Killzone: Mercenary shoots onto Vita on September 10
Trion Worlds hit with more layoffs, Defiance team impacted
Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault defending Vita next week
Game & Wario was originally going to be pre-installed on Wii U
The Last of Us digital download lets you start playing sooner
Weekend PC download deals: Borderlands 2 for $11
Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection coming to PS3 in July for $50
Madden NFL 25's $99 'Anniversary Edition' includes Sunday Ticket
Final Fantasy 8 getting PC re-release (in Japan)
More Game Gear titles headed to 3DS eShop
New Consortium Plans to Reinvigorate PC Gaming
by Aaron Linde, Feb 13, 2008 1:28pm PSTSeveral marquee companies are teaming up to keep the PC gaming platform alive, according to the Mercury News.
Dubbed the PC Gaming Alliance, the group is made up of several companies with an interest in sustaining PC gaming, including Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia and AMD. The alliance aims to keep PCs competitive with consoles in drawing game developers to the platform.
The consortium hopes to expand the efforts of Microsoft's Games for Windows program, which sought to standardize the platform and improve consumer experience. The PC Gaming Alliance is expected to be formally announced in advance of next week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
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Not so much games wise but the hardware needed to play these games to their best and with smooth frame rates.
Valve games are the ones I most look forward to because I KNOW they will run great on my system.
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To address your challenge, we need to "set the scene", so to speak. You've challenged me (or any PC gaming fan, I suppose) to produce a $400 PC ostensibly because you consider the cost of console gaming at $400, which is untrue excpet for perhaps the Wii - which doesn't compare technically, really, to even a mid-level PC, so I'll assume you're claiming that the 360 as a platform will only cost $400.
Let's really look at the costs of 360 console ownership, because using the PS3 is actually too easy for purposes of this debate/discussion:
Xbox 360 Elite - $450 - Let's face it, there are too many reasons in support of owning this specific model (better HD space, which is always at a premium on the 360, HDMI support, better, less failure-prone components, to name a few) so this is the one I'm going with
1 extra controller - $40-50 - I won't even add-in 3 extra for 4-player action, we'll assume that the average console gaming "Joe" or "Jill" is only into having a single friend over to compete against
Xbox Live Gold - $50 - if you want to play MP online, this is the way to go
TOTAL = $550...but that's not really, if we're being fair, the final cost....we're overlooking the cumulative cost of paying $10 extra for games (and yes, there are Platinum level games, which run cheaper but when new games are released, the "average" 360 gamer is going to want them right away, not 1-2 years later at the Platinum price). If we assume that over the 3-4 year life-span of the 360, you're paying about $10 more for all of your software, it rounds out to about an extra $100-200 (probably more, I'm being incredibly fair to 360 owners on this point of the discussion) at least.
NEW TOTAL = $650-750 (including the conservative estimate above of the extra cost of the software over time compared to PC software costs)
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This also leaves out the cost of an HDTV. Here's the skinny on that - there are two kinds of arguments about including the cost of an HDTV in the overall total cost of console ownership: 1. If you're a console gamer who claims that your "next-gen" console looks at least as good as a high-end PC, you have no choice but to admit needing ownership of an HDTV to make that fact true - it's not otherwise, or 2. you're willing to concede the lesser graphics (which are noticeably more fugly without HDTV resolutions). I'll assume that our Xbox 360 owner's cost above do NOT include the HDTV as they're willing to concede poorer graphics by a decent margin. Again, I'm being VERY generous in this discussion/debate, whatever you want to call it, towards 360 owners.
For our high-end PC (that WILL definitely run Crysis and any newly released game at superbly high-graphical levels) we can go to Newegg.com to get our parts, and I'm going to allow the high-end PC builder to carryover his prior DVD-R/W drive and his computer case (that seems reasonable considering that many PC owners cannibalize from their old systems and much more than that even):
Motherboard: ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - $150.00
CPU - Core 2 Duo Conroe INTEL 2.66gHz = $190.00
Memory - 2 gig RAM DDR2 G-Skill = $50.00
Hard Drive - Western Digital 120gig = $45.00
Videocard - XFX 8800 GT 512mb DirectX 10 = $250.00
Power Supply - Thermaltake 500W = $55.00
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Total = $740.00 (Does not include monitor since we didn't factor in the cost of a display for our console costs either)
The big thing people always say, is exactly what you said, "I don't own an HDTV simply for my gaming console so it shouldn't count towards the costs" but I could say the same thing about a PC, it has FAR more uses than a simple console, too. The end point here is that you'll find (perhaps to your horror or disbelief, depending on whether you love or hate PC gaming) that costs have literally crept to within inches at this point of each other.
And you can say, "Yeah, but the average gamer doesn't know how to build a PC" but let's be realistic, there are regular magazine articles that easily and clearly explain how to build one (PC Gamer's 2nd to latest issue was all about that) AND you can always use the internet, which has a million easy and in-depth walk-through articles about how-to build your PC from the ground up, and furthermore, everyone knows at least one (if not more) PC gurus that can help you, so that point is bunk, imho.
So I've met your challenge and I didn't even have to include the cost of an HDTV, which really tips the scale in the PCs favor, even if you're only buying a lowly 30" non-brand name system. ;)
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