You can build a pretty capable PC for about $600. And you won’t have to pay for multiplayer.
Comment on Chips aren’t improving like they used to, and it’s killing game console price cuts
Skyline969@lemmy.ca 1 day agoI mean, for the price of a mid range graphics card I can still buy a whole console. GPU prices are ridiculous. Never mind everything else on top of that.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Grangle1@lemm.ee 23 hours ago
“Pretty capable” will get you dunked on in the PC gaming world. For what I’ve seen PC gamers actually recommend I could buy 2-3 modern consoles.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
That’s just nonsense. Maybe some 13 year olds with rich parents think like that.
Skyline969@lemmy.ca 16 hours ago
Along with paying for multiplayer I get access to a large catalog of games as well as additional games every month. Yes they’re inaccessible if I stop paying, but that’s not really a big deal. Even all that aside, I pretty much play single player games anyway.
Also, when a game comes out I know it’ll work. No driver bugs, no messing with settings, no checking minimum and recommended specs, it just works. And it works the same for everyone on the platform. I don’t have any desire to spend a bunch of time tweaking settings to get things just right, only to have the game crash for some esoteric reason or another.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
Yeah, GPU prices are kinda ridiculous, but a 7600 is probably good enough to match console quality (essentially the same as the 6650XT, so get whatever is cheaper), and I see those going for $330. It should be more like $250, so maybe you can find it closer to that amount when there’s a sale. Add $500-600 for mobo, CPU, PSU, RAM storage, and a crappy case, and you have a decent gaming rig. Maybe I’m short by $100 or so, but that should be somewhere in the ballpark.
So $900-1000 for a PC. That’s about double a console, extra if you need keyboard, monitor, etc. Let’s say that’s $500. So now we’re 3x a console.
Entry cost is certainly higher, so what do you get in return?
- deeper catalogue
- large discounts on older games (anything older than a year or so)
- emulation and other PC tasks
- can upgrade piecemeal - next console gen, just need a new CPU + GPU, and if you go AMD, you can probably skip a gen on your mobo + RAM
- can repurpose old PC once you rebuild it (my old PC is my NAS)
- generally no need to pay a sub for multiplayer
Depending on how many and what types of games you play, it may or may not be cheaper. I play a ton of indies and rarely play AAA new releases, so a console would be a lot more expensive for me. I also have hundreds of games, and probably play 40 or so in a given year (last year was 50 IIRC). If I save just $10 per game, it would be the same price as a console after 2 years, but I save far more since I wait for sales. Also, I’ll have a PC anyway, so technically I should only count the extra stuff I buy for playing games, as in my GPU.
Skyline969@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
You do make some decent points, but the console has one major aspect that PC simply does not have: convenience. I install a game and I’m playing it. No settings to tweak, no need to make sure my drivers are up to date, no need to make sure other programs I’m running are interfering with the game, none of that. If I get a game for my console I know it absolutely will work, with the exception of a simply shitty game which happens on PC too.
The other thing I wanted to touch on was the cheap games. That’s just as relevant on console nowadays. For example, I’ve been slowly buying the Yakuza games for $10-$15 each. That’s the exact same discounts I’ve seen on Steam.
For backwards compatibility, it depends on your console. Xbox is quite impressive - if you have an Xbox Series X you can play any game ever released for any Xbox all the way back to the original. Just stick in the disc. With PlayStation, it’s just PS4 games that the PS5 is backwards compatible with. Sony needs to do better. And with Nintendo… lol.
Yeah, with a PC you can do other things than gaming. For most of that you can get a cheap laptop. There are definitely edge cases where a powerful PC is needed such as development, CAD, AI, etc. But on average a gaming-spec PC is not necessary. I’m saying that as a developer and systems administrator for the past 14 years.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
No settings to tweak, no need to make sure my drivers are up to date, no need to make sure other programs I’m running are interfering with the game, none of that.
I also do almost none of that on my PC. I do install updates, but that’s pretty much in the background. Then again, I use Linux, so maybe it’s different on Windows these days? I doubt it.
Most people tweak settings and whatnot because they want to, not because they need to in order to get a decent experience. I use my PC and Steam Deck largely as a console: install games then then play. That’s it.
I’ve been slowly buying the Yakuza games for $10-$15 each
Steam isn’t the only store for buying games on PC, so the chance that you can buy a given game on sale on a given day is quite a bit higher vs console, where there’s only one store. I’ve picked games up on Steam, Fanatical, or Humble Bundle, and there are several others if you’re interested in looking.
For example, here’s Yakuza 0 price history on PC, it has been $10 somewhere for almost a year. On PlayStation, it looks like it’s been $20 most of the year. I actually got it for a little under $5 about 5 years ago, and I only paid >$10 for one Yakuza game (most were $7-8).
Tons of games show up in bundles as well. I have picked up tons of games for $2-5 each (sometimes less) as part of a bundle, and that’s just not really a thing on consoles.
if you have an Xbox Series X you can play any game ever released for any Xbox all the way back to the original
Interesting, that’s pretty cool!
gaming-spec PC
Honestly, the difference between a “gaming spec” PC and one targeting only typical tasks is pretty minimal outside the GPU, assuming you’re targeting console quality. You really don’t need a high end CPU, RAM, or mobo to play games, you can match CPU perf w/ something mid-range, so $150-ish for the CPU. Likewise for the GPU, you can get comparable quality for something in the $300-400 range, probably less now since the PS5 and XBox Series consoles are kind of old.
But that’s assuming you need console quality. You can get by with something a bit older if you turn the settings down a bit.
If you want to save cash, you have a lot more options on PC vs consoles. If you want to go all out, you have a lot more options on PC vs consoles for maxing out performance. PC gaming is as expensive as you make it. I used the same PC for playing games for something like 10 years before getting an upgrade (upgraded the GPU once), because it played all the games I wanted it to. If I have a console, chances are the newer games will stop supporting my older console a year or so after the new one launches, so I don’t have any options once the console goes out of support outside of buying a new one.
That said, there are a ton of caveats:
- don’t buy laptops for gaming, they are way too expensive and can’t really be upgraded (Framework exists, sure, and I think eGPUs still do, but that’s going to be expensive)
- don’t buy a pre-built PC if you want to save money - if you DIY your PC, you can save a bit of cash, but more importantly, you’re more likely to upgrade it vs replace it later on
- you can spend a ton on PC gaming, if you follow whatever the influencer trends are (everyone needs a top-end GPU for $2k or whatever, plus a monitor > 200 hz)
- consoles have a much better couch co-op experience
I have a Switch for the couch co-op experience, as well as ease of use for my kids to just put in a game and play, and a PC for most of my personal gaming time (I also have a Steam Deck so I can play in bed or on vacation). I have something like 20 Switch games and hundreds of PC games.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 hours ago
GPU prices are ridiculous, but those GPUs are also ridiculously more powerful than anything in any console.
turbowafflz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah but remember to factor in that you probably already need a normal computer for non-game purposes so if you also use that for games you only have to buy one device not two
Fondots@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I just built a PC after not having a computer for about 5+ years.
Built it for games, did not feel like I was missing out on anything in particular except games by not having a computer. There’s a lot of things I’d rather use a computer for but these days most of what I used to do on a computer can be done just fine from a phone or tablet.
During those 5 or so years, I maybe needed to use a computer about a dozen times, and if my wife didn’t have a computer I could have just swung by a library for a bit to take care of it.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
To me tablets feel like the most useless devices ever invented. Too large to carry around with you but just as stupidly limited as a phone compared to a real computer where you can actually automate some of your tasks and type on a decent keyboard and have a decent sized screen that doesn’t ruin your wrists with the weight of holding it up.