UESP Forums

So there's a chance I will be able to save up enough money this summer to upgrade to a brand new gaming PC. But since the next gen consoles are about to come out I started thinking that maybe I was missing something here and there's a better option for me in the Console Land.

See, I've never owned a gaming console and I don't really see the point of them. I like my stupidly expensive electronic devices to be useful for more than one thing and it always seemed like a ridiculous waste of money to buy something that can only do a small fraction of what my PC can. I'm also mostly interested in RPGs and most of the AAA titles have the PC version, my console-owning friends are mostly into that whole Modern Halo Battlefield Solid 58 thing, which doesn't interest me at all.

On the other hand, when I see what the new consoles can do and how awesome some of those games look, a part of me starts drooling and reaching for my wallet. And there's this whole thing with not worrying about my sound drivers conflicting with the graphics card's left shoe (or something - I think I'm pretty computer-literate, but figuring out why the Beth games do what they do might as well be voodoo sometimes).

There it is then - could you guys give me some reasons why I'd want to venture into this new strange land? Or why I should stay where I am?

Console games are always very likely to be on PC for the fact that all games console or not are made on computers. If the developers want to make a version only readable to a console, to each his own. If you think those games you want are truly worth the money then I have no right to throw your way.

No, the point is not those few console-exclusive games, it's more the fact that a PC capable of matching next-gen consoles' performance is probably going to cost a small mountain of money.

The thing is for consoles they optimise the graphics etc specifically for that console, hence why X360/PS3 picture can look almost real, despite being very inferior to a half decent current PC. See GT5 photomode pics, which to the average person can sometimes look more real than the exact same photo of a real car.

From my perspective you can never update the hardware. They say that the Xbox one is better that the best PC on the market, that is an outright lie. Hardware is constantly being improved year by year. I would rather improve the bits as they advance than buy a whole new console just because it has a processor that is a bit better.
I would compare the price difference of the components of the older console to the newer, and the price difference of the components to the retail price itself. Then compare that to a high end PC. You could build a PC supercomputer for $1800 that lasts about 10 years if you do not upgrade it. Whilst the consoles around you keep updating little by little every three-four years.

Vendetta wrote:They say that the Xbox one is better that the best PC on the market, that is an outright lie.

I have never seen this anywhere and I highly doubt anybody would be stupid enough to make such a claim. Even factoring out the upgrading element there's no way in the world a £429 console will be able to outclass top range gaming PCs, ever.

Okay, just to clarify, I most certainly won't be able to spent almost 2K on that computer. I said "save up some money", not "hit the jackpot", so it's going to be a decent gaming rig, not some ultra-high-end monster.

Your profile says you live in Poland so you can't play the Xbox One. Not at launch anyway. You'd have to sign in every 24 hours and only 21 countries are being supported online at launch. No word on when or even if they will support Polish consumers.

Even if you did live in a supported country I wouldn't really recommend it. Still to each their own.

Veck wrote:

Vendetta wrote:They say that the Xbox one is better that the best PC on the market, that is an outright lie.

I have never seen this anywhere and I highly doubt anybody would be stupid enough to make such a claim. Even factoring out the upgrading element there's no way in the world a £429 console will be able to outclass top range gaming PCs, ever.

EA is laughing at your expectations.

The key quote: "Both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have adopted electronics and an integrated systems-on-a -chip (soc) architecture that unleashes magnitudes more compute and graphics power than the current generation of consoles. These architectures are a generation ahead of the highest end PC on the market and their unique design of the hardware, the underlying operating system and the live service layer create one of the most compelling platforms to reimagine game mechanics." --Electronic Arts Chief Technology Officer Rajat Taneja

DO NOT CHALLENGE IDIOCY.

AKB wrote:

Veck wrote:

Vendetta wrote:They say that the Xbox one is better that the best PC on the market, that is an outright lie.

I have never seen this anywhere and I highly doubt anybody would be stupid enough to make such a claim. Even factoring out the upgrading element there's no way in the world a £429 console will be able to outclass top range gaming PCs, ever.

EA is laughing at your expectations.

The key quote: "Both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have adopted electronics and an integrated systems-on-a -chip (soc) architecture that unleashes magnitudes more compute and graphics power than the current generation of consoles. These architectures are a generation ahead of the highest end PC on the market and their unique design of the hardware, the underlying operating system and the live service layer create one of the most compelling platforms to reimagine game mechanics." --Electronic Arts Chief Technology Officer Rajat Taneja

DO NOT CHALLENGE IDIOCY.

Yes, cause clearly some of the games at E3 made use of this super-advanced console tech...And showcased it on a PC instead...

To be fair, some of them held the controller during "game demos". Sometimes they didn't even bother turning the controller, but they did hold them.

Knight Captain Kerr - this is the most moronic thing I've heard about Xbox One so far, and that's saying something. Did Microsoft get collectively dropped on their heads, or maybe someone put something nasty in their water-coolers? I know that a lot of places not on that list have problems with high-speed internet, so it might be hard for people there to connect, but it's not like we all live in mud shacks and only have electricity 4 hours a day... I'm paying about 20$ a month for an unlimited 40Mb connection - that's better than about 75% of the US can get. Or is it because of some legal issues? What could it be though, there's a bunch of other EU countries on that list and they all have mostly the same regulations when it comes to internet laws, so what's okay in Austria should be okay in Poland too.

Anyway, let's not turn this into yet another MS-bashing topic (though I'd say they deserve all they're getting). Seriously, can you give me any reason why I should spend money on a console (PS4, I suppose), rather than a new PC?

Forza Motorsport 5 for Xbox One and it's cheaper for a better product for the PS4.

That's about it.

I have absolutely no interest in any sport games, including racing games. It's just RPGs, RPG/FPSs, a bit of strategy and indie weirdness for me.

The PC vs console argument is actually very different this time around. When they launched, the Xbox 360 and PS3 were both far more powerful than any similarly priced PC. Part of that was due to games being optimised for such systems, and because PC's have their operating systems and various other programs running in the background. But the Xbox 360 and PS4 were also both initially sold at a loss. The strategy was to gain market share, with the hope of making back their losses in game sales. Unlike with PC games, every time you buy a console game, the manufacturer of that console gets a cut. This is why console games are often more expensive than the PC version of the same game. So it actually makes sense to sell the console at a loss if the profits from the extra games sold outweigh the losses. But it also makes comparing consoles to PC's difficult. It's not fair to compare a $650 Xbox 360 console to a $650 computer when the Xbox 360 contains more than $650 worth of hardware. The console would still win against a PC with similarly powerful hardware, thanks to optimisation, but the difference would be smaller. Which system ends up being cheaper depends on how many games you buy, whether you buy them new or second hand, whether you're going to buy a PC (or laptop) anyway, whether you need to buy a TV/monitor for your PC/console etc.

But that was the previous generation of consoles. There are only rumours at the moment, but it looks like the Xbox One and the PS4 could both be sold at a profit (or at least close to cost) from day one. Whether or not that ends up being the case, the difference between a console and a similarly priced PC will be much smaller this time around. Despite this, console games will still be more expensive. Any financial reason to buy a console is much smaller, or perhaps even gone, this time around.

If you're interested, we actually know enough about each console's hardware to start to estimate some equivalent PC components. The PS4's GPU will be slightly less powerful than an AMD Radeon HD7870 ($240-ish here in Australia) where as the Xbox One's GPU will perform similarly to an AMD Radeon HD7790 ($160-ish). Comparing processors is slightly more difficult, but I suspect that their performance will be similar to a high-end Intel i3 ($150-ish), which isn't a high-end processor.

The other thing that's different about this generation of consoles is the processors that they use. Both consoles' processors are using x86-64 architecture - the same architecture used in PC's. This wasn't the case for the last generation. What this means is that neither console will be backwards compatible, and that it's going to be much easier for game companies to make cross-platform games. Expect to see more games released on all three platforms (Xbox, PS3, PC), and for such games to run more smoothly on all of them.

Considering all this, I can't see why someone who's always been a PC gamer would make the switch to consoles. I say upgrade the PC.

Thanks, that's exactly the kind of answer I was looking for.