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
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.
I miss the days when $500 were enough to buy a console.
You still easily can with second hand components.
Thanks etherium
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
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.
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.
What console sells for 400 bucks?
Steam deck lol
its a pc tho 😭
Tim Cook: “I KNEW IT”
That’ll get you… The lowest storage tier Series S. Or a Nintendo Switch OLED. Yay.
This meme is from like 2014
PS5 (discless edition) did until the USD took an almighty shit.
Switch 1.
The consoles are “cheap” because the controllers, games, and subscription services are expensive.
It’s far, far, far cheaper to game on a PC in the long run. You can buy a pc capable of playing many games for as little as $300 (gmtek or similar micro pc sporting high performance amd cpu). If you want better graphics, you plug a gpu into that for $260 or so (Radeon 9060).
Steam is crazy cheap. Multiple sales a year, and if you don’t like a game you can get a full refund. Free AAA games every week as well from GOG, Epic, and rarely but surely, also Steam.
I’ll second this, actually. I used to hate on PC gaming for around a decade or so because it always seemed to prohibitively expensive to me compared to a console. But after building my very first PC with used parts off ebay for around 300-400€ in total, I think, I can confirm that it works really well overall.
Most of the games I’ve played so far perform really well, some even play on highest settings (and that’s with just a 1080 ti), and it’s a PC, so multitasking, office work, homework and whatnot are all possible. Running the OS and games off an SSD makes loading times quite fast compared to the PS5’s SSD, sometimes even faster.
And I haven’t spent a single Euro on games because of a plethora of 🏴☠️ options, which is possible on console depending on the console, but ultimately hinges on jailbreaking your console and voiding a potential warranty.
Overall, I’m very pleased with my PC experience right now. Ever since building the PC, I haven’t played on console, and that’s coming from someone who was playing on console pretty much exclusively since around 2017
Yes, Yes, this is true! (I say after spending multiple thousands on a gaming PC where this is absolutely not true).
My Xbox and PlayStation both came with a full normal controller, and console games are constantly on sale. I have absolutely no idea what you’re trying to get at here.
The point of the submission is that PC dumbfucks don’t know how to compare apples to apples. Console gaming is objectively superior due to the benefits of things like warranty, consistency, drivers, software, etc.
Software and driver issues like clicking update? Waiting for a reboot?
The same one year warranty that your PC has?
A controller is like 20 bucks. My PC can play the vast majority of games ever made out of the box, and for free if I’m willing to commit some crimes.
Ah yes, all the benefits of having the privilege to pay $10 a month to play online, only have enough storage space for like 5 games with no expansion options, barred access to the vast majority of games, and limited options for voice chat and input devices.
But I guess if you’re like 12 and all you play is 2k/madden/fifa/maybe COD and your parents are paying for it then it’s probably fine.
And yet none of those things applies to your superior. Interesting!
Nuh uhh!!1!
Correct. I’m just not an infant so I type normally.
Ok
Over 7 years, you’d have to pay $560 to play online on a PS5, assuming they don’t increase the price again. The cheapest PS5, without the disc drive (which is a bad decision if you like cheap games), costs $500.
You can easily build a PC more powerful than a PS5 for $1060, and that’s before you factor in cheaper games.
Over those 7 years, you get 252 free games for the PS5. Meaning the average value of those games has to be like 2.2 for the subscription to pay for itself
They’re not free, you had to pay to access them. The 252 are useless unless you play them and not just a half-dozen titles you like.
And once the sub stops you lose access to the games.
You know what you do get to keep? The games Epic gets giving out to bribe people into using their launcher. I’ve hoarded over 200 games from them, from which I’ve played maybe 30.
I’ve stopped because either it’s been trash games or it’s something that I’d rather play on steam.
Even their exclusives I decided to just wait on because the epic launcher blows.
I don’t think I’m in the majority but I think a non-negligible amount of people would pay a premium to not use epic.
I used some software they gave out, but otherwise I sit on the horde like a digital dragon.
some $2k beats a console and you get more games, cheaper price, and can do whatever you want with it
so if you’re already getting a computer, it just makes sense
This argument made more sense 20 years ago. Now there’s a lot more people who just don’t need a desktop.
But they need a console?
For a lot less than a desktop that does decent at gaming, yes.
idk about that. I have both and I still prefer using the desktop at home because I can get a much nicer performance out of it than connecting an external display to the laptop. Even for ordinary things like watching a YT video it makes a difference.
people might not need it, but no one who’s not a game developer needs a console either
“Needs” is a tricky word, here.
People want to play games. If they don’t need a desktop otherwise, it’s fine to choose a console for games. The number of people who need a desktop is a lot less than it was 20 years ago.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, but I can use my PC for other things as well (I’m only using my PC for gaming)
I have editing stuff on my pc. Music, art, video.
But since i got my steam deck i realize how much i only used the pc for games.Eventually im going to Linux the thing. But I’m dreading the time sink that’ll be.
No one but the once in a blue moon whales are spending 15,000 on a rig. The average rig I build for people is under 1,000 and the setups I see online are usually near there too.
I have a dual 5090 threadripper rig with 192 GB of RAM and it cost $10k. To get to $15k on a consumer build you’d have to actually be trying to waste money.
Let me introduce you too Falcon Northwest the perfect place to waste money on a PC. https://www.falcon-nw.com/desktops/rak you can configure that to a price of 47,000 +. Why anyone would want to is a mystery but you certainly can. And its probably comparable to your current system so it’s certainly in the “trying to waste money” category.
$400 plus a subscription for the privilege of playing online + some amount of money for a computer anyway
I gave up on PC gaming years ago. Turns out sitting on a coach and being 10’ ft away from a screen is way easier on my body and my eyes than being hunched over a desk 1’ away from a monitor.
Also no driver incompatibility bullshit. Most console games just work w/o me having to custom edit .ini or other files.
Have you used a PC since 1993? There have been new developments.
Dam is this a copy pasta? 😅
Also no driver incompatibility bullshit. Most console games just work w/o me having to custom edit .ini or other files
What century do you think this is?
last pc game i loaded was fallout 4 a few years ago. required like 2-3 hours to get it to run without crashing.
every old game i have from gog… all require custom mods to work. usually have to pull up a thread in the forums that has the solution and it’ always some custom edit. otherwise the game crashes repeatedly.
my ps5 can play the same old games and they just… work. zero effort required. zero crashes. also looks a lot nicer on a 60" OLED than on a 24" LED.
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You can plug a PC into a TV and even use Xbox and PS controllers if you like. Can have the PC auto start Steam in Big Screen mode so you’d seldom need to use a mouse+KB (trackballs or keyboards with trackpads are best in this scenario). Nothing wrong with console gaming though (well, besides supporting all the non-free software, locked-down systems, and shit companies; but most games you likely play are these as well).
I did this a while back. To be fair a “mini” ITX case is still relatively enormous, and I stopped upgrading it when graphics cards turned into magic beans for crypto-bros and got mega expensive.
that’s too much work. i have to setup controller profiles. i have to update drivers. i have to custome mod drivers or game files to get them to run.
my playstation… just fucking works. zero effort required. download game, play game. everything is done for me. my time goes into actually playing the game.
baffles me that y’all can’t see the mass appeal of that simplicity. not everyone is a linux nerd who wants to write custom drivers to play a game or load buggy emulators.
most peopel just want to play a game and enjoy it. not deal with endless bullshit.
There
You must have given up not years, but decades ago.
Guys, you don’t have to downvote someone because they have an experience that happens to be many standard deviations away from the mean. This is what consoles are for. Nintendo still shines for people like this :)
You actually had to edit files? Outside of me breaking things first (yay mods) I’ve only had to edit 1 file ever, and that was mass effect 1 on an old and laptop that was uhh… not suitable for the task given to it.
Where are you living where you can get a good console for $400?
2002
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.
thats how much i paid for a ps5
Good, but nowadays the difference for flagship spec is more $800/$3000.
My console from 2020 runs games about the same as PC hardware from 2018. If you built a 2018 spec PC today it would beat the Xbox Series X and PS5, but unlike the consoles, PC components have reduced in price.
Which means the difference with available hardware and matched SSD size would be $650/$900
My gaming PC is also a digital audio workstation, a photo editing platform, a video editing platform, a home theatre PC, and a platform for spreadsheets and financial planning.
guys, it’s rage bait, you don’t have to defend a strawman
When did “trolling” turn into “rage baiting?”
Aren’t they the same thing?
Yeah, but everyone says “rage bait” nowadays
Problem?
Oh yeah, I guess they do. It just the nature of language for different terms for the same thing to come into more popular use over time. I guess he should be renamed to “Ragebaitface.”
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I think trolling and troll logic is absurdist and humorous where as rage bait is all about engagement farming by inducing negative emotions
I was into the PCMR sub back when you could build a machine that ran better than the current console generation for the same price as the two main consoles. And it’s not like consoles perform so above and beyond a PC that there’s little difference today; the PC hardware just exploded in price so it costs so much more to make something that runs as good or better than a PS5, which is sold at a loss.
It’s possible to build a competent gaming manchine if you’re ok with 1080p. A ten year old card still runs 1080p perfectly fine.
I have a Ryzen 5500 on a radeon 550. It plays mostly everything at 720 to 1080. It’ll do lite 4k but it does what it needs to do.
I bought a Acer nitro with a 3050 in it for my teenager. 🤷 It’s perfectly fine. She plays mostly counter strike anyway.
I play a bunch of indie stuff and remasters… Unless you want 60fps in cyberpunk in 4k ultra ray tracing… You can get into a pretty decent build for well under 1k.
My VR rig built just before the first COVID lockdowns is already capable of keeping up with the PS5 in performance mode; but it was also about $900 mostly from the GPU (a 1660 Super because the 2070 Cyberpunk Edition card was sold out).
I don’t need 4K, but I definitely would like to be able to have raytracing in Cyberpunk, specifically. It’s the only game I’ve seen them used beyond shadows and it looks amazeballs. My GPU is one generation too old to even support RTX, tho. Or DLSS!
If you have a microcenter somewhat close by, they get refurbished 20 and 30 series cards all the time for really good prices. They let you come back and return/swap it out if you dont like it too. Last I looked my store just got a shipment of 4080s that are priced at 750$ as well.
Yeah but you have to spend so much money on games and with PC you can almost play anything for free and games add up fast
Yep so many amazing games for $5-20 on steam sales often not even that old
That’s only part of the story. Consoles have many benefits, like warranty, consistency, drivers, software, etc. I built some reasonable budget gaming machines back then, but I still bought consoles and still do to this day because of their superiority.
Subscription to access multiplayer on third party servers 🤡
I agree you are a clown but I’m not familiar with that because as a decent person, I don’t play multiplayer.
The whole idea of “superiority” is so dumb. People should get what works for them.
For most normies/noobs, they don’t even know how to start thinking of gaming PCs. No ideas of GPUs. Don’t want to make the wrong choice and overpay for an ancient system labeled “gaming ready”. Consoles work great in not having to think about anything and just playing. Also you get exclusives. It comes at the cost of higher price, online subscriptions, system lock in, few options for mid cycle upgrade, etc.
PC works great for me and I haven’t had a console in 20 years. I’d recommend it to anyone who is even slightly inclined to learn the basics. The Steam Deck would be a great console experience for anyone…but the sales number compared to the Switch and lack of mainstream recognition shows that a lot of people don’t have an appetite for PC gaming. Fine, use what works for you.
Another problem is that online PC communities have a real obsession with going “top tier”. Most people can do perfectly well with last generation parts and secondhand or refurbished bargains. Budget gaming, retro gaming, patient gaming, are all valid and cheap.
The whole idea of “superiority” is so dumb. People should get what works for them.
I think you’re taking an unserious humorous thing too seriously.
For most normies/noobs, they don’t even know how to start thinking of gaming PCs. No ideas of GPUs. Don’t want to make the wrong choice and overpay for an ancient system labeled “gaming ready”.
I doubt the person who is this afraid of gaming pcs also worried about being ripped off.
Also, there are more resources than ever to figure out a decent build or to ask people to tell you if a build is decent.
Another problem is that online PC communities have a real obsession with going “top tier”.
They most certainly do not. I don’t think you frequent these places.
Probably the most common build combo is a 9600, 9060XT 16GB build. Thats around 1100 USD. Thats just a bit more than a console while performing a lot better.
As for second hand or refurbished, that can help, but you sometimes can be getting a worse value, as they fall out of support faster or don’t support modern features and you have to be ok with them not being good at ray tracing for instance, or not doing well with ai upscaling, or not being able to do framegen. There are third party software solutions for all of the above, but most people don’t want to deal with the effort required for those. Luckily FSR4 might be coming to some older AMD cards.
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
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 $200 will be awful to use or die within 3 years or both. It will be ridiculous to repair, so you will buy another 200 special hating the shit you bought both times.
Basically at the root a PC and a console are both good for about 6 years but the 700-1300 you pay for online is going to dwarf the buy up from acceptable PC to gaming PC+ hardware.
Cheap PC are the value option expensive pc are the quality option.
Consoles are kind of in between.
Are we talking about a new 200$ 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.
Using a TV for general computing would be fairly broken due to font rendering and DPI. Comparing used anything is fraught because its filled with caveats and isn’t repeatable.
Fair points, my situation doesn’t apply to everyone.
I occasionally use my htpc for light office work, the terrible ergonomics are the only problem In that case.
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.
I think the point is that you don’t have to pay ANYTHING per month to play apps or games you already fully paid for online whereas not paying for playstation online means you lose that entire aspect of your own device whereas with a ps5 if you stop paying sony you can no longer even use netflix despite paying netflix your isp and sony for their hardware. They use the fact that they control your device to effectively blackmail you by making third party apps contingent on paying their blackmail.
That’s not true. You can use Netflix without PSPlus. You can even play Fortnite (and a few others, mostly the online only games) without it.
Free games aren’t included in the 10 per month
Yes they are. 3 free games a month.
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.
I don’t think its a non-argument. If we are talking about PC gaming as a budget option the fact that you CAN have JUST a singular device isn’t obviated by the fact that some people have a separate general purpose PC any more than it is because some people still a $5000 GPU on a $15000 device.
Reading this gave me a headache
Would you like a meme with 8 or less characters and a 2nd grade reading level to calm you down?
What are you updating the GPU to for $200? A 1060?
Most recently I got a nice radeon 6600 with 8GB VRAM for 100 I guess.
