I miss the days when $500 could build a “console killer”
PC Master Race
Submitted 20 hours ago by MTZ@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/889e925c-1487-4a9a-bd64-521403bc1d03.jpeg
Comments
Dettweiler42@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 20 hours ago
These days its like 1500. But you still get all the advantages like being able to do whatever you want with it like using productive software to actually do work.
missphant@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
You will also most likely still make that difference back over the cycle of one console generation through better game deals and no subscription fees for online play.
Credibly_Human@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
It is nowhere near 1500.
More like 800.
For a nice PC that will last you a while 1100 (for like a 9600 + 9060XT)
FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
That was a brief period when consoles were way over priced for the components they had.
poVoq@slrpnk.net 19 hours ago
That period repeats every 3-5 years approximatly towards the end of a generation but before the new generation is announced.
paultimate14@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Nah it’s the GPU market. Cryptocurrency briefly exploded and now AI is sucking up all of the GPU manufacturing capacity. Back in 2019 I got my RX580 for $175. The AMD 9070 that released this year is a tier down from that and had an MSRP of $550, but an actual price more like $650. The sweet spot of value PC building has shifted from $750 to $1,500 in just a few years. Some of that is just general inflation that affects all parts, but roughly half of that increase is just from the GPU.
It’s impacting consoles too. Consoles uses to get cheaper over time, with both price drops to existing models and new, cheaper models being released (Sony’s Slim models, things like the Wii Family Edition and Wii Mini, the DSLite, etc). Looking at this generation… The original PS5 with a disc drive debuted at $500 in 2020. The “Slim” version also debuted at $500, and just got a price increase to $550. They released a PS5 Pro at $700, and just increased it to $750.
Nintendo is doing it too. The Switch was $300 for its entire life, and now that the Switch 2 is out consumers would typically expect a price cut to move the existing stock. Instead, Nintendo raised the price to $330. The OLED model went from $350 to $400, and the Lite went from $200 to $230.
And of course Microsoft is in on it too. It’s more complicated to write up since they have different storage variants of the Series S|X, but for example a Series S 512GB was $300 at launch (For some reason I remember seeing them for $250, but maybe that was a Black Friday sale or something). Now it’s $400!
Dettweiler42@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
I recall it being a period of at least 10 years. A prior generation GPU would run about $150-200. The CPU/Mobo was the most expensive part
ThunderComplex@lemmy.today 18 hours ago
I miss the days when $500 were enough to buy a console.
poVoq@slrpnk.net 19 hours ago
You still easily can with second hand components.
Steve@startrek.website 17 hours ago
Thanks etherium
Blackmist@feddit.uk 17 hours ago
Yeah, but all those people buying wonky 2GB “PS4 equivalent” GPUs ended up pretty quiet when games later in the generation started using more and more VRAM.
The PS4 CPU was a joke, but it could use a lot of textures.
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
It really depends on whether you want the newest games with 128k graphics. I game on a 5 year old Thinkpad* and a first gen switch and am happy about it.
*granted, it was refurbished and still like 2700€, but the same laptop would be cheaper today
rafoix@lemmy.zip 19 hours ago
Wasn’t that just around the second half of the PS360 generation and the PS4 era until crypto blew up?
PCs were always pretty expensive since my childhood in the 1980s.
Dettweiler42@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
I want to say late 2000’s to early 2010’s was when my friends and I all built our own PCs for about $500.
michaelmrose@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Let’s compare a 6 year price without games.
PC gaming
800 gaming PC 200 mid cycle update to GPU 3-5 years in
PS5
500 non-gaming PC because your ps5 isn’t a useful alternative 500 ps5 650 ps5 pro 4 years in 720 for PlayStation online basic at 10 per month
1000 vs 2370
Laughing at console gamers spending more than the cost of a basic computer on the privilege of using it online via your own internet which you also pay for
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
PS5
500 non-gaming PC
Come on, dude. Firstly, you can get a non-gaming PC for under $200 easy. Hell, if you know where to look, you can get it for free.
500 ps5 650 ps5 pro 4 years in
Why not just… not upgrade the PS5? Save yourself $650. If you want to “balance” things, the PC guy can save $200 on their own upgrade.
Wait for the PS6, which will be out in '27/'28 and just enjoy the OG console that was released in '20 for the life of the platform.
Like, this is obviously not an apple to apple comparison. And that’s spotting you a generous $800 PC build out of the gate. You’re simply not building a PS5 quality rig in 2020 for $800.
720 for PlayStation online basic at 10 per month
Do I get to charge the PC owner the release price of every PSO title released for free? Because that’s going to come out far higher than $720 over six years.
Are you playing any MMOs on that PC? Should we be charging you the base rate for those as well?
I’m not even a PS5 guy. I tapped out at 4 and game on my PC happily. But I’m not going to pretend console gamers are doing 3x my spend just because it’s possible to do so.
michaelmrose@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Only a tiny minority of PC gamers pay monthly for anything.
You can’t upgrade the PS5, and the sale price of your 5-year-old unit is like $100.
Free games aren’t included in the 10 per month.
The cost of 18 per month to also have old games costs 1300 over 6 years.
The PC you can get for $200 will be awful to use or die within 3 years or both. It will be ridiculous to repair, so you will buy another 200 special hating the shit you bought both times.
Basically at the root a PC and a console are both good for about 6 years but the 700-1300 you pay for online is going to dwarf the buy up from acceptable PC to gaming PC+ hardware.
Cheap PC are the value option expensive pc are the quality option.
Consoles are kind of in between.
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
The consoles are “cheap” because the controllers, games, and subscription services are expensive.
It’s far, far, far cheaper to game on a PC in the long run. You can buy a pc capable of playing many games for as little as $300 (gmtek or similar micro pc sporting high performance amd cpu). If you want better graphics, you plug a gpu into that for $260 or so (Radeon 9060).
Steam is crazy cheap. Multiple sales a year, and if you don’t like a game you can get a full refund. Free AAA games every week as well from GOG, Epic, and rarely but surely, also Steam.
v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
I’ll second this, actually. I used to hate on PC gaming for around a decade or so because it always seemed to prohibitively expensive to me compared to a console. But after building my very first PC with used parts off ebay for around 300-400€ in total, I think, I can confirm that it works really well overall.
Most of the games I’ve played so far perform really well, some even play on highest settings (and that’s with just a 1080 ti), and it’s a PC, so multitasking, office work, homework and whatnot are all possible. Running the OS off an SSD makes loading times in games comparatively fast to the PS5’s SSD, sometimes even faster.
And I haven’t spent a single Euro on games because of a plethora of 🏴☠️ options, which is possible on console depending on the console, but ultimately hinges on jailbreaking your console and voiding a potential warranty.
Overall, I’m very pleased with my PC experience right now. Ever since building the PC, I haven’t played on console, and that’s coming from someone who was playing on console pretty much exclusively since around 2017
Credibly_Human@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Yes, Yes, this is true! (I say after spending multiple thousands on a gaming PC where this is absolutely not true).
buttnugget@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
My Xbox and PlayStation both came with a full normal controller, and console games are constantly on sale. I have absolutely no idea what you’re trying to get at here.
The point of the submission is that PC dumbfucks don’t know how to compare apples to apples. Console gaming is objectively superior due to the benefits of things like warranty, consistency, drivers, software, etc.
michaelmrose@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Software and driver issues like clicking update? Waiting for a reboot?
The same one year warranty that your PC has?
drspawndisaster@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
A controller is like 20 bucks. My PC can play the vast majority of games ever made out of the box, for free if I’m willing to commit some crimes
Kolanaki@pawb.social 8 hours ago
I was into the PCMR sub back when you could build a machine that ran better than the current console generation for the same price as the two main consoles. And it’s not like consoles perform so above and beyond a PC that there’s little difference; the PC hardware just exploded in price so it costs so much more to make something that runs as good or better than a PS5.
mechoman444@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
It’s possible to build a competent gaming manchine if you’re ok with 1080p. A ten year old card still runs 1080p perfectly fine.
I have a Ryzen 5500 on a radeon 550. It plays mostly everything at 720 to 1080. It’ll do lite 4k but it does what it needs to do.
I bought a Acer nitro with a 3050 in it for my teenager. 🤷 It’s perfectly fine. She plays mostly counter strike anyway.
I play a bunch of indie stuff and remasters… Unless you want 60fps in cyberpunk in 4k ultra ray tracing… You can get into a pretty decent build for well under 1k.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 6 hours ago
My VR rig built just before the first COVID lockdowns is already capable of keeping up with the PS5 in performance mode; but it was also about $900 mostly from the GPU (a 1660 Super becsuse the 2070 Cyberpunk Edition card was sold out).
buttnugget@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
That’s only part of the story. Consoles have many benefits, like warranty, consistency, drivers, software, etc. I built some reasonable budget gaming machines back then, but I still bought consoles and still do to this day because of their superiority.
jnod4@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
Subscription to access multiplayer on third party servers 🤡
cRazi_man@europe.pub 7 hours ago
The whole idea of “superiority” is so dumb. People should get what works for them.
For most normies/noobs, they don’t even know how to start thinking of gaming PCs. No ideas of GPUs. Don’t want to make the wrong choice and overpay for an ancient system labeled “gaming ready”. Consoles work great in not having to think about anything and just playing. Also you get exclusives. It comes at the cost of higher price, online subscriptions, system lock in, few options for mid cycle upgrade, etc.
PC works gr at for me and I haven’t had a console in 20 years. I’d recommend it to anyone who is even slightly inclined to learn the basics. The Steam Deck would be a great console experience for anyone…but the sales number compared to the Switch and lack of mainstream recognition shows that a lot of people don’t have an appetite for PC gaming. Fine, use what works for you.
Another problem is that online PC communities have a real obsession with going “top tier”. Most people can do perfectly well with last generation parts and secondhand or refurbished bargains. Budget gaming, retro gaming, patient gaming, are all valid and cheap.
rabber@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
Yeah but you have to spend so much money on games and with PC you can almost play anything for free and games add up fast
michaelmrose@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Yep so many amazing games for $5-20 on steam sales often not even that old
IWW4@lemmy.zip 18 hours ago
What console sells for 400 bucks?
paultimate14@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
That’ll get you… The lowest storage tier Series S. Or a Nintendo Switch OLED. Yay.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
This meme is from like 2014
Blackmist@feddit.uk 17 hours ago
PS5 (discless edition) did until the USD took an almighty shit.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Switch 1.
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 16 hours ago
Over 7 years, you’d have to pay $560 to play online on a PS5, assuming they don’t increase the price again. The cheapest PS5, without the disc drive (which is a bad decision if you like cheap games), costs $500.
You can easily build a PC more powerful than a PS5 for $1060.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Over those 7 years, you get 252 free games for the PS5. Meaning the average value of those games has to be like 2.2 for the subscription to pay for itself
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
They’re not free, you had to pay to access them. The 252 are useless unless you play them and not just a half-dozen titles you like.
noxypaws@pawb.social 5 hours ago
Spending one fifth of that will perform better than a $750 console (PS5 Pro)
LodeMike@lemmy.today 14 hours ago
$400 plus a subscription for the privilege of playing online + some amount of money for a computer anyway
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I gave up on PC gaming years ago. Turns out sitting on a coach and being 10’ ft away from a screen is way easier on my body and my eyes than being hunched over a desk 1’ away from a monitor.
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 13 hours ago
Have you used a PC since 1993? There have been new developments.
SirHery@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Dam is this a copy pasta? 😅
Credibly_Human@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
You must have given up not years, but decades ago.
sobchak@programming.dev 9 hours ago
You can plug a PC into a TV and even use Xbox and PS controllers if you like. Can have the PC auto start Steam in Big Screen mode so you’d seldom need to use a mouse+KB (trackballs or keyboards with trackpads are best in this scenario). Nothing wrong with console gaming though (well, besides supporting all the non-free software, locked-down systems, and shit companies; but most games you likely play are these as well).
LodeMike@lemmy.today 10 hours ago
Guys, you don’t have to downvote someone because they have an experience that happens to be many standard deviations away from the mean. This is what consoles are for. Nintendo still shines for people like this :)
RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
You actually had to edit files? Outside of me breaking things first (yay mods) I’ve only had to edit 1 file ever, and that was mass effect 1 on an old and laptop that was uhh… not suitable for the task given to it.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
some $2k beats a console and you get more games, cheaper price, and can do whatever you want with it
so if you’re already getting a computer, it just makes sense
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 hours ago
This argument made more sense 20 years ago. Now there’s a lot more people who just don’t need a desktop.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
idk about that. I have both and I still prefer using the desktop at home because I can get a much nicer performance out of it than connecting an external display to the laptop. Even for ordinary things like watching a YT video it makes a difference.
Shamber@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Are we still on this exhausted argument? What’s next Apple or Samsung? People need to chill, just do you, enjoy your gaming experience on whatever you like
the_grass_trainer@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Found the console gamer
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 hour ago
Nah, I’m a long-standing pc gamer and I’m so tired of people fighting this stupid fight. If console people can’t afford a pc and want to game on the couch, that’s great. I just happen to be able to afford the fucked up prices nowadays and want to game at a desk with a mouse and keyboard and run a browser and stuff at the same time or whatever. It really doesn’t matter anymore because nobody is gonna convince anybody else of anything and all you’re doing is being an asshole to somebody. Wanna actually improve things? Stop making the world worse.
Shamber@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Do you Think I was trying to hide or something? You would be sorely mistaken, been around this idiotic fued long enough to learn to respect other people’s presence, that’s all
buttnugget@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
That would be me and yes, I am morally and intellectually superior to all PC gamers combined.
Credibly_Human@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Its a funny image with PC owners laughing at ourselves for paying exorbitantly more for a silly crown and you are angry about an “argument”.
Shamber@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Angry?! Brother I couldn’t really care less about this subject, have you seen the comments? People already started fueding so fast, it had to be said, and I give it maximum a week, before another meme surfaces and people will start the same thing all over again, exactly as it used to be on reddit
REDACTED@infosec.pub 8 hours ago
I understand this is a joke, but 15k? Wtf. I think you meant server, not PC
Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
The number gets higher and higher every time a oconsole dweeb makes the argument that they’re not constantly fucking themselves.
qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 7 hours ago
Flagship Nvidia is around $10k. Easy to spend at least another $5k on the rest of the computer…
REDACTED@infosec.pub 6 hours ago
That’s not a gaming GPU, that’s workstation GPU
michaelmrose@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
That isn’t something normal people buy you can spend any amount on anything but its really fringe rich people shit.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I did not even realize you could run games on these GPUs… It would still be hard to spend 5k on the rest of the PC without throwing money away on visuals and other performance unrelated stuff, but I guess you may be able to do it depending on what you still consider performance improvements…
mechoman444@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I mean ya… That’s pretty much how I feel.
magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 20 hours ago
Yeah, but I can use my PC for other things as well (I’m only using my PC for gaming)
TachyonTele@piefed.social 19 hours ago
I have editing stuff on my pc. Music, art, video.
But since i got my steam deck i realize how much i only used the pc for games.Eventually im going to Linux the thing. But I’m dreading the time sink that’ll be.
underscores@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
guys, it’s rage bait, you don’t have to defend a strawman
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
When did “trolling” turn into “rage baiting?”
morphballganon@mtgzone.com 13 hours ago
Than*
the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
No one but the once in a blue moon whales are spending 15,000 on a rig. The average rig I build for people is under 1,000 and the setups I see online are usually near there too.
socsa@piefed.social 11 hours ago
I have a dual 5090 threadripper rig with 192 GB of RAM and it cost $10k. To get to $15k you’d have to actually be trying to waste money.
Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
My gaming PC is also a digital audio workstation, a photo editing platform, a video editing platform, a home theatre PC, and a platform for spreadsheets and financial planning.
Credibly_Human@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Me with my 5090 I have only played 4.5 games on because I hate dark patterns
notarobot@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
Wait the section on “Psychological Dark Patterns” sounds kind of over inclusive. Leveling up and progressing are thing that give a sense of accomplishment. Granted, things like cs2 skins are a form of manipulation. But you can’t tell me that making a build on a game like DND or building a world you like on Minecraft are “dark patterns”
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I will say, way back in college I had a friend get two $600 graphics cards so he could play Morrowind: Oblivion at max settings. And I was just kinda dumbfounded, cause the upscaling simply wasn’t that good.
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
Did Oblivion even support SLI/Crossfire?
Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 hours ago
Good, but nowadays the gap is more $800/$3000.
My console from 2020 runs games about the same as PC hardware from 2018. If you built a 2018 spec PC today it would beat the Xbox Series X and PS5, but unlike the consoles, PC components have reduced in price.
Which means the gap with available hardware and matched SSD size would be $650 to $900
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 hours ago
I can use keyboard and trackball on PC.
Consoles to the last are configured for right-hand dominance, and not all games support keybinding. In fact, a lot of them don’t support point-and-click either.
Also I have productivity applications on PC.
OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
I’ve never been happy with the performance of my gaming PC for the cost, always seems like it should perform better, but the real reason I don’t buy consoles is because I want to be able to upgrade my hardware but still play my old games.
Hazzard@lemmy.zip 18 hours ago
Honestly, the strongest advantage of PC, if you don’t mind a little tinkering, is modding. I’ve modded on console before, and it’s usually a pretty difficult process, and limited, compared to PC. The thing I find a little silly, is I did build the super expensive PC, and most of what I play would totally run on a console if they were open platforms.
But seriously, Celeste: Strawberry Jam was probably my favourite game of last year. I’m looking so forward to the release of the Fusion Collab, likely in the next year.
I’ve been playing Archipelagos with friends over the past couple months with Hollow Knight and Nine Sols, and they’ve been a blast.
Emulation is also wild, tons of games I’ve enjoyed in the past, playable again with incredible mod support, I’m looking very forward to playing Kaze’s Return to Yoshi’s Island when it releases, and had a blast with the Majora’s Mask Recomp earlier this year.
And steam sales are ridiculous, a lot of these games are much cheaper much more regularly on PC.
If I’d spent say, 500$ on this PC, it would be very easy to save that amount in the price of games, and how many fewer games you’d need to fill your time with all these options, in just a couple years, assuming you play regularly.
i_dont_want_to@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 hours ago
Oh yeah? Well my $20k PC is better than your $15k PC, peasant.
Thorry@feddit.org 19 hours ago
That’s a lot of words to say you are jealous
gmtom@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
How did I know the comments would be full of people taking the joke way too seriously.
AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
stupid meme for stupid people that don’t actually know how much a pc costs
HeyJoe@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
They will be the same people who say, “I only spent a little bit more than a console, but look how much better it is. What’s the point of a console anymore?”
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Consoles have always been appealing to me due to price and ease of use compared to PCs. It was the trade-off for having a locked-down system. But with the price gouging on both hardware and games nowadays, that advantage has gotten smaller and smaller. I suspect the PS5 was my last console and I’ll be getting lower end gaming PCs from here on out. Consoles just don’t make financial sense any more.
Nicopf@feddit.org 1 hour ago
Me cycling between Minecraft and Isaac on my 10 Year Old PC that was outdated when I bought it and my baby games on the switch: 😎 (My take is, PC gaming as shit because confusing and expensive parts and console gaming is shit because companys ripping consumers off)