Could the PC Pose a Real Threat to Steep Priced Next-Gen Consoles?

ZG writes: I concede that the ‘gaming rig’ is a more powerful gaming platform, with superior capabilities in the specification department and with numerous other advantages.

[GreenRanger]

The prices of PC's will go up too, you know.

[exsturminator01]

They won't; as hardware gets older, it drops in price. That means last year's $1000 gaming PC is likely half that price today. I think the article is more stressing the fact that more expensive hardware in a console equals a more expensive console. One of the biggest perks of console gaming is the cheap hardware, but if platform developers decide to compete with current gen PC's, they'd have to raise the price point on the consoles significantly to put the necessary parts in it.

[decrypt]

PC prices wont go up.. just because new consoles are coming out.

What will happen, you will have 500-600usd PCs beating consoles in performance. While consoles will cost 400usd.

The catch here is the same 500-600usd PC will be able to run every game bought on your last PC. Yet with consoles u will lose your entire library. In those terms id say PC easily wins in terms of costing, not to mention every new game bought on PC will be cheaper. Hell some of us probably wont need to upgrade to beat the next consoles in terms of performance.

@knight_crawler

Upgradable consoles aren't going to happen. The reason why it happen because consoles use proprietary parts, which dont fit normal PCs. Hence the demand for those parts will be no where close to their PC counterparts example Ram, CPUs, motherboards etc. All these parts on the PC arent just used for gaming PCs, they are also used for normal office PCs. Hence The cost goes down. Since the console versions will be just built for the consoles. Demand will be much less. Hence due to low production levels the cost will be too much, it will cost more than PC counterparts. Hence you might as well get a PC in the end.

[R6ex]

Don't forget you get to save a tonne of money from all the great discounts and offers from games sold on Steam & GOG. If you can wait a while and not buy day-1 games, your savings on PC games far outweighs the initial extra cost of buying a PC compared to a console. Furthermore, the visuals on PC puts consoles to shame.

[Knight_Crawler]

In a nut shell NO.

If rumors are true that the 720 will be a mix between a console and a PC then I have to say the oppoiste where PC gaming might be in jepordy.

Think abount MS brining out a console with PC specs and the ability to add hardware to your console to improve graphics and performance?

[DudeJets]

MS wouldn't be able to do that would severely damage the console division and developers would hate it

[WiiUalpha]

bringing out a console with PC specs and upgradable to boot? What you are saying or suggesting is that MS is going to go the old Apple route and release PC's using custom parts... You do see how well that worked out for Apple right? And MS has a bout the same presence as Apple did int he PC gaming market.

They gave away any advantage they had in the PC gaming market when they abandoned it and I seriously doubt they have enough pull left to have any kind of impact ont he PC market regardless of what they release.

[Knight_Crawler]

@Wii and Dude - You both have a points.

@Dude - Not if Sony also decides to adapt the same method, then developers will have to do it.

@Wii - When you think about it MS is already doing selling cutome parts for the 360, you have to use MS hard drives in order to upgrade memory.

The 720 is guranteed to have PC software heavly integrated into it as MS want the 720 to be your one stop media device for your every day use, the question is how similiar will the hardware be to a PC.

[Norrison]

Not really, a good gaming rig has always costed 500-1200$ if you know where to look, people are stuck in a mentality that gaming PCs are 3k+ because of the overpriced alienwares and what most ignorant people say. And also people think building a PC is hard when it will take you little time.

You're my favorite ranger btw.

[Dude420]

Come on, you know that's not entirely true. You're average joe is not going to know what kind of processor and RAM is compatible with a certain motherboard, or finding the power consumption on full load to determine your PSU. Not only that but you have to make sure the parts you buy comes from a solid company. You don't want to buy a rocketfish PSU from Best Buy do you? There are so many different variations out there.

Building the PC itself doesn't take long, what's time consuming is the amount of research involved in making sure you have the right pieces for the kind of computer you want. Some people just don't want to do that so they save time and purchase a pre-built PC or a console.

[Pain_Killer]

AMD FX-8150 (8 Core Flagship Bulldozer)

Launch Price - $245
Current Price - $189

AMD FX-8350 (8 Core Flagship Vishera)

Current Price - $195

AMD Radeon HD 7950

Launch Price - $449
Current Price - $329

NVIDIA GTX 670 Overclocked models

Launch Price - $399
Current Price - $359

So much for PC price's going up. And not to mention how cheap SSD's have become overtime.

[I_am_Batman]

I don't think so. If you look at PC exclusives vs. Console exclusives you have totally different games. On PC you have League of Legends, Diablo and RTS games. On Colsoles you have God of War, Little Big Planet, Party games like Mario Party and so on. They are aiming for different target groups so I wouldn't really say they are even competing.

[exsturminator01]

If exclusives like the ones you listed were the deciding factor, wouldn't that imply PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii aren't competing? PC is competition for consoles because it gets most of the same multiplat titles. XCOM, Dishonored, Borderlands 2, Black Ops 2, and most of the other big titles this season are on PC as well as console.

[Slyfamous]

Never has, never will.

[Pain_Killer]

This time it surely will.

[Fishy Fingers]

My current PC probably has double the GPU performance of the next gen consoles (based on leaked specs) yet will be lucky to yield similar results due to consoles unified hardware allowing much greater software optimisation.

PC will always give you more, but at a premier, it's only later into each console cycle will the PC offer better results at a reasonable cost.

That's ignoring the myriad of other uses for a PC mind you which often make that extra investment worthwhile.

[attilayavuzer]

I feel like the people that want to spend the time putting together a custom gaming PC already have. Not that it's that big of a hassle, but most people don't want to be bothered.

[DudeJets]

Because most people seem to think it's harder and more costly than it actually is. And seem to be stuck in the mindset that it has to be at a desk etc.

Pc gaming is so simple and easy now days and reasonably cheap, games are alot cheaper and you get very good support from developers.

Problem is people have this old image in there head about pc gaming and don't realise its very different now days

[attilayavuzer]

Yeah I agree, I have my computer plugged straight into my receiver and am using a 360 controller. To be honest I didn't realize how easy and seamless it was til putting everything together.

[R6ex]

Exactly!

Steam games are often sold at 50-75% discount.

I just bought over 20 games from Steam with their ridiculous 75% off promotions.

This amount of money saved justifies paying more for a PC compared to a console. I get better visuals too.

[millzy102]

there is another reason why people don't pc game and the reason why I don't and its not price or effort of making a gaming pc as none of these is an issue for me but rather keyboard and mouse set up. many gamers that started on consoles don't like key board and mouse and I know you can plug a 360 pad into them now but that defetes the point of pc gaming, console gaming can be more expensive if you need to upgrade your tv. I've pre ordered a Wii u. at 350 pounds and brought a new full hd tv with 3d to replace my hd ready set up at 700. I know I could make a gaming pc with a high res moniter for that price but I prefer the plug in and play set up.

[WiiUalpha]

LOL using a controller does not defeat the purpose of playing on PC... It just gives you another option.

LOL prefer the plug and play method but don't want a PC. The irony of that statement is lost on you I know...

Everything you posted is based off of misconceptions you have.

[DeadIIIRed]

Look up economies of scale and then you will realize how consoles are able to out-do the average gaming PC for the first 2 years of its life cycle.

[InTheLab]

Except there's rarely any good games in those two year for consoles, while PC has pretty much every game ever created that's not exclusive to Sony, N, and a few Halos/Gears.

That, and new graphics cards pop up every 6 months, while the tech in a console shipped this year is already out dated by the time it hits stores.

[GraveLord]

There have always been PCs. There have always been consoles.
Console always win. Why? Convenience.

PCs aren't used for games for the occasional Call of Duty gamer. PC gaming is largely a nerdy thing to do.

Next-gen PS4/720 will launch at no more than $400. These consoles will kill a $400 PC. Developers will learn to make full use of these consoles and we will have games on $250 consoles that look better than those on a $600 PC in a few years.

[wiiulee]

no because console gaming is still the way to go...pc gaming gets tiring after awhile...and with the wiiu nintendo has brought the system out at the right price.

[jmc8888]

There's many factors when it comes to price.

Since the last console came out the dollar has devalued by 2/3rds. That's why a $269 video card now comes out at $500-600. See GTX 680 at launch.

The dollar WILL continue to be devalued for fraud. We have 1.4 quadrillion in worthless derivatives bets (that's what they really bailed out in 2008) tied to your bank deposits for collateral. Every major bank in the U.S., and pretty much the world is broke 50-400x over.

So prices will continue to go up. Instead of collapse the fraud or rescue your deposits through reimposing Glass-Steagall legislation, they are creating digital money and handing it out to the fraudsters. Doesn't matter who wins today, Wall Street frauds win either way. America loses. British empire wins.

So yeah tech on this level will get more expensive.

Then you have how things are being multiples of themselves. Dual gpus/sli-crossfire, 2 cores-4 cores-6-8...dual 8 core, etc. This will continue and expand.

Sure tech generally gets less expensive as it ages, but each time it is initially introduced, the costs for that are going up, up, UP. So they start decreasing from a higher level. The situation is ripe for that starting condition to go sky high. There already is more money printed than there was that caused Weimar, Germany.

So off of price and onto 'threat'. I don't see the PC as a threat to consoles, I see of it as a constant kick in the butt pushing things forward. Where would the consoles be if DX11 hadn't been used on the PC the past ~3 years? We'd still be waiting on them, their first implementations, and all the time it takes to really use them would be ahead of us, not behind us.

It's also pretty silly when you consider most gamers that grew up with gaming say 25-40 age range had both consoles and PC's. So why are people going to want one or the other now? Besides money of course. No one is going to choose to have one or the other. They'll want both, like they've always had. They offer similar but different experiences, add redundancy in case one breaks down or becomes obsolete, etc.

Besides, the devs mostly code for the consoles. Some will code for PC first. Some will code for consoles and PC, and build new features on top of what they do for the consoles. A good example is how lots of games added DX11 and higher res textures on top of the console game for the PC version the last few years.

A committment to PC over console means higher costs and continually improving. Many devs simply don't want to, or can't afford to, meet that standard.

So I don't see PC's as a threat but complimentary. I don't see most Dev's wanting to jump ship and couldn't afford to if they wanted to. Consoles as the author said are indeed cheaper, standardized, and you know how many consoles can actually run your game.

[Pain_Killer]

If NVIDIA sees AMD's flagship as a competitor to its mid-range GK104 chip than that's not their problem.

AMD went on with releasing the card in the first place, no doubt HD 7970 is great card but if NVIDIA's GK104 chip could offer the same level of performance then why not?

Also, AMD's HD 7970 was $549 at launch, NVIDIA's counterpart GTX 680 was $499. They reduced their price later on and now its around $449 with HD 7970 Boost somewhere around $499.

[Zha1tan]

PCs will alwlays offer more bang for your buck, I have the money so I spent it on a good gaming rig and it was basically like lego to put together.

Simple enough and PC has so many advantages its worth the cash IMO.

[ShaunCameron]

Nope. PC gaming just doesn't quite register in the mass market's conscience.

[BitbyDeath]

PC doesn't have the same developer support consoles do, so no.