anyway, which in the UK is a pretty good deal. (£232 on NewEgg)

Wow that IS good. Often I see $1=£1 for sales, and here in America, the 470 is going for around $300. I plan on making that my next card since I'm on a 3 year old 8800GT. It's hard to justify the purchase though since all my games are running at 1920x1080, max settings with only a few exceptions.

 

[Ildecia]

i saw a mac worth 1600 quid in a shop today. i had a quiet laugh thinking about how my current pc cost half as much (or pretty close too) and was about 10 times more powerful!.

I question your usage of the word "worth".

Mac computers aren't worth 1/2 of their price. my laptop cost me 700 dollars and runs better than my friends S2300 macbook pro.

 

[numbersix1979]

Well at least that's one of you.

Now for the rest who list "oh it's sooo expenisve" as a reason as to why PC gaming is "dying".

What about the rest of us who list 'terrible games, bullshit system requirements, unintuitive controls and a serious lack of innovation' as to why PC gaming is most assuredly dying? Or being absorbed by Zynga games, like an ameoba swallowing a horse.

 

[ZombieGenesis]

Money isn't the problem with PC gaming, it's the troubleshooting that turns me off of it. I buy to play, not to troubleshoot. If I buy a game and have to troubleshoot, that's annoying. If there's a problem that takes more than 2 days to fix, that's unacceptable, and I had to troubleshoot next to everything I bought for the PC.

I like this post. Console users are far too willing to throw out the "too expensive" argument and not even look at prices to see how wrong they are about it. THIS argument on the other hand, I can buy, because not everyone has the time, patience, or know-how to deal with the inevitable issues that can crop up while using a PC.

Yeah, I think we can accept that PC software tends to have its pitfalls in gaming. It's just that with a bit of patience we do tend to overcome them, but I suppose it's not for everybody. I myself had a doozy of a time trying to get Fallout 3 to run properly, but in the end it was just software trickery and I worked around it.

Not sure if I can wait on the new ATI releases (since they'll come out here later anyway) to drop the prices of the older cards. I'm getting my EVGA GTX 470 for £200 anyway, which in the UK is a pretty good deal. (£232 on NewEgg)

Wow that IS good. Often I see $1=£1 for sales, and here in America, the 470 is going for around $300. I plan on making that my next card since I'm on a 3 year old 8800GT. It's hard to justify the purchase though since all my games are running at 1920x1080, max settings with only a few exceptions.

Well one decent outlook is that the newer high end 400 cards support the PhysX and higher video memory that Ati will no doubt be putting into their new series of cards coming out in December. Soon all new cards will be carrying it, so we'll see it become next to mandatory in the newer games. Plus the 470 is running at a pretty amazing price point right now...I think it comes with a free Metro 2033!
I've heard of worse reasons to buy.

 

[GiantRedButton]

I'm sorry, am I missing something? £700 for a gaming PC, and you're all nodding your heads sagely and agreeing wwith how cheap that is?

A new Xbox 360 with a 250 GB hardrive costs, on Argos.co.uk, £190. That's less than a third of what your PC cost you. A 250 GB PS3 costs £285 from Argos, and that comes with two free games. I'm honestly struggling to see what exaclty is cheap about the PC option.

You can build a pc with 360 specs pretty cheaply. The tech was outdated 6 years ago. It has 256mb ram his machine has 6 gig, so 24 TIMES what you get with a 360.
If he build a 360ish pc it would be chaeper of course

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

When I was first looking into a gaming computer I didn't really know much, this was about four weeks back, and my searching took me high and low. Advertising and popular opinion tended to point towards high end systems from Dell like Alienware, but after some research I realised something.

PC gaming isn't expensive. Buying the rig alone from alienware (with an i7 930 processor, GTX 460 graphics card, 1 tb hard drive and 6 gb ram) comes upwards of £2000! Now don't get me wrong, that IS expensive, horribly so. But as I've come to learn you can get an even better system than that for about a third of the price.
Thanks to sites like Scan.co.uk I'm getting that same powerful machine for about £700. Of course I'm going to try building it myself (also much easier than I imagined) since many companies seem to throw hundreds into the fluff price for no better reason than exploiting people who didn't know better.

So there you go, from a previous console gamer, PC gaming isn't nearly as expensive as once thought. I'll probably be using this same build through the next console generation too. Still keeping my PS3 of course, I already paid £400 for the thing...

You forgot that things like the Steam sale goes on where they sell games for over 50% of their price which that is a big factor in making PC much cheaper than consoles.

 

[Woodsey]

Well at least that's one of you.

Now for the rest who list "oh it's sooo expenisve" as a reason as to why PC gaming is "dying".

What about the rest of us who list 'terrible games, bullshit system requirements, unintuitive controls and a serious lack of innovation' as to why PC gaming is most assuredly dying? Or being absorbed by Zynga games, like an ameoba swallowing a horse.

The first lot of rambling is made up of opinions (although I'd love to know your actual system requirements) so fair enough, but your Zynga statement is false.

You see, PCs have this remarkable ability to, you know, do other stuff. Zynga is a developer for web-based social networking games. Believe it or not, Farmville's not really pulling people away from playing the likes of Team Fortress 2 and whatnot.

As for unintuitive controls, I don't know what's intuitive about aiming with a stick that can only move up to a set speed. Like I said, personal choice.

Now excuse me whilst I log in to Steam; tell me, have you heard of it child? Of course, since PC gaming's dying it's only got over 2 million users logged in right now, but I still like to hop on it every now-and-then.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Well at least that's one of you.

Now for the rest who list "oh it's sooo expenisve" as a reason as to why PC gaming is "dying".

What about the rest of us who list 'terrible games, bullshit system requirements, unintuitive controls and a serious lack of innovation' as to why PC gaming is most assuredly dying? Or being absorbed by Zynga games, like an ameoba swallowing a horse.

So the 16 mil registered users with a constant 200k playing on xfire all the time and 2mil on Steam everyday and the 8mil on WoW really shows PC gaming dying.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Well at least that's one of you.

Now for the rest who list "oh it's sooo expenisve" as a reason as to why PC gaming is "dying".

What about the rest of us who list 'terrible games, bullshit system requirements, unintuitive controls and a serious lack of innovation' as to why PC gaming is most assuredly dying? Or being absorbed by Zynga games, like an ameoba swallowing a horse.

So the 16 mil registered users with a constant 200k playing on xfire all the time and 2mil on Steam everyday and the 8mil on WoW really shows PC gaming dying.

Man, I wonder what the numbers for Teamspeak and Ventrilo are.

Well to be honest I would say that they are quite high as a significant portion of all of those users need to use one of those programs since they game online. I am sure that there is a cross over with some of those gamers like some having steam as well and some on xfire playing WoW as I knwo there is since xfire is kinda like steam. With numbers anything like this it just irritates me when people say PC gaming is dying and mean it.

 

[DeaconSawyer]

Do the math on an ps2, ps3, xbox, xbox 360, accessories, and more expensive games. Subtract the cost of a standard computer, that you clearly have anyway.

Why do you need all of those systems. Its true I have both a ps3 and a 360 but only becasue the 360 was origionally a gift. It gets used for 2-3 games and thats it. I honestly see the xbox exclusives as complete crap bar a couple games.

Consider what you own and what games you are not capable of playing and so would need to buy other systems for. Since you need to buy games to make a console worth it I think they are relevant to cost. Basic math requires you to define your terms and variables before attempting the equation. The various console platforms and their generations and their games add up to a total cost higher than PC gaming. That is without paying attention to the fact that computers are pretty important anyway, but add that into the equation and it changes it even further.

Maybe you just love PS3 and really want to play FF, if that is the case PS2 and PS3 are the systems for you, but to buy all 4 consoles, (also consider many buy them new and the PS2 was NOT 100$ new) and the games for the consoles (which are relevant because console versions games always cost more) is less cost effective than a PC.

I dont see the need to own multiple systems. If I had to choose my 360 would be sold off in a heartbeat without even thinking. The ps2 was only 200-300 new I believe but I traded in ps1 to get mine and didnt buy new.

Also the inflation comment is pointless, because the hardware 7 years ago is incomparable to that of today, for PCs anyway. So how would you gage what something back then was worth according to today's standards? For 1000$ I expect to build another gaming rig that will last even longer.

Since I would have put about 500$, 7 years ago, into a new computer anyway, just for my work, it is only really 500$ toward the gaming aspect.

The inflation comment was because if you spent $500 on a pc 7 years ago and I spend $500 on a ps3 3 years ago you paid more then me.

So you spend 500+ whatever you would have spent if it was brand new + lets say another 400 toward xbox stuff to get the same number of games the the PC gets + whatever else for controllers and other accessories. Add about 25% to all your game costs.

End result

Console Fan could easily spend 900 or 1000 on the consoles alone
+10-25% on games.
+money for a computer that you obviously have.

I spend 500 on a basic computer + 500 to upgrade into a gaming rig.

So even if you factor out the Xbox it costs as much, factor it in, consoles are more.

EDIT: Please Also see 2 posts lower here. I felt I should mention about my love of consoles.

Buying multiple consoles is alot like buying a high end pc, some people do it but the majority dont do it and dont need to.

Oh and yes I do have a computer as well as my consoles its a laptop. It was purchased for school since thats the only reason I really need one. I could do everything on my old destop if I wanted which is rather old but still works perfectly fine for everything but games.

The cost of your pc is $1200. The cost of my ps3 was $400 and my ps2 for $100, that brings my grand total for $500. So you have spend twice as much as me and my combination has actually lasted just as long if not longer. We are not talking games/tv/anything else since that is irrelevent and doesnt actually favor pc as much as people think.

Yes, we ARE taking the TV into account. My monitor cost $200, and doubles as a TV. My parents' TV cost $3000.

Sooooo...

Fine then how much was your mouse, keyboard, monitor, speakers, and all that other stuff that can really only be used for your computer. My purchase of a tv had nothing at all to do with my consoles. Though a decent 42" lcd flatscreen runs you about $500 depending on where you go.

Fine if you want to take my tv into account you win. Tv plus stereo (because you need sound) and consoles your looking at around $50,000. It however is not really accurate because it gets used only a small fraction of the time for gaming and was not bought for that purpose. I could game just fine on my old 32" pos that is in my bedroom. I think I paid like $200 for it seven or eight years ago.

When I built my computer the shop that I got the parts from threw in a monitor, mouse and keyboard. So free. But that is besides the point. Fact it you need a computer too. So you are still not paying attention o what I said in that last post, plus whatever, you do spend on consoles you have to add whatever your computer costs too, because I already gotsd mine.

Look the fact is that console gaming can be as inexpensive or much more expensive, and if you pour a shit-tonne of money into a computer UNNECESSARILY then it can be cheaper. But despite the fact that I love computer gaming, I still own every Nintendo but the Wii and a PS and PS2. I am not saying consoles are bad, just that they too can be absurdly expensive, just like an alien ware computer. Don't knock prices of computers until you have priced one out, and considered all factors and variables.

And btw. OF COURSE THE TV MATTERS. Yes, you probably wanted a big fuck-off TV anyway, who doesn't, but without that big TV your consoles are next to useless, I mean owning a PS3 is hardly worth it if you are going to play it in a 28 inch tube tv. But I do totally get it. I currently have 2 consoles and my comp hooked up to a 42 inch plasma that makes me grin like an idiot. Even now as I look at it. I mean yea you could game on that POS tv in your bedroom, but if you do you'd be better of playing N64 (btw still a great fucking system) then shelling out for a ps3 with graphics the TV can't display.

The price can go either way depending on the circumstances, and on what you buy. But PC gaming CAN be a lot less. It isn't uniformly less, but as I hope to have proven at this point, neither is console gaming uniformly less.

 

[YuheJi]

Oh good, here comes the recursive 'platform of choice' superiority circle jerk. It's what happens when a large quantity of fans are pulled together away from any alternate view points, for example for a thread that only addresses them. One negative comment about the platform and before you know it you get a quote chain of people sneering about the competitors without any further input from the person who started it.

PS. My Xbox has red ringed once. Then I got it repaired for free as it was under the free three-year extended warranty for Red Rings.

PPS. Yes, PCs have more uses but everyone has access to a PC anyway, it's just that it's probably nowhere near in a state to be playing any recent game releases and as such would cost about as much to upgrade as it would to replace completely.

It's not really a circle jerk or anything, there's a proven defect in the 360's architecture, one that doesn't exist on PC's. Do PC's crash? Yes. Do PC's freeze? Yes. But, the 360 does this also, RRoD aside. I've never had a PC simply _die_ while I was playing games/turning it on. Have I done stupid shit with a PC that caused its death? Yes. Have I seen other people perform similar things? Yes. But, die because I turned it on, or played a game? Hell no.

I don't begrudge anyone their console of choice, it's about entertainment, after all. What entertains one person, doesn't necessarily 'do it' for the next person. But, avoiding discussion on a very real sticking point of any bit of hardware, is rather silly.

Oh no, I wasn't calling it a circle jerk because of the point made, but instead because he quoted someone who quoted me rather tha actually quoting the original post I made. I'm probably overthinking things by saying that, but you must've seen it before when people start a quote chain despite the original commenter being long gone.

I'm sorry, am I missing something? £700 for a gaming PC, and you're all nodding your heads sagely and agreeing wwith how cheap that is?

A new Xbox 360 with a 250 GB hardrive costs, on Argos.co.uk, £190. That's less than a third of what your PC cost you. A 250 GB PS3 costs £285 from Argos, and that comes with two free games. I'm honestly struggling to see what exaclty is cheap about the PC option.

Add in the price of a TV for the 360 and a PC for the internets, and word processing, and photo editing and all those other PC things you do and get back to us.

Oh sorry, I also forgot the price of my house, and the electricity supply, and lighting so that I can play games. I also forgot to pay for my clothes, and food so that I don't fall over sideways half way through playing the game.

My point is, everyone owns a TV and everyone owns a PC (more or less everyone, anyway). What not everyone owns is a PC that is up to scratch to play modern games, and you'd have to upgrade pretty thoroughly to get to that point.

Well, I think the main point is that you don't have to upgrade your PC quite as thoroughly as you might think to play modern video games. For example, I bought an old Dell Pentium 4 for school about 6-7 years ago. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to play games on it. I spent about $80 on a new video card and the computer was able to run just about all of the games at that time (this was probably around 2008). I was able to play games like Assassin's Creed 2, Fallout 3, and Company of Heroes with few problems (though I had to tone down the graphics on Assassin's Creed more than I would have liked). Yes, there are definitely other problems with PC gaming that exist, but I think that the idea that it costs a lot to get into PC gaming is not entirely accurate.

 

[Skorpyo]

Well at least that's one of you.

Now for the rest who list "oh it's sooo expenisve" as a reason as to why PC gaming is "dying".

My latest rig was only $250 for a mainboard, RAM, and Processor upgrade. The rest was there already.

To the console persons, have fun chucking hundreds at your broken machines. Mine is easy to fix, but still runs juuusssttt fine.

 

[LightOfDarkness]

Your regular computer could've been gaming-ready with a 300$ CPU and/or GPU upgrade. Most pre-builts today focus on CPU power, so usually that isn't much of a worry. You DO have to upgrade the CPU sooner than if someone had built a gaming PC at around the same time though.

 

[Jake the Snake]

I can assure you, you won't be disappointed. PC Gaming is in a different league than console gaming. Better graphics, better controls, and just plain more enjoyable.

 

[LooK iTz Jinjo]

Well at least that's one of you.

Now for the rest who list "oh it's sooo expenisve" as a reason as to why PC gaming is "dying".

PC gaming isn't dying, it's just moved to digital distribution faster than consoles, therefore boxed sales of PC games are dying, which is fair enough because why do I want to pay for all the extra stuff I don't need like a box to drive to the store (pay for petrol) when I can bypass everyone bar someone like steam/XBL and save at least $10 off a brand new game.

 

[XSA37]

PC gaming may be a bit expensive sometimes, but constantly upgrading graphics, mechanics, and the promise of updates that can fix most major issues put it head and shoulders above the console gaming industry when it comes to major titles.

In addition, indie games have virtually no market on consoles, meaning that there are literally thousands of developers that go unknown who create such masterpieces as Audiosurf which are only available to PC gamers.

 

[ZombieGenesis]

Well at least that's one of you.

Now for the rest who list "oh it's sooo expenisve" as a reason as to why PC gaming is "dying".

PC gaming isn't dying, it's just moved to digital distribution faster than consoles, therefore boxed sales of PC games are dying, which is fair enough because why do I want to pay for all the extra stuff I don't need like a box to drive to the store (pay for petrol) when I can bypass everyone bar someone like steam/XBL and save at least $10 off a brand new game.

It's funny, only today I was in the highstreet going into the game shops and I thought to myself, there are NO sections for PC gaming (bar for these tiny stalls) but it's true. PC gaming has moved mostly into distribution like Steam and the entire DRM fiasco, and it's not a bad thing by any means (get the entire series of STALKER for $10? Hell yeah) but I must say I do prefer to get boxes and CD's simply because I dislke having to play my games through a third party system.

If I buy it then I own it, and can use it with or without steam installed. That's how I like it, at least.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

I love PC gaming, its a shame my pc is 6 years old. I really need a new one, but its too expensive for me to even build it myself at the moment. It anoys me when my friend says his computer is outdated and needs to get a new one. I have warned him never to say that again.