Why do people keep reposting this shit?
Which console costs 400$?
Which reasonably price optimized PC costs 15k$?
Yes PCs are more expensive than consoles, but they also hold more value, are more versatile and have lower costs for the Games themselves.
To each their own, we’re alle gamers.
Fine, im in Canada and a ps5 costs $500 and a decent current gen gaming pc costs about $3000 where I am. And no I am no interested in building a pc anymore than I am building a ps5. So off the shelf you’re looking at a 1.5-2k pc just to match the ps5. So not 15k but easily triple the cost of a ps5.
What I like about consoles is that I know the game will always work on my console. I could buy a top end pc and it won’t play next years top games that well
Idk about the prices in canada but 3000 CAD shouldn’t give you a “decent current gen gaming pc”. This is already high end territory where you’re already burning money unnecessarly just to have the latest an greatest. For 2500 CAD you can get a prebuild 9070 XT + 7800X3D system (here). This system destroys the PS5 performance wise. I can get 240-300 FPS in the Finals while the PS5 can get a max of 120 FPS in performance mode with hits to the visual fidelity.
And yes a PS5 is 579 CAD as far as I can see, so a lot cheaper.
However as I stated a PC can run way more different games even without taking emulation into account. Furthermore on PS5 you have to pay 110 CAD/year to play online and PC games generally are cheaper than console games. So there is a significant amount of money you’ll save on the software.
Additionally you kinda are forced to buy a new console when the new generation arrives while I can use my PC for the newest games as long as I want to or the hardware just can’t handle it anymore.
And lastly a PC can also be used for non gaming stuff. You can even get use of the performance for 3D modeling, Video editing, running LLMs or whatever.
So as I stated before both have their use cases, a PC is definetly more expensive up front buy it also just offers more value. At the end it doesn’t matter and everyone can play games on the hardware they want to.
The console is subsidized by the games being more expensive. In the emd, the console is more expensive but you have it ready-to-use. While you have more choice on PC and can mod the games. To each their own.
The games are the same cost on pc for the same game.
For me it works better in the end, i pop it in and I know it’s gonna run. Also my library system has games, even on release day. And I use psplus, So I haven’t paid full for a game in a while.
You can also save a vintage console. PCs just get old
$400 console
The only thing that qualifies is an Xbox series S, even Switch 2 is $450 lmao.
Even funnier when you consider “PC” consoles like Steam Deck or Legion which gives you a even wider access to games, including exclusives thanks to emulation.
Hell Sony and Microsoft gave up on the console exclusive system because PC & Steam demonstrated the expanded market is worth the tradeoff when your console hardware is basically a computer.
That didn’t used to be the case even up to the PS4 when the hardware was still targeted for games like high VRAM, but that’s no longer the case.
It gets even better with Switch emulation because it was a glorified Android tablet that was already outdated on arrival, meaning you can play Switch games even on your phone thanks to ARM instruction pass-through techniques.
The only people who care about shit like this are the people who don’t play video games.
A lot of you don’t play video games.
Don’t need to buy a new console every few years.
When getting to slow can upgrade single components.
Cost/performance is basically on par with consoles at the moment.
Completely ignores the fact that consoles are a type of computer and the gaming companies can not sell console + games at +/-0 or they’ll go out of business.The fuck you on about?
I over the last 15 years I’ve bought a total of 4 consoles. Ranging from $300 and below, and only 1 of those was an upgrade. The other 3 were different consoles to play different exclusives. We’ll just call it $1200 plus $150 for extra controllers and headsets. How much have you spent on your PC since you bought it?
I’ll chime in:
Since purchase at $1200 for a custom build in 2020, I’ve spent $500 upgrading storage and my video card for my PC. It can push most modern games at 80fps with ray tracing on low and all other settings on high. Leveraging frame-gen it can do 2k120.
It also holds about 5TB of music and movies, and hosts them on a server which I can access anywhere via a URL pointed to my tunnel.
It also has a DAW, an IDE, and a Nextcloud instance, also accessable anywhere.
$1700 in for total liberation from the tech overlords is worth it. The 500+ games in the steam family library are just a bonus.
That is an incredible price in 2020. The graphics cards alone were going for that much.
I went for a lower end GPU from the previous generation at the time, a GTX 1650 the types of game I was playing at the time accomadated that decision.
Games were free.
this guy gets it
May I ask you, how much did you spend on games?
I am cheap. I only buy games on sale or f2p. Wouldn’t be fair comparison. Probably less than $500 in 15 years.
I probably paid four times as much on PC games because I bought way more than I could ever play 🤔
But 1000 is probably what my initial build did cost.
800€
Divide PC by 10 and add 300 dollars to console.
For $800 I think you can get a laptop that is more powerful than consoles, with similar GPU power, but you also get all the benefits of PC gaming. You can’t even mod most console games, which is reason enough to never buy a console. It’s just a way inferior way to game.
I can confirm that I got a laptop a couple years ago for $800 that has a RTX 4060, i7, and 32Gi of RAM. Beats a PS5 on paper, which is supposedly more equivalent to a RTX 2070, though games optimized for PS5 hardware make the difference more marginal.
The $800 PC will also last longer
And you can install whatever os you want on it.
The real reason I’m better than the console plebs is that I still play multiplayer on twenty-year-old games.
Yeah, I just played CS 1.5 with my colleagues during a break. That shit just never gets old.
When 1.6 came out I was stubborn and refused to install Steam which was needed for it. But I eventually did and it eventually grew on me even though recoil and everything is a bit different. Still using my 22 year old steam account.
So old school of you to play 1.5 instead of 1.6
it hits different. dunno.)))) 1.6 feels corporate although not as much as latter iterations.
Where are you living where you can get a good console for $400?
Secondhand PS5? I’m planning to get a used Switch 2 and some come for that price, and so seems the PS5.
I don’t know about second-hand PCs though.
2002
thats how much i paid for a ps5
Is liquid cooling even worth it these days? I’ve always used air cooling and just vacuumed my pc every once and a while.
Having a noctua cooler and an insulated case will go a long way, especially if you don’t need to think about possible leakages
Depends. For performance? Not really. For sound? Definitely. Unless you go for one of those passive air cooled PC cases (15+ kg of aluminum and no fans), you won’t get anything that is quieter than a liquid cooler with a 360mm rad. With a custom loop and a GPU water block you can get your PC to essentially silent.
Nah, I’ve always air cooled. I’d rather have a chonky cooler instead of yet another failure point.
Not really. Outside of the commercial usage (like data centers), liquid-cooing is used more just for show.
I swear even back in the liquid cooling heyday of 2005 it still wasn’t worth it. If you could afford liquid cooling, you could afford a case and a mobo with more fans
What a stupid take
Like any hobby, they have their own expenses. I only bought a PS5 to play GTAVI early
Enjoy your library being mostly 30fps 720p games.
I’m certain you can build a $15K USD computer, I bet Linus Tech Tips does it regularly, but idk who tf is doing that when an nVidia 3090Ti is only $1080 and is ranked #23 on PassMark.
Yes, and if you’re genuinely spending $15,000 on a rig you are not competing with a goddamn Playstation; at that point you’re either mixing it with low end datacenters or you’ve now got a ziggurat of monitors on your desk that could backdrop a Daft Punk concert. I just built a pretty much top of the line (AMD based, mind you) machine a few months ago for under $3000. I could have gotten away with less, but I didn’t feel like it.
I suspect that many morons with nothing but decades-old experience, if even any to begin with, still have no comprehension of just how cheap computers are.
Why are you considering buying a 3090 Ti for $1080??? It’s an old card and shouldn’t be near that amount when you can get better performance for less money out of a 9070 xt or 5070 ti.
It’s an old #23rd best card in the world, complete without the faulty newer nVidia cables and sockets, but yeah theres no way people need to spend $15k.
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I built my friend a cheap gaming PC. If your target is 60fps 1080 its dirt cheap. The 3060 still handles modern titles and its a few hundred. Amd and Intel also have great budget offerings. 9060 and b580 are great cards.
I have a 3080ti and its even less, and I’m still on max settings in every game at 1440p.
I actually went with a 3080 that had more VRAM than the Ti version at the cost of slightly lower performance, but this unintentionally crashes some games and applications which are not made to handle more than the 4GB memory limit in some 32 bit softwares. It’s too powerful lmao. Someday we’re going to encounter a similar issue when cards regularly reach up to 64GB VRAM.
There is a program that fixes that iirc, I used it for New Vegas. Somebody here will know what it’s called.
ENBoost?
If it wasn’t for Slyrim and thousands of mods, I would agree with you😅
Minecraft would also like a word!
It’s been a while since I played modded Minecraft, but absolutely!
I’ve got a modpack that graphically overhauls literally everything and Skyrim runs fine. It came out over a decade ago and made on the same engine as FO:3, it’s probably hitting the upper limits of its resource requirements if it hasn’t already.
Ever try Lorerim?
I miss the days when $500 could build a “console killer”
These days its like 1500. But you still get all the advantages like being able to do whatever you want with it like using productive software to actually do work. Streaming, editing, rendering, 3D modeling or printing, game dev, etc
You will also most likely still make that difference back over the cycle of one console generation through better game deals and no subscription fees for online play.
Also: INDIE GAMES 🎉✨
Because getting your game published in Sonys or Microsofts store is horrible afaik.
For Xbox its a little bit easier since they launched ID@xbox and pushed it the last few years. Not perfect, but way better than Sony
I’m still a PC player through and through, but I will say that the game subscriptions that give you access to AAA games (albeit sometimes a bit after launch) is pretty enticing. Obviously you get better sales and whatnot through Steam, but not having to shell out 50-70 dollars for a new game is pretty cool.
You didn’t hear? That shit is getting nerfed.
My roommate mentioned there was a price increase recently. It is pretty pricey.
It is nowhere near 1500.
More like 800.
For a nice PC that will last you a while 1100 (for like a 9600 + 9060XT)
I would say a console killer has to outperform a current gen console. A Xbox Series X has a GPU equivalent to something between a 9060XT and a 9070XT. So yeah in total 1100€ is probably gonna get you something comparable.
Every guide I’ve seen says even a 9060XT 16gb is very overkill compared to consoles.
You don’t have to justify buying a PC to your mum and dad because it can do Word anymore lol
I miss the days when $500 were enough to buy a console.
That was a brief period when consoles were way over priced for the components they had.
That period repeats every 3-5 years approximatly towards the end of a generation but before the new generation is announced.
We’re at that point now. Hard to believe, but the PS5 has been out for five years now.
The reason it’s not happening this time is because Moore’s Law is dead. The original formulation was that cost of integrated components would be cut in half every x months. The value of x changed around over the years, but settled on 24. That cost factor is gone and probably won’t come back without a major breakthrough.
There are improvements in the size of integrated components (which often gets mistakenly labeled as Moore’s Law), but they aren’t getting cheaper anymore.
Ps5 sets my record for most dead joysticks, followed by the Nintendo Switch joycon disaster.
PS4 I had a few controllers die, but that was parts physically breaking.
PS3 I never lost a controller.
I have to go back to N64 for any other broken controllers where the sticks die or buttons break.
PS3 I had to get a new controller, but only because the dog ate the analog sticks lmao. Still using the Mini USB cable it came with 🫡
I had to replace the Micro USB port in two DS4s. I don’t even blame Sony for it, Micro USB is ass. I do blame them for both controllers getting stick drift later though.
I don’t use the PS5 enough for the controller to break.
I’m 3/3 on ps5 controllers breaking.
I bought the pro controller when it came out and it hasn’t broken.
There was a generation where it was true at the launch of the console. That’s the period I’m talking about. Beating a 5 year old machine is hardly worth bragging about.
We are talking about price relative to performace, not performance in general.
But the cost of the hardware is anyways not so relevant when the price difference of the software easily makes up the difference.
Yes, and you could beat the price of a PS4 at release with a pc that performed the same. No other console generation had such bad price/performance
Nah it’s the GPU market. Cryptocurrency briefly exploded and now AI is sucking up all of the GPU manufacturing capacity. Back in 2019 I got my RX580 for $175. The AMD 9070 that released this year is a tier down from that and had an MSRP of $550, but an actual price more like $650. The sweet spot of value PC building has shifted from $750 to $1,500 in just a few years. Some of that is just general inflation that affects all parts, but roughly half of that increase is just from the GPU.
It’s impacting consoles too. Consoles uses to get cheaper over time, with both price drops to existing models and new, cheaper models being released (Sony’s Slim models, things like the Wii Family Edition and Wii Mini, the DSLite, etc). Looking at this generation… The original PS5 with a disc drive debuted at $500 in 2020. The “Slim” version also debuted at $500, and just got a price increase to $550. They released a PS5 Pro at $700, and just increased it to $750.
Nintendo is doing it too. The Switch was $300 for its entire life, and now that the Switch 2 is out consumers would typically expect a price cut to move the existing stock. Instead, Nintendo raised the price to $330. The OLED model went from $350 to $400, and the Lite went from $200 to $230.
And of course Microsoft is in on it too. It’s more complicated to write up since they have different storage variants of the Series S|X, but for example a Series S 512GB was $300 at launch (For some reason I remember seeing them for $250, but maybe that was a Black Friday sale or something). Now it’s $400!
Aren’t a lot of those price increases US centric due to asinine tariffs.
They’ve increased in other countries too. The PS5 digital edition costs £70 more today than it did at launch. In 2024 Sony increased the Japan price of all PS5 versions by ¥13,000.
The tariffs aren’t helping, but this has been a trend for years. The gaming console market is not very volatile- prices changes in the US usually happen once every few years, not every few months. The tariffs keep fluctuating all over the place and I would not be shocked if there are more pricing adjustments for consoles specifically next year.
You can blame crypto, you can blame AI, but when it comes down to it everything is worth what people are willing to pay. Clearly companies are pushing that further and further and people keep paying.
I recall it being a period of at least 10 years. A prior generation GPU would run about $150-200. The CPU/Mobo was the most expensive part
They still are
If they were, then you could build a PC for cheaper.
You can. But with used parts which feels like has always been the case.
You still easily can with second hand components.
Thanks etherium
Yeah, but all those people buying wonky 2GB “PS4 equivalent” GPUs ended up pretty quiet when games later in the generation started using more and more VRAM.
The PS4 CPU was a joke, but it could use a lot of textures.
It really depends on whether you want the newest games with 128k graphics. I game on a 5 year old Thinkpad* and a first gen switch and am happy about it.
*granted, it was refurbished and still like 2700€, but the same laptop would be cheaper today
Wasn’t that just around the second half of the PS360 generation and the PS4 era until crypto blew up?
PCs were always pretty expensive since my childhood in the 1980s.
I want to say late 2000’s to early 2010’s was when my friends and I all built our own PCs for about $500.
Let’s compare a 6 year price without games.
PC gaming
800 gaming PC 200 mid cycle update to GPU 3-5 years in
PS5
500 non-gaming PC because your ps5 isn’t a useful alternative 500 ps5 650 ps5 pro 4 years in 720 for PlayStation online basic at 10 per month
1000 vs 2370
Laughing at console gamers spending more than the cost of a basic computer on the privilege of using it online via your own internet which you also pay for
Reading this gave me a headache
What are you updating the GPU to for $200? A 1060?
500 non-gaming PC because your ps5 isn’t a useful alternative
That’s kind of a non-argument. I know a lot of people with desktop gaming PCs who also have a laptop (for school, uni, whatever). The people I know who only play games on console usually don’t have a desktop, they only have a laptop that’s not suitable for gaming. I also know a lot of people who play games on console and PC and therefore have both, plus usually a laptop. And then I also know a lot of people who don’t have ps+/xbox-whatever because they don’t play online games.
PS5
500 non-gaming PC
Come on, dude. Firstly, you can get a non-gaming PC for under $200 easy. Hell, if you know where to look, you can get it for free.
500 ps5 650 ps5 pro 4 years in
Why not just… not upgrade the PS5? Save yourself $650. If you want to “balance” things, the PC guy can save $200 on their own upgrade.
Wait for the PS6, which will be out in '27/'28 and just enjoy the OG console that was released in '20 for the life of the platform.
Like, this is obviously not an apple to apple comparison. And that’s spotting you a generous $800 PC build out of the gate. You’re simply not building a PS5 quality rig in 2020 for $800.
720 for PlayStation online basic at 10 per month
Do I get to charge the PC owner the release price of every PSO title released for free? Because that’s going to come out far higher than $720 over six years.
Are you playing any MMOs on that PC? Should we be charging you the base rate for those as well?
I’m not even a PS5 guy. I tapped out at 4 and game on my PC happily. But I’m not going to pretend console gamers are doing 3x my spend just because it’s possible to do so.
Only a tiny minority of PC gamers pay monthly for anything.
You can’t upgrade the PS5, and the sale price of your 5-year-old unit is like $100.
Free games aren’t included in the 10 per month.
The cost of 18 per month to also have old games costs 1300 over 6 years.
The PC you can get for $200 will be awful to use or die within 3 years or both. It will be ridiculous to repair, so you will buy another 200 special hating the shit you bought both times.
Basically at the root a PC and a console are both good for about 6 years but the 700-1300 you pay for online is going to dwarf the buy up from acceptable PC to gaming PC+ hardware.
Cheap PC are the value option expensive pc are the quality option.
Consoles are kind of in between.
Free games aren’t included in the 10 per month
Yes they are. 3 free games a month.
Are we talking about a new 200$ pc?
Because if you buy used you can get a very decent non gaming pc for that money.
Maybe I got lucky, my current desktop was 350€ used with a pretty modern and fast CPU (5800x) and a somewhat outdated GPU (vega56).
350€ = 405 USD once you add in a mouse keyboard and monitor you are over 500 the figure I used. Decrease your figures further and it gets shittier fast.
You could always attach the pc to the TV, and if you don’t have one you’d need one for the console anyways.
And my screens were like 17,50 each also used obvs. Fair point about the peripheries though…
And my pc would be overkill if you buy a console for gaming.
We would have to include used game consoles too then, which I think is fair. If we are talking about just the desktop box and no peripherals though, I think we could make an equivalent xbox one or ps5 for close to the same price. Thats assuming the purchaser is tech savvy enough to navigate deals at places like newegg and microcenter.
Only a tiny minority of PC gamers pay monthly for anything.
That’s simply not true.
I didn’t say they didn’t watch netflix or have internet.
PC gamers don’t pay a monthly fee connected to their gaming.
So PC GamePass isn’t a thing? If Valve offered a solid subscription offering, gamers would be all over it.
