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PLEASE STOP COMPARING $500 CONSOLES TO $500 PCs

Is it fair to compare a $500 PC and a $500 Console?  

192 members have voted

  1. 1. Is it fair to compare a $500 PC and a $500 Console?

    • Yes
      116
    • No
      76


2 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

For history's sake.

 

It's an honest to god tragedy that I can't fire up and play around with this old copy of Christmas For Windows (THIS IS A REAL THING) that I own nearly as easily as I can emulate Pokemon Yellow.  There is so much classic PC software that is slowly being lost.  You can find torrents for the entire libraries of console games meanwhile so much history of the PC is rotting away on shelves and in boxes in attics, with their media not properly imaged and preserved in an accessible venue.

People usually say "Awwwww" to kitty cats and I do too, but this is way cooler. And what, that's for like, windows 95 or something? And what were we discussing in the first place? 

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Just now, ahmedhara said:

People usually say "Awwwww" to kitty cats and I do too, but this is way cooler. And what, that's for like, windows 95 or something? And what were we discussing in the first place? 

We've gone from saying that a PC can run 40 years of software to pointing out that it can't to me stressing that it's not just that 'Oh that's wrong' but it's a legit problem for preservation sake.  The crazy thing is is that consoles have much better preservation scenes.  Oh 100% there are people trying to preserve PC history but there's so much and so many bits and pieces were small runs and obscure could disappear forever.

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6 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

We've gone from saying that a PC can run 40 years of software to pointing out that it can't to me stressing that it's not just that 'Oh that's wrong' but it's a legit problem for preservation sake.  The crazy thing is is that consoles have much better preservation scenes.  Oh 100% there are people trying to preserve PC history but there's so much and so many bits and pieces were small runs and obscure could disappear forever.

Again, I never said that it could run games from 40 years ago, you can run a lot of old games and if we take pure numbers there are a lot more pc titles preserved than console ones and you still need a ps2 for ps2 games just as you need a pc from 1985 to run 1985 games

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Just now, ahmedhara said:

you still need a ps2 for ps2 games

My PS3 can play PS2 and PS1 games...

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6 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

My PS3 can play PS2 and PS1 games...

Only the first model is. The slim and super slim ones aren't though but yeah, I kinda agree, consoles do have a better preserved history but that's because pcs have a much more scrambled history. Still, in sheer numbers, PCs have more old titles, more old programs you can still run and you have to agree on that one

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its not fair pc is more upfront but has MANY other benifts consoles on the other hand... ehh not very many if any benifits

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Looks like somebody's a little triggered! ?

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2 hours ago, penmaster33 said:

its not fair pc is more upfront but has MANY other benifts consoles on the other hand... ehh not very many if any benifits

Point is, you can't compare consoles and pcs apples to apples consoles are for your average person who doesn't know what a GPU is and for those who just want to lay back on their couch and play games. I use to have a ps4 in my living room for 3 reasons:
 1. I got it on a sale dirt cheap, like, I'm talkin' 150$US so if I were to sell it I'd make a profit

 2. I have my lazy days when I'm just too gosh darn lazy to turn on my pc so consoles seemed like an easier way to play those games

 3. Exclusives

 

2 hours ago, tmcclelland455 said:

Looks like somebody's a little triggered! ?

Who?

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57 minutes ago, ahmedhara said:

Point is, you can't compare consoles and pcs apples to apples consoles are for your average person who doesn't know what a GPU is and for those who just want to lay back on their couch and play games. I use to have a ps4 in my living room for 3 reasons:
 1. I got it on a sale dirt cheap, like, I'm talkin' 150$US so if I were to sell it I'd make a profit

 2. I have my lazy days when I'm just too gosh darn lazy to turn on my pc so consoles seemed like an easier way to play those games

 3. Exclusives

while I see its easier than getting a pc here are my counter arguments, you can buy a cheap pre built, you just hit the power button and log in, and pc has exclusives also

 

I don't like exclusives there anti consumer

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6 minutes ago, penmaster33 said:

while I see its easier than getting a pc here are my counter arguments, you can buy a cheap pre built, you just hit the power button and log in, and pc has exclusives also

 

I don't like exclusives there anti consumer

I <3 pcs and I hate anti-consumerism. I personally have never spent a single cent on a microtransaction. I sold the ps4 for a whopping 300$ and I got a little fun out of it

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56 minutes ago, ahmedhara said:

I <3 pcs and I hate anti-consumerism. I personally have never spent a single cent on a microtransaction. I sold the ps4 for a whopping 300$ and I got a little fun out of it

oh I'm glad that you understand dlc is bad so many people nowadays don't understand that, also I'm glad you got money and fun from your ps4 

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1 hour ago, QuantumBit said:

nearly all games are optimized to run well

Maybe 2 gens ago xD

 

The reality of steam sales (and other methods of getting PC games dirt cheap) makes it valid to compare the two but frankly I don't see a reason to compare them a PC just wins in everything except initial hardware cost, the only reason I even have a console at this point is to play nintendo games the rest of the console exclusives are worthless to me.

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Honestly for the most part I just don't care about consoles, but of course I can understand their appeal. The thing I don't like about 'em is that they hold back game devs. I mean just look at Crysis. It is now ten years old and still excellent, but Crytek was only able to pull that off because they didn't care one lick if everybody and their granny could run their game. If they would have made it to the limitations of then current-gen consoles it would never have looked so good. Triple-A games these days are made so that everybody kind of has a similar graphical and gameplay experience regardless of what they are playing on...

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7 minutes ago, penmaster33 said:

oh I'm glad that you understand dlc is bad so many people nowadays don't understand that, also I'm glad you got money and fun from your ps4 

Thanks :) (Unless that was sarcasm, then why are you being so aggressive? (sorry, I'm really bad at telling when people are being sarcastic))

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The thing is that a $500 pc can do much more than just playing games. Try writing a paper on a PS4.

BUT, if you only want gaming performance (i.e. if you're buying a pc just for gaming), then I would say it's fair to compare them.

 

Gaming performance wise, console games are optimized to run on specific console platforms, ranging from tuning graphics settings or even changing the "core" of the game to suit the hardware. (please correct me if I'm wrong) But for pc, games has to be made a variety of hardware and there's not really a good way to directly optimization for a certain hardware.

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3 minutes ago, penmaster33 said:

oh I'm glad that you understand dlc is bad so many people nowadays don't understand that

Back when devs like Rockstar actually put effort in and made dlc's like The ballad of gay Tony it wasn't all bad. But today most dlc's feel like the devs just cut out a piece of content that should have been in the original game. (CDPR is an exception though)

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1 hour ago, ahmedhara said:

Thanks :) (Unless that was sarcasm, then why are you being so aggressive? (sorry, I'm really bad at telling when people are being sarcastic))

that wasn't sarcasm sorry if I was being rude

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1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Yeah, I think that's true, and could explain part of the popularity of consoles.  Sure you get more performance* for the money now, but make no mistake you pay for it eventually.  Paid multiplayer services, more expensive games, etc all add up over time.

 

But, if that's so important, than just finance whatever device you truly want rather than picking just based on that xD

I don't know why PC gamers always act like console gamers pay $60 for all their games. Like console games don't have big sales too.

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I think everyone here gets a little numb to how the rest of the non tech savvy people out there.  I have been working directly with end users for 15 years and I can tell you people are ignorant.  I am not going to say dumb, because its not of lack of intelligence, they just don't know.    I once had a dentist, who hung on the the belief  that the 5Ghz band and 2.5Ghz on his router were separate "Internets" and traffic on one should never effect performance on the other and he was getting "screwed". I had a lawyer bring in an all in one PC  complaining it would not turn on, when I asked where the power cord was, she looked shocked stood there in silence for minute before replying "Oh, I guess thats why It would no turn on, I didn't know it needed one"  They do not understand and/or refuse to learn. Go stand by your local computer repair shop, or sit by a Geek Squad counter and just listen to the average day to day conversations they have with clients and you will understand how the rest of non tech savvy humanity live.  A large portion of consumers just want a console that is straight forward, easy to use, and want to know when they buy a game for it, it will play regardless.  Also  a large percentage of Best Buy and wall mart customers only have cheap sub $100 prepaid smart phone, a $50 Amazon Fire (or cheap generic android), and a game console at home.  Allot of school systems in the area are issuing Chromebooks to the kids, (even installing chromium OS existing PCs), so even many familes with kids in school doing homework are without a full fledged PC (which is why MS is getting into ARM based systems).  My wife is non-tech person, and with a media center PC and PS4 in the bedroom and living room, she will always be more comfortable opening Netflix or Plex on the PS4 than the PC.  regardless if its ignorance, cost, convenience, or simplicity, consoles will always have large market share of the gaming industry. 

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1 hour ago, AshleyAshes said:

You truly can't say 'A PC can run any game on the PC platform from the last 40 years'.

I tried to run a few games within a 98 VM and the clock speed of my CPU still increased the engine speed of most of my games (Magic Carpet being the worst offender at over 999Hz...). 

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6 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

I don't know why PC gamers always act like console gamers pay $60 for all their games. Like console games don't have big sales too.

Neither of those things are true.  No one's acting like console games are always $60, and not one's denying they get sales.  For example, I just checked the local best buy and CoD WWII is actually $20 cheaper for Xbox right now than PC.

 

But, I'm pretty sure this is founded in fact.  I have seen on numerous occasions in the past a sale or even a normal price that favours PC, and then there's things like Skyrim and other ports of old games that have been out forever already on PC and thus sell for cheap there, but since they're new to console Z, they price them like brand new games

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12 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Neither of those things are true.  No one's acting like console games are always $60, and not one's denying they get sales.  For example, I just checked the local best buy and CoD WWII is actually $20 cheaper for Xbox right now than PC.

 

But, I'm pretty sure this is founded in fact.  I have seen on numerous occasions in the past a sale or even a normal price that favours PC, and then there's things like Skyrim and other ports of old games that have been out forever already on PC and thus sell for cheap there, but since they're new to console Z, they price them like brand new games

I think one thing to consider is that a lot of PC games, namely those that hit Steam, Origin and others, with a minority of exceptions are available to purchase 'forever'.  Meanwhile on console not every game gets a digital download (However things are CLEARLY moving towards 100% new titles available for download) so you have games on disc that have limited printing runs and no matter how popular they all eventually go out of print.  This means that for those games if you're coming in late to the game you can only get them used.   Meanwhile you can get the same game 'new' on Steam for a cheap price because it's 2-3 years old and the publisher wants to squeeze some more bucks out of an old title.

 

So a lot of console games are at their cheapest $20 USD as 'Greatest Hits' (Or whatever the branding) second or third run prints but after that you have to go used.  Meanwhile most any new PC game can eventually had for '5bux' if you wait long enough for a 1-3 year old title to be on a Steam sale.

 

On a related note, I find it silly that people will accuse Bethesda of 'Beating The Cash Cow' by releasing Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch instead of releasing a 'new game' but somehow still selling Skyrim for PC on Steam for six years and counting is perfectly fine.

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Seriously though, are people really choosing a console over a PC and vice versa based solely on price ? I like gaming on PC period. I don't care about the price.

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Just now, AshleyAshes said:

I think one thing to consider is that a lot of PC games, namely those that hit Steam, Origin and others, with a minority of exceptions are available to purchase 'forever'.  Meanwhile on console not every game gets a digital download (However things are CLEARLY moving towards 100% new titles available for download) so you have games on disc that have limited printing runs and no matter how popular they all eventually go out of print.  This means that for those games if you're coming in late to the game you can only get them used.   Meanwhile you can get the same game 'new' on Steam for a cheap price because it's 2-3 years old and the publisher wants to squeeze some more bucks out of an old title.

 

So a lot of console games are at their cheapest $20 USD as 'Greatest Hits' (Or whatever the branding) second or third run prints but after that you have to go used.  Meanwhile most any new PC game can eventually had for '5bux' if you wait long enough for a 1-3 year old title to be on a Steam sale.

That's another good point.  And not just available to purchase forever, but will actually work forever :P With PC games I have confidence that I'll still be able to run whatever I once did 10 or 20 years later on whatever PC I have, but with console (I know this because I've struggled with this experience personally) if a game you like only runs on console Z, you have to keep a working version around which is often easier (and cheaper) said than done.

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9 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Neither of those things are true.  No one's acting like console games are always $60, and not one's denying they get sales.  For example, I just checked the local best buy and CoD WWII is actually $20 cheaper for Xbox right now than PC.

 

But, I'm pretty sure this is founded in fact.  I have seen on numerous occasions in the past a sale or even a normal price that favours PC, and then there's things like Skyrim and other ports of old games that have been out forever already on PC and thus sell for cheap there, but since they're new to console Z, they price them like brand new games

There is a pretty competitive marketplace for console games. Best Buy, Target, Amazon, newegg, Walmart, Gamestop are always one-upping each other. Console games can be very cheap when you shop around, even near launch.

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