Zero Punctuation: Exclusives Showdown

[144_v1legacy]

pumping £2500 into a computer every 6 months

Ah, okay. Trolling it is. Or did you fall into a TARDIS in the 70s where that hyperbole would've been slightly accurate? In that case, watch your mortgage around 2008.

How is that trolling?

Hyperbole is by definition inaccurate.

 

[144_v1legacy]

Not to flame but if you think about it, PC is more expensive since you have to upgrade individual hardware pieces every 6 months.

Uh huh. And your console is visited by a magical moon fairy to regularly improve the 5-year-old hardware that was already bottom-shelf when it was new? Yeah, digging out that worn-out blatant lie is certainly not you trolling, bro.

If you don't keep a PC up with improving technology, games will studder and run badly in general. This is not true for consoles. Because they are completely devoted to their purpose (or at least they used to be), they don't require the same specifications to run games that look graphically comparable to PC's while running smoothly for the length of the console's lifetime. That's why tech faeries aren't required. I don't see how moon faeries would help, but I will say that unnecessary and hyperbolic insults come dangerously close to trolling.

 

[Church185]

Battlefield 4 is a PC game as well. And it's better on PC to boot so it doesn't really count either. Right now their are no exclusives on PS4 or One I'd buy either system for. I don't really want a One regardless but I'm sure a PS4 will be nice to have once Naughtydog or Insomniac release something cool for it.

The gap between the console Battlefield and PC Battlefield isn't nearly as drastic as it was last gen (Battlefield 4 looks like a PS2 game on 360). I would have to spend much more than $460 to get my PC running Battlefield to the point that I would notice a difference. On top of that, I have way more more friends that would rather play it on console. You may argue superiority all you want, but it's not going to diminish my experience.

I respect that there isn't anything you would like to play on it yet, especially if you already own a powerful PC. But, to a person in my position, trying to talk others out of something they want just sounds like arrogance. Don't add to PC gamers having a bad name.

EDIT: This is my final word on the issue. Debating between platforms is pointless, PC is more powerful, but I think preference is more important. The gaming community as a whole needs to quit shaming each other for what they enjoy. I won't respond to any replies.

 

[Spud of Doom]

If only it was actually affordable to buy a competent gaming PC. Coming as somebody with no existing hardware at all (would need case, PSU, all peripherals, OS and monitor), it comes to something like $1700-$1800nzd for me to buy a new machine. Now making the assumption that you upgrade it for like $400 every 3-4 years, that's going to push it up to about $2000 for a 6-8 year cycle or gaming. Simply put, that's a really hard sale proposition for someone like me. I have a 4 year old laptop that can already play most 2D stuff and older games, so all that expense would basically be just to get onto some of the higher end PC games (e.g. Planetside, Star Citizen) and to me it simply isn't worth it. Those $2000 can easily cover 2 new consoles and a pile of games, especially if I wait a year or so to get them.

Are prices really inflated in NZ? Or you're confusing a competent gaming PC with a pointlessly overpowered one
I've got a 550 euro machine here I built last night that's running Rome 2 on extreme with 45 stable FPS.
PC gaming is quite a lot cheaper here than console over a longer period, firstly because console prices are a bit inflated and PC parts are not (though they are about to increase VAT on both ), and secondly because of big difference in game prices. PC titles get discounted pretty damn fast these days and console titles stay at full price for a very long time.

We calculated my friend's 360 game collection and when you remove the handful of exclusives from the equation we figure he payed almost 1500e more for games than he would've on PC, over the period of 8 years or so. That's enough for 2 great gaming PCs that would easily last 4 years each.

I get that a lot of this is very region dependent, some places have a big used games market for consoles that evens things up somewhat and some have just different pricing on different stuff.

The prices for PC hardware here are on average about 30% higher than they would be in USA, after considering conversion rates. I'm not sure how it compares to EU, since I haven't really checked. One major factor is the cost of monitors and inputs, which end up being about 20% of the cost on their own ($300-350, roughly), and another $100 for the OS. The price I quote above is for building a PC with an i5 (3rd or 4th gen, non-overclock) and a GTX770 or R9 280X. A mid-high PC, but nothing crazy. If anything, our console prices are inflated less than PC parts here this time around. Although that wasn't the case early last gen.

The game pricing thing is pretty arguable, since I never buy my games on release. Console games are usually below half price within like 6-12 months of release, at which point I start considering them. The difference really is not as big as people seem to think it is. In fact for major releases by big publishers it is almost always cheaper for me to buy a physical console import shipped from the UK than it is to spend $90usd for the latest COD game on steam [http://i.imgur.com/K4OgjCU.png] or something.

 

[mokes310]

Absolutely spot on about Forza 5. I was a huge fan of the series...then XBOX made their announcements about the One and I was like, "I dunno..." Then I read about how much less 5 has compared to 4 and I said, "well, I'll definitely not be buying an XBOX now. Thanks for taking the decision out of my hands, Microsoft & Turn 10."