this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Definitely not a third. A $500USD Xbox Series X or PS5 has about the same performance as a ~600-650 PC in the current market maybe. They sell at a small loss (or used to), because they intend to get significantly more back from you via subscription payments. Most people want to actually be able to play games they paid for online or use basic online services, so after like 5 years you've already spent another 300 (xbox) to 500 (playstation) assuming you buy the cheapest option annually.
On console you also have significantly less choice for peripherals and pay more for games, a lot of extra money spent for most people. With PC you can spend way less to get the functionality you need.
Plus if you like pirating, you can consider that a few hundred dollars in savings on games... considering you don't pay for them and all.
I pirate all of my console games
The most expensive PSN option was £83.99 a year last time I got it, for the full Game Pass type deal. I've bought a grand total of two games since I got my PS5 a few years ago (Baldur's Gate 3 and Talos Principle 2, and neither are even available as a physical disc making my disc drive in the console pretty pointless), and I play the damn thing just about every day.
It's completely optional in any case, I very rarely even play multiplayer games. The price you're hoping to beat is £389.
I can get an equivalent GPU (3060 12GB is about as close as you can get if you want to avoid lack of VRAM stutter) for about £270, which isn't leaving a lot for the rest of the PC. There may well be regions where the PS5 is more expensive than a PC, but the UK ain't one of them.
There are many strengths of PC gaming, like being able to buy extra hardware, modding, many digital stores, piracy, etc, but competing with consoles in the budget space is not where they shine.
If the only thing you care about is the up-front costs, then consoles are cheaper, but at least in the US, that's not really true in the long-term (except for the switch) if you want basic online access. Especially if you are are going to own a decent computer regardless of whether you game or not. Personally, the only difference I would make between my current computer set-up if I didn't also play games is I wouldn't have upgraded my 9 year old GPU for $250 (3060ti*), which is cheaper than even a switch without accounting subscriptions costs (which is relatively reasonably priced at $20/year and a lot of the games I'd be interested in if it weren't for Nintendo are primarily games I'd want to play offline anyways, so the subscription isn't really that important anyways but the games like like $60/each...).
*edit: used. So a used switch would actually be cheaper as long as you don't get a few years of subscription or buy like 2 games.
I suspect the viability of PC gaming is very regional.
A 3060 Ti costs £384 ($490) in the UK. That's almost exactly the price of a PS5, and the reason I'm still using a 1060 6GB for my PC.
Forgot to mention I got it used, so should be comparing it to used consoles (PS5 looks like its still about $300 for digital edition, but doesn't really matter since the subscription is most of the cost anyways), so a used switch would actually be cheaper.
Apples to apples, I wonder how much that holds true…
When a console launches, buying off the shelf equivalent parts is probably a fair bit more expensive. After a couple of years though, the latest and greatest whatever is at least two years old.
I'm sure console manufacturers flatten out these prices by making long term contracts, but still a 4 year old machine is still 4 years old. AMD has released new chipsets since that are in turn themselves coming up on 2 years old.
Granted, console games are optimized for a specific platform, but that will likely be very game specific.