Which race is more expensive? Master or console?

There have been a thousand threads on this before i am fully aware of that, however, let me compare what i have spent to what most users on a console will spend.

Here is my Steam account, and how much it is worth, and how much i spent.

http://steamdb.info/calculator/?player=mike655&currency=uk

Now, my rig is powerful, it always has been, but has gone through a few upgrades and a few component replacements due to wear.

(my keyboard is USA layout, so i will be using GBP as currency, and not the symbol)

So, here is my hardware price...

i5 2500k (Bought on release) 175GBP

8GB G.Skill Ripjaws X 1600mhz 60 GBP

Corsair H100 80 GBP

MSI P67A-GD53 130 GBP (This motherboard died)

EVGA Z68 SLi motherboard 140 GBP (still in use)

EVGA GeForce GTX 480 1536MB 180 GBP (bought on sale in 2010 near launch but recently died due to power delivery failure on the actual PCB)

Powercolor HD 5850 1GB 50 GBP (from EBAY to replace the short gap between the 480 and 290)

Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB 308 GBP

2x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD's in RAID-0 110 GBP altogether (2TB of very fast mechanical storage at 230 MB/S)

Silverstone Strider ST1000-G 80 Plus GOLD PSU 150 GBP (future proof with outstanding efficiency and leading performance)

Silverstone Raven RVO2-BW case 125 GBP

ACER H223HQ 5ms 1920x1080 does 75hz overclocked 105 GBP

SteelSeries Sensie [RAW] Pro grade mouse 40 GBP

Logitech G110 Keyboard 55GBP

Ok, so there is the cost of my hardware, i did not add OS as i got it free because i am good friends with a local PC hardware supplier.

This is not your typical PC gamer's situation at all, i have so many hardware failures because i am an enthusiast, i overclock everything to insane levels, i strive for performance.

So, if we stuck with the overall cost including my misfortune and HW abuse (overclocking is not within manufacture specifications and voids warranties)

1708 GBP

If i remove all unfortunate events as this does not show light for everyone out there, many will never overclock in the first place.

1518 GBP

So, if i bought a console at launch and i stayed the entire generation.

A good TV back then at a decent size of around 40" would set me back around 500 GBP

PS3 425 GBP

XBOX 360 280 GBP with a online fee of 50GBP

Game costs....

Add everything in my Steam account on top that is a multi plat game, i bought almost all the multi plat games i own on the 360 as that was the console i had before entering the PC arena, however using PC's for other things was a given, but not for gaming.

Do not troll, and please have a civil discussion about this, the outcome is extremely different to what many think, and i DO NOT stand for every PC gamer out there, some will always pay far less than what i did, or even more than what i did.

Console gaming would be way more expensive if I weren't buying my multiplats for less than $10 on the PC. It's not that bad when you have a PC, though, and really only buy the occasional exclusive for the consoles.

Which is more expensive PC or console? PC is much more expensive if you want a better experience.

Both are expensive. Gaming is expensive.

Console is if you regularly buy games when they launch

Being the best can be expensive, but who cares, you get what you pay for.

Master race all the way. It's the most flexible platform, it can be as cheap or as expensive as you want or need it to be.

Depends. If you want the latest and greatest pc will always be more expensive. Consoles will be cheaper as well if you dont nuy many games

For me though pc would probably end up much cheaper considering i go for a $700 build a couple of upgrades $200-300 and that will last me 5-6 years and i tend to buy alot of games ( bargain bin for the win )

More expensive Hardware = PC

More expensive Games = Console

Master manticore race is the most expensive, but equally as rewarding.

Depends on your level of patience

PC games tend to be much cheaper than console games, so you'll be saving more money in the long run.

Then again, the PC also gets more great games every year than any console, so you'll end up buying a hell of a lot more games, so...damn, maybe it is more expensive after all.

It just depends on how you do it. If you need to be at the tip of upgrades then PC is. Yet if you buy sensibly, don't buy everything at launch, wait for steam sales or other discounts PC can be really cheap. Consoles can be cheaper up front but overall they have less sales and hardware takes much longer to drop in price. Which in turn can make it more expensive if you also must have everything at launch.

eh, probably depends on the spending habits of the person. But I don't care, since my PC serves way more purposes than any console.

I have so many games it is not even funny, i can't even fit much time in for them, but i seem to stick to familiar ones, and my Steam account is not my only account, i have many hours racked up on Origin with BF3/4 and Ubisoft account.

PC gaming can be substantially more expensive but it's usually up to you how you wanna go about it and what you wanna get out of it

For games consoles are extremely expensive. PC games even on launch at retail can be half the price of a console game sometimes.

You get what you pay for.

@AMD655: Wall of TEXT. Did not read. PCs and Consoles are not races. lol!!

PC gaming is more expensive to begin, but over time it's cheaper

Console gaming is cheaper to begin, but over time they nickle and dime you.

Case in point

$700 for rig

$399 for console, $60/year for online (x5 year is extra $300) so it comes to $700

PS+ gets alot of games for no cost, maybe not the games you actually want or have time to play

On PC they have alot of free-to-play games, humble bundles with like 7 games for $5 (almost free)

If your console breaks down after 5 years, get another one for $300

If something in your PC breaks down, you take out that 1 part, could be $300 or could be something cheap.

Over the long term I would say the costs are almost equal.

But with PC you get alot more.

I mean you need a computer in your everyday life anyway (even if you don't game on it)

Might as well use it for both computing AND as your "console."

Then again with console, you can just use a cheap laptop for your computing.

Choices choices.

It's basically a tie depending on preference and lifestyle.

Console gaming is more casual "pick up and play"

PC gaming is more hardcore.

Up front? PC. In the end? Console.

If you bought all your games day 1 that would be true, but retail games drop dramatically in price after just a couple of months.

Nice thing about consoles is the games look and perform better over time, where as the opposite is true with PC.

Dunno, my 480 did a fantastic job maxing every game out there, only 1 game it could not was Crysis 3.

Uh, that's not entirely true.

This has been interesting to me because I've always considered myself a budget game player. Which is kind of strange, since everyone is technically a budget gamer, it just depends what that budget is.

If you are willing to be flexible and patient, gaming can be the cheapest hobby of all time. When I was a kid, I inherited a Sega Genesis from one of my older brothers and rented games from an old video rental place on the corner of my block attached to the gas station. I was able to play every new game that came out for like 4 bucks a week. To get into PC gaming, it was a much longer story. And renting games still doesn't exist on the PC even though it could be pulled off very easily through a platform like Steam.

So for me, console gaming has been astronomically cheaper than PC gaming. In half the time I've spent about 2-4 times as much in PC gaming than console gaming. But ultimately you need to be flexible in order for gaming to work with your budget rather than against it. I've always rented games, now I do it through Gamefly on their cheapest plan. I get to play every new game that comes out and if I really like it, I buy it later on when it's 20 bucks on amazon. This is especially advantageous for GOTY editions and the like. I also take advantage of Playstation Plus, so I have more than 30 games I have access to right now and growing every week for 50 bucks a year. I also got my PS3 later on in the lifespan so there were a bunch of games I wanted to play already in the bargain bin and I think I spent around 250 for the console itself. I have found that by being flexible and avoiding buying brand-new games, console gaming is dirt cheap. I still buy PS2, PS1, DC, and GC games from random places if I can find a good deal. I once found a bunch of old PS2 games in a bargain bin for 2 bucks a pop. I got 10 games for 20 bucks, one of them was FF12 and another Silent Hill 2. Seriously good stuff for practically pennies. And those games work perfectly, in my efforts to do the same with old PC games, compatibility is a constant issue. And no, there are not thriving mod communities that offer fast fixes for every last broken game that came out in the 90's, or even the 2000's. You really have to rely on either luck, or GOG.com for stuff like that.

So be flexible, get off your butt, be patient, and console gaming is just a treasure trove waiting to be ransacked.

Is expense all that matters?

Is that how you live your life?

"I can buy a nice comfortable home Or I can rent out a roach motel for MUCH less money! Roach motel obvisouly superior!"

"I can experience some fo the best cusine in NYC by going to these restaurants... or I can just sotp at BK for a whopper for much less money! Whopper for the win!"

"I can pay for front row tickets to my favorite band... or I can download some random guy's youtube clips for nothing! Obviously the clips are superior!"

Jeebus.

Console is more expensive and this is coming from somebody that spent almost $2,000 building his PC.

stop being a moron

there's cost trade-offs, you can make a budget PC or go all out and get the best hardware money can buy... as far as games go though Steam not only has cheap flexible pricing, but it has excellent rights retention

Most likely master race. Though always needing to upgrade is a widely believed myth. The thing that will get you in trouble with a PC Gaming rig is wanting to keep up with the Jones' as well as the virtually infinite amount of options.

Thats the darkside, you have so many options, configurations to play around with, etc that it can easily be overwhelming. For example I've been trying to sit down long enough to beat AC Revelations since December 2011. On PS3 I can now guess that the frame rate easily dips to the low 20's a decent amount of the time. However because I have no way of changing it I don't worry about it to much.

Yet on Crysis 3 Maxed out with my SLI 770's and Adaptive Vsync on I get parts of the game that dip to no lower then 55 fps and soon after I find myself tweaking with stuff on the Nvidia Control panel, GeForce Experience, Nvidia Inspector, and the in game settings. Or on Far Cry 3 occasionally when driving for long distances the frame rate dips to about 50 fps when a vehicle hits full speed.

Someone comes out with a cool mod, chances are unless you're really experienced you might have to go at it 2 or 3 times before you get it to work properly. Happened to me with the Half Life 2 Cinematic Mod and Final Fantasy VII Tifa Bootleg.

Ironically enough the PC's greatest strengths of customization and upgradability can easily become it's greatest weakness if you're not careful.

This is mostly a large change in expectations, and i am one to talk i often do this too, yet i do not mind it on my N64 or Dreamcast.

You guys are over complicating things. If you want to stay on the cutting edge, PC is more expensive by a long shot. For an "equal" experience consoles are more expensive.

My PC is far from equal.

How elucidating. I mean as to your social ineptitude and possibly your level of intelligence, not so much as to the topic at hand...

I'm starting to realise why people hate elitist hermits lol

And? Did you have a point?

My PC much faster, costs less if equal games (multiplat).

Isn't that exactly what I said?

Care to expound on that.

The way I've mostly seen it used, the term "Elitist hermit" appears to be shorthand for: some guy just said the PC does somehting better than a console, burn him!

Not to say that on occasion lording it over the console gamers isn't done... and that in return the console gamers do exactly the same, specially around the launch of new consoles.

As to my own contribution to the thread, my point is that if your ONLY measure of the "worthiness", for lack of a better term, of a gaming system is how expensive/cheap it is - wlel you're doing it wrong.

If your friend asked you to name the best restaurant round your location 'cause he wants to treat you the next time he's town, is the first thing you're going to do to arrive at a proper answer is to find out which is the cheapest? I doubt that's going to help you find the best restaurant.

That is my point. It's weird as **** to ask the question: Which system offers the most, and start by figuring out which is cheapest. I'm not saying it shouldn't be part of the equation, but it's like way down ont he list of questions I'd ask first.

I think there's just way too much emphasis on price, especially when, if you calculate lifetime cost, the difference is usually a few hundred dollars in what is already an expensive, unnecessary habit of luxury.

Well, I guess that was asking too much of you

This. Even if you lower settings as time passes, some newer games will still look better than older maxed games. Devs simply learn how to make things look more appealing while staying at around the same level of tech.

and that's where I stopped reading. That's what normal herms do. What elitists do is lord it over everyone all the time and they never even concede when some console games look really damn good. They just think PC is the be all and end all

Agh, you're going to do your thing again where you respond with silly phrases. Cool, I'll just ignore you I guess. Or you know, you can engage me with a proper response... your call.

This also applies to PC as well. There are so many F2P games that if you weren't too picky you could indulge in nearly every genre for free. Also if you were to inherit an older PC and be willing to play older PC games you could get a new game for under $5 every week on PC the same as above. Plus these latest weekly humble bundle packages have been really awesome and give you multiple games (along with helping charities).

What's the point? you're just as bad, if not worse, than the rest of the fanboy trolls

Weirdly, I seem to have more money and games as a PC gamer than when I played primarily on any console. For example on 360 I was buying new/used, and on selling games. But even if I got an older, 'cheap' 360 game, so about $40NZD, sometimes I'd still make a $20NZD loss.

At $100NZD for a new console game I seldom bought them, higher cost made it hard to justify the expense plus the depreciation is fast.

Recently on PC, I bought Batman Arkham Origins day-1 for just $33USD, worked out to less than half the price of buying the retail console game here in NZ.

Plus with Steam, my library only increases in size. Whereas on consoles, I was selling the games again, keeping my library small.

So all in all, despite not being able to on sell my games, on the PC I'm buying more games, I'm buying the games earlier, and I'm (forced into) keeping games. On consoles, I was buying less games, making effort to on sell these games at a loss, and failing to keep the games in my library. So it seems to me PC was more sensible financially.

And I haven't even mentioned my low cost build that maxes almost everything, drive by a pentium g860 and radeon 7850.

dem PC deals.

Is that a fanboys MO overall though? Just replace PC above with Xbox, Playstation or Wii. Not saying that PC gamers are immune, just that your definition is the same one as for a fanboy in general. I also agree that elitists are very annoying because they make the normal PC gamers look bad (and some are just fakeboys).

Good ole' Gabe (coincidence that it's also GOG?) discovered that cutting deals on software made more money in the long run and thus the mythical steam sales were born. ;)

http://digital.gamefly.co.uk/?stop_mobi=once#!/promotion/523?cid=fouk111513

Thought i would add this as a great deal is on.