The Myth: Next-Gen More $ Than a PC

A lot of people like to talk about how the next-gen consoles aren't worth it, and you should get a PC instead. As a big PC gamer for some time and hardware enthusiast, I want to dispel that myth.

Here's what you'd have to pay to build your own PC on par with the new consoles:

• The GPU in the PS4 is roughly equivalent to an AMD 7870, which retails for $200.
• The CPU has no desktop equivalent. It is clocked quite low at ~1.6Ghz and is a low-power chip, but has a whopping 8 cores. That means it probably does less a cycle than an $75 CPU per core, but has 4x the number of cores. Taking a blind (and conservative guess) I'll say it's probably like a $100 CPU.
• The ram is going to be $75 (The PS4's ram isn't really comparable, but might retail for 50-100% more)
• A motherboard is probably going to be about $75
• A 500 GB hard drive can be found for $60
• A low-wattage power supply will be $60
• A blu-ray drive is $50
• A wireless controller is $50
• A case to hold it all $50
• Pure Hardware: That's a pretty conservative base price of $720.

But, less we forget, there are hidden costs:

• The current Kinect for Windows is $220. Retail cost of a Kinect 2 should be seen as at least $250.
• An OEM copy of Windows 7 64-bit (a PC doesn't do any good without an OS) is $90. Retail price is roughly double.
• The GDDR5 in the PS4 isn't sold at retail, and might cost 50-100% more. (So add $50).
• Necessary cables are bundled in (maybe $20).

So, the cost of building a PC to really match the hardware would be roughly:

• X1: $1080 with Kinect 2, $830 without.
• PS4: $880

And that's ignoring several other factors:

• Games are optimized to run on the X1 and PS4's exact hardware. That optimization is why a 360 game today looks so much better than one did 6 years ago. The difference in hardware to make up for this might be as much as $200 in better parts. Sure, that PC might out-do a PS4 today, but in 4 years developers will have their games running so efficiently on a PS4 that your "more powerful" PC will look just the same.
• Both the X1 and the PS4 use custom made, sleek cases that fit their components perfectly. Only companies specializing in custom rigs and modding enthusiasts are going to get a design as sleek as the X1 and PS4.
• The next-gen consoles integrate lots of unusual features like a hardware video encoder for Twitch streaming and integrated friends lists. These are all "premium" features on a PC that usually require specialized hardware and often need additional software. Companies like NVIDIA have realized that these special features are becoming as important as the specs of the hardware, which is why you're seeing NVIDIA push to do game streaming much like the PS4 will do on day one. Steam is building a more sophisticated friends-list system. But none of these are as integrated or polished as what Sony and MS have.
• Surround-sound capable blu-ray player software for your PC is actually pretty darn expensive (Cyberlink's cheapest software is $50).
• Even if you get all this stuff, you're going to have to build it and make it work yourself.

In summary, you really can't build a PC from scratch to match the chops of these consoles for the same price. Sony and Microsoft buy components by the millions, so they can place orders direct from manufacturers at a fraction of what we'd pay if they were sold at retail. Neither company is really trying to make money off the hardware, either (they make their money on the games). It's one thing if you want to drop $300 for a superior graphics card on your current rig, which might well beat out these consoles, but building a machine from scratch really does cost far more. That's why I'm going to forego upgrading my gaming PC in favor of an X1 or PS4 this holiday (I'm in wait-and-see mode as to which is better) and waiting a couple of years for the $/performance balance to shift back to the PC before I plop a couple grand on a new rig.

If you grabbed the parts on sale (which most people do because there are always tons of hardware parts going on sale all the time), you could easily make that PC for $600, no problem. Can you price match a PC to the PS4 or XB1? Not really. But for spending a little more cash, you get exponential amounts of value.

That was based off the cheapest prices available on Newegg/Amazon and Anandtech's guess at the computational power of the machine.

Those prices were all pretty darn low, fwiw. I seriously doubt you're ever going to find anything decent cheaper than $700, and that's if you hold out a long time and hit each thing on sale.

Also, I apologize if this is the wrong forum. I'm new to blogs and elected to have it copied here, I wasn't really sure where it should go.

Yes, and then after purchasing 20 games the roles reverse themselves PC Games are, cheaper, and fully backwards compatible .

And on top of that the context of this discussion is gaming, expand alil and PCs can do a fuckton of other things consoles can't, like uhm..... I don't know........ Actually make a game, which you can sell. Or simply using a PC for work, it will pay for itself and then some. Consoles are financial black holes, they consum eand are incapable of giving.

But yeah if you live in a gaming vacuum then go ahead and buy a console. You won't regret it.

If you take the price of a console ($400-$500) and add the price of whatever PC the average person has lying around (~$400?) you can build a decent gaming PC for that much. Plus it's upgradable and games go on huge sales all the time. And who the hell actually buys a Kinect for PC?

@ INF1DEL

I want PC Kinect ! Dont ask me why !

My current PC is probably a little more powerful than both these consoles, yet I'm still planning on picking up both consoles at launch. Why? Because I can't play the next Naughty Dog game on this PC (legally), regardless of specs. Value really means **** all here.

@Lulu_Lulu: PC games might be much cheaper than console games, but the PC also has many more worthwhile games than any given console, so you might end up spending a similar amount of money on games regardless of your platform.

The hardware is not the problem. It's the games. With indie self-publishing on consoles, the PC will likely lose even more ground than it already has. The next Amnesia game will be on consoles, just to name one.

I'm not sure how exactly someone is going to take their old console and PC to buy a new gaming PC. It's called a "sunk cost," you've already spent that $800 and now you're spending another $800. Plus, if you already have a working computer, all you really are gaining is pure gaming ability anyway. I don't know many who buy a Kinect for PC, which is why I showed the cost without it. I just included it because it should be reflected in the cost of the machine.

There are plenty of reasons why spending more on a better pc is a good idea, be it modding or cheap games or whatever. I love having Skyrim on my PC because of mods. But there are just as many reasons to like a console, as it is a fully featured entertainment system for your main TV that has great multiplayer ecosystems, netflix, blu-ray player, and games that are guaranteed to run well.

The whole point of my blog was that you can't just take $500 and build a gaming computer that rivals the X1 or PS4 in gaming horsepower. No one has even really tried to argue against that, mainly people have just talked about how it would be smarter to pay $1000 to buy the nice gaming rig (which, I emphasize, likely won't be a huge step up in horsepower) because of the other things like the costs of games and such (though the "you can make money by creating games" argument is frankly silly). But you're arguing for a different class of machine for a different price point.

Simply put, if you limit yourself to $400 you can't build a PC from scratch that can compete with a PS4. It's just not possible.

Lose ground? How do you figure?

Getting all that and putting it together and optimizing settings for each individual game seems like a pain in the ass. I'll take the ease of consoles any day, plus I prefer the console companies' games over PC exclusives anyways.

If I want to PC game I'll do it casually with older titles/indie games that can be played on a cheap laptop.

Lose exclusives. Big name indie developers will no doubt start working on consoles now that the process has finally been streamlined.

this guy stole my avatar

I don't think that will lead to a loss in market-share. If anything, it will only expand the audience for indie games on console.

I should have been more specific, I wasn't talking about market share, rather exclusive content. The gap between PC and consoles was enormous in 2004: there were games on PC that seemed unthinkable on consoles, but from 2005 forward that gap has narrowed considerably (Half-Life 2, Doom 3 on the original xbox, then the release of the xbox 360 with a lot of games that previously would have been PC exclusives). In the last few years PC was the only one to have MMOs, but now consoles have them too. PC today is down to 4 major advantages over consoles: better visuals, indie games, Steam sales and mods. The new generation will fill the gap concerning visuals (at least for a while) and the loosening of the grip on indie developers will likely bring a flood of indie games on consoles (it'd be silly not to).

Again, I'm not making prediction on market shares: the new brood of PC fanboys will keep shunning consoles by religious mandate and keep Steam (maybe even Origin) afloat no matter what, so that's not the point. The point is that consoles are gaining many of the PC's advantages (and flaws, though that's another topic).

Seems like a reasonable assessment. I'm still going for a new pc though, since I can do other stuff than gaming with it. Besides, I have a crappy tv, so that would add to the costs of a console. Also, Steam gives me cheap games. Plus, I never owned a console or used a controller, so by now I think I've completely alienated myself from consoles. ;-P Learning how to properly use a controller just seems like a troublesome endeavor at this point (how do you even move your thumbs independently from one another?). Anyway, I'm not picking a side. Both console and pc have pros and cons and I'm sure I'll miss out on a lot of stuff not owning a console. Oh well...

I definitely think the value judgment is now either spending $400-$500 on a console or $1000+ on a PC.

At the $400 level, there's no way you can get a PC with that much gaming prowess great connectivity (both in ports and things like bluetooth/wifi you won't find on a budget mobo) that is going to play games well and only requires your existing TV (I'd wager the casual gamer is far more likely to have a good TV than a good monitor). As for the possibility that you can get a "deal" on parts and get close to the $400 price point, I am yet to be shown where it is possible. On a competing games site, several posters suggested $350-$400 systems, but literally all of them lacked at least the hard drive and blu-ray player, which are worth $100 alone. They all were also all using CPUs and graphics cards (or internal GPUs) that were at most half as powerful as the X1/PS4. There really, truly is no way a $400 PC is going to deliver the gaming experience of a console.

Once you jump the price point up to about $1200, you can start to afford to drop $350 on something like an Nvidia 7-series graphics card, and get a Core-i5 Haswell system with the necessary bells and whistles. That system actually will be maybe twice as powerful as your $400 console, so the $/performance isn't that much worse, plus you get the advantage of cheaper games, more customization/modding, mouse/keyboard, and the simple advantage of having a nice computer in your home.

It all comes down to how much the added benefits are worth, and if you even have the money for it to be an option. As Black_Knight alluded to, we've returned to the same transition we had in 2005; the new consoles are 5x as powerful for less than 2x the price as the old ones. This radically changes the balance between PCs and consoles, because a $350 PC with an integrated GPU today may fare well against the $300 PS3, but the $400 PS4 will blow that same PC out of the water.

Instead of arguing about how the PC is a better machine for the same money, I think we're back to an era where the argument is more about what "level" of gaming is best, the $400 console or the $1500 PC. I also think the PC market realizes that they can't rely on superior $/performance any longer, which is why they are starting to focus more on special features like NVIDIA's streaming technologies and Steam's "big picture mode." I also think the increase in console horsepower and the uses of DX11 are going to push AAA titles to have much higher quality ports on the PC, making the new ecosystem better for everyone. We have been in an era where an $800 computer could play most games with every single bell and whistle turned on. Now I think you're going to need a much more expensive machine to do that, and I think in the end that's probably a good thing.

Yeah I don't know why anyone says that. I want to build a PC and the suggest for budget builds are around $600.

Anytime I read any argument that with regards to PC vs Consoles the number one thing that has been perpetually wrong is the cost for PC gaming. The reality is that majority of the times you can simply upgrade a few parts without the need of purchasing a new system. Also anyone quoting more than a $1000 for a gaming PC is just being silly.

It seems readily obvious to most of us, but there are a lot of people that really refuse to accept it. To me, the fact that a budget gaming PC has a $600 minimum should be essentially a fact, but people don't see it that way.

I also think that the combination of processing power and premium features (high power graphics,real-time game streaming, wifi, bluetooth, nice controllers, etc.) really can't be had for less than $800 if you're building a PC from scratch.

The fact that you are missing is that you don't NEED to purchase a new system. Here is a particularly decent cheap system for $439. If the graphics card is not fast enough you can upgrade to something better with two free games. That takes you $649 with an upgrade.

Ah. Gotcha.

I don't see any issue with it for the most part. More parity between console and PC just makes it easier to play games on whatever platform I prefer. Better that than having to settle for watered down ports. Plus, it just means there's now a greater variety of games available.

I agree, like I said a while ago in some other thread, the only reason why anyone would be upset for a game being available on more systems is because of fanboysm.

The Geforce 610 in that machine is literally a 1/10th as fast as the 7870 you suggested upgrading to, with the 7870 being roughly equivalent to what's in the PS4/X1. The 610 is wholly inadequate for gaming, and the $200 upgrade for a new card is a necessity in this case. That means you've already gotten up to $650 for your machine. The reward is for games like hitman and Sleeping Dogs, that's only like a $20 value, but I'll be nice and take that out (even though it's a "sunk cost").

So you're paying $630 to have a machine with the horsepower of a $400 PS4. If you throw in the price for a wireless controller ($50) and a blu-ray drive ($50), the computer would cost $730. That's right at my $720 estimate for building a PS4-like rig.

And that's ignoring that this machine will not have wifi, will not have bluetooth, has no software to play a blu-ray with, can't live stream games, and doesn't have a sleek and quiet case.

Games on the PS4 are also going to run better down the road than on this PC as devs get very good at optimizing them.

As for the possibility of dropping a $350 graphics card in your already decent computer (which you likely paid more than $400 for), that's a scenario that I excepted out in my initial blog as being very different from having to build a computer from scratch. Obviously, if I already have a $4000 Computer and just need a blu-ray drive, I can pay $50 and be better off than if I had a PS4. But that doesn't answer the question of "what is the PC-equivalent cost of a next-gen console" that I was trying to address.

In the end, you proved my point. You came up with a machine that can probably play a video game today at the same level as a PS4. However, that machine will cost $250 more than a PS4, and is inferior in a number of other respects. Sure, there are advantages to gaming on a PC, but you just can't game at the same level as a console at the same price.

@Lulu_Lulu: Most of use posting on this forum won't be making a game...

Its obvious that your bias is getting the best of you because you are not relying on being objective.

Trivializing the two free games is comical because the PS4 library is currently and would ALWAYS be weaker than the PC simply due to the full backward compatibility of PC games. If you want to jump on the silly bandwagon then add $60 to the PS4 price for online functionality and additional $120 for two retail games to match the system mentioned. That would take it to $580. Also the system including the upgrade graphics card would surpass the PS4 and would not simply equal it.

Bluetooth is generally useless to the average user, the same can be argued for any optical drive since the most people rely on streaming services that has HD content. Also streaming games would not be available for sometime and don't pretend as if services like Onlive does not exist. As for the system being sleek, true its sleek. Quiet, not sure. But all of this is just straw grabbing as the validity of your point dwindles.

As for games running better on the PS4 than this PC in the future is unfounded. Your speculation holds no merit.

I also like the jump from a $200 graphics card to $350 graphics card. Mentioning the initial cost of the PC has some sort of merit but lets keep it real, if you have something that serves an existing purpose then upgrading for more functionality would equate to being less overall. The average person needs a PC and its already part of their expense. If they want to game they can upgrade or purchase a new one. This is not the same for console gaming for obvious reasons. Unlike consoles you can enjoy your old and new games for less. To currently enjoy PS3 and PS4 gaming you have to buy two systems that clocks in at $600.

The reality is particularly simple. The PS4 does not or will not offer more to the gamer than a new PC that cost $640. As for long term gaming, PC is cheaper. This myth of PC gaming being out of the average person reach is just that a myth. By next year this supposed affordability gap is going to shrink even more with the rise in APU sales and performance.

PS. I am not saying to dump console gaming for PC gaming. Play what you like.

@Pedro:

I'm going to address this exchange because it shows that many people really do argue that $ for $ a PC can be had for superior quality at the PS4 price point.

"Its obvious that your bias is getting the best of you because you are not relying on being objective." - Frankly, that statement is kind of insulting. I said at the onset that I'm a PC gamer, I'm really not biased to consoles. I buy 9 games for PC for every 1 on buy on console right now. For all that I'm about to talk about the PS4, I don't even own a single Sony console or handheld.

"Trivializing the two free games is comical because the PS4 library is currently and would ALWAYS be weaker than the PC simply due to the full backward compatibility... add $60 to the PS4 price for online functionality and additional $120 for two retail games to match the system mentioned"

- Two multiple-year old games worth $10 each are not on par with two brand new $60 games, and the comment on the backwards compatibility of the PS4 is a non-sequitor (it has nothing to do with the money value of the games). $120 will buy you the same games on the PS4's launch that it does on the PC for the same price, you can't use that as an excuse to jack up the price of a PS4. I will, however, buy your argument that the $60 online cost should be considered, but I note there that you'd have to factor in the features of X-Live and PS+, and that they are currently handing out free games like candy.

"the system including the upgrade graphics card would surpass the PS4 and would not simply equal it."

- The 7870 at 2500 Gflops is slightly faster than the PS4 at ~2000 Gflops is slightly faster than the 7850 at 1600 Gflops. The 7870 is indeed a little bit faster (25% potentially), but it's also driving the price of your suggested rig to $200+ above the PS4. That's a 50+% price increase for a 25% performance gain.

" Also streaming games would not be available for sometime and don't pretend as if services like Onlive does not exist."

- I'm referring to hardware-based streaming and recording of your games with services like Twitch, not the OnLive stuff. Nvidia is rolling out Shadowplay on their newest graphics cards, but it's a beta feature for their newest stuff while the PS4 and X1 will do it out of the box.

"As for games running better on the PS4 than this PC in the future is unfounded. Your speculation holds no merit."

- It is speculation, which means it can't be proven directly, but it certainly isn't meritorious to predict that developers will be able to optimize their games more effectively for consoles over time than they will be able to do on PC. I have a really nice gaming rig, and RAGE doesn't play all that well because it's a crappy console port. Unless the market shifts, games are always going to be better optimized for consoles.

"I also like the jump from a $200 graphics card to $350 graphics card. Mentioning the initial cost of the PC has some sort of merit but lets keep it real, if you have something that serves an existing purpose then upgrading for more functionality would equate to being less overall. "

- I have no argument with that. If you have a PC with a modern processor, mobo, Ram, HDD, etc. then it's probably worth just upgrading that machine. But I think you seriously are taking it for granted that the old computer people have lieing around is going to have a good quad-core CPU with 8GB of ram and a nice hard drive. You're also taking it for granted that they are okay having their family computer used for gaming. People that do have a nice setup are also very likely to have a nice GPU anyway and not need a console in the first place. I never directed this article at people who are in a good position to upgrade, because it admittedly makes a lot less sense. That's where the $350 number came from, I was conceding for a little less than a PS4 you can take your Core i5 PC and make it a rig with double the PS4's horsepower.

"The reality is particularly simple. The PS4 does not or will not offer more to the gamer than a new PC that cost $640. "

- Even including PS+ the price of a PS4 is only $460. And your $640 machine lacks a lot of all-in-one entertainment system options. Having a blu-ray player, a controller, and the ability to have it in a sleek and quiet package are actually a pretty big deal to a lot of people. It's both silly to ride on the argument that a PS4 is inferior to a machine costing $200+ more than it does (you would hope so), and it's objectively false to say it doesn't "offer more to the gamer" when there are absolutely tangible features your $640 machine lacks versus a PS4.

"As for long term gaming, PC is cheaper. This myth of PC gaming being out of the average person reach is just that a myth. By next year this supposed affordability gap is going to shrink even more with the rise in APU sales and performance.

- I have no doubt a PC in a year's time will give much better performance for the money than it does today. Consoles' performance is stagnant, which is why I would totally agree that a PC gives much better value for your money than the aging PS3. Eventually the PC market will catch back up to these consoles and pass them. It's also quite possible the PS4 and X1 will be cheaper in a year's time, so it could be a while. But none of this really matters when we're talking about the hardware and pricing available right now. At this very moment, there is no $400 PC that can do what a PS4 can do. There just isn't.